Chapter 111: Duel

Player ID: Li Sanguang

This wasn’t his true ID in Fractured, but rather a nickname given to him by the gaming community. Once, on the Chinese servers of a certain virtual biohazard MMO, he had been a top-tier player—known for wielding an officially borderline-cheat infinite RPG launcher and greeting everything he met with explosives. “Kill it all, loot it all, rob it all.” With that signature style, Li Sanguang had carved out his reputation. But when he entered Fractured, he immediately made a fatal mistake.

He tried to mug an NPC—and got counter-killed. Guards tossed him into a dark prison.

Still, compared to his fellow players outside who couldn’t afford food or an inn room, maybe his luck wasn’t all bad.

While chewing on teeth-breaking black rock bread and plotting escape, a fellow player working for the nobles stumbled upon him and casually bailed him out. Afterward, he ran a string of minor missions. The closed beta was nearly at its end.

For a once-famous pro, suffering such humiliating setbacks in a hyper-realistic game was intolerable. To avoid leaving empty-handed bragging rights, Li Sanguang had bought a memory crystal to record his final mission—rumored to be spectacular.

But…

Watching clergy either flee blindly or get executed by firing squad, Li Sanguang pursed his lips in exasperation.

This didn’t look anything like the grand steampunk-versus-mystery war he’d imagined.

“Come on, brothers, show some fight—or when I log off, I’ll be the laughingstock of the forums.”

Such a pathetic execution scene, and this was supposed to be an important mission? He glanced at the clergy running like headless chickens, and placed little hope in the sealed Forbidden Lord of Cinder.

“Not a single one who can fight—”

BOOM!

A sudden chain of explosions nearly made Li Sanguang bite his tongue in half. Dense smoke from the front blocked his line of sight.

Arthur’s fuel-cartridge gun-sword, tuned for controlled detonation, flooded the battlefield with thick steam. And within that cover, the Steel Nun moved unseen, free to strike. Ordinary soldiers—even with steam rifles deadly to transcendents—lacked the strength and reflexes to stop her.

The smoke wasn’t dense enough to blind, but it veiled the field. Li Sanguang felt a strange prickling current run down his spine, nerves tingling in warning. Reflexively, he activated his memory crystal—just in time to witness something unforgettable.

A figure emerged from the haze.

Clad in tattered armor, robes hanging in rags, he carried a greatsword fused with flowing flame. He walked as if searching for something, each step measured through the rising steam.

The frontline and the Forbidden Lord of Cinder collided without warning.

The exiled lord’s eyes glowed red, blood mist roiling around him, and he cut forth a deadly sword strike.

“Die.”

Flames roared outward.

Heat brushed Li Sanguang’s face; he dove and rolled frantically. When he stopped, choking on charred air, he saw the front ranks engulfed in fire, shrieking as molten flame scythed through them.

Screams, gunshots, and the crackling of burning steel filled the air. The stench of scorched metal mixed with the nauseating odor of roasted flesh.

“Oh God… are you kidding me?” Only moments after mocking the battle’s weakness, Li Sanguang stared at his useless iron stick of a weapon, utterly bereft of safety.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

While his memory crystal recorded, ten prototype steam cannons thundered from the rear line. Fueled by combustion and bound by mystic seals, solid shells tore the sky with streaking trails before crashing down on the Forbidden Lord of Cinder’s position.

The shrieking bombardment grated skulls and split eardrums. Explosions rained like demonic howls. The Lord of Cinder raised his head the instant the cannons fired, eyes meeting the gaze of a Black Coat at the distant command line—before the tidal wave of mud and fire swallowed him.

“So this is a Lord of Cinder?”

The Black Coat’s face twisted into a grin. Usually skulking in the shadows, he rarely tasted such battlefield exhilaration. The sight of the forbidden lord stirred an unspeakable hunger.

Charge forward. Take his head.

“Deploy the Boiling-Water Spiders. Let me see what those unkempt madmen have wrought.” He turned to his adjutant, barely suppressing his bloodlust. He wanted to know if these nearly four-meter-long steel land-machines could truly face the Lord of Cinder head-on.

Amid the haze, from the flank of the battlefield, a slender figure in a black cloak stepped forth—Maria. From her vantage, she watched the confrontation between the forbidden lord and the military.

“Guns, cannons…”

Her crimson eyes narrowed, seeing two familiar war machines. Their segmented metal limbs churned across broken terrain, crawling like aberrant beasts, rushing the shadowed silhouette of the Forbidden Lord of Cinder.

“Those nightmare robots? So they were already here at this time.”

She remembered them well—machines that once boiled soldiers alive with scalding steam, leaving battlefields strewn with cooked corpses.

“Little toys, then?”

The Forbidden Lord of Cinder wiped the mud from his armor, unmoved by the near-misses of the artillery. Not a single shell had struck true; the shockwaves that would have killed mortals were nothing to him.

“You. You’re still here. I will kill you.”

As if waking from a long slumber, he let the invasive, tormenting hatred fill him. His mind was eroded by the will of fire, his purpose now sharpened into one obsession: to utterly annihilate the silver-haired, red-eyed woman.

Maria.

And for that, he would tear down every obstacle in his way.