"This person was terrifying..."
Actually, when he heard the voice coming from above his head, Xiao Xiao's tense heart began pounding like a drum.
Yet precisely because he was so tense, he entered a state of Mind Burst. Instead, he felt his heartbeat slow to an abnormal crawl. Each interval between beats seemed extraordinarily long, and within those lengthy intervals, he began thinking rapidly.
He had not dodged only after the other party fired. The moment he heard the voice, he had already sensed that something was wrong:
He quickly thought it through and reached two conclusions:
1. The other party seemed to possess some kind of hiding ability, allowing him to conceal himself in this empty office without leaving the slightest trace.
2. The other party now intended to attack him, which was why he had appeared above his head.
Did that mean the other party could no longer hide while attacking, and had to reveal himself before launching an assault?
More importantly, now that he had appeared above Xiao Xiao, what would he do?
Fire at him from above? Slash at his neck with a knife?
...He couldn't possibly be planning to flick him on the forehead, right?
In any case, Xiao Xiao, who was extremely tense, made a decision in an instant. Just as instinct compelled him to look up, he first took a step back.
It was the safest decision he could make.
Sure enough, the moment he looked up, he saw the dark muzzle of a gun and those excited Red Eyes.
At the same time as he stepped backward, those Red Eyes pulled the trigger. The bullet skimmed past the tip of his nose, and Xiao Xiao could even smell the strong scent of gunpowder and feel the bullet's shockwave scraping across his face.
...That was fucking terrifying!
Xiao Xiao's entire body jolted into action from fright, and his instincts nearly made him collapse onto the floor.
But the more tense he became, the eerily calmer his face looked.
He forcibly controlled his body. As he retreated one step and dodged the bullet, he had already swung his knife forward again.
The fruit knife in his hand slashed viciously toward the other party's red eyes.
Thus, under the pressure brought by anger and extreme panic, he even answered the other party politely.
"Hm?"
The Red Eyes man, hanging from the ceiling, was genuinely startled by Xiao Xiao's sudden reaction.
Because of the route's characteristics, he had already killed many prey while toying with them, including quite a few veterans who had undergone second-stage Enhancement.
Yet Xiao Xiao's unexpected display of dodging his bullet caused his heart to jolt. The other party was clearly only a newcomer, but not only had he dodged the bullet, his face had even remained unfathomably calm and composed.
Moreover, his counterattack was incredibly fast. In an instant, the fruit knife had already reached his eye.
By the time he reacted, the blade was less than three millimeters from his eyeball.
He had even found the time to answer his question. What did "You're not the only one who says that" mean?
Was he really that polite?
"This is fucking a newcomer?"
Red Eyes cursed inwardly, but all that escaped his mouth was a muffled cry of alarm as his body suddenly leaned backward with the motion.
After all, he was an experienced veteran. Unlike an ordinary person, he did not hunch forward in fear.
Doing so would only make his eyes meet the blade head-on and leave them at risk of being slashed.
He leaned backward, pressed his back against the ceiling, and moved both feet and hands at once, quickly crawling to the side.
He moved so fast that even Xiao Xiao's raised head could not keep up with him.
Everything before Xiao Xiao's eyes blurred, and the other party had already crawled out of his field of vision.
But Extreme Sensitivity still allowed him to sense the other party moving rapidly forward and crawling into the shadows at the edge of the ceiling.
"Crash..."
Xiao Xiao did not even have time to turn around before he suddenly grabbed a pen holder from the nearby desk and hurled it forcefully at the corner of the ceiling.
Crash.
The pen holder shattered, but there was nothing in the corner of the ceiling.
"He just disappeared?"
Xiao Xiao was stunned. He stared at the empty ceiling. He clearly sensed that the other party had crawled there, yet he could not see him at all.
It was an occurrence that challenged his understanding to an extreme degree.
It almost made him feel as if he were hallucinating, as though everything before his eyes was unreal.
"Impressive, impressive. No wonder Black Hand Yang Jia chose you..."
Just as Xiao Xiao's heart filled with surprise and tension, that sharp and irritating voice rang out:
"But your Enhancement is still insufficient..."
"I even overestimated you. You haven't even begun your second Enhancement..."
"..."
Amid the mocking and provocative voice, Xiao Xiao remained highly tense for a moment, trying to determine the other party's hiding place through the sound.
But it was useless.
The man's voice seemed to come from every part of the office at once, from all directions, blending together.
Not only could Xiao Xiao not locate him by following the sound, it instead disrupted his perception.
Even his eardrums seemed to have become uncomfortable. A chaotic buzzing filled his head, as if a thousand flies had burrowed inside.
He already felt the world around him twisting and becoming unreal.
"Swish!"
At that moment, Xiao Xiao's scalp suddenly prickled again. He sensed malice surging from his left and quickly dodged aside.
But out of the corner of his eye, he only caught a glimpse of a pair of blood-red eyes flashing past. They were filled with excitement and greed.
"You're not even qualified to fight me..."
Every nerve in Xiao Xiao's body tensed. He instantly dodged one step to the right.
But his movement was still half a beat too slow. Although he avoided the cold flash that swept toward the artery in his neck, his left arm turned icy cold.
A large patch of skin and flesh had actually been sliced away.
Yet with his thoughts racing, he had no time to feel the pain. The instant the cold flash struck him, Xiao Xiao stepped to the left and avoided the fatal spot. Then the fruit knife in his right hand stabbed toward those blood-red eyes.
His movements were precise, as if he had rehearsed them countless times. His nerves were so cold and detached that it was as though he could not feel the wound's effects at all...
"Swish!"
The fruit knife flashed like lightning, yet it still only cut through empty air.
Those red eyes quickly darted to the side. By the time Xiao Xiao's vision followed them, everything before him was empty once again.
"What an impressive reaction and physical quality..."
That irritating, hateful voice rang out again. "What a pity that you've undergone too little Enhancement. Do you have a hundred Points?"
"Or do you only have a pitiful few dozen Points?"
"Hahahaha! I'm already an expert with a thousand Points. Do you really think you have any chance of winning?"
"..."
"..."
"He can actually disappear instantly? What kind of ability is this?"
Xiao Xiao's face remained expressionless, and he also tried not to pay attention to what the man was saying. Instead, he thought rapidly.
In almost an instant, he had already determined that this person should be one of the three routes Yang Jia had mentioned to him before:
The Hunter route.
The initial Enhancement Element of this route was Lurking Instinct.
Because they feared everything in this world, they always wanted to hide themselves somewhere others could not find.
People who possessed this Enhancement Element were very skilled at playing hide-and-seek.
But that was only the beginning. Once they possessed six hundred Points, they could attempt their second Enhancement.
At that point, they had already embarked on the Hunter route. They not only understood how to lurk, but had also awakened the talent to hunt by relying on instinct.
Because they feared everything in this world so deeply, they might as well kill it all...
So this person before him was on the Hunter route?
Xiao Xiao thought rapidly:
He had just revealed that he was already a veteran with a thousand Points. That meant he had undergone second-stage Enhancement.
Not only had he embarked on the Hunter route, he might even have Enhanced some other elements to support it.
This made Xiao Xiao unable to stop himself from panicking.
He had only undergone initial Enhancement in two elements so far, for a combined total of one hundred and twenty Points.
Both Violence Factor and Extreme Sensitivity were merely initial elements.
How was he supposed to fight this guy?
"Damn, what kind of monster is this?"
At that moment, Xiao Xiao did not know that the Red Eyes Hunter hiding in some corner of the office was also cursing inwardly.
The first time he attacked, Xiao Xiao had dodged under impossible circumstances, which had already startled him.
The second time, he had even abandoned his gun and used the knife he was more skilled with, yet Xiao Xiao had still dodged the fatal blow.
Not only that, both times Xiao Xiao had immediately counterattacked after he struck.
How the fuck was that reasonable?
He could not understand it. The strength and abilities this person displayed truly did not seem like those of someone who had undergone second-stage Enhancement.
But his composure and reactions were genuinely frightening...
Watching Xiao Xiao quietly stand in the office with a fruit knife in hand, looking deep in thought, he was actually too frightened to attack.
He continued deliberately speaking in a frivolous and provocative tone, but inwardly, he had already grown tense.
Haha, I saw that some readers were getting anxious. I've finished this section today, after all. This is the protagonist's first proper confrontation, so I couldn't compress the content too much. I wrote five chapters and had no way to update them all in one day, but I'm adding extra chapters today and finishing this part.
Before you continue