With the man stepping in front of him, Kurei felt like he could finally breathe again. Setsuna Kiryu's suffocating, psychotic killing intent was completely blocked, as if it had crashed headfirst into an impenetrable iron wall!
Snapping back to his senses, Kurei instantly realized he had just stumbled upon a peerless powerhouse. "Two thousand! That's my entire payout for this mission!"
If he successfully completed his main objective in this world, he would be rewarded with 2,000 Terminus Coins. He was offering all of it to buy his life.
As long as there are green hills, there will be wood to burn. As long as he survived and successfully extracted back to the Terminus Space, he could find a way to recoup his losses in the next Mission World.
The Kengan world was simply too dangerous. If he managed to survive tonight, the absolute microsecond he secured his return qualification, he was going to extract.
"Two thousand? A bit on the low side, but I suppose it counts as extra income..." Lu Li muttered, turning his head to look at Setsuna. "I came here to hunt a monster anyway."
"Boss, be careful! He has that thing on him! His stats are completely anomalous!" Kurei shouted a warning while popping a recovery item and frantically backing away. They were both locked onto Setsuna's aggro now. If this powerhouse couldn't beat the psycho, Kurei was still going to die.
Hearing this, Lu Li bared his teeth in a feral, blindingly white grin. "Isn't that even better?"
"Was it you?"
Setsuna Kiryu spoke, his face twisting into a grotesque mask of grief and fury. "Were you the one who killed my God?!"
"It seems you've completely lost your mind. But I have a question for you: why exactly are you hunting him?" Lu Li's eyes narrowed slightly. "Who... fed you that intel?"
Yes. This was the biggest, glaring discrepancy in this entire scenario.
It made perfect logical sense for Setsuna to want to avenge Ohma. But how was he accurately tracking down Explorers?
Currently, no other canon Kengan fighters had been murdered (aside from Yohei Bando, whom Lu Li had killed). Yet, every single night, Setsuna's exclusive targets were Explorers!
This was absolutely not a coincidence. Someone was deliberately guiding Setsuna.
Identifying Explorers wasn't an easy task. To the native inhabitants of this world, Explorers just looked like ordinary proxy fighters. The only entity capable of actively distinguishing between Explorers and native NPCs was someone from the Terminus Space.
The ordinary Explorers were already struggling just to survive the baseline difficulty of the Kengan matches. They didn't even possess the strength to win the tournament, let alone waste time and energy actively orchestrating the elimination of other Explorers.
The deduction was simple: the person feeding Setsuna intelligence and manipulating him into hunting Explorers... was the Violator.
This wasn't great news for Lu Li. However, the silver lining was that the Violator hadn't managed to extract the Origin Seed from Setsuna yet.
Lu Li couldn't be certain if the Violator was simply using Setsuna as a convenient, disposable bloodhound for a little while longer, or if the Violator fundamentally lacked the combat power to actually kill a Seed-buffed Setsuna. Regardless, it resulted in the current situation.
"It was God! It was divine guidance!" Setsuna shrieked hysterically. He hugged his chest tightly, trembling with psychotic arousal. "God revealed the suspects to me! I will eliminate every single one of them! And then God will return to me, and grant me the most exquisite, beautiful death!"
"Yeah, there's no communicating with you. Let's just hack you to pieces first," Lu Li sighed.
He stepped forward, drawing Qiu Mo from its sheath. "Shatter your chains, Qiu Mo."
This was not a friendly martial arts spar. Even a lion uses its full strength to hunt a rabbit. Setsuna Kiryu was not weak. Under the catastrophic influence of the Origin Seed, his raw stats might actually rival Lu Li's. Furthermore, his technical proficiency was top-tier even among the Kengan elites.
If this were a spar, Lu Li wouldn't have drawn a weapon, let alone activate his Shikai. But tonight, he was here to execute.
Dense, purple-black mist swirled around the blade. Vine-like chains materialized and securely wrapped around Lu Li's right arm. The pitch-black blade completely devoured the moonlight; the only thing it reflected was absolute death.
With all his limiters off, Lu Li's suffocating killing intent instantly crushed Setsuna's manic aura. Triggering [Shunpo], Lu Li launched forward like a fired artillery shell, a tiger descending upon its prey!
Setsuna Kiryu aggressively utilized the Koei Style's [Rakshasa's Palm] with his feet, generating explosive, twisting kinetic force to move in a highly unpredictable, erratic trajectory to confuse Lu Li.
But the pitch-black blade descended anyway. It cleaved precisely and flawlessly through the exact trajectory Setsuna was trying to shift into.
In the next microsecond, the dark blade sliced through the night sky, severing the Beautiful Beast's head from his shoulders.
Lu Li came to a smooth halt. Under Kurei's utterly traumatized, disbelieving gaze, Lu Li performed a flawless chiburi (flicking the blood off the blade).
"He was surprisingly durable... To think he actually managed to deploy the Niko Style's [Indestructible] in that exact microsecond," Lu Li muttered, glancing down at Setsuna's headless corpse.
Simultaneously, the mechanical voice of the Terminus Space echoed in his mind.
[The Pioneer has successfully executed the current host of the Origin Seed. Please utilize the designated System Container to extract the Seed. The Mission Reward will be distributed upon successful extraction and return to the Terminus Space.]
Hearing the prompt, Lu Li checked his localized Spatial Inventory. Inside, a transparent, capsule-like container had materialized.
He withdrew the item, noticing that its rarity grade was just a string of question marks. The system completely blocked him from viewing its detailed stats.
Crouching down, he hesitantly pressed the transparent capsule against Setsuna's corpse. Seconds later, a brilliant, vibrant emerald-green light began to radiate from the body. An ethereal seed—its exact shape impossible to discern—floated out of the corpse and was instantly sucked into the capsule.
Once the Origin Seed was secured, the entire interior of the capsule turned a dense, opaque emerald green, completely obscuring the Seed from visual observation.
Lu Li was highly curious. He had initially assumed that killing Setsuna would automatically transfer the Origin Seed's power directly into his own body. Clearly, that wasn't the case. The Terminus Space mandated the use of a highly specialized containment unit, actively preventing him from directly interacting with it.
After a moment's thought, he concluded that a multi-dimensional mega-structure like the Terminus Space likely wouldn't scam a Pioneer out of their promised rewards. He safely deposited the sealed capsule back into his Spatial Inventory.
"Boss Qiu Mo... A-Are you... are you really just Level 7?!"
Kurei's trembling voice came from behind. He cautiously walked over to Setsuna's corpse, feeling like this entire night was an absurd hallucination.
What had he just witnessed? An absolute monster who had secured an apocalyptic artifact and was virtually invincible... got effortlessly one-shot decapitated by this guy?!
"More or less," Lu Li replied casually. He crouched back down and began thoroughly looting Setsuna's pockets.
Unfortunately, there were no new clues or system items. It seemed he would have to rely on Patriarch Erioh and Chairman Metsudo to investigate Setsuna's recent movements to track down the Violator.
Standing back up, Lu Li turned to Kurei and flashed a warm, highly amicable smile. "Pay up."
Kurei's face stiffened awkwardly. "B-Boss... I don't actually have the cash on me right now..."
The warm smile instantly vanished from Lu Li's face. "Are you fucking with me?"
Kurei instantly felt like he had been plunged into an icy abyss. The flat, emotionless killing intent radiating from Lu Li was ten times more terrifying than the psychotic pressure Setsuna had projected earlier.
He frantically shook his head. "No, no, no! I swear I'm not trying to scam you, Boss! But think about it... what kind of Tier 1 Explorer actually hoards thousands of coins before deploying to a Mission World? We spend it all on upgrades!"
"Is 2,000 Coins really considered a lot of money?" Lu Li asked, genuinely baffled.
Sure, he had only earned 3,500 Coins from his first Trial World, but he had actively turned down the flat 10,000 Coin reward option! He legitimately didn't think 2,000 Coins was a massive sum. This Explorer had to be at least Level 5 or 6, having survived several worlds. He couldn't even scrape together 2,000 Coins?!
Hearing Lu Li's genuine confusion, Kurei's expression turned incredibly complex. I guess this is the fundamental difference between a literal God and a mortal, he thought bitterly.
"For a powerhouse like you, Boss, it's obviously pocket change. But scrubs like me don't have the luxury of hoarding cash. I can draft a System Contract with you right now. The exact second we return to the Hub, the funds will be automatically transferred to your account."
"And what if you die before the extraction?" Lu Li frowned. "Doesn't that mean I get absolutely nothing?"
Lu Li suddenly felt like he had taken a massive loss on this transaction. It was true what they said: the debtor is the real master. If he wanted those 2,000 Coins, he now had to actively make sure this idiot didn't get himself killed.
"Please don't worry, Boss! I'm extracting very soon. I won't drag it out! I'm pretty good at surviving!" Kurei pleaded, absolutely terrified that this ruthless demon might just chop his head off out of sheer annoyance.
He had survived a few worlds in the Terminus Space, and he knew a fundamental truth: the longer you survived in the Space, the more mentally unhinged you became. In fact, the absolute strongest Explorers were usually the craziest.
In Kurei's eyes, Lu Li was the kind of guy who was already a high-functioning psychopath before he even entered the Space. The way he had just decapitated a man—without a single microsecond of hesitation or a flinch of empathy—was chilling.
Lu Li glanced at the shattered fragments of Kurei's tactical shield on the ground. "Fine. Draft the contract. And try not to die."
Within seconds, driven entirely by Lu Li's terms, the System Contract was finalized. Lu Li also added a strict non-disclosure clause: Kurei was absolutely forbidden from revealing that Lu Li had secured the Origin Seed.
Even though Lu Li assumed the Violator would eventually deduce who killed Setsuna Kiryu given enough time, he wanted to maintain a low profile for as long as possible. He couldn't risk spooking his actual prey before the net was closed.
After Kurei scurried away into the night, Lu Li pulled out his burner phone. "Hey, Sis Sayaka. It's me. The hunt is finished. I need your cleanup crew."
Hanging up the phone, he walked out of the alleyway, preparing to head to Setsuna Kiryu's known apartment to conduct a thorough search.
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