Elite Beasts — Fortune Within Misfortune

The Gray Rock Beetle swarm and the two gnolls had disappeared entirely from the four companions' view. They exchanged glances, a trace of bewilderment still lingering in their eyes.

"...What exactly was going on back there?"

The elf leader shrugged. "We have a gnoll in our own party. I don't see what's unusual."

"A human traveling with gnolls as companions — that's genuinely rare."

The elf leader was unmoved.

"Earlier, that human mentioned having companions nearby. Could those two gnolls actually be his allies?"

A Huang and the human male caught each other's eye and broke into matching grins.

"Just like us!"

The tall elf nodded in agreement.

"Alright," the elf leader said. "Let's not get involved. We'll head a different way." He waved a hand and led the group off down one of the other passages.

They waited until Lu Yuan and his beetle parade had vanished completely before slipping away in the opposite direction.

Some distance behind in the tunnels, the gray-furred gnoll stood with brow deeply furrowed, expression dark. He stared at Lu Yuan's retreating back, something shifting in his eyes. He stayed silent for a long moment, then finally ground his teeth and spoke.

"This doesn't add up. How is this *happening*? We've burned through almost all our Spiritual Energy — by every right, *he* should be more exhausted than us. So how is he completely fine?"

The brown-furred gnoll beside him was so spent his tongue was lolling out of his mouth.

They looked ahead. The beetle swarm was only growing.

"Big bro, what's the deal with that human?! His speed isn't even faster than ours — so how does he have this kind of endurance?!"

The gray-furred gnoll racked his brain and came up empty. No matter how he turned it over, he couldn't figure out where things had gone wrong.

"Big bro... what do we do now? Our Spiritual Energy's nearly gone. If we run into any trouble ahead, we'll be in real danger."

That landed.

"Stop."

The two gnolls came to a halt and stood watching as Lu Yuan led his army of beetles away into the darkness.

"Count that human lucky. I'm done chasing." The gray-furred gnoll let out a derisive snort. "With that many beetles on his tail, there's no way he survives. He'll be eaten and nothing will be left of him."

"Big bro's right! He definitely doesn't make it. Practically doing him a favor by letting him go."

*Over an hour. An entire hour.*

Throughout the chase, Lu Yuan had kept glancing back. His pace never faltered — not a trace of fatigue showed on him — and that had left the two gnolls staring with shock they couldn't quite process.

*Are you guys physically incapable of getting tired?!*

The answer, of course, was Spirit Crystals. By continuously absorbing their Spiritual Energy to replenish his body mid-sprint, he'd managed to sustain his stamina and just keep going. He'd had the foresight to hold one crystal in reserve beforehand, and had picked up another right at the start of the gnoll confrontation — two crystals total. He'd been dipping into the second one well before the end.

Once that second crystal ran dry, there was truly no backup plan.

The swarm trailing behind him had ballooned to over thirty beetles — a vast, thunderous column. Every Gene Warrior he'd blown past along the way had taken one look at the horde and scrambled to clear a wide path.

*Holy hell. He hadn't actually planned to collect this many.*

It was unavoidable. Every beetle he'd passed along the way was one he had no chance to kill — he could only dodge, and they all folded into the main horde. Because the swarm was serving as a natural barrier between him and the gnolls, he'd kept his pace deliberately lower to conserve energy. The calculation was simple: if he pushed to full speed, he could shake the entire horde whenever he chose.

He was already pulling ahead.

He glanced back again.

No gnolls.

He blinked. Then his expression lit up.

*Those stubborn bastards finally gave up?! What the hell — how did they keep going that long?!*

He couldn't figure it out either. What on earth had kept them going for over an hour?

*Do you have any idea what I just went through?!*

Lu Yuan let out a long breath and slumped against the nearest stone wall, sliding slowly to the ground. He sat there panting, chest heaving.

He pulled out his water jug and drank in deep, greedy swallows, then sighed with deep satisfaction and proceeded to pour the rest over himself from head to toe.

He followed that with two energy bars. The warmth spreading through his body drew out a smile he couldn't quite suppress.

*I'm not made of rock, you know. If you're hungry, go eat the rocks.*

The feeling of being alive was wonderful.

After a brief rest, he pushed himself back to his feet and took stock of his surroundings. Everything was quiet — no sounds of combat. He checked behind him. No beetles in pursuit.

Between the frantic, directionless sprint and the winding passages of the Gray Rock Forest, he had no real idea where he'd ended up. But that hardly mattered. Surviving was what counted.

After another ten-plus minutes, the space behind him was completely still. The horde was gone.

Shortly after, he came across a lone Gray Rock Beetle on the path ahead. He charged in, dispatched it quickly, and collected the gray stone carapace and Spirit Crystal. He absorbed the crystal on the spot, feeling his stamina surge back.

*Now. Back to hunting in peace.*

Lu Yuan picked a passage at random and headed down it.

He'd been walking for a stretch when he suddenly pulled up short, eyes going wide.

A dead end.

About a hundred meters ahead, the passage terminated in solid rock. But in the open space at the end, two beetles were grazing — chewing methodically at the stone face.

These were nothing like the ones he'd been fighting.

They stood close to a meter tall. Across the grey surface of their stone carapaces ran a single distinctive mark: a bold slash of black.

*Black-stripe Gray Rock Beetles.*

The strongest of their kind. Elite-rank beasts.

Unlike ordinary beasts, elite-rank variants of the same species possessed several times the raw power of their common counterparts — and beyond that, they wielded special combat techniques. Truly formidable creatures.

Even if the Gray Rock Beetle was the weakest category of beast in the Land of Origin, their elite variant was a force to be reckoned with.

And there were *two* of them.

Two ordinary Gray Rock Beetles would already test his limits. Two elite-rank Black-stripe Gray Rock Beetles?

One alone could take him apart. Two at once would be something else entirely.

But that wasn't what had stopped his heart.

What truly shocked Lu Yuan was the object resting quietly on the ground behind the two Black-stripe Gray Rock Beetles.

A wooden chest.

About half a meter tall, plain and nondescript at first glance — but the sight of it sent his pulse spiking.

Chests in the Land of Origin were legendary. Rare Transcendent Genes, Gene Armaments, powerful special compounds, priceless stores of knowledge — it could all come from a chest. For any Gene Warrior, stumbling across one was an extraordinary stroke of fortune.

This was a massive windfall.

*Fortune within misfortune* — he'd been hunted halfway across the map, lurching from one crisis to the next, and somehow landed right on top of a chest?

*This luck of mine... I really can't help being impressed with myself.*

The immediate problem, though, was staring him in the face.

What exactly was he supposed to do about two Black-stripe Gray Rock Beetles?

Lu Yuan stared at the pair of oversized beetles and felt a headache coming on.

But...