Chapter 93: Only Thirty Seconds

A faint hum passed over the position, barely audible.

The gravity field that had held for ten seconds vanished the instant Elena died.

They both felt it.

The howling wind seemed to fall silent. A chill settled over the position, deep enough to freeze the marrow.

The tiger had broken its chains. There would be no reasoning with it now.

"Why..."

The leather-coated man stared at the newcomer beside the gun carriage, dragging his elbows through the sand as he struggled to crawl toward him.

"Why the fuck aren’t you firing?! Kill him and you get a share! Fifty thousand Paradise Coins, twenty attribute points... You wanted points, didn’t you? FIRE!"

His voice cracked. Blood flecked his lips, but he kept his face raised, waiting for the newcomer to act.

Before the young man could answer, a voice spoke behind him.

"I just came here to find a plane."

Displaced armor plates scraped and clicked against one another.

"Why did you have to come after me?"

The leather-coated man looked back.

Lin Yan was standing upright, his blade angled down at his side. Fine sand still trickled from his armor.

The man’s lips moved. Instinctively, he looked toward Chen.

Chen stood a dozen meters away, bent over and gasping, his chest and back heaving. The scarlet aura had dissipated. His iron-gray arms hung at his sides, shaking uncontrollably.

His left hand still resembled a fist. Half of his right had collapsed. That final punch had shattered the remaining finger bones against Lin Yan’s bracer, packing fragments into the torn flesh. Blood ran down his wrist.

The leather-coated man swallowed. Chen’s name caught in his throat.

A sharp rush of air—

The black-armored figure moved before either man could blink.

Freed from tenfold gravity, Lin Yan crossed the sand too quickly for their eyes to follow. His afterimage still lingered where he had stood when he was already in Chen’s face.

Chen never even raised his ruined hands.

A cold streak flashed past.

Both iron-gray arms came off at the shoulders, tumbling into the air on trailing streams of blood.

Before the pain registered, the second cut swept across his waist.

The blade passed through flesh and bone without slowing, cutting through his ribs, organs, and spine before tearing free of his back. His towering body split at the waist, the upper half pitched forward by the force of the stroke.

Chen’s eyes bulged. A thick mouthful of blood choked from his throat.

Lin Yan stepped after him, the eye exposed by his broken faceplate fixed on Chen’s face.

"You were enjoying yourself back there, weren’t you?"

The last word left his mouth, and he unleashed a savage flurry of cuts.

The blade vanished from sight.

Cold lines of steel crossed in its place, weaving through the wind around Chen’s falling body. The cuts came too fast to distinguish; only the continuous tearing of flesh and cracking of bone marked their passage.

Before Chen could hit the ground, his body had been hacked apart. Blood, flesh, and shattered bone rained onto the dry sand, soaking it into dark mud.

A few pale fragments of bone, still trailing strips of flesh, dropped into the spreading blood.

Nothing recognizable remained.

Chen.

Hacked to pieces. Dead.

Wind swept through the position.

Lin Yan let the blade come to rest, flicked the clotted blood from it, and sheathed it with a crisp click.

Without looking back, he walked across the blood-soaked sand toward the leather-coated man.

The man struggled onto his back and tried to retreat, but his limbs would no longer support him. He could only lie there and watch Lin Yan approach.

The footsteps stopped before him.

Lin Yan looked down. Flesh and blood clung to his black scale armor; the eye visible through his broken faceplate betrayed nothing.

The man’s lips trembled. Broken, rasping sounds were all that came from his throat.

Lin Yan raised a boot over his face.

Then stamped down.

A wet crunch.

As casually as crushing an ant in his path.

He lifted his boot, scraped the blood and brain matter off in the sand, and stepped over the body, heading toward the rear of the position.

The leather-coated man.

Skull crushed underfoot. Dead.

[00:30 / 00:60]

[All veteran Contractors in this combat zone have been killed.]

[Verified Impediment: Terminated.]

[Qualifying Severe Injury: Not Inflicted.]

[Emergency Extraction Conditions: Not Met.]

[Scarlet Bounty—Failed.]

...

[Trait Plunder triggered.]

[Trait obtained: Werewolf Bloodline — Green.]

[Trait obtained: Stacking Force — Green.]

[Trait obtained: Blood Manipulation — Green.]

Lin Yan opened all three descriptions.

[Werewolf Bloodline — Green.]

[Effect: While equipped, allows voluntary transformation into a werewolf, enhancing muscular strength, bone resilience, and explosive power, and granting claws and fangs.]

[Transformation does not impair reason, is unaffected by the lunar cycle, and may be reversed at will.]

[Stacking Force — Green.]

[Effect: Successive attacks that connect accumulate a portion of the force from each impact, increasing the power of subsequent strikes.]

[Accumulated force may be released in a single blow. Can be channeled through melee weapons.]

[Greater accumulation places greater strain on the body.]

[Blood Manipulation — Green.]

[Effect: Allows the user to sense and control their own blood, making blood outside the body adhere to objects or take shape.]

Turning into a werewolf was something Lin Yan had fantasized about as a kid. Getting the chance now was another matter.

He was already big enough. If the transformation bulked him up as much as it had the shield bearer, wouldn’t he end up nearly three meters tall?

How the hell was he supposed to fit into his armor then?

At his current level, the benefits hardly seemed worth the trouble.

Blood Manipulation was even less appealing. He couldn’t think of a damn thing he needed it for.

Stacking Force, though—that one suited him.

Chen had used it to build an initially unimpressive barrage into a punch that sent him flying. With Lin Yan’s physique and Fleshseed, he could afford to push it much further. And he could channel it through his blade.

He opened his equipped Traits.

All six slots were occupied.

Lin Yan scanned the list and stopped at Battle Instinct I. It had helped him early on, but with the experience and judgment granted by Blade Arts II, he was getting less out of it.

That one could go.

[Battle Instinct I — White unequipped.]

[Stacking Force — Green equipped.]

[Current equipped traits:]

[Trollblood I — Pseudo-Green.]

[Fleshseed — Gold.]

[Blade Arts II — Green.]

[Brawn II — Green.]

[Agility II — Green.]

[Stacking Force — Green.]