Chapter 64: Long-Range Sniping
“Does heaven really exist in this world?” Eleanor asked gloomily.
“Why are you suddenly asking this?” Asker asked in surprise. “And, weren’t you climbing the stairs with Sidlipha? Where is she?”
“Just asking.” Eleanor replied.
Failing to save that woman gave her a strong sense of guilt. If she told Asker, he might be able to comfort her with a few words.
But she didn’t want to be comforted, because it was her fault.
“If you’re talking about heaven in the Solomon sense, then probably not.” Asker said, chatting with her while climbing the stairs. “Our Furnace Island is essentially a fragment of the former Paradise Mountain – which is just a floating island.”
“But what happens after people die, Medea told you about it, right?” Asker continued. “After a person dies, their id remains in the body, their superego sinks into the sea of the subconscious, and their true self disappears completely.”
“So death is death, right?” Eleanor said in a heavy tone, thinking that whether the woman committed suicide or died because of her, she wouldn’t be able to see her dead husband and children.
Reuniting in heaven after death was just a beautiful illusion after all.
“Yes.” Asker said, “So work hard to become stronger, don’t die.”
“Hmm.” Eleanor responded sullenly.
They climbed to the top of the building and quickly ran down, then continued climbing from the first floor. After repeating this dozens of times, the almost overflowing supernatural power was finally digested a bit, and everyone’s physical strength was greatly improved.
The most obvious changes were in Medea and Nuo. These two originally had no foundation in martial arts, the kind who would collapse after running 1000 meters. Now they could climb twenty floors in one go and only breathe slightly heavily.
Asker sighed. The setting of supernatural power saturation was indeed beyond his expectations.
In the game world of his previous life, there was naturally no such thing as players being “blown up.” There was only the setting of “experience value reaching the upper limit, unable to gain new experience.” He didn’t expect NPCs to be so troublesome.
This body of his was, after all, still an NPC’s body.
Absorbing all the physical strength of a level 4 Transcendental with a level 2 body, saying that running up and down the stairs a few times could completely digest it would be cheating.
However, if they didn’t digest the remaining power, they wouldn’t be able to continue fighting.
Asker stood on the roof, looking into the distance, thinking that the original plan had to be adjusted significantly.
This residential building was located at the top of the Third Hill, which was the highest point in the vicinity. Therefore, from the roof, they could easily overlook the Sixth and Tenth Districts below, the Golden Horn in the distance, and even the Galata Peninsula across the Golden Horn.
From afar, they could see that the Frankish knights had already established multiple footholds in the main city.
To the east, towards the palace, the fighting between them and the defenders was the most intense; to the south were the Third Hill and the Second Hill, but because of the need to climb the mountains, few knights chose this direction.
To the west was the Tenth District, where many houses were already on fire. In the lakeside park along the Golden Horn, large swaths of landscape trees were being felled by the knights’ squires and made into crude battering rams or siege towers, intending to use them to break through the Constantinople defenders’ bunkers.
Asker sighed. As expected, this world was still a little different from his previous life. The difference was that there were no players here:
In his previous life, when the Frankish knights rushed across the Galata Bridge, the first thing they encountered was not the Constantinople defenders, but the players.
When the Frankish knights rushed into the Sixth and Tenth Districts and began to loot and massacre, the players in the city were also surprised to find that the supernatural power they absorbed from killing each Frankish knight almost doubled.
This was not an NPC enemy, this was an experience gift package from the game officials!
So the Frankish knights who rushed into the main city began to face the crazy resistance of the player army, especially the targeted sniping of the game guilds.
They didn’t dare to touch groups of Frankish knights, but they wouldn’t hesitate to attack lone ones. Dozens or even hundreds of players would pounce on them, using all sorts of dirty tricks like shooting from behind, grabbing their legs, and hitting them on the head.
Faced with the shameless tactics of the players trading dozens of their lives for one, the number of Frankish knights plummeted. Count Montferrat, seeing this, quickly adjusted his strategy, having the Frankish knights move in teams of three.
As a result, the players had already cultivated a group of elite troops with the supernatural power they plundered in the early stage, coupled with a large number of fearless low-level players who could respawn after death. They fought and killed all the Frankish knights who came, then occupied the Galata Bridge, counterattacked the Galata Peninsula, and fought their way to the other side of the Golden Horn.
In the end, of course, Count Montferrat and Doge Enrico hurriedly abandoned the Frankish knights who hadn’t boarded the ships and fled back to the West.
The Church was also merciless to these two culprits, directly issuing an excommunication order.
The latter was fine, after all, he still had some money in Venice. The former, however, was stripped of all his titles and territories by the king and was stoned to death by a group of devout believers when he passed through a rural area.
But in this world… without a large number of players, Asker was skeptical about whether Constantinople could withstand this attack.
If the Frankish knights couldn’t be repelled, would Zoe still, as before, schemingly seize Theodora’s power and imprison her in a monastery?
There was a popular saying on the forum that the reason why the two sisters fell out was because Zoe wanted to abandon the capital and flee to the Siris province to survive, just to survive.
Theodora was firmly opposed and advocated defending Constantinople to the death, waiting for Western aid.
As a result, they didn’t wait for Western aid, but a wave of Frankish knights’ invasion, which caused Theodora’s prestige in the Senate and the Church to plummet. Zoe took the opportunity to launch a coup, overthrew her, and incorporated the imperial guard legion that was originally loyal to her.
Hmm, he should still make Constantinople hold out a little longer. Otherwise, if the two Empresses were really scared and fled to the Siris province, then his idea of recruiting Theodora into the team would be dashed.
Asker turned around and saw that Miel had already run to the roof and was about to turn around and go downstairs to continue running.
“Miel, come here for a moment.” Asker called out. “Your special training has arrived.”
Miel: ???
She obediently walked over, her delicate little face full of confusion.
After getting acquainted with everyone, her originally indifferent and numb expression finally loosened up a bit, showing a bit more human touch – after all, she was still a twelve or thirteen-year-old girl, she couldn’t keep a bitter and resentful face forever.
Asker motioned for her to lie down on the roof, then asked her to take out the Slaughter-III rifle, switch to sniper mode, and aim at the Galata Bridge opposite them.
“Measure the distance?” Asker said.
“From here to the bridge, about 1000 meters.” Miel replied. “To be more precise, about 980 meters.”
“This distance is a suitable combat distance for snipers.” Asker raised his hand and put it to his ear, motioning. “Do you hear anything?”
Miel held her breath and listened. With her keen half-elf hearing, she noticed that among the occasional bursts of gunfire in the surroundings, there was an occasional loud bang, as if it was coming from a firearm with a louder sound.
“Sniper?”
“That’s right.” Asker said, “In the urban warfare environment of Constantinople, it’s the perfect place for snipers to show their combat advantage.”
“The imperial military should have transferred all their snipers here. Their range is generally around 600-800 meters, and they are easily exposed after firing, so they can only fire when there is intensive gunfire nearby, and they have to change their position after each shot.”
“But you don’t have to do that. The Slaughter-III with the auto-aim module has a much longer range than normal sniper rifles, so you can directly snipe the Galata Bridge, or even the Galata Peninsula opposite. Even if the people over there are hit, they can’t find your position from two kilometers away.”
Asker took the Slaughter-III, set it up on the edge of the roof as a demonstration, and aimed it at the other side of the Golden Horn.
Outside the factory across the Golden Horn, the blind Doge Enrico sat in a chair, quietly waiting for the Venetian sailors to carry out piles of production materials and documents.
The Doge’s assistant was directing beside him, reporting the looting situation to him from time to time.
Whether this attack on Constantinople was successful or not, as long as they could plunder the Eastern Solomon Empire’s industrial production materials, Venice would have achieved its ultimate strategic goal.
Of course, local skilled workers and production experts were also indispensable. They would take away as many as they could, and those who couldn’t be taken away… would be killed on the spot, lest they stay and work for their competitors.
As a commercial city-state, Venice originally started by providing offshore finance and foreign trade transit for the Church. The reason why they launched this war was to plunder the Eastern Solomon Empire’s production materials, so as to skip the stage of basic accumulation in industry and manufacturing.
Currently, the low-end OEM production of the Church was mainly undertaken by the factories in the territories of the nobles of the Holy Solomon Empire, large and small. However, the hostility between Emperor Otto and Pope Innocent was known to the world. Once Otto officially launched a war against Italy, the Church would inevitably stop its technological supply to the Holy Roman Empire and would urgently need to find new OEM factories.
Venice could just take over this wave of industrial transfer, transforming from a purely financial and trade city-state into a powerful country with both financial and industrial productivity.
A country without basic industrial production capacity was absolutely not enough to protect itself in this world.
Just as Doge Enrico was lost in thought, he suddenly heard his assistant shout and push him to the ground:
“Sniper!”
A bullet, traveling a distance of 1,800 meters, shot straight at Doge Enrico’s head. The assistant quickly pushed him down and activated his domain at the same time.
Shadow!
Within a radius of five or six meters around him, it instantly fell into complete darkness.
The high-speed bullet shot into the Shadow Domain and disappeared strangely – the entire Shadow Domain was a black hole with infinite curvature, distorting the surrounding space and time, directly disintegrating the bullet.
This assistant by Doge Enrico’s side was actually a demigod with a Shadow Domain!
The sniper on the other side continued to fire, forcing this Shadow demigod to keep his domain active. He could only quickly expand the black hole, withstanding the bombardment of bullets one after another, and enveloped Doge Enrico into the Shadow Realm.
Then his spirituality extended, opening another white hole inside the factory next to him, spitting out Doge Enrico from the Shadow Realm.
After Doge Enrico was sent to a room where he couldn’t be sniped, the demigod assistant glared fiercely in the direction of the gunshot, trying to lock onto the location of this hateful sniper through the shadow of the high-speed bullets.
However, the gunfire stopped abruptly, and no more bullets came.
The Shadow demigod immediately turned pale – he realized that he had maintained his domain for too long, causing his spirituality to be overdrawn and causing irreparable damage to his own spirit body.
After quickly deactivating his domain, he clutched his head, trying to calm the violent fluctuations of his spirituality.
However, this spiritual fluctuation was too intense, so much so that he had to activate his supernatural power to forcibly suppress the urge to lose control.
Once he activated his supernatural power, in the current low tide of magic, it would inevitably intensify the consumption and fluctuation of his spirituality.
So he fell into an unsolvable vicious cycle.
On the roof of the residential building on the Third Hill, Asker casually put away the rifle, handed it to Miel next to him, and said, “Here, take it and snipe the enemies on the Galata Bridge, don’t save bullets – just treat it as your practical training.”
“How many people did you shoot just now?” Miel asked curiously.
She watched Asker pull the trigger quickly, firing six or seven bullets in the blink of an eye, and couldn’t help but guess the result.
“Didn’t directly kill anyone.” Asker said, “But, I should have killed a demigod.”
“Demigod?” Miel’s eyes widened in disbelief, thinking to herself, didn’t you always say “below demigod, all are mortal flesh”? Could a demigod also be killed with a sniper rifle?
Then she saw a boundless shadow explode on the Galata Peninsula in the distance.
At that moment, it was as if the entire Galata Peninsula had fallen into darkness, no light could penetrate it.
After a while, the vision disappeared, and the town below was bathed in sunlight again, as if nothing had happened.
“That was?” Miel asked in shock.
“The anomaly of a demigod’s fall.” Asker replied.
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