novelno Chapter 1319 Releasing Water
Chapter 1319 Releasing Water
"It looks quite lively."
When King Kong said this, his mouth stretched all the way to his ears.
Cohen looked unwell, not out of fear, but out of frustration.
It's like someone is engrossed in eating when suddenly someone flips over their table, spilling rice all over the floor, splashing soup all over them, and even sending their chopsticks flying somewhere.
He stared at King Kong for three seconds, then squeezed out a sentence through gritted teeth.
Why are you here?
King Vajra did not answer the question.
He cracked his neck, the bones popping loudly, then crossed his arms and tilted his head to look at Cohen.
"I heard you're the face of Death Paradise now. What rank are you in the arena? Ninth? Eighth?"
Cohen didn't respond; he knew King Kong was asking a question he already knew the answer to.
His ranking naturally slipped in the last world because he took on a special mission and didn't go to the arena.
King Kong laughed when he saw that Cohen didn't speak.
"I know even if you don't say it. But even if you play, you won't make it into the top ten."
Cohen tightened his grip on the two-handed greatsword. He knew that what King Kong said was true. His best result in the arena was twelfth place, while King Kong was a regular in the top ten during his peak, and had even reached sixth place.
In the Tier 6 arena, the difference between the top ten and those ranked outside the top ten cannot be measured by scores; it represents a different level of combat power.
The middle-aged man in the cult looked at King Kong, his grip on the scepter tightening slightly.
He also knew King Kong, not only because they had fought in the arena, but also because he had been beaten by King Kong.
The fight lasted less than two minutes, and he was completely dominated from start to finish, without even a chance to fight back.
The arena's rules protected him; when his health dropped to 10%, the arena's protection system automatically determined that he had lost and teleported him out of the arena.
He knew that if it weren't for the rules of the arena, King Kong would twist his head off and use it as a ball.
The young girl who was leading the Holy Light Paradise was also looking at King Kong, and her expression was even more unpleasant than Cohen's and the middle-aged man from the cult.
It wasn't because she had been punished by King Vajra, but because she hadn't been punished by King Vajra.
Her best result in the arena was 68th place, not even enough to qualify her to fight King Kong.
In the arena's matchmaking system, players with a large ranking gap will not be matched together, because that's not a competition, it's a massacre.
King Kong took in the expressions of the three of them.
"You talk too much nonsense."
The moment those four words left his mouth, he kicked his foot on the ground.
The grass was trampled into a depression nearly a meter in diameter, from which soil and grass roots flew out, forming a cloud of brown dust in the air.
His body shot out like a cannonball, leaving a deep trench in the ground, moving so fast that it left a blurry afterimage in the air.
Cohen's pupils suddenly contracted to the size of pinpoints. He had already begun to retreat the moment King Kong pushed off the ground, holding his two greatswords horizontally in front of him with the blades facing outwards and the blades pressed against his chest.
King Kong's fist slammed into the blade of the two-handed greatsword.
A dull, loud bang exploded across the open field, like the sound of two thick steel plates colliding at high speed.
Cohen's feet dug two deep furrows in the ground, and soil rolled out from both sides of the furrows, piling up at the edges of the footprints.
His arm was numb, and every muscle from his fingertips to his shoulder was trembling.
His body was pushed back nearly ten meters by the force of the punch, and the two furrows left by his boots on the grass stretched from where King Kong was standing all the way to where Cohen stopped, like two plowed wounds.
"Caught it, not bad."
Cohen didn't speak; his arm was still numb.
King Kong didn't use his full strength in that punch. If he had, Cohen definitely wouldn't have been able to withstand it so easily.
As King Kong charged toward Cohen, Kivotos's students also moved.
After King Kong charged out, their group quickly split into several smaller teams.
Each squad consists of fifty people, and the members are outstanding shooters drawn from various colleges.
They advanced from all directions of the wilderness towards the positions of Death Paradise, Holy Light Paradise, and Sanctuary Paradise, maintaining a distance of ten to fifteen meters between each person—neither too close to wipe them out in one fell swoop, nor too far to prevent mutual support.
The lead SRT student raised his right hand; this was the signal to fire.
Five thousand guns fired simultaneously.
Gunfire exploded in the twilight, like a shower of fireworks ignited simultaneously.
The barrage of comments poured down on the battlefields of Death Paradise, Holy Light Paradise, and Holy Land Paradise like a torrential rain.
The middle-aged man in the cult raised his scepter the instant he saw the flash of gunfire.
A layer of white light emanated from the gem at the top of the scepter, condensing into a semi-transparent energy barrier in front of him.
The barrier was nearly twice as thick as usual, enough to withstand a full-force attack from a sixth-tier contractor.
The light barrier flickered violently the instant the bullet struck it, then began to disintegrate from the center.
The crack spread outwards from the point of impact, like a torn spider web, its edges curling in the air before dissipating into countless tiny specks of light.
The middle-aged man's pupils contracted. He had seen many kinds of attacks that could penetrate his barrier—skills, props, weapons—but none of them were bullets.
In his mind, bullets were something used by low-level contractors, a transitional weapon that those who hadn't yet learned to fight with energy would rely on.
He never imagined that one day a bullet would pierce through his barrier.
A bullet struck his left shoulder. The bullet slowed considerably after passing through the barrier, but the remaining kinetic energy was still enough to penetrate his robe, cut through his skin, and embed itself in his shoulder blade.
The pain came from his shoulder, not a sharp, stabbing pain, but a dull ache that spread from the bone outwards, as if someone had threaded a red-hot wire through the middle of his shoulder blade.
He glanced down at his shoulder; there was a hole the size of a fingernail in his robe, the edges of which were charred and curled, revealing dark red bloodstains underneath.
The situation is even worse for other members of the cult.
Those who failed to activate the barrier in time were directly hit by bullets, which blasted open bloody holes in their bodies.
The wounds weren't large, but there were too many of them.
One of the cult members was shot in the thigh and collapsed to his knees.
He struggled to stand up, but the second wave of comments had already arrived.
More than a dozen bullets struck his chest and abdomen simultaneously, sending his body flying backward and rolling twice on the ground before coming to a stop.
He lay on the grass, looking at the gray sky, his mouth open as if to shout something, but only a broken breath came out of his throat.
His health dropped from full to zero in a few seconds.
The contractors of Holy Light Paradise also discovered the same problem when bullets hit their barrier.
Their barrier was as fragile as paper in the face of bullets, shattering at the slightest blow.
A female mage wearing light armor activated her invincibility skill the moment the barrier shattered. A layer of golden light covered her body, blocking all subsequent bullets.
She squatted on the ground, covered her head with her hands, and curled up like a hedgehog cornered by its quills.
She knew that the invincibility skill would only last for a few seconds, after which she would be exposed to the barrage of bullets again, and at that time she would be a sitting duck.
Her judgment was correct; the invincibility skill expired a few seconds later.
She didn't have time to activate her second defensive skill because the density of the bullets was too great, so great that she didn't even have a chance to raise her hand.
She lay prone on the grass, pressing her body close to the ground, trying to use the terrain to reduce the probability of being hit.
But the barrage wasn't direct; the bullets came from different angles—some from the front, some from the side, some from above, and some even from behind.
A bullet struck her in the back, entering below her shoulder blade and exiting above her collarbone.
The pain made her curl up, her hands gripping the grass tightly, her nails digging into the soil.
She lay prone on the grass, no longer struggling or dodging, simply waiting for the barrage of bullets to pass. The contractors of Death Paradise were slightly better than those of Holy Light Paradise and Sanctuary Paradise, having more experience and having witnessed the true terror of firearms.
They found cover the moment the barrage of bullets appeared; some hid behind rocks, some behind bushes, and some behind the bodies of their comrades.
Their reaction speed was fast and their movements were swift; no one stood there dumbfounded.
However, cover cannot solve the fundamental problem; the density of the barrage is too high, the coverage area is too wide, and the duration is too long.
You can hide behind a rock and bullets can't hit you, but the rock isn't infinitely large. If you peek out from behind the rock and shoot, the bullets will come from the direction where you have no protection.
If you hide behind the rocks and don't come out, the barrage of comments will keep pressing down on you, making it impossible for you to even lift your head.
Cohen noticed the power of the barrage the moment King Kong retreated.
His expression turned even uglier.
This is no ordinary firearm; it is a firearm imbued with some kind of energy he has never seen before.
That energy is released from the bullet the moment it hits the barrier, like a red-hot knife cutting into butter, tearing the barrier apart from the inside.
The middle-aged man of the cult knelt on the ground, his scepter planted in the ground in front of him. The gem at the top of the scepter emitted a dim light, forming a barrier around his body that could barely stop bullets.
His face was deathly pale, his lips were bloodless, and blood was still seeping from the wound on his left shoulder, with drops of blood running down his arm.
Just as King Kong was about to continue his charge, Cohen suddenly made a move that surprised everyone.
He raised his two-handed greatsword, pointed the tip to the sky, and then forcefully plunged it into the ground.
The blade sank into the soil, and the sword trembled slightly in front of him, emitting a low hum.
This is a signal of truce from the Death Paradise contractors on the battlefield, and it is also a message from Cohen to King Kong that he has something to say.
King Kong stopped and tilted his head to look at Cohen.
He didn't make a move; he just stood there, waiting for Cohen to speak.
Cohen took a deep breath, swallowed back the metallic taste that rose to his throat, and tried to make his voice sound steady.
"Let's make some terms."
"We'll take the fused body; we don't want it anymore. Let us go."
After listening to Cohen's words, King Kong remained silent for a moment.
Then he laughed, a laugh deeper than any he had ever given before, his gums showing.
"Why should I? Because you have a big face?"
"Look at the state you're in now. The men behind you are pinned down by bullets and can't even lift their heads. In your current condition, what makes you think you can negotiate with me?"
Cohen's expression turned even more grim.
He knew that what King Kong said was true, and it was precisely because he knew that he felt even worse.
"Then what do you want?"
King Kong tilted his head and thought for a moment before speaking.
“Each of your three paradises shall hand over one hundred condensed forms of spacetime power. No, two hundred.”
Cohen's lips twitched.
There are probably more than two hundred condensed forms of spacetime power on the entire Beast Continent. King Vajra is asking for an exorbitant amount.
“No, we don’t have any. The first condensed form is with them. But we don’t have to fight over the later condensed forms; we can make a contract.” Cohen raised his chin and gestured towards the direction of Holy Light Paradise.
King Kong followed his gaze and saw the girl leading the group lying on the grass.
"You, get up."
The girl's body stiffened for a moment. She slowly got up from the grass, wiped the tears and dirt from her face with the back of her hand, and stood on the grass, looking at King Kong. Her legs were trembling, but she tried to stand up straight so as not to look too disheveled.
"The condensate is with you?"
The girl was silent for a moment, then nodded.
"Hand it over."
“I…I can give it to you. But you have to promise to give us a way to live.”
King Kong looked at her, and the smile on his lips deepened.
"You have no right to negotiate with me now. Give me the fused body, and I'll let you go. If you don't give me the fused body, I'll kill you all and take it yourself. The choice is yours."
The girl carried the crystal forward a few steps, stopped less than three meters away from King Kong, and handed the crystal to King Kong.
"You can leave now."
The girl was stunned for a moment, seemingly unable to believe her ears. When she realized what was happening, she immediately turned and ran with her people.
King Kong looked at Cohen and told him to get lost.
"Next time we meet, I'll kill you."
The wilderness fell silent again, leaving only the corpses lying on the ground and the broken shields scattered on the grass.
King Kong stood in the middle of the wilderness, forcibly suppressing the murderous intent within him.
Before we came, the dean specifically instructed us that we could cripple these three amusement parks, but not kill them.
This war is very special. Leaving these few paradises behind will allow us to observe the situation more closely.
The location that the Void Tree has chosen this time is certainly not without reason.
The leading SRT student walked up to King Kong and looked up at him.
"Sir, what do we do next?"
King Kong glanced at her.
"Go back and eat, then wait for the next battle to begin."
King Kong spoke in a very calm tone, as if he were asking what to have for dinner.
On the battlefield, death is such a common thing that it is not worth being sentimental about.
The headquarters of the Paradise of Reincarnation.
The main cabin of the spacecraft.
The dean sat at the dining table, holding a cup of tea that had gone cold.
He looked at the map on the wall, his gaze lingering for a moment on the location of the Apocalypse Paradise headquarters before shifting to the direction of Holy Light Paradise.
The widow leaned back in her chair, a slender cigarette between her fingers, smoke rising from the tip and slowly drifting through the air.
Her eyes narrowed to slits, her gaze sweeping back and forth across the dean's face, like someone appraising an item they hadn't yet decided whether to buy.
"What are you thinking?"
The dean picked up his teacup and took a sip. The tea had gone completely cold and had a bitter taste.
"I'm wondering if the people from Apocalypse Park will try to raid our base while we're away."
Widow West scoffed.
"Do they dare?"
The dean placed the teacup on the table, and the bottom of the cup made a crisp sound as it hit the surface.
“Just because they don’t dare doesn’t mean they won’t. I know that Nameless Saint; he’s not the kind of person who would give up an opportunity. We’re short-handed right now, and our base is empty. If he can seize this opportunity, he will definitely come.”
The widow stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray, and a wisp of smoke rose from the bottom of the ashtray.
"So what do you plan to do?"
"It's alright, it doesn't matter that they're here. Right now, I feel that the other amusement parks aren't the main focus; otherwise, there wouldn't be so much of a prestige and resources surrounding the main base. I'm afraid other unforeseen events will occur later." (End of Chapter)