Free Web NovelTang Erda raised his fist and smashed it hard toward Bai Liu’s face.
Bai Liu coughed up blood and turned his face aside. The fist grazed his cheek and slammed into the ground, cracking it open.
Bai Liu had actually wanted to play some tactics and tricks with this captain, but the opponent’s panel suppression was too terrifying. Under Tang Erda’s close-quarters combat, he could not move at all. He could not even find an opening to open the system panel.
Tang Erda’s movements were too fast.
Even though this man’s brain seemed to no longer be functioning normally, his physical reflexes were truly first-rate.
Almost any time Bai Liu attempted to resist, as soon as a certain muscle involved in that movement so much as twitched, before he could even move, Tang Erda would swiftly dislocate his bones and press him back down.
On Tang Erda’s body, Bai Liu deeply felt the meaning of the phrase “one force can break ten techniques.”
Experience, technique, ability, skills, speed—
The limits of every standard used to evaluate a player were being displayed vividly by Tang Erda at this moment.
Although it was only a feeling, Bai Liu vaguely sensed that Tang Erda’s panel values right now might already have broken fifty thousand.
This was not a confrontation on the same level at all.
None of the opponents Bai Liu had encountered before had ever given him this kind of feeling. Tang Erda’s frantic, extreme strength left Bai Liu no room to maneuver.
He was indeed being suppressed.
Under circumstances where Tang Erda had not even fired a single shot yet, Bai Liu rarely found himself at his wits’ end.
If Tang Erda had not gone mad and collapsed, if he had not wanted to torture Bai Liu, Bai Liu sincerely felt that the grass on his grave would already be two meters high.
It would have been far too simple for Tang Erda to kill him.
This situation could perhaps be called a kind of bad luck.
But for Bai Liu, judging only by the result, it could also be considered a kind of good luck.
Bai Liu had long since stopped wearing Liu Jiayi’s appearance.
After he encountered the red-eyed Tang Erda, he had quickly deactivated the effect of the Queen of Hearts skill card. Using the appearance of an eight-year-old girl against Tang Erda was not a wise choice, especially since that skill card also consumed a certain amount of his stamina.
So now, Bai Liu was using his own body to grapple with Tang Erda.
Or rather, to be beaten unilaterally.
Blood splattered between the two of them.
Bai Liu looked at Tang Erda’s distorted, brutal face as his breathing gradually weakened.
Then, at a completely inappropriate moment, he suddenly smiled.
[System Warning: Player’s Health has dropped below 3!]
But it was not as though there was absolutely no chance of winning against this man.
The current Tang Erda was like an S-grade monster.
While he had become incomparably powerful because of his frenzy, he had also completely exposed his weaknesses to Bai Liu.
He only had to gamble once.
If he lost the gamble, it might cause this guy Tang Erda to go completely insane.
Then he would truly be dead.
But as long as he won the gamble—
Bai Liu locked eyes with Tang Erda as the other man brought his fist down.
Now!
Bai Liu, who had been relaxed and had not resisted, had caused Tang Erda to develop muscle inertia.
At the instant Tang Erda’s fist fell, Bai Liu snapped his eyes open and smoothly dodged to the side. He looked nothing like his previous weak state of letting the other man attack him.
The brief one-second opening Bai Liu created was enough for him to quickly tap open the system panel.
[System Hint: Does player Bai Liu wish to reuse skill card (Queen of Hearts)?]
[Confirm.]
A Queen of Hearts playing card appeared out of thin air in Bai Liu’s hand.
After Tang Erda approached, the heart at the very center of the playing card instantly began to spin rapidly.
The person in the center of the heart gradually changed from Liu Jiayi—
Tang Erda raised his fist and took a large stride forward, rapidly approaching the back of Bai Liu’s head as he roared hoarsely:
“Bai Liu—”
Bai Liu slowly turned around.
The protective suit on his body gradually turned into the uniform of the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau. His pitch-black pupils became clear and translucent. His height increased by half a head. White gloves appeared on his hands, and his short, messy hair lengthened into semi-long hair that reached his neck.
He turned back and curved the corners of his eyes.
With blood on his lips, he seemed not to care at all about Tang Erda, who was about to attack him. Instead, he whispered in a hoarse, gentle voice:
“Captain.”
Exactly the same as the Su Yang in Tang Erda’s earliest memories.
Tang Erda’s fist stopped at the tip of Bai Liu’s nose.
The wind from the punch blew aside the bloodstained hair on both sides of Bai Liu’s face.
Bai Liu’s face was covered in wounds from Tang Erda’s attacks, and when these wounds were superimposed onto Su Yang’s gentle face, they gave off a strange sense of incongruity and appropriateness at the same time.
Tang Erda’s fist clenched and trembled in front of Bai Liu’s face.
His pupils shook as he looked at this face of Su Yang, a face he was so incredibly familiar with.
This was the Su Yang of the first world.
This was the very first Su Yang.
This was—
The real Su Yang.
The one hidden in the depths of his heart.
The only Su Yang.
The one who could never come back, whose soul had even been annihilated.
“How dare you use his face to appear before me!!!”
Tang Erda’s eyes were blood-red, nearly dripping blood.
He looked at Bai Liu with a gaze that made one’s skin crawl. In the blink of an eye, a gun grew out of his clenched fist. He brutally pressed it against Bai Liu’s forehead and fired without hesitation.
“Bang—!!”
Su Yang was shot straight through.
He slowly fell to the ground, motionless.
He did not turn back into Bai Liu’s appearance. Instead, he remained in Su Yang’s form, staring at his Captain with eyes that had not yet regained their focus, dying just like that.
No matter what skill or item it was, it could not maintain its form after a person died.
If Su Yang still looked like this after death...
Tang Erda realized something.
Dully, he let go of the gun in his hand and knelt weakly in front of Su Yang’s corpse.
This was not Bai Liu transformed into Su Yang.
This was Su Yang.
Bai Liu’s voice sounded from somewhere unknown, lazy and as irritating as ever:
“Captain Tang, what you just shot was exactly what you saw.”
“It wasn’t Su Yang transformed by me, but the Su Yang you are most afraid of seeing in your heart.”
“Lift your head and look at what is in front of you and behind you.”
As if caught in a loop, Tang Erda raised his head with empty eyes.
At the end of the corridor in front of him was an incomparably massive mirror.
And this mirror reflected another mirror placed at the other end of the corridor.
The two mirrors had been placed at both ends of the corridor, directly facing and reflecting each other.
Each mirror would reflect a new mirror, and the new mirror on its surface would continue reflecting more mirrors. The mirrors constantly refracted and reflected between the two surfaces, forming a corridor made of endless mirrors.
Tang Erda recognized this mirror.
This was the [Murphy’s Law Magic Mirror], which was under special-grade protection in the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau.
This was a special-grade heretic.
It was extremely difficult to break. Even in an explosion, it would remain intact.
When one looked directly into this mirror, the longer one stared, the more the things one least wanted to see would appear and be born from within the mirror.
Just now, while Tang Erda was not paying attention, Bai Liu had placed the two mirrors at the front and back of the corridor, forming this infinite mirror corridor.
In fact, he originally only had one mirror, which was the Monster Book reward from The Last Train to Blast Off.
The other was something he had picked up on a whim during the riot he caused while detained in the Dangerous Heretic Management Bureau.
However, mirrors from the real world could not be brought into the system or into a game for use without the interference of the Evil God’s blessing.
His inverse cross was also with Tang Erda.
Conventionally speaking, Bai Liu had no way to bring the other mirror into the game, but he used a special method to bring it in, all for the purpose of creating this mirror corridor to trap Tang Erda.
For a hunter with a heavy psychological burden, there was no better cage than the past he feared most.
Various versions of Su Yang began to appear in the mirrors.
They smiled as they crawled out from within the mirrors, approaching Tang Erda and softly calling him.
“Captain...”
“Captain, look at this heretic...”
“Captain! Let’s go for a drink after work! The 3rd branch captain is treating!”
“Captain, do you like sons or daughters?”
They were clearly such relaxed and warm fragments of daily happiness.
They were clearly old friends with smiles, people who had been gone for a very long time.
But Tang Erda was so terrified that every one of his fingers was trembling.
He looked at these dreamlike memory fragments cast from real people. As he leaned against the wall and stumbled backward, he shook his head with a blank expression.
“No—!”
“Don’t let this continue—!!”
Unfortunately, he had nowhere to retreat.
A Su Yang also walked out from the mirror behind Tang Erda.
Su Yang patted Tang Erda on the shoulder with a smile full of excitement.
Tang Erda turned his head almost sluggishly.
Su Yang said to him with a beaming smile:
“Captain, as long as we win this final, we’ll have beaten Bai Six. Everything will be over—”
Before his brain could react, Tang Erda subconsciously covered Su Yang’s temple.
He let out a piercing scream of pain, as if every one of his bones were being crushed.
“Don’t say any more!! I don’t want to win against him!!”
“I want you to live!!!!” frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
A bullet fired from nowhere strangely passed through the palm Tang Erda used to cover Su Yang’s temple, accurately entering Su Yang’s skull with a crisp pop.
Su Yang’s gaze went powerless and empty.
Before the smile on his face could fade, he fell backward.
Blood flowed continuously from between Tang Erda’s fingers, which were covering Su Yang’s temple.
“Cap... Captain...”
The intermittent voice caused the dazed Tang Erda to turn his head again.
The Su Yang who had just been turning his head and smilingly asking Tang Erda whether he liked sons or daughters now had all four limbs twisted at strange angles.
It seemed as though something invisible were stepping on his body, grabbing his hair, and forcing him to lift his head and look at Tang Erda.
Half of this Su Yang’s face was a bloody mess. His uniform was filthy and tattered.
Yet his face still carried a very determined smile.
“Captain... you must save those who have been polluted...”
“Bang—!”
A shot went directly from the back of his head through to the space between his eyebrows.
Su Yang did not even finish his sentence before he fell straight down, blood flowing all over the ground.
The Su Yang who had asked whether Tang Erda wanted to drink with the 3rd branch captain after work had been kidnapped by Bai Liu as soon as he got off work.
Now he was curled into a ball on the ground, as if something invisible were continuously twisting and breaking every one of his bones.
He could no longer scream.
With every round of torture, he could only tremble, his face pale.
Something clamped onto this Su Yang’s jaw.
A recording tape generated out of thin air and was being stuffed into the mouth of the dying Su Yang.
“No—!!!”
Tang Erda collapsed to his knees in front of this Su Yang, using every method possible to try to dig out the recording tape being forced down into Su Yang’s stomach.
“Don’t force him to eat this! He’s in pain! He’s really in pain!”
The recording tape was covered in slime, and Tang Erda could not get a steady grip no matter how he grabbed at it.
Finally, with his eyes nearly splitting, he bit down hard on the recording tape, knelt on the ground, and pulled, trying to swallow it himself.
Tears fell from his deep blue eyes.
The nonexistent person stuffing in the recording tape seemed to also find that Su Yang’s mouth was too small to fit it inside.
So he casually dislocated Su Yang’s lower jaw, forcing him to swallow the sharp-edged recording tape.
Tang Erda could not stop it no matter what.
He could only watch helplessly as Su Yang, in the process of swallowing, clutched his stomach and spasmed on the ground, then gradually stopped breathing.
His mouth was full of dark blood.
Exactly the same as when he had been dissected.
Tang Erda knelt in place as if his soul had left his body, his hands hanging limply at his sides, appearing as though he had already died along with Su Yang.
The Murphy Magic Mirror.
A mirror that could reflect the images any person feared most in their heart.
Now, this mirror was reenacting the death process of the Su Yang from every timeline in front of Tang Erda.
Every frame and every scene before Tang Erda’s eyes—
Those daily moments that had once made him feel incomparably happy—
All of them had occurred just before Su Yang’s death.
He had already recalled them countless times.
So the instant he saw Su Yang’s smiling face before his death, he could not control his fear.
No matter how many times he tried, no matter how long he ran with all his might, up until now, not even once had he been able to save Su Yang from Bai Six’s hands.
He could only watch helplessly, time and time again, as Su Yang was tortured to death in all kinds of ways.
And he still had to accept Bai Six’s leisurely teachings and rhetorical questions.
[I truly won’t feel pain because of another person’s pain. But you see, as long as I do just a little something, the one who will be in pain will definitely be you, the empathetic “good person,” and not me, the “bad person.”]
In the recording tape, he smiled and asked Tang Erda in a slow, unhurried manner:
[So, Captain Tang, now that things have already reached this point, can you still tell me the meaning of being a good person?]
Tang Erda stood up unsteadily.
At this moment, the Su Yangs who had truly died before his eyes and the hallucinations in his consciousness overlapped.
He seemed to be answering Bai Six’s words across time and space, and he also seemed to be talking to himself.
“Being a good person is indeed a thankless thing, and it has no meaning.”
“But I disdain being a bad person.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“Even if I already truly want to die, even if it’s only an illusion...”
“As long as I am alive, I will go save him!”
Tang Erda gritted his teeth and took out his gun, aiming it at his own skull.
“Because I am his captain!!”
“Stop all of this, Bai Liu!”
Tang Erda’s gaze accurately locked onto one Su Yang among all the others, one whose behavior was slightly strange.
He pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The Su Yang in front of him slowly turned his head.
His eyes were a pitch-black color.
It was indeed that fellow Bai Liu!
[System Hint: Player Tang Erda’s Mental Value has snapped; panel has fully exploded!]
[System Hint: Player Tang Erda has activated burst skill (Russian Roulette—Suicide Bullet)]
[Locked Target: Suspected mimicry of player Bai Liu]
[System Hint: The wheel begins to spin. The gamble is about to begin... Gamble failed. Suicide Bullet takes effect—]
The bullet pierced Tang Erda’s skull with a tremendously loud bang.
Half of Tang Erda’s face, which still maintained a look of shock, exploded with blood.
He fell to the ground along with the other Su Yangs, dying, unable to move, lying in a pool of blood.
In a trance, Tang Erda saw the “Su Yang” he had seen before abruptly transform into Liu Jiayi.
“How did he get away...”
Tang Erda lay facing upward, his eyelids drooping, but a relieved smile finally appeared on his face.
“Forget it.”
“He always has a way to win the game.”
Tang Erda’s eyes gradually closed.
“I finally lost the bet. I can leave...”
“Hey, wake up.”
Liu Jiayi half-squatted in front of Tang Erda, speechless.
Just now, Bai Liu had activated Heart-to-Heart and directly teleported her over.
Before she could figure out the situation, she saw this huge idiot fire a shot at himself, scaring her into thinking history was repeating itself. She quickly drank the antidote.
In the end, this huge idiot had blown himself away with one shot.
Liu Jiayi was stunned.
Had Bai Liu put a curse on this guy?!
He could even give himself away like this?!
Just as Liu Jiayi was getting a headache over whether to save Tang Erda, who was lying on the ground on the verge of death, the mirrors vanished at some unknown time, and the door to the corridor outside suddenly opened.
Bai Liu walked in calmly from outside.
He seemed to have anticipated the situation inside. Seeing Tang Erda lying on the ground, he merely glanced at him as if nothing were out of the ordinary, then turned to look at Liu Jiayi.
“Save him first.”
While pouring the antidote into Tang Erda, Liu Jiayi scrutinized Bai Liu in disbelief.
“How did you mess him up like this?”
Tang Erda was, at the very least, an S-grade player with incredibly high panel values.
The monsters in this game could not do anything to him. It could be said that in this game, the only person who could defeat him was himself.
And then Bai Liu had actually managed to induce Tang Erda into shooting himself.
And it had been a shot fired while his panel had exploded, completely piercing Tang Erda’s defense value and reducing him to a sliver of health.
Now this guy only had one breath left.
If Liu Jiayi had come one step later, he would have been gone.
“Oh, it’s like this.”
Bai Liu explained methodically.
“I studied that skill of his, Russian Roulette. That’s a skill that gambles on luck. Whoever has the higher luck value won’t be hit. That’s probably why he was able to win against me every time.”
“Just now, at the critical moment, I first switched the image stored by the Queen of Hearts to look like you. Then I used the Ace of Spades to activate Heart-to-Heart and teleport you over.”
“Now it was you gambling your luck against his.”
“I figured that no matter how your luck is, it’s still better than mine, so the probability of winning the bet should be higher than mine.”
Bai Liu looked at Liu Jiayi innocently.
“It looks like you did indeed win the bet.”
Liu Jiayi: “...”
Liu Jiayi took a deep breath.
“Bai Liu, you father-tripping &@&# really are a pit-filler!”
—
Author’s Note:
Tomorrow, 2—who has been driven both crazy and stupid—can finally join the team.
Soon, 2 will be subjected to the sarcasm and internal bullying of the team by the others.
Let me show a little pity.
I’m faking it.
