Lord of the Myriad Worlds

Chapter 228: Battle in the Deep Mountains

It was a solid bunker built at the foot of the mountain.

The entire mountainside was solid rock. The entrance was a semicircular alloy blast door, flanked on both sides by dozens of firing ports and missile launch tubes.

Of course, the missiles had been gone for a long time.

Even their so-called cannon was just a tank's main gun — requiring about fifteen seconds between shots. If it had been a rapid-fire cannon, those stone giants would have been reduced to rubble long ago.

"Charge!"

"Rush them! Kick the Gatling, blow the tank, take the naturals alive!"

The remaining Ability Users launched another wave. This was probably the final push — because beyond this point, there was no cover at all. A clear open stretch of several hundred meters.

Li Wei stopped without hesitation. He had no desire to be killed by the natural humans, and even less desire to kill them. His cooperation with the Ability Users ended here.

"Xuanxuan, Little Sister — you two head back to where the natural humans had their ambush positions. Check for wounded. If there are any, treat them. Be careful."

The two moved out immediately. Li Wei, Leon, and Thomas each took cover behind a large tree to watch the battle unfold.The Ability Users' charge was fanatical and unstoppable. The deaths of their companions didn't lower morale at all — if anything, they could absorb the fallen's GPUs to power up. Truly formidable.

"Whoosh — BOOM!"

The bunker's old tank fired again, landing a direct hit on a stone giant. Given how slowly they moved, it would have been embarrassing to miss.

A torrent of gunfire immediately poured in, trying to destroy the giant while it was cracked and vulnerable.

Minimal effect.

Then something like an RPG came flying in and detonated — and with the stone giant still unhealed, the explosion shattered it completely.

At that moment, Li Wei clearly saw a Universal Gold Card materialize as the stone giant died — only for a cat-type Ability User to snatch it in an instant. The cat was blindingly fast. He'd started as a three-star-plus, but along the way had consumed three GPUs and two CPUs, putting him at four-star-minus. If he absorbed this Universal Gold Card on top of that, he might hit four-star outright.

And indeed he did. The moment the cat-type Ability User merged with the four-star gold card, it was as if he'd suddenly noticed something he'd missed. He looked up — directly at the trees where Li Wei, Leon, and Thomas were hiding. A sharp yowl, and he came streaking toward them like a gust of wind.

"Don't move."

Li Wei said it quietly — then turned and ran.

At first glance, it looked exactly like he was using Leon and Thomas as a rear guard while he fled.

But of course, that wasn't what was happening.

These Ability Users had a tendency toward linear thinking. In their logic, hesitating and refusing to fight was the most unforgivable offense — so when the cat had abandoned the main assault to come after Li Wei's group, it was because they'd been holding back. But now that Li Wei had turned tail and run, desertion became the most unforgivable offense. As long as Leon and Thomas stayed put, they became merely the second-most unforgivable — and therefore a lower priority.

Easy to predict.

And sure enough, the moment Li Wei bolted, the cat-type Ability User let out an even more furious yowl and accelerated — leaving only a blur. Impressive. That had to be at least 30 Agility.

Li Wei noted it with quiet surprise, but didn't panic. He activated the Two-Star Agility Card, adding 3 Agility. After subtracting Encumbrance, he had 25.

He began sprinting through the mountain forest, weaving and dodging through the complex terrain. This kind of environment was his home turf.

Even without switching to the Tracker title, his passive Perception +1 let him track the cat's position clearly.

And the cat absolutely didn't have stronger Perception to counter Li Wei's. Speed was its greatest advantage — along with sharper claws and a more agile frame.

Li Wei had no doubt the cat could dodge through a hail of gunfire and close the distance to tear through the natural humans.

In a way, drawing it away was doing those people a favor.

A high-Agility Ability User like this was a nightmare for natural humans.

"Meow! Where do you think you're running?!"

A gust of wind, and the cat was already on him — a claw raking down from above with a bone-chilling shriek of displaced air, almost forming a wind blade.

But Li Wei moved as if he had eyes in the back of his head, barely evading. The tree he'd used for cover was left with deep gouges — ten centimeters or more — sharper and more savage than a saw blade. And judging by the force, this cat had to have at least 25 Strength.

Genuinely dangerous. In open flat terrain, Li Wei might not be able to beat it — or would have to rely on the Noble Crest Armor's special properties to do something ruthless.

But here, in steep mountain terrain with complex geography and towering trees everywhere, Li Wei's advantages were maximized.

To an observer, it looked like he was being chased in desperate, harrowing fashion — every second under the threat of those claws, barely escaping each time. But in reality, he had complete control.

He even found time to release Adai, sending the bird five hundred meters into the sky to cover the entire battlefield and relay real-time intelligence on both sides.

Through Adai's vision, he confirmed that Leon, Zhao Xuanxuan, and Li Yue had indeed found two critically wounded natural human snipers.

Normally, those two would have been "split evenly" by the Ability Users at the first opportunity.

But this time, the Ability Users were more focused on pressing the assault on the bunker. They were different from ordinary zombies — they were Magic Zombies who had transcended base instincts.

So the two wounded snipers had been saved. Li Yue was bandaging and treating them now. That front was stable.

Leon and Thomas were holding position — smart enough to know that charging forward might get them killed by the natural humans, but retreating would make them deserters, and the cat might casually swipe them on the way past.

Not that a single swipe would kill them — but that ghost-like speed and terrifying attack power would still be a nightmare. Leon had 21 Agility, Thomas only 18, not even at Level 1 Awakening yet. Even with Thomas's Defense at 30 and his enhanced title, in this complex terrain he'd never even see the cat coming. The cat could just spam basic attacks until Thomas was dead, then pick off Leon — who was, in some ways, even more vulnerable.

So watching Li Wei play cat-and-mouse with the actual cat, Thomas was quietly stunned. Every moment looked like it was on the edge of disaster, yet every moment Li Wei slipped through. Leon, by contrast, found it completely normal.

Thomas's mental image of Li Wei was still that irritating archer from the Rookie Mission world. Even after hearing the kid had become Rookie King, he hadn't been particularly impressed. Just hype, he'd figured. He knew the real story — back then, just an ordinary kid.

But now, watching these ten-odd seconds of movement and evasion — this was real skill. Not something you stumbled into by luck. This was deep, solid fundamentals combined with techniques Thomas couldn't even fully read.

And Thomas noticed something else: several times, Li Wei had clearly caught perfect openings to counter-kill — and deliberately let them pass. He was pretending to be chased ragged through the forest...

So his goal was—

Thomas shifted his gaze back to the main battle. Six Ability Users remained: two stone giants, two fire-types, one ice archer, one spike-covered type.

Fewer in number, but stronger.

Like going bald and becoming more powerful in the process.

Because every single one of them had advanced to four-star.

The two stone giants moved slowly, but with no second RPG available on the natural human side, killing them was increasingly difficult — especially once they reached the bunker door, where the old tank's main gun was completely useless.

The two fire-types kept sheltering behind the stone giants, lobbing fireballs when the moment was right. Sometimes the natural humans' sharpshooters blew the fireballs apart mid-air — but sometimes they didn't react in time, and a fireball would punch straight into a firing port and detonate inside, sending tongues of flame licking outward. The ports themselves were fine, but the people inside must have been taking heavy casualties.

The natural humans weren't helpless either. There were many firing ports and they could constantly shift positions. They seemed to have plenty of large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rifles — sometimes catching the right angle and landing a headshot on an Ability User sheltering behind a stone giant.

But if the head wasn't their weak point, a new one would grow back in a second or two.

And if a heart shot killed an Ability User, the Universal Gold Card they dropped would immediately be swarmed and absorbed by the others — making them even stronger.

It felt like a dead end with no exit. A knot that could never be untied.

So what exactly was Li Wei's plan?

Using the Ability Users to grind down the natural humans?

What a filthy tactical mind.

Thomas silently cursed under his breath and held position with Leon.

"BOOM — BOOM—"

A thunderous pounding began. The two stone giants had started ramming the bunker's massive alloy blast door.

That thing had to be two or three meters thick. There was no way they were breaking through.

Then, without warning, everything changed.

From the firing ports above the bunker, four or five natural humans burst out screaming, their bodies wrapped in some kind of material. They threw themselves off the edge — hurling themselves directly down onto the area behind the stone giants, where the Ability Users had been sheltering.

"BOOM — BOOM — BOOM—"

Massive detonations shook the earth. The entire mountain seemed to shudder. A mushroom cloud rose into the sky. The shockwave was so powerful it even made the cat-type Ability User freeze for a split second — he snapped his head around to look.

Just one glance. But that glance decided his fate.

He thought he had everything under control. He didn't know that everything was under Li Wei's control.

In that instant, Li Wei executed an impossible spinning pivot, drew his three-star dagger, and drove it straight into the cat-type Ability User's heart.

"Meow—!"

A shriek — then a lightning-fast backward leap, carrying the cat over ten meters away. He turned and bolted.

His heart was indeed a weak point. But it wasn't his only one.

'You idiot — come chase me then!'

In moments, the cat had already covered over a hundred meters in a straight line. Blindingly fast.

If he wanted to run, nobody could catch him — except a Three-Star Sniper Armor-Piercing Arrow.

Yes.

Li Wei had calculated everything in advance. Adai, flying high overhead, could also use Parabolic Positioning — and with even greater precision and more adjustments than Li Wei could manage on the ground.

"Thud."

A flash of red — like a missile. The Three-Star Sniper Armor-Piercing Arrow found its mark with terrifying precision, punching clean through the cat-type Ability User. His second heart was blown apart.

A strike from a completely different dimension.