He had already lost count of which loop this was.
The first time, he had just arrived downstairs when several mercenaries captured him, locked him in a small dark room, and tortured him for Raiden Mei's whereabouts...
The seventh time, he used a dead mercenary's phone to send a message to his teammates to lure them over. But the other side had a secret code. He was ambushed, his limbs were broken, and he was thrown from a hundred meters high.
The fourteenth time, the thirty-ninth time, the one hundred and fifth time, the one thousand two hundred and thirty-first time...
The immense suffering he had once whimsically inflicted on the protagonist had finally befallen Li Wu himself.
Originally, he thought he would give up after dying once or twice. But after becoming numb, he lost the concept of death. He only thought about solving the problems left over from the previous loop, then dying to the danger of the current loop, and then solving the enemy who killed him in the previous loop in the next loop...
Over and over again, he fell into a terrifying mental cycle.
I died, but I must kill the person who killed me last time, then die in a new way, and then kill them again...
At the tenth death: pain.
At the thirtieth death: fear.
At the hundredth death: regret.
At the five-hundredth death: numbness.
At the thousandth death: emptiness...
As the number of deaths piled up, Li Wu went from fear to numbness. Whenever he encountered a situation where death was certain, he would point the gun at his temple and pull the trigger, starting the next loop.
His first reaction to being hit by a bullet was no longer fear or panic, but the thought: Oh, I got shot. Guess I'll restart then.
This world had become like a game. Apart from pain which could briefly wake him up, living people seemed to have become mobs in a game.
Killing them dropped equipment; killing more improved combat skills and character experience...
Every time he loaded the save and returned, the map in his mind became a little clearer: the enemy's position, habitual shooting angles, reloading intervals, communication rhythms, secret codes...
Li Wu even memorized the location of the scars on every mercenary's face. One with a wild hairstyle would subconsciously lick his lips when nervous; another with blonde hair would occasionally talk about his glory days.
He learned to think calmly amidst severe pain, to pull the trigger amidst the dizziness caused by blood loss.
He had stopped counting. Every restart refreshed his physical stats, but the mental burden was never alleviated.
To protect itself, his brain blocked his emotional perception and output modules.
His actions were like a programmed routine, utterly hollow. Following the optimal solution left from the previous loop, he arrived at the location of the Blood Wolf Mercenary Corps leader—a forest on the outskirts of Nagazora City. It was deserted, with only a small tent pitched, a faint firelight flickering inside.
"Kid, where's your helper? Tell him to come out! He killed so many of my brothers. Today I'm going to catch him myself and turn him into a human stick!"
The leader of the Blood Wolf Mercenary Corps, wearing gaudy makeup and flashy clothes, walked out from behind a screen carrying an AK.
Li Wu glanced at him and left only one sentence: "So you're here."
After speaking, he pulled out his gun and aimed it at himself.
Bang!
The gunshot exploded in the silent forest, startling a flock of birds from the treetops. But soon, the flock flew backward in a bizarre fashion, rewinding time as if nothing had ever happened.
...
...
After repeating all the actions of the previous loop, Li Wu walked familiarly into the tent. Without a word, he raised his gun, aimed behind the screen, and held down the trigger. Dozens of bullets poured out like rain.
Accompanied by a miserable wail, the screen collapsed. The leader of the Blood Wolf Mercenary Corps, his body riddled with bullet holes, lay quietly in a pool of blood, devoid of any breath.
Li Wu walked over and looked at the corpse with vacant eyes, motionless, like a scarecrow in a field.
Standing. Just standing. Doing nothing, not knowing what to do.
It was over.
And then?
What to do next?
Was the game cleared?
What am I supposed to do now?
Why did I kill people?
Was it to win the bet? But why did I bet, and with whom?
Countless questions hit him like a tidal wave the moment the final boss died, occupying almost all of Li Wu's cognitive capacity.
As time passed, he could recall the answer to every question. Only, he couldn't understand or empathize with why he had chosen this path in the first place.
A bit...
Boring.
"System, what do I do next? Too many memories, I can't remember."
Li Wu suddenly asked.
This was the first time he had asked the system what he should do.
[...]
After a brief silence, the system gave an answer—
[You should retrieve your normal senses. Currently, there is no difference between you and a walking corpse that can speak.]
"Is that so? I actually think I'm very normal right now. I've never been calmer. Isn't this a good thing?"
Li Wu extended his hand, looking at the thick bloodstains on his palm, and asked in confusion.
[A normal person's heart rate wouldn't remain unchanged after killing people. Your brain has activated a self-protection mechanism. To save you from severe somatic symptoms and mental collapse, it has blocked most normal emotions.]
[You need some time for those emotions to recover.]
"I see. But I think being like this is pretty good too."
Li Wu walked to the dressing table in the tent and carefully examined his appearance in the mirror. covered in blood and grime, he looked terrible, yet possessed a strange aesthetic beauty.
The original color of the Chiba Academy uniform was completely indiscernible, soaked in blood of various shades—vermilion, crimson, blackish-red... His left sleeve was torn from the shoulder, and on his exposed arm was a hideous wound. The blood had semi-coagulated but not scabbed, gleaming with a bewitching luster under the moonlight.
"This character is not bad. Like a thorny rose forced to bloom amidst ruins and corpses. I like this feeling."
[This is you...]
"Me? Oh, right, it's me. Then change the flower. Roses are used to describe women; I'm not a woman."
Li Wu's tone was calm. He accepted this setting naturally and even joked with the system.
He had completely forgotten the specific details of the bet, as well as the agreed-upon time...
Meanwhile, in the underground storage room of an abandoned factory somewhere in Nagazora City.
Raven paced back and forth in front of Raiden Mei, her expression anxious. Every few minutes, she looked down at her phone to check the time.
"Two hours are up. Just as expected. I said those high-sounding promises were just talk. How could an ordinary person make such an impossible promise? Now, you can give up hope. And then..." Raven's voice drifted through the damp air of the basement, cold and devoid of any warmth, piercing mercilessly into Raiden Mei's ears. "Let's go. I'll take you to see his true colors, so you can die knowing the truth. Then I'll return the black card to him. Using a card from a person like that just makes me sick!"
Raven stopped in front of Raiden Mei, casting a shadow over her.
Raiden Mei didn't answer, nor did she move. Even when Raven reached out, she remained indifferent.
Another few minutes passed before she finally spoke.