Hunt Begins

Within such a vast expanse, the handful of "living things" carrying the breath of life could easily attract not only the corpses underground, but other living beings as well.

Eugene Hope had now run into exactly that kind of trouble.

As he and the young Black man beside him, Habakkuk Morton, fled the camp at top speed and headed deeper into the distance, trying to evade that clearly unmanageable "black shadow."

Not even half an hour had passed before it seemed their pursuer was about to catch up!

Though he still could not determine how the other party had locked onto their position, he could more or less guess. There was no helping it—once someone had a general direction, the movements of the only "living people" in such a sparsely inhabited region were simply too conspicuous.

Sensing the prickling pressure from behind drawing ever closer, the black and white Third Tier users, who had been stepping on water and accelerating close to the ground, "gliding" forward like sleds, were panting like dogs. Finally, gritting their teeth, they stopped trying to drive the water faster and abandoned the extra effort.

The two eventually stopped amid a patch of black shrubs, maintaining their stealthy tactical stances as they quietly awaited their visitor's "grand arrival"—or perhaps prayed that his eyesight was poor enough to pass right by them—

There was no choice. During their earlier investigation alone, they had already deeply understood that the opponent's energy pool was on an entirely different level from theirs.

Once they were truly locked onto, competing in attrition and endurance would be meaningless.

A large volume of water was once again drawn from the bulky "life jackets" they had kept with them, which looked like water-storing sponges.

As a thin curtain of water began spreading in all