The pangolin had not managed to lose the black-vested troops chasing behind even after dashing into Northern Mang Forest Nature Reserve!
But Ren Suo could understand why that was so.
After all, the troops who were chasing after his pangolin character were also pangolins—but in human form.
They had a flat but long tail that grazed the ground, their backs were arched like a hunched person, and they had a brown, scaly appearance. Their heads were cone-shaped, their eyes small, mouth sharp, and tongues long. Their appearances were as ordinary as a typical pangolin, with two rows of white, sharp-like teeth, and tight, muscular abdomen. Their thighs and arms were extremely muscular and they were not to be messed with.
However, they looked just like humans, with thin and long limbs, running wildly on the street!
The reason why that happened was due to the events for the past 1 hour in the game.
At that time, the pangolin had just ignited the Volcano of Legacies but was discovered by humans. Ren Suo activated “Afterimage” in the fastest time possible and controlled the pangolin to escape as fast as possible.
He was, in fact, about to succeed in the escape. Although the personnel of the Countermeasure Division were almost catching up to the pangolin, Ren Suo had activated “Afterimage” three consecutive times and maintained the pangolin’s immense speed from the beginning. The personnel of the Countermeasure Division who were chasing the pangolin must have utilized a special ability to have been able to catch up with the pangolin.
Ren Suo would have conceded if that ability was long-lasting, but fortunately, it was not. As such, the personnel of the Countermeasure Division were left behind when “Afterimage” was activated for the third time, and they could no longer catch up with it.
However, there was a price to pay for activating “Afterimage” consecutively. After using “Afterimage”, the pangolin would fall into exhaustion and 60 minutes were required for it to recover.
After the first activation of “Afterimage”, the pangolin had already fallen into exhaustion. There was no problem in activating “Afterimage” for a second time under such a condition, but the length of time required to recover was increased, not just twice, but thrice.
After activating the ability the second time, the recovery time from exhaustion was increased to 180 minutes, or 3 hours.
After activating the ability the second time, the recovery time from exhaustion was increased to 540 minutes, or 9 hours.
In that case, after activating “Afterimage” thrice in a row, was the pangolin able to escape to a safe area?
The answer was a grim no!
The pangolin had widened the distance between it and the personnel of the Countermeasure Division, and then hid in a small alley while activating “Smudge Camouflage” and “Cold-Blooded”.
However, when Ren Suo attempted to fast-forward the game by 9 hours to let the pangolin recover from its exhaustion, only 36 minutes passed in the game when the fast-forwarding was disrupted.
That was because on both ends of the alleyway that the pangolin was hiding in were two personnel of the Countermeasure Division! Although it could not be seen on the screen, Ren Suo felt that personnel from the Countermeasure Division were also in the buildings on both sides!
How did they discover the pangolin’s location?
The pangolin had perfectly blended into the environment in terms of body heat and appearance. Based on the presently available technology, it was quite unlikely for them to have found the pangolin so quickly.
Could the Countermeasure Division have abilities like “Reiki Vision” as well?
But even if they did, they should have searched area by area, and not flank that area like they were doing!
Their ability was way better than what Ren Suo had expected. It was unlikely to have been the typical power of the Countermeasure Division, or they would have found the pangolin in less than 36 minutes.
Ren Suo said, “It must have been done with an Awakened Ability that was able to find out the target’s location through certain preserved information. Or perhaps it is a high-level ability that is extremely difficult to cast and is only able to be utilized by high-level Practitioners. I just don’t know which kind it is.”
He was easily not far from the truth.
But the problem at present was how the pangolin would escape.
He had used up the maximum number of times “Afterimage” could be activated. Under normal circumstances, the pangolin could run faster than ordinary humans, even without “Afterimage”. However, the pangolin was in an exhausted state with all attributes weakened by 25%, and Ren Suo was fully confident that the pangolin would not be able to outrun the Practitioners clad in the black vests who were surrounding it.
As such, Ren Suo activated the 15 evolutions at that position, hoping that they would be helpful.
“Fortified Defense”, “Claws and Fangs”, “Shadow Play” (increases the Evasion of any directional attacks by 3%), “Impregnable Metal Wall” (increases the layers of Defense armor by 30), “Cloak”, “Sprinter” (increases Movement by 30), “Dash” (doubles Movement), “Dash”…
Evolving 15 times at once felt indescribably amazing for Ren Suo as he saw the pangolin’s various attributes increase dramatically. If the attributes of an ordinary person was indeed 100 each, then Ren Suo was about to create a monster far stronger than humans.
As escaping was of utmost importance at that point in time, Ren Suo chose to boost the pangolin’s attributes for survival. After all, just based on the evolution description, Ren Suo knew that the pangolin still could not defend against a round of bullets with its current evolutionary abilities—
A monster that was far better than humans was nonetheless still a living creature! Unlike in comics and movies where monsters easily defend against bullets, the truth was that even if the bullet did not manage to pierce through the armor of the monster, the strength of the impact was sufficient to hinder it!
Based on the present Defense of the pangolin, it would not be possible for the pangolin to take many bullet shots unless it had hundreds of thousands of layers of defense armor.
After the evolutions, the pangolin now had an 250 Attack, 410 Defense, 522 Movement, 480 Recovery, and 260 layers of defense armor, as well as some assist-type evolutionary abilities, such as “Meditation” (when resting, recovery time of all negative statuses are reduced by 10% up to a maximum of 50%).
Amongst all the attributes, Movement had reached its maximum value!
However, the game prompted that two attributes had to be leveled up to its maximum for the second super-evolution to take place. As such, the pangolin could only remain in its present state.
At that point in time, Ren Suo was extremely confident and continued playing the game, controlling the pangolin to escape from the personnel of the Countermeasure Division who were surrounding it and about to close in on it!
But the moment the pangolin climbed to the roof of the building, a fire sword flew towards the pangolin from the roof of another building more than a hundred meters away. The sword pierced the pangolin, and the grip could be seen still wobbling in its chest.
The personnel clad in the black vest knew that he had been exposed and immediately picked up the loud hailer and said:
“The Elf Protection Act has already been passed in the nation. Mountain elves, earth elves, and fairies are all protected by the nation and will be given training guidance and induction training. You would also enjoy a level 2 member discount if you join now, so don’t miss this opportunity!”
“Otherwise, we will have to forcefully protect you by shooting you with the anesthesia gun for defying the Vocational Elf law!”
Ren Suo was frightened and quickly controlled the pangolin to slip away. Although the pangolin was already in a state of exhaustion and all of its attributes were weakened by 25%, its movement was still close to 400 after being decreased by 25% from 522 points. It was still 4 times faster than humans and was able to maintain a high-speed run of 9 meters per second for a long period of time!
If he did not consider the physical energy remaining, it would be able to reach incredible speeds of 30 meters per second, but it could only do so for less than 20 seconds, after which it would be forced to stop.
But regardless, that speed of 9 meters per second was sufficient to play a game of cat and mouse with the Countermeasure Division in the alley area!
—And then the pangolin was slowed down.
The entire area suddenly began gusting with strong winds. Ren Suo opened the attributes panel and found that the pangolin was affected by a “Strength of the Wind” effect. Yes, it was a negative effect.
[Strength of the Wind: The Movement of living creatures with the Mark of the Wind would be increased by 10% ~ 30%, while that of living creatures without the Mark of the Wind would be decreased by 20%. You are currently unable to be immune to this effect.]
The pangolin had not managed to run far before the personnel clad in the black vest had caught up with it on the roof.
After three rounds of cat-and-mouse chase through the streets and alleys, the pangolin was hindered by all sorts of abilities, including speed reduction debuffs, spells, and curses. Perhaps because it was the capital city of the nation, the personnel had all used silenced anesthesia guns. Although the damage from the guns was not high, the stacking of the anesthetic effects caused numbing conditions of the pangolin for up to 30 minutes at a time!
Furthermore, the personnel clad in the black vest had some amazing ability which allowed him to shoot the pangolin with high accuracy, missing only four of the ten shots even though both he and his target were moving at high speeds!
Seeing that his pangolin character, who had finally managed to activate the Reiki Treasure of Xuan Nation after some difficulty, was about to be captured to become national property, Ren Suo directly exited the game to think of a game plan.
What was fortunate presently was that perhaps due to “Over My Dead Body”, the nation had established the Elf Protection Act. That was why the Countermeasure Division was trying to catch the pangolin with whatever method possible, and not kill or injure it. It appeared that during that time, mountain elves, earth elves, and fairies were still a rare sight.
By the time he returned home from his dinner, Ren Suo had thought of a game plan.
He returned to the game and quickly controlled the pangolin to run to a spot where the personnel in the black vests could not reach temporarily and activated “Personify”!
Then, the pangolin’s body rapidly increased in size and became a human-looking pangolin!
The second move was to exit the game and open the “Equipment” page.
He equipped “Unlimited Energy” on the “All-Devouring Soul”!
Returning to the game, he found that the effects like “Exhaustion” and “Strength of the Wind” had all turned grey, and the same message was written after each of the effects:
“Effect currently ineffective against you.”
After this, the pangolin was able to continue running with a Movement of 522, completely disregarding its physical energy!
Although that enabled the pangolin to escape from the personnel surrounding him, it also attracted much more attention at the same time.
After all, it was a human-like pangolin who was running with an afterimage!
Within 30 minutes, the pangolin ran a horizontal distance of 44 kilometers, reaching speeds of 36 meters per second, neglecting jumps and falls. It ran from the Volcano of Legacies in the east of Tianjing City all the way out of 8 ring roads around the city and then, hid in a forest garden. But shortly after, a helicopter was flying above the forest in search of the pangolin!
Ren Suo looked at the Western Mang Forest Nature Reserve on the screen and lightly licked his lips.
“There’s no use continuing to run like this, I should think of a way out here…” Ren Suo thought.
The pangolin had not managed to lose the black-vested troops chasing behind even after dashing into Northern Mang Forest Nature Reserve!
But Ren Suo could understand why that was so.
After all, the troops who were chasing after his pangolin character were also pangolins—but in human form.
They had a flat but long tail that grazed the ground, their backs were arched like a hunched person, and they had a brown, scaly appearance. Their heads were cone-shaped, their eyes small, mouth sharp, and tongues long. Their appearances were as ordinary as a typical pangolin, with two rows of white, sharp-like teeth, and tight, muscular abdomen. Their thighs and arms were extremely muscular and they were not to be messed with.
However, they looked just like humans, with thin and long limbs, running wildly on the street!
The reason why that happened was due to the events for the past 1 hour in the game.
At that time, the pangolin had just ignited the Volcano of Legacies but was discovered by humans. Ren Suo activated “Afterimage” in the fastest time possible and controlled the pangolin to escape as fast as possible.
He was, in fact, about to succeed in the escape. Although the personnel of the Countermeasure Division were almost catching up to the pangolin, Ren Suo had activated “Afterimage” three consecutive times and maintained the pangolin’s immense speed from the beginning. The personnel of the Countermeasure Division who were chasing the pangolin must have utilized a special ability to have been able to catch up with the pangolin.
Ren Suo would have conceded if that ability was long-lasting, but fortunately, it was not. As such, the personnel of the Countermeasure Division were left behind when “Afterimage” was activated for the third time, and they could no longer catch up with it.
However, there was a price to pay for activating “Afterimage” consecutively. After using “Afterimage”, the pangolin would fall into exhaustion and 60 minutes were required for it to recover.
After the first activation of “Afterimage”, the pangolin had already fallen into exhaustion. There was no problem in activating “Afterimage” for a second time under such a condition, but the length of time required to recover was increased, not just twice, but thrice.
After activating the ability the second time, the recovery time from exhaustion was increased to 180 minutes, or 3 hours.
After activating the ability the second time, the recovery time from exhaustion was increased to 540 minutes, or 9 hours.
In that case, after activating “Afterimage” thrice in a row, was the pangolin able to escape to a safe area?
The answer was a grim no!
The pangolin had widened the distance between it and the personnel of the Countermeasure Division, and then hid in a small alley while activating “Smudge Camouflage” and “Cold-Blooded”.
However, when Ren Suo attempted to fast-forward the game by 9 hours to let the pangolin recover from its exhaustion, only 36 minutes passed in the game when the fast-forwarding was disrupted.
That was because on both ends of the alleyway that the pangolin was hiding in were two personnel of the Countermeasure Division! Although it could not be seen on the screen, Ren Suo felt that personnel from the Countermeasure Division were also in the buildings on both sides!
How did they discover the pangolin’s location?
The pangolin had perfectly blended into the environment in terms of body heat and appearance. Based on the presently available technology, it was quite unlikely for them to have found the pangolin so quickly.
Could the Countermeasure Division have abilities like “Reiki Vision” as well?
But even if they did, they should have searched area by area, and not flank that area like they were doing!
Their ability was way better than what Ren Suo had expected. It was unlikely to have been the typical power of the Countermeasure Division, or they would have found the pangolin in less than 36 minutes.
Ren Suo said, “It must have been done with an Awakened Ability that was able to find out the target’s location through certain preserved information. Or perhaps it is a high-level ability that is extremely difficult to cast and is only able to be utilized by high-level Practitioners. I just don’t know which kind it is.”
He was easily not far from the truth.
But the problem at present was how the pangolin would escape.
He had used up the maximum number of times “Afterimage” could be activated. Under normal circumstances, the pangolin could run faster than ordinary humans, even without “Afterimage”. However, the pangolin was in an exhausted state with all attributes weakened by 25%, and Ren Suo was fully confident that the pangolin would not be able to outrun the Practitioners clad in the black vests who were surrounding it.
As such, Ren Suo activated the 15 evolutions at that position, hoping that they would be helpful.
“Fortified Defense”, “Claws and Fangs”, “Shadow Play” (increases the Evasion of any directional attacks by 3%), “Impregnable Metal Wall” (increases the layers of Defense armor by 30), “Cloak”, “Sprinter” (increases Movement by 30), “Dash” (doubles Movement), “Dash”…
Evolving 15 times at once felt indescribably amazing for Ren Suo as he saw the pangolin’s various attributes increase dramatically. If the attributes of an ordinary person was indeed 100 each, then Ren Suo was about to create a monster far stronger than humans.
As escaping was of utmost importance at that point in time, Ren Suo chose to boost the pangolin’s attributes for survival. After all, just based on the evolution description, Ren Suo knew that the pangolin still could not defend against a round of bullets with its current evolutionary abilities—
A monster that was far better than humans was nonetheless still a living creature! Unlike in comics and movies where monsters easily defend against bullets, the truth was that even if the bullet did not manage to pierce through the armor of the monster, the strength of the impact was sufficient to hinder it!
Based on the present Defense of the pangolin, it would not be possible for the pangolin to take many bullet shots unless it had hundreds of thousands of layers of defense armor.
After the evolutions, the pangolin now had an 250 Attack, 410 Defense, 522 Movement, 480 Recovery, and 260 layers of defense armor, as well as some assist-type evolutionary abilities, such as “Meditation” (when resting, recovery time of all negative statuses are reduced by 10% up to a maximum of 50%).
Amongst all the attributes, Movement had reached its maximum value!
However, the game prompted that two attributes had to be leveled up to its maximum for the second super-evolution to take place. As such, the pangolin could only remain in its present state.
At that point in time, Ren Suo was extremely confident and continued playing the game, controlling the pangolin to escape from the personnel of the Countermeasure Division who were surrounding it and about to close in on it!
But the moment the pangolin climbed to the roof of the building, a fire sword flew towards the pangolin from the roof of another building more than a hundred meters away. The sword pierced the pangolin, and the grip could be seen still wobbling in its chest.
The personnel clad in the black vest knew that he had been exposed and immediately picked up the loud hailer and said:
“The Elf Protection Act has already been passed in the nation. Mountain elves, earth elves, and fairies are all protected by the nation and will be given training guidance and induction training. You would also enjoy a level 2 member discount if you join now, so don’t miss this opportunity!”
“Otherwise, we will have to forcefully protect you by shooting you with the anesthesia gun for defying the Vocational Elf law!”
Ren Suo was frightened and quickly controlled the pangolin to slip away. Although the pangolin was already in a state of exhaustion and all of its attributes were weakened by 25%, its movement was still close to 400 after being decreased by 25% from 522 points. It was still 4 times faster than humans and was able to maintain a high-speed run of 9 meters per second for a long period of time!
If he did not consider the physical energy remaining, it would be able to reach incredible speeds of 30 meters per second, but it could only do so for less than 20 seconds, after which it would be forced to stop.
But regardless, that speed of 9 meters per second was sufficient to play a game of cat and mouse with the Countermeasure Division in the alley area!
—And then the pangolin was slowed down.
The entire area suddenly began gusting with strong winds. Ren Suo opened the attributes panel and found that the pangolin was affected by a “Strength of the Wind” effect. Yes, it was a negative effect.
[Strength of the Wind: The Movement of living creatures with the Mark of the Wind would be increased by 10% ~ 30%, while that of living creatures without the Mark of the Wind would be decreased by 20%. You are currently unable to be immune to this effect.]
The pangolin had not managed to run far before the personnel clad in the black vest had caught up with it on the roof.
After three rounds of cat-and-mouse chase through the streets and alleys, the pangolin was hindered by all sorts of abilities, including speed reduction debuffs, spells, and curses. Perhaps because it was the capital city of the nation, the personnel had all used silenced anesthesia guns. Although the damage from the guns was not high, the stacking of the anesthetic effects caused numbing conditions of the pangolin for up to 30 minutes at a time!
Furthermore, the personnel clad in the black vest had some amazing ability which allowed him to shoot the pangolin with high accuracy, missing only four of the ten shots even though both he and his target were moving at high speeds!
Seeing that his pangolin character, who had finally managed to activate the Reiki Treasure of Xuan Nation after some difficulty, was about to be captured to become national property, Ren Suo directly exited the game to think of a game plan.
What was fortunate presently was that perhaps due to “Over My Dead Body”, the nation had established the Elf Protection Act. That was why the Countermeasure Division was trying to catch the pangolin with whatever method possible, and not kill or injure it. It appeared that during that time, mountain elves, earth elves, and fairies were still a rare sight.
By the time he returned home from his dinner, Ren Suo had thought of a game plan.
He returned to the game and quickly controlled the pangolin to run to a spot where the personnel in the black vests could not reach temporarily and activated “Personify”!
Then, the pangolin’s body rapidly increased in size and became a human-looking pangolin!
The second move was to exit the game and open the “Equipment” page.
He equipped “Unlimited Energy” on the “All-Devouring Soul”!
Returning to the game, he found that the effects like “Exhaustion” and “Strength of the Wind” had all turned grey, and the same message was written after each of the effects:
“Effect currently ineffective against you.”
After this, the pangolin was able to continue running with a Movement of 522, completely disregarding its physical energy!
Although that enabled the pangolin to escape from the personnel surrounding him, it also attracted much more attention at the same time.
After all, it was a human-like pangolin who was running with an afterimage!
Within 30 minutes, the pangolin ran a horizontal distance of 44 kilometers, reaching speeds of 36 meters per second, neglecting jumps and falls. It ran from the Volcano of Legacies in the east of Tianjing City all the way out of 8 ring roads around the city and then, hid in a forest garden. But shortly after, a helicopter was flying above the forest in search of the pangolin!
Ren Suo looked at the Western Mang Forest Nature Reserve on the screen and lightly licked his lips.
“There’s no use continuing to run like this, I should think of a way out here…” Ren Suo thought.
