Chapter 427: Habit

The body of Bai Ma Mu Bei, like a precise machine, sidestepped the gray-green giant's powerful blows with gliding steps, then seized every opening to unleash a barrage of jabs, hooks, and uppercuts.

Meanwhile, a corner of her consciousness drifted upward, detached.

Lone Wolf players were not a trendy profession; from any perspective, aligning with large guilds, multinational conglomerates, or state apparatuses was clearly the better choice.

They possessed comprehensive intelligence, reliable logistics and think-tank teams, systematic training curricula, and relatively robust personal protection mechanisms.

So why had she chosen to become a Lone Wolf?

Probably because she wasn't used to it.

She wasn't used to the superiors' self-proclaimed superiority, wasn't used to their tone when speaking of ordinary people—as if they were pigs or dogs—wasn't used to the near-pathological obsession and worship of individual power within large guilds.

Power is justice. Strength is truth. As long as one is strong enough, no rule is inviolable, no morality untouchable.

The Global Occult Consortium, theoretically the guardian of global order and justice, launched heavy strikes against superhumans involved in serial killings and terrorist attacks,

but turned a blind eye to the Evil Science Alliance;

GS Biotech, which abused gene-editing technology to mass-produce bio-cloned slave laborers;

Prometheus, which treated war-torn Africa, the Middle East, and South America as testing grounds for new weapons.

GOC merely issued condemnations, at most ordering self-correction and self-supervision.

This wasn't hard to understand; there had long been a saying on player forums,

that once GS Biotech's gene-editing, the Evil Science Alliance's artificial wombs and accelerated growth chambers, and Prometheus's memory-upload devices were integrated,

excluding the three hundred thousand players with Chosen status, what vital, irreplaceable value remained in the remaining eight billion ordinary humans?

The upper echelons of major guilds could press a button and mass-produce stronger, smarter new humans; if thought-stamping technology emerged in the future,

then ordinary humans would lose even their last card: "refusing reproduction to weaken the collective and achieve mutual destruction."

And those level-40 top-tier superhumans had long since departed from Earth's ecological circle, no longer needing human society's sustenance.

Rather than acting like judges maintaining Earth's current civilization, GOC was more like a force desperately delaying the arrival of a terrifying future, striving to preserve the still "warm and tender" status quo.

Hmm.

It seemed she had thought too far ahead.

Bai Ma Mu Bei's eyes showed no sorrow or joy; she leaned back, dodging the gray-green giant A's sweeping strike, then arched her spine backward, planted her hands on the ground, and launched herself upward like a spring,

kicked the giant in the ribs, forcing it back several steps, where it was struck again by the Blood Lion's twin-bladed greatsword.

As one of the forum's recognized most promising players below level 30, Bai Ma Mu Bei had long foreseen the future trajectory of human civilization—she simply couldn't accept it.

Within the next decade, or even just a few years,

her homeland, the land where her ancestors and parents had lived, all familiar culture, traditions, and religions she once took pride in, would be crushed into historical dust by the overwhelming tide of the age.

Her thoughts gradually returned; seeing the fist rapidly expanding in her vision, Bai Ma Mu Bei clenched her teeth and activated the enhancement skill named 【Burning Blood Borrowing Life】,

spreading the blue flames originally coiled around her hands across her entire body, forcibly overextending her stamina and lifespan, sidestepping,

and seizing the fleeting moment when the gray-green giant A's old force had exhausted but new force had not yet formed—her left hand gripped the bony spikes on the giant's thick arm, her right fist drove upward in a full-power uppercut, striking the giant A's elbow dead center.

Crack.

The giant A's elbow dislocated instantly; bone shards pierced the skin, exposed to the air.

But the next second, the giant swung its arm horizontally, its sharp bone spikes slicing toward Bai Ma Mu Bei's throat.

At the critical moment, Bat Claw embedded into the wall, its steel cable tautened, and Li Cheng soared through the air like Tarzan, with Gray Rain clinging to his ankle, drifting alongside him,

and as they entered the battlefield, Gray Rain released Li Cheng, free-falling, swinging her Skull-Shattering Power Hammer downward with full force, smashing the exposed bone fragments at the giant's elbow into shards.

Without pause, Gray Rain gripped the hammer shaft upward with her left hand, swung the power hammer in a full arc, and smashed it into the giant A's knee.

The Skull-Shattering Hammer's effect activated; the shockwave raced up the thigh, shattering the femur into multiple segments. Before she could swing the hammer a third time, dense popping sounds erupted deep within the gray-green giant's thigh—the tendons, far stronger than steel cables, twisted and compressed, reassembling the broken bones.

Then it swept its leg out, kicking Gray Rain—weighing over eight hundred kilograms—flying into a concrete building. The speed was so great it produced a sonic boom.

The gray-green giant's body sprouted more and more bone spikes, growing stronger with every battle; its right hand slapped away the Twin-Bladed Greatsword of Infinite Justice's downward strike,

its severed left arm snapped back onto the elbow joint, then precisely caught Bai Ma Mu Bei's incoming punch—and crushed it. Literally, into a cloud of blood mist.

Pop. Pop.

Li Cheng repeatedly pulled the trigger of the 【Ape Regression Gun】, causing the gray-green giant A's fist to regress into a furry glove, halting its pursuit and preventing it from killing Bai Ma Mu Bei outright.

Changsun Yao and Nikolai's reinforcements arrived at the perfect moment:

the former released countless paper pentagrams, like meteors slamming into the giant's back;

the latter chanted a spell, liquefying the concrete beneath the giant's feet into molten lava, pinning it in place.

"."

The giant "looked" at the swamp beneath its feet, puffed out its chest, lowered its head, and blasted a torrent of air from the hole where its mouth should be—dispersing the viscous lava and breaking free.

Then it leapt upward, snatched the Twin-Bladed Greatsword from Infinite Justice mid-air, spun it around, and drove it straight through the cockpit.

With another swing, it forced Li Cheng to retreat via 【Familiar Swap】.

Finally, it hurled the greatsword with all its might toward Nikolai, who was still chanting.

Pop!

The obsidian necklace on Nikolai's chest shattered instantly; within it was stored the high-level spell 【Revenge Refraction】, which auto-triggered,

first freezing the Twin-Bladed Greatsword in midair, then launching it backward at greater speed, piercing straight through the giant A's skull.

"Damn."

The same thought rose in everyone's mind—and sure enough, the giant A pulled the greatsword from its face; faint red light glowed in the hollows where its eyes should be,

then

Zzzzzt!!

The gray-green giant's eyes erupted with crimson high-energy lasers; wherever they passed, buildings collapsed, structures crumbled.

Nikolai, drenched in sweat, unleashed his most powerful illusion magic, creating near-perfect illusions to buy time, shouting without turning: "Red Spider, how much longer?!"

"Almost there!"

The red spider's voice came from the drone,

He himself had reached the end of the corner, lying silently atop an IKEA sofa, his cheek pressed tightly against the rifle's barrel,

The 【Miraculous Grace】 sniper rifle was the strongest single-target elimination item any player present could currently produce.

Yet, this minimum one-minute lock-on time was still far too long in the eyes of the transcendent — it felt like an eternity with every passing second.

(End of Chapter)