Chapter 523: King of the Underground (1/2)

The redhead growled out before pushing the ground beneath his feet. He looked like a red blur as he charged toward me with incredible speed. Judging from the fiery energy surrounding his sword, he was preparing to use Blaze!

I ran toward him as well. I wasn’t going to underestimate the guy, and my prudence was quickly proven to be wise. Just before we made contact, redhead’s eyes flashed with cunning before he abruptly cut to my side at a 45-degree angle. He kept zigzagging around me in an attempt to catch me off-guard.

”Trying to kill yourself?!”

I stabbed the Heaven-stealing Sword into the ground and executed War Crush, but the redhead was able to react in time and dodge the skill completely. Rushing in again with unpredictable movements, he slipped behind me and slashed out with lightning speed!

Chiang!

Steel met steel, and I managed to parry his first strike completely. Annoyed by the failed hit, he swerved past me again and spun around for another strike!

I had figured out his plan at this point. It was a classic close-range battle technique, the butterfly maneuver! The basic idea was to run to and fro around an enemy and attack them from a difficult angle, exploiting the fact that most people didn’t have the skill to spin their vision angle in time to parry the attacks. From above, it would look like the player was running along an 8-shaped or butterfly-shaped pattern. It wasn’t really that high-level a maneuver, but it could only be executed properly by a first-rate expert or above. No wonder he was able to kill Xu Yang.

”Die!”

Suddenly, he growled and thrust a sword with a flaming cone in front of it toward my back. It was none other than the Level 120 fifth-promotion skill, Barrier Break!

”What?!”

I exclaimed in surprise, but my mind was as calm as a lake. Deducing his attack angle instantly, I took a sliding step forward, bent backward and swung my sword in a half arc in front of me.

Ding!

A sharp ring resounded across the air, and the redhead pulled back before staring at me in shock. He was sure that the skill would land, but I managed to parry it and reduced my HP loss to only around 2000 or so. My max HP was over 21k, so this bit of damage was nothing at all.

”Who… who are you? You can’t possibly be this good…” the redhead growled at me.

My eyes turned cooler as I raised the Heaven-stealing Sword again. ”You can speak after I put you to the ground, you little shit!”

I abruptly took off and pounced toward my opponent. Gritting his teeth and meeting my charge, the redhead tried to use the butterfly maneuver again right before we made contact!

”Fuck! This can’t be happening!”

Redhead was shocked. He clearly wasn’t expecting me to break his prized maneuver so easily. However, his reaction speed was amazing, and he tried to emulate my movement by bending on his back and parrying my Universe Break!

”Think you can parry this? Dream on!”

I sneered out loud and pushed my sword downward so that it would follow his movements and pierce his armor. Unfortunately, he was ultimately able to execute a partial parry!

14898!

As I thought, the skill failed to one-shot the redhead. From the looks of his health bar, he probably had around 18k HP. My opponent’s face turned white when he saw how much damage he took, and after chugging down a health potion he shouted in obvious astonishment, ”Who are you? In Suzhou, he should be the only one at this level!”

I ignored him and rushed him again. Before he could steady himself, I leaped into the air, hit him beneath the chin with the sharp, craggy surface of my Battle Soul Poleyn, and sent him flying. It was a knee strike, but it still dealt over 3000 damage to him. His HP instantly dropped to the red again.

My eyes gleamed with murderous intent. Still in the air, I plunged my sword right through his chest from above and used Thousand Ice Slash!

Boom!

Thousands of energy blades penetrated the redhead. His body had almost been torn apart by the time the corpse landed heavily on the ground.

……

The second the match was over, I logged out and put my gaming helmet at the viewing platform next to me. Then, I walked straight toward the boss of the entertainment center.

”You…”

The boss was so shocked that he didn’t even realize that the cigarette he was smoking had dropped to the ground. He clearly had no idea who I was or what I was planning to do right now.

I stopped right in front of him, grabbed a nearby chair and snapped off one of its metal leg right off the hinge. It felt heavy in my hands just the way I liked it.

I then shot the boss an indifferent glance before saying, ”You’d better not interfere with what I’m about to do next!”

When I turned around, I saw redhead just logging out of the game. Astonishment and hate alternating rapidly across his features, he swore, ”You must have cheated, you fucker!”