From Bullets To Billions novel Chapter 707

Chapter 707: Him Again?

Max and Aron had done enough searching on the mountain peak—at least as much as they possibly could have given the wreckage. There was no way for them to confirm if Hercules was still alive, or where the monsters had dragged him off to, but one thing was for sure: whoever he’d gone against, the giant would have given them a hell of a fight before he went down.

Just like their ascent, they had to physically scale back down the steep trail to head toward their car. As they walked through the dark woods, the silence between them was heavy.

"We’re completely surrounded, right?" Max asked, his voice low but completely calm.

"Correct," Aron replied, his hand dropping casually to his side.

"Well, these definitely can’t be the high-level professionals you were just talking about," Max muttered, a cold smile touching his lips. "If even I was able to spot their positions from this far away."

The two of them stopped dead in their tracks, freezing in a small clearing. The moment they stayed still, figures began to spill out from their hiding corners. They emerged from the thick brush in front, stepped out from the treeline on the sides, and closed the gap from behind, cutting off the escape path.

Several men materialized in the dark. There had to be around fifty of them in total, all carrying nasty smirks on their faces and heavy weapons gripped tightly in their hands.

"Are you guys the crew that just took Hercules down?" Max asked, looking around the circle.

There was no actual answer from the mob. Instead, a wave of arrogant snickers and giggles rippled through the crowd. They looked at each other as if they were going to thoroughly enjoy this, or maybe it was just because they thought they’d lucked into an incredibly easy hit contract.

Max shook his head, a look of profound boredom crossing his face. "Why am I asking stupid questions? These idiots don’t even have a single scratch or bruise on their bodies. Of course Hercules didn’t fight them... but then again, his own Vow probably would have stopped him from laying a finger on ordinary people anyway."

Max had a pretty solid guess as to what the specifications of Hercules’ Vow actually were. He felt like the giant had held that restriction true to his soul for decades, and ironically, that absolute discipline was exactly why he had been defeated in an ambush.

"It is absolutely no coincidence that these people are waiting for us right after we visited the cabin," Aron declared, his eyes scanning the front line. "So it’s safe to assume that the leadership of this group might actually know something about the paper trail."

Before Aron could finish his thought, three of the men suddenly charged forward, sprinting across the dirt to steal the first hit. The guy in the lead was wielding a heavy bike chain; he swung it with a violent hiss, aiming straight for Max’s skull. Instead of flinching or dodging, Max simply lifted his left arm, allowing the heavy metal links to slam into his forearm and wrap completely around his sleeve.

With a brutal jerk of his shoulder, Max pulled hard on the chain, violently ripping it right out of the man’s grip. In one continuous motion, he swung the stolen weapon back at the other two attackers who had closed in. The heavy iron crashed into their faces with an echoing crack, cutting their skin, fracturing their jaws, and shattering the chain itself into useless pieces.

Although Aron didn’t directly jump into the main melee, a few of the stragglers had naturally tried to flank him, assuming the older man was an easy target. Aron dealt with those idiots with a few quiet, brutal takedowns, but he spent the majority of the time focused on his own specific job: securing an interrogation target.

After about ten minutes of continuous violence, the chaos in the woods finally died down. Max had successfully dealt with every single person who had come to attack them. He stood in the center of the clearing, breathing easily as he looked at the sea of broken bodies scattered across the dirt.

"Yeah... the old Max Smith would have never been able to pull off a slaughter like this," Max claimed, wiping a smear of dust off his knuckles as he started to walk back toward his guardian.

He stopped in front of Aron, his eyes locking onto a terrified, bleeding lieutenant whom Aron had pinned against a boulder by the throat.

"Did you manage to extract any useful information from the survivors?" Max asked.

"I did," Aron claimed, letting go of the lieutenant, who immediately crumpled to the ground, gasping for air. "They’re a mid-tier street gang mobilized from a neighboring city. They had absolutely no clue who their actual targets were tonight. Their contract parameters were simple: get rid of anyone who came to investigate the cabin."

Aron adjusted his jacket, his expression turning cold. "But I managed to dig deeper into their transaction history. They were paid a massive lump sum of cash to execute this ambush, and based on the physical description of the payer... it was Donto Stern."