The air in the decaying ship cabin seemed to freeze, with only faint electrical hums and barely audible ghostly whispers echoing around. Rex stepped forward steadily. His mechanical eyes lit up with two sharp points of icy blue light, like the eyes of a raptor locking onto prey in the darkness.
Rex stepped forward, his mechanical eyes flashing blue. "Buzz—"
Accompanied by a precise yet clear mechanical whirring, hundreds of nano-drones shimmering with silver-blue cold light swarmed out from the seams in his back armor like a disturbed beehive. They weren't chaotic; in an extremely short time, they arranged themselves in mid-air into a precise, sharp-edged massive diamond formation, the subtle sounds of their wings adjusting angles converging into a low hum.
His opponent had already positioned himself at the end of the diamond formation's diagonal, as if coalescing directly from the shadows of the cabin. It was a flickering figure, emanating an inhuman aura—a ghostly sniper. In his hands was not a modern energy weapon, but an antique rifle wrapped in black, slowly writhing vines that seemed alive. The wooden stock was covered in cracks from age, yet the metal barrel gleamed with an ominous dull sheen in the dim light. Two utterly different power systems formed a stark contrast at this moment.
The mysterious figure—the host and arbiter of this eerie competition—slowly raised his hand shrouded in shadows. His voice remained low but clearly pierced through the drones' hum: "Second round, shooting battle—'Ghost Shooting Range'."
As his words fell, a sudden change occurred!
The rusty, stain-covered metal walls of the cabin vanished as if wiped away by an invisible giant hand! In their place was a vast, profoundly unsettling void background. And in this void, tens of thousands of transparent glass spheres of varying sizes floated silently. They weren't still; they moved slowly, eerily, and without any discernible pattern—rotating, colliding. At the center of each glass sphere was sealed a flickering "ghost fire" emitting either eerie green, pale white, or dark blue light. These flames burned, twisted, and struggled silently inside the spheres, casting bizarre shadows that rendered the entire space like an underworld playground. A bone-chilling cold aura, accompanied by countless ghostly murmurs, instantly swept over everyone present.
"The rules are simple." The mysterious figure's voice scraped like a cold wind. "In three minutes, the one who shatters the most glass spheres wins." He paused deliberately, pointing to those few spheres among the green, white, and blue lights that stood out with particularly glaring colors, their inner flames like congealed blood clots. "But beware, the red glass spheres are traps. Shattering one will trigger an energy explosion." His tone was flat, yet carried an unquestionable dangerous warning.
"Begin!"
"Clang!" "Buzz!"
The instant the command dropped, two utterly different activation sounds erupted simultaneously!
Rex's left arm's mechanical structure emitted a precise and swift transformation sound, metal components layering and reassembling at high speed. In the blink of an eye, it turned into a streamlined heavy ion cannon flickering with charged blue light, the muzzle aimed at the swirling glass spheres in the sky. At the same time, commands from his core processor fired at lightspeed: "Drones divide into groups, Team A prioritize locking green targets, Team B scan and mark red traps in real-time, Team C free-lock for support fire, maximize coverage!"
"Command confirmed!" The blue lights of the hundreds of nano-drones shifted instantly—some turning to efficient green locking markers, others lighting up with glaring red warning markers, the rest maintaining blue—as if pulled by invisible threads. The diamond formation disintegrated in an instant, turning into several precise and efficient silver-blue streams, dispersing toward their assigned airspaces!
In that moment, the silence was utterly torn apart!
"Zzz—! Zzz—! Zzz—!"
Hundreds of hair-thin yet containing astonishing destructive power high-energy laser beams shot out from Rex's ion cannon and the dispersed drone swarm! They sliced through the void, leaving brief bright trails, precisely hitting one locked glass sphere after another. No margin of error, no hesitation. Each shot was accompanied by a crisp "pop" sound, and a puff of ghost fire extinguishing like a burst bubble, dissipating. Glass shards briefly reflected the laser's afterglow in the void before being swallowed by endless darkness. Rex's shooting was like the most efficient industrial assembly line—cold, merciless, precise to the millimeter. His mechanical eyes constantly scanned, calculated, and corrected at high speed, incorporating every millisecond of dynamic change.
On the other side, the ghostly sniper's counterattack was equally fierce and eerie. He didn't spread his fire like Rex; instead, he steadily raised that antique rifle. The black vines wrapping the barrel suddenly lit up with dark purple runes, and a thick, roiling mass of dark energy gathered at the muzzle. "Bang!" A muffled gunshot that seemed to come from underground rang out, and a fist-sized "bullet" composed entirely of shadows shot forth. Its flight path wasn't straight but carried a living agility, tracing erratic arcs in the air, precisely smashing into a moving glass sphere.
"Pop!" The same glass shattering sound, but what followed wasn't the ghost fire dissipating—instead, it seemed swallowed and assimilated by the bullet, instantly dimming and annihilating. Then, "Bang! Bang! Bang!" The muffled gunshots continued relentlessly, each one accompanied by the destruction of a glass sphere. His shooting rhythm wasn't fast, yet it carried the steadiness of ancient craftsmanship and an eerie predictive ability, as if he could see through some "spiritual" pattern behind the spheres' erratic trajectories. The black bullets wove a web of death in the void, efficient though not matching Rex's laser rain, but carrying a chilling, cold beauty that made hearts race.
Time flew by. The sounds of glass spheres shattering in the void were as dense as a sudden downpour, the lights of extinguishing ghost fires rising and falling.
"One minute!" The mysterious figure's cold time announcement rang out.
Rex's internal counter instantly displayed a number: 3600. Three thousand six hundred in one minute! This was already a terrifying speed. However, his processor instantly completed a new tactical assessment: Dispersed fire had reached its bottleneck; the drones' point-shooting efficiency was declining in unit time when facing more scattered and disorderly remaining targets. He needed larger range, higher density coverage strikes!
"Drones combine!" Rex decisively issued the new command, his voice still steady and unperturbed. "Target: Continuous sweep matrix!"
"Command confirmed! Combination protocol activated!" All the point-shooting nano-drones' blue lights suddenly blazed brightly, like soldiers hearing orders. They instantly abandoned their current locked targets, turning into hundreds of silver-blue meteors, rapidly converging toward a preset coordinate! They collided, fitted, and docked in mid-air, metal structures emitting tooth-gritting precise meshing sounds. In just two seconds, a ferocious-looking, several-meter-long giant multi-barrel laser gun, assembled from hundreds of drones, floated in front of Rex!
The giant laser gun's barrels began high-speed rotation preheating, emitting a low, destruction-filled roar, the body radiating scorching heat waves.
"Buzz————Boom!!!"
A thick, dragon-breath-like blazing white energy torrent erupted from the rotating barrels! This beam was no longer precise point shots but transformed into a destructive light whip! Rex's mechanical arm was steady as a rock, controlling this giant gun, the beam like Death's scythe, sweeping a wide fan-shaped trajectory through the void!
Where the light whip passed, the scene was nothing short of terrifying!
"Pop pop pop pop pop—!!!"
Dense shattering sounds, indistinguishable individually, converged into a continuous explosion! Hundreds, thousands of glass spheres, upon contact with the light whip, vaporized instantly like high-temperature-melted hailstones, along with their inner ghost fires—annihilated! Glass shards didn't even have time to scatter before being evaporated by the terrifying energy. Where the beam swept, it left a brief vacuum zone composed of pure destruction! Efficiency skyrocketed to a jaw-dropping level.
"Good heavens! This firepower!" TISK watched in stunned awe, his dwarven love for metal and energy making him so excited his beard trembled. "This is the pinnacle of mechanical art!"
Fa nodded slightly, a barely noticeable approval flashing in her right eye. Arya drew in a light breath; the elf's sensitivity to energy let her feel the destructive power contained in that beam. Kayla grinned, baring her sharp canines—this pure sense of power excited her. Yuyuer quickly mentally calculated Rex's kill efficiency, wisdom gleaming in her eyes. Zhamisi flicked her tongue: "Tsk, this metal lump gets scary when it goes all out."
The ghostly sniper was clearly shocked by Rex's violent assault; his flickering form seemed to freeze for a moment. He could feel the gap between them rapidly widening due to this terrifying light whip! Anxiety wrapped around his spiritual core like a cold venomous snake. He couldn't maintain that precise point-kill rhythm anymore—he needed to be faster! More urgent!
"Roar!" He let out a silent spiritual howl, the black vines on the antique rifle dancing wildly, the muzzle gathering dark energy at a suddenly accelerated pace! "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" The muffled gunshots became rapid, linking into a chain. He no longer pursued perfect arc trajectories but injected more spiritual power, making the black bullets faster, attempting to cover a larger area.
However, haste breeds error!
One red glass sphere, standing out glaringly among the many green, white, and blue lights, was passing through the sniper's aiming zone at a tricky angle. His mind was entirely focused on catching up to Rex's astonishing kill count, his alertness to that red suppressed in a moment of impatience.
"Bang!"
A black bullet more condensed than before, carrying the sniper's urgent will, whistled out and precisely hit that red glass sphere!
Time seemed to freeze for half a second.
Then—"Boom!!!"
Not a crisp "pop," but a deafening, void-shaking terrifying explosion! The instant the red glass sphere shattered, it released not ghost fire, but a highly unstable, destruction-filled crimson fireball! The fireball expanded instantly, violent energy shockwaves spreading madly in all directions like a tsunami!
"Woo—!"
The powerful air blast slammed into the ghostly sniper, his flickering spiritual body like a leaf in a gale, flung backward, tumbling several times in the air before barely stabilizing, his antique rifle nearly slipping from his grasp. Worse still, within dozens of meters around the explosion core, whether green, pale white, or dark blue glass spheres, all were directly shattered and flung by this sudden violent energy shockwave! The originally somewhat orderly shooting area instantly descended into chaos. Countless glass shards mixed with residual ghost fire energy turbulence wildly shot and spun around the explosion point, forming a dangerous death zone.
The sniper's shooting rhythm was utterly disrupted! He needed time to stabilize his form, and more time to avoid that chaotic energy turbulence and flying shards. These few seconds of stagnation, in a race against time, were fatal!
Rex's mechanical eyes precisely captured the explosion and its aftermath, but his giant laser gun didn't pause for a fraction. He calmly fine-tuned the beam's sweep trajectory, cleverly avoiding the explosion's energy turbulence area, the beam continuing to mercilessly harvest the unaffected peripheral glass spheres. The post-combination sweep mode of the drones showed its area-attack advantage in this chaos.
"Last thirty seconds!" The mysterious figure's voice rang out again, like a death knell.
The ghostly sniper let out an unwilling screech, raising his rifle again, firing madly in an attempt to salvage the loss. Black bullets shot out densely once more, but neither the momentum nor efficiency could compare to before the explosion. Meanwhile, Rex's beam giant gun continued steadily and efficiently spewing destructive torrents.
"Time's up!"
With the mysterious figure's cold declaration, the sky-full of shooting beams and black bullets abruptly ceased. The floating giant laser gun instantly disassembled, turning into hundreds of silver-blue streams, orderly flying back behind Rex and re-entering his armor. His ion cannon arm also swiftly transformed back to normal. The entire process was as smooth as breathing.
The void was a mess. The originally tens of thousands of flickering ghost fire glass spheres now had only a few scattered ones still floating alone. Most areas were left with drifting fine crystal dust and not-yet-fully-dissipated energy afterglow.
The mysterious figure raised his hand, two light screens appearing out of thin air, displaying the final numbers:
Rex: 12568
Ghostly Sniper: 892
The cold, vast disparity in numbers declared the winner of this tech-versus-supernatural showdown.
"Second round, Fa's team wins." The mysterious figure's voice echoed in the silence, still without ripple, but keen observers like Fa could catch a faint, subtle acknowledgment of pure mechanical efficiency deep in that flat tone.
"Beautiful! Damn, that was too fucking beautiful! Rex!" TISK was the first to jump up, his face flushed with excitement, his stout dwarven arm slapping his thigh with bangs. "Hundred percent accuracy! This is true precision!"
Arya let out a sigh of relief, showing a gentle smile, softly saying: "Incredible control." She knew well that maintaining that scale and intensity of energy output in such a chaotic environment required terrifying control ability.
Fa said nothing, just nodding slightly, the light deep in her right eye receding. She acknowledged this victory; Rex's performance was impeccable—calm, efficient, pushing mechanical advantages to the extreme. Kayla crossed her arms, grinning: "Now that ghost thing has nothing to say!" Yuyuer looked thoughtfully at the remaining red crystal dust: "The trap design... very interesting." Zhamisi swished her tail: "Won clean and crisp!"
Salsa's mechanical cat shell let out a soft "meow," data streams flashing in her electronic eyes, as if analyzing the battle data just now.
The mysterious figure's shadowy outline turned slightly toward Rex, the shadows under his hood seeming to deepen for a moment. His voice was a bit clearer than before, though still low, carrying a detectable weight: "Well done." These two simple words seemed to carry some strange gravity, landing on the cold metal floor. "You won this match."
He paused, his shadowed gaze seeming to sweep over Fa's team, finally resting on Rex's flashing blue mechanical eyes.
"Mechanical precision... lives up to its reputation."