Chapter 20: He Opened the Transparent World
The metal trestle bridge shattered and fell, stirring up clouds of dust.
That sound, even amidst a raging storm, could not be fully muffled.
All the surrounding Iron Crosses instinctively turned their eyes, with some walking straight over, intending to investigate the situation here.
Using the corner of his eye, Rast confirmed that a red and white figure had already slipped into the factory area under cover of the disturbance, and he let out a quiet breath.
His gaze swept across the entire factory zone. At that moment, dozens of Iron Crosses had already been attracted by the noise and were converging toward Rast’s position.
But this was far from enough. His goal was to pin down every Iron Cross in the entire harbor district, reducing the risk of the time bombs being tampered with to the lowest possible level.
Moreover, those Iron Crosses he had previously lured to the harbor perimeter had now lost their pursuit targets and were aimlessly wandering.
They would likely soon stray away from the harbor, and Rast had to ensure that when the bombs exploded, all Iron Crosses were within the blast radius.
He set up the bipod of his sniper rifle and used the remains of the trestle as a high point to establish a makeshift sniping position.
During the previous escape, Rast and Shiltina had to stay mobile at all times.
This bulky weapon was far less convenient than a pistol, but now, he wasn’t running—he was intercepting and sniping. This was the perfect scenario for a sniper rifle to shine.
Rast set his pocket watch to timer mode and pulled out that evil god sculpture.
Shnk—
The triangular bayonet flashed and vanished.
Rast once again sliced open his own vein with the bayonet, and black-red blood sprayed into the air, splashing onto the humanoid sculpture bound in restraints.
He hurled the evil god sculpture forcefully and then raised his pistol to aim.
The pollutant traced an arc through the sky. At the peak of its trajectory, Rast’s bullet struck it dead on. The blood-soaked sculpture trembled violently in midair, erupting with a resonant hum.
Invisible ripples of biological energy burst out from the sculpture as the epicenter, radiating across the entire harbor and even reaching Deep Blue Port.
Ordinary people and other creatures couldn’t detect such a wave, but to the Iron Crosses within Deep Blue Port, it was a command issued directly into their minds.
Every Iron Cross that received the pulse halted its current action, then sprinted madly toward the depths of the harbor. Their unified movement even caused the ground to shake, like a thunderous stampede of ten thousand horses.
Clack.
As he fired, Rast pressed the button on his pocket watch. The second hand began to tick slowly.
The 25-minute countdown began.
……
The rain fell even harder now, its sound mingling with the ever-approaching footsteps and the distinct maniacal laughter of the Iron Crosses.
Rast crouched still in front of the sniper rifle. Beside him lay the triangular bayonet stained with his own blood. He no longer bothered with bandages, yet the wound on his wrist visibly stopped bleeding and began to heal.
The mixed serum he had injected earlier granted him regenerative abilities comparable to the Iron Crosses.
The price, however, was death by organ failure within two hours. His accelerated circulation and metabolism caused his body temperature to rise, and the rain evaporated into mist as it landed on his burning-hot skin, drifting away with the wind.
Through the scope, the world appeared as a torrent of rain.
In such a storm and fog, a person thirty meters away became a mere blur.
Even shooting by sight was extremely difficult—let alone using an optical scope to find targets over a hundred meters away.
But Rast continued to aim, calculate, and fine-tune the muzzle.
He loaded a pointed bullet into the chamber of his sniper rifle.
This rifle used a single-shot breech-loading mechanism. Each shot required opening the breech to remove the spent casing and then manually inserting a new bullet.
Sacrificing any semblance of rapid fire granted it immense power per shot—each bullet capable of felling a full-grown wild bull.
Only a sniper rifle like this, paired with pointed bullets, could penetrate the steel diaphragms guarding the Iron Crosses’ weak points at such a distance.
As the click of the bullet chambering echoed, Rast fell completely silent.
In proportion to his rising body temperature, the light in his eyes faded, and the world around him seemed to freeze with a clang, the sound of rain abruptly ceasing.
He calmed the ripples of thought. Not only sound—he also sealed off his emotions.
In mere seconds, Rast’s mind completely synchronized and merged with his surroundings, until he became one with the environment.
This was the same flow state Shiltina had entered earlier, though she achieved that full control through her Night Blade, while Rast relied solely on experience—unmatched mastery.
He had been partnered with this sniper rifle for over two hundred years. Human civilization’s first sniper rifle likely hadn’t even existed for two centuries.
Due to the reset loop, Rast couldn’t enhance his physical abilities through training. All he could do was endlessly hone his techniques and mind.
Over hundreds of years, he had elevated many skills to unprecedented heights.
For most people, entering a flow state was a rare chance occurrence.
For Rast, it only took a mental cue—the sound of the bullet chambering was the trigger he set for himself.
The rain faded.
The world fell silent.
Time slowed.
Rast’s “temperature” took control of the sniper rifle, the surrounding terrain, and the entire world within his scope.
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet left the barrel.
The muzzle flashed.
In the real world, there was no hit feedback like in shooting games, but Rast knew a hundred meters away, within the veil of rain, a fellow sniper Iron Cross had just taken a bullet to the heart.
Amidst the rain, the faint thud of a body hitting the ground followed.
Rast slowly turned the barrel, reloaded, and fired again…
This mechanical process repeated six times. Each shot killed a sniper Iron Cross, with screams echoing at almost equal intervals.
After the sixth shot, Rast suddenly tilted sideways.
In the next instant, a steel-core bullet pierced the steel plate behind him.
While airborne from his side tilt, Rast aimed and fired again, ending the life of the seventh Iron Cross sniper.
This wasn’t a fair sniper duel.
The raging rainstorm obstructed scope vision, turning every Iron Cross sniper into a blind man.
The seventh’s counterattack had only been possible thanks to the sacrifice of the previous six, using gunfire to roughly estimate Rast’s position.
But Rast knew the rain would ease in one minute. When that happened, these sniper rifles would become his greatest threat.
That was why he chose to eliminate them preemptively.
If this were the FPS games of his previous life, these information-less blind shots with no visible enemies would’ve instantly earned him labels like “hacker” or “wallhack,” and a rapid ban. But Rast achieved this not with x-ray vision.
In previous loops, Rast had successfully reached the harbor over eight thousand times—only to die eight thousand times as well.
That massive volume of experience enabled him to pull off what was nearly an impossible backboard strat.
Every weapon and firearm each Iron Cross carried in the harbor, their movement patterns, trajectories… even the wind and rain’s interference on bullets at different times.
Even if there was nothing in his field of vision, Rast had already memorized every detail of the harbor to perfection—thus delivering fatal shots with absolute precision.
Rast didn’t have x-ray vision. But in a certain sense, he was even scarier—because x-ray vision couldn’t account for bullet drop and wind deviation.