The distance between the two of them was rapidly closing.
Roly cast a glance back.
Ethan's face expanded rapidly in her vision.
His face was twisted in a ferocious grin, and his eyes held no anger or killing intent—only a pure, almost crazed excitement.
“Keep running!” Ethan's voice echoed from behind. “Let's see you run now!”
Roly grit her teeth, picking up her pace once more.
Emerald-green light surged wildly around her body.
The energy infused by the World Consciousness coursed through her veins, driving her speed ever higher.
The streaming light trailed a long wake behind her, carving an arc across the ruins.
Ethan shattered a broken beam beneath his foot, using the momentum to leap into the air and pounce toward Roly from above.
Splaying the fingers of his right hand, vines shot forth from his palm.
Roly executed a sharp, ninety-degree turn midair.
The vines grazed past her back.
Tapping her toes lightly on the roof of a half-collapsed tower, she accelerated once more.
Ethan crashed down exactly where she had just stood, collapsing half of the roof beneath his feet.
Debris rained down, kicking up a massive cloud of dust as it pelted the sandy ground.
He burst through the dust cloud.
His leg muscles tensed like steel as he sprinted, each stride blasting a half-meter-deep crater into the sand.
Roly looked back again.
Ethan was now less than two hundred meters behind her.
The grin on his face sent a shiver down her spine.
She turned her head forward and clasped her hands together. Emerald-green light condensed in her palms, then exploded outward.
The shockwave propelled her forward, sending her speed soaring once more.
Ethan pursued her for a full half-hour.
The emerald-green light swirling around Roly had mostly dimmed.
The energy infused by the World Consciousness was fading, and the glowing particles drifting from her body grew increasingly sparse.
Her breathing grew ragged, her chest heaving noticeably.
She landed before a pile of rubble, stumbling and nearly losing her footing.
Ethan lunged at her from behind.
Roly whipped around, holding her short staff horizontally in front of her.
An emerald-green barrier expanded from the tip of the staff.
Ethan slammed a fist into the barrier.
Boom!
The barrier shuddered violently, its surface spiderwebbing with cracks.
The force of the impact pushed Roly backward, her feet carving two deep furrows into the sand.
She raised her head, staring at Ethan.
Ethan stood before her, tilting his head slightly as he looked at Roly ten meters away. “Done running?”
Roly shoved her short staff forward once more, barely managing to conjure a fragile shield.
“Still not—”
Before Ethan could finish his sentence, the bushes thirty meters to his left exploded.
A figure shot out from the shrubbery.
It was a four-and-a-half-meter-tall Amons, with dark red war tattoos stretching from his neck all the way to his fingers.
He held a rapier in his hand—the blade was only two fingers wide, entirely silver-white, with its tip glinting coldly in the sunlight.
He stepped on the air, each stride sending a ring of ripples exploding beneath his feet.
The thirty-meter distance was compressed into a single stride.
He thrust the rapier forward, the tip piercing the air with a sharp whistle.
The tip of the blade aimed straight for Ethan's throat.
At the same time, three arrows shot out from the dense forest to the right.
The arrows flew in a triangular formation, wrapped in emerald-green light.
The light was denser than any energy arrows they had seen before, expanding mid-flight as the energy at the tips condensed into nearly solid cones.
The arrows completely sealed off Ethan's retreat.
One blocked his path backward, another cut off his evasion route to the left, and the last aimed straight for his face.
Another Sentinel leaped out from the pile of rubble behind Roly.
He stood nearly four meters tall, with bulging muscles, and his pale green skin was covered in a layer of earthy-yellow energy armor.
In his left hand, he held a medium shield wider than his chest, its surface carved with intricate runic patterns.
He slammed the shield into the ground.
Boom!
An earthy-yellow shockwave erupted from the shield. The shockwave rippled outward along the ground, erecting a semi-transparent energy barrier between Roly and Ethan. The barrier was five meters high, half a meter thick, and swirled with dense runic patterns.
Three First-Tier lifeforms.
One Sentinel wielding a rapier, one Sentinel shooting arrows, and one Sentinel holding a shield.
The rapier was already within five meters of Ethan.
Ethan stomped hard, retreating rapidly.
The sand beneath his feet exploded into two deep pits, launching him backward like a cannonball.
Emerald-green light burst from his palms.
Dozens of wood pillars erupted from the sand.
The wood pillars fanned out, each one as thick as an adult's waist.
The first three slammed into the oncoming rapier, the fourth through tenth blocked the trajectory of the arrows, and the remaining pillars crashed toward the earthy-yellow energy barrier.
The rapier-wielding Sentinel flicked his wrist.
The tip of the blade traced an arc in the air, fine emerald-green lines surfacing on the silver-white steel.
The tip tapped the oncoming wood pillar, and the wood began to disintegrate from the point of contact.
It did not explode; it shattered directly into fine powder.
The silver-white sword light pierced through the powder, its momentum undiminished.
The second wood pillar suffered the same fate, disintegrating instantly before the tip of the blade.
Then came the third.
The three wood pillars failed to delay the rapier for even a fraction of a second.
However, the situation on the arrows' side was different.
The three emerald-green arrows collided with the wood pillars.
The tip of the first arrow pierced the surface of a pillar, the energy wrapped around its shaft detonating instantly.
Boom!
The pillar exploded into a flurry of splinters.
The second arrow shot through the splinters, striking the second pillar and exploding once more.
The third arrow collided with the third pillar.
The three arrows tore through over a dozen wood pillars before finally detonating completely in front of the last one.
The shockwave of the explosion blasted the surrounding sand away, carving a shallow crater five meters in diameter into the ground.
The rapier-wielding Sentinel's blade had already pierced through the seventh wood pillar.
He was less than three meters from Ethan.
Standing at four and a half meters tall, he looked down on his target, thrusting his rapier downward at an angle, the tip aimed directly at Ethan's throat.
And then, Ethan smiled.
“Heh.”
Emerald-green light exploded from his entire body.
Mana poured out from every inch of his skin.
“I was just having some fun with this woman, and you three little shits dare to show your faces!”
As his voice fell, the ground within a hundred-meter radius completely overturned.
Deep Forest Emergence.
Vines burrowed out from every single inch of the sand.
Some were as thick as the trunks of thousand-year-old trees, while others were as thin as strands of hair.
They spread in all directions at a frenzied pace, weaving into a dense, impenetrable green net.
Sand was pushed aside by the vines, rubble was crushed by the roots, and the sandy earth completely collapsed under the pressure of the growth.
The rapier-wielding Sentinel's blade was now only half a meter from Ethan's throat.
And then, the vines arrived.
Three massive vines, as thick as ancient trees, erupted from the ground to shield Ethan.
Emerald-green runic patterns swirled on the surface of the vines, their wooden fibers hardened to steel under the infusion of energy.
The rapier struck the first vine.
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