Chapter 30 – How Can This Be!

Seeing the oncoming axes, Wang Zhong didn’t get flustered. He proceeded to aim and rapidly fire his pistol at them. Yet, how could an attack of such a degree change their trajectory?

Wang Zhong only fired two shots before he had to face Anlor. Otherwise, even if he dealt with the combat axes, he would have been ripped to shreds by Anlor.

Everyone’s eyes in the crowd lighted up. This was the moment they’d been waiting for!

Seeing that Anlor was about to close the gap and reach him, Wang Zhong didn’t dodge, and instead, proceeded to use an Arc Shot.

Shielding the vital points on his head, Anlor ignored the rest of his body. As long as he could reach his opponent, victory would be his!

All-Mouthy King had no plans to attack those vital spots. He fired shot after shot into Anlor’s chest.

This level of attack, however, wasn’t very strong, and it also seemed that All-Mouthy King had godly luck. The two combat axes had barely scraped past his head, but he hadn’t become distracted as Anlor had already appeared before him. While protecting his head, Anlor launched two fists down like double hammer strikes.

At this moment, All-Mouthy King had just finished his barrage of shots and had no time left to do any other action, much less use Oscillating Fist.

Any form of attack required the storage of soul power, and the soul power All-Mouthy King had just used within his pistols had emptied it. With diminishing soul power and physical strength, it would be extremely difficult to switch to a different style of combat, much less to form an attack as well.

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Unknowingly, Mario had already managed to slip himself closer to the room’s entrance. He had seen Sharmie’s trembling back.

In another room, Arnold had also turned mute. All-Mouthy King could have easily used Oscillating Fist to meet Anlor head on, or he could have used a rune pistol to keep up the harassment and open up an opportunity to suddenly launch the technique. In the end, however, he’d chosen neither option and chose to play himself to death.

Frankly speaking, Anlor’s training during the holidays had borne fruit. That flying combat axe move was impossible to defend against. If not for that stroke of luck, All-Mouthy King would have already been chopped to death by them. In the end, though, only the method he would die from had changed.

☀

With victory seemingly at hand, Anlor suddenly stopped moving, his fists still raised in the air. So long as those fists made contact with the other party’s brain, he would have turned them into a blood pulp!

But right now, his body had actually frozen up. Unable to move forward, his soul power began to dissipate. Feeling this, Anlor’s eyes began to fill with despair.

At this moment, Anlor could only watch on and stare as his opponent raised his rune pistols, that pair of ‘toy guns’ that all vanguards made fun of.

They were raised to just between his eyes.

So hopeless!

Bang…..

Victory For All-Mouthy King!

A bullet to the head…

The number of people in the audience had unknowingly grown to 600. During the moment where Wang Zhong had fired that Arc Shot, it had grown by a hundred as the ability to use Arc Shot was the hallmark of an outstanding ranged soldier.

But this still didn’t mean he had to capability to steal the victory away from Anlor!

All-Mouthy King’s way of putting away his rune pistols was quite cool, but no one had paid it any attention. There were no cheers, no celebrations. Everyone was just in deep discussion, an innumerable amount of messages thrown into the forum as no one could understand what they had just witnessed. Did Anlor regress that much after playing for an entire holiday season?

Why did his fists not hammer down? Did he give up on purpose?

Some actually speculated that Anlor had had too much fun the night before and was exhausted, so he slipped at this crucial moment.

Having ten rounds in one night! Only this level of exhaustion would be an acceptable reason for why Anlor gave up the fight.

In the OP room, it was extremely quiet. This battle was serious enough for Arnold that he didn’t start making jokes or laugh. He couldn’t guess how much this fight had damaged Anlor’s ego. As a berserker, to lose to a ranged soldier in a confined space… this was the worst kind of embarrassment one could suffer.

Laura opened her skylink and calmly watched the entire battle process, thoughtful. There were many questions that occurred throughout the match. Anlor should have had plenty of opportunities for victory, yet the other party seemed to show extreme luck on his part.

Was it accidental?

Being a heroic soul soldier, this was obviously inevitable.

A loud cheer could be heard from within Flame City. Sharmie felt as if she were a genius. Nothing else had to be said. This was a smurf, but him winning a battle at his grade meant he wasn’t cannon fodder. She had to to make some preparations in order to mock a certain somebody.

Mario, thinking it was incredible, rewatched the scene. As a fellow vanguard, that look of despair in Anlor’s eyes had pierced his own soul.

This was a battle that was completely winnable, so how did he lose?

How did that resilient defense actually lose to a rune pistol?

The number of people within the gallery didn’t reduce as everyone was still discussing what had happened. More and more experts began to share their speculations.

Yet, what everyone was waiting for was the battle analysis of the Explosive Bear Goddess, Laura. This was a fight that was different from the previous ones. Not only was her eternal rival Sharmie watching on the side, but the one All-Mouthy King had defeated was a key member of her vanguard.

Time ticked by, and just as everyone thought she wouldn’t release anything this time, Laura’s analysis appeared.

This battle analysis post was created by both Laura and Arnold. When it came to the intricacies of long-ranged combat, Arnold could be considered an expert.

The battle between All-Mouthy King and Anlor was split into three parts. The first part was the close-ranged fight between them. Initially, everyone had thought that the key to gun proficiency was accuracy, but the analysis showed the firing path of the bullets. It was discovered that other than the attacks used to hinder movement, the rest of the shots were focused on four different areas; the ribs, the head, the elbows, and the knees. All of the shots were accurate, something Anlor hadn’t realized beforehand. A person with this level of marksmanship was definitely not an amateur ranged soldier.

The key to identifying one’s mastery could be seen through their fundamentals. Even if it were a smurf expert, unless the expert was a ranged soldier, this sort of result couldn’t be achieved. Being strong didn’t equate to being versatile.

Although the two Arc Shots had only managed to stun Anlor, Arc Shot was still a skill that could only be mastered by the very best of ranged soldiers. For soldiers, it involved controlling the rotation of soul power, and the difficulty lay with landing the shot on the intended target.

Both guns had fired at the same time, and both had accurately struck Anlor’s temples. This was the most shocking part, as this process proved that All-Mouthy King was a super ranged soldier. Even a prodigy would need at least two years of training before they could achieve such pinpoint accuracy.

Being a prodigious ranged soldier, this was Arnold’s verdict.

Yet this was just the beginning……

The second part was focused on the moment All-Mouthy King managed to luckily use his shots to divert the flying combat axes. When this was played in slow motion, it left everyone’s mouth slowly gaping open.

Throwing a whirling flying combat axe wasn’t anything special. All that was needed was strength and skill mastery. With Anlor’s innate master of combat axes, it made this skill astonishingly lethal. The first portion of the second analysis wasn’t focused on All-Mouthy King, but on Anlor’s combat axes.

Everyone could see the two combat axes thrown out, but they were unable to grasp the skill used during that instant. The skill displayed, however, showed that one combat axe rotated clockwise… while the other one rotated with a counter-clockwise spin.

Different rotation directions but the same target. This was definitely a sure-fire killing move. After spending an entire holiday, Anlor hadn’t just learned how to throw the combat axes at his target. In this, the finesse side of him came out.

Everyone was stumped. With this kind of skill, how could it be easily deflected using bullets? Everyone’s heard fluttered. Could it really just be a stroke of luck?