Only a small number of people from Hazy City were aware of the true nature of the alien phenomena, and among the worlds related to these phenomena that Ahn Seven knew of, some were also aware of their truth.
After her family in Hazy City made preliminary progress in their research on the phenomena, a split occurred. At the time, the entire family divided into two factions; one was the migration faction, who wanted to escape their world seeking higher environment worlds to develop within.
In low environment worlds, even the strongest beings could potentially be eliminated by technological weapons— it just depended on the feasibility. For exceptionally powerful entities, the possibility was never zero, but in high environment worlds, meeting an extremely powerful being meant normal technological weapons stood no chance of killing them.
There was no point in bringing up weapons like the star destroying cannon from science fiction works.
The powerful beings in high environment worlds were indeed mighty, able to disregard most normal technological weapons, but such worlds naturally had powerful beings of similar caliber. Thus, in certain aspects, things were much the same, whether in high environment worlds or low ones.
But the advantage of high environments was the possibility of more, finding a way to break through the limits of lifespan in low environments wasn’t easy, whereas, in high environment worlds, that was not a problem. However, with the potential for immortals to clash, even watching from hundreds of meters away could result in death from the remnants of their fights.
In low environment worlds... as long as there wasn’t a nuclear war, encounters with gods fighting were not common outside of war zones.
Despite this, her family had split at that time, with some members taking a portion of the family’s resources and migrating to a high environment world upon encountering a high-level phenomenon, seeking greater development. Since then, there had been no word from them.
Her family still paid attention to this matter, but they had never discovered the world connected to the phenomenon from back then. Finding a similar world was exceedingly difficult, and unless something unexpected happened, the family members who chose the high environment world were likely never to have contact with their own ever again; their knowledge of each other would be limited to what was recorded.
The conservative faction, which is now the family elders remaining in Hazy City, didn’t lack the desire to go to high environment places. They just chose a more cautious approach, not rushing over. Hazy City in itself was a unique location.
Simply being a region with a high concentration of phenomena, they were reluctant to leave Hazy City easily. By staying in Hazy City, they could come into contact with more phenomena, gaining more knowledge or technology from those worlds through them.
With continuous accumulation, when the time came to make a decision and they chose a high environment world, they would have a plethora of ’max-level’ strength, wouldn’t that be better than the migration faction, who after choosing a high environment world, painfully developed from scratch?
Additionally, due to "Environmental Adjustment" factors, they didn’t have to worry about the sudden appearance of a super being flattening Hazy City, forcing them to abandon everything. Interaction between different worlds happened within their own or comparable worlds.
Going to a lower environment world and crashing wasn’t a joke. Ahn Seven had been in contact with people from other worlds who knew about the phenomena, and those people, upon learning some of the characteristics of Hazy City, were quite envious.
Some even wished to remain in Hazy City before the phenomenon disappeared completely, to gain more development opportunities, and after accumulating enough, choose a high environment world.
There were such individuals within Ahn Seven’s family, and other powers in Hazy City who knew the truth about the phenomena also had their fair share of these unique beings.
Upon reaching the southern forest, Ahn Seven looked at the report handed over by her subordinates. As soon as her people exceeded the contact time, the camp personnel immediately reacted, searching the area where the lost squad was active.
The result was a discovery of several incomplete corpses, but the numbers didn’t match; one person was missing, and that person was the leader of the team, a seasoned Alien Phenomenon hunter who had followed her for years.
As for those bodies, they were scoured clean. Were their gears valuable? That depended on the circumstances. Firearms were not hard to acquire in Hazy City, and their price varied depending on how they were obtained—more expensive in formal shops, cheaper on the black market—but they were not rare items, and peerless wonder weapons simply did not exist.
In fact, in the many worlds connected to alien phenomena, any qualified firearm from Hazy City’s gun stores could be considered a peerless wonder weapon, as long as it had bullets.
Moreover, those firearms bore the mark of her hunters group, so the likelihood of them being scavenged by peers was low, primarily because they would be difficult to sell, and electronic devices such as those would be traceable by her people once they ran out of the forest and found a signal.
Anyone with a modicum of sense wouldn’t scavenge them, so it was most likely that those items were scavenged by the natives of the worlds associated with the alien phenomena.
Besides the recovered bodies, there were other things.
"Our people don’t use this kind of gun," Ahn Seven observed as she looked at some steel pellets. Shotgun pellets had been found at the scene, along with traces of small grenade explosions—none of which were weapons equipped by her hunters, who had far more powerful weaponry.
Not only that, the searchers had found a particular kind of powder that wasn’t just dust; it was the residue left behind after the destruction of something.
After her people were harmed, other hunters intervened at the scene. The report’s reconstruction of the events suggested that the others must have carried out a thorough search upon finding the bodies. The alien phenomenon hadn’t dissipated at that time, and it was during their search that they encountered an attack by some kind of ’creature’. The initial shotgun attack was ineffective.
According to her team’s investigation, the shotgun pellets were dispersed too widely. Unless it was an intentional misfire, at least some should have hit the target, but the recovered pellets were remarkably intact.
The attacked hunter swiftly switched tactics after the ineffective shot, resorting to small grenades, and the explosion seemed to have an effect.
But afterwards, the individual faced similar or different kinds of attacks, fighting while ’kiting’ the creature. At that time, the attacking hunter didn’t use a gun but a cold weapon instead. Some trees had holes poked into them—using a long spear among cold weapons in the forest was certainly unique.
The final outcome seemed to be that the attacker suffered minor injuries but won the battle. However, no effective blood traces were found at the scene. The blood had been licked clean by the extraordinary creatures in the forest, and heaven knows why those beings suddenly started ’cleaning up’ for other hunters.
Based on the traces, it was confirmed that the attacker had come into contact with the alien phenomenon present at the scene. There was a high probability that they entered the phenomenon and remained in an unknown world after the phenomenon disappeared because the investigators found no evidence of anyone escaping from the scene.
The identity of the other party remained uncertain, as many hunters had entered the southern forest recently, and none of them were known to be proficient with a long spear.
Ahn Seven put away the report and took the powder marked with anomaly: "Let this matter rest here."
The annihilated squad wouldn’t come back to life; the intervening hunter was most likely left in an unknown world, and the alien phenomenon had long since vanished. This case was harder to deal with than an inconclusive one and not worth further investment of energy. It sufficed to properly settle the families of those hunters.