Her weapons, the forging and acupuncture kit, and most vulnerable of all, that Demonic Beast Egg. She had chosen to conduct her breakthrough very close to her cave thinking that immediately after finis.h.i.+ng her business in the creek, there would be no reason to stay out and exposed. Yet that very reason was now coming back to make her life dozens if not hundreds of times more difficult.

"f.u.c.k it! We're doing this the hard way..." As Elizabeth made up her mind, a chilling flash of resolution s.h.i.+ned on her eyes, before she darted out of the water and back into her cave. She made a conscious effort to not use up any Inner Strength in her running as every little bit would be needed to escape the incoming horde of animals.

If it were just the inorganic items that were left behind in the cave, Elizabeth could see herself being more willing to flee and return upon becoming stronger. Sure, it would be a pretty devastating setback to lose essentially all the function-given spiritual items she possessed; even more so, considering their evolvable nature. But those were just material losses that could be temporarily subst.i.tuted and eventually recouped.

The same could not be said for the Demonic Beast Egg. Of course, given that she was exponentially increasing the risk to her life, she only came to this decision after weighing the value of the egg. To put it simply, it was the most valuable treasure she possessed or had even seen so far into her Mage's journey; confirmed to be above Spiritual Grade after spending the night exchanging energy with it.

At that moment, Elizabeth only knew about the Mortal and Spiritual Grades, which corresponds to the Mortal and Spiritual Realms respectively. Anything above that was too absurd to comprehend, so for the unborn Demonic Beast to be even higher than Spiritual Grade… Even Elizabeth couldn't imagine what kind of monstrosity would stand by her side after she managed to hatch the egg. But that was only the case if she protected it long enough for the beast to be born.

Elizabeth entered her cave and never stopped moving as she wished to spend every second effectively. The first thing she did was throw all her forging and healing equipment into her muddied and haggard-looking purse. With not a second wasted in caring about the state of her several-hundred dollar's worth purse, the next thing Elizabeth did was chuck in all the pieces of Bismanthium she had completely excavated from the cave wall followed by putting on the Quartzite leg and arm braces she had refined earlier.

And as she wrapped things up in the cave, 100 units of Inner Strength were spent creating two magazines for her pistols. Elizabeth ran out her cave with her teeth clenching onto her blade as she fully loaded her twin pistols and continued running past the creek, back into the forest biome; the first bunch of the ensuing horde were starting to become visible behind her…

The first group of animals that caught up to her were actually some canines, but they didn't look like the dogs that attacked Elizabeth when she first arrived on the Shadow Realm. These animals looked a bit more like Jackals than Dachshunds. In any case, they were just as intimidating, if not more so, since they looked more like predators and not sausage wieners rus.h.i.+ng up to fight Elizabeth…

"..." Elizabeth frowned as she could hear the jackals catching up to her. The situation would only devolve further if she let herself get surrounded, and every second spent dealing with these beasts would only give the other predators time to catch up to her. So, she turned around when she found a chance, and… Boom! Boom! She pulled the trigger twice.

"..." Disappointment and even a hint of despair clouded Elizabeth mind as she witnessed the results of her gunplay.

Right about now, Elizabeth started regretting not picking up marksmans.h.i.+p when she had the time, as her coordination with guns became apparent after two bullets were shot and missed spectacularly. Just like that, the long-range appeal of her guns was lost, as they now amounted to close range superweapons.

Things became all the more dangerous, as Elizabeth — the ever hateful pragmatist — opted to conserve ammunition until she could guarantee that her bullets would connect. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the jackals to catch up to her, and the chase temporarily stopped.

When one of the jackals was about five meters away from Elizabeth, the fastest one among them, it pounced at her with the intentions of holding her still for long enough for its companions to start tearing into her flesh. When the gap shrunk down to about two meters, Elizabeth seemed to defy gravity, as her body twisted mid-air, position perfectly with her left eye looking down the sights of Dawnbringer and directly into the center ma.s.s of the jackal.

Boom! Another bullet was fired, and along with the gunshot, the sounds of a whimpering jackal cried out in pain. For a split second, Elizabeth lost focus as the gory scene she just caused topped out anything she had seen so far. With the jackal flipping through the air as it crashed down back to the earth revealing a ghastly exit wound; its entrails, bones, and flesh mixed and mashed up into a slurry of fatal damage.

Good thing, she had seen "relatively" gruesome injuries before, as even though she paused for a moment in shock, Elizabeth still had the wherewithal to quickly continue running away. She finally understood why her bullets were "typically" fatal, as described in their status. It didn't matter where the bullets. .h.i.t, as long as they connected with beings below or at the critical level of fatality, from the exit wounds of her bullet, there would be enough damage done to cause its victims to bleed out. Of course, if the bullet just cut off a limb or grazed someone, they would be pardoned from immediate death; so long as they could avoid getting hit another time…

Elizabeth kept running and gunning down the forest, bobbing and weaving through trees with as much randomness as her body could handle. She killed four more jackals stupid enough to get closer to her before arriving at "dead end." She could feel the earthquake-like tremors caused by the stampede behind her, so after crying in self-pity internally, she ignored her instincts and jumped off a cliff, taking what had to be a several-hundred-foot-long fall down a waterfall, and into the chillingly cold waters below. All the while she fell through the air, the thought of her unborn companion dying from the impact caused her to unconsciously hold onto her bag even tighter than before and cover it in a thin layer of Inner Strength.

Miraculously, the egg seemed to understand the danger present both to itself and Elizabeth, as it actually used some of the energy it innately possessed, to help Elizabeth in creating the barrier. Elizabeth herself didn't notice, as her body's her cognitive functions couldn't perceive the egg's actions at their current level of development, and her focus was entirely centered on cus.h.i.+oning the incoming fall damage to the best of her abilities.

Splas.h.!.+ Elizabeth's body fell nearly a dozen feet into the water before her legs crashed down on the ground.

'f.u.c.k!' Elizabeth momentarily confused the numbing and sharp pinch-like sensation of the penetratingly cold water she submerged herself in with that of the bones of her feet shattering, as she actually touched the floor of the river below the waterfall. But, after a couple moments pa.s.sed, with her still doing her best to swim back to land and continue running away, as her body acclimated to the cold water, and no real pain or deficiencies in her legs surfaced, she realized that the water broke most of the impact of her fall as she hoped for, and the fleeing continued.

Elizabeth turned to look behind her at the top of the waterfall before she entered another densely wooded area of the forest. She sighed at the sight of all sorts of dangerous looking animals jumping down in pursuit, as a grand majority just stood hesitantly, without enough confidence or strength to follow the best of the best in their hunt for what looked to be the birth of a natural treasure.

The chase continued on, but as Elizabeth widened the gap after crossing the waterfall, adding on to the fact that most of the animals chasing her had stopped thereafter. Now, the few predators strong enough to continue following her had less support, resulting in her losing even more enemies.

The few that did manage to follow on her path were barely faster than Elizabeth, so, for a long half-hour's stretch, there were only a few dozen or so predators on her tail. Elizabeth ran as fast as her feet could take her, and in this half hour, she had easily crossed close to a dozen miles; even on the less-than-ideal terrain that made up the forest. Across that span of time and distance travelled, surely the other predators not directly after her had to be quite dispersed by now.

So, as Elizabeth felt the last dregs of Inner Strength start fading from her reserves, a new maddening resolve possessed her into stopping, to finish this before her pistol's magazines ran out their time limit. After all, the only thing that could make her situation worse would be to engage in a fight without Inner Strength or her pistols.