Simon ran to a Crossroads in the bustling crowd.
Standing on a dazzling screen, the rapidly flashing neon lights illuminated his fractured skull. Cracks spread across it like parched earth, revealing tiny gears and circuits within the openings, while silver-white tentacles adhered to the entire cranial cavity, preventing it from collapsing. The tentacles were smooth and translucent, reflecting the neon lights and exuding an iridescent sheen, as if a world was mirrored within them.
Tracing them back, these tentacles were connected to a vibrant brain.
Simon himself was oblivious to this, letting go of Skerry, still clutching the River-Splitting Sword tightly in one hand, and reaching into the assassin's robe with the other, feeling a hard object in an inner pouch.
He pulled it out to see it was an Assassin's Seal.
He and Skerry stood one horizontal, one vertical, as the crowd flowed past them. These strangely dressed people wore lazy expressions, like tourists, completely deaf to the series of explosions.
Simon felt out of place among them; their dynamic presence felt no different from static railings or street signs, or rather, it was like looking through a screen, where the scene was enchanting and magnificent, but disconnected from the reality of his senses.
In the distance, the black-robed assassin floated erratically. He had fewer pulse propulsion devices on his back, making his movement more strenuous, like an overweight, fat bird struggling to glide.
During the chase underground earlier, he had strapped most of the flight devices to a body whose fate was unknown, making it move quickly to attract firepower, while he himself had honestly hidden in a corner, playing dead.
It proved that his plan was very successful.
On the ground, Simon swung his sword again; the sword light, like a clear spring, cleverly caught Antino's eye.
"Hales! My friend, and Skerry, so glad to see you!" Due to the distance, his cultivate voice was completely muffled, and Simon heard nothing, but at least the opponent's bright white teeth were still very eye-catching.
Antino's posture was arrogant and at ease, the city's vast sky his to soar, with the colossal space city from outer space serving as the backdrop for his show, revealing its majestic form through the clouds.
This space city, oppressive like black clouds and filled with the precision of technology, seemed to come from another world. Against a complex background of lines and planes, a black dot gradually expanded, revealing its true outline: a manta ray-like aircraft, diving angrily, its blanket-like body curled into a shuttle, plummeting like a sharp sword, and standing vertically atop its guillotine, in a lunge, holding his laser rifle, already focused and ready to fire.
The blade falls, the razor closes; in the name of the guillotine, no one can escape death.
Antino was approaching Tyson the ground. He saw Skerry's fuzzy smiling face, felt comfortable, and thus relaxed even more, like taking a stroll in the countryside after dinner.
The attack from behind was like the sunset falling to earth before darkness consumed everything, both emotion and scene indistinct.
Coolness contrasted with comfort.
The scene was like heavy cavalry launching a deadly charge against unarmed civilians.
On this bleak and rainy street, Skerry and Simon, witnessing this moment, quickly paled, while the other spectators stopped their leisurely steps, taking their time, as if attending an art exhibition, where the grandest performance was about to begin.
"Hey! Behind you!" Skerry yelled, and Simon waved frantically.
Antino turned his head, instinctively twisting his body.
In a world where time was nearly stagnant, the searing laser moved sluggishly forward.
It broke through the rain curtain, grazed the black hat, grazed the red hair, and gently but irresistibly swept across half of his face.
His cranial cavity was exposed.
Within the complex metal structure, Antino's left brain had completely vanished, along with parts of his cerebellum and brainstem.
Next, the Guillotine only needed to gently flick his wrist, and this assassin would disappear forever.
Simon watched this scene, without time for any thoughts.
The rain seemed to have intensified.
Azure water light silently occupied the city.
The world shimmered with reflections, like a shallow continental shelf at noon.
Suddenly, a blurry phantom appeared on Antino.
A wild and hearty face, laughing loudly.
"Jackdaw, set sail!!!"
A thunderous roar echoed in everyone's ears.
Time began to flow.
The Guillotine shivered all over, almost dropping his laser rifle.
The next moment, people witnessed an unforgettable spectacle.
An old wooden warship, carrying a fierce ghostly sea wind, appeared out of thin air. Its magnificent and imposing figure covered half of the city's sky, and a tattered black pirate flag unfurled in the wind, wild and defiant.
Boom!!!
The warship suddenly crashed into the arrogant manta ray, like a wheel rolling over a crab.
"No!" The Guillotine roared in defiance, but his voice was soon drowned out by cheerful sea shanties and roaring waves.
Weigh-hay and up she rises...
A group of pirates laughed heartily, singing cheerful songs, and led by that legendary assassin, gradually sailed the ship away.
The assassin at the helm looked back at Simon, his eyes seeming to hold an entire deep sea.
Skerry yelled, "Hales, quickly catch Antino!"
This shout brought Simon's soul back. He saw the black-robed assassin's thrusters sputtering intermittently, he himself completely unconscious, plummeting chaotically to the ground.
At this moment, the Temple Corporation soldiers had sealed off this Crossroads.
They began to surround the assassins.
Simon dragged Skerry, pushing through the crowd, breaking through the encirclement, pinpointing Antino's landing spot, and slammed the Assassin's Seal onto the ground.
Buzz!
A brilliant blue passage opened, like a mirror, revealing another world behind it.
Antino fell in, and Simon and Skerry also leaped into it.
The portal closed, bullets harmlessly hitting the dazzling screen, in vain.
...
The setting sun hung on the horizon.
In a brilliant golden-red world, towering steel pillars stood tall.
A wide road stretched across the dense, golden-yellow grassland towards those tall buildings.
Several airships flew in the sky.
Simon looked at the scenery outside through the safety house's glass window.
A small, thin woman wearing glasses and a white coat walked over.
"Hales, I've erased your visit records at Eden. I hear you had a lot of fun this time."
"How is Antino?"
"He's fine, it's just that his hippocampus was burned to pieces by the laser. He'll need to download a memory backup from the archives."
Simon recalled the exposed half-brain, remaining silent.
Through the reflection in the glass window, he could clearly see his own face.
His head, encased in tentacles, resembled a tumor covered in blood vessels.
His reflection looked at him, just as he looked at his reflection.
Faintly, it seemed that the reflection asked, "Who are you? Do you still remember?"
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Thank you for following the story this far.
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