On the other side of the world, on the other side of the ocean, the city of Bongoro in the state of Marseille.
Knee-deep snow covered the lawn, and the snow flakes solidified in mid-air, presenting an eerie sight.
This is an abandoned world, an afterimage of reality, and a hell of despair.
The air was filled with the smell of blood. The man wearing goggles used a knife to cut two pieces of meat on the monster's leg. Just after wrapping it in kraft paper, a blurry black shadow hit the wind and snow.
The man jumped away swiftly.
Snowflakes in mid-air clung to his coat—maintaining an abandoned world with such bad weather, it's hard for people to hide their tracks. The footprints left by the snow they walked were still covered up, and the frozen snowflakes in the air were dissipated and vanished.
The Sombra that attacked just now was no exception.
A trace rushing down from the sky is like someone using an eraser to erase a blank on the graffiti covered with snowflakes. Following this trajectory, to the end, a black sharp-toothed bird stopped on the corpse.
It lowered its head to the wound of the dead monster, spread its wings, and let out a shrill, excited cry.
"Corpse Crow?!"
The man took two steps back in horror, stretched out his hand, and disappeared without a trace.
The sharp-toothed bird's eyes narrowed, it lost another source of bloody smell, but such a big food was enough for it to feast, and the corpse crow buried its head and bit the fresh meat with satisfaction.
Black sharp-toothed birds flew in one after another, and soon seven or eight stopped on the corpse, and there was a fight when they were eating. They flashed their claws on their wings, bared their blood-stained teeth, and let out a menacing cry.
Small corpse crows will consciously drop their wings, give up the fight, and instead bite the parts with poor meat quality.
If they were evenly matched, the two sharp-toothed birds would go to war directly on the corpse, with their feathers flying around, and their shrill calls could be heard endlessly. Corpse crows are gregarious creatures that gather together in family units. When looking for food, they often encounter the same species of different ethnic groups, and conflicts often break out.
When they are fierce, they will fight to the death until one of their wings is broken or they are unable to stand up.
At this time, the corpse crow, who was always "gathering and watching" by the side, would stop eating and fly to the side with the same group of losers, giving up the right to eat.
The winner screamed twice, followed by its claws with sharp hooks, directly piercing the loser's neck, and with the dark red blood gushing out, it tore the feathers and separated the losers. Food.
There are many kinds of monsters in the abandoned world, but there are only a handful of species that eat the same kind.
Several corpse crows left contentedly, and the loser's companion continued to fly down to eat, without even looking at the remains of the relatives who died tragically.
When the surroundings calmed down again, the "snow scene in the sky" in front of him had been smeared in a mess by the corpse crow.
A group of gophers burrowed out of the snow and pounced on the remaining food.
One of them hit an invisible obstacle, fell into a snowdrift, and smashed a deep hole. It climbed out and took two tentative steps toward it, shaking its beard, desperately sniffing the air.
The cold of Bangolo City made the gopher's movements clumsy and dull.
The nasal cavity was so frozen that only the feeling of coldness remained, and the gopher turned its head and crawled towards the place where the same kind of dinner was held. At this moment, a strong force suddenly came from behind it, and it hit the mouse's spine with precision and ruthlessness.
When it was about to scream, its body sank into the snow with this force, and when it opened its mouth, another mass of snow poured in, and the squeaking screams turned into dull noises.
The gophers have a keen sense of hearing. They turned their heads and saw only one of the same species fluttering in the snow, as if they were just like before. They turned their heads boringly and continued to tear up their food.
Each gopher was the size of a house cat, and they quickly swept away the remains of the corpse crow and the leftover monster carcasses. When they were about to evacuate, the mouse discovered that the stupid mouse "playing with the snow" was gone, leaving only a deep pit and a few drops of solidified dark red blood.
- Enemies are lurking nearby!
The gopher squeaked, looked around vigilantly, and searched around.
But the murderer they were looking for had already run away carrying the "trophy".
Federico Morenza walked all the way to the door of his house. He looked around and found no danger. Then he walked to the small door next to the garage and knocked a few times in a rhythmic manner as agreed.
He lowered his head, took out the key, and opened the door.
He didn't remove the space ability during the whole process, so in the eyes of others, it was a row of shoe prints printed on the thin snow that extended to the door, breaking the snowflakes in the air, and finally the "invisible man" entered the door.
- Bad weather is really the biggest distraction when space power users want to hide.
However, Federick is not worried that these traces will attract the attention of other power users, because there is a fourteen-year-old boy waiting for him to come back in his garage.
This is the future American hero, savior... Those titles aside, Johnson Brown is now the snowblower in the house of Uranus superstar Morenza.
When the wicket was knocked, Johnson shrank behind the box.
He didn't move, until the "invisible man" walked in, removed the space ability shrouded in his body, took off his goggles and hat, revealing blond blue eyes and a rough wild charm face, Johnson came out of the dark.
"Good evening, little John."
Federico threw the gopher to the ground, which he was carrying.
The young man stretched out his head and glanced in fear, then stepped on sheepskin boots that were more than a size larger, and clunked to the garage door, staring at the footprints outside, and the area where the snowflakes disappeared in the air in a daze.
The invisible wind rolled up the snow and gently wiped the footprints.
The wind rubbed the falling snowflakes, and they were stirred again, and then scattered evenly in front of the eyes. The empty space has been filled in, extending all the way to a few hundred meters away. If anyone was chasing the blank trail left by Federick, at most, they could only come to this block full of rich and famous people, and then get lost in the intricate and various blank tracks.
Those who will scatter snowflakes are not only power users, but also monsters.
Gophers can dig holes, corpse crows can fly, and gibbons climb trees and walk to the top of buildings. It is normal and not surprising that the blank traces are broken.
Like a maze, Johnson pulls a few blank tracks to the roof, or next to the drain cover.
Obviously no one was chasing after him, but he imagined the scene of several monsters running around in the block. It doesn't matter if the "smear" is crooked, and the wind ability is wiped and re-changed.
Johnson also fantasized about a group of people who "broken the maze", confidently analyzed the monster's trail, and finally walked to the "dead road" in disappointment, looking extremely frustrated.
"Well done."
The sound from behind made Johnson's ability tremble, and the blank trajectory wiped the roof of a villa, drawing a parabola and landing on a big tree.
"… "
The jumping ability of this gibbon is a bit amazing!
Frederick stood behind the teenager and patted Johnson's shoulder: "Close the door, you'll catch a cold."
"It'll be fine soon," Johnson said.
He used his wind power to shake the tree, which fell a lot of snow, and soon replaced it with another tree, letting the imaginary monkey jump over the trees in the block, and then Johnson closed the door reluctantly, and his "painting" "bid farewell.
Federico rubbed the boy's head: "Come here, it's time for us to have dinner."
"Every meal we eat is dinner," Johnson questioned in a low voice.
"Because the time in this world does not move, it is always in the afternoon and evening."
"but… "
Johnson hesitated for a while, but kept repeating the word "But", not knowing what to say. He and Mr. Morenza had been in this strange place called the Abandoned World for a long time.
Five days, or a week
Johnson couldn't tell, because of their lives, they eat when they are hungry and rest when they are sleepy.
Mr. Morenza's space ability is very safe, and every time they sleep, they will enter that transparent cover. It's warm, and monsters can't get in.
Sometimes Morenza would take him out to observe the ferocious monsters up close, to see their physical features and how they looked when they attacked. But this is very dangerous, even in space, monsters can touch the outline of "space", but they can't see or smell them.
If surrounded by monsters, after the power is exhausted, the space power user will only die.
"Mr. Morenza, can we go back?" Johnson hesitated for a long time, and finally asked.
He wanted to go back to the world of Bungolo, where there were a lot of people, TV shows, and Christmas music. Even if every door on the street didn't open to him, even if the talk show host on the TV screen liked to taunt the poor, even if he wouldn't get presents when the Christmas music was over, Johnson missed a world without monsters.
The teenager had seen the ferocity of those creatures with his own eyes. Every time Frederick went out, Johnson, who was waiting silently in the garage, couldn't sit still.
Federic paused for a second and replied, "Those who work hard to survive can go back."
"It's called the outcast world, Outcast...Are we sinners cast out by God?" Johnson was very disturbed.
"Listen, Johnson, there is no god in this world." Federick looked straight into the terrified eyes of the teenager, and said in a tone of contempt that would make believers go mad, "Even if there were, he wouldn't be able to see us."
Johnson, who was born in the ghetto, was not very devoted to God, but that the nuns in the church had always been kind to him, and he was comforted by his belief in God that his classmates who bullied him would be judged after death.
Gradually growing up, over the age of self-deception, Johnson no longer believes this, but the profound influence of the environment, the teenager was still startled by Federick's rude words.
"Mr. Morenza?"
"No, nothing!" Federico felt his gaffe.
If there is a God in this world, who is God
"Nanyakea? Oh, no kidding." Federic said to himself, he took off his coat, took two pieces of meat from the wrapping kraft paper, and put them in a basin to wash off the blood with snow.
Johnson consciously stood aside.
"This is the meat of the wild boar. I was lucky today. It fell into the trap I dug. The meat on the thigh is sprinkled with black pepper, and it tastes good raw."
Federic was not in the mood to continue talking about this delicious dish, and the early appearance of the Corpse Crow made him feel dangerous. Federico picked up a pen and paper and drew a picture for Johnson.
"Today we're talking about this monster, it's a bird..."
The author has something to say: Outcast, abandonment, also means exile, the latter means a little more.