A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 138 Summer in the Mountain City (Part 2)

Strictly speaking, Quinn's first real battle after arriving in the other world was against Vice Dean Hermes of Grindelwald.

It started inexplicably, and it ended inexplicably.

His severe lack of combat experience became a major disadvantage when he encountered Jack, and if he hadn't met Father Sissa, the outcome would have been unpredictable.

Strangely, despite having little combat experience and no training on Earth, Quinn possesses a bizarre fighting instinct.

This allows him to act like a seasoned master, making the most accurate judgments with his body and subconscious without needing to think when facing an enemy.

Using MOBA games as an example, Quinn is like a complete novice with no experience or foundation, who doesn't understand strategy, team fights, teamwork, or enemy skills.
Yet, they are able to hold their own against their opponents in single-player battles, and often even have the upper hand.

Quinn had never tested how high the limits of this instinct within his body could be.

But he knew that what he lacked was experience, or rather, practical thinking on how to correctly apply this instinct.

He has been in Temuran for almost four months. Since returning from the Abyss, his boss has taken him to find one or two unlucky people to practice on every week.

The boss believes that skills can be taught and experience can be learned, but real-world experience is essential for genuine growth.

A life-or-death real-world battle.

The boss's earlier statement, "Kill him and you can leave," was not an empty promise. He would never offer any help unless a situation arose that Quinn couldn't handle.

If he dies at the hands of an evenly matched opponent, that's his own business.

Always being protected only forges a beautiful but useless piece of glass, which shatters with a single blow. To obtain steel, one needs true blood and fire—

The superhuman, the monsters around the city, and Anlexie of the Ghost White Bandits were Quinn's tenth real battles. After more than two months, Quinn had not gained any improvement in his skills. His instincts still silently but efficiently controlled his body.

But his emotions became increasingly relaxed and at ease.

Blood was drawn out by the Mana blade, and Anlexithy rolled away in a sorry state before his belt sword could even touch Quinn.

The katana followed closely behind like a spell.

Arcane blades have no physical form; their destructive power relies entirely on the spell itself. Lacking weight, they are far inferior to steel in terms of slashing power. If Anlexis's shield were still intact, Quinn would never have been able to so easily suppress him into a desperate struggle. Knights, who excel at defense, are particularly vulnerable to this type of weapon.

However, the absence of weight also means that the biggest drawback of the katana has disappeared.

The knife was only the size of an elder wand to Quinn, so light that he didn't need to think about sheathing or neutralizing the force when wielding it. It was precisely because Anlexis hadn't noticed this characteristic that he was caught off guard by the thrust that was too fast to react to.

roll.

Anlexi tried to create distance, but in the narrow alley, he could only retreat. The katana, however, pursued closely. Quinn no longer used the rigid iaido parrying technique he had before; instead, he used straight slashes, thrusts, and upward slashes.
Like a snake slithering across the land, the fierce glint of the blade weaved through the rain, elusive and unpredictable, leaving Anleke no chance to rise and retaliate.

In the lower and middle sequences, regardless of one's fate, it takes some time to activate a supernatural ability that can change the situation.

For example, the hand gesture Quinn makes when using [Steal] is necessary to match the ancient Terran language used to manipulate the power.

The knight's "Knights Don't Die Unarmed" is similar to a passive ability; although it doesn't require a specific trigger, its effect isn't as convenient, requiring the preparation of items to act as a sword and shield beforehand. Another ability of the swordsman/shield user is driving vehicles, which is useless in urban warfare. He needs to find other ways to break the deadlock, but he's being overwhelmed by Quinn.

In a short while, Anlekesai had nowhere to retreat. He was hit by several knives in succession, his breathing was disordered and he desperately dodged, his blood staining the water red.

A muffled rumble of thunder came from the horizon, but the light couldn't penetrate the narrow alley. Anlekesei couldn't even make out his face. His figure, wielding a katana, moved swiftly like a grim reaper.

Life in Eswell has gradually overshadowed those days in the Empire. Family ties, the glory of military service, and the resentment of imprisonment have all been buried in a corner of memory. This line of work involves evil deeds, wealth built on the suffering of the silent masses of Eswell, and even seeing the heartbroken expressions on the faces of those women sometimes brings a pang of conscience.
Anlexico didn't believe that supernatural powers would bring him a peaceful end. In the dead of night, he would be filled with unease, fearing death in a gangland feud, loss of control over his supernatural abilities, or even the Imperial Military Police coming across the ocean to find him.
But he never imagined that he would die at the hands of a random man.

His expression was as if he were using him as a practice toy, intently anticipating what new tricks he would pull as he rolled around.

A hint of violence flashed in Anleksey's eyes.

To put it nicely, he was one of the leaders of the White Bandits, but in the eyes of those bigwigs in East Wales, he was nothing more than a gangster, a beggar who could be appeased with scraps. Unlike the superhumans trained by state powers who had reliable arcane equipment, and unlike the superhumans of the cult who had containment items available, these wild superhumans could only gamble their lives on luck at the Adventurers' Guild if they wanted to obtain anything.

The mystical items that end up on the black market and can be bought and used by these gangs are all flawed items with significant side effects. For example, the Mista that Ankuya gave to Quinn is an extremely rare and highly sought-after item. The slightly better ones are taken by the White Bandit leaders above him, and all he gets are tools for risking his life.
These kinds of items aren't even worth keeping by the cult; they'd probably break after one use, and the cost would far outweigh their intended purpose.
Anlexis had nowhere to retreat.

As the katana slashed down, he awkwardly raised his belt, a piercing tearing sound rang out. The extraordinary concept that "Knights never die unarmed" could grant had come to an end. After all, it was just a belt. The dented pieces of iron and half of the belt flew out, and the katana paused only slightly before continuing to fall.

Anlexi raised his hand, his flesh slamming into the blade formed from mana, severing his muscles. The brute force of the knight's destiny stubbornly resisted in the end. At the cost of one hand, he managed to deflect the blade slightly, piercing his ribs below his heart, and blood gushed out.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. After Anlexi's left hand, which he had used to block the knife, was cut open, not a single drop of blood flowed out.

The bones between the skin and flesh were exposed, with a mottled, withered yellow color, as if the skeleton of a dead person had been attached to a living person. If you looked closely, you could see that it was covered with a dense layer of worm-like characters.

The words were so malevolent that Quinn had seen similar words in a book about witchcraft. A bad feeling washed over him, and he immediately severed the connection between his mental energy and his wand.

This is the advantage of the Manata sword; it can be switched on and off freely like a lightsaber. The blade, which was inserted into Anlexis's body, dissipated and then condensed again a moment later. Meanwhile, the staff had already changed angle and was held horizontally against Anlexis's neck, ready to end his life with a single strike.

Quinn met his gaze, his eyes filled not with resentment or fear, but with a madness tinged with venom.

A sense of danger rushed to his head, and Sekiro's instinctive premonition made him instinctively roll backward—

Compared to the [Thief], the [Bandit] has further enhanced their eyesight. The last scene before the roll, like a slow-motion image, is clearly imprinted in their mind.

Blood suddenly gushed from the dense incantations on his bones, and they came to life like swarms of worms, beginning to devour flesh and blood.

All of this happened so fast. The moment Quinn rolled over, Anlexi's left hand was sucked into a withered skeleton, with only a layer of transparent, wrinkled skin covering the bone, stained with the color of blood.

His left hand swung violently, several times faster than before. A dark cloud filled with wails and cries surged from the incantation, propelling the arm across like the flames erupting from the tail of a rocket. In an instant, the blood-red skeleton shattered the rain curtain and crashed into the high wall on the right with unstoppable force like a storm. The building visibly shook, cracks spread, bricks collapsed, and rainwater scattered, as if it had been struck by an earthquake.

The movement was too fast; if Quinn hadn't rolled away in advance, he would probably have been broken in half by the skeleton. After rolling, he quickly stood up from the ground, his perfect dodge with Shadowfall 2 working. The distance between the two increased by several body lengths. Quinn did not attack again, because Anlexi looked like he couldn't possibly survive.

The sweeping skeleton not only forced Quinn back, but also ripped half a bone off his arm. The flesh and blood could not withstand such brutal force, and the torn flesh was bleeding profusely, with bone spurs clearly visible.

The bones of the upper arm were white, lacking the withered look of someone buried in the yellow earth for many years.

With multiple knife wounds on his body, a severed arm, and a fatal gash torn from below his heart by the Mana blade, he was not a warrior who could endure pain any longer, and there was no way he could survive.

Thick black clouds surged from between the walls, accompanied by eerie wails and cries, as if thousands of dead souls were trapped within them, making the wind and rain gloomy and oppressive, turning the alley into a hellish place in a short while.

Quinn's eyes flickered. In this environment, he felt his hands and feet were ice-cold. Something unseen and intangible wanted to rush into his body, but it was blocked by his powerful dual destiny characteristics. He could hold on for a while.

"Is this witchcraft?"

Having already acquired the arcane foundation that Ankuya had used to prepare for his interview, Quinn gained access to the Whale Skeleton Library's teacher section after becoming a senior teaching assistant. In the past two months, Quinn had read quite a few books from the academy's collection, and his perspective was now comparable to that of the average senior student.

Witchcraft and arcane arts are quite similar in power. Arcane arts are precise and rigorous like mathematics, relying on mental power and circuits to construct mana, while witchcraft is more primitive and disordered, relying on drawing power from unknown beings in high positions of the spirit world, making it much more dangerous.

In the dark ages before the Divine Age, arcane magic was a noble art that only a select few could master, while sorcery, with its much lower learning threshold, was widely practiced. However, after the Divine Age, and especially after the establishment of the academy, the dangerous and unstable sorcery gradually disappeared, regarded by arcane sorcerers as a symbol of backwardness and barbarity, with only a few sorcerers in a small country on the northern continent still persisting in it.

Judging from Anlexicote's northern appearance, it's not impossible that he acquired such an arm.

He seemed to know he wouldn't live much longer, and his expression softened, even nodding in acknowledgment that it was witchcraft.

“Before I went to prison, the military police cut off my hand as punishment for rape,” Anleksei said slowly, pulling the skeleton from the wall. “Later, when we escaped from the Gulag, the wizard who saved us prepared this arm for me.”

Quinn didn't want to listen to his nonsense.

While Alexei was taking his arm, Mista had already taken the weapon and was pulling the trigger repeatedly at his head.

Pieces of firelight illuminated the rain-soaked alleyway, only to be extinguished by the rolling black clouds.

Anlexicote was still standing there, perfectly fine.

The Demon King's Eye was already activated. In Quinn's vision, the black clouds were chaotic shapes filled with malevolent twists, and bullets that entered them seemed to be swallowed up. Anlexithy shook his hand, and six rotten, shriveled eyeballs fell to the ground from the cracks in the bones, where he stomped on them.

"In my country, whether you're a commoner, an official, a tycoon, or a superhuman, everyone is treated the same if they commit a crime. So I accept this hand because I touched a woman I shouldn't have."

He gave Quinn a cold look.

"But... I won't admit to killing me. Do we even know each other?"

Quinn nodded.

"Hello, my name is Ankuya. Now that we've met..."

"Give me a reason." As death approached, he grew increasingly calm.

“You’ve broken the law—the police have received twenty or thirty rape leads over the years alone, and you’ve done all sorts of dirty things with the White Gang that have caused deaths: murder, suppressing workers demanding back wages, arson, and using kidnapping to buy land for your sugar daddy.” Quinn shrugged. “I’m Spider-Man, a vigilante, here to rid the world of evil.”

Anleke nodded slightly, seemingly accepting the reason.

"Then let's handle it the way the underworld does."

The man from the north gritted his teeth fiercely.

He obtained the skeleton before he came to Axwell City.

The things the gang could buy for him were hidden in his mouth and made into teeth.

Just moments ago, Anlexis was on the verge of death, struggling even to stand, but now he straightened up, a surge of pleasure flashing across his face. Quinn, seeing this, frowned. Had he taken drugs?

Immediately, his eyes widened little by little.

A layer of blue light appeared in the dark clouds.

It was a fluorescent blue, like a firefly from the starry sky. A dark blue, viscous substance gushed from every wound on his body, sticking his flesh together like an adhesive. Even his severed left hand stopped bleeding.

Quinn felt a chill run down his spine; he had seen this substance in jewelry stores before.

The robber Bates used this blue light to stay alive, and the three workers who relied on the artificial circuit almost killed Chaldale's Sequence 8 bodyguards because of this thing.

This is "Starlight," an artificial circuit rejection inhibitor developed by the college.

"Where did you get this potion?" Quinn asked, already having the answer in mind.

He did not stop supplying Golden Wind's Star Flowers for the past two months, but the quantity was not large; he only sold nine in total.

Anlexi's voice has returned to normal.

"I'll tell you when you die."

He gripped the withered bone tightly.

[Knights Never Die Unarmed], activated.

(End of this chapter)