Femme Fatale

That was how Buzzcut was now.

He was outnumbered ten to one and still held his ground, living life to the fullest.

But he was also about to die, quickly and cleanly.

His injuries had already reached a dangerously severe state.

Otherwise, one of them wouldn't have slipped past him just now.

Everything pointed to him no longer being able to stop all the Speedster Gang members.

From a distance, Wang Wen could see he was faltering and grew anxious.

"What do we do? Our point man's about to go down!"

His mind raced. He turned to look at Femme Fatale, who was still trying to see if Thin Scholar could be saved.

He shouted at her, "Forget about him! Hurry up and go help up front!"

The young woman nodded and said, "Oh," then ran forward, taking up a position beside Buzzcut as if ready to fight shoulder to shoulder with him.

When Buzzcut saw her coming, his eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets.

Then he heard her call out in her sweet voice, "Big brother, I'm here to help!"

Buzzcut seemed to catch fire. Gritting his teeth, he tossed something into his mouth, let out a furious roar, and charged at the enemy with both blades in hand.

His strength surged, his speed increased, and his whole body seemed to be wreathed in red flames.

He was like a completely different person.

The moment they clashed, the three leather-clad men charging straight at him were cut down.

Before they could get back up, he struck several more times, each swing of his blades taking another life.

The blades flashed, and the fallen men's heads went rolling away.

Seeing this, the young woman couldn't help cheering, "Amazing!"

She was completely sincere in her praise.

Strangely, though, none of the three had hit Buzzcut, yet after killing them, he spat out a huge mouthful of blood.

He wiped his mouth, his gaze dimming a little, but still raised both blades and continued cutting down his foes.

Before long,

he made good on what he'd said.

"Manual labor's a man's job."

He didn't leave a single one of the ten leather-clad men for the young woman. He took them all out himself.

And when he killed the last one, he collapsed to the ground.

In the distance, Wang Wen quickly took down the remaining man who'd been "putting up a hard fight" for quite some time. Keeping an eye on his surroundings, he walked toward the two of them.

Buzzcut lay dying in a pool of blood, holding the hand the young woman had offered him. With regret and helplessness written across his face, he said, "Little miss, I can't protect you any farther. We need to leave the tower now, or it'll be too late."

Wang Wen secretly rolled his eyes.

So they were just leaving the tower. Hearing the first half, he'd thought Buzzcut was about to die.

The young woman nodded, touched. "Thank you, big brother."

Buzzcut's eyes brightened, but his hand still dropped weakly to his side. "I've saved your contact info. I'll add you once we're out. One last piece of advice: end your climb at Floor 19 this time. Another even-numbered violence floor will put you in danger."

"Okay, big brother." The young woman nodded vigorously.

At last, Buzzcut faded away in a satisfied burst of white light.

He was gone.

Only the young woman and Wang Wen remained in the entire stage.

Wang Wen's eyelid twitched, and he edged a little farther away.

The young woman quietly waited for the white light to disappear, then stood and turned to face Wang Wen.

She thought for a moment.

Then she suddenly smiled sweetly and said, "Hey, big brother, would you like my contact info?"

Just that one sentence.

Wang Wen immediately sensed danger.

He hurriedly shook his head and waved his hands, afraid she'd get the wrong idea.

The young woman tilted her head in confusion and slowly walked toward Wang Wen, looking puzzled as she asked, "Why not? Don't you like me, big brother?"

Wang Wen stopped fooling around.

He raised the hammer's handle and pointed it straight at her forehead. "Stop using your mental powers, or I'll beat you to death."

The young woman halted.

For the first time, she looked surprised.

She stopped approaching and asked softly, "A fellow climber?"

Wang Wen waved the stick in his hand. "Take a good look. I'm a warrior!"

Recalling how he'd fought the leather-clad men, she burst out laughing.

After a while,

she nodded, took a deep breath, and said with apparent resignation, "All right, warrior big brother. You win. Since you don't want to keep teaming up, I'll head to the next floor first. Maybe we'll meet again."

A miniature flying vehicle descended from the sky. Its scanning beam "burned" a large hole into the ground.

The young woman took a long look at Wang Wen, as if trying to memorize his face, then jumped into the hole and disappeared.

That was the entrance to the 11th Floor.

If they didn't enter the next floor together as a team, they'd go their separate ways again, randomly assigned to different stages to challenge the odd-numbered skill floors on their own.

Wang Wen didn't jump in.

He quietly waited until the young woman had disappeared into the hole, then finally relaxed his tense body.

He'd barely managed to withstand that powerful burst of mental energy just now.

She was a mental power master!

Though her specialty was control, it was easy to imagine that she hadn't been some helpless weakling all along.

If she'd truly made a move, the Speedster Gang might have casually slaughtered one another.

To get someone that absurdly powerful on a randomly assigned team—what a ridiculous stroke of luck.

Wang Wen wondered if he should find some time to pray to a bodhisattva and turn his luck around.

Lost in all sorts of wild thoughts, he went around stabbing the leather-clad corpses with his blade.

Once he'd confirmed that every corpse was indeed dead, he began hauling the leather-clad men from all over the place to the villa's spiked fence.

He piled them into a human mountain.

He had no intention of leaving this floor so soon.

If he remembered correctly, villas in an environment like this should contain a hidden item.

A standard rare item on the World Tower's 10th Floor: the Universal Key.

Plenty of people knew it was there.

And the market had no shortage of them for sale.

But some people still couldn't find one.

Or perhaps they couldn't be bothered.

After all, this was a low-floor rare item. It wasn't an offensive or restorative item, so it wasn't very useful and wouldn't sell for much.

The main issue was that it could only be used once.

The Universal Key looked like an ancient long-handled key. Its target also had to be something with a keyhole it could fit into, or it wouldn't work. Once it successfully opened a lock, it would immediately shatter into starlight and vanish, never to be used again.

It could only open locks and had no effect on any other mechanisms.

Even the lock-breaking stage of the famous Disordered Mechanism on the 69th Floor was beyond it.

Usually, Tower Climbers would buy one from the market and carry it with them, just in case.

And most of the time, they never needed it.

It was also hard and uncomfortable to carry around.

Wang Wen was different.

He was broke.

Even the cheapest Universal Key cost several hundred Points. He wasn't about to waste that much money.

Wasn't free better?

With a grunt, he piled up the bodies. Once the pile had risen above the fence, he shoved two more over it to use as footholds.

Everything was ready.

He patted his hands, wet and sticky with blood, picked up the Sea-Stabilizing Needle, and climbed the human mountain. He successfully got over the spiked fence without triggering the current or getting pricked. Then he simply jumped into the villa grounds.

Standing in front of the villa's main entrance, he looked at the tightly shut door.

He considered how to get inside without a Universal Key.

He tried knocking.

Just as he'd expected,

the villas had all been abandoned.

In the end, he could only do as everyone else did and use brute force to break in on an even-numbered violence floor.

With a crash, he smashed the window with the hammer's handle. Then he wrapped his hand in his clothes and carefully cleared away the broken glass before climbing into the villa.

He had to admit, the temperature inside was comfortable—not too hot or cold—and the air was fresh and well circulated.

Wang Wen even saw neatly arranged food on the table!

But when he saw the muzzle of a long-barreled gun poking out from the second-floor stairwell, he didn't dare touch it.