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Chapter 360 - Chapter 360

Time seemed to stop.

Ali froze mid-step, Claw halted mid-breath, and even Silk's fingers twitched but went still. Every gaze turned to where the rail gun was tumbling from the sky, spinning downward in a death spiral. It fell toward the exact spot where the Beast King Flame Ape, scarred and bleeding but still raging, wrestled against Pummel Fist's two massive bronze hands.

The moment stretched thin—like the world itself was holding its breath.

[Ali, take cover.]

Miles's message flashed on the interface, but Ali didn't need the warning. Every instinct screamed the same thing: death is coming.

TURN. TURN. TURN. TURN.

The reactor made its last revolutions before slamming into the rail barrel. Red-hot energy bled across the long weapon's frame, surging into the final segment. The glow was so bright it lit the forest in a bloody dawn.

"BRONZE DOME!"

Fist's roar split the silence. Being closest, he had no choice but to fortify. His gigantic bronze arms clenched down, and the earth beneath him ripped upward in chunks. Soil, stone, and shattered roots compacted together, compressing tighter and tighter until it hardened into a metallic sphere around him. The Flame Ape howled in fury, pounding against the structure, confused why its prey was suddenly hidden.

Across the battlefield, Silk's right arm whipped back, pulling every thread he controlled into himself. The forest around him trembled as countless near-invisible strands ripped free from bark, branches, and stone. He wove them together, frantically spinning them into a dense cocoon of white cords. The ball thickened around him, gleaming with razor edges. His teeth clenched. Faster. Thicker. Stronger.

Claw did not wait.

He abandoned defence entirely. His Beast Fusion-enhanced legs bent, muscles trembling, then launched. His body blurred hundreds of meters away in seconds, leaving behind streaks of ghostly miasma. He wasn't about to gamble with the rail gun's range—he knew what X17's prize weapon was capable of. Distance was survival.

Ali didn't flinch.

Dozens of fangs rose around him from the shadows, locking together into a jagged dome of monstrous teeth. Each fang pointed skyward, like a fortress of predators waiting to devour the storm that was about to fall.

DUD. DUD. DUD. DUD.

The weapon's death knell echoed. Pressurised energy built to its peak, the core spinning one last time before slamming home.

This was no ordinary weapon. This was X17's treasure, a relic she had obtained from a futuristic world broiled in war, earned by achieving a high grade. It would fire once more—and then vanish forever, like its master.

The Flame Ape roared, oblivious. Beating its chest, it gathered fire in its scarred torso and unleashed a pillar of flame against the bronze hands holding it down.

"FUCKING BEAST!" Pummel Fist bellowed inside his dome, feeling the giant arms weaken against the inferno even before the true storm hit.

WOOOOOOOOOO—

The sound wasn't thunder. It was worse.

A ringing that tore through bone and marrow. A frequency so deep the forest itself vibrated apart.

Red light swallowed the world.

The soil ripped free, atomised into nothingness. Trees vanished in the blink of an eye, reduced to ash before their trunks even had time to fall. The lush green forest floor became a charred wasteland, scorched black and glowing hot.

For five endless seconds, the world was fire and red silence.

Then it was over.

HAAA— AHHH— HAAAH.

Pummel Fist staggered, breath ragged. His bronze dome cracked, flaked apart, and collapsed in molten shards. The air seared his lungs with every inhale.

The stench hit next—burnt blood, roasted flesh.

The Flame Ape stood trembling, a seven-meter-wide hole carved straight through its torso. The beam had erased everything in its path. The beast gurgled a final roar before its chest caved in, and it crashed down like a felled mountain.

[Personal Mission: Kill Beast King Flame Ape (0/1)]

[Reward: +1 Strength]

[Passive Skill — Flame King's Nature: Gain resistance to fire-element attacks. (20% Fire Damage Resistance.)]

This was the same mission that all of them received when the Beast first charged in but none dared to go for the kill with Ali at their back.

Ali and Mateo couldn't resist the opportunity for an easy power boost. Mateo dropped a lightning bolt at the ape's head from above, but Ali was quicker.

Pummel Fist's eyes widened as a giant black monster emerged from the ape's feet, its massive snout open to swallow the beast whole.

Shadow's snout widened even more as he swallowed the entire ape, disregarding the fire clinging to it. He closed his snout and his sharp teeth tore the ape apart, landing the final blow before its death.

CRACK BOOM!

The lightning hit Shadow's face just under his right eye, tearing through the scales and drawing blood from the large gap. The giant dragon head then entered a black portal mid-air and disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared.

"What the fuck was that thing?" Mateo's eyes immediately turned to where Ali and Silk were when the mission vanished from his interface.

There, he saw that Ali's large fangs had been torn apart, and the dome was completely destroyed but no sign of Ali inside. Silk's thread ball was on its last strings, very thin compared to before it was hit.

"UGH!"

Pummel Fist looked below when he felt the air knocked out of him and something tear through his body. There, he saw a hand extending from his abdomen and dripping with his blood.

In his last breaths, he tried to turn his face and look behind him, with Bronze starting to cover his body to save himself. But the next moment,

PLACK!

His body exploded from the inside out. Ali had used Force Push from inside his body before jumping back into the portal behind him and disappearing. Mateo barely tracked Ali's presence.

[You Killed a player]

[Reward: 45 Paradise Coins]

Ali exited the portal directly above Silk's thin ball of strings. Mateo watched but didn't move to help his fellow player.

Ali raised his hand, and red lightning covered it as he sliced down with a straight hand covered in lightning and aura. The sharp slice opened only a small cut in the silk, but it was enough for Ali.

'Venomous Breath', Ali activated the skill, breathing out a cloud of grey poison into the ball. Silk opened his eyes wide, immediately closing them with his hands spinning through the lightning-quick hands sign.

'Substitution Jutsu', he thought, making the final hand sign. His skin slowly turned into gnarly dead tissue.

POOOSH

A white cloud of smoke burst, replacing his body with a small stone. Silk reappeared two hundred metres away in the outskirts of the blast, where some trees still stood. He breathed in the fresh air and looked at his body, now covered in skin falling off.

'That fucking scum, son of a bitch! Look what he did to me!' Silk watched in horror as his body lost more skin and tissue by the second. He immediately used all his remaining Spirit into his Imperial Arms, pushing its limits to the extreme.

He had lost all his Strings from the Rail Gun's Blast, but now thousands of sharp strings flew everywhere around him as he raised his left hand, where a tattoo of a black skull was on the top. He recited a chant, and the skull started glowing black. A small black flame floated from his hand and flew along the strings closest to him.

Ali flew straight at Silk, who saw him and smiled maniacally. That's when he opened his mouth, revealing a small vial of blue. He crushed it with his teeth and drank the blue liquid, disregarding the glass cutting his mouth.

'With the two Spirit Points now…', Silk thought after drinking the Spirit potion, refilling two points worth of Spirit. He inhaled a deep breath, blood clogging his mouth.

'Wind Release: Great Breakthrough Jutsu', he thought as he used the Jutsu without any hand seals showing his mastery of the ninjutsu. A powerful gust of wind escaped his mouth and slammed into the black fire, spreading it all over his threads in a split second. It flooded the forest remains with the unique fire of the Death Guild.

Ali leapt into the air, narrowly avoiding the fire. However, a small flame attached itself to his right arm, draining his Spirit and weakening his right hand with each passing second. 'Interesting,' he thought, 'these are the great Death Guild flames, best suited to killing players with the Spirit draining effect…' He flared his aura, and the flames vanished.

"YOUR DEADDDDDDD," Silk screamed, his face falling off as the poison took effect. He pushed his right hand forward, and some silk threads covered in the Death fire flew swiftly at Ali.

Silk watched the threads approach, while Ali floated there with a smirk.

STAB

UGH

Ali's inverted Spear of Heaven, stabbed Silk in the back of the head. The chain attached to it led back to a hole in the burnt soil. The tip of the blade pierced through Silk's forehead and continued until the spear was completely out of his head. Then, the tip turned around and stabbed his body.

This gruesome process repeated itself until Silk's mutilated body dissipated into blue lights and faded away.

[You Killed a Player]

[Reward: 40 Paradise Coins]

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