Ryan tried using a building for cover and looked for an opening to break through the assassin blocking him head-on.
Bang! Bang!
Two shots placed with precise accuracy cut off his path forward. Ryan understood: the one in front wasn't just able to see through his Shadow Concealment — like the pursuer rapidly closing from behind, they were somehow tracking his exact position in real time by some unknown method.
"How is this fair?"
He cursed internally as he fled east again.
Once he'd put distance between himself and them again, Ryan fell back on a secondary plan and began angling south toward the Tasok River. He'd try looping back around to the Docklands — and if that failed, jump in and let the current carry him to the next city.
Even for a Sequence 8 Beyonder, a leap into this river, which could be two or three kilometers wide at its broadest, was no guaranteed survival. But it was still safer than being driven out of the city and into open terrain where he'd have to face a witch who was almost certainly above Sequence 7.
But the organization behind these sudden attackers was tighter than Ryan had expected.
Bang!
Another precisely placed shot from his right-front closed off that option too.
"Seriously? Three Extraordinaries, seven or eight guns, and you're cheating on top of all that — just to kill me?"
He looked at the second gunman who had stepped out of the shadows, suppressed the urge to extend a middle finger, and was forced to flee east again.
"Now what? With these two blatantly-cheating assassins in place, I can't even buy myself enough time for the church Extraordinaries to arrive."
He thought hard and came up with nothing. Short of taking out one of the Beyonder gunmen concealed in the shadows as quickly as possible, there was no way to change the situation.
But even with a gun of his own, landing a quick kill on what was almost certainly a fellow Assassin Beyonder while his position was completely known to the enemy required the enemy to make a mistake — and he didn't have their cheat to work with.
"What is going on here? That scarred man chasing directly behind me — I at least have some vague memory of him."
The scarred man was roughly the leader of a gang in a nearby city. Back in November, Ryan had used Instigator abilities to maneuver that gang into a firefight with a rival. He hadn't expected the man to survive the church's pursuit — and now here he was, coming for revenge.
"But those other two silent Assassins — I have absolutely no memory of them. Are they that woman's people? But if she ordered this, why isn't she acting herself? With an evil god behind her, she wouldn't be afraid of open confrontation with me."
In a world with gods, loyalty wasn't quite as foundational as it might seem — especially in a cult with limited numbers. Once you'd joined and established a connection to an evil god, your life was at that entity's discretion. Unless you weren't afraid of dying, you followed orders. The Seven Great Churches, with their vast followings, couldn't possibly keep watch on every member — which was why defection was possible. But an evil god skulking in the shadows didn't have that headache. The moment you even decided to betray them, you might already be dead.
So Ryan genuinely couldn't work out what the witch was trying to accomplish.
"Surely she's not punishing me just because I didn't immediately agree?"
He thought about it, couldn't make sense of it, and stopped trying. Instead he began moving at maximum speed through the slums with Featherfall active.
At this pace, an Assassin couldn't simultaneously maintain Shadow Concealment — and Ryan quickly heard footsteps from both his left-rear and right-rear directions.
He ran like that all the way out to the city outskirts.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Without buildings to provide cover, the two Assassins on either flank immediately tried to open fire. But Danger Intuition still worked, and with both sides moving at speed, Ryan caught the single bullet that might have hit him with a roll and kept running.
Out here on open ground, however, Featherfall or not, his build was still a liability. He could no longer maintain his speed advantage over the two lean Assassins — instead, the gap between them was slowly, steadily shrinking.
Realizing this, the two Assassins stopped firing blindly and decided to close the distance first. A short distance behind them, the third pursuer had never given up, and was slowly grinding his way closer.
Ryan was anxious and had no way to act on it. While Danger Intuition kept him mostly safe from gunfire at a reasonable distance, his own gun wasn't doing much to slow these two assassins glued to his tail.
Bang!
He fired a shot rearward based on sound alone. It was dodged, as expected — it only slowed his nearest pursuer slightly. Nothing more.
"Hey — who exactly are you people?" He tried talking his way into an answer.
Bang!
The two behind said nothing and fired back.
"Useless. That Instigator ability is completely worthless when things actually get critical."
He silently vented the frustration — and then, suddenly, the book in his left hand, containing the Witch formula and materials, felt warm.
If a man was about to die, and becoming a woman was the only way to survive — what would he choose?
He didn't know what others would decide. But for himself, he'd choose to live. Provided the world he was in was stable and peaceful enough — a place where a woman, if she chose to, could manage perfectly well on her own. Otherwise, death was honestly the better option.
"Never mind that. Stop daydreaming. This isn't some power fantasy where sheer willpower lets you refine a potion on the spot. They're this close — there's no chance to even brew it."
That said — thinking about Edith and the way she'd completely lost it when she handed over the formula and materials — he had a pretty good idea now of what that woman had been hoping for. If these three people behind him really were her doing.
Ryan was fairly certain all of this was that insufferable woman's scheme. If not her, who else could have engineered things to this point?
But whatever the case, all he could do was keep running — occasionally firing a shot or two at the two assassins to slow their approach — and wait for the situation to shift.
There wasn't much else left to do.
"You son of a — I swear, even if you run to hell, I'll put a bullet in you today!"
The scarred man, who had been eating exhaust this whole time and had only just caught up, finally got his chance to talk tough.
Ryan ignored him. Because the tree line was right ahead.
"Cut him off!"
The scarred man called it the moment he saw the forest.
But with everyone involved being Extraordinaries who all had guns, there was no way to stop Ryan in the short term if he was committed to running.
Left hand pressed over the pocket holding the golden datura and narcissus juice, Ryan used Danger Intuition and Assassin agility to find gaps in the crossfire, rolling his way into the forest through three people's shooting.
In the process he even noticed that the Instigator potion seemed to have slightly enhanced his Danger Intuition as well — the warning seemed to arrive a fraction of a second sooner than it had at Sequence 9.
"You think the trees scare me? Go!"
The scarred man cursed and plunged in without hesitation. The two Assassins did the same. With their own abilities, they had no reason to fear an ambush.
The moment Ryan entered the forest, he activated Featherfall and began moving at speed through the treetops again.
The distance the three had so painstakingly closed began to widen once more — everything seemed to be back to square one.
But the three quickly noticed something wrong. The small mirrors in each of their hands, which had been displaying the big man's exact position, seemed to be suffering some kind of interference — the image was growing blurry.
Up ahead, Ryan also noticed that the three didn't seem to be pressing nearly as hard.
Author's Note (this chapter): "Never mind that. Stop daydreaming. This isn't some power fantasy where sheer willpower lets you refine a potion on the spot. They're this close — there's no chance to even brew it."
Assuming your will can overpower the potion's will… you might refine it instantly, or you might not absorb it at all.