The Terrifying Madman

The five colleagues sprawled before the Bloodsmith Hunter had all died without a whole corpse left behind.

Unable to identify them by their mangled faces, Ye Chen stepped forward and took their Hunter Black Rings, retrieving their hunter nameplates from within.

After a quick confirmation, sure enough, all five had been members of Smoke Squad.

"Ah."

Faced with this tragic ending, though it was not entirely unexpected, Ye Chen sighed regretfully. He carefully put away the Black Rings and nameplates of the five seniors, then hurried toward the last corpse leaning against the mountainside.

Compared with the teammates whose bodies had been mangled into an utter mess, this corpse appeared far more intact. Only its entire body, from head to toe, had been evenly divided into left and right halves, leaving behind facial features clear enough for identification.

Holding the pure Blood Blade, Ye Chen crouched on one knee before one half of the bloodied body and took in half of the lifeless gray-white face.

The man was an old senior who had once led Ye Chen on a dangerous mission when Ye Chen had still been a newly inducted hunter. He was also the leader of all Smoke Squad—Clone Hunter Dusarien.

Over half an hour earlier, as the final wave of reinforcements to reach the scene before Dawn Squad, Dusarien and his Smoke Squad had covered Kadeci as she sealed the clowns inside the "Maze Cube." Then, leading his teammates close behind, he had attempted to work with Kadeci's ability to surround and eliminate the scattered clowns one by one.

Yet beyond everyone's expectations, the clowns had Dunke, a former hunter who had been brainwashed.

Using his special ability, he replicated the relic effect of the "Maze Cube," seizing a portion of the spatial control from Kadeci and thoroughly