It was a masterpiece of psychological warfare.
Eagle created a pattern. A series of three distinct sounds from a specific cluster of rocks: a scrape, a pause, a tap. He repeated it twice, conditioning Shen Liang. On the third repetition, the scrape came, the pause held… and Shen Liang, predicting the tap, fired preemptively at the source of the sound.
The mana bolt struck empty stone. The tap never came. It had been a feint within a feint.
[Shots Fired: 37]
[Shots Missed: 7]
A sob of frustration caught in Shen Liang's throat. He was being played like a fiddle. He was down to his last three misses. The pressure was a physical agony, a white noise screaming in his skull.
He emptied one of his Mana Pistols, its 35 charges spent. He drew a fresh one, the action feeling futile, like drawing a spoon to fight a dragon. [MP: 375/550]. The number was meaningless. All that mattered was the miss counter.
Miss eight was a reckless, panicked volley of three shots to cover a retreat across an open gap. One of them was guaranteed to miss. It did.
Miss nine was the most devastating. He had Eagle. He was sure of it. A clear line of sight for a fraction of a second as the sniper transitioned between covers. It was the chance he'd been waiting for. He took the shot, his form perfect, his aim true.
And at the last possible millisecond, Eagle's head twitched, a minuscule, involuntary reaction to a falling piece of debris from Shen Liang's own earlier environmental damage. The mana bolt grazed the tip of his helmet, doing no damage, but the system registered it as a clean miss.
[Shots Fired: 48]
[Shots Missed: 9]
One. One miss left.
Shen Liang collapsed behind a low wall, his body trembling, not from exertion, but from sheer, unadulterated terror. This was it. The next shot that failed to connect would be his last. Failure. Humiliation. The end of his journey before it even began.
He had 62 shots remaining in his mana pool, but only one life left in his ledger.
Across the arena, One-Shot Eagle finally emerged. He stepped out into the open on his platform, a stark, gray figure against the endless blue. He didn't raise his rifle. He simply stood there, looking across the chasm at Shen Liang's hiding place.
It was the ultimate insult. The final psychological blow. He was saying, without words, I have won. The next time you reveal yourself, it is over. You have no options left.
And Shen Liang, huddled behind the wall, knew he was right. Every tactic had failed. Every trick had been seen through. He was out of ideas, out of time, and almost out of hope.