123. Showtime!

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“What the hell! What is going on? Which heartless bastard started a fire? Aren’t they afraid of wetting the bed like a fountain in the middle of the night?”

After stepping outside, Chen Shang discovered that the entire abandoned town had been swallowed by roaring flames.

The town had clearly been deserted only moments ago, yet after he had spent a little while fooling around in an Internet café, someone had set the whole place ablaze?

But on closer thought, what had happened in the game just now seemed strangely similar.

After the character controlled by Chen Shang left the town, the place had caught fire. And the location where the character had escaped to appeared to be a cemetery.

Wasn’t that exactly where he had come from?

A cold sweat suddenly broke out all over Chen Shang as he wondered what kind of game it really was.

“This is way too strange...” Chen Shang shook his head and muttered as he tried to find a path through the flames and escape the town.

He secretly swore that once he got out, he would first hire ten friends to take the hits for him before continuing to explore places like this haunted wasteland.

Besides, the Dice Glove that allowed him to cheat had only about thirty percent of its charge remaining. He had no idea how long it would last. If only he had known, he would have gone to the black market to get a glove charger before coming here.

Chen Shang raised his light crossbow and ran toward the nearest exit from the town.

Among the ammunition for his light crossbow were Ice Rounds, which were apparently meant to freeze enemies. They seemed capable of suppressing flames temporarily as well.

“Craack—”

A burning wooden post could no longer support its own weight and collapsed across the road ahead. The flames, which seemed destined never to go out, sealed off the way forward and blocked Chen Shang’s escape.

Chen Shang swiftly switched ammunition and fired three Ice Rounds into the flames in front of him.

The azure energy rounds struck the fire and burst into a mass of ice crystals. The flames blocking the road diminished somewhat, dropping from roughly a person’s height to about half that.

Chen Shang immediately sprinted forward, took a running leap over the flames, and continued racing ahead.

Suddenly, an abrupt noise came from beside him. Something had broken through the wooden door of a building beside the street and lunged at him.

“Dodge check: 1d100 = ???. If the result is greater than 48, the dodge succeeds.”

Time around him came to a complete stop, and a die appeared in Chen Shang’s hand.

He wanted to turn his head and see the attacker’s true form while time was frozen, but he could move only a few fingers on his right hand. His head, apparently, was beyond his control.

Out of caution, Chen Shang silently called out “55” and rolled the die.

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After spinning across the ground for a while, the die finally came to rest on 52.

“The deviation is getting worse...” Chen Shang felt the glove on his right hand gradually losing power. If he had not been cautious enough to call out a slightly higher number, he would probably have been done for.

He could not afford to linger in this otherworld any longer. He had to find a way out as quickly as possible.

“1d100 = 52, which is greater than 48. Check passed. You dodged the opponent’s attack.”

Time began to flow again. Chen Shang suddenly felt as light as a swallow and instinctively sidestepped.

A withered claw covered in green skin swept past his shoulder.

Chen Shang focused his eyes and saw that his attacker was a green-skinned monster resembling a radiation-mutated zombie. Its dull, blood-red dead-fish eyes stared ominously at him. Its drooling mouth revealed yellow, withered teeth like dead weeds, while three arms that looked as though they had been crudely stitched onto its body flailed toward him.

This monster... was exactly the same as the one he had seen in the game.

Chen Shang had no intention of running. He decisively switched the light crossbow into chainsaw melee mode and charged the creature.

Although the monster looked like a zombie that had walked straight out of a B-movie, its movement and attack speeds were within the range of an ordinary human’s. In fact, because of its poor coordination, it was slightly weaker than a normal person.

Chen Shang brought the chainsaw down on one of the zombie monster’s arms. Foul green blood sprayed everywhere, and the entire limb was severed amid the shrill crunch of splintering bone.

The zombie monster let out a pained wheeze and staggered backward several steps. Chen Shang had no intention of letting it off, however. He raised the bloodstained chainsaw and hacked at another arm.

Another crunch of breaking bone rang out, and both of the monster’s arms were severed in an instant.

Realizing that it had lost two arms, the zombie monster wheezed in frustration, drool spilling from its mouth faster and faster.

After Chen Shang had swung the chainsaw twice in succession, he had no strength left for a third attack. The zombie monster took advantage of the opening, extended its third arm, and reached for him.

Chen Shang swiftly drew a pistol from his waist and pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Three gunshots erupted with flashes of fire. At point-blank range, Chen Shang shot the zombie monster in the head, blowing a gaping hole through its skull. The bullets exited through the back of its head, dragging out a string of oily green brain matter.

The zombie monster staggered backward in agony, its body arching sharply. Chen Shang seized the opportunity, tightened his grip on the chainsaw crossbow, and drove it viciously into the creature’s chest.

The rapidly spinning teeth shredded its organs, flesh, and bones all at once. A great gout of filthy blood burst from the monster’s chest and drenched Chen Shang from head to toe.

Chen Shang paid no attention to it. The moment he pulled the chainsaw blade from the zombie’s body, lights suddenly illuminated the weapon, accompanied by a prerecorded announcement:

“Congratulations! You have filled the charge gauge for the first time by using Chainsaw Mode. Press X + A to activate this weapon’s ultimate skill—Show Time!”

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The light on the crossbow flashed like the energy indicator on Ultraman’s chest, as though urging Chen Shang to press the button immediately.

To be honest, this was the first time he had triggered the light crossbow’s skill, and nobody had ever told him what it did.

Was it going to cause a huge explosion?

Probably not, right?

While he was still thinking, he heard several more howls. Six or seven green-skinned zombies resembling the one from before burst out of the flames and pounced on Chen Shang from every direction.

Chen Shang immediately pressed the X + A buttons on the light crossbow. Even if the so-called ultimate really was a massive explosion, he could still revive through his skill. Compared with that, he was far less willing to get bogged down fighting these disgusting zombies.

As the skill activated, a deep, magnetic male voice suddenly came from the light crossbow:

“Reveal your true form!”

The chainsaw crossbow in Chen Shang’s hands suddenly split down the middle, then automatically mounted itself onto his two forearms. At a glance, it looked as though two chainsaw blades had grown directly from his arms.

Bzzzt—!

Chen Shang felt a prick in his arms, as if some kind of stimulant had been injected into him.

The next moment, his body crouched halfway down against his will. His chainsaw-clad arms crossed over his waist, as though he were gathering strength before unleashing a swordsman’s draw-cut.

Naturally, the movement was not his own choice. It felt as though something else were controlling him.

Just as the zombies came within a single step of Chen Shang, an ear-piercing turbine roar suddenly erupted from the chainsaws.

The entire world seemed to turn pitch-black in that instant. Then two streaks of white light flashed, cleaving through the darkness.

When Chen Shang came to his senses, he found himself standing five meters away from where he had been, striking a dramatic pose. The zombies, meanwhile, had all been cut in half at the waist. Their upper and lower bodies gradually separated, revealing smooth, perfectly even cuts.

“Huh?”

Still completely bewildered, Chen Shang watched as the two chainsaw blades in his hands fused back together, reverting to the original light crossbow.

“So the ultimate skill is just making me perform a chainsaw draw-cut while unconscious?” Chen Shang complained.

Though it wasn’t a huge explosion, it was still pretty damn cool.

The flames around him grew fiercer by the second. Chen Shang had no time to inspect the zombies’ corpses and could only carry the light crossbow as he continued sprinting toward the outskirts of the town.

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