Femme Fatale

Femme Fatale

That is exactly the state of Buzzcut right now.

He is holding his own against ten opponents, living quite brilliantly.

Yet, he is about to die, and quite abruptly at that.

The wounds on his body have reached a critical, life-threatening level.

Otherwise, he would not have let one slip through just a moment ago.

All signs indicate that he no longer has the strength to hold back the entire Speedster Gang.

From a distance, Wang Wen notices his decline and feels a surge of anxiety.

"What do I do? The one sticking his neck out is about to fall!"

His brain races as he turns to look at Femme Fatale, who is still busy trying to see if Thin Scholar can be saved.

He shouts at her, "Forget about him, go help at the front!"

The girl nods, lets out an "Oh," and runs forward, positioning herself to fight side-by-side with Buzzcut.

When Buzzcut sees the girl approaching, he nearly pops his eyes out of their sockets.

Then, hearing the girl call out in a crisp voice, "Big Brother, I'm here to help you!"

Buzzcut completely ignites; he grits his teeth, tosses something into his mouth, lets out a berserk roar, and charges at the enemies with a blade in each hand.

His strength surges, his speed increases, and his entire body seems to be engulfed in a layer of red flames.

He is a completely different person from who he was moments ago.

The moment they clash, the three leather-clad men facing him are instantly hacked to the ground.

Before they can rise, he follows up with a few more swift strikes.

As the blade shadows flash, the fallen leather-clad men lose their heads.

Seeing this, the girl cannot help but cheer happily, "Amazing!"

Her praise is sincere.

Yet, strangely, even though Buzzcut was not struck by the three men, he coughs up a mouthful of blood right after killing them.

He wipes the corner of his mouth, his gaze dimming slightly, yet he still raises his dual blades to continue the slaughter.

Before long.

He fulfills the words he spoke earlier.

Manual labor is for men.

He doesn't let a single one of the ten leather-clad men reach the girl, finishing them all off in one go.

But he himself collapses to the ground the moment he takes down the last one.

In the distance, Wang Wen taps down the stragglers who had been "struggling" for so long, then walks toward the two while scanning the surroundings.

He finds Buzzcut lying in a pool of blood, on the verge of death. Buzzcut holds the hand the girl has offered him, saying to her with a face full of regret and helplessness, "Little sister, I can't protect you on the road ahead. I have to leave the tower now, or it'll be too late."

Wang Wen rolls his eyes in secret.

So he's just leaving the tower; hearing the first half, one would think he was dying.

The girl nods, moved, "Thank you, Big Brother."

Buzzcut's eyes brighten, though his hand drops weakly, "I've memorized your contact info, I'll add you once I'm out. One last piece of advice from your brother: end this run at the 19th floor. If you hit another violent integer floor, you'll be in danger."

"Okay, Big Brother." The girl nods vigorously.

Buzzcut finally vanishes into a ball of white light, satisfied.

He is gone.

Only the girl and Wang Wen remain in the stage.

Wang Wen's eyelid twitches, and he shifts his feet slightly further away.

The girl waits quietly for the white light to fade, then stands up and turns to look at Wang Wen.

She thinks for a moment.

Suddenly, she offers a sweet smile and says, "Little Brother, do you want my contact information?"

Just that one sentence.

Wang Wen immediately senses danger.

He shakes his head and waves his hands vigorously, terrified that she might misunderstand and think he has some ulterior motive.

The girl tilts her head in confusion, walking toward Wang Wen step by step, asking with a strange expression, "Why? Does Little Brother not like me?"

Wang Wen stops his frantic gestures.

He raises the hammer handle, pointing it straight at her forehead, and says coldly, "Pull back your mental energy, or I will kill you."

The girl's footsteps come to a halt.

For the first time, a look of surprise appeared on her face.

She stopped approaching and asked softly, "Traveling together?"

Wang Wen waved the staff in his hand and gestured, "Look closely, I'm a warrior!"

The girl recalled the scene of his fight with the Speedster Gang and couldn't help but chuckle.

A long moment passed.

She nodded, took a deep breath, and said with a look of feigned helplessness, "Fine, little warrior brother, you win. Since you don't want to continue teaming up, I'll head to the next floor first. See you if fate allows."

A miniature aircraft descended from the air, its scanning beam "burning" a large hole into the ground.

The girl took one last deep look at Wang Wen as if trying to memorize his appearance, then jumped into the hole and vanished.

That was the entrance to the eleventh floor.

Unless they entered together in a party state, everyone would go their separate ways on the next floor, being randomly assigned to different stages to challenge the odd-numbered skill floors individually.

Wang Wen did not jump.

He waited quietly for the girl to enter the hole and disappear before relaxing his tense body.

He had almost failed to withstand that powerful mental energy from just a moment ago.

The other party was actually a master of mental energy!

Although she leaned toward control, one could imagine that the girl was by no means a weak woman with no power to truss a chicken throughout their journey.

If she had truly made a move, this group of Speedster Gang members might have easily slaughtered each other to death.

To encounter such a freakish individual in a randomly assigned team—this kind of ghostly luck was truly something else.

Wang Wen wondered if he should find some time to pray to a Bodhisattva or do something to change his luck.

While his mind wandered aimlessly, he carried his blade and went around finishing off the corpses of the Speedster Gang members one by one.

Until he confirmed that all the corpses were indeed dead, he began to exert effort to drag the scattered bodies of the Speedster Gang members over to the villa's spiked fence.

He piled them into a mountain of bodies.

He had no intention of leaving this floor so soon.

If he remembered correctly, there should be a hidden item in a villa in this kind of environment.

A standard rare item on the tenth floor of the World Tower: the [Universal Key].

Many people knew it existed.

There was no shortage of them for sale on the market.

But there were always people who couldn't find them.

Or perhaps they were just too lazy to look.

After all, this low-floor rare item wasn't a combat or recovery item, so it wasn't very useful and couldn't be sold for much money.

Crucially, it was also a one-time-use item.

The [Universal Key] was shaped like an ancient long-handled key, and the corresponding target also had to be shaped with a keyhole to be inserted; otherwise, it could not be used. Once it successfully opened a lock, it would immediately shatter into starlight and vanish, unable to be used again.

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

It was ineffective even against the Broken Lock link in the famous 69th-floor Disordered Mechanism.

Under normal circumstances, tower climbers would at most buy one on the market to carry with them just in case.

And most of the time, it wouldn't even be used.

Plus, it was hard and uncomfortable to carry.

Wang Wen was different.

He was poor.

No matter how cheap a [Universal Key] was, it still cost several hundred points, and he wasn't willing to spend that wasted money.

Wasn't free better?

He grunted as he piled up the mountain of bodies, using the fence to stack them high before pushing two more bodies inside to act as a stepping stone.

Everything was ready.

He patted his wet hands, which were covered in sticky blood, picked up the Sea-Stabilizing Needle, and climbed the mountain of bodies. He successfully vaulted over the spiked fence without triggering any electricity or getting pricked by the spikes, simply jumping into the villa area.

Standing before the villa's main entrance, he looked at the tightly shut door.

He pondered how to open these doors and get inside without a [Universal Key].

He tried knocking on the door.

No surprise there.

These villas were already abandoned.

In the end, he had no choice but to do as the locals did; for the integer-based violence floors, he would just have to use brute force to break in.

Bang-clatter. He smashed the window with the handle of his staff, wrapped his hand in his clothes, cleared away the broken glass bit by bit, and climbed into the villa.

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

Wang Wen even saw food neatly arranged on the table!

However, he glanced at the long-barreled muzzle protruding from the stairwell on the second floor and didn't dare to move.