Rudith’s words, faint as they were through the layers of stone and branching tunnels, never reached Rohan and Elane directly.

Rather, they continued their hunt completely unaware that Sarah had already pieced together that something was happening.

To them, everything was going as smoothly as it could be.

Too smoothly, perhaps — but in the middle of a good ambush, neither of them were in the habit of complaining about fortune finally falling in their favour.

The next tunnel gave them exactly what they’d hoped for.

Another pair of Awakened.

This time the two hired Awakened were facing away from them once again, and Rohan and Elane approached silently while they listened to the two of them quietly argue.

"Man, should we be pushing this deep with just the two of us? I’m starting to get creeped out..."

"You’re telling me... this place gives me the heebie jeebies..."

"Not to mention they didn’t even tell us what we’re supposed to be looking for! What’s the point in asking us to spread out and search? Spread out and search for what goddamit!!?"

Rohan’s lips twitched in amusement at listening the two Awakened argue whether they should push deeper into the dark or head back and report that they’d found nothing.

One was carrying a broad cleaver over his shoulder while the other held a lantern low in one hand, with a week blue light barely reaching the tunnel walls.

’That’s a new one. At least some of these Awakened have some sense in them.’

Rohan was honestly appalled at the lack of care or awareness these Awakened from Erenhot showed — they came into this knowing that they’d venture deep into underground tunnels in the beast nest, so surely it was blindingly obvious that you should pack a light source!??

At least one of them had enough brain cells to think of that.

’Too bad they accepted a request from the wrong person.’

Neither of the two Awakened noticed the two shadows approaching from behind. The blue light emitting from the lantern not providing much use when the unseen enemies were behind them.

Elane’s bowstring tightened in utter silence, while Rohan held his spear in his right hand, stretched far past his shoulder in a stance that practically screamed he was ready to let it loose.

’Time to try this new trick I figured out the other day!’

Both of them let loose at once, with Elane’s arrow moving slightly faster than Rohan’s loosened spear.

The two projectiles flew through the air at incredible speed, making the over 30 metre distance between them and their targets nothing as they sliced through the air like a hot knife through butter. There wasn’t even a hint of the usual sounds of air splitting apart at high speeds like you’d expect from fast objects like that.

Gurgle!

Thud.

The first man’s skull snapped forward as the arrow punched clean through the back of his neck and burst out of the other side, causing him to spew heaps of blood and guts all at once.

The second guy holding the lantern must have been quite a stronger and more adaptive Awakened than all of his other comrades, as he actually half-turned at the sound of his teammate being impaled by an arrow — he had quite an impressive reaction time.

Unfortunately that could only take him so far, as he felt a dull impact on his back and looked down to find the rear end of a spear poking out from his chest, where his heart was beating fervently until just a few moments prior.

By the time their bodies hit the ground, Rohan was already on the move.

Whoosh!

Miraculously, his spear disappeared from the second man’s chest, and reappeared in Rohan’s hand a moment later!

A few hours ago during the boring hours of walking aimlessly through the beast nest’s tunnels with nothing to encounter, Rohan stood up to continue making his way towards the entrance after taking a short break but had forgotten to pick his spear back up off the ground in doing so.

Without even thinking, he instinctively unsummoned it and was shocked to find that it had actually disappeared from its spot and returned to its inactive state! This didn’t work when his spear was Normal tier, which led him to assume that it wouldn’t while it was evolved to Elite tier either!

But it turned out he was wrong, which led to this new innovation in his fighting techniques.

With his trusty weapon back in his hands, Rohan drove the but of his spear into the now heartless man’s face, hard enough to crush what little life remained so that he couldn’t use his last moments alive to let out a final shout to warn the others of the ambush.

After all, everything Rohan and Elane had done so far had been at the level of a whisper, anything louder than that and they’d risk being detected.

Though, they weren’t aware that they’d been detected already by letting the bodies of the Awakened they’d killed fall to the floor.

Rohan crouched down and began rummaging through the Awakened’s belongings now that they wouldn’t be needing them anymore.

"Anything good?" Elane asked, hopeful that they might come across another unfortunate Awakened carrying a Genetic Armament.

Rohan held up six more Origin Crystals, and then with a huge grin on his face, raised a small red orb tightly between his finger and thumb.

"Looks like we hit the jackpot! This guy had a Gene..."

Elane hopped over to Rohan’s side excitedly.

"No way... and its from a Worker Ant too!" She exclaimed.

Rohan didn’t see what the big deal was; weren’t Worker Ants some of the weakest beasts in this entire area? What use would the ability to conjure up some hot stone balls do for oneself?

"What’s with the enthusiasm?"

"The Elite version of these ants, the Soldier Ant, gave you a powerful defensive gene making your own defence on par with an Elite beast. Can’t you evolve this into another Firestone Skin Gene?" Elane asked.

But her question led Rohan into deep thought. This was actually something he hadn’t considered before.

’The Worker Ant drops a completely different type of Gene than the Soldier Ant — what happens when I evolve it?’

He genuinely didn’t know the answer.