Endzone: Simulated Apocalypse

"Uhhhhh, they're catching up!" Kirika yelled, glancing back at the half a dozen massive anacondas chasing after them, slithering on the tree branches. "We're not gonna make it, just running aimlessly like this!"

"… Now, Luna."

"Understood."

Suddenly, the trio ahead of them, consisting of Dianna, Luna, and Cyanide, stopped in their tracks and spun back around to face the serpents. They had successfully lured them out into the open, an area with no trees close by, where the snakes no longer had any place to retreat to.

Luna opened up her homing missile launcher from one of her metal appendages spouting from her back, but instead of normal, explosive missiles, these ones were completely harmless and only meant to create smoke.

But of course, what's smoke without a little fire?

"Ragnar," Cyanide began, but the underground vigilante was already on it.

"Yeah, yeah, I know!"

Activating his Weapon Art [Searing Edge], he swiped his sword seemingly at nothing but thin air. Naturally, however, that was not the purpose of this movement—instead, it was to create the smell of something burning, the smell of heat.

And now, for the final act…

"Finally, my turn," Kirika said with a smile, and pulled out her katana in a vertical fashion.

"Way of the Tempest — Spinning Gale!"

Creating a light tornado that sweeped up the air, Kirika's wind carried the smell of Ragnar's burning sword into the smoke using the status ailment reaction of 'Spread': Fire plus Wind.

All the preparations were in place. Now, all that was left was to execute the plan.

Cyanide and Dianna leaped into the gas with their high agility, scaling the trees to use them as a foothold to jump off of. There, Cyanide used [Inspect] to determine the serpent's locations, and pulled out his knife. Down below, Luna fired a couple of warning shots her minigun to further confuse the serpents' senses.

Instantly locking onto his target, Cyanide swung himself from a vine on the tree and landed directly on top of one of the snakes. It was clearly surprised at the sudden attack from a direction it did not expect with all the distractions around covering each of its senses, but it was already too late.

Cyanide stabbed the snake directly in the eye with his charged up Vampiric Blade with enhanced ATK, and watched coldly as the sound of glass shattering rang in his ears. The serpent opened its mouth widely to scream in pain, but Cyanide harshly shoved his gun in its mouth and unleashed a flurry of silent bullets, all the while keeping a completely neutral expression on his face.

The anaconda's eyes widened as its entire body's interior was blasted open with holes, and the light faded away from its mechanical eyes as it turned into nothing but shards of white light and experience for Cyanide.

[Obtained Snake Scales x8.]

[Obtained Snake Fangs x2.]

[Obtained Snake Meat x5.]

On the other trees across from Cyanide, Dianna had taken down one of the anacondas as well with her ability to control throwing knives. However, the fight was not yet over—there were four more to go, all four of which still didn't even know their brothers had been massacred already.

The prey had become the hunters. The predators had become the hunted.

Because [Inspect] had no cooldown, Cyanide could continue to abuse it to find the serpents' locations. As long as there was no solid object between the entity and himself, [Inspect] would always work. That's how the skill functioned, and it was an exploit Cyanide discovered long ago.

[Name: Mutant Anaconda (Stage Two Mutant)]

[Level: 30]

[HP: 3000/3000]

[Category: Beast]

Quickly, he located the next serpent and moved towards it, getting the jump on it once again. The poor snake had been busy trying to detect its surroundings by sticking its tongue out like most serpents did, but Cyanide casually landed on its hand and stomped down as hard as he could, causing the anaconda to bite its own tongue. Once again, it could not even open its mouth to attack before it was promptly finished off with two bullets straight in the eyes.

After all, those were its weaknesses. Its defense was immense on its scales, but the eyes and inside of its mouth were two critical spots that could guarantee a kill with ease. What use was all that attack power if you died before you could even use it?

On the other end, Dianna took down two more snakes using her knives' tracking abilities, meaning there was only one remaining. Cyanide saw a glimpse of it in front of him, but it appeared to be retreating. It knew that staying here was suicide... but then again, it's not like running away now was going to do much.

Cyanide was an assassin. And this serpent... was his target.

Using [Thunderflight], Cyanide rose into the air. Two abyssal purple wings shot out of his back, lined with electricity, and he immediately dove towards where the final serpent was. He couldn't afford to let it get away, and call for help.

He shot forward a bolt of purple lightning from his wings, striking the serpent in the back and stunning it momentarily. Of course, this meant the flight effect was cancelled early, but that didn't matter. He was already there anyway.

Landing on top of the snake, Cyanide executed it with the second variation of Stealth Takedown, from above. Because the snake was inflicted with the Shock status ailment, its defense stat was reduced to zero, thus making the kill easy.

As the final serpent faded away to white light and EXP, Cyanide holstered his weapons and silently awaited the item gains feed to pop up.

[Obtained Snake Scales x7.]

[Obtained Snake Fangs x2.]

[Obtained Snake Meat x6.]

[Blueprint Unlocked: Anaconda's Fang]

[Achievement Unlocked: Beast Hunter I]

The first three items were all the usual, but... this blueprint... it seemed to be for a weapon. That was the first time Cyanide's gotten one to drop. The achievement, of course, was for taking down three mutants of the Beast category.

".... Hm, how interesting."