Chapter Ninety-Three: Like Moths to a Flame

The dragon still held a colossal fireball in its jaws.

After descending a short distance, it opened its mouth and hurled the fireball downward.

Boom!

The fireball slammed violently into the ground, but it failed to strike anyone there.

Qin Fei and the others had long since undergone a complete improvement in physical condition.

Moreover, human bodies were far smaller than those of dinosaurs, giving them an extra advantage when evading ranged attacks.

Thus, Qin Fei and the others slipped away from the dragon’s assault with ease.

Only the four of them had come to face this beast, and they had brought no pets with them.

Because the dragon could fly, it was of almost no use to the Southern Giant Lizard, which could move only on the ground.

Not only that, the creature’s enormous size would only make it harder for it to dodge the dragon’s fireballs. One careless moment, and it might be struck, driven into a berserk state, or even turn and attack its own allies.

So Qin Fei had not brought it onto the battlefield this time.

For the same reason, he had also left behind the Big-Nosed Beast, the Dire Wolf, and the Basilisk Frog.

Seeing that the fireball it had spat out had done no good, the dragon flapped its wings and landed on the ground.

In the world of the Ark, the dragon boss could not only fly and spit fireballs at enemies, but also attack in two other ways.

Beyond directly flying up to its target and engaging in close combat, it could also breathe flames from its mouth to scorch enemies at short range.

The dragon, now grounded, instantly spewed several streams of flame toward Qin Fei and the others not far away.

Seeing the flames rush toward him, Qin Fei sprang upward at once.

Using the double-jump function of the bottle cloud, he leapt into the air.

Then he spread the glider on his back and, borrowing the height of that leap, swiftly flew away from where he had stood, narrowly escaping the wave of flames.

Xie Nainai took from her backpack a strangely shaped firearm that looked rather cumbersome and held it in her hands.

White, freezing vapor continuously drifted from the barrel.

This gun was called a freeze gun.

In the world of Fallout 4, Xie Nainai had not only obtained the melee item Rage Fist, but also taken the freeze gun from the shelter.

When she saw the flames from the dragon rushing toward her, Xie Nainai immediately pulled the trigger.

Puffs of white mist burst from the muzzle of the freeze gun.

This white mist was extremely cold, and the instant it met the flames, it extinguished them completely.

Its ammunition was exceedingly precious. After clearing away the fire before her, Xie Nainai put the freeze gun away again.

Qin Fei and Xie Nainai had both avoided the dragon’s wave of fire.

But Caesar and Pulse had no good way to deal with it.

When the dragon was flying in the sky, the fireballs it spat were far from the ground, and the two could still rely on speed to dodge them by force.

But after the dragon landed, the flames it breathed at close range were basically impossible to evade by speed alone.

In an instant, fire consumed both of them from head to toe.

They rolled madly on the ground, trying to smother the flames on their bodies in that way.

As their whole bodies were set ablaze, Caesar and Pulse hurriedly stripped off all their clothes. They took out water skins from their backpacks and poured water over themselves.

Yet the heat of those flames was far greater than they had imagined.

The moment the fire touched their skin, their bodies were already ignited. Even after they tore off the clothes clinging to their skin, it was still useless...

Amid their screams, in barely half a minute, they were burned to ashes.

Before, when Pulse had entered the toxic gas mine, he had accidentally been killed by leeches once. When he entered the cave of the High Priest, he had also died by accident once.

Thus, all of his replacement dolls had already been used up.

With no replacement dolls left, after the dragon burned him to death, he could not be revived again.

This time, Pulse was truly dead.

At the same moment Caesar and Pulse were burned to death, the diamond-shaped crystal on Qin Fei’s wrist sent him a notification that Pulse had left the team.

Pulse has left the team!

Once a survivor dies completely, they automatically leave their team, and the team leader also receives a notice that the member has departed.

As for Caesar, because he still had a replacement doll in his backpack, he would revive again on his sleeping bag after death.

Qin Fei’s eyes widened in shock.

Pulse and Caesar were actually dead.

In the blink of an eye, his two teammates had been reduced to ashes.

Most crucial of all, because he no longer had a replacement doll, Pulse could no longer revive.

In the world of the Ark, Qin Fei and Pulse had known each other for some time.

Now that he had seen his companion burned to death, a wordless sorrow surged within Qin Fei at once.

He was not merely grieving the death of a friend.

More importantly, Qin Fei feared death; he was worried that he himself might meet the same fate as Pulse.

After completing the missions of two worlds, a survivor was given one chance to choose not to continue traveling.

If they chose that, they could take the bonus earned from the mission and live an ordinary life of moderate comfort...

And no longer have to worry about death.

When survivors traveled between worlds, the chance of dying was very high.

Yet every person in the team, Qin Fei included, had chosen without the slightest hesitation to keep going.

After all, in these worlds of passage, there existed magic, future technology, and other such powers...

By continually accumulating these powers, a survivor could even transcend ordinary existence and become a being akin to a god.

Perhaps no one was willing to remain mundane.

All survivors who crossed into the game worlds, even if they flew into the flames like moths and lost their lives, even if they were burned alive as Pulse had been, would not stop their journey through the worlds.

For the sake of power, for the sake of surpassing the ordinary, no one would regret even death.

Qin Fei included.

So he quickly adjusted his mindset.

After all, if Qin Fei truly wanted transcendence, he would have to keep living, keep strengthening himself, and become an extraordinary existence.

Not even the death of a friend would leave the slightest cowardice in his heart.

According to the tactics he had already planned, Qin Fei charged forward several steps.

Using that burst of momentum, he sprang into the air at once. With the help of the bottle cloud, he completed a second jump in midair.

Upon reaching the highest point, he spread his glider and instantly flew to the space between the dragon’s two legs.

In the game, there was a certain technique to killing a dragon.

The dragon was formidable in combat, capable of flight and ranged attacks... but no matter how powerful a creature might be, it would often have weaknesses.

In pursuit of overwhelming strength, the dragon had grown to a massive size far beyond that of Kong and the Broodmother.

Precisely because of this, it could not attack an enemy of smaller stature positioned between its own two legs.

After Qin Fei slipped beneath the dragon, he swiftly took out the Tek rifle from his backpack and began firing controlled bursts upward at the dragon overhead...

And the dragon, unable to reach Qin Fei beneath it, had no answer at all. Unable to strike the target under its body, it grew frantic and began spinning in place.

Under Qin Fei’s relentless bursts from the Tek rifle, blood gradually began to flow from its abdomen.

Like ordinary firearms, the Tek rifle would overheat as its temperature rose.

After using it for a while, Qin Fei stowed the Tek rifle in his backpack because it had grown too hot.

He switched to his shotgun and continued firing at the dragon.

Under Qin Fei’s sustained attack, the wound in the dragon’s abdomen grew larger and larger...

As the injury worsened, its movements became increasingly sluggish, and even its breathing grew weaker by the moment.

At last, the dragon finally collapsed to the ground from excessive blood loss.