Chapter 47: Hall Isn’t Dead?!
“It’s here.”
Zhou Xue crouched down, using her gloved hand to pick up a severed vine fragment from the dirt.
This was the very spot where they had fought the fierce battle against the mutated chimera yesterday.
Three had been slain; one had escaped.
The one that fled had dragged their comrade, Hall, away with it.
Yesterday, they had only had time to extract the beast cores from the three slain monstrosities, leaving their mountain-sized carcasses behind.
Handling such colossal remains was far beyond their current capabilities, and Yves’s orders had only been to eliminate the threats, with no mention of carcass recovery.
Now, the corpses of the three mutated beasts had vanished completely, leaving behind only scattered fragments and gore.
“They were probably devoured by other mutated creatures.”
Shelley, another member of the squad, walked over to inspect the vine fragment in Zhou Xue’s hand.
There were no bite marks or signs of tearing; the cut was remarkably clean.
Mutated flora and fauna could no longer be classified using pre-cataclysm standards, as hybrids were all too common. Mutated flora could sprout fangs, and mutated fauna could grow tentacles. It was impossible to discern what had consumed the corpses of those three beasts.
They couldn’t even tell whether the carcasses had been picked clean by separate scavengers or devoured entirely by a single monstrosity.
Fortunately, most of the energy in C-rank and higher mutants was concentrated within their beast cores or plant cores, leaving relatively little residual toxicity in the rest of their flesh.
Hopefully, this wouldn’t breed another lethal mutant.
Tossing the vine fragment aside, Zhou Xue drew the blade strapped to her back. “Keep up.”
They had now pushed deep toward the outer perimeter of the safe zone.
After yesterday’s battle ended, they had tracked the trail of the fleeing chimera for some distance.
They pursued it until darkness fell and the distant city bells tolled, yet found nothing.
Instead, they had nearly lost their way.
Now that the sun was high, tracking trails through the wild was far easier.
Drag marks were visible across the dirt.
Zhou Xue and her squad advanced until they reached a stagnant pond.
Yesterday, when they reached this point, they had lost their bearings entirely. Their tracker, Luo Xianghuai, had depleted his energy reserves and couldn’t pin down the right path.
Today, however, was different.
Luo Xianghuai opened his eyes, pulled up his face cloth, and pointed firmly in the direction opposite to yesterday’s search. “This way.”
“I’ll take point. Shelley, watch the rear. We’re beyond the safe zone now, and the terrain is unpredictable. Stay alert, everyone.”
With her hand resting on the hilt of her blade, Zhou Xue swept her gaze across the surroundings as she cautioned them, leading the squad forward with measured steps.
The five-man squad, fully geared and on high alert, pressed onward.
—Awakeners were exceedingly rare. Even with Yves giving them the green light, Zhou Xue’s “Dark Star” organization had only six awakened individuals to date.
Subtracting Hall, who had been dragged away, only the five of them remained.
Fortune seemed to favor them today, as the squad smoothly traced the trail to the entrance of a stone cavern.
A rancid, foul stench hit them like a physical blow, penetrating right through their face cloths.
Zhou Xue raised a fist, and the squad instantly dropped into a low crouch by the cavern’s mouth.
“I’ll scout inside first,” Zhou Xue whispered, laying out their tactical signals in a few sharp sentences: “If the beast is inside, I’ll draw it out; find your positions and engage. If there are too many, retreat immediately upon hearing my whistle. If the coast is clear, I’ll snap my fingers twice.”
“Understood.”
Giving her comrades a nod, she ducked low and slipped into the cave.
Outside, the squad held their breath in tense silence.
Moments later, two crisp finger snaps echoed from within the darkness.
The beast wasn’t home.
Turner exchanged a quick glance with Shelley, who then led the others inside.
Once inside, the stench became truly nauseating. The grotesque reek hung in the air like chemical poison, burning their eyes and making it hard to keep them open.
A wave of bile surged up their throats, threatening to spill over the moment they parted their lips.
Fortunately, they were all awakened individuals with physical constitutions superior to ordinary humans, allowing them to barely stomach it.
The cavern was vast, littered with dark, unrecognizable matter.
Deep green creepers were tangled across the floor alongside fractured bones… the half-eaten skull of a bird, an abnormally large rabbit ear, and matted wolf fur crusted with dried secretions.
There was even a severed limb that bore an uncanny resemblance to a human hand.
The lair of a C-rank mutant was a slaughterhouse in every sense of the word.
Advancing deeper, they quickly caught up with Zhou Xue.
Zhou Xue pointed toward the ground at her feet.
It was a torn scrap of fabric.
Black, embroidered with a subtle gray motif.
The emblem of Dark Star.
This proved without a doubt that Hall had indeed been brought here.
The squad’s eyes dimmed.
Reaching this place, everyone had harbored a sliver of hope that Hall might have miraculously cheated death.
Yet being dragged alone into this den by a mutant that had eluded a coordinated squad ambush—especially when Hall had only just awakened his ability…
The more they thought about it, the more hopeless his survival seemed.
“This blood should belong to the beast.”
Her rational mind overruling her grief, Zhou Xue pointed to a pool of dark blood on the stone floor. “Xiao Luo, give it a try.”
The dark pool was laced with streaks of deep green—unmistakably the blood of a mutated creature.
Compared to the other dried stains in the cave, it was relatively fresh.
“On it.”
Luo Xianghuai reached down, smearing a trace of the blood onto his gloved fingertip.
Lowering his face cloth, he brought it to his nose.
Shortly after, his brow knitted tight.
His emerald irises flared with light—the unmistakable sign of an Awakener channeling their power.
Pathfinder: amplifying olfactory perception thousands of times over.
The surrounding world seemed to fall dead silent as Luo Xianghuai slowly closed his eyes.
His nostrils flared slightly as he filtered through the air, chasing the faint, rancid trail through the wastes.
The scent led due west.
However, the traces were faint—nothing more than stray drippings of blood.
…Strange.
He frowned deeply.
“How is it?” Zhou Xue asked the moment she saw him open his eyes.
“It seems to have headed west, but the scent cuts off abruptly.”
“Cuts off?”
“Yeah. It didn’t reach the boundary of my range; the scent just stopped dead, as if it vanished into thin air.”
“Awoo—!”
Just as Luo Xianghuai’s words fell, several ferocious howls tore through the cavern entrance.
“Damn it, mutants incoming!”
Shelley, who had been keeping watch at the mouth, shouted back to them: “Lupine types, four of them, and moving fast!”
“Fall back outside the cave! Don’t engage in here!” Zhou Xue drew her blade with a metallic scrape, leading the sprint toward the open air.
The interior was pitch-black, making combat extremely hazardous and leaving them vulnerable to being cornered.
Though the squad was swift, the mutated wolves were swifter.
The instant Zhou Xue broke through the cave entrance, a razor-sharp claw lashed out, slicing through the air with a whistling gale!
She raised her blade to parry.
Clang—!
The mutant wolf’s rock-hard claws struck the edge of Zhou Xue’s blade, ringing with a crisp, piercing chime.
Reversing her grip, Zhou Xue drove the blade upward with blistering speed, channeling her formidable strength to slash clean toward the beast’s chest!
Pale white shoots erupted from Shelley’s body, swiftly coiling toward another lunging mutant wolf.
In a fraction of a second, the shoots lengthened into tough, woody boughs, binding the beast’s forelegs tight.
Running in the middle of the formation, Luo Xianghuai possessed purely auxiliary abilities. As a third mutated wolf pounced toward him, their teammate Quick threw himself forward, using his broad back to absorb the tearing bite.
The wolf’s fangs shredded Quick’s clothes, exposing the hardened, stone-like dermal layer beneath.
Clink—!
The sharp fangs failed to leave so much as a scratch across Quick’s back.
“Ahhhhh—!”
The final squad member, Turner, opened his mouth and unleashed a piercing, sonic screech.
Every human and beast in the clearing froze under the disorienting assault.
“Turner!”
Zhou Xue was the first to snap out of the daze. Her blade sank deep into the chest of her target, but as she whipped her head around, she saw the fourth wolf shaking its head clear before Turner.
Springing into the air, its jaws parted wide to pin Turner to the earth!
Turner had awakened only recently; while his concussive screech could stun the lesser mutants within the safe zone, it had minimal stopping power against an apex wolf mutant!
Gritting her teeth, Zhou Xue drove her blade entirely through the beast before her.
Wrenching the weapon free, she spun and sprinted toward Turner’s side.
Twirling the blade in her grip, she aimed to deflect the beast’s lunge.
No, she wouldn’t make it in time.
She was simply too far from Turner.
Whoosh—!
A jagged blade of solid ice crystallized directly before the wolf’s gaping maw, violently piercing straight through its palate.
“Awoo—!”
Howling in blinding agony, the mutated wolf was knocked out of midair by the sheer kinetic force, crashing hard against the dirt.
An ice blade?!
Zhou Xue snapped her head up.
Sprinting toward them at full tilt was… Hall?!!!
