The King's Avatar

Panda Novel

This had been planned from the very start.

Upon realizing Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng’s intention, the pro players instantly grasped the implications.

Su Mucheng had repeatedly positioned herself to attack Jiang Botao in order to lure him forward. When facing a Launcher, the closer you went, the safer it was. Any pro player who had close-range battle ability would have made such a choice at that time.

And Ye Xiu?

From the very beginning, when Lord Grim had been searching for openings and moving all around, he had already been starting to lead Zhou Zekai’s movements. Zhou Zekai knew where he should stand in order to have clear lines of sight around the obstacles in the way, so Ye Xiu also knew which obstacles he should use for cover if he wanted to lure Cloud Piercer to stand where he needed him to.

And then, charge, advance, approach.

In order to give Lord Grim more pressure, Zhou Zekai would naturally control Cloud Piercer to move back and maintain the distance between them.

No one could say that Samsara’s actions were wrong. Any player in their places, facing the same conditions, would probably react in the same way. No one had suspected that Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng were actually planning such an attack.

The instant the mushroom cloud rose up, the entire stadium was shocked.

No one had noticed the guiding crosshair when Dancing Rain initiated her attack. By the time everyone noticed, the Heat-Seeking Missile was already howling down from the sky.

Dodge?

That was only one type of instinctive reaction when faced with an attack. In order to avoid Heat-Seeking Missile, the key was to notice the guiding crosshair when the missile was initially launched. By the time that was finished, the speed with which Heat-Seeking Missile fell from the sky was far faster than the speed of any character.

You could do your best to dodge it, but you would only be able to avoid the center of the blast, reducing only some of the damage that you took.

In this moment, what Samsara’s three players cared more about was: attack.

Their control of Dancing Rain would definitely be broken after this attack, and they would definitely suffer a heavy loss. So, right now, what they had to do above all else was to kill Dancing Rain.

Their formation, which from the start had been meant to suppress Dancing Rain, was still useful. Dancing Rain had no extra space to dodge the attacks that the three launched against her.

The audience couldn’t see what was going on in the mushroom cloud. All they could see was flickering silhouettes and the flashes of skills being used. Samsara’s three players couldn’t worry about controlling the situation right now. They each used their most powerful attacks. And then, the audience watched as the four players’ health bars plummeted.

Whose health would reach the bottom first? Whose health would remain above zero?

Everyone’s hearts were in their throats as they stared at those four health bars. Whether the broadcast or the live displays, all screens were currently showing a close-up of their health bars.

Zero!

Of the four health bars, one reached zero first.

Jiang Botao’s Empty Waves?

This was everyone’s instinctive answer. After all, he had the least health out of them all, only 11%. He shouldn’t be able to tank a Heat-Seeking Missile.

But, no!

The name written above the health bar was Dancing Rain. Samsara’s focus fire as the missile had exploded had actually killed off Dancing Rain first.

The health bars of Cloud Piercer and One Autumn Leaf were still falling. Originally, they’d had around 30% remaining, so the damage of the Heat-Seeking Missile wouldn’t be enough to directly kill them. What about Jiang Botao’s Empty Waves?

Empty Waves’ health had actually been the first to stop falling. 0.7%, 0.7% remaining!

Empty Waves was still alive. In other words, this situation right now, Ye Xiu was facing a 1v3?

Happy lost.

Countless people were already thinking this. Even though Ye Xiu had faced a 1v3 in last round’s team battle, what he had done back then was simply self-preservation. Ye Xiu had only been able to control Samsara’s three players there because they had believed “3v1 is no problem for us, we can definitely take care of this very quickly.” He hadn’t truly restricted all three of them, let alone defeated the three of them.

And now, he needed to defeat three people in an upfront battle. How was that possible? This was what everyone was thinking. The audience couldn’t help but feel regret, seeing how Happy had worked so hard to get all the way here, only to face such a hopeless and helpless conclusion.

And for Samsara, this was truly fortunate.

Such an unforeseen wave of attack had actually ended with them having the upper hand.

The Best Partners had been disintegrated. Happy had only Ye Xiu remaining, while Samsara had their three strongest remaining.

We won!

At this moment, they could have this thought, right?

Jiang Botao, whose character had only 0.7% remaining, felt this fortune most clearly. He had just barely managed to escape the clutches of death. Empty Waves was still alive thanks to the small adjustments he’d made as Lord Grim had approached. At that time, he had felt an instinct of self-preservation. There was no fear in closing in on Dancing Rain, but when Lord Grim arrived, he of course felt that it was more appropriate to retreat, put some distance between them. Moreover, the Heat-Seeking Missile that Su Mucheng fired of course wouldn’t center upon Empty Waves, who was already at low health. Thus, in the end, Empty Waves was the Samsara character closest to the edge of the blast radius. Added to his high defense from plate armor and his subconscious evasive maneuvers when the missile came down, Empty Waves had taken the least amount of damage.

How wonderful it is to live! Victory is best enjoyed when alive!

These were Jiang Botao’s honest thoughts at this moment. But, they were only thoughts. He didn’t even have the chance to feel any emotions before Empty Waves’ health suddenly dropped again.

Zero!

Empty Waves died.

Jiang Botao was stunned. He was completely sure that the damage from the Heat-Seeking Missile had already stopped. This was damage that a new skill had instantly created, not prolonged damage from an old attack.

What was this?

His camera view floated upward. Upon the grayed-out screen, Jiang Botao saw a shuriken piercing the chest of Empty Waves’ fallen form.

Finishing blow…

The Heat-Seeking Missile didn’t kill him, but Ye Xiu’s follow-up attack did.

This attack had come so fast that there’d been less than one second’s difference between it and the damage of Heat-Seeking Missile. Never mind the fact that Jiang Botao hadn’t noticed it – even if he had, he had no way of dodging such a fast and accurate finishing blow.

They hadn’t won yet.

They hadn’t finished yet.

Heat-Seeking Missile was only the beginning. From the very start, Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng had realized that in that kind of situation, even if Dancing Rain let loose that strike, there was no way she could escape that encirclement. She would definitely be focused by Samsara and killed.

But Ye Xiu had already prepared the finishing blow.

0.7%, Empty Waves avoided death by only 0.7%. Such a small difference meant that even Jiang Botao didn’t dare confirm in that moment that Empty Waves would live. But Ye Xiu accurately predicted, and his final hit had come so accurately, so flawlessly.

Be careful!

It’s not over yet!

Now was the time for Ye Xiu to deal the finishing blow!

Jiang Botao desperately wanted to send this information to his two remaining teammates. He knew that because Heat-Seeking Missile dealt immense damage, and because they’d been focused on nothing but killing Dancing Rain, the Samsara players had had no chance to do anything besides a few subconscious evasive maneuvers. Right now, they were still suffering the aftershocks of the explosion. And Ye Xiu was planning to use this moment to instantaneously kill all three of them.

1v3 was an impossible task, but under these special conditions, Jiang Botao felt danger. Because he sensed that deep trust between Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng, as well as all sorts of confidence. Ye Xiu trusted that Su Mucheng could absolutely pull off a map explosion, and Su Mucheng firmly believed that, after Dancing Rain fell, Ye Xiu would be able to execute the finishing blows alone.

Glory isn’t a single-player game. This was the view that Ye Xiu had always maintained. Even now, when he was the only one left on the battlefield, the plan that he carried out still embodied this belief. In this final scene that everyone had worked so hard to set up, he brought everyone’s hard work to the ultimate conclusion.

“Watch out!!” But Jiang Botao could not make his voice heard. The light from the explosion had yet to fade, but with his camera view floating upward, he saw a silhouette darting forward like a bolt of lightning, overlapping with another silhouette.

Even under the cover of the light and smoke, Jiang Botao could recognize that second silhouette. It was one with which he was incomparably familiar, Zhou Zekai’s Cloud Piercer.

Powerful Knee Strike!

Aerial Twist!

Two skills in a row, both from the weapon of a Fighter class.

When the Powerful Knee Strike came close, Zhou Zekai detected it. He swiftly adjusted the position of Cloud Piercer’s body, which had been thrown into the air from the force of the blast, in order to fire at the approaching Lord Grim. But by the time the gunfire sounded, Lord Grim’s two legs were already locked around his neck.

Twist!

Lord Grim twisted his body in midair, and the bullets fired by Cloud Piercer slammed against the ground. Ye Xiu didn’t wait for this skill to land before cancelling it. While still spinning, he was already unsheathing his sword – Collapsing Mountain.

Without anything to push off against in midair, the Collapsing Mountain naturally didn’t have any leaping effect. It was simply an attack that swept straight downward, cleaving Cloud Piercer.

The two silhouettes crashed downward, but then Lord Grim’s skill changed again, the blade that swung down suddenly swept upward again, Upwards Slash!

Cloud Piercer was going up and down as though he were riding a roller coaster. Because of how rapidly and relentlessly Lord Grim was switching skills and attack directions, Zhou Zekai’s figure was never moving in the same direction, not even for a moment. Under this kind of rhythm, even Zhou Zekai had absolutely no way to adjust.

How fast did he have to be?

In the eyes of ordinary gamers, this was simply unimaginable, this was breaking the game’s design. In their eyes, in this short amount of time, a skill couldn’t even be completed, right?

But the pro players knew, Ye Xiu was able to execute these skills so quickly because, over the course of this process, he was forcibly canceling skills nonstop. Every skill used the shortest and most direct path to hit the opponent, and then, without even waiting for the skill to finish dealing all of its damage, he was immediately canceling it, and then using the next skill, repeating the process. Used in this way, these skills weren’t dealing all of the damage that they could, but the changes were fast to the extreme. And such fast changes meant that Zhou Zekai had no way to counter.

This was the theory behind this. But how accurate of a judgment was needed for this? How fast of a hand speed?

Use a skill, cancel it, and on top of all this, Lord Grim still had to worry about changing weapon forms as well.

What kind of hand speed?

The pro players were stunned. They had all experienced the unspecialized blitz, but this was their first time witnessing it this fast, this densely packed. Calling this God-level was frankly an insult. This was beyond God-level!

Falling Flower Palm, Anti-Tank Missile, Gatling Gun.

In the blink of an eye, three more skills. Just as closely packed, just as fast. The moment that Falling Flower Palm came out, those who weren’t pro players practically didn’t see it at all. And then, Cloud Piercer was already being swallowed in the explosion of the Anti-Tank Missiles, and by then, the high-speed bullets of Gatling Gun were already sinking into his flesh. Along with the blowback from Falling Flower Palm, they sent Cloud Piercer flying.

Zero!

Cloud Piercer’s health hit zero!

Zhou Zekai had had no chance at all to adjust. Because the skills were packed together so densely, Cloud Piercer was rapidly spinning and flying in every which direction. He had absolutely no way to adjust.

Died!

Cloud Piercer died.

3.5 seconds ago, Ye Xiu faced a 1v3.

3 seconds ago, Ye Xiu faced a 1v2.

And now, 1v1.

Jiang Botao, Zhou Zekai.

The captain and vice captain who had led Samsara to two championships, Ye Xiu had killed both of them in the span of 3.5 seconds. Even if the two characters had already been at critical health, even if the two of them had suffered a huge impact from the Heat-Seeking Missile – killing them in 3.5 seconds, this was enough to be called a miracle.

There were no words to describe it. The stadium was filled with clamoring shouts. Because the changes were too fast, everyone had seen different things at every moment. While one person was still shouting because of something he’d caught, another person had noticed something something else.

But no matter what, Empty Waves, Cloud Piercer, these two characters had truly fallen, fallen without a single chance to fight back. And then, One Autumn Leaf, this character that Ye Xiu had built by his own hand, was the final target that he had to kill.