The collision naturally ended with the giant lizard's victory. Even with his tail, Achilles's modified body was only three meters long, utterly insignificant compared to that two-hundred-meter behemoth.
The small figure was sent flying backward. The thousand-plus people floating behind him also stopped attacking at that moment. It seemed that even the strongest youth among five million people was no match for the giant lizard.
Yet the giant lizard, which appeared to have won the clash, remained where it was. At the spot where its enormous head had struck Achilles, a charred hole several meters wide had appeared. Part of its skull had already carbonized. Bright red blood kept flowing out and coagulating, while rapidly regenerating cells repaired the massive creature.
Creatures like this giant lizard, with immense strength and incredibly high defenses, were difficult to kill. Ordinary giant creatures were like little mice before it. No one could restrain its movements, conventional nuclear warheads were too slow to hit it head-on, and hypersonic missiles cost dozens of times more than ordinary nuclear weapons.
The light and heat released by an airburst nuclear weapon were deadly to ordinary people, but for it, as long as it stayed more than a hundred meters from the core, it would suffer only minor burns. Its self-healing ability could easily restore it.
To kill these giant creatures, the powerhouses from Districts 1 through 9 could only choose self-destruction tactics to save points—those who could fly fast enough acted as humanoid missiles, embracing nuclear weapons and Monsters as they perished together.
Of course, there was no issue with that in the game. Those powerhouses also regarded it as an effective method, one that fully utilized a player's immortality.
But Achilles's survival instinct made him reject such suicidal attacks. In fact, during the month since entering the virtual world, he had never died.
Even when facing multiple giant beasts alone, he would never resign himself to death. From the age of six to twelve, he had survived those six years only because of that unyielding will, until the day he was discovered by members of the warlord faction.
In the shop, Achilles discovered an item with a rather strange description. It was a red metal sphere only a few centimeters across, called a "Cherry Bomb."
Cherry Bomb: Ultra-miniature clean thermonuclear weapon.
Note: This is actually a grenade. You need to throw it yourself.
It was far cheaper than conventional missiles because its yield was only fifty kilograms of TNT, its lethal blast radius was only fifty meters, and it lacked a missile's complex propulsion and guidance systems. It did not even have a delayed fuse.
This ultra-miniature nuclear bomb was marked as unable to be fired by electromagnetic weapons, unable to be launched with Telekinesis, unable to be propelled by gunpowder explosions, and liable to explode upon suffering a violent impact.
To other powerhouses, this thing was useless. Such a tiny amount of damage was nowhere near enough to kill giant creatures, and it came with so many restrictions. They might as well embrace a high-yield nuclear weapon and perish with their target in one go.
But for a close-combat powerhouse like Achilles, this weapon was the best armor-piercing round. Its hit rate was countless times higher than remote weapons, and its cost-effectiveness was even greater than conventional armor-piercing ammunition. Just a few of them could kill a giant monster.
Flesh writhed around the wound on the head of the two-hundred-meter giant lizard. The shockwave from the Cherry Bomb could not harm it, so only the flesh within a few meters of the center had been destroyed by temperatures of several thousand degrees.
Even so, it was still tremendous damage. These Monsters had limited regeneration rates, and they also had weaknesses—the head and the heart. As long as either core was destroyed, they would die.
Its one remaining eye revealed a hint of terror. For the first time, the giant lizard realized that among these pleasant-smelling little creatures, there were people this terrifying. It swung its tail and smashed the ground, kicking up great clouds of dust that could block the little creatures' vision and long-range weapons.
The damage it had just suffered made it feel fear. Now, it abandoned its instinctive hunger and turned to flee.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
Achilles naturally could not perfectly control this body's power, but once he fixed his sights on a target, he would never stop. When he began attacking a creature, the outcome was destined to be a fight to the death.
Another enormous boom rang out as Achilles viciously slammed another Cherry Bomb into the giant lizard, blasting away a huge chunk of its flesh.
He grew faster and faster. Telekinesis gathered in the air beneath his feet and propelled him forward, doubling his power and pushing his speed beyond Mach 5. The people watching from afar could see only Achilles's afterimage darting back and forth around the giant lizard, along with one thunderous boom after another.
Jump, throw a sphere, jump, throw a sphere. Endless shockwaves scattered the dust kicked up by the giant lizard. Achilles could not clearly see his surroundings. He merely repeated, at the limit of his reaction speed, throwing Cherry Bomb after Cherry Bomb toward that enormous figure, waiting for the moment it died.
In three seconds, the giant lizard over two hundred meters long had only taken a few steps before dying at Achilles's hands. Achilles threw one Cherry Bomb every 0.1 seconds. Thirty ultra-miniature nuclear weapons blasted its body full of craters, while several bombs melted away half its head.
The giant lizard's corpse toppled to the ground and turned into a small egg amid White Light. Achilles stepped forward and put it away, then turned back to the others and said:
"I'm going to the Sky-Piercing Tower. Goodbye, everyone."
He had brought these people with him so they could hold back other Monsters during battle. In one-on-one combat, he was nearly invincible on the ground, but when facing many opponents, his deficiencies in observation and reaction would make evasion difficult, leaving him vulnerable to attacks from other Monsters.
By now, he had cleared out every monster in the forest of District 10. Since he was about to enter the Sky-Piercing Tower in its depths, he naturally no longer needed those companions.
In fact, if he brought a large group with him, it would almost certainly attract the giant birds that lived atop the tower and ruled the skies. They would eat every last one of them. Only he could rush into the tower by relying on his speed.
Upon hearing this, several men over two meters tall, tattooed with the symbol of a white-haired skeleton, actually wiped away tears and shouted at him, "Commander, we'll train hard! When we get out, we'll still follow you!"
"That's right! Once the Commander gets out, he'll be one of Manohar Company's higher-ups. We'll keep following the Commander in the future!"
"The Commander will definitely take down those nine weaklings!"
Achilles looked at the group speechlessly. Once survival was no longer their immediate concern, their instinct to worship the strong emerged. He was the strongest of them all, so without realizing it, he had gathered so many people around him.
Looking at these enthusiastic people, he could not connect them at all with the thugs in the slums from his memories, who would fight viciously over the slightest scraps of profit.
In fact, because he had gone without washing for so long, Achilles's white hair and skin had been completely covered by filthy black mud. No one recognized him as the little beggar from the sewer.
He casually waved goodbye, then turned and dropped to all fours. Like a beast, he raced toward the Sky-Piercing Tower close before him. He had defeated every monster blocking his path in District 10. The finish line was right ahead.
The Sky-Piercing Tower truly pierced the heavens in this world. It stood around ten thousand meters tall. Above it was no longer blue sky and white clouds, but an invisible boundary beyond which lay the simulated sun, moon, and stars.
At its very summit lay the nests of the most powerful creatures in this virtual city. Those ultra-giant creatures, each weighing hundreds of thousands of tons, slept there every day.
Achilles had already become stronger than every creature on the ground. He broke through the blockade of all Monsters and became the first to pass through the thousand-meter-tall gate at the tower's base.
The imagined trials and battles through countless obstacles did not appear. There were no more terrifying Monsters than those outside, nor were there any powerful guardians. There were not even stairs to climb the tower. Inside this ten-thousand-meter Sky-Piercing Tower was only a broad plaza, and in its center stood a man with eight long, slender tentacles behind his back.
Lin Li looked at the white-haired youth with a reptilian body before him and said:
"Achilles, the swift-footed hero of Ancient Greek Mythology. But the meaning of your name comes from Zeno's Paradox. Your parents believed you would never be able to outrun that turtle."
As one of the most powerful people in this land, and someone who controlled all network systems, Lin Li had easily found Achilles's parents and learned from them about the albino youth's past.
In the race, the pursuer first had to reach the pursued one's starting point. When Achilles reached one hundred meters, the turtle had already crawled another ten meters ahead, creating a new starting point. Achilles had to continue chasing, and when he covered those ten meters the turtle had crawled, the turtle had already moved another meter ahead. Achilles could only chase after that one meter again.
In this way, the turtle would create infinitely many starting points. It could always create a distance between the starting point and itself. No matter how small that distance was, as long as the turtle kept crawling forward with all its strength, Achilles would never catch it.
Lin Li controlled the artificial intelligence and erased the subtle traces of alteration from his face. Beneath Achilles's short white hair was a rather cute face. He was not a white-haired youth, but a girl.
Achilles gently touched his face. It was only in this world that he had seen his own appearance for the first time.
Outside, he had merely been a filthy beggar in the sewer, unkempt and wagging his tail for pity. Who would care whether he was male or female? In people's eyes, he was bottom-rung trash no different from a stray dog.
The white-haired girl, now showing his original appearance and looking somewhat cute, shook his head.
"My parents understood very well that Achilles could catch the turtle. They didn't give me this name because they saw me as the swift-footed hero, but as the ridiculous turtle in that paradox."
Over the past month, he had learned some knowledge in the shop. He had searched for his own name, and the intelligent maid had carefully explained the meanings behind those stories.
In his parents' eyes, a girl born with albinism was that ridiculous turtle. Only in a paradox could he outrun children with healthy bodies.
But he was not sad as he said this. Instead, a smile appeared in his pale pink eyes. "However, I really did encounter a paradox when I was about to die. Even if I'm only a turtle, I can outrun everyone in this world."
Lin Li neither confirmed nor denied it. He controlled a projected image to descend. It showed the head of a white-haired girl, with a mass of red gelatinous matter attached below the neck. A sphere pulsed rhythmically within it, sending ripples across the transparent nutrient solution.
Achilles looked at the head in the image, and he finally began to look shocked. "That's... me! You took my body apart?! Don't tell me everyone is like this!"
In his understanding, anyone who had become like that would have long since died.
The eight tentacles behind Lin Li extended, stretching for more than a hundred meters. He spoke calmly:
"Defeat me, and you will learn the truth. Perhaps you may even be able to bring the paradox from this virtual world into reality."
Achilles's pale pink pupils suddenly contracted. He frowned at the person before him, who looked even more like a monster than he did. His indifferent attitude changed in an instant. Originally, he had felt that returning to that frail body in the real world would be worse than remaining here forever.
Bring the paradox of the virtual world back into reality. If he could stop being that slow turtle even in the real world...
With all four limbs on the ground and his tail swaying behind him, he prepared to fight.
Perhaps this Octopus Monster was not lying.
Perhaps all of this was real.
A spark of hope ignited in his heart. For the first time, Achilles displayed an unprecedented fighting spirit, a desire that seemed even stronger than the pure urge to survive.
"I'll kill you!"
Before you continue