Chapter 133: Too Late

Chapter 33: Too Late

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Violent tremors, accompanied by ear-piercing booms, reverberated through the secluded corridor.

Tiny stones rained down from the ceiling, while dust was kicked up from the ground.

Dizzy and in agony,

Bert lay sprawled on the floor like a corpse.

His head felt as though a mixer were churning inside it, releasing endless waves of pain and faintness.

The thunderous collisions of the Pokémon battling nearby echoed in his ears.

Even though he was on the verge of unconsciousness, Bert still knew instinctively that his Arbok was engaged in an extremely fierce battle with its enemy.

Yet he could not help in the slightest. He could only become a heavy burden.

“Damn it!”

Bert roared inwardly,

but his body seemed to have lost all control and could not move even an inch.

“Move, damn youuuuu!”

When a human faced utter desperation, the deepest and most hidden potential within the body could awaken.

At that instant, stirred by Bert’s tenacious will, that potential slowly began to emerge.

On the cold, hard floor, Bert’s motionless body suddenly convulsed as though struck by an electric shock.

Mental energy began flowing through his meridians once more, and the fleshly body was reclaimed by its master.

Like a drowning man being dragged back above the surface,

Bert gasped desperately, his chest—burdened by the thick flesh of middle age—heaving violently.

His eyelids felt as heavy as lead. With immense difficulty, Bert controlled his tightly shut eyes and struggled to open them a sliver.

What entered his vision were the rubble and dust scattered across the gloomy floor,

and, lying quietly not far from him, a cold glimmer of metal.

“A gun…”

Sensing the strength remaining in his body rapidly fading,

Bert clenched his teeth and used every ounce of power he possessed to slowly move his right hand.

One finger, then two…

Like a climber scaling a cliff, Bert drove his fingers into the ground littered with sharp stones and pulled with all his might!

Scarlet blood seeped from his fingertips, and his thick nails were easily torn back.

Under the strain, Bert’s right arm drew slightly closer toward the pistol.

“Not enough!”

In Bert’s barely opened eyes, a flame of ironclad determination burned with a ferocity he had never possessed since birth.

Hiss—

His five bloodied fingers plunged into the ground once again.

He pulled with all his strength.

The distance narrowed a little further.

…

In the darkness,

a blood-covered hand caked with dust and gravel groped painfully across the cold floor.

At last,

a chill touched Bert’s fingertip.

Like a famished predator discovering fresh flesh before it,

Bert’s right hand, numb with pain, closed tightly around the firearm.

A faint smile appeared on his rigid face, pressed against the ground.

Beneath his leaden eyelids, his eyes turned sluggishly, as though trying to capture something in the darkness.

The muzzle rose slightly, and his finger curled over the trigger.

Within the secluded corridor,

violent impacts, furious hisses, and shouts continued to ring through the air in rapid succession.

Then, suddenly, it seemed that the battle had reached a brief opening.

The collisions ceased, replaced by two heavy thuds and harsh, labored breathing.

“Now!”

A sharp gleam flashed through Bert’s eyes.

His blood-soaked index finger gently squeezed the cold trigger.

“Bang!”

The powerful recoil nearly tore the pistol from his hand. The hammer struck the firing pin, igniting the primer with explosive force, while the metal bullet spun clockwise through the precisely rifled barrel.

Muzzle flash briefly illuminated the darkness. Pale smoke curled upward as a streak of cold metal shrieked through the air.

Even the air had no time to cry out before it was pierced straight through.

…

Heavy breathing echoed in the darkness.

Lu Yun’s thick, scarred arm hung at his side as he used this brief lull in the battle to recover as much strength as possible.

His crystalline pupils, glowing with a scarlet light, remained fixed on the opponent before him.

This Arbok was no ordinary creature!

Its enormous, muscular serpentine body granted it tremendous vitality and formidable strength.

Its dense, hardened purple scales provided extraordinary defense against both physical and special attacks.

And then there were the dazzling patterns around its neck, shifting wildly throughout the battle and layering one enhancement after another onto its body.

All these factors

made Arbok a terrifying war machine and an exceptionally troublesome opponent.

The more troublesome his opponent became, the more fortunate Lu Yun felt about his own decision.

If he had chosen to charge recklessly forward without a care in the world,

then by now, even his corpse might have been almost completely digested by the Arbok before him.

“Hiss!”

The Arbok, its own body covered in hideous wounds, let out a furious hiss at Lu Yun.

As its muscles flexed, scalding blood gushed from its wounds.

Clearly, Arbok was not faring well either.

With a system at his command, Lu Yun was naturally no pushover.

His six maxed-out individual values granted him attributes that were nearly invincible among opponents of the same level.

His dual Fighting and Ghost typing made his combat style more varied and flexible.

The strength enhancement and damage immunity provided by two pieces of legendary equipment had further elevated his battle power by leaps and bounds.

With all these advantages, Lu Yun was at a considerable disadvantage in level,

but in terms of actual combat strength alone, he was still slightly superior to Arbok.

By now, their battle had reached its fiercest point.

All schemes and strategies had long since been cast aside by both sides.

What remained was nothing but a brutal clash of flesh and bone!

Reddish-brown Fighting-type energy, blazing like fire, spilled from Lu Yun’s knuckles.

It twisted and wrapped around his fists,

transforming into a fervent battle spirit that surged outward.

Lu Yun bent his knees slightly. The sturdy muscles in his calves suddenly swelled,

and his explosive strength cracked the floor beneath his feet, sending fragments of stone flying through the air.

His tense body leaned forward like a cheetah, poised to charge straight toward Arbok.

But at that delicate instant, when Lu Yun’s previous momentum had faded and his next burst of strength had yet to form,

a cold gunshot suddenly rang out from the darkness beside him.

Time seemed to freeze.

Driven by the rifling, the metal bullet spun rapidly through the air, trailing a pale, spiral stream behind it.

Moving at a terrifying speed beyond sound, it turned the distance between itself and Lu Yun into nothingness in an instant.

Fortune had always been generous in rewarding those humans with unwavering determination.

The shot Bert fired from the darkness

had, by some bizarre twist of fate, been taken at the most perfect moment and aimed in the most precise direction.

Lu Yun’s pupils contracted, and an alarm of danger screamed in his mind.

“That shot… is aimed at my head!”

Although the Machop whose body Lu Yun inhabited possessed physical abilities far beyond those of a human,

its body was not especially suited to defense. Facing a firearm head-on would almost certainly end badly.

And if the bullet struck him directly in the head, instant death was entirely possible.

At this critical moment, the mental energy within Lu Yun’s mind seemed to be stimulated and suddenly erupted,

transforming into an extraordinarily keen reaction.

But it was useless.

Reacting mentally did not mean he could control his body in time.