“In your eyes, am I just a prey escaping in panic? Do you think you’re the hunter who decides whether the prey lives or dies?”

Blade Hunter: “So what?”

Dongdong: “You’re really naive. You’re even worse than some of the punks I’ve seen.”

“You know what? We who grow up on the frontier fight from the moment we understand—fight against life.”

“If we want to survive, we have to become ruthless. To get anything, even just a bite to eat, we have to struggle, compete, bet our lives in combat, fight to the death.”

“People like us never underestimate the enemy, nor dare to, because a single mistake could mean no food today, no warm clothes tomorrow, and dying like trash on the street the day after.”

Blade Hunter sneers: “What are you trying to say?”

Under its gaze, Dongdong stood up with a baseball bat.

She spat out a mouthful of bloody foam, slightly raised her chin, her eyes full of mockery: “I mean, you must have grown up comfortably, pampered without experiencing any hardship, right? I even doubt if you’ve ever truly fought for your life.”

“Why did you listen to my request earlier? Should’ve just killed me with one claw, and all would be over?”

“Now that I’ve caught my breath, little lizard, you’re in big trouble.”

Hearing Dongdong’s words, Blade Hunter’s colossal mouth twitched, then burst out laughing: “Hahahahaha! Little brat, you are the most ignorant person I’ve ever met!”

“I kindly let you catch your breath, and you act tough with me? Think you’re capable again, huh? I’ve given you face!”

Dongdong carrying the baseball bat, a faint cold sneer on her face: “Your real body must be in this forest, right?”

Blade Hunter’s laughter abruptly stopped, coldly staring at Dongdong.

Dongdong casually said: “I’m not very familiar with your so-called pig-brain modification, just heard of some humans who can control beasts for combat.”

“At first, I thought you controllers were thousands of miles away, sitting in some strange machines, like playing video games.”

“But after escaping into the forest, I realized something odd.”

“When your beast chased me, its movements had varying degrees of delay, sometimes just tenths of a second, sometimes up to one or two seconds—and this delay never occurred inside TL730.”

“I realized then that this delay was caused by distance.”

“People like you who control beasts aren’t hidden in unreachable places; you must maintain a certain distance, or the control is affected.”

“Underground in TL730, because the area is small, you can complete full coverage hiding on the surface, controlling beasts directly without delay.”

“But in the forest chase, as I and the beast kept moving, you had to move as well, sometimes getting too far, causing the delay earlier.”

Blade Hunter’s gaze became fierce, unexpectedly finding Dongdong’s combat intuition this sharp, able to see through it.

It fell silent for a moment, then chuckled coldly: “And what if you discovered this? You only know this phenomenon but have no idea about my distance and relative position to the beast.”

“Finding me in this complex terrain forest is harder than finding a needle in the sea.”

Dongdong’s lips curled into a slight arc, suddenly asking an irrelevant question: “Hey, little lizard, you know what I’m best at?”

Blade Hunter opened its sharp claws, countering: “Do you always talk so much nonsense?”

“Come on, listen to me finish.” Without waiting for Blade Hunter to answer, Dongdong continued on her own, “Street punks like me are everywhere on the frontier, a dime a dozen. Saying I’m good at fighting, there are plenty better fighters than me.”

“So, to be honest, sometimes I can’t figure out what the leader saw in me… But I am really good at one thing, and that’s catching mice.”

“I lost my mom when I was young, always wandering outside. You know, people need to eat meat, not eating meat can lead to sickness and death. I had no money to buy meat, and the frontier didn’t have many meat shops to steal from. So what do I do?”

Dongdong sucked her lips, making a squeaking sound: “I went to catch mice, catch a fat one and roast it to eat, and I’d have enough nutrition for two or three days.”

“I caught and caught, for so many years, catching them to the point where once I set my eyes on a mouse, no matter how it hid or where it hid, I’d eventually drag it out.”

Saying this, her gaze became profound, smiling at Blade Hunter: “Compared to the little frontier mice, your target is really too big.”

“Wherever mice run, footprints appear, debris gets nudged, and sometimes you see a few mouse hairs.”

“Even such cunning creatures inevitably leave traces, do you think you can hide better than a mouse?”

Blade Hunter froze, instinctively looking around.

Suddenly, it realized Dongdong’s escape path was very strange.

When a normal person is chased, they definitely run forward chaotically.

But now thinking back, Dongdong’s escape route kept looping, always locked in a specific area.

At first, it believed the dense forest trees interfered with her sensory judgment, like a person can’t walk straight with eyes closed.

But the truth seemed different…

Amidst a frantic look around, Blade Hunter found anomalies…

Distinctly large-size footprints not belonging to Dongdong were on the dirt.

There were signs of shrubs being pushed aside.

Fibers from clothes clung to branches and leaves.

These things were like clues guiding a direction, pinpointing someone’s location…

The mouse… had been exposed.

Dongdong: “You asked earlier if I always talk so much nonsense?”

“I answered you, not really, I was just waiting for my energy to recover to catch the mouse.”

“And you, what were you waiting for?”

“Swish—” Dongdong’s words fell, the artificial spine was fully activated, and she entered a super-speed bullet time state, sprinting forward.

With her energy recovered, her speed was astonishing, bypassing Blade Hunter’s interception range in a blink, rushing into the depths of the forest like lightning.

Panic surged like a floodgate opening in Blade Hunter’s eyes, sprinting after Dongdong with all four limbs like a mad beast.

This was Dongdong’s last life-risking gamble.

She held nothing back, disregarding risks of overheating the artificial spine.

There’s only one word: Charge!

Charge recklessly!

During her high-speed charge, Dongdong became a barely discernible blur, with fierce winds rising in her wake, earth soaring meters high like quickly erected then toppled brown fences.

Even though Blade Hunter’s speed was not slow, its large frame was obstructed by trees, constantly stumbling and failing to catch up to Dongdong.

Along Dongdong’s path, she constantly saw traces left by other humans, using them to deduce the Spiritual Brain Modifier’s position, racing through the forest.

Under bullet time, her control over her body was precise to the extreme, no matter how complex the terrain, she moved as if on level ground.

Finally, after nearly a thousand meters of rushing, a fleeing figure appeared in her view.

Spiritual Brain Modifiers can control powerful beasts, but their real bodies are still human.

Due to the three superpower systems repelling each other, Spiritual Brain Modifiers cannot carry blood codes or implant artificial spines, besides the beasts, they are just ordinary humans.

In Dongdong’s eyes, this clumsy fleeing human is even less than a limping mouse.

“Old thing dropping gold coins!!!”

“Boom!” Dongdong caught up and delivered a flying kick, flipping the Spiritual Brain Modifier, sliding forward on his back.

Amidst the Spiritual Brain Modifier’s dire scream, he was kicked like a sled, sliding over ten meters, dragging out a groove mixed with clothes fragments and flesh.

Dongdong lifted her delicate foot, stepping on his head, grinning with bloodied white teeth.

“Got~ you~!”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep