“You bastard! I’m gonna kill you!!”

  Staring out at the desolate plain, Lucas knew he’d taken the wrong path. Overflowing with rage with nowhere to vent it, he screamed up at the sky.

  He’d been chasing Liam, but the man in black armor was far too fast. Lucas wasn’t built for endurance, and he’d lost the trail. Helpless, he’d followed his gut to track him down—but he knew he’d made another mistake. His intuition was never right.

  Now he desperately missed the days when Elijah had been around. Back then, he only had to act, not think, because Elijah had already thought everything through for him.

  But Elijah was dead now. Killed by that bastard!!

  No one would call him an idiot anymore. No one would tease him or grumble at him. He’d never see Elijah push up his glasses again…

  “Aaaaaaaaaah!!!!” The thought of Elijah’s death drove Lucas wild. Corrosive fluid erupted from his body, eating away at the ground and leaving it pockmarked and ruined.

  Expelling that much acid left him exhausted. He sank to the ground, gasping for breath, then looked up at the sky, and suddenly everything went quiet.

  Elijah… if it had been me who was killed, what would you have done? The thought popped unbidden into Lucas’s head.

  If I’d been murdered, Elijah would definitely have avenged me. But he wouldn’t have run around like a headless chicken. He would’ve analyzed the enemy carefully, found their weakness, and only struck when he was one hundred percent certain.

  Lucas’s eyes slowly lit up. He thought he’d finally found a way to beat Liam.

  “Huh? When did it get foggy? And the fog’s white… that’s weird.” Lucas suddenly noticed the mist curling around him and muttered under his breath.

  Ever since the world had been infected with the Z-Virus, fog had almost always been red. White fog was a thing of the past.

  “Hello.”

  A feminine voice drifted out of the mist.

  Lucas shot to his feet at once. Corrosive fluid oozed from his skin as he snarled, scanning his surroundings warily. “Who’s there?”

  A dark silhouette gradually took shape in the fog. “You may call me Olivia,” she said.

  “I don’t care what your name is. Show yourself if you’ve got the guts.” Lucas sneered.

  Olivia huffed coldly. The fog thickened, and the temperature plummeted.

  Lucas felt his corrosive fluid beginning to solidify. At this rate, it would freeze and become completely useless!

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  “The freezing point of your acid is ten degrees below zero,” Olivia said calmly. “Once it freezes, its corrosiveness weakens. Even an ordinary person with the right weapon could kill you.”

  A gunshot rang out. A bullet grazed Lucas’s cheek. His acid hadn’t frozen yet, but the cold had already slowed it down.

  “You’re asking for it!” The bullet pushed Lucas over the edge. Acid burst wildly from his body, then began to float in the air. He smirked. “This is my newly evolved ability: Acid Shit Control. Go to hell!”

  The floating acid swirled, then sharpened into a single arrow and shot into the mist.

  “Wrong direction. I’m over here.” Olivia’s voice sounded right behind Lucas.

  Lucas gritted his teeth. “Shotgun blast!”

  Countless droplets of acid erupted from him in all directions, like an expanding green halo.

  “Why are you so eager to fight?” Olivia said slowly. “We have no past grudges, no present conflicts. Is this life-or-death battle really necessary?”

  The fog grew even denser. Lucas could barely make out Olivia’s shadow before; now all he saw was white. He couldn’t locate her at all.

  He tried sprinting, but no matter how fast he ran, he was still trapped in the mist. It was endless.

  “Bastard, come out!!” Exhausted, Lucas stopped and glared around him. Everything was white. For the first time in his life, he hated the color.

  Olivia’s voice drifted out again. “Tired? Good. Then we can talk properly now.”

  “What’s there to talk about?!” Lucas snapped.

  He hated this woman hiding in the fog. He felt like a tiger trying to bite the sky—completely helpless.

  “Plenty. For instance… the man you want to kill. His name is Liam…” Olivia said calmly.

  Lucas froze. “You have a grudge against him too?”

  The enemy of his enemy wasn’t necessarily a friend, but they could still be allies.

  “Me? No grudges at all. I’ve never even met him.” Olivia chuckled lightly.

  Lucas felt like he was being played. He roared, “Then what do you want?!”

  “I want to cooperate with you,” Olivia said. “You kill who you want. I kill who I want. Our goals don’t conflict.”

  Lucas hesitated, then thought of Liam’s insane ability to escape. If he teamed up with this woman, she could trap Liam in her endless fog… that sounded like a perfect plan.

  “Who are you trying to kill, then?” Lucas asked. He wanted to agree immediately, but then he thought about how Elijah would’ve acted, and he calmed down.

  If this woman could trap him this easily, she could probably trap Liam too. But if she was willing to team up with him, whoever she was after must be dangerous.

  If it was some monster that had mutated more than ten times, he wanted no part of it. Of course, he could always agree temporarily, betray her later once Liam was dead.

  “You don’t need to know,” Olivia said. “You just kill Liam. My target isn’t hard to deal with. Actually, ‘kill’ or ‘deal with’ aren’t even the right words… ‘eat’ might be more accurate.”

  Lucas couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth. He’d tried his hardest to think like Elijah, but it only made him a little smarter. At his core, he was still impulsive and reckless.

  “Have you made up your mind? Say the word, and I’ll take you to him right now,” Olivia tempted him.

  Lucas had been hesitating, but those words made his heart race. If he could find Liam, with his new ability, he could probably kill him in an instant. It didn’t matter if this woman helped or not—as long as she didn’t get in his way, the partnership was worth it.

  “Fine. I agree. But can you get rid of this fog?” Lucas weighed his options and decided there was no downside. He shouted into the white haze.

  Olivia chuckled. “Of course. But don’t be shocked.”

  “Tch. Nothing shocks me anymore.” Lucas scoffed. He’d been through too much to be surprised by anything.

  The fog slowly lifted.

  Lucas realized he was standing right on the edge of a cliff. One more step, and he would’ve fallen into an endless abyss. A cold sweat broke out on his skin. He spun around furiously—

  —and stared at Olivia behind him.

  He gasped, stunned beyond words.

  “It’s… you!!”

  He was shocked.