Pressure

In an extremely quick exchange of blows, Ryu managed to defeat the man blocking his path, however, even that little time was precious to a man running for his life, so by the time the fight was over, the two bodyguards had covered all the distance he'd gained by running before.

Thus, Ryu jumped over the man rolling in pain on the ground, and resumed running, storing the staff so that it did not delay him. But this second contest of running skill turned much more dangerous than before because the two bodyguards' mood turned into a fury from Ryu beating one of their fellow gang members.

Another time, Ryu began to open space from the two men, but he had his hopes of escape shattered in a single moment when one of the two guards pulled his sword, jumped on it, and continued to chase from flying above the ground. Though the speed of the flying sword was slightly faster than Ryu's running speed, the man could not run ahead to block the path because of the constant turns that Ryu pulled.

However, with a pair of eyes watching from above, Ryu knew that his chances of escape had drastically reduced, and, worse still, more highvale members would see the man flying and consequently come to see what was happening. Since Ryu was not confident in taking down the two bodyguards at once, he decided to escape from the only remaining way he could think of in the heat of that moment.

Using all the strength in his legs, Ryu jumped from the ground directly onto the nearest house roof, and from there, he jumped to another roof, then jumped back to the ground and started running. With no chances of escape, Ryu decided to throw discretion away and take the shortest route out of the town.

As decided early with his friend Nura, at the first sign of danger, Ryu decided to leave the town and flee and decided to do so before more chasers arrived, making even the task of leaving the city impossible. What to do after escaping was a problem to be resolved later, when safe, with the options being: wait for Nura and abandon the mission or try to reenter the city when the dust settles.

As expected, when Ryu jumped down from the roof, a woman with long hair using the gray robe of highvale, positioned at Ryu's left, began to run in his direction, forcing him to run right path. This unexpected change of route made Ryu turn in the wrong direction, as while he intended to head straight out of the city, he found himself going deeper into it.

There was no help either that the new woman chasing was not slow like the two bodyguards, and Ryu was not opening any distance to the woman, no matter how hard he tried. Then, Ryu saw the man at the sword flying ahead to block his way at one block with no exiting, but since Ryu did not want to fight him, he jumped onto another roof.

The moment Ryu landed on the roof, his focus shifted to the side almost instantly, thanks to his enhanced eyes passive skill. Aiming to slit Ryu's neck, a thin metal sword wielded by another highvale flying over another sword.

With no time to take his staff to block the attack or dodge, Ryu used his only option to avoid the incoming slash, which was the vanishing raindrop steps. As the sword passed where Ryu was until a second before, Ryu reappeared two steps to the side unscratched, but his eyes displayed the fear he felt with that attack that came out of nowhere.

As more highvales appeared for the chase, the danger increased. However, Ryu had no time to breathe and calm down because, while still thinking about the blow he had just avoided, his focus shifted again, and he saw the woman jumping on the same roof where he was. She had her sword in hand, and it became clear that she wasn't expecting Ryu to be so close because her eyes opened wide in surprise.

Not losing the opportunity, Ryu extracted his staff with a swift movement to move it in a horizontal arc towards the woman. Since the woman was in midair, she had no means to avoid the blow that hit her chest, making a dry, loud sound. When the staff hit her chest, the cloud of dust spread out before her, and her only reaction was to emit a grunt of pain as she fell off the roof.

Of course, Ryu wouldn't try to go down to finish off the woman, so he just turned in the opposite direction, jumped down the street, and continued running while two men chased him from above and another man on the ground.

With the fastest hunter out of the game, another chance to escape presented itself, so Ryu chose the shortest direction to leave town and ran straight for it, completely ignoring the people chasing him.

After turning and entering an especially wide street, and seeing that the path was clear of enemies, Ryu took the chance to turn his head back and see if by chance he had lost his pursuers. Instead, he saw five people chasing on foot and three flying in swords, all with expressions of wanting to skin him alive.

'Damn! These guys are so insistent. ', Ryu thought. As he was getting closer to the exit, he hoped that some of them would give up on the chase. Otherwise, he would have to flee even farther, maybe even fight against two or three to escape.

But, instead of Ryu's situation improve, it turned severely worst when ten highvale members appeared, running in a crossing street ahead, all with weapons ready and yelling agitation. The situation became the worst possible as there were already seven men behind, so there was no chance of escaping the other ten men, who were ahead.

In that moment of despair, Ryu began to heat from how fast he tried to find an escape route, but before he could come up with an idea, all the ten men continued on their path. Through the same intersection, the ten men came from, they left, ignoring the presence of Ryu and his seven pursuers entirely.

If Ryu was left utterly confused, the frustration of his seven chasers was indescribable, and all they could do was to yell to their fellows, trying to draw their attention. Since luck decided to reward Ryu, he gladly accepted and continued to run down the same street as before, as if nothing had happened.

Still confused, Ryu was almost out when three highvale formed a blockade at the exit of the town. When they saw the pack running their way, all three prepared to fight, drawing their weapon, but from their reaction, it became clear that none of them was actually expecting to see action.

Seeing the exit in front of his eyes, Ryu would not dare to go back, so he ran straight to the blockade until the first man slashed in his direction when he got close enough. With a small leap to the side, Ryu dodged the blow but ended up face-to-face with a second man.

In this position, the man right in front of Ryu moved towards him, swinging his sword, at the same time, the third man of the blockade moved forward to attack from the side. But all his efforts were lost when Ryu dodged behind the group using his ability.

Thus, Ryu easily crossed the blockade and reached out of town.

However, there were still ten enemies behind him.