Chapter 45: A Fatal Blow

After purchasing elixirs, potions, and other supplies, Murong Xun once again took the inter-city bus to the center of the Magic Tower and entered the dueling arena.

Since he still had some time left before his mandatory departure from the Magic Tower, he decided to spend it right here in the dueling arena.

Advancing into the upper echelons of the dueling arena would yield ranking rewards; the longer one maintained a certain position, the greater the rewards would be. He wanted to give it a try.

He was currently ranked in the several hundreds, and with the stay duration of three more worlds remaining, it meant he could challenge his ranking three times. He wanted to see how high he could ultimately climb by then!

As soon as Murong Xun initiated the duel, the people who had followed him yesterday poured into his dueling room to watch.

In an instant, his room skyrocketed to become one of the most popular ones.

On one hand, there were many spectators; on the other hand, quite a few people were placing bets on Murong Xun to win, causing the popularity to surge instantly.

Soon, Murong Xun was matched with an opponent.

Seeing that his opponent had a heavy rifle strapped to his back, Murong Xun did not dare to be careless.

In the Magic Tower, anyone who dared to use firearms was a ruthless individual.

In the early stages, firearms were naturally very easy to build up.

However, in the later stages, the firepower of firearms was insufficient, making it difficult to truly threaten genuine experts.

For instance, mages had shields, and tanks went without saying, equipped with all sorts of damage-reduction and defense-boosting gear.

Melee fighters each possessed movement techniques and extremely sharp five senses, making it very difficult to snipe them with sniper rifles, let alone kill them with firearms in close combat.

True firearm masters did exist, but they were very rare.

Therefore, seeing that his opponent was within the top several hundred rankings and still used firearms, Murong Xun grew even more vigilant.

What surprised him was that the opponent did not attack immediately. Instead, he dropped something on the ground and then began to retreat.

"The Gun King is at it again!"

In the opponent's spectator seating area, someone chuckled, looking completely relaxed.

They were all supporters of the Gun King, having witnessed him achieve victory time and time again using the exact same strategy.

Although he occasionally lost, the Magic Tower Paradise was such a vast place—who could dare claim they were invincible? Losing was normal, and at the very least, he won far more often.

As one of the few Mechanists in the Magic Tower, the Gun King's fame was naturally very high.

He was renowned not just for his raw combat power, but because many people sought him out to commission firearms, which made him widely known. Of course, his actual strength was also formidable.

Fighting the Gun King while letting him deploy his mechanical insects—clearly, this was yet another person who was ignorant of the Gun King's terrifying prowess.

Thinking that they were about to net a handsome profit, the spectators were naturally overjoyed.

Murong Xun did not know what his opponent had dropped, but he could faintly hear the commotion, knowing that changes were happening beneath the ground.

Without hesitation, he charged directly toward the Gun King.

However, the Gun King was no pushover.

Seeing him close in, the Gun King directly unslung the heavy rifle from his back, fired a warning shot at him, and then utilized the massive recoil to rapidly widen the distance between them.

Murong Xun frowned. He had no way to close the gap; even using Flash of Aurora was not enough to shorten the distance.

The travel distance of Flash of Aurora was simply too short.

He once again felt the predicament of lacking a proper closing skill.

It was time to seriously consider acquiring a skill or obtaining a transitional piece of equipment to make up for his flaws.

He released a Laser Ray, but the Gun King nimbly dodged it and seized the opportunity to launch a counterattack against him.

Moreover, throughout this process, the opponent continuously dropped various items onto the ground.

Relaying on the effects of Sword Heart Transparent, he could clearly perceive the rustling sounds traveling from deep underground.

Murong Xun knew that if this stalemate continued and the opponent managed to charge up his ultimate move, it would be extremely unfavorable for him. Without hesitation, he unleashed the Wrath of the Deep Blue.

Anyway, this move had been used previously, and its cooldown was reset in the dueling arena, so it wouldn't cause any real-world repercussions.

However, to Murong Xun's surprise, the Gun King's entire body flashed with a golden light, standing like a reef amidst the raging tides, unmoving and unshaken no matter how fiercely the monstrous waves crashed against him.

His currently strongest attack had actually been evaded by the opponent using an invulnerability skill.

"You have every right to be proud!"

The Gun King spoke arrogantly.

"There are very few people over such a long time who have forced me to use this life-saving skill."

While he was speaking, something went *clack-clack* and broke through the soil on the ground.

Then, a gigantic entity emerged.

"Now, it's my turn to put on a show!"

Seeing that his opponent had foolishly allowed him to buy time until the mechanical insect base was fully constructed, the Gun King made no effort to conceal his contempt.

During battle, actually granting the enemy preparation time—this was simply far too foolish.

"Is that so?"

Murong Xun put away the Shadow of Slaughter and produced an old, battered hunting rifle in his hand.

[Little Red Riding Hood's Old Hunting Rifle: Armed with this, you shall fear no wolf.]

[Quality: Golden Masterpiece]

[Attribute: Fatal Strike—has a chance to instantly kill the targeted enemy in one hit!]

[Attribute: Hit Damage +30%!]

[Skill 1: Sniper—When performing ranged sniping, consumes energy to imbue the bullet, doubling the damage.]

[Skill 2: Little Red Riding Hood's Wrath—Summons divine death power for augmentation. Upon a hit, even if the target does not die, they will be eroded by the power of death.]

Murong Xun held the rifle in one hand and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

"Bang!"

A gunshot rang out.

Something that utterly shocked everyone unfolded before their eyes.

The Gun King, who had just assumed it was his turn to shine and looked utterly imposing, met his end just like that.

It was only a single shot.

The Gun King, famed for his firearms, collapsed to the ground, with only the bullet hole on his forehead telling the onlookers what he had just experienced.

"Is the Gun King an idiot? He actually got headshot by a single shot!"

"Alas, the Gun King was too careless! Who would have expected a melee fighter to suddenly pull out a gun and shoot from behind?"

"The Gun King has gotten a bit too cocky!"

The Gun King's supporters wrung their hands in deep regret. Most of them felt that the Gun King had simply been too careless, failing to anticipate that his opponent would suddenly whip out a firearm.

When directly subjected to a headshot, no amount of health points or formidable combat prowess mattered unless one possessed a specific life-saving skill; otherwise, death was inevitable.

Such were the rules of the Magic Tower.

A fatal wound was called a fatal wound precisely because it required only a tiny fraction of damage to instantly strip away your life.

Furthermore, players' bodies were already semi-digitized; even the heart was no longer a fatal zone, leaving the brain—which stored the soul—as the sole weakness.

Yet, what they did not know was that the Gun King had not died simply because he was hit in a vital spot.

In truth, he had triggered the hunting rifle's "Fatal Strike" effect, and then, amidst various futile attempts at evasion, the attack landed directly on his skull, resulting in instant death on the spot.

There was a logical relationship at play here: although the Gun King suffered a headshot, it was because the Fatal Strike effect had been triggered first, causing the opponent's attack to strike his head as if ordained by destiny, thus fulfilling the formation of the instant kill.

This essentially inverted cause and effect.

Normally, cause precedes effect; but here, the effect was determined first, and the cause was traced backward from the effect, with the cause defined by the effect.

This already touched upon the unfathomable laws of cause and effect, something ordinary people could never hope to comprehend.

Therefore, in their eyes, it looked as though the Gun King had been careless, doing nothing at all before being headshot by a single bullet.

In reality, the Gun King had not sat idly waiting for death; during those brief moments, he had even deployed numerous defensive measures, but they proved utterly useless. The destiny of his instant execution had already been sealed, and no matter how many actions he took, they were merely futile struggles.

Unless he possessed the ability to reverse cause and effect and distort the doom of a fatal strike, his fate was directly sealed.

Having secured this victory, Murong Xun truly grasped the terrifying nature of this rifle.

Leaving aside the skills, the passive "Fatal Strike" effect alone was simply too horrifying.

It was manageable when it didn't trigger, but once this effect activated, your end was basically sealed.

Initially, he had intended to sell it in exchange for better equipment, but golden-grade weapons were not so easily parted with, and he now firmly decided to keep it.

Such equipment happened to make up for his deficiency in ranged damage.

Melee combat was covered by the Shadow of Slaughter, and ranged combat by the rifle—forming a truly perfect combination.

Following this victory, the duels continued.

However, unless absolutely necessary, Murong Xun refrained from pulling out the hunting rifle, relying primarily on the Tang Dao in his hand to fight.

After all, he had come to the dueling arena precisely to temper his combat experience; if he were to rely on equipment to crush others, the so-called training would lose all meaning.

As he intentionally accumulated combat experience and faced increasingly stronger opponents, the duration of his battles grew longer and longer.

Yet, his winning streak continued to climb steadily.

Starting from thirty-six consecutive wins on the first day, it kept rising.

Forty consecutive wins!

Forty-five consecutive wins!

His ranking also advanced all the way from the nine-hundreds.

Although it wouldn't leap by thousands of ranks with a single win like it did at the very beginning, the progression was still quite rapid.

When Murong Xun achieved his fiftieth consecutive win, his ranking surged straight into the top one hundred and twenty-third!

After two more hard-fought battles, he finally slashed his way into the top ninety-ninth position at his fifty-second win.

As long as he maintained this ranking, every time he cleared a world, he would receive 1,000 Paradise Coins and one unit of World Source.

Paradise Coins were a minor matter, but World Source was truly captivating to Murong Xun.

This stuff was exceptionally difficult to find.

Aside from the wartime world where he obtained a massive amount of merit through selling potions to exchange for fifty units of World Source, and the previous world where he achieved an unprecedented SSS rating yet only managed to secure ten units of World Source, it was clear just how hard this resource was to acquire.

Moreover, the ninety-ninth place granted a single unit—what about the top fifty?

Ranks fifty-one to one hundred shared the same reward, ranks thirty-one to fifty shared another, and ranks eleven to thirty were identical; only the top ten differed individually.

Murong Xun wondered about the first-place ranking. He had no idea what kind of reward the person at the very top received.