Realizing he had become the focus of the undercurrents swirling within King’s Landing, Luke’s heart suddenly tightened.
The whispers of greed and calculation mixed in the tavern wound around his spine like cold snakes.
He had to leave this place immediately, return to the temporarily safe Inn by the Blackwater, and head back to the Blue Star to lie low for a while.
Lowering the brim of his hat—his black noble attire came with a soft cap—he minimized his presence and hurriedly ducked into a relatively quiet alley that led toward the inn.
It was far from the lights of the Street of Silk.
Only a few scattered windows cast a dim, yellow glow, barely illuminating the uneven cobblestones beneath his feet.
Thick clouds blocked the moonlight, and the darkness filled every corner of the alley like thick ink.
His mind raced as he planned his next steps: suspend all public transactions, hide out on the Blue Star for a few days, cash in the gold first, and beef up his means of self-preservation…
But just as he was deeply absorbed in his calculations, his vigilance slipping slightly because he was in a relatively familiar area—
“Hey!
Stop right there!”
A gruff shout echoed from the shadows ahead.
Immediately following it, three ragged but heavily built men emerged like ghosts from behind a pile of discarded wooden barrels, blocking his path.
They carried clubs of varying lengths, and their eyes gleamed with malice in the dim light.
Luke’s heart leaped into his throat.
Without a second thought, he spun around and bolted!
However, before he could take a step, his retreat was cut off by a tall, thin man in similar attire, brandishing a short dagger.
The four of them formed a crude but effective encirclement, trapping him in the middle.
“Hand over all your coin!
Do as you’re told, and maybe you’ll spare yourself a beating!”
The scarred leader shook the thick wooden club in his hand.
His tone was threatening, but he seemed to leave some room for negotiation, only wanting to rob him.
Luke’s brain buzzed, and terror instantly gripped him.
This dumbass protagonist had actually forgotten in this crucial moment that he possessed his world-crossing ability.
It was practically mind-boggling!
He tried to speak, hoping to buy them off, even if it meant handing over a portion of his Gold Dragons or promising them more.
But under such extreme tension, his poor spoken English shattered completely, and he could only squeeze out a few mumbled syllables: “Gold…
I give…
let me go…”
Just then, a rather dim-witted-looking accomplice with a missing front tooth chimed in excitedly, speaking rapidly.
“Boss, didn’t someone offer a hundred Gold Dragons to have us kidnap this kid?
Why waste our breath on him!
Tie him up and deliver him, we’ll get way more money!”
The scarred man glared at his snaggle-toothed accomplice, seemingly blaming him for running his mouth and revealing their true intentions, but the greed in his eyes only grew stronger.
Kidnapping!
A hundred Gold Dragons!
It was far riskier than simple highway robbery, but the payout was vastly higher!
Luke understood “hundred Gold Dragons” and “kidnap,” and his last shred of hope dissolved.
If they only wanted money, he might have been able to negotiate.
But kidnapping…
the outcome would be entirely out of his hands!
He lunged backward, trying to break through the thin man’s blockade, while his hand reached for his waist.
“Trying to run?!”
The thin man reacted with lightning speed, planting a kick squarely into Luke’s stomach.
The agonizing pain wrung a grunt from him.
As he bent over and stumbled back, a club from the side slammed hard against his shoulder, his bones letting out a sickening crunch.
In the impact, his Bluetooth earbud flew out and splashed into the filthy water a few paces away.
It was over!
The bridge of communication was broken!
“Hold him down!” the scarred man growled.
The other two lunged forward, their fists and feet raining down like a storm.
Luke resisted desperately, roaring and fighting back with every curse word and frantic struggle he could muster.
But his fighting skills were practically zero, and his strength was nothing compared to these desperate thugs who spent their lives in the slums.
His resistance only provoked a more savage beating.
A heavy fist slammed into his cheek, his teeth cutting his lip, and the metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth.
Clubs struck his back, ribs, and thighs…
every blow brought a piercing pain.
He was beaten to the ground, curling into a ball, desperately and futilely shielding his head and face.
His pleas for mercy were drowned out by the dull thuds of the beating and the thugs’ cruel laughter.
“Beat him!
Beat him into submission first!
Saves us the trouble of him struggling on the way!” the scarred man’s voice was sadistic and excited.
His consciousness began to blur, and the agonizing pain and terror ground Luke’s thoughts to a near halt.
Was he going to die here?
Die in this filthy, dark alley of an alien world?
No!
He couldn’t!
“I’m the fucking protagonist!
How can I die in such a pathetic way?!”
Just as another foot was about to stomp on his abdomen, the despair of death and a frenzied will to survive coalesced into a burst of raw, wild power.
Summoning strength from God knows where, he rolled violently to the side, temporarily escaping the center of the beating, and propped himself up against the cold wall.
Before him were four blurry, grinning figures closing in.
Darkness.
Despair.
And…
the hard, rectangular object in his pocket.
His phone!
An almost instinctual thought flashed like lightning through his chaotic mind.
The light…
of the Blue Star!
Marshaling his last ounce of strength, he braced himself with one hand on the ground and reached into his pocket with the other, grabbing his phone.
The screen was locked, but he remembered the hotkey—the flashlight!
Just as the scarred man raised his club, preparing to deliver the final, crushing blow—
Luke thrust his phone forward and pressed the side button with all his might!
*Flash!*
A blinding, snow-white beam of light—one that absolutely did not belong to this era—burst forth like a sudden bolt of lightning.
It tore through the thick darkness, shining directly into the eyes of the four thugs!
“Ahhh!!!”
“What the hell is that?!”
“My eyes!”
Caught completely off guard, the four men screamed in terror as the unprecedentedly intense light blasted them right in the face.
They instinctively closed their eyes or shielded them with their hands, thrown into brief blindness and utter chaos and panic.
Was this some kind of magic?
Or was it punishment from The Seven?
Now was his chance!
Luke’s eyes had already adjusted to the dark, and the beam wasn’t aimed at him.
Capitalizing on this fleeting window of barely a second or two, his survival instinct overpowered all fear and hesitation.
A single thought consumed his mind: Eliminate the threat!
Live!
His mind focused with frantic intensity!
The watermelon knife he had bought on the Blue Star and kept stored in the deepest corner of his portable space as a last resort appeared out of thin air in his blood-smeared right hand!
Heavy and ice-cold, the blade gleamed with a faint, eerie blue light in the phone’s peripheral glow.
No hesitation, no thinking of the consequences.
He finally remembered he still had his world-crossing ability.
He activated it in an instant, flashing back and forth between the Blue Star and Westeros in milliseconds.
Within a single second, he made several round trips, leaving a trail of afterimages in his wake.
Like a beast backed into a corner, Luke let out a raspy, inhuman roar and leaped up from the ground.
From an outside perspective, his speed was astronomical!
It was as if he had activated a shadow clone technique, drifting to and fro.
He truly embodied the phrase “half-human, half-ghost.” It was like he had turned on a phase shift and became completely untargetable, immune to all physical damage!
The bandits couldn’t touch him at all; everything they swung at was a mere afterimage!
With his pain temporarily blocked out by adrenaline, he swung with all his might at the closest target—the toothless thug who was still clutching his eyes and wildly flailing his club!
*Slash!*
The dull squelch of a blade slicing into flesh rang out with striking clarity in the silent alley.
Warm liquid splashed across Luke’s face.
“Ugh-aaah!”
The toothless thug shrieked in agony, stumbling backward as he clutched his spurting neck.
The other three were jolted awake by their companion’s shriek and the spraying blood.
They looked in horror at Luke, who stood like a demon holding a knife, his face smeared with blood and contorted in rage, and at the strange, gleaming blade in his hand, dripping with fresh blood.
“He…
he has a knife!
A magic knife!” the thin man’s voice trembled.
The scarred man was shocked and enraged.
“Together!
Kill him!”
“No, he’s a demon!
We can’t hit him, he’s too fast!”
“He can teleport!”
“He disappeared!
He’s back again!”
The bandits fell into a state of sheer frenzy!
But Luke had gone completely wild.
Fear, agonizing pain, and the despair of impending death had entirely transformed into a raw instinct to kill.
Without waiting for them to encircle him, he lunged at his second target: the thin thug with the short dagger.
His phone had fallen to the ground.
The flashlight beam cast a crooked light on the wall, creating swaying, grotesque shadows.
The thin man barely managed to raise his blade to parry.
With a sharp *clang*, his crude iron dagger was actually notched by the strange, gleaming blade!
The sheer force of the blow left his wrist numb.
Luke was a completely ordinary guy.
He only knew how to slash and stab like a madman!
But in the face of crisis, fueled by adrenaline, he had a flash of inspiration and unlocked the correct way to use his world-crossing ability: infinite blinking!
By rapidly flitting back and forth between the two worlds, he left behind countless afterimages, almost transforming into a quantum particle. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Just like Schrödinger’s cat, the moment you observed him, he wasn’t there!
In the world of martial arts, speed reigns supreme.
If you are fast enough, you become untargetable!
*Squish!
Squish!*
Two more squelching sounds of a blade slicing into flesh rang out.
The thin man’s chest and abdomen were ripped open with terrifying gashes, and he collapsed to the ground, screaming.
The scarred man and the final thug were utterly terrified.
How was this the helpless fat sheep they were just beating up?
This was clearly a life-harvesting fiend crawled straight out of hell!
Especially with that blade appearing out of nowhere and its mind-boggling sharpness…
“Monster!
He’s a monster!”
The last man shrieked, turning on his heel to flee.
Suddenly, a massive, one-hundred-pound sack of table salt fell from the sky, crushing the fleeing man instantly.
Luke had to silence them; he couldn’t let anyone discover his secret.
Thus, in a sudden stroke of genius, he directly released a heavy object from his space…
He had discovered yet another brilliant use for his portable storage!
By releasing heavy items from high up, he could literally crush people to the ground or even to death!
He made a mental note to store some large iron blocks in his space in the future.
In times of danger, he could just execute a high-altitude drop!
At this moment, Luke saw nothing but blood and threats.
He caught up and drove the knife deep into the man’s back, right through his heart.
The thug collapsed forward, twitched twice, and went still.
Seeing things take a turn for the worse, the scarred leader abandoned all thoughts of the hundred Gold Dragons.
Dropping his club, he ran for his life toward the far end of the alley.
But Luke had no intention of letting a single one of them escape.
He snatched his phone from the ground, the flashlight still shining.
Enduring the agonizing pain racking his entire body, he stumbled forward a few steps, aimed the beam of light at the scarred man’s retreating back, and hurled the watermelon knife with all his might!
He frantically used his world-crossing ability to flash back and forth, leaving a trail of afterimages as he swept toward the man like a phantom!
The blade spun through the darkness and struck with a sharp *thwack*, embedding itself deeply near the scarred man’s shoulder blade.
He wailed in pain and crashed to the ground, struggling to scramble back up.
Wheezing heavily, Luke walked over, wrenched the blade free, and under the scarred man’s despairing gaze, delivered the final coup de grâce.
The world fell suddenly silent.
There was only his heavy breathing, the sickeningly metallic stench of blood, and the four rapidly cooling corpses on the ground.
The flashlight’s beam, tilted against the wall, illuminated a scene of utter carnage and splattered blood.
Luke stood frozen, holding the dripping knife, staring blankly at the scene.
A cold night wind blew against his burning cheeks, sending a shiver through him.
I…
killed someone.
Four of them.
The realization pierced his brain like an icicle, instantly snapping him out of his frenzied state.
He used to mock those brain-dead authors—why did they always write about their protagonists throwing up the first time they killed someone?
If he were the protagonist, he’d definitely never…
Yet.
His stomach convulsed violently.
He bent over and dry-heaved, bringing up nothing but a bit of bloody bile.
A wave of fear—not of his enemies, but of what he had just done—belatedly washed over him.
It chilled him to the bone, far more than the beating he had just endured.
In the distance, faint footsteps and voices seemed to echo, likely residents or patrolmen alerted by the screams and commotion.
He couldn’t stay here!
This thought overrode everything else.
Luke didn’t even have time to retrieve his translator earbud from the filthy water, let alone properly clean up the scene.
Stumbling, practically scrambling on all fours, he rushed into the deepest shadows of the alley.
Pressing his back against the cold, damp wall, he trembled, using his blood-smeared hands to focus his last remaining shreds of intent—an intent almost entirely swallowed by terror and confusion.
Go back!
Go back to the Blue Star!
Back to my rented apartment!
His intense longing was like a drowning man clutching at a final straw.
The familiar weightlessness washed over him right on cue, and the blood and darkness before him were replaced by a familiar sight.
*Thud!*
He crashed heavily onto the hard concrete floor of his rented apartment.
The rough landing sent a searing, bone-deep pain through his bruised and battered body.
But he didn’t care.
He simply drew in greedy gulps of the dry, dusty, yet incomparably safe air of his room.
In his hand, he still tightly clutched the watermelon knife.
On the blade, thick, dark-red blood slowly dripped from the tip, drop by drop, onto his cheap linoleum floor, blooming into startling little flowers.
There was his own blood, and the blood of others…
The apartment was dead silent, save for his heavy, bellows-like breathing, and the faint yet terrifying sound of dripping blood—
Drip.
Drip.