The moment the trap sprung, Li Ke's hard-earned survival instincts kicked in. He executed a sharp combat roll toward Roche, seamlessly pulling a heavy machine gun straight out of his 7 Days to Die inventory.
Dropping into a low crouch, he whipped his head around to face the threat. But Roche's crimson silhouette was already a step ahead.
Swinging her staff with terrifying speed, the fiery red Chaser orbiting her crystallized into a wave of searing flames. The blast forced the primary attacker backward. Without losing momentum, her petite frame accelerated with an unnatural, jarring burst of speed. She closed the gap instantly, slamming her palm directly into the assailant's abdomen.
The attacker was a towering, heavily muscled brute. Yet, under the kinetic force of Roche's palm strike, he was sent flying through the air, coughing up a spray of fresh blood before crashing heavily onto the cobblestones.
However, Roche and Li Ke were up against more than just a single rogue.
The exact millisecond Roche extended her palm, a second assailant lunged from the shadows, a razor-sharp katana slicing cleanly toward her exposed neck. Roche reacted with fluid, acrobatic grace, snapping her upper body backward at an impossible angle. In the same motion, she spun her staff, transferring it from her right hand to her left. Riding the massive wave of generated momentum, she smashed the weapon—now crackling with a glowing white Light Chaser—directly into the second attacker.
Blinding arcs of electricity exploded across the man's torso, blasting him backward.
This strike packed a far heavier kinetic punch than her first palm slam. The second thug slammed into the brick alley wall with enough force to web it with cracks, his katana slipping from his numb fingers and clattering into the dark.
Instead of overextending to press the attack, Roche immediately snapped into a defensive combat stance, her sharp eyes scanning the shifting shadows of the alleyway.
Her finely tuned senses told her that more danger was lurking nearby.
Staring down at the two bruised thugs as they scrambled back to their feet, Roche narrowed her eyes, her tone dropping into a deadly, freezing demand.
"Who the hell are you people? Why are you trying to ambush Big Brother Li Ke?!"
The muscle-bound brute who had taken her initial palm strike aggressively wiped a smear of crimson from his lips. When he had been blasted backward, he had accidentally bitten down hard on his own tongue, and every word he spoke now burned with a sharp, throbbing ache.
"Heh... what do you think, brat? We're just looking to borrow some spending money from the rich guy. But you over there... your reaction time isn't half bad."
The brute rotated his heavy shoulder, testing his joints. He genuinely hadn't expected a pint-sized girl like Roche to possess such monstrous reaction speed, velocity, and raw physical power. He had been caught completely off guard.
But he reasoned that as long as he kept his guard up and took her seriously, overcoming her would be a walk in the park.
Meanwhile, Li Ke's gaze locked onto the weapon that had nearly ended his life. It was a massive iron greatsword. The blade alone was a staggering fifteen centimeters wide and nearly a meter and a half long. Yet, the muscular brute handled it as effortlessly as if it were a common trench knife.
Was that massive chunk of iron about to take my head off just a second ago?
Li Ke stared at the greatsword, a cold sweat breaking out across his back. He felt a profound wave of relief that Roche was by his side; otherwise, he likely would have been a corpse before he even realized he was under attack.
Then again, if Roche hadn't guided him into this sketchy, narrow alleyway in the first place, he never would have set foot here. He possessed plenty of self-awareness. To the powers that be in this realm, an outsider like him dying in a ditch meant absolutely nothing. At best, Kiri might investigate his disappearance a bit and eventually avenge his death.
But beyond that, no one would care.
With that harsh reality settling in, Li Ke's gaze instantly turned ice-cold.
"Hey, Roche. If I slaughter these bastards right here, am I going to run into any legal trouble?"
Li Ke's index finger drifted downward, resting firmly against the cold steel of the machine gun's trigger. For safety's sake, he needed to confirm the local rules of engagement first.
"No," Roche replied, her eyes never leaving the muscular brute as her grip tightened around her spear-tipped staff. "Adventurers getting into lethal squabbles and fighting to the death is completely normal around here. As long as you aren't mindlessly massacring innocent civilians or murdering people right in front of the city guard, the Principality won't interfere, no matter how brutal the fight gets."
This chaotic, lawless environment was exactly what she despised most about this world. The lower rungs of society here weren't all that different from Pandemonium. Both places were teeming with unhinged lunatics who didn't value their own lives, let alone anyone else's. It was the exact reason she had abandoned specializing in elemental magic to learn Chasers and Battle Mage combat strategies instead.
This cutthroat world simply didn't grant her the luxury of time required to sit down and research traditional spells!
"Damn right, kid! As long as there are no witnesses, anything goes!"
The brute roared, swinging his greatsword as he charged toward Li Ke once more. Roche immediately moved to intercept him, her staff tracing a lethal arc through the air.
"Don't you dare!"
Their weapons clashed with a resounding metallic boom. Though the sheer kinetic impact forced the heavy brute back two steps, the sinister smirk flashing across his face caused Roche's stomach to drop.
Oh no!
She whipped her head around just in time to see the katana-wielding swordsman she had previously blasted away sprinting toward Li Ke. The assassin's blade was thrusting forward at blinding speed, aimed directly at Li Ke's heart from his blind spot.
She desperately wanted to pivot and save him, but the brute's greatsword came crashing down again with crushing weight. If she dared to break away, that massive iron slab would sever her neck.
Her lack of physical height left her with zero leverage to cover both angles at once.
At that exact millisecond, alarm bells went off frantically inside Li Ke's head. A suffocating wave of killing intent surged from behind. Relying purely on raw survival instinct, he twisted his torso around. Even before his body fully completed the turn, his finger slammed down on the trigger toward the source of the lethal threat.
A deafening, continuous roar of gunfire instantly echoed through the narrow alleyway. Amidst the mechanical violence, a sharp, metallic screech rang out.
The very instant Li Ke opened fire, the swordsman's katana hacked violently against the metal frame of the machine gun. The concentrated force instantly depleted the weapon's durability to zero, rendering the firearm completely broken and jammed. However, the initial burst of heavy rounds unleashed right before the impact had already shredded through the air, tearing directly into the ambusher's torso.
The swordsman stared down in utter disbelief at the two gaping, bloody holes that had suddenly appeared in his chest. He desperately tried to force his body forward to finish Li Ke off, but in a seamless blur, the ruined machine gun in Li Ke's hands vanished, replaced instantly by a heavy combat shotgun.
"Go to hell!"
Following Li Ke's enraged roar, the overwhelming blast of buckshot tore the assassin apart. The swordsman was launched backward in a horrific spray of shredded flesh and lead pellets, crashing onto the cobblestones and instantly falling dead silent.
"What the hell?!"
The heavy brute had never seen a weapon capable of such instantaneous, explosive violence. His eyes widened in absolute shock. But before he could even process his partner's demise, a blistering heat radiated through the steel of his greatsword.
"Where do you think you're looking?!"
Roche's sharp, commanding voice pierced the air. Her staff erupted in a roaring, incandescent blaze, forcing the brute to instinctively scramble backward to avoid being charred alive.
Retreating a few paces, the brute glanced at his dead comrade before looking back at Roche, who was glaring at him with gnashing teeth. He made a split-second calculation, pivoted on his heel, and bolted deep into the branching alleyways.
"Don't you dare run!"
The petite Battle Mage pursued him without a second thought. While she didn't necessarily intend to execute the brute on the spot, she fully intended to beat him into submission and drag him to the city guard.
Li Ke, however, didn't follow them. He had a far more staggering, urgent revelation to verify.
The exact moment his shotgun blast had neutralized the swordsman, a crisp, distinctly mechanical sound effect from the 7 Days to Die system echoed in his mind. Concurrently, a blood-spattered canvas backpack materialized out of thin air, tumbling out of the dead assassin's flying trajectory and dropping straight onto the pavement right in front of his boots!
It was unmistakable.
The enemy had just dropped a Loot Bag!