Chapter 71: One More Bet

Empty chamber!

Four pulls in a row, all empty!

Zeta threw his head back and burst into laughter. All the tension and fear from before vanished.

"Hahahahahaha—!"

"See that, Lin Yan? See that!"

"You think you’re worthy of gambling your life against me?"

"God is on my side!"

Lin Yan wiped his face. His palm came away covered in blood, and even the slightest movement of his head made him feel like throwing up.

Fuck. Guns really were way too overpowered.

He opened the Trait Library and quickly went through it. There were no Traits left that could make his body any tougher.

"What are you going to do?"

The revolver began spinning in Zeta’s hand.

"Lin Yan, what are you going to do ! ?"

His smile grew more and more unrestrained.

"Still asking your System?"

"Begging it to save you?"

"Hahahahahaha—!"

Lin Yan couldn’t help looking at the bastard still laughing at him.

The revolver spun lazily around one finger, his every movement carrying the ease of someone who already believed he had won.

Wait...

This guy was clearly nothing more than a soul, yet he could touch the gun.

The rules... the rules said each participant had to pull the trigger at least once during their turn. The revolver could not be used to attack anyone else.

The challenge phrase was "I challenge you to a real man’s duel." The revolver was called The Real Man’s Revolver, and the company that made it was called Real Man Co.

<anno data-annotation-id="3f8f20fb-84d7-669c-fcb3-4cc9cdb0801a" data-title="So the rules only restricted... the revolver?">So the rules only restricted... the revolver?¹</anno>

<anno data-annotation-id="c6bab444-ea0b-f3c3-1c5f-0daa07f58254" data-title="If the duel itself forbade the two participants from attacking each other, there would have been no reason to separately specify that "the revolver cannot be used to attack anyone else." In other words, the rules had never said they couldn’t attack each other by other means.">If the duel itself forbade the two participants from attacking each other, there would have been no reason to separately specify that "the revolver cannot be used to attack anyone else." In other words, the rules had never said they couldn’t attack each other by other means.¹</anno>

The last two times he had been shot, he had nearly fallen out of the chair, and nothing had forced him to remain seated.

Which meant the revolver wasn’t the point.

The real man’s duel was.

He stood up.

Zeta’s laughter stopped for an instant. The next moment, Lin Yan vaulted over the table and drove a full-force punch at his face.

His fist passed straight through without resistance.

No warning appeared. No punishment came.

He had guessed right.

Zeta froze for a moment, then burst out laughing again.

"Hahahaha! Did you forget—"

Lin Yan pulled his fist back and grabbed for the hand holding the revolver. Zeta realized something was wrong and immediately tried to pull away, but he was still too slow.

The smile vanished from Zeta’s face.

The next moment, it appeared on Lin Yan’s.

"You—"

At over two meters tall, Lin Yan’s hand was large enough to close around both Zeta’s gun hand and the revolver. His fingers tightened, trapping Zeta’s hand against the grip.

The moment Lin Yan grabbed the revolver with his other hand, Zeta understood.

He yanked his arm back.

It didn’t move.

Lin Yan kept turning the gun toward him.

"Let go!"

Zeta twisted hard, trying to tear his hand free, but Lin Yan’s grip never loosened.

"No! That’s cheating!"

"You can’t force me to pull the trigger!"

As the muzzle drew closer, Zeta panicked. His free hand clawed at the trapped wrist, tearing chunks of white soul-light loose as he tried to rip the hand off before the gun reached his head.

The wrist was already tearing apart. A few more seconds, and he might actually get free.

"Didn’t you say God was on your side?"

The muzzle was pressed firmly against Zeta’s head. He was still clawing at his own wrist, trying to tear it free.

"Then let’s gamble one more time."

Lin Yan tightened his grip.

Zeta’s trapped index finger began to curl against the trigger.

"No—"

BANG—!!!

[Live round fired.]

[Zeta Valerius is dead.]

[Duel concluded.]

---

[Task 1 completed.]

[100,000 points awarded.]

[Current points: 100,000.]

...

Line after line of something white kept flashing past the edge of his vision.

"Ugh...What the hell is that...?"

His head was still a complete mess. He planted his hands against the ground and tried to push himself up, but his hands felt weak and refused to give him any real support. He tried again, shifting his weight and using his core to haul his upper body off the ground.

By the time he finally got to his feet, he was already swaying badly and nearly went down again.

That last shot had been absurdly powerful. It had blasted him clear across the space. The other side was an even worse mess. Everything above Zeta’s waist was gone, leaving only half a body behind. Large fragments of white soul-light were scattered everywhere, their edges constantly evaporating into fine luminous mist that drifted through the air.

Quite a few fragments had landed on Lin Yan as well.

The instant one piece of white light sank into his body, a section of broken memory suddenly connected again.

Lin Yan froze.

These were his memories.

Seeing the soul fragments scattered across the ground continuing to disappear, he immediately walked over and reached out to pick them up.

The moment he extended his hand, he stopped.

The hand that had been gripping the body of the revolver had taken the worst of the blast. The entire palm had nearly burst open, the flesh peeled outward like a flower in bloom. His other hand was just as bloody, with the index and middle fingers gone from the base, blasted off to somewhere he couldn’t see.

"..."

"So this is the power of knowledge?"

Lin Yan looked at his ruined hands, then at the soul fragments still scattered across the ground.

"Fuck it."

He dropped to the ground and rolled straight through them.

Large amounts of white light sank into his body, restoring one missing memory after another. By the time most of the fragments on the ground had disappeared, Lin Yan finally stopped.

White light poured into him as he rolled, broken pieces of memory snapping back into place one after another.

By the time the last few fragments faded, Lin Yan had pieced most of himself back together.

Around him, the duel domain was coming apart as well. The hazy boundary thinned, and the real world slowly bled back in.

Lin Yan stayed where he was for a moment.

Then he remembered his fingers.

Maybe they were still salvageable.

He dragged himself back up and started looking.

The two missing fingers from his right hand were easy enough to find. Both were mostly intact.

His left hand was another matter.

The hand that had gripped the revolver had taken the blast almost point-blank. There were no fingers to recover, only bloody scraps of flesh scattered across the floor.

Lin Yan gathered those too.

Every piece he could find.

He knew next to nothing about reconstructing a hand this badly mangled, and even he could tell the odds were terrible.

Into the pocket they went anyway.

He could worry about whether any of it could be saved later.

Another streak of white flashed across the edge of his vision.

Lin Yan paused.

That thing again.

He finally turned his attention to it.

A small translucent window hovered near the upper-right corner of his sight. A red dot glowed at the top, and the number beside it kept climbing.

120,847.

Underneath, lines of text were flying past so fast they almost blurred together.

[Real-time translation enabled. All chat messages will be translated into the user’s current language.]

One line happened to linger long enough for him to read it.

[Fuck me, that was worth every last bit of the ticket price!]

<annotations style="display: none;">[The Real Man’s Revolver][Classification: F-Grade Rule Artifact.][Chambering: .44 Magnum.][Effect: To initiate a duel, the wielder must designate a living target within ten meters, maintain direct sight of the target, know the target’s full name, and declare the target’s full name followed by: "I challenge you to a real man’s duel." The duel begins only if the designated target verbally agrees; no specific wording is required, and any response recognized as acceptance will suffice. Once both parties are bound to the duel, each may wager anything they genuinely own, whether physically present or not, including money, property, abilities, physical attributes, reputation, lifespan, life, or other forms of recognized ownership. The total value of all stakes is converted into the power of the revolver’s single live round—the greater the combined wager, the more powerful that round becomes. The revolver contains six chambers and one live round. Participants take turns placing the muzzle against their own heads and pulling the trigger. Each participant must pull the trigger at least once during their turn, but may choose to pull it multiple times before passing the revolver to the other participant. The revolver cannot be used to attack anyone else; any attempt to aim or fire it anywhere other than at the current wielder’s own head will be resolved as though it had been aimed at that wielder’s head. Whoever fires the live round receives its full power. The rules of a real man’s duel will be upheld with absolute fairness. No favoritism, exemptions, or special treatment will be permitted. The revolver may be reused once the duel has concluded.][Manufactured by Real Man Co.—the manliest company in the universe.]</annotations>