Total Annihilation

After the fierce battle,

Three black Cats returned victorious from the chapel.

One carried a thick, bloodied arm in its mouth. A playing-card tattoo marked the arm, its biceps rivaled a professional bodybuilder's, and brass knuckles were still on its fingers.

A priest dedicated to healing had been hiding a close-combat trump card.

The priest had used that trick to catch plenty of opponents off guard. Enemies who rushed in to take out the healer in the back line had looked utterly hopeless when they discovered he was a hulking brute.

But against the monsters' overwhelming strength, those tricks were a joke.

Bang!

A gunshot rang out. The black Cat carrying the arm took a bullet between the eyes, and its head burst apart.

It was Captain Wu.

Never abandon a teammate—that was his creed. The moment he heard the priest call for help, Captain Wu had rushed over from his hiding place in the training ground's haystacks.

But he was still too late.

"You goddamn beasts!"

The sight of the priest left Captain Wu's eyes blazing with rage. He raised Judgment and shot dead all three black Cats that had killed him.

But the gunshots drew the castle's other black Cats.

Hiss!

Hisses like rattlesnakes sounded from every direction. Captain Wu brushed the bits of hay from his hair and knew he was unlikely to get out in one piece.

No matter what, he had to buy the others enough time.

Reload. Fire. Reload. Fire.

Captain Wu shot down the charging black Cats one by one, but the first three he had killed had already come back to life.

From above, Lin He saw it all clearly. "No wonder he's a B-rank agent. Even with the black Cats moving that fast, he never misses. Too bad the monsters can revive. Captain Wu won't hold out much longer."

The words had barely left his mouth when the one-eyed black Cat lunged at Captain Wu during a reload. One swipe ripped his belly open.

He could kill his enemies again and again, and they would revive. One hit was all it would take to kill him.

If this were a game,

It would be far too unfair.

Captain Wu knew he was finished, but he refused to go down without a fight.

He had to make those beasts pay.

Captain Wu pulled a grenade from his coat and roared, "Goddamn it, have a taste of this!"

He pulled the pin and threw it.

A deafening blast rang out. A powerful force swept across the entire area, shredding the three black Cats at its center into scraps of meat.

"A Psionic Grenade. So that was Captain Wu's trump card."

"Those three black Cats vanished. Looks like they're dead for good."

Watching the captain blow apart like a firecracker, Lin He wasted no time mourning him. He started calculating his options.

Fifteen minutes have passed, and there are three fewer monsters.

But three players are dead too. Excluding the two brothers in the basement and Xiaohu, who's nowhere to be found, I'm running out of people to divert the monsters toward.

The very thing he feared happened.

While Lin He was thinking, the one-eyed black Cat tried climbing the building again.

"Bastard, what did I ever do to you? Why do you keep coming after me?"

"I've got no choice, Chengcheng."

Deep down, Lin He did not want to turn on Meng Chengcheng, but his own life clearly mattered more.

There are plenty of other women out there.

Lin He steeled himself and sent a third sword beam toward the cat shelter.

This time, he had miscalculated.

On its third climb, the one-eyed black Cat ignored the noise and kept climbing.

How could that be?

Lin He's heart jolted. The rules said Cats are as smart as humans.

Put myself in its place. If I were the Cat and heard a noise every time I climbed up, what would I think?

Someone's trying to stop me from getting upstairs. Which means someone's up there!

Run! Run!

The moment he realized it, Lin He used Cloud Ladder Leap to jump down without hesitation.

Despite all his care, the one-eyed black Cat caught the faint sound.

"Hiss!"

The moment Lin He heard it, despair washed over him.

It found me. I'll have to fight for my life.

The black Cat was too fast. If he wasted his strength running, it would toy with him and kill him like an Exile. Fighting was his only chance of survival.

Lin He drew the Coin Sword and repeated his earlier move, firing a sword beam at the black cat's eyes.

"From what I saw earlier, you can only get your sight back by reviving."

"So this time I'll just blind you, not kill you. Let's see what you do then, you beast."

Desperation sharpened a person's wits.

Sure enough, with a pained yowl, the black Cat covered its eyes and rolled across the ground.

Had it worked?

Delighted, Lin He moved to escape, only to find three more black Cats blocking his path. They had heard the commotion.

Damn it!

They got here fast!

Lin He cursed his luck. If they had come one at a time, he could have blinded all the black Cats. Three at once, though, and he was done for.

My cultivation is too shallow. Two sword beams are already my limit.

Six at once, and every one of them has to hit an eye? That's impossible!

But if he did not try, he would die.

Lin He gritted his teeth and bit through the tip of his tongue, spraying blood onto the Gold Coin Sword.

In spellcraft, blood was considered intensely yang. Chicken blood was normally used to strengthen spells, but with no time to get any, Lin He could only use his own.

And his blood was nothing to scoff at. As a Taoist who had retained his virginity, Lin He's blood was far more potent than chicken blood.

The moment the blood struck it, the whole Gold Coin Sword seemed to come alive, glowing crimson in the darkness.

Kill!

Lin He channeled his power. Six sword beams shot out at once, striking with a string of wet pops and blinding all three black Cats before him.

It worked! It worked!

At the sight of the fallen black Cats, Lin He was elated. If he had not bitten through his tongue, he would have laughed aloud.

A breakthrough in the middle of battle!

That sort of thing only happened to novel protagonists, yet it had happened to him!

I can control six sword beams at my age. When I get back, Master will definitely make training me a priority.

He might even teach me lightning arts!

Once I have lightning arts and inherit the Taoist temple, I can...

Lin He could already see a glorious future ahead.

Then came a swish.

A claw shattered his dream.

"Why?"

Lin He looked down at his body, severed in an instant, then at the one-eyed black Cat before him. He could not understand it. He had blinded both its eyes. How had it struck him so precisely?

Had it followed the sound?

Or sensed him with its whiskers?

But when he met its bright gaze, Lin He understood. It killed itself, revived, and got its sight back!

It really is as smart as a person.

If I'd faced them alongside the captain and the others, would things have turned out differently?

By the usual rules of a story, a protagonist's mid-battle breakthrough should have ended the crisis.

But Lin He died as easily as a stray Dog by the roadside.

That was Cihang City.

A place where the starting area alone could kill hundreds of transmigrators.

Meanwhile, in the Cat shelter,

Meng Chengcheng had completely fallen apart.

She had heard the priest's dying roar, the captain's grenade, and the sound of Lin He's flesh being torn apart.

The priest was dead. The captain was dead. Lin He was dead too.

Only Xiaohu and I are left. And Xiaohu's nowhere to be found. He might be dead too.

A wave of nausea and heart palpitations struck Meng Chengcheng. She wanted to vomit, but it stuck in her throat. She wanted to cry, but did not dare make a sound, and the tears would not come.

Fear washed over her like a rising tide.

Then something even worse happened.

The door opened with a sharp creak, and a black Cat returned to the shelter. A white scar crossed one of its eyes. It was the "one-eyed" Cat that had killed the priest, the captain, and Lin He!