Zarek looked out onto the desert horizon.
The skies were a particular maroon color, unnaturally so. With dusk approaching, the sun setting, and the blood moon lurking behind the clouds, ready to make its appearance… a heavy tinge of red was normal. But it should be shaded so…
Violet.
On the way here, Zarek had already been quite cautious. This region not only had the Challenge Hub he hadn't finished clearing, but also the hidden C-Class Godsfall Tear.
This C-Class Godsfall Tear was certainly no joke, even compared to the one he had just entered. A Time Godsfall Tear represented a lot of opportunity, but it was also a great amount of danger as well.
The danger Zarek had ended up in within the Anato Codex Godsfall Tear was mostly unexpected and a series of coincidences and mysteries he had yet to completely unravel.
But this one… this was something else. There would be no "unexpected" danger here. It would only be facing death and hopefully escaping it.
However, Zarek knew that the danger would start long before he stepped foot into the actual Godsfall Tear. He didn't know what had happened in this region in the past, so he had no way of knowing if this Godsfall Tear vanished ahead of time without being cleared or not.
But what he did know was that because he had wiped out so many of the earthworms, the odds of someone else stumbling into this region were a lot higher than previously—and there was also less to stop them once they did.
The good news? The odds that they'd find the Godsfall Tear were actually still quite low. Zarek had only found the Godsfall Tear because of his years of experience. Someone else might be too enamored by the Challenge Hub to realize that there was something greater down below.
On top of that, the Challenge Hub wasn't so easy to benefit from after Zarek cleared so many of its items too. What was left was still valuable, sure. But it also might cost you your life quite easily.
Especially if you landed on the darkened slices.
All of these reasons were why Zarek still chose to return even after a month. The odds seemed out of his favor, but they weren't completely hopeless.
But it was also why he felt that something was off instantly.
He stood on a dusty mountain, having climbed to this point to get a good vantage point of his target.
There it was, still littered with holes. He could also still see the Challenge Hub, still standing, so no one had managed to clear the final rewards there just yet.
The longer a Challenge Hub stuck around, and the more times it was triggered to failure, the more difficult it would become. Judging by the new damage around it, Zarek guessed that others must have come around it by now.
This wasn't too much of a surprise. The lack of corpses wasn't too much of a worry either. After all, humans and Turned alike would be attracted to this place. Any human corpses that might have been the result of the Hub would have long been eaten up, and any blood blown over by the dusted roads.
'Am I thinking too much?' Zarek wondered to himself.
Zarek's eyes suddenly flashed and he ducked down to one side.
Chi.
The howl of the bullet whizzing by his ear came long before the clap of thunder that followed it.
'Supersonic bullet?'
The accuracy was hair-raising. He didn't even see where the sniper was, but had he not moved just then, his head would have bloomed like a flower.
His senses had been on high alert from the start, but he hadn't even reacted to the bullet just now, or even the sound that came after; he had quite literally reacted to a prickling against his skin as though he had felt the compression of the wind.
If not for that, it would have been a much closer call.
'Anato Codex? It makes me that sensitive?'
Zarek's eyes narrowed. Well… it was that and one more thing—someone he had a knack for tracking right now.
He had already thought of one marksman from the start, the very same one he had clashed with the moment he stepped out of the Temp Duplicate Godsfall Tear.
Malik and his Hawkeye Talent.
No, Malik, his Hawkeye Talent, and a certain Skill Zarek had been pining after for a long while now… [Ironbound Compulsion].
'And if it's him, the bullet certainly didn't come from that direction.'
The main issue here, though, was the quality of the bullets and the gun. How had Malik gotten his hands on something like that so quickly? There was just no way for Zarek to deal with something like that in close range.
Obviously, Malik had hoped to catch him off guard, which was why he had taken a chance now. But now, when he fired his second bullet, it would most definitely be at a range Zarek wouldn't be able to react to.
'Troublesome.'
Zarek could use his sensitivity to his timeline and his previous Rebirth Talents to sense and feel out for Malik. But there was a limit to that.
'Which means…'
BANG!
Zarek shot down from the mountain. He made his decision so fast that he had hardly crouched when he exploded forth.
This was what he was known for. If he was a made man already, then the only way was to do something his opponents would never guess.
If Malik sensed him and fired before Zarek had, that meant he was too far away from Zarek right now. That also meant that in all likelihood, unless there was some shocking coincidence that caused them to arrive around the same time, Malik was biding his time and simply observing what was going on below—and likely had been for a while.
That meant that Zarek's intuition was correct. There was a great danger down there even Malik and his gang couldn't easily throw themselves into.
So Zarek would, and Malik would allow it because he needed a guinea pig.
Unfortunately for him, Zarek wasn't so easy to make use of.