Chapter 447: The Thirteenth Series Episode (Part 4)
In the close-ups, players watched cannonball after cannonball detonate in midair, each one sniped down by Zhou Ning's seemingly unpatterned but impossibly precise shots.
Seeing the bombardment fail, a bell tolled. Wind General maintained its barrage while accelerating, rapidly closing in on Wings of Freedom.
Then the low, surging music gradually faded into stillness—like the suffocating calm before a storm.
CRACK! A mast snapped under the wind and crashed straight toward Zhou Ning.
In a slow close-up, Zhou Ning didn't even spare it a glance. He simply raised a hand and caught the falling mast mid-air, movement impossibly smooth and effortless.
Then everyone saw it—
A card materialized in his palm, glowing with blinding, kaleidoscopic light.
He slammed it down.
"Here it comes! Wayne Sturwell's overwhelming summon ability!"
The camera shot into the sky. As the light burst dissipated, a massive vortex tore open in the air. A silver-white dragon erupted from it, releasing an earth-shaking roar.
Nearly every player had memorized Wayne Sturwell's performance in the Darkland Tragedy—the battle that still held the top three spots in the game's all-time combat highlight rankings. They recognized it instantly.
The Mythic creature once used as the sacrifice to summon the Sky Dragon—
The Spiral Dragon!
Before millions of staring eyes, Wayne Sturwell leapt onto the dragon's back. The silver wyrm beat its wings, defying the wind as it surged toward Wind General. Meanwhile, the protagonist continued firing, bullet after bullet detonating every shell in the sky.
The perspective shifted to Wayne Sturwell's first-person view.
Below, Wind General's deck was a sea of bodies—enemy sailors packed shoulder to shoulder. Flintlock rifles raised. Cutlasses and sabers drawn. Every face turned upward, bracing for assault. Even General of the Wind, Gallagher stepped out from the captain's quarters, gazing skyward.
The immersion was overwhelming. Players collectively held their breath, nerves tense as if they were the ones about to plunge into an army.
Then—
Wayne Sturwell's long-awaited execution soundtrack hit.
"It's here!!! The Execution BGM!!!"
"ALERT—HYPE INCOMING!!! REPEAT: HYPE INCOMING!!!"
Players who had already watched the episode spammed the chat in anticipation.
The Spiral Dragon coiled around the mast before blasting out a colossal spiraling column of water that tore downward onto Wind General's deck.
Then came the moment that made everyone flinch—
From the first-person view, countless blades glinted upward, stabbing toward the sky. Some players physically jerked their heads back.
The spiraling water slammed down, detonating into chaos.
Then—without sound, without warning—players watched their hands raise a massive greatsword engulfed in roaring flame, reflecting blinding sunlight as it descended.
BOOM!!!
Zhou Ning hit the deck like a falling artillery shell.
The shockwave alone hurled bodies into the air, knocking enemies unconscious or critically injuring them on impact.
One sweeping sword wave followed—
A burst of sword energy that instantly cleared the field.
Pure spectacle.
Devastating.
Cathartic.
Players went wild. This was the first time they had experienced the protagonist's strength in true first-person. Previous battles now felt distant. This wasn't watching the hero… this was being the hero.
In front of them now stood a dense mass of Northern sailors—well over a thousand strong.
Farther ahead:
• Wind General's first mate — "Hurricane" Spike, white shirt whipping in the storm
• Second mate Sea Serpent Steinbeck
• And above, looming at the door to the captain's quarters—
General of the Wind, Gallagher
The scale hit like a physical impact.
Still in first-person, a surge of golden presence erupted, saturating the battlefield with overwhelming pressure.
Close-up flashes showed the entire ship trembling. The wooden deck cracked beneath the force. Pirates near the protagonist rolled their eyes white and dropped unconscious. The sheer aura carved a narrow corridor through flesh and steel as the protagonist advanced, one step at a time.
The perspective subtly shifted.
Players watched Zhou Ning draw two guns.
At his back, twin wings of golden light unfurled—towering, radiant, divine.
Above his head, the light brain generated text:
[Retribution: Sky-Severing Wings Ultimate Skill — Transforms the user into an angelic form with radiant wings. Automatically fires two rounds of sweeping bullets at enemies ahead, then ascends and unleashes a rotating bullet storm that deals massive damage. The user is immune to all control effects during transformation. Restores 3% Concentration per second while active.]
Every Gunslinger player watching lost their minds.
"So the third class advancement is Sky-Severing Wings?! And this skill is Retribution?! This is PEAK!!!"
Zhou Ning strode forward across the deck, guns blazing with effortless precision. Golden feathers forged from pure aura manifested in his wake—each exploding like a bomb moments later.
Pirates dropped like dominoes behind him.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Style over brutality.
Grace over chaos.
This wasn't devastation—this was art.
It might not have been as cataclysmic as Batman vs. the King of Lavides, but the impact, intimacy, and visceral hype surpassed it in every way. Professional players rewatched the sequence on loop. The impact rating? MAXIMUM.
The music reached its peak.
Wayne Sturwell arrived before the captain's cabin.
Face to face—with General of the Wind, Gallagher.
The duel that followed exceeded every expectation. The light brain cut between first and third person flawlessly—Wayne's calm composure versus Gallagher's monstrous storm mastery, culminating in the pirate's grotesque transformation into an arachno-demigod.
Players sat frozen, hearts pounding.
Finally—
The Spiral Dragon's water vortex locked Gallagher in place.
Wayne raised his gun.
Seventeen shots.
Seventeen impacts.
One dead "General of the Wind."
Only then did players exhale. Some realized their clothes were drenched in sweat. No fight before had ever immersed them so completely.
The episode moved past the two-thirds mark.
Players were hooked, fully absorbed.
Wings of Freedom safely reached Teldron Island.
Wayne and Red-Hair Robinson headed to the Temple of the Sea God to claim the bounty.
Meanwhile, Opa Bessemer successfully met his co-conspirators.
The scheme was set.
The trap was spring-loaded.
By now, many players were genuinely anxious for Zhou Ning. According to the cursed book, Opa intended to summon the Moonlight Direwolf, an angel-class catastrophe. How the hell was the protagonist going to handle that?
Even if this episode didn't outshine the last, it never dropped the tension for a second. A breathless ride end to end—and a glorious showcase of just how overwhelmingly powerful the protagonist had become.
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