Chương 219: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 219 - Fleeing in Panic

Li Chen drew his sword and launched himself forward, leaving only an afterimage where he'd stood. The blade was already cutting ripples through the air, aimed straight at the Storm Worm King's head. He'd talked to draw its attention. To put it plainly, he was here to steal the kill. He'd spotted it long ago: a crack running across the Storm Worm King's skull, almost certainly carved there by Tagoshi Shishi's desperate hacking. One clean strike into that crack and the thing was dead. That was the whole plan.

His internal cultivation technique had two strengths above all others: penetrating force, and an internal energy that just didn't run dry.

"Damn it! Stop him!" Tagoshi Shishi had the fastest reflexes. He reacted first. His hand went to his waist, and five prismatic throwing stars left his fingers in a single motion, tracking Li Chen like they had eyes. Across the platform, McCree raised both guns and sighted down the barrels at Li Chen, suspended in midair, nowhere to brace himself. He read the trajectory. Three shots. Left eye, center of the forehead, heart. BANG BANG BANG! Caught between the Sakura Players and McCree's guns, Li Chen didn't flinch.

With nothing to push off of, he stepped on the air itself, twisted into a full hawk-flip, and came out the other side completely untouched. The surrounding players stared.

"Nani?! What the hell was that?!" Tagoshi Shishi couldn't process it. He knew the Heaven Dynasty had ancient martial arts, strange and deep, but something at this level shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be possible. McCree watched with a different expression. Something almost like envy.

"Is that Heaven Dynasty Kung Fu? If I could fold that into my gun-fu..." He let the thought trail off, both pistols still leveled at Li Chen.

"My strength could reach somewhere new." Their stances were opposed. He was never going to learn Heaven Dynasty Kung Fu. Facing a talent like this, the cleanest move was to send him back to the respawn point before he became a real problem. No point wasting breath.

"BANG BANG BANG." Bullets poured out. At the players' current level, ordinary firearms were still lethal. Even McCree's old revolvers, which jammed occasionally, still put out enough lead to matter. Li Chen let out a cold snort. No room to dodge. He dropped his weight, raised his sword, and spun it into a wall of afterimages. His internal energy burned through at a furious rate. Steel rang against steel, DING DING DING, and every bullet that reached him got knocked wide.

His master-grade longsword came out of it with a rolled edge. He tossed it into his inventory without a second glance and pulled out a fresh one. The resources of Heaven Dynasty's No. 1 Beginner Town had his back. He could afford to be this wasteful. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. The whole exchange lasted only a few seconds. By the time Li Chen landed and sheathed the new blade, the other players had caught up to what had happened.

They closed in around him, surrounding him on all sides. He looked completely unbothered.

"What's this about? You want to fight?" Li Chen's eyebrow lifted. He dragged the tip of his sword lazily across the ground. A sharp hiss, and a groove half a finger deep appeared in the earth.

"Heh. The world's highest-level player — and you live up to it. You're very, very impressive." Tagoshi Shishi stepped forward. He hated to admit it. He did. But one-on-one, he probably wasn't Li Chen's match.

"But impressive or not, there are rules. We've been grinding this monster down for ages. You show up at the last second and try to take the kill? On what grounds?"

"I just saw you all struggling so hard." Li Chen spread his hands, the picture of innocence.

"I was trying to help."

"The kill right? Please. You all know I'm the world's number one player. You really think I care about a kill right?"

"What a joke."

"No good deed goes unpunished!"

"You —" The shamelessness of it was staggering. Tagoshi Shishi was about to let loose, but McCree put a hand on his arm. Li Chen was strong. Strong enough that killing him wasn't going to be quick or clean. Better to negotiate, this was a matter of interests, and interests could be arranged.

"My friend." McCree's smile was perfectly courteous.

"The kill right grants the best rewards. That's a system announcement — you can pull it up in the game logs right now. So let's skip the excuses." He stripped away Li Chen's pretense of generosity first, putting the logic firmly in his own hands, then continued.

"The Storm Worm King is a world BOSS. Everyone here is free to participate in the kill. But the arrangement was agreed on beforehand: the kill right is mine, and I distribute the rewards equally after."

"Why mine? Because I spent my own Invasion Points hiring those Goryeo mages to build this earthen platform. Because I designed the entire BOSS strategy. Does anyone have a problem with that?" McCree's argument was clean and airtight. The players around them nodded. Even the Storm Worm King, left to sway its battered head and tail in the shallows, found the logic fairly reasonable. It decided to use that time to build up something special for these bugs.

"Before I showed up, maybe there wasn't a problem." Li Chen settled into a casual seat, one leg crossed over the other, utterly unrepentant.

"But now that I'm here, there is one. Here's my offer: the kill right goes to me. Whatever Invasion Points you spent, I'll transfer them back. How does that sound?" Even McCree's considerable patience had a limit.

"Oh?" His grip tightened around his guns.

"I think we're done talking."

"Correct. Despicable bugs." The voice came from above like a peal of muffled thunder. Every player turned. The Storm Worm King had hauled its battered body upright again, rising from the sea in all its ruined, towering mass.

"You slaughtered my offspring, so I destroyed your villages. Then you stole my eggs to lure me into these shallows..."

"Today, you die here."

"Lowly bugs!" BOOM! The sea exploded behind it. A wall of water surged up dozens of meters into the air and came crashing down toward the earthen platform like a collapsing cliff face. The platform had been reinforced again and again by the Goryeo mage players, it was solid now, nearly indestructible. The Storm Worm King couldn't break it by throwing itself against it. So instead it would wash every last one of these insects into the sea. This was the last of its strength.

It was exhausted to the bone, its whole body screaming with pain. If it could drive them into the water, it still had an advantage there, it could pick them off one by one. If it couldn't, the odds weren't in its favor.

"Petty trick." Tagoshi Shishi pulled a grappling hook from his pack and drove it into the ground at his feet, then looped the rope around his waist and cinched it tight, locking himself to the platform. McCree simply jumped into the water. He was an excellent swimmer, two strokes and he was sheltered beneath a solid reef, waiting for the wave to pass before he resumed his attack. The players each found their own solution. Some didn't bother. They just let themselves get washed away.

They weren't the main damage dealers anyway, they'd been playing support. They'd done their part. The rewards would come regardless. Only one person didn't move at all. Li Chen stood on the platform and looked the oncoming wall of water directly in the eye. He settled into the opening stance of Tai Chi. The Yin-Yang diagram bloomed behind him and began to turn. Every last scrap of internal energy left in his body surged to the surface. The wave hit him, and split.

The seawater swirled around him instead of through him, the roaring surge going gentle the instant it touched the edge of the Tai Chi diagram, curling inward, circling, until it formed a perfect sphere of seawater with Li Chen at its center. When the tsunami passed, he was completely untouched. The Storm Worm King had lived a long time. It had never seen anything like this. It left its eggs. It left its home. It turned, dove beneath the surface, and fled southwest as fast as its ruined body could carry it.

Southwest, toward the Silver Moon Mountains. ➤ Next: Toll