Three seconds after the explosion, Tsukishiro Yanagi realized something was wrong.
At first, she had assumed it was just an ordinary battery detonation.
She had seen countless cases like this on the battlefield.
A shockwave, fragments, flames, and then silence.
But this time was different.
After smashing through the walls on both sides of the alley, the shockwave didn’t weaken.
Instead, it seemed to be pushed back by something.
That meant the shockwave had collided not only with the walls, but with the stretched spatial passage itself.
Purple light spread outward from the center of the explosion.
It wasn’t the color of flames.
It was the dark purple hue unique to oversaturated Ether Energy, carrying a grainy texture.
When the light struck the broken walls and ruins around it, it didn’t dissipate.
Instead, it began to flow like water.
“This is bad!”
Tsukishiro Yanagi blurted out.
Before Russell could ask what was bad, the ground beneath their feet began to tremble.
It wasn’t an earthquake.
It was the trembling of space itself.
The space inside a Hollow was inherently a topological structure, maintained by a delicate balance.
The destruction of that Typhon Destroyer’s battery had effectively shoved a massive quantity of uncontrolled Ether Energy directly into that balance system.
The result was what they were seeing now.
Centered on the explosion, every portion of space within a radius of roughly thirty meters began to overlap.
Russell watched with his own eyes as a wall ten meters away split into three afterimages within a second.
Then the three images suddenly merged together.
The wall itself was crushed into fragments during the process.
Farther away, the alley they had just escaped through had vanished.
In its place was a black fissure stretching across the entire area, as if someone had torn open space itself.
Tsukishiro Yanagi took one look and reached a conclusion.
“We can’t go back.”
Her voice remained calm when she said it.
But Russell noticed that the fingers gripping her weapon were trembling slightly.
“…What’s that fissure?”
Fundamentally, the two of them were still strangers who barely knew each other.
So after the brief natural conversation forced by circumstances, a trace of caution naturally entered Russell’s tone.
“A Spatial Fault formed by Ether Turbulence.”
Yanagi didn’t find anything strange about the question.
She pulled out an electronic display from her uniform pocket.
The data on the screen was visibly descending into chaos.
“The spatial structure inside a Hollow is already unstable.
The destruction of that mech’s energy core essentially created a temporary Superposition Eruption Point here.
Now that the fissure has formed, the entire area’s spatial arrangement is being reorganized.”
She paused.
Her tone lowered almost imperceptibly.
“Simply put, our escape route has been sealed off.”
Russell lowered his head and glanced at his minimap.
Roads previously marked as traversable had closed off.
Not only that, the dark-red regions were slowly expanding outward like spreading ink.
“It might not just be the escape route,” Russell said.
Tsukishiro Yanagi looked at him.
“The turbulence is spreading.”
Russell pulled out his map for show.
He deliberately angled it toward Yanagi so she could see the area he circled.
“If we don’t leave, this place will be swallowed too.”
Yanagi looked at the Fox Masked man with some surprise.
She genuinely hadn’t expected him to be navigating the Hollow using such an ancient tool.
Were Hollow Raiders having such a hard time these days?
Out of politeness, however, she kept that thought to herself.
Instead, she stared at the area Russell had circled for two seconds before speaking decisively.
“Let’s go.”
Russell had already turned and started running.
He chose the eastern route.
According to the minimap, a passage leading deeper into the Hollow remained open there, still marked green.
Although their absolute position was moving eastward and farther from the Hollow’s exit, compared to the routes north and west that had already been blocked by the rebels, the east was the only direction not covered in red.
Another low rumble of spatial collapse sounded behind them.
Russell didn’t need to look back to know that the building they had been standing in moments earlier had already been swallowed.
The sound of their footsteps echoed through the empty corridors of the Old Factory Area.
Tsukishiro Yanagi’s high heels crunched across shattered glass and concrete debris.
Russell’s sneakers had soft soles, making almost no sound at all.
After running roughly two hundred meters, Tsukishiro Yanagi suddenly spoke.
“My teammates—”
“He got out before the turbulence erupted.”
Russell interrupted her in a calm voice.
“I saw him head southwest after breaking through the wall.
The mech chasing him got cut off by the Spatial Fault.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am.”
Tsukishiro Yanagi fell silent for a second before letting out a quiet breath.
She didn’t ask how Russell knew.
Inside this Hollow, where Ether Turbulence had thrown everything into chaos, all electronic equipment had already failed.
Yet he had somehow tracked another person’s movements dozens of meters away while fleeing himself.
That definitely wasn’t an ordinary reconnaissance capability.
And perhaps it also explained why he could wander around a medium-to-high-risk Hollow like H-037 using nothing but what appeared to be a hand-drawn map.
Russell explained nothing.
So Tsukishiro Yanagi could only fill in the blanks herself.
Still, there were many situations where saying nothing and pretending to be an expert saved a lot of trouble.
“As for the people in the factory,” Russell continued, a faint stiffness hidden in his voice, “they’re trapped now, but that’s also what saved them.
The enemy’s main force is chasing us.
Instead of worrying about them, you should worry about us.”
It wasn’t exactly good news.
But it wasn’t entirely bad news either.
Rescue might be difficult later.
Still, that was better than being captured now.
And having once been a soldier, Tsukishiro Yanagi understood military thinking.
Police work and military service looked similar on the surface, but they were fundamentally different.
Soldiers always focused on destroying the enemy’s effective forces.
Negotiation was someone else’s job.
The military even disliked the people responsible for negotiating.
So even rebels like these would never prioritize hostage tactics.
There was also an objective reason.
Hostages only mattered if negotiations were possible.
And negotiations required both sides to approach each other at close range.
The actual situation now was that the rebels possessed a hundred-man detachment and four mechs—three remaining after the explosion.
With overwhelming numbers and superior overall strength, but weaker individual combat capability, they would never give her a chance to engage in a life-or-death duel.
Instead, they would choose to wear her down like a pack of wolves.
Having reached that conclusion, Tsukishiro Yanagi couldn’t tell whether she felt relieved or more anxious.
However…
She soon realized that the Fox Masked man’s tone didn’t sound like he was trying to comfort her.
“…You know the enemy is chasing us?” Yanagi asked.
Russell didn’t answer immediately.
He rounded a corner and sidestepped a rusted steel beam hanging overhead.
Only after Yanagi caught up did he reply in a vague tone.
“Ether Aptitude.
Hollow Raiders like me can’t match you regular soldiers in a direct fight.
But people who are confident in combat tend to charge straight ahead, simple and brutal.
When it comes to staying alive, though, you’re not as good as I am.”
Yanagi glanced at him.
The mask concealed his face, making his expression impossible to read.
The statement clearly carried a hint of deliberate concealment.
Yet it probably also contained part of the truth.
This man possessed some kind of Ether detection ability.
He could accurately sense the number and locations of pursuers.
He could even distinguish the movements of the main force from scattered units.
Even within the Hollow Special Operations Section, such precision under conditions of severe turbulence would be considered rare talent.
But she didn’t press further.
Inside a Hollow, with their escape route sealed, pursuers unknown, and allies scattered, the proper way to treat a stranger with reconnaissance abilities who had voluntarily offered assistance was not interrogation.
It was temporary trust.
“I owe you one.”
Tsukishiro Yanagi said.
★ ★ ★
Shilling time!