The Scythe in the Sewers

Suren and Kai were both injured, leaving bloodstains on the ground.

Since they were being pursued, the Steam Party members did not dare slow down. Following the trail, they chased them to the vicinity of the platform. Suddenly, the guy at the very front failed to notice the thin wire beneath his feet and stepped on it.

With a crisp clang, the grenade's safety lever popped free. Though it was only a slight sound, the burly Steel Gorilla immediately became alert. Moving like the wind, he flashed in front of the group.

Boom! Flames scattered everywhere, and the explosion was quite loud.

But it achieved very little.

Ordinary grenades had limited killing power against the fully armed Steam Party members, most of whom had modified Mechanical Prosthetics.

But Suren had never expected this method to inflict much damage on the enemy.

The explosion was enough to disrupt the enemy formation and attract the monsters' attention!

Hearing the blast, Suren stepped out from cover without hesitation. As he raised both arms, the muzzles of his two pistols were already spitting fire at the Steam Party members a hundred meters away.

For a gunman, this was the most comfortable combat range.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Those carrying gas lamps became the first targets. In the blink of an eye, seven or eight light sources fell to the ground.

"Damn it!"

An angry roar came from the darkness.

Before Suren even had time to change magazines, a burly black shadow charged straight at him, just as expected.

"Here it comes!"

Suren's pupils contracted sharply, but he showed no intention of retreating. He raised his hand and fired several more shots, emptying the remaining rounds in the cylinder into the black shadow.

However, those shots did not slow the man down in the slightest.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The bullets threw sparks off Sith's body as though they had struck steel plates, ricocheting away.

Even the shot that accurately hit his goggles failed to harm him at all.

Suren had emptied his gun and smoothly replaced the cylinder.

Yet his gaze was not on the gun. He stared coldly at the approaching Steel Gorilla and calculated, As expected. Judging by this level of defense, even Armor-Piercing Rounds might not penetrate his runic goggles.

If he rashly used Alchemical Bullets and failed to kill him in one shot, the enemy would become wary. It would be much harder to succeed next time.

Besides testing him, those shots had also been meant to lower the enemy's guard, making him think Suren's gunfire posed no threat at all!

When the Steel Gorilla was only a few meters away from crashing into Suren, a thinner but swifter figure slammed into him head-on.

Boom!

After the dull impact came a close-quarters struggle.

Kai's Blade Augment Armor carved sparks across the Steel Gorilla's body, producing piercing sounds of metal tearing against metal.

The two began fighting fiercely.

Suren clearly heard Sith sneer, as though mocking Kai for overestimating himself.

Kai had followed the agile ranger path. If he chose to keep moving, Sith might not be able to do anything to him for a while.

But if he chose close-quarters combat, that was exactly what Sith wanted!

The Steel Gorilla might lack agility, but in a brawl, he held an absolute advantage in strength over Kai.

With this head-on fighting style, Kai had already fallen into a disadvantage after only a brief exchange.

But if Kai retreated, Sith would definitely switch targets and kill Suren, the gunman, first!

Therefore, once Suren and Kai had chosen this tactic, it meant there was no way back.

If they wanted to live, they had to trust each other completely.

Yet because he had to hold Sith down, Kai's injuries made his movements somewhat sluggish. In one careless moment, Sith grabbed his ankle and flung him around like a sandbag.

Life and death would be decided in an instant.

Even now, Suren stood ten meters away without retreating half a step.

He calmly loaded his ammunition and raised his gun again.

At this distance, for a Firearm Expert like him, even if the target moved violently, he could still hit every shot.

This time, Suren was no longer testing him. He aimed at the clasps on the Steel Gorilla's mask!

Even if the mask was part of the external Mechanical Skeleton and nearly indestructible, machinery had obvious weaknesses. Weld points, joints, and connections were more fragile than other parts.

The heavily enchanted goggle lenses could block bullets, but the clasps securing the mask might not.

If one shot was not enough, then he would fire more.

Ding! Ding! Clang! Clang!

Suren fired several shots in a row. Every shot accurately struck the mask's clasps, forcibly cracking the weld points.

Kai, who was fighting the Steel Gorilla at close range, also seized the chance and delivered a fierce kick.

With a clang, the mask fell off.

It revealed the Steel Gorilla's eyes, filled with shock.

Seeing his mask shot off, Sith froze. Then the overwhelming terror of imminent death hit him instantly.

His eyes shifted over, and he saw a pitch-black muzzle aimed at his eye socket. At the same time, he seemed to recognize the weapon's origin: Iron Head Ivan's famous gun, the Three-Headed Ghost?

He also realized that he had been careless.

The ordinary bullets earlier had made him lose his necessary vigilance. He had thought Suren was merely a gunman with no real threat, never expecting him to be hiding Alchemical Bullets.

Yet as he faced the dark muzzle, Sith's lips curled into a cold sneer. "Hmph, naive!"

He had been extremely vigilant as well.

In fact, when he discovered that Kai had chosen to confront him head-on, he had already sensed something was wrong.

Now, seeing his goggles knocked off, he understood Suren and Kai's objective.

Heh. Breaking the goggles was simply to hit his eyes, wasn't it?

It was not a bad idea, but unfortunately, if Professionals could be killed so easily by guns, they would be far too pathetic.

Even an Alchemical Bullet would have to hit one of the few weak points on his body to kill him.

Sith's crisis-response instincts made him instinctively turn his head the moment his mask was knocked off. That angle was a shooting blind spot. He believed the bullet could not threaten him at all.

But in the next second, something happened that filled him with despair.

The instant Sith turned his head, he caught sight of Suren making a strange shooting motion. As flames burst from the muzzle—

He was actually flicking the gun?

At that sight, the mocking smile on Sith's lips had yet to fade before it turned into terror.

It was already too late to react.

In the final moment of his life, the veteran Steam Party captain thought of a Profound Grade firearm technique in utter despair: Gun-Fu!

So—

There was such a terrifying person hidden among the enemy.

Like a venomous viper concealed beneath dead leaves, it delivered a fatal strike when the hunter least expected it.

Suren's eyes held an almost numb calmness. Switching guns, predicting the angle of his enemy's head turn, calculating the bullet trajectory, and flicking the gun as he pulled the trigger.

There was not a single mistake. He gave his enemy no chance to turn the situation around.

An Alchemical Armor-Piercing Round shot from the pistol bearing three silver skulls, tracing an arc through the air before accurately striking the Steel Gorilla's left eye socket in an instant.

With a boom, blood exploded before his eyes.

The Alchemical Bullet pierced Sith's skull, and the Steel Gorilla, who had been so menacing a second ago, crashed to the ground.

That shot killed him instantly.

Suren let out a breath and walked over, helping Kai, who had been tossed around senselessly, to his feet.

At the same time, he casually devoured the Gray Mist from the corpse.

"You obtained Memory Fragment x3 from 'Sith Arnold'."

"You obtained a small amount of Intermediate Mechanical Knowledge."

"You mastered the 'Basic Mechanical Arm Kinetic Device Modification Technique'."

"Combat Experience +8"

"Mental Power +0.12"

Suren only felt that countless mechanical techniques had suddenly appeared in his mind, but he had no time to think about them.

Because the battle was far from over.

Helping Kai up, he asked, "Captain, are you all right?"

"No—"

Kai wanted to say he was fine, but before he could finish, he could not suppress the burning sensation in his throat and spat out a mouthful of dark blood. Shaking his slightly dizzy head, he said with a bitter smile, "I won't die for the time being."

Then Kai looked at Sith's corpse on the ground, shot through the eye socket, before looking at Suren again. His expression became extremely complicated.

Suren's astonishing performances, one after another, had completely refreshed his understanding of this "newcomer."

It turned out he was not merely a Firearm Expert. He was also proficient in the Profound Grade gun technique, Gun-Fu.

That was an exceptionally difficult firearm technique that only truly gifted professional gunmen could master.

No wonder he had been so confident.

Kai sighed inwardly, also feeling fortunate that he had chosen to trust him.

From the moment the explosion sounded to when Sith charged in, fought them, and was killed through Suren and Kai's cooperation, the entire process had taken only a little over twenty seconds.

Red Hair Kuntu, in the distance, had originally thought that with Sith personally taking action, even if he could not kill the two of them, he could at least hold them back.

Then Kuntu and the other gang members could rush over and easily kill them.

But plans could not keep up with changes. The explosion had drawn the Mutated Monsters lurking in the dark!

Those incredibly agile Mutated Monsters that could climb walls appeared and disappeared like ghosts, using their long mouthparts to bite one gang member after another to death.

The Steam Party members were actually pinned down where they stood.

Screams rang out endlessly, while gunfire descended into chaos.

But because of that brief delay, the situation had taken a sharp turn.

After only a few exchanges, Kuntu had watched helplessly as Sith, another Official Professional, was killed—by a shot to the head?

Kuntu was horrified. Only then did he understand why those two had planted a bomb here despite knowing it would not be effective.

The purpose had not been to hurt anyone at all. It had been to attract the monsters' attention!

Seeing Sith killed, Kuntu immediately wanted to retreat, but it seemed he was already too late.

Dense masses of wall-climbing Mutated Monsters had surrounded them.

What had originally been a duel between two sides had instantly become a three-way melee because of the Mutated Monsters.

Watching the monsters, Suren asked gravely, "Captain, can you still fight?"

Kai did not look relaxed either. He took out another potion and injected it into his leg. "I can hold on for a while longer."

As he spoke, he looked at the Steam Party members fighting the monsters in the distance, a mocking smile appearing on his face. "Now, whoever survives will have to rely on their real skills."

The Steam Party gang members could barely protect themselves. Even without Suren and Kai lifting a hand, those guys might not survive the monster horde.

By comparison, Suren and Kai's situation was not ideal, but it was no worse than before.

Some monsters, drawn by the gunfire, had climbed above their heads.

However, the two worked together quite well. One never missed a shot, while the other killed one monster with every slash in close combat.

Though those wall-climbing Mutated Monsters were astonishingly fast, the two could still hold on for now as they fought and retreated.

But suddenly!

As Suren continued killing, he unexpectedly discovered a mass of Gray Mist amid the pile of monster corpses.

"An elite monster actually produced Soul Fragments?"

Because monsters had low intelligence, Gray Mist almost never appeared on their corpses.

Yet after he had just shot a powerful Mutated Monster through the head, he saw fragments on its corpse.

Since the corpse had fallen not far from his feet, Suren devoured it casually while firing.

But after digesting the information in that Gray Mist, his expression suddenly became rather strange.

"You obtained Memory Fragment x2 from a 'Mutated Abomination'."

"You obtained Sewer Partial Pipe Network Layout Information."

"You obtained several incomplete images."

"You mastered the Intermediate Climbing skill."

"Mental Power +0.01"

It was not surprising that Suren had learned Intermediate Climbing from a mutated humanoid monster capable of climbing walls.

The Sewer Partial Pipe Network Layout Information was also within expectations.

But those "incomplete images" afterward made Suren feel that something was wrong.

A monster's sensory system did not perceive things as clearly as humans did. In the monster's memories, Suren saw a warm yellow image fragment, like something captured by thermal imaging.

But even though it was unclear, he could still make out that it was an object shaped like a scythe!

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