Volume 4, Chapter 12 – I Picked Up the Backpack and Burst Into a Sprint

Chug, chug, chug.

The car shook twice, and Anran’s heart shook twice with it. It nearly stalled.

Mother of god!

She glanced back. Even with that huge boulder in the way, she could still hear the motorcycle getting louder and louder.

What the hell.

Anran angrily slammed the steering wheel.

The wheel jolted.

Luckily, she had used her left hand. Otherwise, she might have smashed the steering wheel apart.

Vroom, vroom, vroom.

Under Anran’s frantic handling, the off-road vehicle finally started.

Stomp the gas, shift gears, start accelerating, all in one smooth motion. A true heroine among women drivers!

On the flat road, Anran sent the off-road vehicle hurtling forward.

At this point, she no longer cared in the slightest that her driving was awful. The wilderness was wide and open anyway.

Being roughly steady was good enough. Speed was what mattered most.

And if it came down to stability, she refused to believe that piece-of-junk motorcycle was steadier than her car.

Bang!

The response to that thought was a bullet.

It struck the rear of the off-road vehicle and instantly left a deep dent.

“…”

Anran hurriedly jerked the steering wheel.

If one of the tires got shot out, she was done for.

“Amitabha, amen, ancestors bless me. I still don’t want to get dragged off to tell stories to that vicious woman. Please let her crash already.”

Anran muttered under her breath.

She was concentrating on driving and had no time to play a shooting game with Heloise.

Left, left-left. Right, right-left-right.

A puddle? Run straight over it.

A patch of bushes? Ram straight through it.

The vehicle took several hits. Even the passenger seat got shot, but thankfully the tires were still untouched.

From the rearview mirror, Anran could tell that Heloise, riding that extremely imposing motorcycle, was also in a rush. She had to dodge obstacles while shooting at the same time.

Ha.

Clang!

The front of the car suddenly slammed into a rock, jolting Anran so hard her butt practically lifted off the seat.

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She immediately grabbed the steering wheel tight and punched the gas to force the vehicle through.

Scared the hell out of me.

No more getting cocky.

But very soon, they reached a comparatively flat stretch of ground.

Anran realized Heloise’s driving was clearly better than hers, and that motorcycle was no slouch either. It was actually starting to catch up.

Anran felt miserable.

She could only shout, “Why are you so dead set on chasing me? Can’t you go after the people over there instead?”

She was pointing at the two groups exchanging fire in the old riverbed not far away.

Ummm…

Having lost her sense of direction out in the wilderness, Anran had somehow drifted all the way to the old riverbed to the north.

The two groups who were firing at each other stopped shooting.

The battle entered halftime, and they stared in bewilderment at the two people racing past in their vehicles.

“Isn’t that the branch chief?”

“Ah, it really is!”

“Isn’t that Anran?”

Feilian, who had been shot in the thigh and was in the middle of getting bandaged, widened his eyes.

“Hiss… ow ow ow!”

He suddenly sucked in a sharp breath. Anna had accidentally touched the wound while bandaging him.

“It really is Anran!”

Wuuu—

The two vehicles sped away.

Halftime was over. Bang bang bang, both sides started shooting at each other again.

“If you stop now, it’s not too late yet!”

Against the wind, Heloise’s voice drifted into Anran’s ears.

She had heard it over and over already, but Anran still thought it sounded really nice.

But that was useless. To her right now, this woman was a demon.

No way she could beat her. No way.

Anran had just used Scout on her.

Heloise was level 23.

Almost every other piece of information was ???.

A boss, no question about it.

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Fortunately, she was not a speed-type fighter. Otherwise, she would not even need a motorcycle. If she just started running, Anran would have been caught long ago.

Anran herself was fast, but she was wounded, and blood was still flowing from her waist.

“Only an idiot would stop. If you’ve got the guts, fly over here and hit me!” Anran shouted arrogantly.

Good. They were entering complicated terrain again.

That woman would fall behind soon enough.

“If you don’t stop, you’ll regret it later,” Heloise said.

“If you stop now, I won’t kill you immediately!”

Doesn’t that mean you’ll still kill me later?

“Did you overdose on idiot pills? If I stop and wait for you to catch me, would that not make me the dumbest person in the world?”

Anran fought to keep hold of the steering wheel.

She was pressing the accelerator so hard it felt like she might break it.

Thankfully, there was plenty of fuel left.

“Actually, there’s a canyon up ahead.”

In a flat tone, Heloise stated this astonishing fact.

“Huh?”

The old riverbed was to the north. Cross it, then head farther west.

Damn it, it really was a canyon!

No wonder the terrain here had suddenly become so bizarre.

This is bad, this is bad.

A canyon in front, an evil woman behind.

Anran panicked hard.

Was there any way to save herself now?

Sweat poured down her body. Her underwear had long since been soaked through and was clinging to her skin, lightly rubbing against the small mounds of her chest in a very uncomfortable way.

Jump out of the car?

She would get caught.

So turning back was absolutely not an option.

Jump…

Right, all of a sudden Anran remembered that one of the mission rewards for killing Roentgen was a blue-quality jetpack.

Choose to claim mission reward.

Then a backpack suddenly dropped onto Anran’s lap.

It even hurt a little.

Anran hurriedly glanced over the equipment description.

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Back-mounted jetpack. Uses jet propulsion for short-distance, low-altitude flight.

Armor: 15/15

Energy: 50/50

Fixed Speed: 0 to 20

Load Capacity: 0 to 150 kg

At rated output, 50 energy would last about twenty-five minutes.

A green-quality jetpack could not fly upward. It could only serve as a cushion when falling. But this compact blue backpack had an ideal flight altitude of around 200 meters.

It could not compare with those large jetpacks capable of long-distance, high-altitude flight.

But this was exactly what Anran needed right now.

As the off-road vehicle charged over a small slope, the canyon appeared right before her eyes.

It was called a canyon, but in truth it was a rift over 400 meters deep at its deepest point.

There was no way the off-road vehicle could fly across it.

“If you stop now, it’s still not too late!” Heloise shouted.

She fired another shot.

Unfortunately for her, her marksmanship was only average, and the shot missed again. It failed to hit the tires.

Anran took both hands off the steering wheel.

Her foot stayed pressed on the gas.

She took off the backpack containing the tool kit, then quickly strapped on the jetpack.

It tugged at the wound by her waist, sending a burst of sharp pain through her.

Baring her teeth, Anran picked up the bag she had just taken off, and her gaze sharpened.

The seat was smeared with her blood. Her wounds had never been properly treated. Anran’s face was pale as paper, and she was even starting to feel dizzy.

But it was right there in front of her…

Vroom—

The off-road vehicle bounced over a rock and launched into the air.

Anran released the gas, pushed off with her foot, and leaped up in an instant.

“Keep dreaming! I, Anran, would rather jump from here and die down below than stop the car!!!”

She scooped up the backpack and burst into a sprint.

Everything in there was “money.” No way was she letting go!

She jumped forward.

“…”

Heloise, riding the motorcycle, froze for a moment.

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Little Anran really had nerves of steel?

So Nine Songs had people with this much backbone too.

And just like that, she missed that brief window to shoot Anran in the back.

Then Anran and the off-road vehicle vanished together into the rift.

Screech—

The motorcycle came to a stop at the edge of the rift.

Heloise’s long legs braced against the solid ground. The wind brushed across her body, lifting one corner of her clothes.

Just like that, she had taken care of another one of Nine Songs’ people. But somehow it felt a little regre…

Hm?

Heloise’s eyes suddenly widened.

About several dozen meters away from her, there was a blurry figure, hazy in the evening mist, tumbling over and over.

Wasn’t that the very Anran she had been chasing?

The backpack on Anran’s back was spraying white jets of air outward, while her whole body slowly descended in an unstable posture.

“…”

Rat-tat-tat—

Heloise was so furious that she pulled out her gun on the spot.

So that was why Anran had suddenly made that fierce declaration about jumping rather than stopping. She had already planned it all out.

Bang bang bang!

Heloise fired three shots in quick succession.

One of them grazed Anran’s left thigh directly.

Her already injured leg became even more miserable.

Still trying to figure out how to operate the jetpack, Anran fumbled frantically as she controlled her body and shot diagonally downward.

It hurt like hell. If Heloise had aimed just a tiny bit higher, she would have hit her in the butt.

Anran shot Heloise, who was just as furious, a resentful glance over her shoulder.

You just wait, my 150,000 EXP.

If I weren’t injured today, I’d definitely fight you for three hundred rounds!

Just wait until I come back for revenge!

Bang!

It hurts so much!

Anran instinctively touched her right thigh. She had been shot again.

She hurriedly fled downward.