Chapter 307: Hidden Foe

His entire path through the forest was silent. The trail of his travel, of his fights with the Nascent Realm beasts he killed, was much more silent compared to the other sounds of the forest.

Uhtred had long learned to rein in his presence by stifling his passive essence draw. But it seemed that wasn’t enough to bypass the senses of Nascent Realm beasts. They had somehow picked up on his presence and stayed clear of his path.

He hadn’t sensed it at all before. But now that he paused to listen, it was actually quite obvious.

However, that wasn’t the strange thing that he noticed.

Aside from the silence his presence created through the forest, there was also another area that was the same. About a mile to his right, practically in tandem with his entire path, there was also another trail of relative silence.

Uhtred opened his eyes, his frown deepening. "Am I being followed—"

The words had barely left his mouth when a wave of danger washed over him, a flash of blinding light shooting straight for his chest.

He reacted instantly, straining to twist his body out of the way. But it was too fast.

A searing pain flared from Uhtred’s shoulder, drawing a sharp hiss from his teeth as he activated Slipstream Stride, blurring into erratic, unpredictable zigzags to throw off his attacker.

A long-range attack! Uhtred’s eyes locked onto the far distance where he felt the projectile come from. Who is it? Another champion? A beast? Or something else?

Another bright light shot straight for him, taking him completely by surprise. He was moving at such extreme speeds and so erratically that even if someone could track his movements, landing a hit should have been impossible.

Yet, not only did the projectile track him despite his speed and haphazard path, but it tore another gaping hole right through his right shoulder.

"Fuck!!" Uhtred cursed, stumbling and crashing through a thick grove of trees. His immense momentum carried him for dozens of meters, the deafening cracks of splintering trunks echoing through the woods and alerting every predator in the vicinity.

His body finally skidded to a halt, a pained grimace contorting his face — not from the collision, but from the two smoking holes in his shoulder. His left hand clamped down tightly over the wound to stem the heavy blood loss.

He urged a stream of healing essence into the damaged tissue, but his Basic Healing Magic struggled to knit the flesh back together.

Fuck, no wonder it hurts so bad, Uhtred cursed internally. The attack is laced with Esoteric magic... It’s fighting against my healing essence.

He shifted his focus from the injury to his surroundings. The massive, fallen trunks he had just demolished provided a dense wall of cover. While a strike of that caliber could easily pierce through the wood, his attacker couldn’t pinpoint his exact position behind the debris.

Which means firing those shots costs them significantly, Uhtred deduced. Otherwise, they’d just carpet-bomb the area and force me out.

Speaking of which...

Uhtred winced as he shifted his weight, preparing to move from his hiding spot.

I felt a trace of Space magic in that last shot, too... That’s how they’re locking onto me despite Slipstream Stride.

Which means...

Uhtred’s eyes widened in realization. He instantly reactivated Slipstream Stride, bursting away from the fallen tree in the opposite direction.

He had barely cleared the space when a beam of blinding light punched straight through the thickest log he had been leaning against, drilling deep into the earth like a searing laser.

If Uhtred had been there a second longer, he would have been impaled right through the chest.

The attacker possessing Space Magic meant their earlier pause wasn’t out of uncertainty. Instead, they had been using spatial perception to lock onto Uhtred’s position, tracking the minute distortions his mass created in the space around him.

Fortunately, Uhtred had caught on in time to react. The sudden burst of speed widened the distance between them, giving him a chance to analyze the attack from a safer vantage point now that he wasn’t directly in its crosshairs.

Lightning? Uhtred thought as he retreated deeper into the woods. Whoever’s attacking is using a lightning strike like a projectile, increasing its speed with space magic, and also lacing it with some sort of Esoteric magic that ensures injury...

It was a refined, three-layered strike combining three high-tier affinities. Whoever was firing had to be a Unique Grade talent at minimum.

So I’m up against another champion? Uhtred’s mind raced. The human side only had ten representatives, all on good terms with one another. Besides, none of the human champions possessed this specific combination of abilities.

The only logical assumption was that his assailant belonged to another race — a champion from one of the nine other races in this Scenario.

Yet that made little sense. Xun had made it clear this region bordered human territory. While the Brutal Wilderness enveloped all the kingdoms, this particular stretch was firmly on the human side.

For an alien champion to be lying in wait here, they would have needed to travel for weeks across hostile lands just to set up an ambush.

Why waste weeks trekking all the way out here instead of pushing forward in their own zone? Uhtred wondered, irritation mixing with confusion.

He swore under his breath and skidded to a sharp halt, spinning around to fixate on the distant origin point of the attacks.

He activated his Gnostic Eye, this time not to pry for information, but to observe the movement of cosmic essence in the air.

He could see it moving like it was alive... threads of it interwoven in reality, telling a story of how it was being used by every living thing in the surroundings — from the little bacteria and microorganisms on the ground, to the insects and little critters, to small animals, big animals, prey, predators, and even the attacker in the far distance...

Uhtred could see all of it.

"...Got you."