Although she was aiming for their vital spots, Paige Summers didn’t think a few arrows would be enough to stop them. She just wanted to get away.

A dull ache throbbed in her head, likely from expending too much spiritual power. In her current state, she wasn’t fit for a prolonged battle with Shawn Monroe and his people.

So, while her opponents were busy deflecting the arrows, she twisted around and bolted forward.

In the blink of an eye, she had covered several dozen meters.

Just then, the sharp whistle of something cutting through the air came from behind!

She dodged sideways, only to run right into a follow-up attack from her left. A sharp arrowhead was aimed straight for her back!

Paige Summers twisted her body again. She managed to protect her back, but a sharp, sudden pain flared in her upper arm. A crossbow arrow had grazed her, tearing through her sleeve and leaving a bloody scratch.

But the pain lasted only a moment before the wound began to itch.

’It was a Poison Arrow!’

Paige Summers faltered, seething with fury.

’Using a Crossbow against me? Are they trying to give me a taste of my own medicine?’

’Fine, just fine. I was going to let this go for now, but they’re not getting off that easy anymore!’

She clutched her wound, pretended to stagger forward a few steps, and dropped to one knee. Then, she laboriously turned to look behind her.

The ones holding the Crossbows were Jayden Yeats and Quentin Sutton.

They were walking toward her, not suspecting a thing.

Of course, they couldn’t have known about Paige Summers’s unique constitution. Even as she feigned injury, her body was already rapidly expelling the toxin.

Strangely, Shawn Monroe hadn’t followed them. Instead, his expression was quite grim.

A thought flickered through Paige Summers’s mind. ’Could this not have been his order?’

’Internal strife?’

She narrowed her eyes, looking as if she might faint at any moment, but in reality, she was sizing up Jayden Yeats and Quentin Sutton.

Of the two, Jayden Yeats was clearly the leader.

’But why is Jayden Yeats so intent on killing me?’

Paige Summers couldn’t figure it out.

But that wouldn’t stop her from getting her revenge.

Just as the two drew closer, a little over ten meters away, she suddenly struck!

She kicked off the ground, springing backward like a startled rabbit to create some distance. She used the momentum to hurl the Crossbow Arrow in her hand.

She had just retrieved the Crossbow Arrow from her dimensional space.

Because of its short length, it didn’t arouse any suspicion. It was perfectly plausible that she had hidden it up her sleeve earlier.

The two men were caught off guard by the sudden attack at close range. More importantly, Paige Summers threw with enough force that the arrows flew at an incredible speed. So, despite being on their guard, they were a fraction of a second too late.

Quentin Sutton was the lucky one. The arrow was aimed at his throat, but as a Transformer, he instantly activated his superpower and shifted into a large dog to dodge it. Jayden Yeats, however, wasn’t so fortunate. As a Fire Ability User, he wasn’t faster than the arrow and could only try to block it with his superpower. But his flames weren’t strong enough to incinerate the arrow; at best, they only managed to knock the tip slightly off course...

Seeing the arrow strike his shoulder, Paige Summers turned with satisfaction and fled at full speed.

’Why not use her Crossbow?’

’Because the arrows for her Crossbow weren’t poisoned, but the ones in her space were. They dared to use poison on her—how could she not return the favor!’

’Besides, this was an enhanced version of Rainbow Water. It’s a Poisonous Liquid that even Levi Young can’t create an antidote for. Even diluted, it’s more than enough to make him suffer!’

With Jayden Yeats suddenly injured, Quentin Sutton lost all interest in pursuing Paige Summers.

In truth, he was never enthusiastic about it. If it hadn’t been for Jayden Yeats desperately signaling him and their deep friendship, he never would have gotten involved in such a thankless task.

He understood Jayden’s reasoning. He felt that Paige Summers was growing too strong and was completely unresponsive to the Young City Lord’s overtures. Jayden saw her as a major threat who should be eliminated sooner rather than later. The problem was, the Young City Lord didn’t think so. In fact, he had never hidden his desire to recruit Paige Summers.

’Whatever his reasons, it’s unwise for a subordinate to deliberately undermine his plans.’

’Jayden Yeats’s loyalty,’ he thought, ’is excessive.’

’And Shawn Monroe might not appreciate it.’

And that was indeed the case. Although Shawn Monroe quickly brought Nola, Woody Warren, and the others who had rushed over to check on Jayden Yeats’s condition, his dark, menacing gaze wasn’t just due to his subordinate’s injury.

"How is he?"

Quentin Sutton had used acupuncture to seal several of Jayden Yeats’s acupressure points to stop the poison from spreading and had also given him an Antitoxic Pill.

But his condition was still dire.

Jayden Yeats remained unconscious, and the purplish hue spreading across his body hadn’t subsided much.

"It’s hard to say. I’ve never seen the poison on that arrow before. It’s incredibly potent." Watching Woody Warren and the others carefully lift Jayden and start carrying him back, Quentin Sutton frowned. "I’ll try to think of something else."

Shawn Monroe gave a cold grunt of acknowledgment and said nothing more.

Jayden Yeats’s injury was certainly a problem, but what unsettled Shawn more was that he had never given the order to attack. Yet, these two had acted on their own. ’Who in the world gave them the audacity to do that?!’

’Could it be... Nora Lowell?’

His mind filled with suspicion.

If this had happened in the past, he wouldn’t have been so suspicious, but his current circumstances left him no choice but to overthink.

Ever since the battle in The Dead City, he was no longer the Young City Lord whose call would be answered by a hundred followers.

His subordinates were either dead or wounded. The majority of the survivors had been left behind in a corner of The Dead City to cover their escape.

He knew very well that those people wouldn’t last long.

But at a time like that, he’d had to make a painful but necessary sacrifice.

In the end, they managed to escape, but he was left with only Nora Lowell, Jayden Yeats, and Quentin Sutton, along with the mostly useless Nola. They didn’t have many Crystal Cores on them, either. If they hadn’t run into Woody Warren, who had been searching for Nora Lowell with his people and had cars, gasoline, food, and other supplies prepared, their journey would have been far more difficult.

But it was precisely because of this that Nora Lowell’s attitude toward him had changed.

She had become much more assertive.

For instance, in choosing which path to take, or in deciding whether to engage or retreat when they encountered a Hunting Party... All in all, Shawn Monroe was increasingly discovering that Nora Lowell was an incredibly ambitious woman. She was absolutely unwilling to stand silently in a man’s shadow.

He was, of course, extremely unhappy about it.

But for the sake of The Dead City, he had no choice but to endure it.

’Yes, I can never give up The Dead City. It should have been mine!’ For someone like him, who was now destitute and had to start over from scratch, he needed outside help to have any hope of reclaiming his city.

The only reason he had agreed to come to Central City with Nora Lowell to seek opportunities was because she had mentioned a man named Evan Pierce and the data he possessed.

As soon as he heard about it, Shawn Monroe had understood the importance of this data.

’If I can get my hands on it and use it wisely...’

’...then returning to The Dead City in the shortest possible time might not be impossible!’

With such a huge glimmer of hope right in front of him, he would naturally do everything in his power to seize it.

And Nora Lowell’s attitude no longer seemed so unbearable.

But reality didn’t align with his expectations.

They found Evan Pierce and got the data, but Nora Lowell was now holding it in a death grip.

She claimed they needed to find the most powerful faction in Central City together and trade this data for the most effective assistance. The words sounded nice, but frankly, he wasn’t a hundred percent certain she genuinely intended to help him reclaim The Dead City.

’Now, if I can’t even trust my own subordinates...’ Having reached the courtyard gate, a vicious glint flashed in Shawn Monroe’s eyes. Then, looking as if nothing were wrong, he walked inside.