Shen's Hesitation

Bullets poured from Li Ke's gun, turning the five or six soldiers who hadn't yet learned to scatter and take cover into sieves.

But Li Ke, who had lost his memories of being a protector, had forgotten one thing.

Automatic weapons fired at a fearsome rate.

He felt like he'd only held down the trigger for two seconds when the gun in his hands began to click. It was obvious he'd run out of bullets.

"Useless thing! Why didn't I get a Big Pineapple?!"

He meant the M60 from CrossFire, nicknamed the Big Pineapple. That thing held a full hundred bullets, enough for him to unleash a torrent of fire to his heart's content.

What he didn't know was that the Big Pineapple fired much faster than the M16. If he shot it like this, he'd be left staring at an empty magazine even sooner.

After all, the game needed balance...

Reality didn't.

With a click of his tongue, Li Ke stowed the gun and continued using the Noxian longsword.

A faint white glow appeared along the blade, making the ordinary-quality sword begin to tremble violently. He swung it backhanded, cleaving a Noxian who came charging toward him with a howl, along with his weapon.

Then he fired a shot, hitting another Noxian charging at him.

Shen's side was faring just as well. While Li Ke had been killing enemies with his guns, Shen had already killed more than a dozen.

Compared to Li Ke, who relied on the power of firearms, Shen had killed fewer enemies, but it was more than enough to prove just how formidable he was.

"These men are no ordinary soldiers!"

Shen shouted as he swung his steel blade, taking several more lives in the blink of an eye.

"Of course they aren't!"

Li Ke kept swinging his weapon. After breaking a Noxian's weapon, he heard a cracking sound from his sword and threw it away without hesitation.

The moment he let go, the sword shattered in midair. Its broken shards cut several Noxian soldiers, and one unlucky man even had a fragment pierce his eye.

That was what happened when he used Overdrive on ordinary iron. These unevenly made swords might have had internal cracks or breaks he couldn't see from the outside.

Overdrive made even the tiniest cracks spread. And even if there were no cracks to begin with, the constant vibrations and impacts would quickly create them.

But that wasn't what worried Li Ke. He still had five swords on his back and could afford to waste them. What worried him was something else.

"More than half of them are dead!"

Looking at the bodies on the ground, Li Ke's understanding of Noxian strength grew ever clearer.

In terms of weapons, armor, and training, the soldiers before them were no more than ordinary troops—perhaps no better than Ionian militia.

Their ages varied, too.

And yet their will to fight remained undiminished!

That was almost impossible.

In just a minute, the two of them had easily killed half the enemy. Even wild beasts would have felt fear by now. So why did these men still show no sign of retreating?

Li Ke casually killed another soldier with a backhanded strike. As the man fell, Li Ke caught sight of the calluses on his palm. They weren't the kind that came from holding a sword or knife. They were thick calluses of the sort that came from years of working with farm tools.

A farmer?

But...

Shen had noticed it, too. He'd seen even more than Li Ke and could tell that these Noxian soldiers might have been ordinary farmers only a month or two ago.

He couldn't help asking them.

"You're just farmers, aren't you?! Why fight like this?!"

If they ran now, he wouldn't pursue them. Not only because it was dangerous, but because they were farmers—men who shouldn't have been on the battlefield at all!

But no one answered him. The survivors continued to roar and charge at him.

Some were silent; others wore fanatical expressions. Yet their battle cries made even the highly skilled senior disciple of the Balance Order take a step back.

"Long live Noxus!!"

The dozen or so remaining Noxians charged at Shen, who had left an opening. They didn't understand why the enemy, who had been killing them so decisively just moments earlier, had become so hesitant after learning who they'd been a month or two ago. But they knew one thing.

The enemy had faltered! This was their chance!

Shen's blade had slowed!

Li Ke noticed. He swiftly drew one of the longswords on his back and hurled it. It pierced two soldiers who had charged right up to the wavering Shen. Then he pulled the two pistols from his waist and opened fire on the others.

Both pistols kept booming. Li Ke's aim wasn't very good—in fact, it was downright terrible—but Shen had recovered, too. As Li Ke charged forward, shooting down the other soldiers, Shen killed the ones who had reached him.

"Why did you hesitate like that?"

Li Ke asked breathlessly. Shen's hesitation had made him waste quite a few bullets.

He knew his aim wasn't up to par, so he always fired at close range. Shen's hesitation had cost him at least eight bullets.

He could only conjure these things up through simulation. It wasn't as if he couldn't get more, but Li Ke didn't intend to spend all his time in the CrossFire world.

There were no supernatural powers there...

...right?

Thinking of weapons like the Fire Qilin, Li Ke felt a little less certain.

Shen fell silent. He didn't know how to answer. Given his upbringing and everything he'd experienced, he shouldn't have reacted that way.

He hadn't hesitated because he couldn't bear to kill those men. He'd been thinking about something else.

"Men who were farmers just a few months ago can fight to the death under Noxian orders. They'll fight to the very last man, and not one of them will run... Li Ke, can Ionia really withstand their invasion?"

Shen was utterly lost.

In a melee infantry force, only the best of the best could avoid breaking and fleeing after suffering more than half their losses. Yet these men were farmers who'd received just a few months of training. They didn't even have proper weapons.

So how could they display the resolve and bearing of men ready to die?

He didn't understand.

Li Ke didn't understand, either. An undisciplined force like this was rampaging through Ionia, and the Ionian authorities still hadn't reacted. Were the rulers here eating dog shit?

But just as he thought that, Li Ke suddenly remembered: Ionia had no proper ruling organization. It was a tribal society.

Ah. In that case, never mind.

But he still answered Shen firmly.

"We can."