Ascending the Tower

The clash naturally ended in the giant lizard's victory. Even with his tail, Achilles's modified body was only three meters long, utterly tiny compared to this colossal beast over two hundred meters long.

The small figure was sent flying backward. The thousand-plus people floating behind him also ceased their attack at that moment. It seemed that even this strongest youth among five million people was no match for the giant lizard.

Yet the giant lizard, which appeared to have won the collision, remained where it was. A scorched black hole several meters wide had appeared where its enormous head had struck Achilles. Part of its skull had already been carbonized. Bright red blood continually poured out and coagulated as rapidly regenerating cells repaired the massive creature.

Creatures like this giant lizard, with immense strength and extremely 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 emitted by an airburst nuclear weapon were fatal to ordinary people, but as long as it stayed more than a hundred meters from the core, it would suffer only minor burns. With its self-healing ability, it could recover easily.

To kill these giant creatures, the powerhouses from Districts 1 through 9 had no choice but to choose self-destruct tactics in order to save points—those who could fly fast enough would act as human missiles, embracing nuclear weapons and monsters alike as they perished together.

In the game, of course, this was not a problem. Those powerhouses even regarded it as an effective method, one that fully utilized the immortality granted by being players.

But Achilles's survival instinct made her reject such suicidal attacks. In fact, during the month since entering the virtual world, the girl had never died even once.

Even when facing multiple giant beasts alone, she would never meekly await death. From the age of six to twelve, she had survived those six years only through that same unyielding will, until the day she was discovered by members of a warlord group.

In the store, Achilles had 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 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 incapable of being launched by electromagnetic weapons, incapable of being projected through Telekinesis, incapable of being propelled by gunpowder explosions, and liable to explode upon suffering a violent impact.

To other powerhouses, this thing was useless. Its damage was far too low to kill giant creatures, and it came with so many restrictions that they might as well embrace high-yield nuclear weapons and perish together with their targets.

But for a close-combat powerhouse like Achilles, this weapon was the perfect armor-piercing round. Its hit rate was countless times higher than that of long-range attacks, and its cost-effectiveness was even greater than conventional armor-piercing shells. Just a few could kill a giant monster.

Flesh wriggled around the wound on the two-hundred-meter giant lizard's head. The shockwave from the Cherry Bomb could not harm it, so only the flesh within several meters of the center had been destroyed by the heat of several thousand degrees.

Even so, it was still tremendous damage. These monsters had limited regeneration speeds, and they had weaknesses too—their heads and hearts. As long as either of those two cores 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 pleasantly scented little creatures, there were terrifying individuals as well. It swung its tail, battering the ground and kicking up huge clouds of dust that could block the little creatures' vision and long-range weapons.

The previous injury had made it feel fear. Now, it abandoned its instinctive appetite and turned to flee.

Unfortunately, it was too late.

Achilles naturally could not perfectly control the power of this body, but once she fixed her sights on a target, she would never stop. When she began attacking a creature, the outcome was destined to be a fight to the death.

Another enormous boom rang out as Achilles viciously struck the giant lizard with another Cherry Bomb, blasting away a huge chunk of its flesh.

Her speed grew faster and faster. Telekinesis gathered beneath her feet, pushing against the air and propelling her forward. The doubled force drove her speed beyond Mach 5. The spectators in the distance could see only Achilles's afterimages flashing back and forth around the giant lizard, along with the repeated booms.

Jumping, throwing spheres, jumping, throwing spheres. The ceaseless shockwaves scattered the dust kicked up by the giant lizard. Achilles could not clearly see her surroundings. She merely repeated the motion of hurling Cherry Bombs at the enormous figure with her utmost reaction speed, waiting for the moment it died.

In three seconds, the giant lizard over two hundred meters long had taken only 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 of its entire head.

The giant lizard's corpse toppled to the ground and transformed into a small egg amid White Light. Achilles stepped forward and stored it away, then turned back to the others and said:

"I'm going to the Sky-Piercing Tower. Goodbye, everyone."

She had brought these people with her so they could hold back other monsters during battle. In a one-on-one fight, she was nearly invincible on the ground, but when facing many opponents, her shortcomings in observation and reaction would make evasion difficult, leaving her vulnerable to attacks from other monsters.

By now, she had cleared all the monsters in the forest of District 10. Since she was about to enter the Sky-Piercing Tower in the deepest part of the area, she naturally no longer needed those companions.

In fact, if she brought a large group over, there was almost a hundred percent chance that they would attract the giant birds living atop the tower and ruling the skies. Those birds would devour every last one of them. Only she could rush into the tower with her speed.

Upon hearing this, several men over two meters tall, their bodies tattooed with the mark of a white-haired Skeleton, actually wiped away tears and shouted at her, "Captain, we'll train hard! When we get out, we'll still follow you!"

"That's right! Once the captain gets out, you'll be one of the Manohar Company's higher-ups! We'll keep following you, Captain!"

"Captain will definitely take down those nine weaklings!"

Achilles looked at the group speechlessly. Once their need for survival had been removed, their instinct to worship the strong had emerged. She was the strongest among them all, so without realizing it, she had gathered so many people around her.

Looking at these enthusiastic people, she could not connect them at all with the vicious thugs from the slums in her memories, who would fight viciously over the slightest petty gain.

In fact, because she had gone without washing for so long, Achilles's white hair and skin had been completely covered by filthy black mud. No one recognized her as the little beggar from the sewer.

After casually waving goodbye, Achilles turned and dropped onto all fours. Like a beast, she sprinted toward the nearby Sky-Piercing Tower. She had defeated every monster blocking her way in District 10. The finish line was right before her.

The Sky-Piercing Tower truly pierced the heavens in this world. It was around ten thousand meters tall. Above it were no longer blue skies and white clouds, but an invisible boundary—the simulated sun, moon, and stars.

At its very top was the nest of the most powerful creatures in this virtual city. Those ultra-giant creatures weighing hundreds of thousands of tons slept here every day.

Achilles was already stronger than every creature on the ground. Breaking through the blockade of all the monsters, she became the first to pass through the enormous thousand-meter-tall gate at the tower's base.

The imagined trials and hardships, the battles through successive checkpoints, never appeared. There were no monsters more terrifying than those outside, nor were there 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 at its center stood a man with eight long, slender tentacles extending from 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 that 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 girl's past.

In the race, the pursuer must first reach the pursued one's starting point. When Achilles reaches one hundred meters, the turtle has already crawled another ten meters forward, creating a new starting point. Achilles must continue the chase, and when she reaches those ten meters the turtle crawled, the turtle has already moved another meter forward. Achilles can only chase after that one meter.

Thus, the turtle creates infinitely many starting points. It can always create a distance between the starting point and itself. No matter how small that distance is, as long as the turtle keeps crawling forward with all its strength, Achilles will never catch it.

Lin Li controlled the artificial intelligence to erase the subtle traces of modification from her face. Beneath Achilles's short white hair was a rather adorable face. She was not a white-haired boy, but a girl.

Achilles gently touched her face. Only in this world had she seen what she looked like for the first time.

Outside, she had merely been a filthy, disheveled beggar in the sewer, wagging her tail and begging for scraps. Who would care whether she was male or female? In people's eyes, she was lowly trash, no different from a stray dog.

The white-haired girl, whose revealed original appearance looked rather cute, shook her head and said, "My parents understood very clearly. Achilles could catch the turtle. They gave me this name not because they saw me as the swift hero, but as the ridiculous turtle in the paradox."

Over the course of a month, she had learned some knowledge from the store. She had searched for her own name, and the intelligent maid had carefully explained the meanings of those stories to her.

In her parents' eyes, the girl born with albinism was that ridiculous turtle. Only in the paradox could she run faster than children with healthy bodies.

But she was not sad as she said this. Instead, a smile appeared in her pale pink eyes. "Yet I really did encounter the paradox when I was near death. Even if I am only a turtle, in this world, I can run faster than everyone."

Lin Li neither confirmed nor denied it. He controlled a projection of light that descended before her. It showed a white-haired girl's head, connected below the neck to a mass of red gelatinous material. A sphere pulsed rhythmically within it, sending ripples through the transparent nutrient fluid.

Achilles looked at the head in the image and finally became startled. "That's... me! You dismantled my body?! Don't tell me everyone is like this!"

In her understanding, anyone who became like that was already dead.

The eight tentacles behind Lin Li stretched out for more than a hundred meters as he said 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. She frowned at the man before her, who looked even more like a monster than she did. Her indifferent attitude changed in an instant. Originally, she had thought that returning to that frail body in the real world would be worse than staying here forever.

Bring the paradox of the virtual world back into reality. If she could stop being that slow turtle in the real world too...

She dropped onto all fours, her tail swaying behind her as she prepared to fight.

Perhaps this Octopus Monster was not lying.

Perhaps all of this was real.

A spark of hope ignited in her heart. For the first time, Achilles displayed an unprecedented fighting spirit, a desire that seemed even stronger than her pure instinct to survive.

"I'll kill you!"