Lord of Prayer - Chapter 69 - 62: Crazy Thursday

Chapter 69: Chapter 62: Crazy Thursday

In the training grounds of the Room in the Crack.

Nineteen metal dummies raised their right arms, their palms rapidly transforming into training pistols as their dark muzzles aimed at Zhou Chen, dozens of meters away.

As Xiao Yan tapped the start button on the screen, an invisible signal was instantly transmitted to every dummy, activating their operational commands.

—Fire!

Inside the dummies, unseen, countless precision parts began to whir under the system’s control. Each component performed its function, all working in concert, culminating in an instantaneous burst as rubber bullets shot out from the muzzles.

But even before that, Zhou Chen’s enhanced perception had already detected the transmission of the electrical signals. He heard the whirring of the tiny parts, allowing him to ’predict’ the moment they would fire and roughly judge the bullets’ trajectories.

His muscles bulged, erupting with terrifying explosive power in an instant. A blurry figure weaved through the gaps in the hail of gunfire. The dozens of meters vanished in a flash as he tore into the group of dummies, the wind howling in his wake.

Before Xiao Yan’s eyes could even focus, the metal dummies that had just fired a few shots ground to a halt, the ’death buttons’ on their necks pressed.

Finally, the fierce wind died down. Zhou Chen stood beside the last dummy, pressing the death button on its neck.

“4.36 seconds.” Xiao Yan glanced down at the timer on his tablet.

In that short time, Zhou Chen had taken out all nineteen gun-wielding metal dummies.

Of course, this wasn’t his limit. The metal dummies couldn’t actually be killed. Real, flesh-and-blood bodies, on the other hand, were incredibly fragile. A simple slice across an artery or the throat, or a knife to the heart, spleen, or lungs… was all it took to turn a living person into a cold corpse.

If he wanted to be cruder, Zhou Chen could have taken them out with a single punch each, enough to splatter their brains.

“Want to try rifles?” Xiao Yan asked.

“Let’s skip the rifles. I wouldn’t be able to evade the suppressive fire from nineteen rifles. Not unless I had some cover or gear.”

Zhou Chen shook his head. He knew his limits. Unless their numbers were cut in half, he’d be pinned down and killed by the sheer volume of fire. Automatic rifle rounds weren’t so easy to dodge, especially from more than a dozen guns.

“Then let’s double the number of pistols and try again.” Xiao Yan’s fingers flew across the controls. The system reactivated the metal dummies, and this time, their left hands also transformed into training pistols.

The training began again.

In the fraction of a second before the metal dummies opened fire, his Sensory Enhancement fed back a vast and complex flood of information. Zhou Chen’s brain began analyzing at high speed: the firing timing and direction of thirty-eight pistols, the velocity of the bullets, their flight trajectories…

The instant he moved, the first wave of bullets crisscrossed through the air. He dodged left and right, emerging from the downpour of fire unscathed while already analyzing the gaps in the second wave. Then the third, the fourth…

Soon, he charged into the crowd of dummies and began his ’slaughter.’ But this time, the dummies’ AI had been upgraded a Level. A dozen of them twisted their bodies and opened fire on him with reckless abandon, ignoring their own ’allies.’

In the confined space, bullets flew everywhere, forming a dense web. But Zhou Chen moved like a master Artist of dance, weaving and dodging among the dummies like a butterfly flitting through a field of flowers. Leaving only afterimages in his wake, he had ’killed’ all the dummies in no time.

“9.77 seconds. Not bad at all,” Xiao Yan praised. “That’s seven or eight seconds faster than a typical Ascender, and you came out unscathed.”

“Any more and I couldn’t have done it,” Zhou Chen said.

“Alright, next up, we’ll test your neural response and muscle coordination.” Xiao Yan tapped his tablet. The metal dummies slowly sank into the ground, and a platform bearing numerous items slowly rose up to take their place.

A knife, a wooden stick, a spoon, a beaker, a ping-pong ball, a beer bottle… An assortment of utterly ordinary items.

Zhou Chen stepped forward and tossed all the items into the air. He snatched the wooden stick first, holding it horizontally. As the other objects began to fall, he moved like a circus master, using the stick to catch them one by one and exquisitely arranging them in a neat row along its length.

Even the ping-pong ball, the most prone to rolling, remained perfectly balanced on the stick.

Next, with a powerful flick, Zhou Chen sent all the items flying again. He turned the stick vertically and caught the falling knife on its tip. Then came the beer bottle, the spoon, the beaker… Finally, he had stacked all the items into a precarious tower. It swayed, yet it remained in perfect mechanical equilibrium.

“Incredible, just incredible.” Xiao Yan applauded. “With skills like that, you could always find work in a circus if you ever lose your job.”

“Hm?” Just then, a look of surprise crossed his face. “I’m connected to the medical scanner on your Essence Communication Device. It says your brain is currently in a state of overload. Are you feeling anything?”

“Feel anything? I don’t feel…”

Suddenly, Zhou Chen felt a warmth at the tip of his nose. A trickle of blood flowed from his nostrils. It was followed by a sharp, stabbing pain in his brain. His concentration shattered, his mind scattered as if it had been viciously struck by an invisible sledgehammer.

CLATTER! His control broke. The items tumbled to the floor, and the beer bottle smashed into countless fragments with a loud CRASH.

As his brain throbbed with excruciating pain, Zhou Chen hastily tore off the Blindfolded Sunglasses. Without the Sensory Enhancement, the World instantly fell silent. He felt as if he’d been plunged into a mire, stripped of the feeling of weightlessness and the God’s Perspective-like sense of control.

It was like switching from a high-refresh-rate monitor to a low-refresh-rate one, from a sports car to a tractor, from an unlimited ammo mode back to standard.