Chapter 30-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player



Chapter 30

From across the distance, Anderson saw Tyrant's eyes. They were empty his words had not stirred the faintest ripple in them. He understood immediately: he had misjudged her again.

The moment Bai Shan released, he hurled his escape item [Flash Grenade] without a second thought. The smoke from this item's detonation would carry him instantly to somewhere ten thousand metres away.

Anderson felt a surge of bitter regret. He should never have let curiosity and pride drive him to approach Tyrant. He should have concealed himself in some corner and bombarded her with ranged weapons without pause even if it meant exhausting his entire arsenal, it would have been worth it.

Fortunately, he still had a chance to recover.

In the span of milliseconds, [Flash Grenade] was about to hit the ground and detonate. The arrow trailing inextinguishable flame was clearly a half-step behind.

But the arrow had not yet arrived and already the ferocious fire had ignited the air, ignited the earth, tearing through sky and ground alike. The metal sphere was swallowed in an instant.

Charlie Anderson recoiled on instinct. He had barely turned when Tyrant's blazing arrow arrived at last. The moment the arrowhead touched black metal it exploded; flame wrapped itself around the cold black body from above to below. A scream of agony tore across the ruins. The man's weapon-transformed body burned bright red, as though it were about to burst apart.

At the moment of life or death, Anderson tore the skull pendant from inside his clothes and gripped it tight.

[Death God's Blessing (??) Effect: Death God can bless death, and also curse life.]

This was the reward for accumulating ten thousand kills. Gripping the skull pendant attached a death-blessing to any weapon, amplifying its lethality but each use split the skull with another crack.

Bless death and curse life! Charlie Anderson did not know what a curse of life meant, but at this moment he made a sincere, fervent wish: he cursed himself to live.

The skull pendant crumbled to dust in his hand.

The flame that had nearly melted him was snuffed out by a chill so cold it made the bones shudder.

[Death God's Blessing has expired!]

["Bloodshed Resonance" second skill "Heavy Artillery" has been permanently damaged by "Inextinguishable Sun Flame" and cannot be used!]

"Shit!!"

The flame vanished, leaving the surroundings scorched black and a half-melted metal body. Anderson's camouflage jacket had burned away. The black metal frame barely maintained a human shape; the gun-barrel head had liquefied into a flowing mass, the whole figure like a wrecked boat dredged from a swamp, thick molten iron dripping steadily downward.

What rank of item was Tyrant using? It had not only burned the body it had burned away a talent ability too.

His most powerful item, [Death God's Blessing], was gone. His second skill was unusable. His next most powerful remaining item was A-rank completely inadequate against Tyrant.

As far as he knew, items dropped at extremely low probability. He had killed so many people and only ever received a dozen or so items, only a handful of which had ever been truly useful.

"I understand now it's luck. Your talent must be super luck!"

That he could still produce a human voice despite the external damage spoke to the real power of his second skill. Without that layer of metal, the moment the flame touched him he would have died.

Bai Shan's foreign language ability was not particularly strong, but strangely, she could always immediately grasp from key words and tone exactly what the other person meant.

Luck? She was indeed lucky.

Luck was a prerequisite for success. Bai Shan had never denied the role of fortune.

"You are also a lucky boy."

Bai Shan put together a simple reply in the foreign tongue to return his compliment.

"Are you insulting me? I did not get where I am today through luck it was through a spirit and capability far beyond anyone else's!"

Charlie Anderson was furious. In the old world, killing someone like her an ordinary person would have been easier than killing a rabbit. If the game had not given someone so ordinary the chance to leverage her luck, he would never be in this wretched state.

Looking at the half-melted mechanical head, Bai Shan could somehow read the bitterness and resentment in it. A moment's thought and she understood perfectly well what he was bitter and resentful about.

"The fact that you can stand here and face me today required everything your nationality, your gender, your natural physique, the people who recognised your talent, and the ability the game gave you. Not one of those could be missing."

"The reason you were able to kill so many people in the past was not because you were powerful it was because you were luckier than they were."

"Now, you have simply met someone luckier than you."

As she spoke, Bai Shan narrowed her eyes slightly, drew the bow once more, and let a second tongue of flame mount the arrow.

"By the way I like this ten-minute deadline."

The second arrow flew and again ignited a scorching storm.

Anderson, now braced and ready, produced his most powerful defensive item a jet-black shield raised before him, like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

But Bai Shan's expression shifted suddenly.

She snapped her head up. The arrow that had been flying straight for the man abruptly changed course barely grazing the mostly-burned shield, it curved sharply upward and shot straight into the sky.

A silent missile was streaking in from the horizon.

BOOM.

The blazing arrow collided with the missile. In one instant an enormous force erupted a mushroom cloud detonated overhead, like volcanic lava ripping the boundless sky apart. The sky became an inverted sea of magma, terrifying energy spreading without end.

On the ground, Bai Shan crouched low. The massive shockwave from above brought down the surrounding buildings a second time. She reached out her hand thick smoke everywhere, scorching and chaotic air to breathe.

There was no time to swear. Anderson's second wave was already upon her.

Rustle rustle a swarm of black drones wove through the smoke like a plague of locusts.

Bang bang bang bang! A dense volley of bullets swept toward her. Bai Shan swung both arms upward; fragments of stone and steel rebar around her knitted together into a shield, blocking the fierce assault from above. Within moments the surface of the shield was riddled with craters.

Charlie Anderson seemed to hear the trumpet of a counterattack. Seizing the opportunity, he slipped away to a far corner, picked up a rifle, and trained it on Tyrant from the shadows.

He could see it now Tyrant had no powerful defensive weapon. Under a sustained barrage, her items and stamina would be ground down continuously. He just needed to wait for the right moment, and one bullet would finish her.

Anderson steadied himself, his breathing nearly silent, melting himself into cover.

After the missile explosion, the temperature in the area had spiked sharply it was approaching body temperature now. He guessed Tyrant must have some heat-imaging type item, and the current conditions were perfect to confuse that kind of detection. Finding him again would be difficult for her.

Don't rush stay calm, Anderson told himself. He tried to recall the year he was seven, when his father took him hunting rabbits for the first time, how carefully and deliberately he had approached it.

Lucky? He had no mother. He had grown up in genuine poverty. As a child he had been bullied relentlessly for developing late. How dare that little wretch call him lucky.

He had risen through his own strength. If he fell here today, it would only mean Tyrant's luck was extraordinary but even if she won today, luck alone could never carry someone far. Sooner or later she would be dealt with by someone truly powerful.

Through the scope, Anderson watched a bomb streak toward Tyrant and blast apart the improvised shield she had assembled from rubble.

Now Anderson was about to pull the trigger, but a flash of hesitation hit him a worry that Tyrant might locate him again and his finger slowed.

Then he saw something that made his eyes nearly split from their sockets. Through the scope, clear as anything: an incoming bomb had been stopped dead in midair by Tyrant.

The weapons he controlled had been seized and turned against him.

Bai Shan swept a hand forward. The bomb that had been bearing down on her flew upward. The drones detonated in a chain, like a small fireworks display; the wreckage rained down in pieces.

She had only been testing she had not expected [Tyrannical Command] paired with the Bracer to actually seize control back.

Stopping something as large as a missile might be beyond her but Bai Shan guessed Anderson probably had very few of those left. A man who had killed so many people must have spent weapons at a staggering rate.

Her eyes, faintly touched with red light, swept the area. The temperature was too high now she couldn't use heat imaging to locate him.

How much of the ten minutes was left?

Bai Shan had always been good at racing deadlines. Every assignment from childhood onwards had been finished right at the wire. Since being dropped here she hadn't counted the time, and had not looked once at the girl forced to keep the countdown she had no idea where the girl was now. She could only hope the girl was sharp enough to find a safe place to shelter.

Four tanks ground forward from the opposite direction, barrels aimed at her. Bai Shan sprinted clear of the shells and thought as she ran.

[Inextinguishable Sun Flame] gave three flames per day; she was down to her last one. She needed to find Anderson's location quickly. An enemy lurking in the dark was always a source of unease.

She just needed to find Anderson, and one final shot would end this game.

A shell exploded behind her, throwing up dust and rubble. Bai Shan dodged neatly; a blackened severed limb landed at her feet some corpse's, from the look of it. Bodies were hardly rare here.

Bai Shan stepped around the corpses people who had died days ago, and innocent hostages because she had no capacity to attend to them. All her focus was funnelled into a single task: killing Charlie Anderson.

Corpses?

It struck her suddenly there was still one item she could put to use here.

Inside an abandoned building, Charlie Anderson was tracking his target with absolute concentration when something tapped him on the shoulder.

His scalp went cold. He wheeled around nothing there. Empty.

Was he so strung out that he was hallucinating?

The next second, an overpowering force slammed his body hard to the ground. He struggled to rise. His back, his limbs it felt as though countless hands were pinning him down. The rifle slipped from his grip and fell from the fourth floor to the street below.

"Holy shit!"

Was it Tyrant or that girl? No, the game rules would restrict interference. That girl's ability could not affect him at this moment

Then it could only be

Bai Shan had moved to a building across the narrow, ruined street. Through the gap she watched the man thrashing helplessly inside the building opposite.

[Fengdu Tiger Tally (SS) Effect: When a person dies, their spirit particles remain if they had extreme unwillingness or desire before death. These are perhaps what you call ghosts. With the Tiger Tally, you can command them.]

The ancient bronze tiger tally dissolved in Bai Shan's hand. In Tomorrow's Dominator 1.0, this item had never been easy to use but in this place, resentful souls were screaming from every direction.

Charlie Anderson had no idea what had him pinned. He naturally assumed it was Tyrant's peculiar telekinesis a fine skill, he had to admit; it was enough to make even this metal body tremble. Tyrant's luck was truly something to behold.

At this point, all he felt like doing was laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Anderson said: "Before you kill me, tell me your real name. In exchange, I'll tell you a secret."

Bai Shan had her hands in her pockets. She looked a wreck by now her usually clean face was caked in dust, the coat filthy around her shoulders. She laughed a real, easy laugh and the flash of teeth was startlingly white against all the grime.

"I'm not interested in your secrets," she said.

"Besides you're not an honest person. You said there were more experience depots. But everyone here has already been killed off by you and the game, hasn't they."

Anderson persisted: "I can tell you this secret is worth as much as Tyrant's real name. Miss this moment, and you may never hear her real name again."

"She?" Bai Shan frowned.

Anderson's phrasing was vague, but Bai Shan caught his meaning quickly. "Your superior?"

A few heavyweight names moved through her mind in rapid succession. She couldn't pin it down, and she was a little curious.

"Even without knowing who she is, I don't think that secret is worth more than my name." Bai Shan shrugged.

"Ha. Fine." Anderson could hear something in his body cracking apart. He kept his voice steady: "You've already gotten in her way. The experience you gain from killing me might let you live a little longer, lucky girl."

If only there had been more people around him enough to let him level up to 50 and unlock his third skill Damn it. He was always the unlucky one.

Bai Shan caught the raw bitterness in Charlie Anderson's voice. She let the cold indifference drop from her face and laughed a genuine, open laugh.

"A lucky girl is about to kill you but it's a pity it won't be me."

From the dark recess of the building, the girl with the bomb still strapped to her body stepped slowly out. She looked no older than thirteen or fourteen, her face wild with panic.

The human bomb walked to Bai Shan's side. Charlie Anderson hope all but gone spotted his last chance. He barely registered what Bai Shan had just said. His two blood-red eyes flickered, and the first skill of [Bloodshed Resonance] activated every firearm fell under his control.

The pinned man waited with grim satisfaction for the explosion to swallow the figures across from him. After all this, his trump card had finally come into play.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Nothing happened.

The bomb's countdown had frozen at 1:01.

The girl stood rigid and hollow, as though her soul had left her. She had no idea what would happen next whether her body would suddenly explode, or whether this legendary Tyrant standing beside her would save her. None of it mattered anymore. She had already accepted a fate of being used.

"Do you know how to shoot a bow?" Bai Shan asked.

The girl said nothing.

"I want to ask you to help me test something."

Bai Shan wanted to test whether an arrow with [Inextinguishable Sun Flame] attached could be used by someone else. In principle, items couldn't be used by others but when [Inextinguishable Sun Flame] was affixed to a plain compound bow, it was already in an active state. It was possible someone else could fire it.

The girl stayed rigid and unmoving. Across from them, the ghost-pinned Anderson began shouting in a loss of composure: "You wretch! You disabled my bomb mechanism!"

"Even though you keep calling me a wretch" Bai Shan bent down and removed the bomb device strapped to the girl's body, speaking with unhurried ease. "Anderson you already knelt to me."

The moment the ghosts had seized him and pressed him to the ground, Bai Shan had received the notification.

[Charlie Anderson has bowed before you!]

[Your "Admonition" may now freely access the talent "Bloodshed Resonance"!]

Bai Shan tossed the disarmed explosive outside. The bomb, frozen at 1:01, came to rest permanently in a corner of the broken street.

"Didn't we agree on ten minutes? Can this kid give me any kind of reaction?"

Bai Shan muttered under her breath, pressed for time. She bent slightly, wrapped both arms around the dazed girl from behind, and took hold of her hands the two of them together drawing back the burning arrow.

The [Inextinguishable Sun Flame] burning at the arrowhead lit a flame in the girl's dead eyes. For the first time, something frantic and alive crossed her face.

"That girl has seen your face and heard your voice she'll expose you. You should kill her!" the man across from them called out in disbelief.

Was Tyrant mad? Killing him would yield an enormous surge of level-up experience and all his items and instead of doing that herself, she was going to have this nobody girl do it?

This was a battle between the top two human players in the world. A wretched, powerless, disposable person with neither strength nor luck had no business interfering.

"Because she is lucky, Anderson. You refuse to acknowledge your own luck so your luck has run out. And someone else's is only just beginning."

Bai Shan said it mockingly, then lowered her head to the girl's ear:

"I'll count three, two, one. We let go together."

Bai Shan counted down in the girl's ear. When she reached one, the girl still hadn't moved. Then she was startled to find that the person behind her hadn't let go either. Suddenly tense, she gripped the bow tighter and in that same instant, Bai Shan withdrew her hands.

The warmth of that grip vanished all at once. The girl's eyes went wide. Her hands relaxed on reflex.

The arrow leapt from the string with a roar. Merciless flames tore through the brittle metal body. It seemed as though countless souls howled alongside him in one final, piercing cry.

The gust of force threw back the girl's dirty hair. Her face was lit up by the raging fire across the way; the light found her eyes too, and she opened her mouth slightly like someone standing in the depths of polar night, watching a sun rise for the first time.

Testing the item had only been an excuse. Bai Shan admitted she had a streak of wilful mischief in her.

She watched the building burn and burn, and thought: had Charlie Anderson understood, in his final moment? How absurd the small and the powerful he had obsessed over, and the transition between them had happened in an instant. In her instant.

[Player Tyrant has killed Player Charlie Anderson!]

[Charlie Anderson's Position Swap challenge has failed!]

Lin Huijun had been watching the world channel without pause, waiting alongside millions of other players for news.

She had barely settled herself to wait perhaps less than ten minutes had passed, not even ten minutes when the notification appeared: Tyrant had killed Charlie Anderson.

[Look everyone! The number one spot is still Tyrant! Charlie Anderson's name is gone Lin Haiying is now number two!]

[Oh my god, this is the best news since the game began. Praise be to Tyrant!]

[Oh wait Anderson's gone, but a new name seems to have appeared on the leaderboard. What's going on?]

[Who is Fatima at number 92?]

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