Chapter 199 - Valiant Battle (XVII)
Thank you ChrysAmans for your support—Bonus Chapter (10/10)
Editor: Kitty historical
The team had one less Qi Ling but one more Clown now. The appearance of Clown caused most people’s expressions to change. Although Xing Yan, Duan Li, and Luo Feng were all experiencing partial memory loss, Luo Feng was the first to recall Clown as he pointed to the other party’s nose and said:
“F*ck, you son of a bitch!”
At the same time, Clown also pointed to Luo Feng’s nose and said in unison, “F*ck, I was about to say that, you bastard!”
“You have not accounted for when you stabbed me in Burial Grounds!” Luo Feng began to provoke him.
Clown was not reconciled, “What am I accounting for? Did you count how many bullets you shot at me?!”
“At that time, you looked like neither a human nor a ghost, and you didn’t feel the pain when I shot you, right?”
“You fired so many shots, so I just stabbed you! Don’t you feel apologetic?!”
Abyss said with a gloomy face on his face, “Shut up both of you.”
Because Abyss always exuded a gloomy aura, the two suddenly shut their mouth but still secretly communicated with each other using their eyes. Their eyes glimmered in all manners, exchanging flirting glances...... cough, cough, not right.
However, when they walked into the church, they were all attracted to the huge crucifix in front of them. At the same time, there was a figure standing under the statue. This man had his back to Abyss and was wearing a black robe adorned with red sides. His outfit also included a black hood and a pair of white gloves. He was dressed up as a priest.
“Welcome to the Temple of Time.”
When the several people were standing below the stairway up to the crucifix in the church, the priest standing on the steps seemed to hear their footsteps, but he did not look back but spoke those words in a moderate tone.
Abyss felt a heaviness in the air. He was staring at the priest who was on the stairway and noticed the priest’s thin hands hanging at his sides. Then the man turned slowly. He could not see his whole face under his hood; only his pale lips and clean chin appeared visible.
The priest lowered his voice slowly. His voice was mechanical and numb. He whispered, “I am a priest and judge. I know what you’re here for, and what you want is right here.”
When the priest said this, a mechanism was activated on the steps, and an exhibition cabinet popped out from the floor. In the cabinet, there was a very small fragment, like some kind of stone corner, on which familiar and complicated patterns were carved. That was the corner missing from the cube and also the lock of the cube.
“Is it really good to put things out in such a grand way?” Abyss was bold and presumptuous. He directly raised his feet, walked up the steps towards the middle of the church, and approached the lock of the cube.
The priest gave Abyss a brief glance and lightly said, “Don’t worry; it will belong to you sooner or later. As long as you have the ability to take it away, I will give it to you personally.”
“Hearing what you say, it seems that I have to fork out a high price to take this away.” Abyss rigidly gave a smile. When he saw the lock in front of him, he did not feel he had won. He was calm, but he felt very tired and lethargic.
He longed for the end of all this. He hoped that he could sleep for a long time and wake up to see all the people he cherished beside him, just like how an ordinary person would live their entire life. Nothing would be more fortunate than to experience that.
But the enemy would never let him go easily. The priest voiced out a sound like a light chuckle and continued, “Today, almost all the selected people are gathered in this church.”
Before waiting for Abyss to understand the meaning of this sentence, they suddenly heard a loud noise sounding from the back of the church gate. Someone kicked open the white and holy church gates violently and walked in with neither light nor heavy footsteps.
Abyss turned back to take a look, and instantly, he felt his heart shake. He saw that the guy who had broken into and come in from the gates was a familiar figure. He was the expressionless Nie Cong, who was dressed in a retro robe!
What was more, Nie Cong dragged a badly mutilated man in his hands, and he dragged him all the way here. When Abyss fixed his line of sight on him, he found that the badly-mutilated fellow was actually Ying!
Nie Cong dragged Ying and threw him onto the stairs of the church, and Ying fell to Abyss’s side directly. Currently, Ying was conscious and did not faint. He just looked at Abyss in embarrassment and burst into a smile at him: “Really...... sorry, I have no way to...... do it to him.”
Although Abyss understood, he did not agree, “If you don’t do it, it’s you who will die. Do you already understand that?”
Ying still shook his head weakly. “I can’t do it. I can’t...... kill him a second time.”
This sentence made Abyss’s heart tremble. He realized that Ying’s words unintentionally revealed some information. Could it be that Ying’s former companions were killed by him?
But at this point, there was no room for Abyss to think about more things. The priest on the stairs over there had already spread out his hands and continued in a high tone, “Look, everyone is here.”
“What does it mean, ‘everyone is here’?” Abyss listened to that priest inexplicably talking, and inwardly, he faintly felt an uncomfortable premonition.
The priest who was over there seemed to be a little excited, but he explained patiently, “The secret chamber’s will has chosen three people, and these three lucky people have already appeared here today; among the three of you, there must be a decisive victory, and the reward of the only winner will be the prize placed in front of you! So...... Either die here today or become the strongest one!”
This completely-uncalled-for speech made all the people present feel cold. Abyss frowned and asked, “What about the people other than those three?”
The priest seemed to be laughing at something, and he said, “Others? They’re just a pile of rubbish. However, they still have some value, so they can be used as a sacrifice to witness the birth of the strong......”
Abyss couldn’t listen anymore. He interrupted and said, “Fine, I see what you mean. You just want these three selected hapless brats to kill each other so that the winner can get the lock of the cube, and the rest will die, right?”
The priest smiled. “Yes...... That’s right...”
Before the priest was done speaking, Abyss, standing at the other side, directly rushed forward with a knife and charged towards the priest, wanting to cut his waist into two.
But Abyss was merely pulling out his knife to cut water. He withdrew his knife and retreated. His movements were agile and had been completed in one go. It took less than a few seconds from the beginning to the end. But what was terrifying was that although Abyss was so decisive, the priest did not seem to be able to be easily cut to death. His waist was cut, but his body appeared like a holographic projection that had glitched. His body began to unnaturally fracture and group together again.
“It’s not a living person,” Abyss sighed. When he first saw the priest, he felt that the breath that the other exuded was very strange. He could not feel the presence of life from this man.
Abyss’s knife also verified his belief that the other party was nothing but a holographic projection. But this might complicate matters a little because he was still considered as something having a material body.
The priest’s body showed that its data frames were currently being torn apart, but it soon returned to normal. After returning to normal, the priest did not care about Abyss’s sudden attack. He just said mildly, “I’m not human, and I won’t die. Please don’t do such meaningless things.”
The priest continued, “Next, I’m going to announce the names of the three lucky people. They are...”
The priest said, looking down at Abyss, “Dear Mr. Abyss, Mr. Xing Yan, and...... Mr. Nie Cong.”
This conclusion was not beyond Abyss’s expectation. It was better to say that the three most powerful people standing in this church hall were indeed these people. In fact, if Ying had done his best and had not been beaten half-dead by Nie Cong, he may have also been shortlisted. However, considering that Ying’s identity was almost equal to a creator, one was afraid the secret chamber could not help but want to strangle him to death.
Although matters had already reached this point, Abyss still felt a little dissatisfied. He interrupted the priest again and said, “I’m afraid it’s unreasonable.”
The priest seemed to smile. “What’s unreasonable?”
Abyss raised the knife in his hand and pointed to Nie Cong over there. Nie Cong stood there in a trance, looking like a puppet. In fact, he truly was a puppet.
“Is that a stalker? If he’s under the direct control of the secret chamber, what’s the difference between letting him participate in this fight and allowing the direct participation of the secret chamber?”
The priest’s mouth raised into a more exaggerated smile, “He was originally a tool used by the secret chamber to participate in battles. If you defeat him, you will defeat the secret chamber.”
“Can I join hands with Xing Yan to kill him?”
Instead of answering Abyss’s question immediately, the priest asked Abyss, “Are you sure that Mr. Xing Yan will help you?”
This sentence stupefied Abyss for a moment, and he subconsciously turned his head to look at Xing Yan. Xing Yan stood still and was looking at Abyss all this time. Two people gazed at each other for some time. Abyss suddenly turned pale and yelled at Duan Li and Luo Feng, who were supporting Ah Lan next to Xing Yan, “Duan Li! You two back off!”
Duan Li and Luo Feng instinctively followed the command and retreated. Similarly, Xing Yan also drew out his own blade and swept his sharp blade at where they were originally. Fortunately, the two people avoided it.
As for Clown, he had hidden himself from the beginning.
Abyss looked at Xing Yan with a gloomy face. In less than a few minutes, his pupils had turned from black to red, and once again he returned to the stalker’s form. As a matter of fact, Abyss had already predicted that. How could the secret chamber’s will give up squeezing the lives out of these poor stalkers to work for it?
He had known that it was only a matter of time before Xing Yan would recover his status as a stalker.
“My opponents have become stalkers, but in the end, they are still aiming at me, aren’t they?” Abyss unconsciously waved the blade in his hand, and his face was full of sarcasm. He yelled, “What other high-sounding reasons do you need to come directly at me?”
In fact, he knew the reason why the secret chamber targeted Abyss that much. It was probably because he held ‘Abyss’s’ identity, because he was a GM. In the secret chamber, he could possess certain authorities. He was regarded as a thorn in the side by the secret chamber.
At the same time, the secret chamber also realized that Abyss was the best candidate for the strongest in its mind, not only because of his strength but also because he has a GM’s body. He was inseparable from the secret chamber. Once the secret chamber was destroyed, Abyss would be destroyed with it together as the GM. This was also the reason why the secret chamber had no fear. It believed that no intelligent human would take his own life as a joke.
In particular, Abyss had a strong will to survive.
Therefore, the secret chamber’s will was determined, and Abyss would eventually obey it. In order to survive, Abyss would accept all the conditions it imposed. Abyss would naturally become a part of the secret chamber. From then on, they would share the same destiny, and there would be no force in the world that could separate them.
Therefore, the secret chamber’s will had no scruples about putting its cards in front of Abyss. It could not wait to know what choice Abyss would make, whether to sacrifice his companions in order to survive or to sacrifice himself for those doomed to die?
No matter what the choice was, in the eyes of the secret chamber’s will, human beings were wonderful yet ignorant creatures.
T/N: For those interested in supporting the EIC team, but EIC Kofi goals are open again. But I’m only offering two bonus chapters, since we are already at chapter 199, and the novel ends at chapter 206 (inclusive of extra chapters). If anyone supports more than the amount, the amount would just be split among the team for us to buy some coffee.