-Vol 6: Dusk of An Era-

-Murata’s Secret(2)-

That little visual effect was just the beginning. Even before they could go deep into the forest, they had already endured relentless illusion attacks. Sometimes it will be in the form of a monster appearing out of nowhere, or a ground splitting open with a lava explosion. No matter what, every step would tangle them in a new wave of illusions. It was to the point that Kenshin felt annoyed.

But even with all the annoyance he still couldn’t pinpoint that man’s accurate location. His map was showing random locations throughout this whole time. Once or twice he even followed it but came out without any result. That Murata wouldn’t be there. After those two attempts, he gave up following the map to find him anymore. He just walked towards the temple.

But there came another problem. It seems that guy really didn’t want them to find the temple. He was continuously trying to mislead them and succeeding every time. While walking Kenshin gave his map one look and already knew he was going off the tracks again.

“Tch! This guy and his tricks!!” Kenshin complained loudly before turning to his left. That seemed to be the right way. the map wasn’t omniscient, it had its limits as well. High-level illusions can fool this thing. Or maybe it was because the power of a ‘god’ was involved here. No matter what it was really getting irritating for Kenshin to continue like this. If he could he would have wiped off the whole forest to weed out the damn bastard. In fear of attracting unneeded attention, he refrained from doing so.

“I say we should torch this whole damn forest to weed out that guy!!” Joy was also equally pissed off as Kenshin. He mouthed his annoyance without much hesitation.

“Torch this whole forest? If you really do that, the forest department people will torch your ass instead. Don’t underestimate them.” Kenshin smiled and reminded Joy. Actually, with how the world is now, a forest like this will sprout in just a few years if left alone. One of the effects of a sudden world’s change was the rapid growth of vegetation. The government had to spend billions yearly to clean off weeds and unneeded plants from growing up in human settlements. Even some of the low ranked hunters were getting official tasks to complete them once in a while.

When he was just a bottom tier hunter, he also had done stuff like those. Cleaning up overgrown weed, cutting off some trees that seem to have sprouted overnight… things like them were actually pretty common.

“I was just joking. Having those people follow you around is no joke. It's fucking annoying.” Joy shook like a leaf in a cold breeze, as if remembering some traumatic past.

While they were talking, suddenly Joy’s senses tingled as he leaped forward, taking Kenshin with him as they both threw themselves to the ground. a second after, many thick metallic pikes passed by them, embedding them into trees behind them. Soon the ground split open as a huge rocky hand emerged as it tried to grab him and Kenshin. Having already dealt with them before, Joy knew how to do things now.

As soon as the hands approached him, a burst of his WIL exploded washing over the hand. Soon the scenery changed, together with the hand and the split ground. Even the pikes and the destroyed trees were nowhere to be found.

“At this rate, we will deplete our WILs and fall into a precarious situation.” Joy complained while standing up behind Kenshin.

“Maybe that guy planned for this from the very beginning. He wanted us to be in a precarious situation before finishing us off.” Kenshin was pretty calm about it though. Unlike Joy, his WIL count was overwhelming. To disrupt these illusions, he only needed single-digit WIL. Adding to his regeneration rate due to an upgrade in [Passive Regeneration], he can do this all day.

“I think so too… sigh! I still think we should torch this whole forest and weed that guy out.” Joy still stood firm with his decision to light the forest. As for Kenshin, he was also thinking of a way to counter this guy’s repeated illusions obstructing his and Joy’s advance.

‘Wait a minute… what if I concentrate on my senses and activate my Dragon Sense Passive? That thing could even see through dangers that would happen in the future, what a mere illusion before it?’ Kenshin had a very bright idea all of a sudden. The problem was how to use a passive skill actively.

Smelling, hearing, seeing… we don’t actively use these organs to function what they made for. They do their work even when we don’t use them consciously. The passive skill was like that as well. Even if you don’t use the skill, it just remains activated all the time. Dragon sense always remained activated, warning him of dangers to his life many seconds or in some cases minutes before the thing even happened.

Now though, Kenshin was trying to actively use this passive of his for his work. He had thought of a way. all he had to do was stretch his senses, from the description and how the skill worked, [Dragon Sense] encompassed all the senses of his body and developed as a sixth sense.

“Joy, Keep quiet for a second.” He warned Joy before stretching all his senses throughout out the forest. For an accomplished hunter like him, it wasn’t a big deal to encompass the whole forest his senses. Like a pulse wave from a sonar, his hearing, smelling everything extended wide and tried to have a feel of everything on its path. But soon Kenshin frowned as a mild suffocating feeling originated from his body. He knew the reason. It was because of the illusions messing with him.

‘Just a little…’ enduring the suffocating feeling like someone choking him, Kenshin continued to feel around the forest. Gradually his sensing range declined as he felt more stifled. But the repeated gaining experience of his [Dragon Sense] encouraged him to continue what he was doing.

[Dragon sense +50 EXP]

[Dragon sense +50 EXP]

[Dragon sense +50 EXP]

He knew whatever he was doing was working if his DS was gaining experience. Therefore, he continued with this endeavor. Just when he was feeling like giving up, he saw light. Quite literally at that.

The stifling feeling vanished all of a sudden while giving him a cool and relaxing sensation, as sitting before an air conditioner on a very hot summer day. soon after the gradually declining radius increased once again, giving Kenshin a good view of the forest’s true nature. Also, he spotted that Murata who was crouching on a branch just above their heads.

“Found him, Joy. He is crouching directly above us.” Kenshin muttered as he slowly opened his eyes.

“Above us?” Joy looked up only to find a crow perched on a branch and looking at them, “it can’t be this cliché, right?”

“It’s indeed cliché, now get rid of him. He already heard us.” The crow was actually an illusion that concealed real Murata behind it. when he heard one of the hunters already found him, he immediately tried to slip away, but Joy was faster.

He clenched his fist and gave the tree a heavy punch, uprooting it in one go. The crow was just an illusion, obviously, it couldn’t fly. The illusion was broken as soon as it fell to the ground, revealing Murata who looked a world apart from that middle-aged village leader they had seen.

He looked like a fucking tribal chief with all the tattoos on his body.