NOVGO.NET Chapter 108 Caught in a fish net
Chapter 108: Chapter 108 Caught in a fish net
A star-like glow suddenly appeared in the sky. At first, it was nothing more than a tiny point of light—the people inside the structure barely noticed it. Then it began growing, brighter, bigger, closer. The strange glow illuminated the ceiling above them, and one by one, the people inside looked upward. Fear immediately spread across their faces.
"What the hell is that?" someone shouted.
"Move!" another voice cried.
"Run!"
The crowd scattered in panic. People shoved past one another as they tried to get away from the strange light that seemed to be descending directly toward them. Some stumbled over chairs, others grabbed onto whatever they could find, and a few simply ran without knowing where they were going. The star-like glow continued expanding until it was no longer a point of light—it became a massive tear in space. A dimensional rift. The air twisted violently around it before the tear suddenly opened wider.
Then—a body came tumbling through.
"ARCHHHHHHHHHHH!" Kai’s scream was easily the loudest. He screamed so hard that it sounded as though he was trying to tear his lungs apart.
Adrian came next, and apparently, somewhere along the way, Adrian had forgotten one very important fact—he wasn’t a bird. He flapped his arms desperately, but nothing happened.
"Why isn’t this working?!" Adrian shouted, continuing to flap anyway.
"Adrian, you idiot!" Ethan screamed.
"Oh dear!" Adrian cried.
They kept falling. Luna, however, remained surprisingly calm. Her face was expressionless as she looked downward. There was no ground, no visible platform—just a rapidly approaching structure. Rowan immediately moved toward her. As always, his first instinct was to protect her. He grabbed her tightly as they continued falling.
"Luna!" Rowan called.
"I know!" she replied.
The group dropped together. Ethan joined Kai in screaming when he realized they were getting closer to the ground. Kai suddenly remembered something—"My ice!" His eyes brightened, and he immediately tried to activate his ability. But before he could do anything—WHOOSH! Something shot upward. A gigantic net caught them in midair.
"What the fuck?!" Kai screamed.
The net tightened around their bodies, trapping all of them together. They were packed into it like fish caught by a fisherman. Kai struggled against the ropes. "Get me out of this!"
Ethan grabbed the ropes, trying to pull them apart. "It’s not moving!"
"Of course it’s not moving! We’re in a fucking net!" Kai shouted.
"That’s the point!" Ethan shot back.
The net swung violently, and everyone slammed into one another as it descended. Luna grabbed one of the ropes to steady herself, while Rowan kept one arm wrapped around her. Adrian looked like he had completely lost his ability to understand what was happening.
Then—BOOM! Instead of hitting the hard floor they had expected to meet, they landed on something soft. A huge foam-like surface caught their fall.
For several seconds, nobody moved. Kai slowly lifted his head, looked around, then down at the foam beneath them. "That’s not that bad, though." Everyone stared at him. Kai smiled. "At least they gave us a foam."
The others looked at him as if he had completely lost his mind. Luna’s eye twitched. "So now you’re in love with a fucking foam?"
Kai shrugged. "Comfort is important."
"Can you see where we are?" Luna struggled against the uncomfortable net, then turned sharply toward Adrian. "And Adrian, why the fuck did you bring us here?"
Adrian’s expression immediately became uncomfortable. "What?"
"What happened to your magic?" Luna’s frustration was already spilling over. "You’re supposed to be a professional at casting portals. That’s your main job." She glared at him. "And yet you failed us."
Adrian lowered his eyes. Before he could respond, Kai stood up—or at least attempted to. The lack of space made him lose his balance, and he immediately dropped back onto his butt. "Don’t say that shit, Luna." She turned toward him. Kai’s expression had changed—the usual playful smile was gone. "Don’t." His voice was unusually serious. "Didn’t Rowan tell you how tired Adrian was getting?"
Luna’s expression hardened. "That doesn’t mean—"
"Didn’t he tell you that you were taking a huge gamble before we even came here?" Kai interrupted her. "I wouldn’t normally talk to you like this, but you have no right to speak to him that way."
The others fell silent. Kai pointed toward the space around them. "You’re the architect of this problem." He paused. "No." His expression darkened. "You’re the architect of our problem because we’re all stuck here now."
Luna’s lips parted, but Kai continued. "We could have stopped the mission for now. We could have gone back, rested, figured out another way to locate the supermarket, and tried again." He shook his head. "But you refused to listen." Luna’s eyes flashed, but Kai didn’t stop. "Now look where we are." He gestured around them. "We don’t even know where the fuck we are!"
For once, Rowan didn’t come to Luna’s defense. Neither did Ethan. Even Adrian had turned his gaze away from her. Luna noticed. That somehow made everything worse. She opened her mouth, but Kai spoke again. "You keep acting like you’re the only one who knows how to survive." His voice became sharper. "We’re not puppets, Luna." He pointed toward himself. "We have mouths too." He pointed toward Rowan and Ethan. "And we’re not going to sit quietly while you make dangerous decisions that put all of us on the sidelines like sacrificial lambs."
Luna stared at him. She had expected Kai to argue with her, but she hadn’t expected this—not from him. Kai was usually the one making jokes, the childish one, the one who could turn almost anything into a ridiculous conversation. But now he looked genuinely angry. "Maybe we shouldn’t have become a team in the first place." The words hit harder than Luna expected. Kai looked away. "Because apparently we have completely different ideas about what being a team means." He folded his arms. "I can’t keep watching you take dangerous routes while expecting us to follow without question."
Silence followed. Luna stood there, stunned. She looked toward Rowan—surely he would say something, surely he would defend her. But Rowan remained where he was, his expression grim as he tried to figure out where exactly they had ended up. Luna’s chest tightened. "I didn’t know it would be like this." Her voice was quieter. "I didn’t."
Rowan finally looked at her. "As you said, it’s the end of the world." Luna’s eyes lifted. "You should have known that perfectly laid-out plans wouldn’t always work." His voice wasn’t cruel, but it wasn’t comforting either. "You can’t calculate everything." He looked around. "This world isn’t a machine where every result can be predicted." Luna remained silent. "Sometimes you need to know when to move," Rowan continued. "And when to stop." His gaze sharpened. "You also need to listen to the people around you." Luna’s expression slowly fell. "Even if they don’t always mean well, you can still use what they say to your advantage." He sighed. "But you don’t do that." Rowan’s voice became heavier. "When your calculations fail, you act like we’re the problem." Luna’s throat tightened. "Like our warnings are useless." He shook his head. "You make it look like every mistake is our fault when sometimes..." He paused. "...sometimes you just made the wrong decision."
That one hurt—more than Luna expected. Ethan and Adrian still said nothing, but their expressions were enough. Luna could see it—they agreed with them. For the first time since she had met them, Luna felt completely surrounded. Not by enemies, but by people who were supposed to be hers. And somehow, that felt worse. She bit the inside of her cheek and forced herself to breathe. She wasn’t going to break down here—not in front of them, not now.
Before she could gather her thoughts, movement caught her attention. People were gathering around them—dozens of them. They surrounded the enormous net holding the group, staring upward with curiosity and suspicion.
"How did they do that?" someone whispered.
"Did they come through the sky?" another asked.
"Are they awakened too?" a third voice added.
"Where did they come from?" someone else wondered.
The people were attempting to whisper, but they were doing a terrible job—their voices carried clearly. Luna’s eyes narrowed as she looked around. This wasn’t the supermarket anymore—not the way she remembered it. The familiar stalls and shelves were gone. Instead, the interior had transformed into something else entirely—a massive fortified bunker. Metal walls. Heavy structures. Reinforced ceilings. Security doors. Everything looked designed to survive an apocalypse. And not just survive it—it looked like someone had prepared for something much worse.
Luna’s instincts immediately went on alert. "This is a problem."
One of the survivors spoke up. "Didn’t this base get sealed?"
Another answered, "How did they get inside?"
Luna’s eyes narrowed. Exactly—that was the question. The place was supposed to be hidden from ordinary human eyes, yet they had somehow appeared inside it.
One man suddenly laughed. "I don’t know." He looked toward the group. "But Malcolm would love to see this." His smile became wicked. "He’d butcher them."
Several people laughed. The sound sent a chill through Luna. Ethan shifted, looking ready to move.
"Don’t." Luna’s voice stopped him. Everyone looked toward her. "We don’t know enough yet." She lowered her voice. "Don’t show them what we can do."
Ethan frowned. "They’re already looking at us."
"Exactly." Luna’s eyes moved across the crowd. "For now, we need to know how strong they are." She counted silently. "How many awakened are here?" Her gaze hardened. "And who the fuck is Malcolm?"
Ethan scoffed. "And we should listen to you again because?"
Luna looked at him. "What’s that supposed to mean?"
"How are we sure we’re not being used as bait this time?"
Luna gave a small laugh. "Brilliant suggestion." Her eyes returned to the surrounding people. "But right now, they see us as something foreign." She gestured toward the strange environment. "Something that shouldn’t be here." Her voice became calmer. "They’re curious." She looked at the people watching them. "That means they’re going to study us before attacking." She paused. "And entering a place like this blindly and attacking without knowing their abilities would be like voluntarily climbing into a coffin."
Nobody responded. Luna continued, "We don’t know what kind of awakened they have." Her eyes narrowed. "Someone here could have an ability we’ve never seen before." She looked around. "One forbidden ability could be enough to kill all of us."
That finally made Ethan quiet. He didn’t like admitting it, but she had a point. Attacking first without knowing what they were dealing with would be stupid. They were already trapped inside an unknown base. They had no idea how many enemies were present. They didn’t know who Malcolm was. They didn’t know what abilities the awakened here possessed. And they didn’t even know how they had been brought into the bunker.
Ethan crossed his arms. "Fine." He glanced at Luna. "We watch." Then he muttered, "Funny how you’re saying this after making us walk into here blindly."
Luna’s lips pressed together. She was clearly irritated, but she didn’t respond.
More people began emerging from the deeper sections of the bunker. Then Luna felt it—auras. Powerful ones. Several of them. Her throat tightened. These weren’t ordinary survivors—they weren’t even ordinary awakened. The pressure coming from some of them was strong enough to make the atmosphere feel heavier.
Luna stared. So this was what was waiting inside the supermarket. Not shelves filled with food, not helpless civilians—a fortress. A population. Powerful awakened. And someone called Malcolm.
Kai slowly looked around, his eyes widening slightly. "Well..." He gave a low whistle. "Looks like you’re not the only one who prepared well for the apocalypse." Luna turned toward him. Kai looked at the metal walls. "Someone might have done it better than you."
Luna’s expression became uneasy because he was right. Everything about this place screamed preparation—the fortified walls, the security system, the hidden location, the awakened, the organization, the fact that they had somehow moved the entire supermarket. This wasn’t random. Someone had known. Someone had prepared. Someone had built this place before the world completely collapsed.
Luna slowly clenched her fists. Now she had discovered something far more interesting. And Luna Hart was going to find out exactly who the hell that person was.