But just as he sighed in relief that he wasn’t going to die, he noticed Loki was running in his direction, and Loki was running much faster than before.
He didn’t know what was going on, but he wasn’t willing to stick around to find out. So he turned back to escape before Loki could reach him.
Unfortunately for him, the gap between his physical strength and that of Loki appeared to be much greater than he expected. By the looks of things, Loki was at least 4 times faster than him.
Jim is a cultivator of the Mind Hunter Pathway, so his body is naturally weak, and he doesn’t have any Metac to increase the power of his body. The strength of his body is only 0.5 units, which is average for beings at rank 1.
On the other hand, Loki has forged his body to 2 units. Loki is also using the Body Lever Metac and the Telekinesis Metac to improve his speed.
This makes it so that the power output of Loki’s body is 1(Cultivation Rank) × (2(Body) + 2(Mind/Telekinesis) + 1(Body Lever)) × 1(Skill), which is 5 units. So in reality, Loki is ten times as fast as he was.
As for the vines in the forest slowing him down, he used the Liquid Metal Metac to produce a claymore, which he used to cut them down. As for the branches and foliage brushing against his skin, he didn’t worry about them because they weren’t strong enough to break the defense of his skin.
So not only was Loki much faster than Jim, but he also had little to worry about the forest and wasn’t slowed down as much by the forest compared to Jim. This made it so that he was catching up with Jim very quickly.
He even twisted and turned in hopes of throwing Loki off his trail, but Loki was able to know where he was and go directly after him, no matter how he feinted.
In ten seconds at most, he would catch up to Jim. Jim realized this, so he decided to stop running.
Instead of trying to avoid the confrontation, he stood still and prepared for it. By preparing for the confrontation, what he was doing was thinking of ways to talk himself out of the conundrum.
As for fighting Loki, he wasn’t around about that at all. He wasn’t worried because he didn’t think that Loki would attack him after his identity was revealed. And even if Loki were to attack him, he was sure that he would be able to easily defeat Loki.
What he expected them to do was talk. He wasn’t sure that Loki would believe his excuses. But he didn’t think Loki would have any choice but to believe.
So when Loki burst out of the foliage nearby, he cracked a dry laugh and said, "OK. You caught me."
"How did you realize that I was following you, and how did you know where I was, though? I hope you can tell me."
He spoke nonchalantly as if they were meeting as acquaintances in a bar. His tone of voice was nonchalant, as if he hadn’t just been caught doing something suspicious.
But Loki didn’t answer his questions. Loki didn’t even stop rushing after him.
Contrary to his expectations, Loki continued approaching him menacingly and even swung the large claymore at him. This caught him off guard for a while, but he quickly reacted by attacking Loki.
He attacked Loki with the Sleep Metac. It is a Metac that puts the target to sleep.
He used this Metac because he didn’t want to harm Loki’s mind permanently. After all, Loki is Death’s Envoy, a precious commodity, and will need to be in perfect condition if he doesn’t want her to kill him.
He also thought that all of these were a misunderstanding. So his plan is to put Loki to sleep to calm him down. Then he would take Loki back to the city.
He expected Loki to fall limp to the ground in the next moment. But this didn’t happen because Loki had used the Mind Shield Metac to defend his mind. While this was not enough to block the attack completely, it was enough to delay the effect of the Sleep Metac until he was done with what needed to be done.
So Loki was able to take on the mental attack head-on and continue swinging his claymore at Jim. This caught Jim off guard again. But this time, he didn’t have time to do anything else to rectify the situation before the claymore struck his shoulder, sliced through it, and reached his stomach.
The claymore had struck his left shoulder, so his heart was in the way of the attack. As the claymore slashed through his body, it severed many arteries and veins, crushed half of his heart, and destroyed his left lung.
Cultivators of the Mind Pathway don’t need their body for power, but they surely need their body to continue living. With this kind of damage sustained, there was no way Jim could continue living.
Jim fell to the ground, and blood gushed out of his mouth as he asked, "How? Why?"
Loki chuckled and said, "How did I find you? How did I keep track of you? How did I resist your attack? Why did I attack you? Why didn’t I stop when I realized your identity?"
"I don’t know which question you mean. But then again, there is no need for a dead man to know anything."
As he said this, he ripped out the claymore from Jim’s body. Then he swung it at Jim’s head for good measure.
The claymore split Jim’s head in two. This sealed Jim’s fate and led to his swift death. Loki was able to confirm that Jim had died because he received a notification from the sect about a debit of 15,000 energy stones for killing Jim. Since even the sect was saying that Jim was dead and was asking him to pay up, then Jim must be surely dead.