A Bloody Passage: I'm the Hunter

Lu Chen darted through the doomsday forest like a bolt of crimson lightning.

The drones buzzed overhead like a swarm of pesky mosquitoes.

He glanced up, a cold smile curling his lips. "You want to catch me? In your next life!"

With a thought, he instantly activated both talents, [Extreme Speed Storm] and [Beast Speed Instinct]!

The wind howled in his ears, and everything in his vision blurred into afterimages.

Trees, bushes, dirt... every obstacle might as well not have existed in his eyes.

Like a cheetah racing freely through the forest, he covered more than ten meters with each leap, easily evading the drones' surveillance.

"This speed is ridiculous!" Even Lu Chen was a little surprised.

But he didn't let it go to his head.

He knew that in the apocalypse, the slightest lapse could spell utter ruin.

"Speed alone isn't enough. I need to learn how to hide myself, too," Lu Chen mused as he ran.

Suddenly, he noticed a commotion below.

It was a military patrol!

Guns in hand, they were searching the forest carefully for something.

"Hmph, heaven has a road, but you won't take it; hell has no gate, yet you barge right in!" Lu Chen licked his lips.

He approached the patrol without a sound and locked onto a soldier.

"Replicate!"

An invisible ripple of energy flashed past, and Lu Chen instantly plundered the soldier's C-rank talent, [Heat Source Camouflage].

The next second, the mighty power of [Infinite Replication] activated, directly elevating the C-rank [Heat Source Camouflage] to the SSS-rank [Absolute Concealment]!

Lu Chen seemed to blend into his surroundings, vanishing completely from sight.

The patrol continued its cautious search, utterly unaware that death had arrived.

"Awooo-!"

Just then, a piercing wolf howl shattered the forest's tranquility.

Countless howls followed, rising and falling as though a legion from hell were gathering.

"Shit! Wolves!" The patrol captain's expression changed drastically.

They immediately stopped searching and formed a back-to-back circle, watching their surroundings warily.

Countless pairs of green eyes lit up in the dark forest like ghostly flames, filled with bloodlust and greed.

"Fire! Fire!" the captain screamed at the top of his lungs.

Rat-tat-tat...

A barrage of gunfire rang out, bullets raining down on the wolf pack.

But there were simply too many wolves, and they were extremely agile, darting nimbly between the trees and making themselves hard to hit.

Before long, soldiers were being pounced on by the wolves, letting out piercing screams.

Lu Chen stood at a distance, watching the bloody slaughter with cold eyes.

When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman profits, he thought with a secret laugh.

None of these military men were any good. Their deaths would rid the people of a scourge.

But he hadn't forgotten his objective.

He carefully observed everyone on the battlefield, trying to find a talent worth copying.

Suddenly, an officer caught his attention.

Though the officer was also surrounded by wolves, he seemed unusually calm.

He kept directing the soldiers and adjusting their defensive formation, seemingly able to predict the direction of the wolves' attacks in advance.

"Interesting." The corners of Lu Chen's mouth rose slightly.

The A-rank talent [Battlefield Sense of Smell] was his!

SSS-rank [Battlefield Precognition], activate!

At that moment, Lu Chen felt as though his brain had become a supercomputer, countless streams of information converging in his mind.

He could clearly sense everything around him, including the wolves' movements, the soldiers' positions, and the smell of blood filling the air.

"This feels so fucking good!" Lu Chen couldn't help letting out a moan.

With [Battlefield Precognition], his sense of danger had grown sharper.

He could foresee his enemies' attacks and make the best possible response.

"Next, it's time to find that commander." Lu Chen

Night fell, plunging the forest into darkness.

Several campfires burned in the military's temporary camp, lighting a small area around them.

The soldiers gathered in twos and threes, talking in low voices.

After a day of fighting, they were all exhausted.

But they had no idea that danger was creeping closer.

Like a ghost, Lu Chen slipped into the camp without a sound.

With [Absolute Concealment] and [Battlefield Precognition], he easily avoided all the sentries and patrols.

These guys really aren't very alert, Lu Chen thought with a secret laugh.

He found a tent with a light burning inside and the sound of low voices coming from within.

"This is the place." Lu Chen took a deep breath and gently lifted the tent flap.

Before the two sentries could even make a sound, Lu Chen snapped their necks.

He found a safe containing an encrypted document.

"Doomsday Overlord? Immunity Talent? Law-Level Evolution?" Lu Chen frowned deeply at the contents of the document.

It was the first time he had heard any of those terms.

It seems this world is even more complicated than I imagined, Lu Chen thought.

Cracking the document required advanced technical skills.

Lu Chen found a technician and copied his B-rank talent, [Data Analysis].

SSS-rank [Absolute Analysis], activate!

With this talent, he felt like an elite hacker, no complex code capable of hiding its secrets from him.

He began cracking the document's encryption at high speed.

Time ticked by, and fine beads of sweat emerged on Lu Chen's forehead.

Finally, he succeeded in cracking part of the information.

"So that's how it is..." Lu Chen looked at the contents on the screen.

The document recorded some secrets concerning the "Doomsday Overlord."

It seems this "Doomsday Overlord" is the real mastermind behind the apocalypse, Lu Chen thought.

He put the document away and prepared to leave.

But just then, he suddenly sensed an intense aura of danger!

"Shit! I've been discovered!" Lu Chen's expression changed.

He immediately activated [Extreme Speed Storm] and shot out of the tent like lightning.

"There he is! After him!"

The camp erupted in chaos as countless soldiers pursued Lu Chen.

Lu Chen sped between the tents, moving as swiftly as a phantom.

"You want to catch me? It won't be that easy!" Lu Chen sneered.

Rather than confront the enemy head-on, he circled around behind them at tremendous speed.

Then he used [Extreme Speed Storm] to create multiple afterimages and confuse them.

The soldiers couldn't tell which was the real him and which were afterimages, so they could only fire wildly at random.

Lu Chen seized the chance to pick them off one by one, killing every one of those soldiers as easily as chopping vegetables.

At last, only a sniper remained, staring at Lu Chen in terror.

"Y-you're not human!" he said, his voice trembling.

Lu Chen ignored him and slit his throat with a single stroke.

He gazed at the sun rising in the distance.

"What am I, really? Maybe even I don't know..."

Lu Chen harvested lives like a ghost in the night.

Looking at the sniper's fallen body, he spat. "That's all you've got? And you thought you could catch me?" He turned, his crimson figure disappearing into the darkness before dawn.

By the time the first ray of sunlight pierced the horizon, Lu Chen had returned to his original hiding place with the bloodstained documents.

Leaning against a thick tree trunk, he skimmed the documents in his hands, a playful smile curling his lips. "Doomsday Overlord? Interesting."

He raised his head and looked at the red sun slowly rising in the distance. Feeling its warmth on his body, he said quietly, "Speed isn't the goal; it's a way to plunder faster. Only by plundering can I survive in this apocalypse!" The faint smell of blood and the fragrance of earth in the air, along with the distant, indistinct snarls of zombies, all reminded him that this was the apocalypse, a purgatory where the strong preyed on the weak.

He turned to look at the trembling Xiaobai. "Will you... come with me?" he asked softly, his voice deep and magnetic.

Xiaobai timidly raised her head and looked at Lu Chen's blood-smeared face, then at the cold gleam of the dagger in his hand. She slowly nodded, her tattered clothes fluttering gently in the morning breeze, a light in her eyes for the first time.

The morning mist still lingered among the trees as Lu Chen led Xiaobai through the bushes beside an abandoned highway.

Suddenly, Lu Chen stopped, narrowing his eyes as he looked ahead...