Chapter 9: 9. The Underground!
Ryan drank the juice he ordered and pondered on what he did yesterday. He had been visiting underground guilds for a while under the name 'Grim' and also visited hit wizard taverns which gave out tasks.
These taverns are one of the ways the nobles and ministry deal with problems deemed below their level like dealing with potential magical beast attacks, scouting unmarked dangerous areas, hunting info on the vamps and wolves in the country, etc., while they try to control the Aurors and make them deal with tasks that would not trouble them. Even with the overwhelming victory of the light faction, the dark faction could still control many areas within the ministry subtly.
Ryan had joined these guilds first because they felt similar to adventure guilds from the Isekai stories and he required wizarding money, so he started going on 'quests'. It... was also the first time he took the life of a somewhat evolved sentient being. He had encountered a group of Acromantula and hunted them down. Ryan was thankful they were spiders or he might have hesitated in killing them.
He also had trouble killing the forest trolls he encountered later. It was mostly because some of the green blood splashed on his arm. It had rendered him immobile for a few seconds, remembering the first time he saw his blood, but his observation haki had warned him and he dispatched them all after coming to terms with his dilemma.
Then there was the smell of the blood assaulting his enhanced nose, which almost made him puke before he applied the bubblehead charm to keep the smell out. Troll blood smelled disgusting. While he had gotten access to some skills thanks to gluttony and got some shadows, Ryan had to come to terms with himself that these were the disadvantages of being in a fantasy world. While he could just shoot a killing curse at them and be done with it as the result would be the same, he decided to erase any disgust or trauma by forcefully getting used to it... He was pretty sure the trolls didn't appreciate that.
While he considered killing wrong and believed that just classifying a living being as a monster didn't make killing right, at its most natural state the world has always been about survival of the fittest. So it was better to train himself to follow that mindset whenever required.
Moving away from the bloodshed, Aria had used the chances at the guild as an advantage and gathered information from novice occulmens and other open minds, getting information relating to current news and their knowledge or experience which could prove useful. Ryan felt a bit disgusted for looking at their minds as books and throwing away their privacy, but it was one of the few ways to get information.
For example, one of the scanned hit-wizards was a muggle-born sorted in Slytherin house, and his memories did not paint the house as just someplace with snot-nosed brats playing politics, or using curses on 'mudbloods', no. While these problems did exist, there were some groups of students who were tortured for fun by Crucio and enjoyed playing with them.
Those blood purists were taking ragging to bullshit levels. The guy Ryan saw the memories of literally saw one of his muggle-born female friends get dragged to one boy's room by several of them, and this couldn't be reported because they warned to kill families if they did so.
'I thought it was up to prank spells and name-calling, but this?' Ryan thought when he received this memory from Aria. He also considered the fact that the guy Aria provided memories of was in that house before Voldy's death, so there was a possibility of Dumbledore improving Hogwarts's security related to students, or at least making sure things like this don't happen without consequences.
Due to acceptance that he was in a bloody world, Ryan decided to try hunting dark wizards from some experience. He at first took simple jobs of hunting a vampire and a werewolf.
It took some time to track them down, but Aria's improved magical observation helped to track them much easier and faster.
Ryan had fought them hand to hand to compare his level with theirs. He even challenged the werewolf at night for this!... Though he did not have fun avoiding their fangs all the time. While Ryan's enhanced physiology made him immune to most curses, he wouldn't risk getting putting his hand in a werewolf's jaw until he was sure he was safe from Lycanthropy. Call him paranoid, but he didn't want to encounter a difficult situation that he could have easily avoided but didn't due to overestimating himself.
Importantly, Ryan had not killed any wolf, vamp, or dark wizard, but he did hand them over as they were a genuine threat to normal people because of their thirst for human blood and some werewolves had turned cannibals under Greyback. Thanks to a few contracts, it got Ryan a good amount of Galleons. He also had a 'nice' talk with the goblin when he was called by Gringotts to enquire about the increasing Galleons, but a little pressure due to his haki, and the one who had swindled him before when he had first arrived at Gringotts apologized to him like there was no tomorrow.
Back to his life as a bounty hunter, Ryan... had been getting quite a bit annoyed as of late. He usually ignored the snickers of people in the tavern every time he had brought his targets alive, and most tried to make fun of him because they thought he was too much of a pussy to kill them.
Once or twice they tried to teach him something, but a little conquerers' haki and they all fell flat. This happened to anyone who stood in his way, but he never got any problems after two times, because he had beaten the group who had followed him to a pulp. Wizards didn't treat high levels of injuries in the same way as muggles because of the healing potions, but the experienced knew they were just on the brink of death.
There were some rumors about Ryan being a vampire as well as some others, but nothing concrete. Ryan had started enjoying the quests and hunts because they provided him with experience, even if they were no match for him. He did have quite a trouble against a talented rouge hit-wizard because of a wand-to-wand duel, in which Ryan was using a transfigured stick, but it was still the best experience he had.
Ryan was sure that if not for his enhanced senses, he would have lost as the guy had set a lot of traps for him. He had made the area swampy while distracting Ryan with spells, to making serpents around him while trying to corner him. Because of this, Ryan started to look into groups of people to crack down to train himself in wand fights, discovering a few dark societies. Some were rebellions of muggle-borns, in which Ryan had left two groups after challenging them, but he took away a few twisted ones in the third group who were borderline serial killers.
To him, fighting with wands became a sport like fencing. But for the opponent, Grim was a nightmare. The rest of the dark wizards followed some gods, so cult stuff. This also helped Ryan realize there are a lot more dark groups than just the death eaters. It's just that Voldermort was too powerful that the death eaters became well-known.
Ryan had also encountered various smuggling rings in which there were small-range portkeys to catch muggles to host them in an auction as slaves.
The particular auction was something Ryan couldn't target directly as there were too many influential people connected to it, with it also being a platform for the circulation of magical artifacts and magical beast parts. So... wizards doing organized crime.
'As if dealing with immature idiots with too much power wasn't enough... Fuck, this is too realistic... well, as one wise purple potato said, 'reality is often disappointing'' Ryan cursed for a while for wizards not behaving like sheep, but it also made him realize they were more than just simple pureblood bigotry in UK.
Ryan had been quite thoughtful about the world which had opened up for him and wondered if he should continue doing what he did with the flow. While playing an adventurer was fun, the name Grim was entering into hit lists and was getting feared, and doing what he did anymore would come with many complications, and he didn't know if he should take the headache. The best he could see through this was getting involved with a plot where the influential bad guys make the auror's hunt him or something. And Ryan didn't want to play magical Batman, at least not yet.
Ryan was also aware that all these things were slowly eroding his moral compass, and he did not think he could uphold some no-kill rule or something similar.
He did not want to see too much bloodshed. He did not take a chance at another life to act as some god, passing judgment, flowing rivers of blood for what he thought was right.
It was during this he heard some info about Fenrir Greyback that Aria had picked up, so Ryan flew to the town. He needed to vent his frustrations, so Fenrir was the perfect target as there was no way he could be called sane. Ryan then noticed some haywire emotions in the residents and decided to investigate. He did not expect to encounter a hunting ground for the ex-death eaters.
Ryan injured them quite harshly, taking his frustrations on them. He had also corrupted their magic, making them equivalent to squibs.
He just stared at the traffic, seeing families going shopping, and people rushing for their jobs, ignorant of all the things going on in the world.
Though all this did have many advantages for him than just money and experience. Meeting people like the old man from yesterday makes him realize there are people who have suffered, are powerless, yet are living their life, so he doesn't need to through a tantrum on being abandoned by Potters.
If they have abandoned him, then he just needs to make sure he is free of their control in case they realize who he is.
Ryan threw the juice packet away and sneaked into an alley, then flew away in stealth, flying towards the location of his shadow which had changed due to the guy he was trailing using a portkey.
But he was not going to get rid of him that easily!
*Meanwhile in the Wizarding World*
Ryan had not realized just how many waves he had created in the world due to his actions. His back-to-back success in all contracts and the fact that all his targets have been captured alive than killed showed that the task was too easy for him. This was because of the way he carried himself. Even after making subtle changes, he could only make himself look like a teen, yet he had gained a reputation beyond what he believed.
His competitors gave rumors of an extremely dangerous wizard which was circulating around, and people had no idea about them. And since he left all he attacked from some cults and groups alive, the information networks treated him like a guy hunting people involved in groups or cults. And most considered that his not catching them and leaving after he fought them was an insult to them. This made people very scared of Grim, making him out to be a hunter from whom it's impossible to escape.
And due to the three admissions of St. Mugo being ancient and noble family lords who were saved by their house elf, the healers made a shocking discovery of the injured barely having any magic even after multiple magic-replenishing potions. The three buffoons went into madness, and the Daily Prophet's Rita Skeeter had somehow gotten some inside info about the one who attacked them being a cloaked individual with green eyes, and Skeeter painted an image of some Dark wizard hunting good members of the society. The underground was able to match descriptions of the titles to Grim, and by cross-analyzing his actions, people came to the conclusion that Grim was hunting ex-death eaters.
This news was then circulated and soon reached the ears of bigger Death eaters like one Lucius Malfoy. Through his contacts, he had the ministry declare Grim as a dark lord in the making, panicking the sheep of Magical Britain. And all the while the person in question was watching a cricket match in a stadium without a ticket and lots of food he prepared beforehand!
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