Nel halted her advances to catch her breath. As luck would have it, the building she had entered carried on for a mile underneath the rubble of several buildings. There was very little light due to the rubble so she had to rely on her intuition and experience to navigate the various passageways. By her intuition, she predicted that she was heading southwest, a bit of a way off the clock tower where the sniper was located. This wants a bad thing since it meant she could get a bit closer towards the clock tower unseen to conserve some energy.

What did make her nervous was that every now and then she would feel a slight vibration, as well as large mana output coming from the north-west (enough for her to sense), which she could confidently guess, was Max wreaking all sorts of havoc. While she had every confidence that Max could take care of himself there was the fate of the others, and if Max was under attack, then it was safe to assume the others were also facing similar problems. She dismissed those thoughts, as her priority at this point was to take out that sniper. As proven, her comrades could take care of themselves.

The end of the tunnel was nearly in sight, and once she was out, it was another dash to the clock tower. "Time to take out that sniper."

Nel vs. Large Jack

After a bit more running, Nel ran up, or across the inside of a collapsed tower and finally saw the exit outside. She skidded herself to a stop just before the tunnel exit. She wasn't certain if the area was before she was within the line of sight of the sniper, or if there was an ambush waiting for her. So she drew out her blades, took a deep breath, and activated her Piercer Eyes.

"Here goes."

She then made a fast dash to the exit. The second she was out, she set off a trip wire, detonating bombs that were placed around her. Fortunately, Nel moved fast enough to Quickstep out of harm's way and into the remains of a courtyard. Before she could relax 5 people who were clearly lying in wait for her, armed with a sword, a hatchet, a ball and chain, a polearm and a large cleaver, all attacking her at once, immediately jumped her.

In one fluid motion, Nel stabbed the swordsman through the chin with her dagger while dodging the chain and ball, which caught the polearm user. Keeping the momentum, she kicked aside the hatchet users weapon into the man who used the ball and chain severing his arm while freeing her dagger and blocked the cleaver user with her short blade, span and finished off the ball and chain user by slicing his throat before bringing her short blade to slice open the cleaver user.

Despite a crushed arm, the polearm user was still active. Nel was about to finish her off when she noticed a walker Magitek weapon approaching her from the distance, firing its cannon. Nel escaped using quickstep as the cannon impacted, killing the man with the polearm, and made a dash towards it as it frantically fired its machine guns at her.

Running along a fallen Pillar, Nel used quickstep to launch herself into the sky, over the cockpit of the Magitek Walker, noticing only when she hired a gunshot in the distance, that the clock tower where the sniper was located was to her right.

Shit!!

Nel spun to use the flat of the short blade to block the incoming bullet at the last second, which ricocheted down and grazed her thigh. Losing her momentum, she fell and landed on the roof of the building behind the walker, barrel rolled until she hit the wall of the next building that had collapsed into the current building she was on.

Damnit! I was careless.

She barely had time to check her wound when another shot came from the tower. Nel quickly rolled out of the way and back to her feet, ignoring the pain she felt in her thigh. However, the Magitek Walker had turned around and was now aiming directly at the building Nel was on and fired its main cannon.

Not Good!

****

Large Jack watched as the Magitek Walker's cannon destroyed the building the woman was on. However, through the scope, he saw that the woman managed to escape using the technique quickstep to jump to the next building and continue her dash towards the clock tower. However, she was notably slower than before. Back then, when she came into view again, he definitely managed to catch her off guard cause she only just managed to block the bullet. And by the looks of it, the bullet still managed to catch her. It was small, but there was blood leaking from a graze in her right thigh. Even if it was a small wound, for someone who had to keep moving, that wound could make all the difference. And if by some stroke of luck the woman managed to make it up to his nest, he had a contingency plan in place.

Either way, the woman was now only a few blocks away. His game of cat and mouse would be ending soon. The question was whether the mouse would end up caught in a trap, killed by the cat, or through the last resort.

****

Nel halted as another shot was fired, and quickly ducked into what was left of an alleyway. She was finally within reach of the clock tower where the sniper was located, which was connected to a large palace or government building. Due to her sprints, it had taken at least 30 minutes to get this far, an impressive feat given the various ambushes and delays she faced along the way.

Now there was the question of getting up into the tower. Path forwards was a wide-open plaza with nearly no cover, besides some debris which wouldn't be that effective this close to the sniper. What's more was that there were about 10 people, 8 of them armed with guns standing at the large columned entrance.

Common sense would tell her to flank around and find a way to sneak past, but given the various sounds of destruction coming from the west as well as a growing sense of danger emanation from somewhere beneath the city, time wasn't exactly something they had a lot of, and she didn't want to risk the sniper changing targets to one of the others (Of with they would all be helpless).

"Guess I'm going through the middle."

Nel brought up her short blade, ignored the pain in her right thigh, and charged out into the open.

She immediately brought up her blade to block a shot from the sniper before resuming the charge. The men gathered outside the building immediately opened fire with automatic guns. Nel simply charged on as fast as she could, using her two blades to slice and block several of the bullets. Eventually, she got close enough where she used Quickstep to move to where the men were gathered, landed on one of their heads and used it as a springboard to use quickstep again to scale the tower. While on it, she had to run as fast as she could since she was scaling a completely vertical surface, aiming for an opening In the tower while the men below fired frantically at her.

Ignoring the constant rattling of bullets around her, She reached the opening just before her momentum died down and plunged her dagger down into the rock and used it for one final push to launch herself into the opening. Once she was in the main stairwell, she leaned against the wall painting.

".... That took a lot more effort than I thought." She said, wiping away some sweat from her forehead. It had been quite a rush to get there, but now she had made it. All that was left was to find and kill the sniper before he got away.

She charged up the spiral stairway until she finally reached the top, a large open space littered with broken cogs and a large bell at the center, and clock faces on all four walls. Of course, none of this interested Nel in the slightest. The only interest was the dwarf of a man standing on one of the ruined support pillars, standing close to an opening in one of the clock faces with a rifle slung across his back.

"So you must be the sniper," Nel said casually as she twirled her blades in her hand.

"And you're the only person to ever make it to me." The man said with a large grin. "End of the line for your thought missy." He then pulled a detonator.

Startled, Nel looked round the clock tower with her Piercer eyes, taking note of the various explosives that had been set.

"See ya in the next life." The sniper said as he pushed the button on the detonator and leaped out of the opening.

****

There were enough explosives set to destroy the entire clock tower. Frankly, Large Jack had cut it a bit close in his escape, almost getting caught in the explosion.

Ok... That was way too close.

He was still amazed at that woman. This was the first time he had to use his last resort on anyone. In this case was blowing up his nest while jumping down towards a large fissure in the ground directly below, which leads to a large underground lake, filled with man-eating aquatic monsters. Fortunately, he wouldn't be hitting the water since attached to his waist was a grappling hook that he would use to stop his fall.

Another important quality for a sniper was the quick escape route to make if the need arises. And in this instance, he was very glad he had this planned. That woman was surely dead. There was no way she could have escaped the blast with the time she had.

As he fell through the hole in the ground he made it to the underground reservoir where he activated his grappling hook, which caught onto a nearby stalactite and braced himself for the pull.

Home fre-

Nel appeared behind the sniper and before he had any idea what was happening, she plunged her dagger into his skull while using her short blade to cut the rope before grabbing it. The sniper's body fell down and plunged into the water below, being devoured by several large monsters.

"That was way too close." Nel sighed a sigh of relief.

Just before the explosion, she used Quickstep to catch up to the sniper and leaped out of the building a second after him, very nearly getting caught in the blast herself.

"I should have known he'd pull something like that."

Nel stuck her dagger between her teeth and used her now free hand to get a better grip on the rope, sheathing her short blade in the process and resting her feet on the stalactite as she surveyed her surroundings.

Since the lake was full of monsters, the sniper would have had a way out that didn't involve swimming. She then spotted land not too far away, and as fortune would have it, an opening in the cave, likely a way out. Unfortunately, it was quite a distance away.

He was probably gonna use the grappling hook to swing across. Nel thought as she removed the dagger from her mouth and sheathed it.

She secured both feet on the rock surface while loosening her grip on the rope. While Quickstep could launch her at an incredibly high speed, it wasn't anything like teleporting. If she screwed up her footing then she'll end up fish food, literally. She was high enough that if she traveled as far as she could, she could hopefully fall on the ground.

Here goes nothing.

She then let go of the rope and launched herself from her peach, appearing a few meters away from the ground and plummeted forwards, just landing on the ground and rolled to avoid breaking her legs.

"Made it." Nel sighed a sigh of relief.

She then grunted at the pain she felt from her thigh. With everything that had happened, she had completely forgotten that he was hit before, and it was bleeding a bit more than she had thought. In fact, it was now trickling down her leg.

Probably should take care of that first. Nel thought as she sat down, rolled up her pants leg to take a closer look at her thigh.

Fortunately, it was just a graze, the bullet hidden lodged itself in her body, her clothing may have prevented that outcome, She wasn't sure she wasn't a doctor. But it was deep enough to be bleeding.

The cave then rattled from some kind of battle that was happening up top, and Nel cringed as she could only think of one person who was responsible for that.

"Is he trying to destroy the entire city?"

She let out a sigh as she took out a makeshift bandage out of some spare cloth she had. It then dawned on her that she was still separated and didn't know where exactly they were heading. She didn't know where this cave would lead her out, but with a bit of luck, it would be the path they were supposed to be on, meaning she'll run back into the others along the way. If not, she'll have to find Deadmans End without the map (Which she gave to Melvin before running off to kill the sniper).

Looks like I'm gonna be delayed for a while.

Sighing, she got back to her feet and walked into the cave entrance.