“GHRK…!”
“A gun!? Is that the bastard?”
“Fuck! Kill him-!!”
I had left two of the Raiders critically wounded, but the remaining two were different.
‘As expected, this is the limit beyond its effective range.’
Still, incapacitating the careless ones by targeting their vital points was already a significant achievement.
‘I can deal with those two later. The problem is the remaining pair.’
One used Haste to evade the torrent of Steel Balls with rapid movements.
The other seemed to possess a Passive Skill called Steel Skin. The Steel Balls ricocheted off his body instead.
Judging by his grimace, the impacts were not entirely harmless. However, unless I struck a vital point, it seemed difficult to inflict a fatal injury from this distance.
‘They are approximately a hundred paces away.’
The distance was roughly two hundred meters.
The closer a stationary target was, the easier it became to hit. With a moving target, however, the opposite could sometimes be true.
The Haste user moved even more nimbly than before, avoiding every Steel Ball.
“Heh heh. I will cut off your head!!”
The Daggers in his hands gleamed coldly.
If he reached me, he might carve me apart with those blades.
Behind him, the man with Steel Skin charged forward while shielding his face with his thick arms.
‘Close combat is unavoidable at this rate.’
Even at a glance, their Stats had to be at least twice as high as mine.
Otherwise, Haste alone would not have made the first man this difficult to hit.
The Steel Balls traveled at more than three hundred meters per second. The fact that he could evade them meant that he was swiftly moving aside whenever he saw the muzzle point toward him.
‘It cannot be helped. I will leave that skittering bastard alone for now and focus on Steel Skin.’
I drew the borrowed Dagger from my waist, mounted it beneath the barrel of the Modified Steel-Ball Gun, and rushed forward.
The weapon had been modified to allow a blade to be attached to the muzzle, making modern Bayonet Combat possible.
“Have you given up? Do not think that means I will give you a painless de—urgh!!”
RATATAT!!
Without even turning toward the Haste user who had rapidly closed the distance, I fired a burst and forced him back.
Only a few Steel Balls remained.
‘All of my current Stats should be 10.’
My Stats were fixed values, so they remained the same no matter how many times I regressed.
That was why I knew precisely what someone with all Stats at 10 could accomplish.
I knew how quickly I could run, how much Vitality I possessed, and how much strength I could exert.
Everyone else had to test their bodies and gradually adapt to them.
I did not.
‘They still do not know how to use their bodies properly.’
I could tell merely by watching them run.
If they had complete control over their bodies, they would not be wasting so much strength with every movement.
My Stats might have been only 10, but depending on how I used them, I could outperform those two.
“Damn it! Does that bastard have Haste too? He suddenly became so fast…!”
The man’s urgent voice came from behind me.
It was an understandable mistake.
He ran like an ordinary person who did nothing but throw himself blindly forward, while I had fully mastered the running form of a professional sprinter.
The efficiency with which we used our bodies was entirely different.
WHOOSH!!
“Heh heh! Are you out of pellets? I will snap your spine!!”
Realizing that no more Steel Balls were coming, the man with Steel Skin lowered his body and attempted a tackle.
Rather than retreat, I charged straight toward him.
“HRYAAAAAA-!!”
He attempted a Flying Takedown with a bizarre battle cry.
SWISH-.
I leaped even higher than he did, pressed one hand against his shoulder, and vaulted over him.
“Wh-what!?”
RAT! RATATATAT!!
I fired every remaining Steel Ball into his lower abdomen.
“AAAAAARGH!!!!”
Steel Skin lived up to its name.
Even after taking those shots, he twisted around and swung a fist at me.
I bent forward to avoid it, then drove the bayonet-mounted Steel-Ball Gun into him with all my strength.
STAB-!
“Ghrk….”
“Steel Skin does not make you invincible. Your vital points are especially soft. This is the final shot. Goodbye.”
BANG-!!!
THUD.
I pulled the Steel-Ball Gun from his lower abdomen and wiped the blood dripping from it on his corpse.
“Fuck. I ran into one sadistic son of a bitch.”
I did not answer the Haste user.
I merely extended my left hand and curled my fingers toward myself.
“Come at me.”
“Fuck you, asshole!”
He pretended to rush toward me, only to turn and sprint in the direction I had come from.
The Raiders were never companions in the first place, and their true objective was the Guardian Stones.
Rather than taking an unnecessary risk, he chose to flee.
“Running away, are you? I cannot say I did not expect it, but is that truly the road to survival?”
I slit the throats of the two remaining wounded Raiders as they groaned and awaited incineration, then leisurely followed the direction the Haste user had taken.
Perhaps a clean death at my hands would have been better for him.
“Boundless really is absurdly versatile.”
Limitless guaranteed growth without any upper limit.
As if to prove it, System messages informing me that one thing or another had Leveled Up continued to fill my vision.
For immediate usefulness, however, Boundless was far superior.
“I never expected ‘synthesizing anything’ to mean this.”
FWIP! FWIP! FWIP!!
“D-dammit-!!”
BANG!!
BOOM-.
“AAAAAARGH!!”
The screams of the man I assumed was the Haste user continued to echo.
They did not last long.
Eventually, everything fell silent.
“I suppose he was fast enough to make it through about three of them.”
I followed at a leisurely pace, repairing the traps he had destroyed along the way.
I had glimpsed Boundless’s potential when I discovered that it could synthesize the Disposable Workbench and the Toy Gun, but it truly was an absurdly powerful skill.
In particular, when I understood the underlying principle or could clearly visualize the result, Boundless produced an object that matched my intentions.
Skills occasionally possessed unknown hidden mechanics like this.
Boundless was no exception.
[Pressure-Activated Spring Gun.]
Rank: Unranked
The spring from a discarded mattress has been connected to a metal tube and loaded with a nail. When pressure is applied to the installed location, the spring releases and launches the nail.
I had synthesized the springs from old mattresses scattered throughout the city with nails and metal tubes, creating Spring Gun Traps.
I had already known how to construct them and had originally intended to use such traps against the enemy.
However, Boundless reduced the time required to create them exponentially.
It also produced traps of far higher quality than anything crudely assembled by hand.
“I never expected to create Unranked items from junk that does not even register as an item.”
I stared at the nail in my hand, but no item rank appeared.
Junk was not considered an item in the first place, so it possessed neither a rank nor a description.
“His feet are completely mangled.”
Drops of fresh blood formed a trail along the ground.
Like a hunter pursuing wounded prey, I leisurely followed the traces he had left behind in his panic.
[High-Voltage Shock Handle]
Rank: Unranked
A transformer has been connected to a metal handle. When the trigger activates, electricity is supplied, shocking any target in contact with the metal handle.
I had connected a handle to a broken transformer and coated it with a highly conductive gel.
Sure enough, I found the man collapsed there.
Moreover, he had fallen into a traditional pit trap concealed with camouflage.
I had filled the bottom with various shards of glass. He must have convulsed violently from the electric shock, because so many shards were embedded in his body that there was scarcely an untouched area left.
“Impressive. You are still alive in that condition? Did you invest heavily in Vitality? Or do you possess a Regeneration Passive Skill?”
He rolled his bloodshot eyes toward me and struggled to speak.
“Ki….”
“Hm? What did you say?”
“Kill… me.”
“If that is your wish.”
To minimize his suffering, I drove the Dagger deep into his Baihui Point and twisted it half a turn.
The thrust pierced the cerebral cortex, parietal lobe, and occipital lobe—the regions responsible for pain.
He should have died without experiencing much agony.
I knew because I had once died after being stabbed in the same place.
The wound had even produced a faint sense of euphoria, so his death was unlikely to have been entirely painful.
“That settles the four here. I should see what happened elsewhere.”
I had to pass through this area anyway to check on the remaining three Raiders on the left.
Leaving the path I had taken behind me, I continued forward.
After walking through several buildings, I heard screams similar to those made by the Haste user before his death.
“Did one of them reach Point 4? Hmmm. Then it must be one of two things. Either he is extraordinarily strong, or extraordinarily lucky.”
Several mistakes must have occurred.
I quickly headed toward their location.
The left side had been transformed into a maze by connecting approximately eight buildings.
This area was a vast forest of skyscrapers, so we had designated each building as a separate sector and blocked every alternate exit with wrecked vehicles and various objects.
Had the Raiders possessed even a little creativity, they might have smashed through those wrecks and created their own route.
However, I knew they would never do that.
Until now, they would have tried to sneak forward as quietly as possible, heading toward wherever they believed the largest number of Guardian Stones was located.
Any Raider unfortunate enough to be discovered would have confronted the Sentinels and delayed them, while the others shouted, “Nice,” and blindly rushed toward the Guardian Stones that were presumably unguarded or protected by only a few people.
That was why I could state with certainty that the Raiders would never cooperate.
They did not gather their strength to defeat the Sentinels.
The reason was simple.
Not one of them could entrust their life to another person.
What if someone proposed cooperation, only to monopolize the Guardian Stones after the others risked their lives holding back the Sentinels?
Everyone else would have suffered and died for nothing.
Even if a righteous and powerful person established order among them, it would last only ten days.
That person would disappear after the tenth day. Without a central figure, the remaining Raiders would begin distrusting one another again, and a traitor would inevitably emerge.
Because the same cycle repeated endlessly, they never truly united.
Unless circumstances forced them to cooperate as they had today, they thought only of reaching the Guardian Stones before everyone else.
A Raider who obtained a Guardian Stone gained access to Escape, allowing them to run forward without ever looking back.
“I hope he is merely lucky.”
Feeling slightly tense, I examined Point 4.
“He is covered in wounds. Then he must be strong.”
A truly lucky person would not have suffered so many injuries.
In this place, Luck was practically a skill or a Stat of its own.
Someone with high Luck was unlikely to be caught by mere Unranked traps.
Therefore, the fact that he was so badly wounded meant that he had forced his way through the team at Point 3 and reached this place through strength alone.
STEP. STEP.
I slowly approached him while considering what variable might have occurred.
Our strategy was actually simple.
If more than one Raider appeared, the team was to seize exactly one and allow the others to pass.
The only thing awaiting those who continued forward was the series of traps I had created.
Moreover, I had stationed a team at every point.
That meant one team guarded each area through Point 3.
The farther back a point was, the easier the defenders’ task became.
Once a team defeated the enemy before them, they would move forward to reinforce the next group.
By the final point, the Raider could be trapped between two teams and eliminated more easily.
I had also transformed the route to Point 8 into a maze.
Anyone following it would eventually reach a dead end and be forced to turn back, while irritating traps were scattered throughout the path.
They were subtle and effective, created from the experience I had accumulated through countless regressions.
Someone had asked whether we could simply eliminate every enemy with traps.
However, the Raiders were not fools.
There was no trap that could not be avoided by someone sufficiently cautious.
The traps would merely delay them. If too many Raiders survived and gathered directly before the Guardian Stones, the situation would become genuinely dangerous.
That was why we needed to divide their strength and eliminate them one at a time beforehand.
Despite all that, the Raider at Point 4 had broken through Point 3 and reached this location.
The team there might have been a disorganized rabble, but he had still defeated ten Awakened who were using traps.
There was a high probability that he was extraordinarily powerful.
“Well, I will know once I see him.”
I slowly approached the wounded beast, who was screaming from within the trap at Point 4.