[You are running. Leg muscles strengthened. Endurance and explosive power increased.]
[You have traveled 9,978 kilometers.]
[22 kilometers remaining until objective completion.]
On ground flowing with filthy foul water and rotting biomass, Gavo's slender figure was running at a speed that would leave anyone stunned.
This area belonged to the scavenger settlement, a buffer zone between the major gangs of the underhive, and it possessed a relatively stable low-level order.
Violence was not forbidden here, but if you struck first, then you had better be prepared to be swarmed by the other scavenger groups.
This unspoken rule of mutual noninterference allowed Gavo to train by running in relative safety.
Through years of steady exercise, the three-year-old Gavo had long since shed the baby fat of the past, and her figure had become lean and slender.
Perhaps Infinite Growth had accelerated her development, or perhaps Hunger Endurance had ensured that she never truly lacked nourishment.
In any case, Gavo had not become short and frail despite living in the underhive. Instead, she possessed a strong body far beyond the normal developmental level of children her age.
The current Gavo could not only lift a fifty-kilogram bearing with one hand, but could also run thirty kilometers without stopping.
With physical ability like this, forget children her own age, even the adult trash pickers would struggle to compare.
But this was still nowhere near enough.
In the world of Warhammer 40,000, where monsters and nightmares were everywhere, her current level could only be described as enough not to die if she behaved herself.
"I need to start training at an even higher intensity."
That was what Gavo thought as she ran.
Suddenly, the air shifted in a chaotic flow.
Accompanied by the sharp hiss of something cutting through the polluted air, a stone came flying toward her at high speed, accurately predicting her path of movement.
It was a solid rock, covered in sharp edges, and moving extremely fast.
With that amount of kinetic force behind it, if it struck her, even the current Gavo would definitely suffer a considerable injury.
Faced with this dangerous sudden attack, Gavo did not panic in the slightest and simply raised her right hand.
The instant the disturbed airflow brushed against her skin, her right hand exploded into motion like a released spring. It flashed up in front of the stone, and her five fingers clenched tightly around it, catching it firmly in her palm.
After braking to a stop, Gavo lifted her head and swept a cold gaze toward the direction the stone had come from.
On top of the remains of a broken giant pipeline, three thin figures were standing there.
They wore tattered clothes. Their hair had become dry and sparse from malnutrition, and under the influence of varying degrees of genetic mutation, their faces displayed disgusting, sickly deformities.
These boys, around six or seven years old, were the underhive's feral children.
They had been abandoned by their parents for all kinds of reasons, and had only survived by clinging to life with the stubborn vitality of vermin.
If Gavo had not met her adoptive father back then, she likely would have become one of them.
"Mask freak, why'd you stop running? Don't you like running so much?"
The rabbit-lipped boy at the front pulled back his split lips, revealing rotten yellow-black teeth that made the stomach churn as he let out a shrill mocking voice.
The other two also broke into strange cackling laughter.
Gavo looked at them coldly, with not the slightest ripple in her heart.
Living two lives had given her powerful mental resilience, and her strength also gave her the confidence to look down on these weaklings.
She had never once taken the initiative to provoke these feral children, yet they clearly could not stand her.
Possibly because of the minor detail that she had something none of them did anymore.
A father.
She shook her head, casually tossed the stone to the ground by her feet, and prepared to ignore them and continue completing her system objective.
Although her strength was more than enough to beat ten of this sort, these feral children had a group mentality similar to gangs. Once provoked, they would cling to you like rot.
To put it more vividly, it was like hitting a Zombie Pigman in the ancient video game MC from M3.
Trouble like that would greatly hinder Gavo's journey of grinding her stats.
Therefore, whether viewed rationally or emotionally, no matter what these little pests did, Gavo ought to treat them like air.
And that was exactly what she did.
[You are running. Leg muscles strengthened. Endurance and explosive power increased.]
As the system pop-up appeared, Gavo devoted herself fully to running. No disturbance from the outside world could shake her focus in the slightest.
"Fourth Bro, the mask freak got scared, he ran away! Kekeke..."
A big-headed boy with bulging fish-like eyes let out a shrill cackle.
But the rabbit-lipped boy did not see it that way. Anger appeared in his eyes.
Even through the heavy gas mask, he had still sensed that cold, disdainful look from the other side.
Why did she get to look down on them? Weren't they all underhive scum?
Just because she had an adoptive father?
At that thought, the rabbit-lipped boy immediately flew into a rage. His skin, already unnaturally pale from years without sunlight, flushed red.
"Bastard, look at me!"
With a scream, he picked up another stone and hurled it at Gavo.
Whoosh.
The stone was fast and precise, but it still could not escape the fate of being intercepted by Gavo.
This time, she could not even be bothered to stop, and simply maintained her normal running rhythm.
That silent contempt dealt a devastating blow to the rabbit-lipped boy's fragile pride.
From beginning to end, he had been the one provoking and attacking first.
And yet he was the one who ended up getting mentally broken.
He was like a grot whose toe had been stepped on, ridiculous and pitiful at the same time.
He screamed again and threw several more stones, but every single one was intercepted by Gavo's right-hand anti-air system.
Realizing that all of this was useless, yet unwilling to lose face in front of his lackeys, he could only resort to the crudest Low Gothic curses, shrieking them at the top of his lungs:
"You gutter bug! Pipe slime!"
"Curse you! You damn freak!"
"Yeah, you're scared, you ran away! Our little one needs to go find comfort from Daddy now!"
"What are you gonna do? Hide in the arms of that disgusting lump-covered thing and cry? Tremble and scream like a skinned rat-wolf?"
"That's right, the mask freak is gonna go cry to his monster old man!"
"How pathetic. Do you wear that mask because your face is just like his, disgusting like a swollen, rotting rat corpse soaked in foul water?"
"You..."
The rabbit-lipped boy stopped his verbal barrage, because to his delight, he found that his insults finally seemed to have worked.
Gavo had stopped.
And she had turned to look this way again.
Only this time, the gaze beneath the mask was no longer cold indifference and disdain.
It was an icy chill that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Yes, for Gavo, the most rational thing to do was to ignore everything these pieces of trash said and did.
But the moment he insulted her adoptive father...
Things changed.
"What are you trying to do?"
"Y-you... don't come over here!"
(End of Chapter)
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