Chapter 373: Perhaps I Can Try

The Executioner used only a single shot to leave half of Baishe Street in ruins, and dozens of transcendents died on the spot without even a whimper.

Looking at the surrounding broken walls and the corpses of transcendents lying about, the priest from the Western Union felt his mind go blank; his ears felt as if they were filled with mercury, and everything around him seemed to become unreal.

The Priest, ranked 92nd on the combat power leaderboard, was a rare player with a specialty in the Inspiration attribute, which reached an astonishing 70; to match his Inspiration, his Willpower attribute was also raised to 45.

As an ordinary top-100 player, his understanding of S-rank instances was no different from that of other players.

Let alone him, there were no fewer than a hundred Abyss Game players who had entered Steam Phantom, and among them, no more than three had previous experience clearing S-rank instances.

From entering the instance until now, more than half the instance time had passed, and apart from the anti-magic bullets that even transcendents found hard to dodge, and the smog permeating Grimland that could suppress his abilities, he had felt no danger.

Even the previous scramble for invitations had posed no threat to him, because he had joined the Saint Enlightenment Sect directly through an application and become a priest.

This brings us to his class-transfer ability: Piety.

As long as he used the skill, he could display astonishing piety toward any deity and directly join the faction to which that deity belonged.

Relying on the Piety skill, Zhu Li had accepted this "overseas Stilan descendant" without any hesitation.

At the investigation meeting held by Glad and several other parties that evening, Zhu Li even had him attend as a representative of the Saint Enlightenment Sect.

More than ten days of calm had given him the illusion that this newly born S-rank instance only had the difficulty of an ordinary A-rank one.

As long as he continued to slack off and didn't go looking for trouble, he could easily leave with the minimum clearance rewards once the instance world ended.

But right now, this shot from the Executioner had jolted him awake from his beautiful dream.

The suffocating pressure from the Executioner filled him with fear.

If it were in other instances, the fear of life and death would trigger a player's anger, causing many to attempt a desperate struggle.

But in the Steam Phantom instance, players were under the Steam Rules; all their skills were unusable, and even their ultimate class-transfer skills meant for life-or-death situations could not be activated.

Facing the Executioner, even if they wanted to resist, all they could do was rush out of cover and engage the Executioner in hand-to-hand combat using their physical attributes.

It just so happened that the Priest was a player specialized in the Inspiration attribute, with extremely poor physical attributes, so the path of hand-to-hand combat was also sealed off.

The only thing he could do now was hope that the faction the Executioner belonged to was some evil cult, so that when it came time for his execution, he could kneel on the ground and rely on Piety to "join them if you can't beat them."

For the Priest, this was not shameful; since joining the Abyss Game, he had survived at least four instances by joining the boss's side.

Just as he was pondering which surrender plan to use, he saw the Executioner open the carriage compartment again, preparing to reload ammunition.

Just as the Priest was hurriedly looking for safer cover, three beams of light attacked the Executioner from three directions.

The three players who made the move were exactly Leng Shan, Jianxing, and Phantom.

As players who possessed Origin Power and were among the few in the field still able to act, they knew that if they dragged it out and let the Executioner continue to unleash barrages of bullets, they would sooner or later be worn down to death.

Only by seizing the moment of the Executioner's skill cooldown and fighting with all their might would they have a glimmer of hope.

The fastest was Jianxing; his flying sword was just a flash of golden light, and the flying sword Changfeng thrust toward the Executioner's chest.

During the final scramble for the invitation, Jianxing had seen Wu Chang subdue the self-destructing cyborg and remembered that the chest was the cyborg's weak point.

But Changfeng, which had been invincible at the Steam Council stronghold, had no effect on the Executioner at this moment.

The tip of the flying sword only pierced in less than an inch before it was clamped directly by the Executioner's body; thick steam erupted from the Executioner's wound, not only preventing the flying sword from advancing an inch but also blowing out the wispy sword Qi surrounding the blade.

Following the flying sword came Phantom.

This time, Phantom was playing for real, not as casual as when he was "fishing" earlier; he drew his huge scimitar at the start.

As the scimitar swung, layers of blade shadows appeared, as if hundreds of blades were hacking at the Executioner simultaneously.

If it were any other player facing this strike from Phantom, thinking that only one was real and the others were illusions, they would likely be minced into meat paste by the other blade shadows while trying to block the "real" one.

This move was Phantom's signature technique, Phantom Blade Dance; every blade shadow he swung was real.

Each blade shadow was actually him using the Origin Power of Speed and Slowness to temporarily solidify the blade Qi while swinging; he would swing hundreds of times in an extremely short period, then use the Origin Power to adjust the speed of the blades, causing the seemingly fake blade Qi and the final real strike to hit the target simultaneously.

If one didn't know the intelligence on Phantom beforehand, even a player in the top fifty of the combat power leaderboard would very likely be killed on the first encounter.

The power of Phantom Blade Dance lay in the difficulty of distinguishing real from fake, as well as the dense strikes, but both points had limited effects on the Executioner.

The blade Qi Phantom hacked out was more solid than the wispy sword Qi around Changfeng's blade, but it was only limitedly solid; once hit by the steam sprayed by the Executioner, most of it dissipated.

The remaining blade Qi had lost its sharpness; hacking onto the Executioner, it left dense dents on his surface, ruining the Executioner's appearance—cutting him from "99% new" to "battle-worn"—but in reality, it caused no pain or injury, not even as deep as Jianxing's sword strike.

And the strike with the greatest force, the one carrying the physical entity, was blocked by the Executioner with his serrated long blade.

Just as Phantom was about to change his blade stance, he saw the Executioner's left hand squirm, transforming from a two-meter-long cannon into a short, thick barrel.

Accompanied by firelight, a dense spray of tiny bullets shot out from the barrel.

Oh no.

Seeing this, Phantom changed his move in time and dodged using the Origin Power of Speed and Slowness.

But he was too close to the Executioner, and the bullets fired by the Executioner were wrapped in steam and unaffected by his abilities; it was too late to dodge.

Jianxing didn't see how deeply the Executioner was injured, only seeing a cloud of blood mist explode in the air, after which Phantom turned into a beam of light and fled Baishe Street, swaying.

The last to act was Leng Shan; after the probing by Jianxing and Phantom, he had already seen that with the protection of the Steam Rules, scattered energy-based attacks were hard to damage the Executioner's origin.

So he compressed his energy to the extreme, turning it into a slender ice awl twenty centimeters long; taking advantage of Phantom's cover, he arrived in front of the Executioner after the Executioner fired, and along the breach pierced by Jianxing's sword, he thrust the ice awl in.

The ice awl sank into the Executioner's body, and the Origin Power of Cold burst forth; the Executioner immediately solidified, his body stiff and motionless, with a layer of ice crust forming on his surface.

Leng Shan did not hold back with this strike, using his full strength; even a boiler with a transcendent steam engine burning at full capacity would be frozen into ice on the spot if poked by him.

If it were any other steam cyborg or steam councilor, even with the protection of the Steam Rules, they would be frozen into an ice sculpture.

But the Executioner was different; he had devoured and fused with the Multi-Handed One and possessed extremely strong vitality.

Before Leng Shan could press his advantage and condense the next strike, he saw the gears inside the Executioner beneath the ice crust begin to rotate slowly.

The Executioner was adapting to the extreme cold created by his Origin Power at an incredible speed.

At this, even Leng Shan was momentarily at a loss; if the Executioner completely adapted to his Origin Power and broke free from the frozen state, and with Phantom having fled, it would be extremely difficult for him and Jianxing to win.

They only had two choices right now: one was to fight the Executioner to the death, using all their abilities to try and kill the Executioner before he broke free from the freezing.

The second choice was a strategic retreat, first to rendezvous with Heping and the others; with the addition of two ranked players like Heping and God's Tongue, facing the Executioner would be much easier.

It was just that as a price, the transcendents and important figures on Baishe Street would likely suffer heavy casualties.

Weighing the two results on a scale, because Leng Shan was in a hurry, the scale didn't even have a symbolic stalemate and tilted completely toward choice one.

"Better the comrade dies than the monk"; he had already briefly frozen the Executioner and bought time for everyone; whether they could escape depended on their own luck.

He pulled the flying sword out of the Executioner's chest and threw it back to Jianxing; without any extra conversation, the two of them left quickly with a tacit understanding.

When passing through a small alley, a man wearing a priest's robe suddenly rushed out and shouted:

"Two big shots, take me with you."

Leng Shan frowned and reached out, preparing to freeze the guy in front of him and throw him back to where he came from.

The Priest said quickly: "I know where there are good horses!"

Leng Shan changed his move, patted the Priest on the shoulder, and said: "Lead the way."

Under the Priest's guidance, the three found the place where the police station parked their carriages, and the Priest unhitched three horses from the Saint Enlightenment Sect's carriage.

To demonstrate his usefulness, the Priest didn't forget to say:

"The Saint Enlightenment Sect's horses have undergone special training; they didn't even fall into weakness during the Great Stench, they are definitely good horses."

The three mounted the horses, and Leng Shan said: "Follow us closely, don't fall behind."

The three rode wildly toward the outside of Baishe Street, and Leng Shan said:

"In at most half a minute, the Executioner will completely break free from the frozen state; we must find a safe place." After hearing this, Jianxing remembered something and said: "The Gray Church slums! There is special ability protection there that can resist the instance plane's Steam Rules."

"Heping said when we met up before that no matter who is chasing us, as long as we enter the slums, Lady Xiao En there can guarantee our safety."

Leng Shan asked suspiciously: "Sir Xiao En's wife, a native of the plane?"

Jianxing nodded, "That's what Heping said."

Leng Shan had no time to hesitate and immediately said: "Trust Heping, we're going to the Gray Church slums right now!"

In the West District of Grimland, inside the estate of Chief Justice Gasko.

When the Conservative Party did dirty work, they would gather in this estate to discuss, and they would also meet here afterward; within the Conservative Party and the landed nobility, this place was also known as the House of Nobles.

It was just that the noble councilors who belonged to the landed nobility had now completely fallen; under the offensive of the Arcane Knights, they were easily broken through before they even had time to resist.

The Conservative Party members who came to discuss were taken into separate rooms by the Arcane Knights and fed truth serum for questioning.

As for the people doing the work underneath, the thugs were directly tied up, gagged, thrown into carriages, and sent directly to the police station afterward to be exiled overseas.

As for the players who joined the Conservative Party, after Wu Chang learned that the Gun God had gone missing, he didn't make things difficult for the other players, only sending people to control them and take them back to the secret Security Department first.

Once things came to an end, they could be allowed to pay bail to gain their freedom.

If they could cough up enough benefits, they could be released to complete a main quest; if they couldn't pay the ransom, they would be locked up until the main quest ended.

Now that things had come to an end, Wu Chang asked Lei Mengde, who was walking out of the interrogation room:

"How are the results?"

Lei Mengde shook his head slightly, "They said everything they could; Brooke even said he had an affair with Gasko's wife last weekend, but none of them admitted to launching an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Luo En."

"As for the Industrialists Association, it seems to be a coincidence."

"The conservatives who came here are all deep-rooted believers of the Holy Lord, very dissatisfied with the Saint Enlightenment Sect reformed by Luo En and Her Majesty the Queen, and even more disdainful when mentioning the Church of Tranquility."

Wu Chang shrugged and asked: "If we follow Stilan law and tell people about the evil deeds they confessed to, what sentence would they get?"

Lei Mengde curled his lips and said: "Gasko himself is the Chief Justice; eighty percent of the judges in all of Stilan are his people; what sentence do you want him to pass?"

"Moreover, the cases they planned were mostly aimed at ordinary civilians and didn't involve important personnel or treason, so it doesn't constitute a death penalty at all."

"Even if Gasko doesn't use his connections, he only needs to prove they have poor mental states, and at most it would be temporary imprisonment, or even direct acquittal."

Wu Chang said regretfully: "I originally wanted to give Randy and Her Majesty the Queen some face and hand them over to the law to deal with."

"But if the sentence is really passed like that, wouldn't others think that the dignity of our Arcane Knights is the same as Stilan's law, something that can be trampled on at will? Their judges can afford to have no decency, but I still want to save face."

He waved his hand at the Arcane Knight in charge of the interrogation and said:

"Go find some hemp rope in the estate; it needs to be of good quality and strong enough to hold weight—these noble masters aren't light, don't let them fall."

Then he turned to Lei Mengde and said:

"When we pass through the Westminster District on our way back, find a good spot and hang them on the street lamps; make it flashy. Tomorrow morning, let everyone passing through the Westminster District see them."

"Tell the guys watching in the shadows of Grimland that the Arcane Knights don't put up with them."

After dealing with the Conservative Party matters, Wu Chang led the members of the Arcane Knights back to 6 White House Street.

Passing the garden square in front of White House Street, the motorcade paused briefly; after leaving a dozen swaying sunshine dolls on the square's streetlamps, the group continued toward White House Street.

A few hundred meters from White House Street, Wu Chang’s expression grew grave, and he signaled the motorcade to slow down, keeping everyone on alert.

He sniffed the air, catching the scent of gunpowder and fresh blood.

The motorcade slowly drove into White House Street; the moment they entered, everyone saw that White House Street looked as if it had been strafed by bullets.

At a glance, the corpses of transcendents were visible everywhere.

If not for the fact that their manner of death was identical, Wu Chang would have thought the Arcane Knights had been ostracized by the old-school transcendent organizations, with no one even bothering to invite them to the private combat queue.

The situation on White House Street was tragic, but the most severely damaged place was the Police Department.

Wu Chang and his group entered the Police Department and found it littered with corpses, with a large number of police officers and secret police dead.

Unlike the fighting outside, most of these dead ordinary people had died from knife wounds, disemboweled in a very cruel manner.

Following the bloodstains inward, they saw the broken conference room door and Acting Prime Minister Glad nailed to the wall.

Wu Chang clicked his tongue; he knew the player mindset was correct.

Fighting for the position of Prime Minister through public opinion and political maneuvering was useless; only those who survived could be Prime Minister.

Now, with both Glad and Gasko, the two frontrunners, out of the race early, Randy’s competitive pressure had plummeted.

There were not many living people left in the Police Department; after the upheaval, even the surviving officers were mostly delirious and babbling.

It was only by following his inspiration that Wu Chang found a Clock Tower mage hiding away and understood what had happened.

While they were away, that serial killer who had been wandering the nights of Grimland, specializing in hunting transcendents, seemed to find the hunting efficiency too slow and had attacked White House Street directly.

The transcendents tried to block them, but they were unilaterally slaughtered by the Executioner, with no power to fight back at all.

To be precise, there had been resistance at first; three transcendents had attacked and temporarily frozen the Executioner into an ice sculpture.

But when the transcendents thought it was all over and relaxed, the Executioner broke free from the freezing and continued the slaughter.

Not only did they kill all the remaining transcendents on White House Street, but they also rushed into the Police Department and killed Acting Prime Minister Glad, who was holding an investigation meeting there.

Based on the survivors' descriptions and the attack methods of the three who had acted, Wu Chang guessed that they were indeed Leng Shan, Jianxing, and Phantom.

Judging from the Executioner’s previous actions and the survivors' descriptions of him, he must be a member of the Steam Council.

Leng Shan and Jianxing appearing here, risking their undercover identities to fight the Executioner, was certainly not to protect Glad.

It was likely that they were being hunted by the Executioner and had come to the Secret Security Department for reinforcements, only to lead that monster here.

They joined forces with Phantom, realized they were no match, and fled; the Executioner, thinking he was already there, just casually finished off Glad before continuing to hunt down Leng Shan and Jianxing.

Unless Jianxing had been beaten into amnesia, they would likely be fleeing toward the Grey Church Slums to escape the Executioner’s pursuit.

There should still be time.

Wu Chang controlled his True Self to say to Earth Puppet: "Lend me your car; I’m going to save them."

Earth Puppet handed over control of the car and said with some worry:

"That Executioner is very dangerous; let us go with you."

The True Self shook his head and said: "No need, you are responsible for staying behind to protect Sir Xiao En."

The Executioner possessed a large-scale area-of-effect skill; ordinary transcendents would be killed instantly if hit. Taking other players along would not only be unhelpful, but he would also have to divide his attention to look after them.

The True Self sat in the car made by Earth Puppet, floored the accelerator, and sped toward the Grey Church Slums.

On the other side, Leng Shan, Jianxing, and the Priest were five hundred meters away from the Grey Church Slums.

Five hundred meters was a short distance in normal times, but at this moment, it felt like a chasm; behind them, the thick fog belonging to the Executioner had already caught up.

Not only that, but the horses they were riding had also been killed by ultra-long-range sniping.

Separated by the thick fog, although they could not see the Executioner’s presence, they could clearly feel that they had been locked onto.

Crossing these five hundred meters safely seemed to have become impossible.

Leng Shan took a deep breath, his gaze becoming firm as he made a decision in his heart.

He said to Jianxing: "I will be responsible for blocking the Executioner; you are fast, use your sword flight to get into the slums and see if you can ask that Lady Xiao En for help."

Jianxing knew the risks involved and said: "The Executioner’s attack range is extremely far; if you and I separate, we might be picked off one by one. Let’s join forces and fight while retreating; it’s not impossible for us to enter the slums together."

Just as the two were arguing, the Priest looked anxiously toward the slums, hesitating about who to follow.

When his gaze caught the Grey Church looming in the mist, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him, and he sensed something.

Before Leng Shan could continue speaking, he carefully raised his hand and said:

"For these last five hundred meters, perhaps I can try."

(End of chapter)