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The two hadn’t even exchanged blows yet, and HIM was instantly obliterated.

The result wasn’t surprising—everyone had seen it coming—but the sheer speed of the encounter left players stunned.

It was too fast.

Some players couldn’t process what just happened.

“Could HIM be faking his death…?”

“That’s possible! Remember when Cloud Soar Guild thought HIM was dead before?”

“Yeah, but if HIM’s pretending to die, doesn’t that mean he’s afraid of the GM?”

“Hmm… hard to say. At the end of the day, isn’t HIM just data?”

“…”

Even Xu Yuan was caught off guard as he watched the clone get destroyed so effortlessly.

Before he could process his thoughts, that voice in his head spoke again—cold, furious, and commanding.

“Go, kill him!”

The voice was undeniably angry, but there was also an unmistakable confidence behind it.

Xu Yuan, however, merely let a faint, nearly imperceptible smirk tug at his lips.

“It worked.”

———

“Can’t Find My Data?”

Hearing the voice echo in his mind, Xu Yuan felt reassured.

Just as he was about to leave, 007, standing by his side, noticed something was up.

“My King, is something wrong?”

Xu Yuan waved him off casually. “I need to step out for a bit. Just stay here and don’t wander off.”

Although uneasy, 007 dared not disobey Xu Yuan’s orders. Reluctantly, he nodded.

“As you command…”

———

Meanwhile, the livestream chats were flooded with identical reactions:

“??????”

“Wait, what? HIM got one-shot?!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! Isn’t HIM supposed to be the Demon King?!”

“This feels like reading a novel where the protagonist dies out of nowhere mid-story and the book just ends.”

“Noooooo! I refuse to believe this! I can’t accept it!”

The absurdity of the situation had left players speechless. But after giving it some thought, the idea of HIM losing to the GM didn’t seem so far-fetched.

At the scene, members of the Eternal Guild were ecstatic. They cheered as HIM’s fading remains disappeared into the void.

“Holy crap! GM is amazing!”

“Hahaha! So this is the so-called Demon King HIM? What a joke!”

“It’s just game data. The GM deleted you like it was nothing!”

“What Demon King? HIM is just a bully picking on us regular players. Against the GM? Insta-kill.”

“Uh, GM? Can you let us down now? We’re still dangling up here!”

“Yeah! The wind is literally killing us!”

303, who was about to free the suspended players, suddenly froze.

A figure had appeared in front of him out of nowhere.

He blinked, thinking it was a trick of the light, even rubbing his eyes. But when the figure came into focus, his expression turned to shock.

“HIM?!”

The impossible stood before him. HIM, whose body had just dissipated moments ago, was back.

303 was certain of one thing—this HIM wasn’t the same as the one he’d just defeated.

While their appearance and attire were identical, the aura was completely different.

Before this, 303 had never quite understood why players described HIM as radiating an oppressive presence. Now, standing face-to-face with HIM’s true form, he finally understood.

“So, the real one is here…”

Though he didn’t know the specifics, 303, being highly familiar with game data, could piece together a theory. Most likely, the HIM he had erased earlier was just a clone.

Thankfully, he had spent hours combing through those 20-plus gigabytes of HIM’s data files beforehand. He had a rough grasp of HIM’s abilities.

HIM’s powers stemmed from monsters in the game but were enhanced to terrifying degrees. Explosions, teleportation, webs—all copied from existing entities. For instance, the teleportation came from Little Black, and the web skills were from spiders.

So it wasn’t hard to deduce that HIM had a cloning ability derived from slimes.

That also explained the earlier system error reading “01”—it wasn’t a bug; it was a clone.

‘So that ’01’ was just a copy…’

The atmosphere shifted the moment HIM appeared. Eternal Guild players, who were celebrating moments ago, immediately went silent, their faces pale.

HIM’s casual glance in their direction was enough to make several players panic and forcibly disconnect from the game.

The psychological damage HIM inflicted was evident.

———

Viewers in the livestreams experienced a rollercoaster of emotions.

“I KNEW IT! HIM ISN’T DEAD!”

“So that’s how he dealt with Cloud Soar Guild before!”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t get one-shot again… at least hold out for a few seconds, okay? (LOL)”

“I don’t think the GM stands a chance this time…”

“Yeah, HIM never fights battles he’s not confident about. If he’s here, it’s a clean-up operation.”

“Or maybe he’s just overconfident?”

The debate was heated. Most players believed the GM would wipe HIM out again, but a minority held faith in HIM’s victory.

HIM had always been cautious. He never initiated a fight unless the odds were overwhelmingly in his favor. In the three wars he had waged so far, all were crushing victories.

Whenever HIM appeared, the battle was as good as over.

Standing face-to-face with HIM, 303, a game administrator, felt an oppressive weight.

For the first time, he found himself unnerved. HIM’s gaze wasn’t something that mere game data should be capable of producing.

The longer 303 stared, the more unsettled he became. He muttered to himself in an effort to stay calm:

“It’s just data… It’s just code… I can delete him just like before.”

But no amount of self-reassurance could shake the suffocating feeling. HIM’s presence seemed to peer into the depths of his soul, unearthing his most buried fears.

Unable to bear it any longer, 303 averted his gaze and initiated a system scan of HIM’s data.

Seconds passed. Then a minute.

The bottom-left corner of his screen flashed relentlessly with a single message: “No data found.”

303 broke into a cold sweat.

He had scanned HIM’s body directly and even detected him. Yet every search returned the same response: “No data found.”

Again and again, he tried. His hands trembled as he entered commands, but the results didn’t change.

303 was paralyzed with confusion. “How… How is this possible?”

He had located the clone’s code effortlessly before. But the main body? It was as if HIM didn’t exist within the system.

———

The battlefield fell into a stunned silence.

Even the players watching the livestreams were utterly baffled.

“Uh… is my game lagging?”

“Thank God! I thought it was just me!”

“What are they doing? A staring contest?”

“Is this what battles between powerhouses look like? Intense internal monologues before the fight starts?”

“Can they narrate their thoughts out loud? We’re bored over here!”

———

303 was visibly panicking now.

If HIM couldn’t be deleted, the only option left was to defeat him using skills or weapons.

But even with administrator privileges, defeating HIM in combat was a near-impossible task.

He knew HIM was immune to fire damage, dragon breath, and projectile attacks. In other words, ranged damage was useless.

That left close-quarters combat—but how could anyone get close to HIM?

With teleportation, flight, and the ability to manipulate obsidian, HIM was untouchable.

Victory was a pipe dream.

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep