Chapter 44: Three C-Ranks

How could this be?!

Ye Mi didn’t waste a single movement looking back, but she could clearly hear the chaos behind her.

They’d abandoned their vehicles and were giving chase on foot, yet somehow they were even faster?!

Suddenly, Ye Mi recalled the faint blue light she’d glimpsed beneath the feet of those squads.

Could it be that her pursuers possessed some kind of acceleration ability?

It seemed there was no escape.

Ye Mi’s brow twitched beneath the corroded metal “mask” of Rust Tide, her expression grim.

If this were a contest of endurance alone, Ye Mi was confident she could outlast the squads behind her—her entire body was metal, free from joints or biological limits; she could keep going indefinitely.

Even for ability users, no matter how enhanced their bodies, they’d eventually tire, and even armored vehicles would run out of power sooner or later.

But if her enemies had the advantage of speed, the outcome was no longer certain.

The distance between her and her pursuers was shrinking with every passing second.

At this rate, she’d be caught in less than ten minutes.

There was no way to shake them off.

Ye Mi silently acknowledged this: she would have to fight.

Even as she swiftly analyzed the situation and reached this decision, her feet never faltered. The scenery around her blurred into streaks, racing by in her desperate escape, a testament to her current, breakneck speed.

Because stopping now would mean certain death.

She had to draw the battlefield farther away.

Ye Mi suspected that, for an incident of this magnitude, the Defense Bureau’s higher-ups would never send just a single squad after her. If she got bogged down in a fight and reinforcements arrived, it would spell disaster.

She had to put as much distance as possible between herself and her pursuers, to buy precious time.

And indeed, just as she expected, the squads behind her had already shared Ye Mi’s position with all operatives involved in the mission, Marcus included.

The sound of footsteps was growing steadily closer.

While sprinting, Ye Mi shifted her artificial eye to face behind her, and with a quick glance, her pupils contracted sharply: three figures in combat uniforms, blue light flickering at their feet, green holographic badges blazing on their chests—clearly the core fighting force of this pursuit.

“Three Class C operatives...”

They were certainly not underestimating her.

Ye Mi gritted her teeth, her expression beneath the rusted metal growing darker.

Their speed was astonishing—the gap between them was shrinking visibly.

The one in the lead had already raised a customized pulse rifle, its barrel beginning to charge.

Bang!

A streak of blue light shot past Ye Mi’s ear, blasting a boulder before her into powder.

A barrage of attacks followed in quick succession, but Ye Mi dodged them all as though she had eyes in the back of her head.

“Damn it, how is this freak dodging everything? Does she have eyes back there?”

In fact, she did.

Ye Mi hadn’t shifted her artificial eye since moving it behind her; now the images before and behind her were laid out in perfect clarity.

Of course, the trade-off was that her field of vision in that eye was partially obstructed, but it was enough.

Ye Mi was observing them closely.

For most ability users, you could deduce their powers from the areas of their bodies they’d enhanced, their equipment, and their attack patterns—except for those with psychic or other special abilities.

Of the three behind her, the one on the far left was a hulking brute over two meters tall, his arms encased in stone-like armor—the classic type of physical enhancement, able to level half a building with a single punch.

The one in the center, a tall, lanky man, had hands crackling constantly with electricity—clearly an elemental controller, a lightning ability user. The long-range arc attack Ye Mi had dodged earlier must have come from him.

But the most troublesome was on the right—his whole figure drifting like a ghost, almost certainly some kind of spatial ability user, not unlike the vice-captain of Team 13.

However, it was obvious he couldn’t teleport; otherwise, he’d have already reappeared behind her.

“I can’t stall any longer...”

Having confirmed her opponents’ attack methods, Ye Mi’s gaze hardened. She suddenly veered sharply, darting into a derelict industrial zone.

A maze of pipes and collapsed factories sprawled ahead—an ideal place to shake off pursuit.

In that instant, as her speed dropped for a split second, her pursuers barrelled in behind her.

The stone-armored brute was the first to arrive, smashing the ground where Ye Mi had just stood and gouging a three-meter-wide crater. As debris flew, Ye Mi’s venomous spear lashed out at his throat like a viper, but was stopped by a sudden barrier of crackling electricity.

So the lightning user’s ability could be used defensively! Much like Anders’ vine barrier.

This was the fundamental difference between a Class C elemental user and a Class D—their control over their own powers!

A Class C, with enough familiarity, could shape their element into any form, unleashing wide-ranging attacks, while a Class D was limited to only a handful of basic moves.

It was simply a matter of ability.

“Got you now.”

The tall, lightning-wielding man grinned maliciously, electricity gathering into blinding spheres between his hands.

After chasing Ye Mi for so long, his temper was frayed to the limit.

Rather than retreat, Ye Mi surged forward. Rust Tide exploded outward in a storm of black spikes. The lightning user, caught off guard, tried to pull back, but not before a spike sliced open his cheek.

Blood trickled down his face.

“Shit, it can change shape?!”

“What the hell is this monster? You’re dead!”

Furious, the tall man cursed twice in a row, unleashing arcs of electricity at Ye Mi as if they cost him nothing.

But Ye Mi didn’t even bother to dodge. Electricity crackled and danced wildly across her metallic body, sparking and fizzing, but ultimately dispersed harmlessly into the air.

She had already gauged from the force of his attack that the lightning user’s power wasn’t enough to pierce Rust Tide’s defenses. After looting two Defense Bureau supply depots, her defensive capabilities were nothing to scoff at.

What puzzled her most was that none of them had recognized her as Rust Tide.

This genuinely surprised Ye Mi.

What she didn’t realize was that, after consuming the supply stations, her appearance had changed dramatically. Now her entire form gleamed, the rust marks from devouring corroded metal long since vanished.

No one would mistake her for the kind of weak metal creature that higher-level ability users treated as cannon fodder.

In fact, thanks to her frequent use of black threads, Rust Tide now looked more like an ominous, shifting silver mass—troublesome as liquid metal.

The Defense Bureau operatives, naturally, didn’t make the connection. They assumed she was some newly emerged, intelligent monster, perhaps even one being remotely controlled by someone else.

“Damn it!”

The curses snapped Ye Mi back to the moment. The tall lightning user was grinding his teeth, humiliated that his attacks had no effect on her.

Just then, Ye Mi suddenly felt her body grow heavy, her legs leaden and hard to move.