“You are as resilient as you said you are,” Rainsford commented. “I still refuse to believe that a person can be so lucky.”
“Pfft! Lucky?” Feng Bujue mocked harshly. “This has nothing to do with luck. I am simply that powerful. What you just saw was the legendary skill, the Jesus Walk!”
The boss had no comment regarding the man’s mocking words and irrationality. Instead, he pulled out a pistol silently from his waist.
“F*ck!” When Feng Bujue saw that, with a whoosh, he disappeared. In reality though, he merely moved to the other side of the boulder that he had been hiding behind all that time. He dangled the flashlight from his lips, curled his body into a ball as small as he could, and hugged the boulder. Due to the distance, his body was hidden perfectly in Rainsford’s blind spot.
Even though the sun had not come up, Rainsford’s power of sight was much stronger than a normal individual’s. With the glow of the flashlight coming from behind the boulder, he could clearly discern Feng Bujue’s hiding spot, but unfortunately, he did not possess any bullets that could phase through boulders.
Feng Bujue used both hands to wind himself as tight as he could around the boulder; only his butt was slightly touching the surface of the swamp. He did not make enough contact with the swamp to be sucked into it. Before his Stamina Points were exhausted, he could maintain this posture for a very long time.
“I should have brought the rifle with me.” Rainsford smiled as he put the pistol away. “Even though I’m a good shooter, a pistol is indeed not suitable to fire at a target who’s too far away, especially on a dark night like this.”
“Admit it, you’re too frightened by my skill that your hands holding the gun are shaking, right‽” Feng Bujue screamed into the night. For the sake of provoking the boss, he decided to abandon the flashlight in his jaw. Once the device dropped from his lips, it hit the soft ground and sank into the swamp.
“Ha ha… You really think you’ll be safe by hiding there?” Rainsford chuckled fiendishly. “You really think I won’t dare come close to you?”
“Stop wasting time!” Feng Bujue replied in an increasingly haughty tone. “I am a very busy person, so I can’t free up my time to go and punch you, so I need you to run into my fists instead.”
He used two seconds to release one arm from the boulder and raised his middle finger at the boss before swiftly returning to hug the boulder again.
“Such a crude little b*stard…” The boss was finally angered to the point of cursing. Rainsford then moved away from the edge of the swamp. He took several steps back, drawing up enough distance for a running start. Rainsford did not know how to perform the Jesus Walk, but with his physical prowess, with enough preparation, he could leap toward the boulder that Feng Bujue was hugging.
Feng Bujue’s flashlight had completely sunk into the swamp, and Rainsford did not carry with him any lighting device. The environment was dark, and the moon had disappeared from the sky. The sun had not risen to take its place, and a dark-purplish color covered the sky. Even in the Death Swamp, which was relatively open, with Feng Bujue’s eyesight, he could see barely five meters around him.
The surrounding was also incredibly quiet, so quiet that one could hear the bubbles bursting through the surface of the swamp. Feng Bujue trained his focus, paying full attention to the movement from Rainsford’s side. Soon, he heard… footsteps. They came fast, much faster than when the man was pursuing him. Other than that, the footfalls were powerful, and there was only a short distance between each step, indicating that the running was for the sake of increasing speed. The runner was gathering power and aiming for a burst release.
Finally, with a loud “tut”, a foot landed heavily on the muddy ground. Rainsford leaped through the air in a beautiful arc, bouncing up from his kick to the ground.
When Feng Bujue heard the bounce, he climbed up the boulder and pulled out his pistol without hesitation. He shot twice randomly into the air. He was not hoping for the shots to connect—he was merely using the gunfire as a sort of brief lighting to see where his target was.
The two shots understandably missed, and they were so far from the intended target that it was laughable. To make matters worse, one second later, Rainsford already landed on the same boulder as Feng Bujue, standing just two meters away. Feng Bujue did not have time to hesitate; he fired off another shot and finally hit Rainsford. With the degree of visibility he had, aiming for a headshot was too much of a risk, and he should be thankful that the shot that he fired even connected.
For a normal person, even if they were wearing an anti-bullet vest, being shot at such a close distance would topple them backward, causing some breathing difficulty or shock, but Rainsford did not even stagger a step back. All he did was grit his teeth like he had suffered a punch to his body.
“Ha ha ha…” Rainsford laughed proudly; he knew that this was over. This time, the boss did not plan to use his gun but instead was going to use his two bare hands to tear this uncouth b*stard apart.
“He he he…” Feng Bujue followed the laughter with a more cunning one. He used the active skill Below-the-belt Shin Kick, which had two uses left, on Rainsford. This was a skill that ignored mastery level; it could topple any humanoid monster that theoretically could be toppled. Feng Bujue could not have asked for a more perfect occasion to use this skill.
Rainsford leaned precariously backward. His hands gripped the air hastily for support, and his expression was one of panic. Actually, for a boss at his level, he could have easily reacted before his body landed on the ground. He could have turned his body around or changed the direction of his fall. In fact, he could have leaped in midair and landed on the ground. But with Feng Bujue’s skill, no matter how powerful the boss was, they had to be ’tripped’. Only by having the target ’land on the ground’ would the skill be counted as completed by the system.
Therefore… Rainsford careened off the boulder and fell into the swamp.
Without wasting time to gloat, after using the skill, Feng Bujue slithered to the other end of the boulder and got back into position, hugging the boulder. He removed himself from Rainsford, refusing to appear in his line of sight.
Since the battle had reached this stage, Feng Bujue would not allow himself to make any mistakes. What if Rainsford fired off all his shots before he died or grabbed a ball of mud and hit him, causing his one Life Points to drop to zero? Then all of his effort thus far would have been wasted.
Whether it was necessary or not, being cautious was never wrong. Therefore, Feng Bujue maintained this posture and silently listened to the curses and fervent struggling that came from Rainsford’s side. About three minutes later, the voices finally stopped. Even the second before the mud covered Rainsford’s lips, he was still cursing Feng Bujue. It was not until the swamp water filled up his lungs and cut off his breathing that the man stopped.
“Current quest completed. All main quests completed. You have completed the scenario. Auto teleportation in 180 seconds.”
Based on the progress of this new scenario, killing Rainsford would not lead to Ivan’s rampage. Then again, that appeared to be rather expected, or else no one would have been able to clear the scenario.
Once Feng Bujue climbed on top of the boulder, this thought came to him. Perhaps after reading General Zaroff’s dying message, the other means of clearing this scenario was to sneak into the castle, and while evading Ivan’s detection, find the location to the underground harbor and depart on one of the boats. However, that was probably only doable when there were multiple remaining players. To put it simply, one had to put themselves up as bait to lure Rainsford away from the castle while the others made use of the opportunity to sneak into it.
Soon, Feng Bujue teleported. There was no reason for him to stay.
Not long after Feng Bujue left, a mammoth of a man appeared in the forest. He stood at the edge of the swamp, staring at the pool, wondering how he was supposed to salvage his master who had been sucked to the bottom of the swamp.