The hound’s barks announced the danger was coming, and obviously, this danger aimed for Feng Bujue.
He opened the game menu and checked his Quest Menu. The time displayed that it was [203 minutes to sunrise].
General Zaroff had only departed for 37 minutes. Although Feng Bujue had tried his best to run away for over one hour, at this moment, the chance that his opponent could catch him was still high.
The barking sound came closer. Not far from him, the python had given up its meal, threw the wild boar onto the ground, and immersed into the jungle in panic. It seemed that animals on this island were well aware of the hunting dog’s barks. Even if they weren’t afraid of the hounds, they were still scared of their owner.
Feng Bujue understood that this was an emergency situation and he must do something effective to counter it. Although it was hard to avoid death, he should make efforts to delay more time for his other two teammates, increasing the chance that they could complete the scenario.
Hiding away wasn’t a possible option. Along this path, Feng Bujue had left footprints. With the general’s ability of tracking down his preys, no need to mention the footprints, even a small broken tree branch or a streak on the grass couldn’t be hidden away from the eyes of the Cossack man.
Moreover, Zaroff had brought along his hunting dogs. The smell left on the muddy ground to this sort of hunters, which had the sense of smell 100 times stronger than human’s, was as obvious as traffic sign boards.
Under such circumstances, being a prey, he should be extremely panicked. In a dark and complicated situation, hearing the intimidating BOSS coming closer and closer, and not knowing when and how this ‘human’ hunter would attack his prey, needless to say, this feeling was so self-evident. In most of horror or action games, being chased after by something scary are used to test players’ psychological quality and operating skills.
If it were some other player, he would run madly into the jungle and wouldn’t care about the directions or anything else. In this case, they would just run away from the canine barks. However, Feng Bujue was calm and alert. As he didn’t feel fear, he quietly readied the dagger, then used the flashlight to determine the best direction to run.
He didn’t care that the flashlight would reveal himself because if he turned off the flashlight, he still had no way to slow down his opponent’s speed. Quite the contrary, it would make him run in the dark.
After Feng Bujue had conducted a quick survey, he considered the path in the north was relatively smooth enough; he then shone his flashlight in that direction and started to flee away with his fastest speed. The hunting dog’s barks were still echoing behind him as if they were getting closer to him. However, he didn’t bother with this kind of auditory pressure; in fact, he didn’t turn his head around even once or got his mind distracted. He was totally concentrated on the road in front of him, ensuring his pace would not be affected.
Running on such irregular terrain, the fugitive should avoid turning around while running to check the one who is chasing after him since this contains a hundred harms without a single benefit.
In countless horror movies Feng Bujue had watched, the scenes which had a high frequency for such a situation to appear included the main character (often a beautiful lady) usually getting chased after by monsters in a jungle. The lady would be screaming while running away, and from time to time, she would turn her head around to reveal her panicked face, and the camera angle would record from the monster’s point of view, which was constantly jittering. After running like that for a while, 100% that the main character would tumble and then the images would be messily clipped and edited. One second later, tomato sauce would fill the screen together with a pig squeak echoing and the monster getting a lot of blood.
Feng Bujue wouldn’t make this sort of mistake. It was impossible to see him tripping. Well, it was more practical to see him make the monster trip.
The pursuit lasted for a short while. When the barks arose behind him around five meters, Feng Bujue knew he had entered the sight of the hunters. According to the common sense analysis, Zaroff had two options then. First, releasing the dog and letting it tackle down the target ’by itself’; second, using his BOSS-level shooting skill to shoot the target.
No matter which option he would choose, Feng Bujue would be killed instantly, and the difference was just that he would get his throat torn apart by a pair of fangs or get his nape shot through with a bullet.
Anyway, there’s a cool proverb saying that a stab from behind is a swordsman’s insult. Oh, it seems to have nothing to do with our current situation.
In short, Feng Bujue had decided that if he had to die, he should at least resist to death. If he were about to be OVER and he hadn’t consumed much of his Survival Value and Physical Value, this was such a meaningless thing. His mind just flickered and his [Spirit-Body Congregation Technique] was activated. He suddenly accelerated, flexed his feet and jumped aside, landing behind a tree trunk.
This was the first time Feng Bujue had used this skill. A wonderful feeling crept up to him as if the blood in his body was boiling instantly. His body exuded some kind of heat, but this ‘heat’ was different from the heat of brought by pressure as it didn’t bring an uncomfortable sticky feeling but instead a stir of excitement. It was enough to say that this had boosted his fighting spirit.
The desired effects for a skill that didn’t consume anything but Survival Value were like this.
“No…” Feng Bujue suddenly felt suspicious while hiding behind the tree.
After he had activated the skill, every aspect of his strength was enhanced, and his senses were also increased a little bit. His hearing became more sensitive, and his reflexes were much faster than ordinary people’s. Generally speaking, it was like the flow of time slowed down for him… At this moment, he could distinguish clearly between the tiny noises coming into his ears. Thus, he found out that under the cover of the dog’s barking, besides the sounds made from four foot stomping on the ground, there was no sound of human walking.
He immediately craned his neck out from behind the tree. Indeed, he didn’t see the light from a flashlight or any other light-emitting devices. Since General Zaroff wouldn’t be groping in the dark with his dogs, basically, from the beginning, there was only a dog chasing after him.
Feng Bujue understood it immediately. This was a way the system had helped players to survive. He had estimated the difficulty level of this scenario a little bit too high. He had thought that after half an hour, the general would conduct the pursuit with his dogs, but it turned out Zaroff only released his hound first, and he would deliberately chase after them later.
Perhaps the difficulty level of the scenario would be based on the players’ capacities before the BOSS departed. Nevertheless, the fact that One Saber got killed too soon and Like Rain had disconnected might have changed the difficulty level. Anyway, this setting was consistent with the watertight style of the system.
Players could split up to run, and so could the monsters! Thus, there would be no scene where one team could finish the scenario with ease, while the other team would struggle in desperation. Each team would surely meet this advanced test, and correspondingly, the BOSS would show up tonight!