“Full Counter!”

Zhuge Yue’s clear voice rang out from within the sky-piercing Sword Qi.

In an instant, Wu Wang’s body exploded. The power of the Excaliblast, doubled and reflected back at him, had pulverized his flesh.

But his 【Undying】 trait brought him back in an instant.

Wu Wang twisted his neck and grinned.

“Finally starting to play your trump cards?”

Her combat experience was impressive. He had intentionally used indiscriminate, area-of-effect attacks to bypass her precognitive 【Peter’s Tingle】.

Take the meteorite, for example. Its true target wasn’t Zhuge Yue, but Wu Wang himself as he moved at high speed. All he had to do was get close enough for her to get caught in the blast. At that point, even if she had used 【Captain’s Full Counter】, there would have been no target to reflect the damage onto.

But the Excaliblast was different. It was a direct attack from his own hands, aimed right at her. This time, the target for her counter was clear.

Too bad for her, he was 【Undying】.

The only reason he seemed to be holding the upper hand was the unexpectedly powerful effect of the 【Six-Eyed Flying Fish】, coupled with the stacked effects of numerous 【Epic】-grade items.

This was a battle that would be difficult to replicate. No one else could get their hands on so many powerful items.

If anything, this only highlighted just how powerful and troublesome Zhuge Yue really was.

An ordinary player would have died from the 【Holy Hand Grenade】 and the 【Son of the Plane’s Meteorite】 at the very start of the fight. After all, Wu Wang’s fighting style had always been about trading his life for his enemy’s.

The fact that she had remained unscathed until now was terrifying.

Zhuge Yue walked out from the gradually fading Sword Qi. Her eyes were no longer dazed. Instead, she had reverted to her usual teasing state.

“Yan Shuangying, you are very strange,” she said. “The number of powerful items you have is far beyond what a normal player could possess. Even if it’s just a matter of running Instances, perhaps no one besides Wan Shitong could pull out so many 【Epic】 items and toss them around like they were free.”

“But you yourself seem a bit too frail.”

“The fact that my every punch can injure you reveals a fundamental problem.”

With that, she also twisted her neck and grinned confidently.

“You’re not entirely a player, are you?” she asked. “You’re rejected by reality, too! You, like me, are a freak born from the whims of 【Fate】!”

At these words, Wu Wang was stunned.

Wait a minute… she seems to have misunderstood something.

Although he was absurdly powerful and possessed the bizarre trait of 【Undying】, Wu Wang was very sure of one thing. He was born from his mother.

My frailty isn’t because of some rejection. It’s because I’m only level ten!

I’d love to send you flying with one punch too! But I don’t have the strength!

Swish!

Before his thoughts could catch up, Zhuge Yue’s phantom-like figure appeared before him. She threw a sudden punch at his head.

Fortunately, the predictive image from his 【Eye of the Prophet】 allowed him to block the blow.

But in the next second, her clenched fist opened into a palm and swung toward him.

The scarlet blood dripping from it was too fast for him to dodge. Zhuge Yue’s speed was simply too great.

Even though he predicted the point-blank attack, his body couldn’t react fast enough to dodge.

Pa!

A smear of fresh blood covered his entire face.

Zhuge Yue’s voice was filled with helplessness.

“You have one minute left to live. My blood is poisonous, and it cannot be wiped away.”

“Reality rejects Instance Creatures. This is why it was difficult for them to descend directly in the past, though that might change after the Open Beta.”

“But for now, at least, you will die a sudden death within a minute.”

Actually, Zhuge Yue’s explanation wasn’t entirely clear. Her blood wasn’t poisonous. It was simply something reality could not accept. Anyone contaminated by it would be rejected by reality, eventually leading to death.

Wu Wang swayed as he stood up. He reached up and wiped the blood from his face.

Zhuge Yue’s pupils dilated in terror as she watched him wipe the blood away and flick it to the ground.

Wu Wang suddenly lowered his head, secretly slipping on a ridiculous red nose.

“Hey! Zhuge Yue!” he shouted. “I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

Zhuge Yue replied subconsciously. She was still reeling from the previous scene. How could her blood be wiped away so easily?

But she never expected what came out of his mouth next. The words left her completely dumbfounded.

“I want to say, I love you. If no one else in this world loves you, I will.”

Buzz!

Her brain instantly crashed.

What the hell is this guy saying? Aren’t we in a fight to the death?

In that instant, her eyes became dazed once more. She didn’t even notice Wu Wang rushing toward her.

【The Clown’s Red Nose】!

Its effect was simple. The more absurd or incomprehensible Wu Wang’s actions were to a target, the lower his presence became in their eyes. It could even make them forget his existence entirely.

After hearing so much of her inner monologue, Wu Wang had determined that she was just an unlucky child starved for love.

Sure enough, a single sentence was enough to make her brain crash. Under the effect of 【The Clown’s Red Nose】, Zhuge Yue was completely unable to perceive his approach.

“Who says you can’t stab someone to death without a sword tip?”

He raised the 【Xiaochuan Broken Sword】 and swallowed a strange pill.

【Stretch-Leg-and-Stare-Pill (Epic)】

As the name implied, after consumption, the user would stretch their legs, stare blankly, and die within one minute. Before that, however, the user’s Strength and Agility would double, and their damage against any target would also double.

It was a last-ditch item, meant to be used when one was cornered and ready to die with their enemy. Its effect was remarkably similar to Zhuge Yue’s 【Soul Burn on a Thread】. They were both abilities to be used on the verge of death.

Now, however, it was just a buff for Wu Wang. After all, he wouldn’t die. For him, the pill’s fatal side effect was completely negated.

Puchi!

With his strength doubled, the jagged edge of the 【Xiaochuan Broken Sword】 managed to pierce through Zhuge Yue’s chest.

She snapped back to her senses from the intense pain and looked down at the fatal wound. She knew she was being forced toward her final end.

In an instant, her wound healed completely under the effect of 【Soul Burn on a Thread】.

All of her stats began to double. At this moment, Zhuge Yue was stronger than she had ever been.

Wu Wang’s expression turned serious. He knew the boss had just entered its final phase.

Meanwhile, in a place trapped in a perpetual winter of ice and snow.

Inside a massive, semi-circular building, a woman raised an eyebrow. Her every action was seductive to the extreme, capable of igniting lust in those around her even when she was standing still.

She lifted a cup of red liquid as viscous as blood and savored it, listening to a hoarse voice coming from a camouflage-patterned walkie-talkie on the table.

The person on the other end was questioning her about when she would go find 【Undying】.

“Don’t be in such a rush~” she said lazily. “A star representing a life seems to be on the verge of extinguishing.”

“The prophecy of the 【Fate Weaver】 cannot be wrong. 【Undying】 is still in reality. ZG2233 is about to be killed by him. Her death will guide us to our destination.”

“After all, a mother is always extremely sensitive to the one who murders her child, isn’t she~”

With that, the woman turned her head to look at the transparent glass behind her.

On the other side, a flesh-and-blood monster as tall as a mountain was wailing in grief. Chains all over its body prevented it from making any move.

It was weeping for its last child. In some unseen way, it could feel that its child’s life was coming to an end.

Hearing this, the man on the other end of the walkie-talkie, the 【Weeping Freak】, seemed to realize something.

“The Abyss V experiment began many years before 【Undying】 appeared,” he said through gritted teeth. “Why is its objective to find 【Undying】 now? And not five years ago?”

“Does this mean you knew all along that the Advent Ceremony back then would fail? Did you deliberately let 【Undying】 go five years ago?”

In response, the lazy expression on the woman’s face did not change.

She simply swirled her wine glass and shrugged.

“Who knows~”

“Just like how ZG2233 thought she could find release by escaping the research institute, never imagining that no one can escape the shackles of 【Fate】.”

“Whatever she does is futile. In the end, she will inevitably be guided by 【Fate】 to approach 【Undying】 and then die at his hands.”

“The failure back then might have been caused by other factors, even if I hadn’t made a mistake.”

“This is 【Fate】, a predetermined end.”

Listening to the woman’s charlatan-like words, the 【Weeping Freak】 fell silent for a moment.

Then he spoke again, his voice full of disdain.

“Fate? That’s just an excuse for the weak.”

“If I were from your world, and I was in charge of the Advent Ceremony back then, such a low-level mistake would never have occurred!”

“That’s why you aren’t a human from this side,” the woman said teasingly. “Which is also part of 【Fate】.”

“Hmph! Mere sophistry!”

The 【Weeping Freak】 clearly didn’t want to argue with her. He had long grown tired of this woman’s flowery words. Unfortunately, 【Undying】 was in the real world, and as an Instance Creature, he had no way of crossing that barrier to descend.

The more powerful an Instance Creature was, the harder it was to reach the real world.

This was the world’s own protection mechanism.

The woman took another sip from her cup and chuckled.

“Speaking of which, I’ve actually grown rather fond of that little girl. Her struggles are so fierce. She even called the failed experiments who died before her ‘sisters’, trying to remember them forever as different personalities in her mind.”

“This is the beauty of life~ To survive~ To dispel the confusion in one’s heart~”

“She is like a moth with a short lifespan, even knowing that flying into the flame means death.”

“Yet she still wants to find a sliver of hope within it, fantasizing that she is a phoenix capable of nirvana.”

“But any bystander understands that there is only one end for a moth drawn to a flame…”

Smash!

The woman gently tossed the cup in her hand to the ground, where it shattered. The residual red liquid bloomed like rose petals, forming a strangely beautiful image.

Her seductive voice gradually faded away in the director’s office of the Pluto Research Institute. A final, chilling sentence hung in the air.

“And that is to be reduced to nothing.”