"This Forbidden Zone is way too terrifying!"
At the Forbidden Zone exit, a group of people who had already made it out still hadn't recovered. Nearby, military soldiers stood guard, counting the survivors one by one and marking their names on a roster.
A soldier checked off another name, his brow tightening.
The thirty day deadline was almost here. Dozens of people had entered the Forbidden Zone earlier, yet less than half had returned.
In another three to five days, if the rest still didn't come out, then there was a good chance they had already died inside the instance.
Not far away, a handful of survivors were still chatting, celebrating the fact that they'd escaped with their lives.
"It was insane. At first I killed two demons and got all smug about it. Then I ran into this guy who claimed he was some 'Lower Rank' and he almost beat me into paste!"
"I ran into one too, a Lower Rank from the intel. We clashed twice and I bailed out of the instance immediately. Thank god I didn't get stupid and pick a high tier mission, or I would've died in there for sure!"
"This one was even worse than Resident Evil. Those human looking things… they ate a person alive right in front of me!"
"Then some people in black uniforms showed up with swords to hunt the demons, and they got wiped out in, like, seconds."
A thin girl said it with a deathly pale face. The moment that scene came back to her, nausea rose in her throat.
A few guys crowded around her, equally shaken. They wanted to comfort her, but the instant they pictured what she'd described, their faces went just as pale, their stomachs turning.
"These kids," a soldier at the gate muttered, shaking his head. "Their nerves are way too fragile. A little thing like that and they can't handle it."
"You've got the nerve to say that?" another soldier replied, mercilessly calling him out. "Back in college, when you came out of your first Forbidden Zone run, you puked so hard you practically vomited bile."
"T-That was because I was young," the first soldier stammered, face burning as he tried to argue.
He was still scrambling for words when the Forbidden Zone exit on the left suddenly lit up.
"Someone else is coming. Get ready."
"Yeah," the other soldier said, his expression turning stern. "Command said we can't let a single one slip away. We grab them and question them. Could be some big shot."
Both pairs of eyes locked onto the exit. The rating color above it began to cycle.
White. Green…
Layer by layer, the colors shifted, and the two soldiers grew more and more stunned.
Those young people outside? Every single one of them had barely scraped by with the lowest rating.
But this light was still changing, still climbing.
The two soldiers exchanged a look and nodded in perfect understanding.
This had to be a monster.
Finally, in their shocked stares, the rating stopped on gold.
Top evaluation.
A golden legend.
Their eyes went wide. They reacted instantly.
This was exactly the person their superiors wanted.
They stepped forward, bracing themselves for whoever was about to appear.
Then a figure burst out at terrifying speed, slipping right past them and vanishing from sight in the blink of an eye.
"Wha…"
The blushing soldier stood there, dumbstruck. That was fast. Fast like someone was chasing him down for debt.
He looked helplessly at his partner, only to see his partner's eyeballs nearly fall out of his head.
"I… I didn't see him clearly. What about you?"
"Me neither…"
Vincent Fox didn't stop until he'd reached somewhere deserted.
The skin on his face shifted, returning to his original appearance.
Right before exiting the Forbidden Zone, he'd used the simplest flesh control from Regeneration to change how he looked.
"No idea if they saw me," Vincent said with a small laugh. "Even if they did, it doesn't matter."
He pulled on a mask and started walking home.
Before long, Vincent arrived.
He grabbed his phone from the table and unlocked it.
Instantly, a flood of messages poured in.
A massive stack of missed calls, too.
Vincent stared at them, a headache forming.
Calling everyone back to explain one by one would be a pain.
His finger flicked across the screen. He picked a few of the most important contacts.
"I'm safe. Don't worry."
He selected them and sent it as a group message.
"That should do it," he muttered, falling back onto the bed.
Nearly a month of nonstop fighting had wrung him dry.
Inside the instance, he'd been forced to keep his mind razor sharp at all times.
It wasn't like the real world, where danger could flare up but also die down.
In there, as a Demon Slayer, you had to be ready for missions at any moment.
Now that everything had gone quiet, sleep swallowed him almost immediately.
While Vincent rested, military leadership had already received a call from the soldiers guarding the exit.
"What? You still didn't stop him?"
On the other end, the soldier stammered for a long time before finally forcing out an answer.
"It… it's not like we got nothing…"
"We might… we probably… saw what he looked like."
Only then did the furious general's face ease slightly.
His expression softened. He dragged back the chair he'd just thrown aside, sat down, and steadied his breathing.
"If you got something, that's enough. Find two people to cover your post. Then get to my office immediately. Now."
He hung up.
"Xiao Zhang!"
He called toward the door. A secretary named Xiao Zhang hurried in.
"General, you called?"
"Mm." The man nodded. "Go find the most experienced suspect sketch artist we've got. Immediately."
A suspect sketch artist?
The secretary froze for a beat, then his face turned serious.
Someone who could make even the general this tense had to be a monster who'd committed unforgivable crimes.
The net of justice was vast, but nothing slipped through. They absolutely could not let such a madman remain at large.
He nodded hard and hurried out.
The general sat behind his desk, staring at a thick stack of files.
"You'd better surface soon… big shot…"
That night, Vincent slept like a stone.
Days of exhaustion eased, at least a little, in those hours of deep rest.
He had no idea the military was practically tearing their hair out trying to find him.
Soon, the night passed.
Early the next morning, a rapid knock on his door jolted him awake.
Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Vincent shuffled over in slippers and opened the door.
"Vincent Fox!"
The moment it cracked open, a sharp, furious shout hit him in the face.
Autumn Summer stood there with her hands on her hips, big eyes locked onto him like she wanted to burn a hole through his skull.
"What have you been doing these past weeks? It's almost a whole month! You couldn't even send a single message back?"
"Do you have any idea how worried I was?"
Vincent's lingering morning grumpiness died instantly. He gave an awkward laugh and stepped aside to let her in.
"I… I was in the Forbidden Zone."
"You went in and didn't even say anything? And what kind of Forbidden Zone takes a whole month?" Autumn poked his shoulder, refusing to let him off the hook.
"Zone Seven. They gave a full month for it."
"They gave you a month and you actually stayed the whole… wait."
Autumn suddenly thought of something. She pulled out her phone from her small shoulder bag and started scrolling fast.
Then she lifted the screen toward him, eyes narrowing.
"This… isn't you, is it?"
----------------------------------------------------
The deeper he goes, the more the truth unravels. Don't wait read ahead and witness Vincent's rise before the world catches up!
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