Time rewound to several minutes earlier.
At that moment, Kojo was being dragged along by Yuma, running forward nonstop just as before.
Only this time, the two of them weren't hurrying to get somewhere. They were running for their lives.
"Faster, Kojo!"
This time, Yuma was the one urging him on anxiously.
"Damn it!"
Kojo looked utterly flustered as well. Even though his stamina was nearly depleted, he could only keep fleeing as though his life depended on it.
On closer inspection, both Kojo and Yuma bore faint burn marks.
The reason was simple.
As the two fled, clumps of flame kept pursuing them from behind.
"Boom!"
The clumps of flame slammed down beside Kojo and Yuma like cannonballs, blasting the area apart and sending hot wind and Flame Wave sweeping over them, forcing them to change direction.
Yet even after Kojo and Yuma changed course, the cannonball-like clumps of flame continued to rain down without pause.
"Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom!"
Explosions rang out one after another without end.
The clumps of flame pursued Kojo and Yuma again and again, bombarding them as blast waves swept over them repeatedly with tremendous destructive force.
Kojo and Yuma were like fugitives fleeing across a battlefield filled with artillery fire. They could only keep running nonstop, using that method to throw off the enemy's aim and make the flames land in empty spaces time and again.
It went without saying that the moment they stopped, the flaming cannonballs would blast them to pieces and kill them on the spot.
Unfortunately, the two of them had limited stamina after all.
"Ha... ha... ha..."
Before long, both Kojo and Yuma were panting, making their exhaustion easy to sense.
The attacker, on the other hand, still had plenty of stamina—perhaps because he was an Artificial Lifeform.