“What the hell - did you leave personal items to those people who sent you?” Gloria asked the men.

“Of course! ” The man standing to the right of Marcus cried. “Oh my god! We’re dead! We’re so fucking dead!”

“It’s a deliverer. We - we can’t attack it.” Marcus focused his Qi on both his arms, a heavy frown on his: “What should we do? Do you know a way to find the person controlling it?”

“Yes. Trace the cord.” Gloria forced herself to calm down, her talismans holding right in her hand. “He must not be far. So - buy me some time and I’ll track the bitch down. ”

“How?”

“Your Qi, it’s a Yang-based Qi right? Infuse it into the array. ” Gloria wiped her forehead: “Just don’t push too hard. It will speed up its burn but should give it extra strength for a period of time. And - ” She paused: “If the wall breaks, just defend yourself, don’t attack it, don’t harm it in ANY way. You understand?”

“Yes. Go!” Marcus nodded, then sat down on the ground in a meditative pose, his hand hovering on two pieces of bamboo strip. Thin streams of Qi flowed from his palms and into the bamboo, which caused the wall of energy to light up some more. After picking up two knives confiscated from the men who were trying to find them, Gloria shot out of the range of the array, her eyes glowing in light blue.

The creature squealed in frustration, its skeletal body releasing black smoke as it used all three of its hands to claw at the wall of energy. Its two human hands on the side were connected to its shoulders, while the single hand with three long fingers in the middle came from inside of its rib cage, connected to its spine. Its head was in the shape of a dog’s skull, with rotten skin and fur sprinkled all over the surface of the bones.

“What the hell is this! Please! Kill it!” One man cried and squealed, his legs were not able to support his body and he had to hold onto the tree.

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“Please! Kill it!” The man with a broken nose begged.

“No, we need to hold here. ” Marcus shook his head, his eyes fixed on the creature: “This is a deliverer. It’s the carrier of curses. And if we did anything to harm or injure it, we’d all be cursed with severe blowback.”

“What kind of blowback!? I don’t care! It’s literally trying to kill us!”

“Yes! Who cares! Just get us outta here!”

“The direct blowback would be a horrible gruesome death.” Marcus raised his voice to shut the men up: “So back off and be quiet! Unless you want another taste of my palm!”

With her Qi concentrated on her eyes, Gloria could see the ugly and foul cord that connected the deliverer’s body with its controller. Through all these days of studying the notes and documents left to her by Gyu Park and diving into the documents in the archives, this was the only way she knew for sure would resolve the situation where a deliverer was sent on her way. If she had brought more materials, she could in theory have built a more sturdy protection array and guard the captives until the controller expended all his energy. But this would be a huge gamble, to say the least. Not even Gyu Park could guarantee his array could hold for that long.

Following the direction of the cord, Gloria found a cloaked shadow hidden behind a tree.

Her Qi infused into the blade a knife. Her right arm swung across the air, tossing the knife with a rapid horizontal spin. The knife’s trajectory curved in the air, bypassing the trunk of the tree and cleaving at the shadow’s side. “I found you, motherfucker!”

The shadow shivered and attempted to dodge, but was not able to get away in time. The spinning blade struck the shadow right on the shoulder. Its edge buried in the shoulder pad. The shadow let out a female grunt before throwing a black talisman with red ink at Gloria.

Ethereal green flame burst from the talisman, and in a mere moment turned into a howling flaming skull shooting at Gloria with its mouth open. Gloria had no intention to dodge, and just thrust her right hand forward with her middle and index fingers pointing forward.

A sharp blade of Qi shot from the tips of her fingers, penetrating the forehead of the green flame skull and exploding it from inside. The shadow backed away while chanting her spell using a wooden short staff with a fierce dog head at its end. But her spell was cut short by another throwing knife - the spinning blade almost cut off a couple of her fingers, and ended up severing the wooden dog’s head from the staff.

A shockwave exploded from the broken staff and threw the shadow into the ground. Splinters tore many holes in her black cloak, and blood seeped through her face cover.

Gloria took a few steps forward, getting close enough for her to take a look at the shadow while not too close that she wouldn’t have time to dodge the shadow’s attacks.

The shadow seemed to be in great pain. She ripped off her face cover and the cloak around her chest area. At visible pace, her face became pale and covered in dark marks that looked like claw scratches or bites.

Their eyes met. And for some reason, the shadow let out a light scoff right before the lights in her eyes dimmed.

“Shit.” Alerts blared in Gloria’s mind. She turned and began rushing towards the direction from which she came.