LOCATION: AGARA — MOUNTAINS

The wind hits Sid’s green shirt, making the fabric flutter violently as he slides his glasses up onto his forehead. His expression is calm but dead serious, his dark brown eyes locked onto the distant figures. His grip tightens around the small sphere as it begins to glow with a faint, threatening orange light.

Back on the road, Echa rests her hand under her chin, squinting her green eyes. Besides the hoverbike, Index remains flawlessly quiet and defensive.

“You think he’ll actually reach them by tomorrow at that pace?” she mutters, letting out an annoyed groan before her tone shifts to genuine curiosity. “What even are those things anyway?”

“Anomalies,” Index responds, its red optical lenses boring into Sid's profile. “They are similar to Nila. But where Nila was gentle, these kinds are purely violent.”

The moment Sid draws close, two of the figures freeze dead in their tracks. With a sickening, unnatural crunch, their heads twist around, their jaws warping out of alignment just to face him. Both beings stand completely rigid like hollow statues, their wide-open eyes staring blankly without a single blink.

They wear simple, ordinary black and brown shirts. But before a human eye can even blink, the two anomalies plunge forward, sprinting directly at Sid with terrifying acceleration. Meanwhile, the third anomaly stubbornly continues its relentless chase after the goat across the field.

The creatures move exponentially faster now than they did when hunting the animal. Within three seconds, they completely close the gap, dashing right into Sid's space.

The moment the creatures close the distance, Sid drops the sphere from his hand. The object hits the grass, and an intense orange light flashes violently from its core.

Within a fraction of a millisecond, a transparent domain expands outward. The anomalies' wide eyes stretch even further as the energy field washes over them, instantly locking their high-speed velocity into a slothful, predictable crawl.

Through their slowed vision, they catch a confident smirk cutting across Sid’s face. Moving with effortless precision, Sid reaches out and catches one of the anomalies squarely by the face. The second creature narrowly evades his grasp, tumbling past his shoulder and skidding completely outside the boundaries of the domain. With a single, fluid motion, Sid slams the captured entity headfirst into the dirt. Its glitching body tremors violently for a split second before going completely still.

Sid calmly pulls his hand away.

Back on the road, Echa stares with parted lips, her green eyes wide with awe. “What the... how?” she whispers.

Sensing the intense curiosity in Echa’s reaction, Index chimes in. “It is actually a specialized destruction device provided by Oshna. It deploys paramount codes that are incredibly difficult for anomalies to adapt to.”

Sid stands completely unbothered, straightening his posture as he turns his attention toward the creature. Outside the domain, the second anomaly slowly rises back to its feet, dropping into a defensive, guarded stance in front of him.

“Anomalies require time to fully calibrate and adapt to a heavily protected environment like Agara,” Index finishes. Echa nods silently, absorbing it. She watches the chaos unfold.

Without warning, the surviving anomaly completely shifts its target, lunging directly toward Echa and Index with blinding speed. Echa jolts on the hoverbike as the creature dashes toward them. Index instantly rolls to the front, positioning its small frame as a protective shield.

“OH NO!” Echa yelps, diving off the seat to take cover behind the bike's heavy chassis.

The red armor plating on Index’s chassis slides apart with a mechanical hiss, revealing a narrow gap that rapidly charges with the bright energy of an awaiting cannon blast.

The anomaly charges on, its face locked in that horrific, unmoving grin. But right before it can leap over the wooden fence, the creature collapses face-first into the grass mid-stride, its body juddering violently for a single second before going entirely unresponsive.

Echa peeks out from behind the hoverbike, seeing the threat neutralized, Index powers down its weapon, the glowing energy disintegrating as the armor panels slide shut.

Both Echa and Index look back toward the field, their eyes locking onto the barrel of the B3-Fiveter—a heavily modified, tactical handgun that Sid holds with complete, unbothered composure. Without wasting a single second, Sid pivots on his heel, raises the weapon, and fires a second shot toward the far edge of the pasture.

The energy projectile tears through the third creature, which had already pinned the white goat. The entity drops instantly, its wide eyes staring blankly as it slumps into the dirt. At the sound of the creature falling next to it, the injured goat lets out one final, weary cry before it, too, collapses into a motionless pile next to the creature.