The scarlet figure was gone.
Wilbur didn’t panic.
Losing and re-acquiring a target was Hunter 101. As long as he found a new trail, it wasn’t a true loss.
He’d been doing it the whole way.
He quickly scanned the mall’s first floor, careful and quiet. The lights were long dead. The only light ca from a massive, cracked skylight on the top floor. By the ti that faint glow filtered down through three stories, it was almost nonexistent, leaving the space in a dim, oppressive gloom.
Before him was an open area, an old custor lounge or a small display platform.
A dozen ters away, the path turned a sharp right. Beside it, a stopped escalator, its tal steps buried under a thick layer of dust.
The mall’s layout was a maze.
In a multi-level space with bad sightlines and a dozen paths to take, losing sight of your target while trying to stay hidden… wasn’t surprising.
Instead, Wilbur got calr.
His challenge now wasn’t just finding the Scarred Woman again.
It was hiding himself, too.
He didn’t have true invisibility. One wrong move, one careless peek, and he’d be exposed.
After tracking her all this way, maybe even to her nest…
He couldn’t let all that hard work go to waste because he got impatient.
Especially since this place was almost certainly her den.
Using an entire abandoned mall as a “ho.”
It was unconventional. Ingenious, even.
Compared to a predictable apartnt or a standalone house, this was way more trouble. But it had its perks.
Plenty of space for traps and false trails.
A complex structure that was easy to get lost in, easy to hide in.
Thoughts raced through Wilbur’s mind.
His gaze swept across the dim corners of the first floor.
It locked onto a large plush toy not far away.
It was in an old “family fun zone,” an area the mall had set up back in the civilized era to lure in parents.
The toy was a character that had been wildly popular with kids back then.
Theoretically, it should have been fluffy white, with a cute, round face, pink, furry cat ears, and two long side-ear decorations with pink ribbons tied to the ends. There was also a fluffy, soft white fox tail almost as tall as its body.
Those descriptions, however, applied to “before.”
Now, after being ravaged by ti, the toy looked nothing like its old self. The white fur was grayish-yellow and matted, falling out in patches to show the dark brown stuffing. The cute, round face was withered and distorted, its innards shifted.
It wasn’t cute anymore. In the dim light, it was just bizarre. Grotesque.
Even so,
the remains of the plush toy, nearly three tis the height of a man, were still excellent cover.
Its massive body was more than enough to hide him completely.
Plus, its position was right at the edge of the faint light filtering down from the skylight, a natural gradient of light and shadow.
Wilbur flickered.
Without a sound, he was gone.
He reappeared at the foot of the giant plush toy, pressing himself against its tattered, dust-covered “belly.”
The dim light and the toy’s shadow swallowed him whole.
“Good…” Wilbur thought.
This spot gave him plenty of cover while still offering a relatively open view of the mall’s interior.
Only then did he focus his attention deeper in.
Having left the brighter area near the entrance, his angle had changed.
In the direction of the stopped escalator…
He caught it. A fleeting, familiar flash of scarlet!
The flash of red was climbing the escalator’s tal steps, vanishing around the corner to the second floor.
The Scarred Woman!
A cold, certain smile spread across Wilbur’s face.
Just as he’d suspected.
She hadn’t gone far. Maybe she’d even let her guard down, back in her own territory.
He had her trail again.
Next…
He just needed to be patient. Stay hidden. Avoid being discovered.
The instant the thought crossed his mind,
sothing at the edge of his vision shifted.
The edge of the shadow… was changing?
Was sothing there?
Wilbur’s brow furrowed. A prickle of warning.
He snapped his gaze back from the escalator, whipping it down to the patch of ordinary shadow at his feet.
The shadowed area was empty.
Just the fine cracks in the floor tiles and a thin, even layer of dust.
Nothing “unusual.”
But…
The second he saw the “emptiness,” Wilbur’s expression changed!
An intense but subtle sense of wrongness, a cold steel needle of alarm, pierced his rational mind!
A “hiss” of sothing hard cutting through the air, amplified by the mall’s open space, hit his ears!
“Damn it!” Wilbur cursed inwardly, his body reacting before his brain caught up!
He kicked off, trying to dodge and leap back!
But…
it was too close!
THUMP—!!!
The muffled, giant crash of a heavy object falling at terrifying speed echoed through the silent mall!
It wasn’t an animal’s limb.
It was more like… a terrifying structure. A giant “crab claw,” mutated from so kind of insect or crustacean!
It tore through the air with a sharp whistle, smashing down viciously on the exact spot where Wilbur had been standing a second ago.
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