The key to understanding the enemy's ability was determining how he locked onto Ivan's position.
When the Velociraptor turned the corner of the building and blocked the enemy's line of sight, the attacks still struck Ivan precisely—and they weren't even coming from behind.
That meant the enemy wasn't using vision to track him.
Which left another strong possibility.
Just like the emergency guard earlier, the enemy's ability likely required obtaining something from Ivan, or completing some kind of contact-based condition.
The first possibility was much simpler.
Ivan himself had thrown the tennis ball earlier.
Each tennis ball had six marbles attached.
And now he had seen one of those marbles embedded inside the stone used to attack him.
That alone proved the enemy was using those marbles as tracking anchors.
So the real calculation became simple.
How many objects could the opponent throw?
The first tennis ball had been destroyed.
If the fragments from the explosion counted as usable items, then the enemy could theoretically launch countless attacks.
But Ivan didn't believe that was the case.
If fragments worked, the stone he found should have contained tiny tennis-ball fragments, not a marble.
Which meant the usable objects were likely limited.
One tennis ball.
Twelve marbles.
So far, Ivan had been attacked three times.
Most likely, the opponent had been using marbles.
That meant about ten attacks remained.
But Ivan remembered clearly that when the first tennis ball exploded, not all the marbles had flown toward the enemy.
Some had flown out the window.
Three of them.
Unless the opponent had some way of retrieving every one of Ivan's belongings, then the total number of attacks Ivan had to face was seven.
There was also another escape method.
Simply run out of the opponent's attack range.
Based on the weakening force of the attacks, Ivan estimated the range at roughly 1,500 meters, possibly even farther.
He had reached that conclusion by comparing the force of the stones that struck him.
But even that estimate contained uncertainty.
One more crucial detail remained.
During the ability's activation, Yuliel did not move.
The Velociraptor continued running.
The fourth attack struck Ivan's leg.
At the same time, five Compsognathus broke away from the swarm harassing the guards near the morgue and rushed toward the building.
The easiest way to determine whether Yuliel was pursuing him was to observe his reaction to the dinosaurs.
Ivan couldn't see through the dinosaurs' eyes, but he could still issue commands remotely.
However, he deliberately kept them from approaching Yuliel.
Because a troubling thought had occurred to him.
What if creatures transformed by his ability counted as objects the enemy could throw?
That thought had barely formed when the fifth attack arrived.
This time it wasn't a stone.
It was a chunk of wall.
A piece of wall carrying a dead security guard's body suddenly appeared and slammed into Ivan's side.
It counted.
Ivan confirmed that as he was sent flying.
The larger the object, the larger the projectile it could carry.
That was the conclusion he added while hitting the ground.
Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.
The attack's power had weakened with distance.
But its size had compensated for the loss of force.
At the same time, Ivan sensed the Compsognathus he had dispatched rushing toward the guards.
Which meant Yuliel was moving.
That created a serious danger.
If Yuliel closed the distance and attacked again, a full-power strike might easily pierce straight through Ivan's body.
If the hit landed anywhere other than the head or heart, the death Nen might still repair the damage.
But if either of those two points were destroyed—
Ivan would die instantly.
That meant Ivan had only one real option.
Before Yuliel found him, Ivan had to break Yuliel's defense and infect him.
Otherwise, once Yuliel obtained a new earpiece from the guards and reestablished communication with the emergency guard, he would be able to close the distance rapidly.
So what could Ivan do?
Even the Velociraptor's bite couldn't penetrate Yuliel's defense…
Then a memory flashed through Ivan's mind.
Yuliel maintaining Ken.
Ivan clearly remembered that when he looked back earlier, Yuliel had still been standing in the second-floor window maintaining Ken.
That was strange.
Extremely strange.
Could maintaining Ken be one of the conditions for activating the ability?
Otherwise, with Ivan already far away, Yuliel had no reason to keep maintaining such a stamina-draining state.
The sixth attack struck just as Ivan climbed back onto the Velociraptor's back.
Ivan could feel the aura inside his body being rapidly drawn into the death Nen.
The death Nen in turn consumed it at high speed, repairing his wounds.
Six attacks also allowed Ivan to determine another crucial detail.
The interval between attacks.
The shortest gap was five seconds.
The longest was uncertain.
Ivan abruptly changed direction.
He began heading back toward the parking lot where he had originally arrived.
At the same time, his eyes searched the area.
He was looking for approaching security guards.
He needed new dinosaurs.
Meanwhile, after crushing the Velociraptor's skull and retreating into the corner, Yuliel quickly realized Ivan had chosen to flee.
That allowed him to relax slightly.
Because he knew perfectly well that losing all sensation on his left side placed him in serious danger.
But Ivan choosing escape instead of continuing the attack was, in Yuliel's opinion, the worst possible choice.
Because it exposed Ivan's weakness.
Yuliel activated his Nen ability:
"Yuliel's Investigation Field."
He had developed this ability during his time as an investigator.
Its purpose was simple—
to locate suspects more effectively and gather evidence they left behind.
While maintaining Ken, if Yuliel obtained a suspect's personal belonging, then once the suspect entered within 800 meters of him, he could launch attacks.
The projectiles were stones.
Each stone required one of the suspect's belongings embedded inside it.
The optimal attack distance was 300 meters.
Beyond that, the power dropped with every additional 100 meters.
Another restriction was that he had to maintain Ken the entire time the ability was active.
Additionally, within a 50-meter radius during activation, any object belonging to the suspect would be automatically gathered and summoned to Yuliel's hand.
One unexpected detail had surprised Yuliel.
The dead security guard had also counted as Ivan's "belonging."
Which meant Yuliel now had fourteen usable projectiles.
If the first tennis ball hadn't shattered, he would have had fifteen.
The left-side disappearance lasted exactly seven seconds.
When Yuliel's full vision returned, he noticed the earpiece on his left ear had been destroyed.
Fortunately, his Nen had blocked the explosion.
He suffered no serious injury, though ringing still echoed in his ear.
A faint numbness lingered in his left shoulder where the earlier attack had struck.
Yuliel walked quickly to the bed.
His ability had already gathered all the usable projectiles beside him.
He calculated the distance between them.
After launching four attacks without achieving the result he wanted, he decisively threw the security guard's corpse.
Then he jumped down from the second floor.
The Compsognathus wandering nearby were completely ignored.
Those tiny creatures couldn't break his defense.
In fact, they could even serve as additional ammunition.
He almost hoped they would attack him.
Still, he needed to determine Ivan's exact location quickly before Ivan escaped the attack radius.
And that required cooperation from Greg's ability.
So the first step was to obtain a new earpiece from the arriving guards.
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