Just a little farther. Only a little farther to go.
Kiseki Tokito moved faster and faster, practically gritting his teeth as he charged ahead.
He listened to the increasingly sparse gunshots and cries for help in the distance, going out one by one like candles guttering in the wind.
His heart grew heavier.
If it really was a demon, then those fading voices and signs of resistance...
However unwilling he was to assume the worst, he knew what that meant.
In less than five minutes or so.
Kiseki heard panicked footsteps and heavy breathing up ahead.
Someone violently shoved the bushes aside.
A somewhat familiar hunter came scrambling toward Kiseki Tokito from directly ahead, practically falling over himself.
"Mr. Boqi?"
"You... Tokito?! Why are you here?!"
The hunter, his clothes covered in blood, clearly had not expected to run into the familiar woodcutter here either.
He froze for a moment.
Then panic crept back onto his face.
"Why did it have to be now? Stay away! Tokito, run!"
"There's a man-eating monster in these mountains! It's no bear!"
The hunter barely slowed down.
Clutching his gun in one hand, he grabbed the hem of Kiseki Tokito's clothes with the other and tried to flee into the distance.
"We have to run now, before that monster catches up!"
However.
The hunter discovered that the man he remembered as having an ordinary build stood with his feet seemingly rooted to the ground.
No matter how he pulled, he could not make the other man move a single step.
Only then did he suddenly notice that the woodcutter was not holding his usual woodcutting axe or hatchet.
Instead, it was a silvery-white samurai sword that gleamed coldly and looked quite expensive.
"What are you trying to do?! That thing's a monster!"
"Even the