Without wasting time, Dylan began to run with all his might while heading northeast. It didn’t take long for enemies to notice him, and they began to run as well.

  ‘Using a gun would make me draw more attention, but it might also help other enemies find those three… I should focus on just making the area ahead free of enemies,’ Dylan thought while looking over his shoulder and seeing six enemies charging toward him.

  Despite their size, since they have several legs, those monsters can move insanely fast… they were almost catching up to Dylan, but then he suddenly disappeared behind a tree, and when they turned to face him, one of them suddenly lost their neck. When the enemies began to move to attack, Dylan took two steps forward and then split the head of another enemy with a single swing downward.

  Two enemies armed with spears stepped forward to attack Dylan, while the others armed with bows stepped backward. It was about time for him to find them, and he had a good use for those.

  The monsters trusted their spear toward his stomach at the same time, but Dylan jumped to avoid both of them. Still, he barely had time to do so… even though their attacks were fast. Fortunately, they only had one time to attack. In the next moment, Dylan landed on one of the spears and then took a step forward, swinging his katana horizontally.

  In the next moment, both of the creatures lost their heads… the timing and his stance were still a bit off, but Dylan practiced the swing that he learned from his father horizontally as well, and despite not being perfect, it killed the monsters.

  Before he had time to celebrate, two arrows flew at Dylan’s head. He twitched his head to the side and dodged one of them, but the other he blocked with the side of his katana, and it had enough power to push him backward for several meters.

  ‘If I hadn’t increased the power of the armor…’ Dylan furrowed his eyebrows while he saw his sword trembling in his hands.

  When Dylan stopped, the enemies had arrows ready to be shot already. He jumped to the side with all his might and avoided the next arrows. After rolling on the ground for half a second, he got up and saw the enemies nocking the next arrows. They were annoyingly fast…

  Dylan hid behind a nearby tree, but then he heard the sound of the grass being smashed, and the enemies were approaching. He had to act fast, and so he did it out of instinct. After taking one of his daggers, Dylan threw it upward and to the side. In the next moment, the arrows hit the weapon.

  Dylan had more than enough time to move in the opposite direction and attack the monsters that had approached, they tried to block the katana with their bows, but Dylan stabbed the head of the first enemy and then swung the weapon to the side to cut the throat of the other. Both creatures were killed.

  While breathing a bit roughly, Dylan stared at the bodies of the monsters. He had killed some monsters before, but he never fought them without some backup. That had been intense, but quite exciting as well…

  Dylan took a deep breath to calm down his nerves since it wasn’t time to think about that and then grabbed one of the monster’s bows and their arrows. He had never used such a weapon before, but maybe it was about time to learn, since it was a lot more silent than the magic pistols.

  ‘It is a bit big since those creatures are pretty large, but it shouldn’t be harder to handle than a longbow,’ Dylan thought while checking the weight of the weapon and confirming that it was just right.

  After that, Dylan went to look for his dagger, and once he found it, he followed his path toward the Northeast part of the area. For five minutes, he didn’t find any enemy, but then he found more of them patrolling around.

  ‘They aren’t heading east, and I can’t hear the sound of guns… is the battle over, or are they looking for me?’ Dylan thought.

  Using the bow was risky now, but attacking the enemies directly that were cautious like that wasn’t a good idea. Time was of the essence, and if anything, he might confuse the enemies if they saw one of those arrows flying or hitting them, so Dylan decided to use it.

  Nocking the arrow and aiming it had been quite easy. Neither of them was that heavy, and the string was quite elastic. Dylan’s aim looked steady enough, but he felt that something was off while holding the bow… then he recalled how those monsters used it. Maybe it was because of their size, but they pulled the string really close to their cheek while Dylan focused on pulling the string to the limits and beyond his ears. Their style seemed off, but he decided to copy it.

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  Dylan felt more relaxed by doing that, and his aim felt even more steady. It was the same feeling that he had when aiming with a gun. He could tell with certainty where the arrow would hit… When he shot, the arrow pierced the neck of one of the enemies, and the creature began to agonize while standing.

  When the other monsters noticed that they were being attacked, Dylan had already moved to the side and hid behind a tree twenty meters away from his original position, and when the other enemies moved and searched for him in his original position, he shot them again, this time with a lot more confidence and quickly finished them off.

  Dylan sneaked and eliminated some enemies using the same tactics, and thanks to that, he got some extra arrows, but soon he had to stop with that because he reached an area where the forest wasn’t that dense anymore. If he didn’t know any better, he could tell that the paths around resembled roads… but they were too large for those creatures. Either way, the grass in that area had been smashed to the point and many times that it wasn’t growing anymore.

  While he was hiding behind a tree a few dozens of meters away from the weird-looking road, Dylan saw many groups of enemies using that path.

  ‘It is really a road, but…’ Dylan thought and then shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter, those guys aren’t just patrolling around, and they are moving in a hurry like they are looking for something, but if they are on that path…’

  It means that they knew where their targets were and they were using the shortest route. In any case, it seemed that Dylan could do the same and possibly find traces of Francis and the other team.

  ‘If I get close enough to their pod, Felix will find my presence and change the frequency of my suit to allow communication.’ Dylan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘It is a pain, but there is no other way.’

  In any case, the plan to decrease the number of enemies wasn’t working at all. They knew that they would face a lot, but not thousands of them… Dylan sighed, wondering if the Russians didn’t use probes to check the area and confirm the number of enemies or if they were just unlucky.

  Dylan used the search mode and found the location of many ether wells nearby… maybe that was why they were unable to confirm the terrain properly. The amount of ether in the area messed with their probes analysis.

  Dylan approached one of the wells to get some fuel just to be safe while he considered his next steps. The more he thought about it, the more Dylan realized that they truly needed the radar field that the research team was working on… navigating without the help of someone like Felix. It was like trying to walk in a dark room filled with nails. Maybe that was why they were developing that kind of tool already, since they expected that kind of thing to happen.

  In any case, after waiting for fifteen minutes, Dylan decided to move again, but then he found more enemies crossing the forest while heading north and mumbling something to each other. That couldn’t be a good sign…

  ‘If I head north any further, returning to the pod in less than ninety minutes will be hard… but I can’t lose any opportunity to gather Intel here,’ Dylan thought as he watched the sixth group of enemies passing nearby without noticing him.

  Dylan made up his mind and began to cross the forest while following those groups from behind. They eventually joined each other, and that only raised his suspicions.

  Letting them grow any further would make things difficult for him, so Dylan made sure to ambush the other groups coming from behind and without alerting the others. Still, the number of corpses was starting to pile up in the area, and it was only a matter of time before they sent even more monsters to look for his team and Francis.

  Before long, Dylan reached the base of another mountain and then saw dozens of enemies moving in groups of ten running around. Some of them were even climbing the mountain… getting rid of them will be really difficult in that situation.

  Dylan decided to observe the situation for a while longer, and then he heard some shouts in their unknown language, and then the monsters began to move. Dylan decided to follow them yet again, since a lot of them were heading in the same direction.

  Since they were too focused on it, Dylan managed to kill some of the enemies from behind without alerting their friends… Those bows were really good, and he also had some suspicious talent when it came to sneaking around and assassinating the monsters. Which was weird since he had been trained to be a soldier and face the enemies head-on.

  ‘I will get a bad reputation if Felix spreads the footage of my battle suit,’ Dylan thought while furrowing his eyebrows. ‘Well, not that I care.’

  In any case, soon Dylan will have to stop with that since he was running out of arrows and he couldn’t approach the mountain to get the arrows of the fallen monsters without exposing himself.

  Still, before that could happen… Dylan stopped when he saw a large concentration of enemies forming a circle. His battle suit didn’t let sound leak, but he could hear the sound of something burning and melting in the middle of that group, and Dylan didn’t like that… the enemies had either found one of his allies or someone from the Russian team.

  ‘I have to confirm and to confirm it… I have to fight,’ Dylan thought and touched his two guns since using them will be faster.

  All of a sudden, Dylan felt a touch on his shoulder and quickly turned around while grabbing one of his daggers and moving toward the throat of the enemy… his weapon stopped a few centimeters away from the soldier behind him. She raised her arms, showing that she wasn’t an enemy. If she were, she could have easily killed Dylan… it was annoying that someone sneaked behind him that easily.

  In any case, Dylan didn’t recognize the black-haired woman who looked exhausted, but he could tell that he had found someone from the Russian team.