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Markus walked through the sparsely populated streets of beacons holding his head low. He had a bag over his shoulder, a black hoodie with glasses and overall looked unassuming.
This was in the case that he was spotted by a hunter, already he had his perception working on overdrive already.
He was walking off towards the droppoint, wanting to pick up the keys and deed to his newly bought property and leave.
He turned a corner in an alleyway, made a shortcut to the post office and entered while making sure to draw as little attention as possible.
Moments later and he was inputting the code that he got for the safe, opening it and finding the enveloped paper with keys, he smiled.
Then with no fanfare he grabbed both and left.
But this time as soon as he left he immediately felt multiple people, all radiating more mana that any normal human could coming towards his direction.
' Fuck...' He absently thought, changing his course of route and sprinting.
[Aura Enhancement Technique[C+] immediately activated, allowing him to immediately and swiftly dash through the streets.
He passed street after street, his sight towards the road which would take him as close as he could into the forest, and in doing so the exact opposite of his new place.
~|—|~
—[Moments Later]—
Markus ran through multiple trees, jumped over logs all the while cursing inside.
His plan had failed.
He had planned on running into the forest, losing the hunters and making a half-circle around into his base but now that didn't seem likely.
As for why?
Well that was because they motorcycles.
13 Motorcycles in a damn forest, chasing one guy and they were gaining on him.
He was pushing his Aura Enhancement as it was and could already feel the strain, having ran for more than half an hour.
*Swoooop*
Markus dodged and arrow aimed at his ankle, simply having slid out of the way having had his perception at the ready and his body luckily boosted enough to handle quick movements.
He had been doing that for a while now, running.
A part of him really wanted him to just turn and start fucking everything up, it wasn't like he couldn't do it.
But that would be foolish, already his body was getting strained and his mana while full had been strained too after his sigilstone carving spree.
He had magic yes, but they had arrows and bullets.
And as much as Markus thought himself capable, he wasn't capable enough to take care of 26 hunters. And yes, that was how many there were chasing him, 2 on each motorcycle.
So since he had no chance at taking them all on without getting impaled or shot at, he was doing the next big thing.
Running, and as much as he hated it, he really did not want to get captured or otherwise killed.
And while the motorcycle and him were a good distance, with him taking the lead, the motorcycles were still faster than him and were gaining.
His [Aura Enhancement] had even ranked up to B- in grade granting him a 50% boost in all his stats but still.
[—Dexterity - 23 [39]-]
Grunting as he held on to the bag on his back he took a slight turn, small and not easily noticeable.
And just as he had sensed, there it was. He grinned as he saw it, a cliff.
If his senses were anything to go by then he knew that it dropped into a moderately high distance, at the bottom was nothing but more trees though which would have been a problem.
If he hadn't already thought of a plan to offset the jump and hopefully survive.
The plan was stupid, probably dangerous too but he really did not want to experience what giving up would bring him.
So just as the motorcycles were really close, having him dodging arrows more often his speed stunted for a moment.
While he was running faster than any human being had any right in doing, he had become slower.
But said slowness had meaning as Markus had focused the Aura Enhancement away from simply enhancing his entire body.
And the reason for that was simple, because what he was about to do was gonna hurt and he needed to enforce the most important bits of his body.
And since enhancing the entirety of his had less gain than enhancing specific parts, then he really saw no reason to keep up the speed when he was gonna be free-falling for a bit.
" Markus! Stop!"
Hearing his name being called out, especially by a voice he knew and was the reason he was in this mess made him almost stopping, thinking of whether he could actually face the hunters instead.
But he squashed that down, already being close to the edge and spun around just at the end, letting his momentum do the rest of the work.
Markus instead looked back at the girl, Allison. She had a look of guilt and helplessness as she held out her hand, still closing in the gap but close enough for them to see each other clearly.
He didn't wave, nor try to catch her hand or anything like that.
He simply stared at her eyes, expressionless while a dozen thoughts raced through his mind.
And as quick as that moment lasted, he started descending to the deep unknown while the sun shone a bitter shade of light on him as it dipped beneath the mountain peaks.
As soon as the hunters were out of sight, Markus looked at the corner of his vision, where his most important stat at that moment was shown.
[—Stamina - 20 [40]*]
He hoped that would be enough to stave off the worst of his fall, even when he took one last nervous glance at the only skill he had used between the hunter encounter.
[—Aura Enhancement Technique[B+]- A technique derived from the Mana Enhancement Technique but much more powerful. This technique grants the user a +50% Boost towards his physical stats when enhancing their entire body.
- When focusing on a specific body part the user obtains a +100% boost towards that body part but at the risk of overdrawing their body or said body part that is being enhanced.]
And now he just hoped that enhancing his bones, his spine, skull and his skin would be enough to not fuck up his entire day.