Brother Dao gritted his teeth so hard his gums bled from the force.
The two locked in a stalemate—for Brother Dao, every instant felt like a century.
Yet he forgot: he had more than one enemy.
Fu Songcheng walked to where the dagger had fallen earlier. He unhurriedly bent down, his slender fingers gripping the hilt. With a light pull, he took the bloodstained dagger back into his hand.
He walked to Brother Dao’s side and looked down at him as he wrestled against Yu Huaiting.
Brother Dao caught sight of Fu Songcheng approaching from the corner of his eye. His eyes erupted with intense despair and unwillingness—not long ago, this very man had asked him, “Do you trust me?”
He wanted to turn the gun’s muzzle, but the crushing weight of Yu Huaiting’s greatsword pinned him dead. He couldn’t even turn his neck with any ease.
The expression on Fu Songcheng’s face was terrifyingly calm.
He looked at Brother Dao’s face, twisted with fury and exertion, and bent slightly at the waist.
“Sorry about this.”
Fu Songcheng’s voice was soft. The instant the words fell, the dagger in his hand became an afterimage.
Extremely precise, clean—it stabbed into the side of Brother Dao’s neck in an instant, then, without hesitation, slashed horizontally.
Shh—
Scalding blood sprayed out like a fountain, splattering across Yu Huaiting’s cold greatsword and onto Fu Songcheng’s boots.
Brother Dao’s eyes flew wide, staring at this cunning, ruthless man before him, the light in his eyes rapidly scattering.
The pistol gripped in both his hands finally lost its strength and clattered to the ground.
Yu Huaiting smoothly withdrew his greatsword, stepped back half a pace, and shook the blood off the blade with distaste.
Brother Dao’s body toppled straight backward, slamming heavily onto the platform. After a few twitches, he went completely still.
The whole fight happened extremely fast—from Brother Dao’s explosive draw to Fu Songcheng’s dagger finishing him off, no more than a dozen seconds in total.
Only when Brother Dao’s corpse hit the ground did the bleached-hair youth nearby and the middle-aged man below the platform snap back to their senses as if waking from a dream.
The two stood together, coordinating with the seamless rapport of a single person.
They were clearly players who had long since bound themselves into the same team!
One played the fool in the open; the other pushed the boat along from the shadows.
The middle-aged man swallowed, his legs as heavy as lead.
Under the absolute suppression of force, he didn’t even dare entertain the thought of a desperate lunge.
The short-haired girl looked at Brother Dao lying in a pool of blood, then at Fu Songcheng and Yu Huaiting standing to the side, her eyes full of unwillingness and hatred.
She had known from the very beginning that these two were problematic, but she hadn’t been able to convince the foolish Percival or the other Loyal Servants.
Now, it was all too late.
“You two—you killed him with your own hands.”
The short-haired girl glared at them through gritted teeth. “It wasn’t the system—you killed him.”
“What gives you the right to question us?”
Fu Songcheng didn’t look at her again. “He lost, so he should accept his punishment. A loser trying to sneak-attack and kill the winners right before death? There’s no such logic.”
Yu Huaiting, meanwhile, rested the greatsword on his shoulder, watching the short-haired girl with interest. “What? You want to fight us too?”
The short-haired girl took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the fear in her heart.
She absolutely could not die here.
Her right hand darted into her pocket and pulled out an item radiating golden light: [Leave Slip].
This was an extremely expensive item for escaping an instance—she hadn’t expected to end up using it on a B-rank instance of all things.
“You two—I’ll remember you.”
The short-haired girl gave them one last venomous look, then used the item to escape without hesitation.
A blinding golden light instantly enveloped her entire body.
When the light faded, the short-haired girl’s figure had vanished from the spot, leaving only a fluttering scrap of paper.
“Tsk, she ran fast.”
Yu Huaiting looked at the paper scrap on the ground and pursed his lips with some regret.
“Forget her.” Fu Songcheng put the wiped-clean dagger back into his space. “The system’s about to clear the field.”
As if to confirm his words, the mechanical voice in the sky sounded again—this time carrying a bone-chilling air of execution.
[Eradication protocol activated.]
[Targets locked: Player ‘Zhu Chenglin’, Player ‘Liu Yiming’.]
Not until the moment before their deaths did Fu Songcheng learn their names.
“No! No! I was wrong—let me start over!”
The bleached-hair youth scrambled backward, screaming shrilly.
The middle-aged man closed his eyes, let out a deep sigh, and let his arms fall limply to his sides.
Two thick red pillars of light shot down from the void, precisely enveloping the bleached-hair youth and the middle-aged man.
Under the red light, their bodies—like sand sculptures weathered for a thousand years—began to crumble inch by inch from the edges, dissipating into the air.
In just a few seconds, the platform fell silent again.
Apart from Brother Dao’s gradually cooling corpse on the ground, no trace remained that anyone else had ever existed.
[Congratulations, players ‘Fu Songcheng’ and ‘Yu Huaiting’, on completing the faction confrontation mission.]
[Settling your rewards. Teleporting back to the system hall in ten seconds…]
On the empty platform, only two standing figures remained.
The taut air finally relaxed.
Yu Huaiting let out a long breath. With a flip of his wrist, he put the terrifying greatsword back into his space.
He turned his head, looking at Fu Songcheng, who was tidying his collar, and reverted to his slacker demeanor.
He walked over in a few strides and once again slung his arm around Fu Songcheng’s shoulder with utter naturalness, complaining, “Hey, I gotta say—you were squeezing my doll way too hard in your pocket earlier! I almost yelped out loud!”
Fu Songcheng frowned slightly and unceremoniously pushed his arm off his shoulder.
“If you’d played the game seriously just now, I wouldn’t have needed to remind you that way.” Fu Songcheng looked at him coldly. “Who starts a game yelling ‘kill everyone’?”
“I like it. You’re so nosy—do you live by the sea or something?”
Yu Huaiting rubbed his shoulder, unbothered, and shot back with a grin.
Fu Songcheng snorted and couldn’t be bothered to keep bickering.
“But speaking of which.” Yu Huaiting leaned closer to Fu Songcheng, a trace of probing in his eyes. “You asked that old man if he trusted you, then killed him with your own hands. Even I’m wondering—what kind of dressed-up beast are you?”
“All tender and devoted one second, then blade out the next.”
“Shut up.” Fu Songcheng’s eyes turned cold. “Stop prying into my business.”
“Tch, boring.”
Yu Huaiting rolled his eyes, then rubbed his chin, savoring the game they’d just played.
The system’s countdown turned into massive red numbers in midair, ticking down the final seconds.
[3]
[2]
[1]
[Teleportation begins.]
White light completely enveloped their bodies.
The platform was empty—only a cold wind remained, blowing through the silent ruins, stirring Brother Dao’s unclaimed corpse.
In the victors’ story, the foolish losers have no right to a byline.
Even after leaving the instance, Fu Songcheng didn’t know his name.
Maybe one day he’d die like that too.
Who knew?
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