My ragged coat flapped in the cold wind.
I pushed off hard, sending muddy water splashing from the filthy puddle beneath my feet.
Like a great ape gone wild, I shot deeper into the woods.
The gust I whipped up sent rotten leaves tumbling from the treetops.
The purple glow on the Black Rods grew brighter and brighter, like a firefly in the woods.
"Well, look at that. Pretty good sense of direction."
I looked down at the iron toothpick in my hand and couldn't help muttering to myself.
The stench of machine oil and rust in the air had grown almost chokingly thick.
I passed a few rusty hemlock trees as thick as a man's waist.
Deep wheelchair tracks appeared in the muddy path ahead.
The tracks zigzagged across the Mud Flats.
A scattered trail of white paper scraps lay beside them, all soaked to mush in the muddy water.
"All right, you cripple up ahead. I see you."
I planted my toes on a rotten log and charged after them.
Whoosh.
I landed like a massive iron weight, kicking mud half a meter into the air.
I came down right in front of a strangely shaped wooden cart covered in paper scraps.
Konan was pushing it, her deathly pale face looking haggard beneath the soot.
The paper on the wooden cart rustled oddly, making it look like a battered cardboard box.
"Stop right there. You still haven't paid me for my workplace damages."
Hands in my pockets, I tilted my head and sized them up.
"Sen Senju... you actually..."
Konan struggled to stop, her charred hands trembling.
She bit down hard on her bluish lower lip, her wide eyes filled with despair.
Even six hundred billion explosive tags hadn't managed to blow this monster to pieces.
Now that