This time, Wu Shuang finally took the "proper path." He wasn't forced to jump from the building, nor did he encounter any sneak-attacking living corpses along the way. Using the step ladder, he easily descended from the fourth-floor eaves to the second-floor roof.
As a medieval castle, the height difference between the floors of this building could be conveniently utilized to create a shortcut for entry and exit.
However, while climbing down, Wu Shuang discovered that Paul was gone—or more precisely, his corpse was gone.
"Resurrected... No way, right?"
"What stole his corpse?"
Wu Shuang pondered, uncertain. In any case, he hadn't noticed any movement related to it.
Still, he would definitely need to reinforce the inside of the window with some wooden boards or iron bars later. The eaves weren't safe either, so leaving only gaps for ventilation and observation would be much safer.
Wu Shuang planned this out in his mind without obsessing over it; overthinking would only add to his troubles.
He safely set foot on the muddy ground and looked at the light spheres not far away. Instead of heading over directly, he scanned the street north of the estate, walking over only after confirming there were no living corpses.
The street was excessively quiet. Even though the town was always like this, it still made Wu Shuang feel uneasy.
He took nearly two full minutes to cover a mere thirty meters, keeping his footsteps as silent as possible until he finally reached the massive skeleton and approached the two floating light spheres.
When the distance narrowed to five meters, he noticed an additional line of text floating above the light spheres.
【Bound to gatherer. Restricted to Hero ID 42782408421. Time remaining until unbinding: 3 hours, 25 minutes, 14 seconds. Item will vanish in 27 hours, 25 minutes, 14 seconds.】
The countdown was still ticking. This was loot protection, common in online games to prevent loot from being stolen by other players.
Wu Shuang's eyes widened as a possibility suddenly struck him—could there be other players in Gulf Town?
The possibility couldn't be ruled out; there was no rule stating a town could only have one Hero.
If that were the case...
Wu Shuang felt his scalp go numb. Reaching for the hand axe at his waist, he hurriedly backed away.
He had barely retreated two steps when his uneasy foreboding was confirmed. A gunshot exploded, and he saw a flash of fire erupting from a residence twenty-five meters away.
The attacker was laying an ambush, choosing a window that directly faced the light spheres. Not expecting Wu Shuang to sense the danger, they could only hurriedly swing the barrel and pull the trigger at the distant Wu Shuang.
Bang!
Following the flash of fire was a shower of flying lead shot. Wu Shuang could clearly see which twin barrels spewed the bullets, how many there were, and in which directions they flew...
Blood spattered, accompanied even by the clanging sound of metallic impacts.
Wu Shuang collapsed at the sound and began twitching on the ground.
A few seconds later, a figure rushed out from that building. They wore a set of ragtag clothes cobbled together from who-knows-where, even their face covered except for a pair of exposed eyes. Shaking their right hand, which seemed scorched by the hot blast of gunpowder, they held the gun in their other hand and rushed over toward Wu Shuang to finish him off.
They were lucky; after all, this piece-of-trash gun hadn't been fully loaded, so unlike Wu Shuang, it hadn't dislocated their elbow joint.
However, they had miscalculated one thing: overestimating the accuracy and range of such an old-fashioned firearm. Unaware that one of the three rounds had misfired, and severely underestimating the power of Humanity, they had been blinded by their apparent success.
Arriving before Wu Shuang, the attacker reached their scorching right hand toward the short knife at their waist, only to be dumbfounded on the spot.
The lying Wu Shuang suddenly sat upright like a corpse reanimating. With his right cheek torn open, almost exposing his gums, he glared viciously at the attacker, lunging up to hurl the hand axe straight at them.
The sequence of movements was smooth as flowing water, so fast the attacker couldn't react in time. By the time they realized what was happening, they had already been struck—and with remarkable accuracy.
After all, in Wu Shuang's perception, he had been lying there waiting for nearly a century, having rehearsed it countless times in his mind to choose the most sudden method of attack.
The angle of the throw was still off, though. Instead of the axe blade striking true, the blunt side slammed into the attacker's head.
This was far more devastating than a brick.
After taking the blow from the axe, the attacker collapsed straight backward without making a single defensive move, clearly knocked unconscious.
It was unclear how much time had passed.
Perhaps a dozen seconds, perhaps a few minutes.
When the attacker regained sensation and opened their eyes while enduring the throbbing pain in their forehead, what met their sight was a bloody, cheek-torn fiendish face less than twenty centimeters away, blood dripping right onto their face.
Because Wu Shuang had crawled over.
Their eyes met, but Wu Shuang didn't waver in the slightest. Unblinking, eyes bloodshot, he gripped the dirt-caked short knife in his left hand and thrust it straight toward the attacker's throat.
"Wait..."
The person tried to say something, but the short sword in Wu Shuang's hand was already thrusting down with zero intention of communicating, making the attacker's pupils shrink in terror.
Immediately after, the entire world slowed down as if slamming on the brakes—including him, including Wu Shuang before him, and including the blade thrusting toward his throat, creeping closer millimeter by millimeter.
Don't, don't kill me!!
I didn't mean to!
He wanted to scream, but no sound could leave his throat. His vocal cords couldn't keep pace with his thoughts. He could only watch helplessly as the tip of the blade approached his throat—a process so agonizingly long that it gave him enough time to review his entire life.
From Wu Shuang's perspective, he merely felt the attacker's body making a slight movement as if trying to roll backward, yet the short sword plunged straight into the throat anyway. Blood gushed out, bubbling slightly.
After that, the attacker had little reaction left, taking a few more stabs, twitching several times, before going completely motionless.
Yet until their last breath, the attacker's eyes remained wide open, staring intently, as if having witnessed something incomprehensible.
Two light spheres slid out from their body, just like the ones dropped by the goblin after death, ready to be collected upon contact.
One was the money stored in the person's Hero Handbook, nearly 2,500 coins; the other was an item whose effects were visible without requiring appraisal.
【Name: Blue Embers (27)】
【Description: Embers left behind after the demise of a high-Humanity lifeform (greater than 100). Inhaling them allows one to sense the deceased's lingering memories and emotions, increasing one's total Humanity. Left alone, they dissipate quickly; collection in bottled containers is recommended.
Depending on the color of the user's Humanity, the effects of absorption vary. Frequent or improper use may cause one's Humanity to become murky, leading to mental chaos or even losing oneself.
Hero's Insights ②: Beware of your peers so that you may walk further, yet without them, you will find it hard to move a single step.】
With hardly any hesitation, Wu Shuang scooped up the flock-like sphere of light and inhaled it. His eyes widened—in just a second or two, he felt as if he had experienced that scene once again, except this time, he was the one being stabbed.
Thanks to this, Wu Shuang's Humanity surged past 150 at once, closing in on 160. He really had almost died earlier—one of the pellets had flown straight for his head, the very one that ripped open his cheek.
Yet at the critical juncture, he had entered Near-Death Time. The terror of death drove his actions to dodge the incoming bullets, enduring the hit with minimal damage.
That had been a long and agonizing stretch of time, during which his Humanity broke past 120 again and his Agility reached 7 points. In the end, he successfully dodged the lethal pellet and even blocked two with his axe.
Even so, he was hit in his right armpit, cheek, and right thigh—especially his thigh, which took two pellets. This was already the result of his desperate side-step dodge combined with the dispersion of the shot, without which death would have been inevitable.
In this world of collapsed order where everyone feared for themselves, danger did not come solely from mutated villagers and monsters—it could also come from fellow Heroes like him...
Rate on N.U.
