Chapter 197: A Gaze of Prying
Before she even stepped onto the field, Pandora was ready.
She’d already downed a potion of her own making. A custom antitoxin, designed to counter the common mists and boost her resistance.
As a professional alchemist who knew Ascension Road’s formulas better than they did, her brew was far more effective than the mass-produced poison their grunts used.
The rain and the faint poison mist made a natural curtain.
Using it for cover, Pandora moved like a leopard through the undergrowth, gliding silently between the ruined buildings and the thorny, mutant plants.
Through the haze, the sounds of battle were a constant storm. Gunfire, steel on steel, screams, and the wet thud of torn flesh.
Both sides, Ascension Road and Echo Quarry, were lost in the bloodlust.
The Quarry, under Aldrich’s well-prepared assault, was on the back foot.
The scales of victory had tipped heavily toward Ascension Road. They were a hair’s breadth from destroying the eastern ritual node.
But then the scarlet figure had appeared, a phantom cutting into the fray.
And the tide turned again.
Her greatsword was scarlet, the blade broad and heavy. A faint, bloody mist clung to the steel, swirling with her every move.
Every flash of her sword was precise, cold, and almost always followed by a spray of warm blood!
An Ascension Road Second-Rank, trying to flank her, had just raised a poison bottle when an icy sting hit his throat. He felt the hot, hollow rush of blood draining away.
He clutched his neck, his eyes wide with disbelief. He collapsed into the mud, twitching his way to death.
“Enough,” Pandora thought.
With a flick of her wrist, she cleared the blood from her blade. The scarlet mist around it wavered.
Her figure never stopped, already hunting for the next “suitable” target.
Her mental power, far stronger than any other Corpse-Plague Acolyte's, was already spread out like an invisible web, feeling every stir on the battlefield without anyone knowing.
Before she jumped in and revealed herself as the Scarred Woman, she’d already swept the field with her mind, piece by piece.
And just as she’d expected, she found him.
Hiding among a pack of ordinary Second-Ranks, his aura almost perfectly contained, his movements flawless…
Blighted Hand Wilbur.
It was harder than she’d thought.
Even when she locked onto the subtle difference in his aura, her mental grip on him wasn’t the crushing domination she could exert on someone of her own rank. It was tenuous.
If she hadn’t been absolutely certain he was here… if she’d jumped in blindly, her attention split by the chaos…
She might have missed that single, faint clue in the storm of auras and motion.
Pandora cursed the rank gap in her head. The way it dulled a Transcendent’s perception. A new urgency to break the Second-Rank bottleneck hit her, and she pulled her focus back to the fight.
In her mind’s eye, the figure representing Wilbur, with its faint, sickly, purplish-green glow, was a fixed point she could monitor.
To avoid spooking him, she deliberately didn’t look in his direction. Not with her eyes.
She just knew he was there.
Like knowing a tripwire is hidden in the grass ahead, you just have to walk past it like you don’t see a thing.
As for Wilbur, he’d spotted her the moment she arrived.
And he had already coiled himself, waiting. A predator in the grass, ready to strike.
He wasn’t moving yet. There was too much distance between them, too many bodies from both sides caught in the meat grinder.
He was waiting.
For the perfect moment. For her to wander into his pre-set kill box during the heat of battle. The moment he struck, with minimal cost and the highest chance of success, he would end the Scarred Woman for good.
Pandora knew exactly what he was planning.
And so…
she turned her gaze toward the center of the battlefield.
The fighting there was even more intense. It was the core, the place where they battled over the ritual node.
It was closer to Wilbur’s hiding spot than she was.
But... it was also “not close enough.”
Not close enough for him to be certain of a one-shot kill.
It was a delicate distance.
The next moment,
Pandora’s figure vanished from her spot.
Not far away, in the central battlefield.
Unlike the outer ring, where they butchered each other without discrimination, the fighting here looked… “tamer.”
The Second-Ranks fought with more fury, using techniques and Transcendent abilities left and right. But the casualty rate was lower than the carnage among the First-Ranks, who were being cut down like grass.
That was normal.
Compared to the endless stream of new meat that fed the First-Rank ranks every year, Second-Ranks were precious.
They’d survived the initial “two-year cull,” earning a moment to breathe. They no longer lived with the constant fear of being purged.
So they cherished their lives more. They fought smarter. Or maybe just more cowardly.
Unless it was absolutely necessary, or they saw a clear path to victory, they were cautious. Self-preservation came first.