231. Lyudmila, the Magic Bullet Marksman
231. Lyudmila, the Magic Bullet Marksman
***
Suddenly, the opponent's reactions became insanely fast.
Serin instinctively registered the change in her opponent.
'Bullet Time?'
She immediately thought of the Gunner's trademark skill, and as she registered the rising muzzle, she unconsciously raised her hand to follow it.
The distance between them was effectively zero—close enough to call it point-blank. It was, in the truest sense, point-blank shooting range.
At this distance, the only way to react to a shot was to watch the muzzle and respond. There was no other way to deal with it.
Slither.
The moment she raised her hand to follow the rapidly rising muzzle and thrust out the Crescent-Moon Weight—
BANG!
Flame erupted from the opponent's anti-materiel sniper rifle without even aiming, but Serin had already twisted her body and swung the Crescent-Moon Weight.
It was impossible to pull off the fantastical performance of splitting a bullet, but since she had carefully watched where the muzzle was pointing, dodging wasn't particularly difficult.
FWOOSH!
The Crescent-Moon Weight, already launched, was surging straight toward the opponent's head.
The attack required no special technique. In this state with True Moon Princess active, she judged that simply striking a player's head with full force would be enough to kill.
And that thought of hers—
SWISH!
—was completely deflected as the white trajectory drew a clean arc and sliced through empty air instead.
The moment the attack she'd expected to land cut through empty space, Serin's vision registered the opponent, who had inexplicably put a great distance between them.
Like magic, the figure had vanished in an instant.
'That shouldn't be a skill.'
The moment that small doubt arose—
CRACKCRACKCRACK!
—lightning-like magic surged in from behind, and Serin had no choice but to evade.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!
Serin wove through the space like an acrobat, continuously dodging the magic.
Watching Serin from a set distance, the Outlaw Lyudmila felt a chill run down her spine.
She had escaped the immediate crisis and opened distance using the special effect of a Mythic accessory, but the pure-white Crescent-Moon Weight that had been aimed at her head still seemed vividly before her eyes.
'Is she... even human?'
Lyudmila felt a tension that made her whole body shrink—a feeling she hadn't experienced in a long time.
A massive commission had come in targeting a user called 'Rin,' who was currently a hot topic, and she had set out to track her. Rin hadn't even set her status to private, so the tracking itself hadn't been difficult.
Originally, she had planned to ambush Rin right after she cleared a dungeon, but when she confirmed that Rin's dungeon channel had been made public, she revised the plan and switched to tailing her from extreme long range.
She had concealed even her presence perfectly, and the moment Rin showed an opening, she had even landed what should have been a decisive sniper shot.
'No—can I even call that a success?'
Lyudmila still harbored a massive question about how that first shot had missed.
The skill 'First Bullet.'
A skill usable only on the first shot, First Bullet was more important to a sniper than any other skill. The first shot revealed you to your opponent, and a first shot fired from extreme long range to catch someone off guard was nearly impossible for any person to react to.
Unlike the Arena, where you revealed yourself from the start and deployed your skills, this was a true 'sniping' in every sense—on a completely different dimension.
Lyudmila's choice of the Outlaw class was largely driven by her unwillingness to give up this greatest advantage a sniper possessed.
Why should a sniper openly reveal herself and fight a decisive battle against an opponent?
Lyudmila simply couldn't understand an environment where you voluntarily threw away the advantage of extreme long-range shooting.
That was why First Bullet, fired from a blind spot, was devastating beyond compare, and why snipers poured more focus into their first shot than at any other time.
That was also why 'Outlaw snipers' had a reputation far more vicious than other Outlaws.
A First Bullet aimed at an opening—a situation the opposing player wasn't even aware of, hadn't even imagined—was nearly impossible for any ordinary player to react to and dodge.
So until now, the only person who had ever dodged her first shot was that monster, 'Jeanne d'Arc.'
That singular record had just now become a record of two, thanks to the user called Rin.
'Should I have been more careful?'
Lyudmila couldn't shake the thought that she should have been more cautious.
The target called Rin was close to being a monster—beyond imagination, a monster with transcendent mechanics.
Even as countless thoughts churned through Lyudmila's mind, she was aiming her muzzle at Serin, who was performing acrobatics to evade the endless barrage of magic.
Click, click, click!
Lyudmila assumed her signature sniping stance, trying to aim her muzzle at Serin, who never stopped moving.
But she couldn't easily take the shot.
Considering the recoil she'd have to manage, attacking would itself be like exposing an opening.
Lyudmila carefully observed the situation.
Right now, she was outside the Arch Lich's perception range, so it was still only targeting Rin—but if the Arch Lich so much as noticed her, it would effectively be over.
'Seriously, I should've been suspicious when the payout was that big.'
If she could, she wanted to force-quit and escape this situation. But from the moment an Outlaw attacked someone, logout became impossible, and she couldn't move beyond the distance from which she'd first attacked.
To be precise, logout was possible—but the penalty for logging out was the same as dying, so it was effectively identical to death.
In the end, only one of two outcomes was possible: the opponent died, or she did.
'Fuck...'
She already had a forced suspension on her record. If she died now, the effects would stack, and she'd be suspended for at least seven days.
She really hated that.
FWOOSH!
"...!"
The moment the white Crescent-Moon Weight shot toward her like a beam of light, Lyudmila abandoned any thought of shooting and immediately chose an evasion skill.
—Burst Bullet.
The anti-materiel sniper rifle fired, spewing massive flame into the space ahead, and the recoil sent Lyudmila's body hurtling backward as if launched.
A shot taken purely for evasion, not attack.
BOOM!
In a split second, the space where she had been was struck hard, revealing the pure-white Crescent-Moon Weight that had gouged the ground.
The Crescent-Moon Weight, weaving through the air like a white viper as it was reeled back in, was chilling just to look at.
Click.
Lyudmila immediately shouldered the rifle and aimed at Serin again, her pupils trembling ceaselessly.
The more she thought about it, the more she couldn't shake the feeling that she had picked the wrong target.
But if she didn't want to die, she had to shoot somehow.
Yet the hand on the trigger simply wouldn't move.
That monster was dodging the Arch Lich's magic with acrobatics as if she could foresee it, showing off all the while, forcing Lyudmila to keep adjusting her aim.
Click, click, click, click.
The anti-materiel sniper rifle's muzzle tracked Serin's acrobatic movements, swiveling with its signature shouldering sounds—but the trigger was never pulled.
Lyudmila, one of the notorious Outlaws known as the 'Magic Bullet Marksman.'
She was now feeling something like fear as she watched Rin.
She had no confidence that her shots would land,
while a strange certainty that her opponent's attacks would pierce her filled her entire body with dread.
Lyudmila's trembling green eyes stared directly into Serin's blood-red eyes, which were fixed on her.
In that moment, the trembling in her hands, gripping the sniper rifle, stopped.
'One shot.'
Lyudmila felt it vaguely. No matter what happened, everything would end with the next shot.
The Mythic accessory's cooldown was thirty minutes, and Bullet Time also had a long cooldown, so evading attacks with evasion skills would be difficult.
Lyudmila aimed at Serin with gradually calming eyes.
And Serin, watching Lyudmila, was also growing tense, little by little.
The moment she'd failed to finish it in what she'd thought was a perfect situation, due to the opponent's inexplicable response—it was as if a countdown had suddenly begun.
'Seriously... annoying.'
The duration of her Awakening Skill, True Moon Princess, was almost up.
—34 seconds.
The Awakening Skill duration visible at the edge of her vision was now just over thirty seconds.
Once True Moon Princess ended, dealing with the Arch Lich and the Outlaw would obviously become far more difficult.
The fact that the Outlaw was no longer taking easy sniper shots like before was also incredibly irritating.
Parrying wasn't something you could activate by reacting in the moment.
You had to predict what attack the opponent would use, then match the timing of that skill and attack precisely for the parry to trigger.
So just being conscious of the opponent's sniping and thinking about parrying seemed to be dulling her focus, bit by bit.
The Arch Lich's magic had been coming in an endless bombardment barrage ever since a certain distance opened up, making concentration even harder.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM!
As magic of every color hammered the ground where Serin stood, she hurled herself through the air to escape the aftermath—and finally made a decision.
'Even if I take a hit, I finish this completely.'
She boldly discarded the option of winning without taking any damage at all.
She activated a skill whose cooldown had come back.
—Moonlight Step.
WHOOOSH!
Once again, a massive burst of light erupted, and Serin's body transformed into light, shooting forth as a single line.
The Arch Lich's magic fired as if predicting her movement, and Serin's body couldn't dodge all of it—she took several hits and was wounded.
—Last Bullet.
The anti-materiel sniper rifle Lyudmila had shouldered finally belched massive flame as she fired her final shot.
BANG!!
With a gunshot clearly different from before, a blood-red trajectory was drawn through the air as if to strike Serin directly in a single blow.
Serin's form, wreathed in pure-white moonlight, surged forward like light,
and Lyudmila's bullet, tracing a massive blood-red trajectory, met that moonlight as if crossing paths with it.
THUNK!
Lyudmila's bullet cleanly pierced something.
But Serin's form, wreathed in moonlight, ignored it and continued surging toward Lyudmila.
"What...?"
The moment Lyudmila, unable to comprehend what had happened in that split second, let out a dazed voice—the pure-white Crescent-Moon Weight was already dyeing the space white.
—Moonlit Threads (月下詵線).
Following Serin's hand gesture—impossible to tell when she had even swung—the pure-white Crescent-Moon Weight cut through space itself.
From the cut line, light erupted as if exploding, and countless beams of light began firing out.
Even if the Outlaw showed another bizarre response, at this distance, she would never be able to dodge.
Moonlit Threads was a skill that completely swept the entire area.
Immediately after,
countless beams of light burst against Lyudmila's form.