Matthew Atkinson & Natelie Russell
Fourth Layer of the Supernatural Realm
[You killed Daito, Sho, and Aech, who are among the famous Gunters. Your hands are stained with the blood of one of their friends.]
[Parzival will join the Battle Royale to get revenge in three hours. Get ready!]
[03:00:00... 02:59:59... 02:59:58...]
This warning surprised Matthew and Natalie because none of the Professors had mentioned such a thing.
Did this event occur every time Daito, Sho, and Aech were killed?
Or was the Supernatural Realm holding a special event to balance the imbalance in the Battle Royale?
This piqued Matthew's curiosity, but he had another matter to attend to at the moment.
The other NPCs.
Matthew didn't hold back and soared a few meters into the air, beginning to kill every avatar he saw with his heat rays.
For a moment, there was a calm in the Artifact Zone, but then new NPCs filled the void, attacking Matthew and Natalie.
It seemed impossible to scare them into retreating.
Thereupon, Natalie and Matthew entered a repetitive, monotonous, and frankly, tedious process.
For the next three hours, they killed every avatar that approached their zone, increasing their kill count and coins.
Matthew's level remained fixed at 100, but Natalie's level continued to increase.
After approximately three hours of zone protection, her level reached 72, and she now had a 72% level buff.
When Natalie and Matthew's Artifact Zone Recorders showed three hours, they encountered a new message on their panels:
[Parzival has joined the Battle Royale.]
Matthew immediately scanned the area, and a few seconds later, he saw Parzival running towards them from a short distance away at the Portal Gates.
He then attacked Parzival with his Heat Rays without hesitation, but unlike his previous attacks on avatars, Parzival didn't turn into a pile of items.
This was the first avatar to survive Matthew's Heat Ray attack, and from what he could see, the reason was Parzival's energy armor.
It appears that OASIS, or the Supernatural Realm, sent Parzival here, equipped with serious armor.
So Parzival was one of the bosses of this layer, probably a mini-boss.
Matthew carefully watched Parzival, who hadn't died from the attack but had been pushed back slightly, and noticed that the NPCs surrounding Parzival were gathering around him and acting in unison instead of attacking him.
Apparently, Parzival's only distinguishing feature wasn't his high-level armor. But wasn't the true power of the owner of the Parzival avatar, Wade Watts, precisely his ability to rally people behind him?
Matthew thought it wouldn't be a good idea for Parzival to gather more NPCs and trap them in the Artifact Zone.
After all, it was a mini-boss. You never knew what kind of abilities and skills it possessed.
Moreover, even if Parzival couldn't harm them, it could still drive them out of the Artifact Zone, and Matthew didn't want that to happen.
So, he said to Natalie, "Nat, can you look after this for a while? I'll go deal with Parzival."
"No problem. Leave it to me. And be careful."
"You too."
Then he flew towards Parzival, and the next second, he landed with a powerful impact right in front of Parzival, scattering pieces of earth everywhere, and aimed a fist at Parzival's head, delivering a punch.
Matthew's landing impact threw back the NPCs near Parzival, while Parzival himself was sent flying several meters backward from Matthew's punch.
Matthew had expected Parzival to be flung back at least a few kilometers. Still, before his fist even made contact, he saw that Parzival's shield activated, absorbing a large portion of the punch's power.
Matthew was about to lunge at Parzival again, but several NPCs nearby suddenly stopped attacking and headed towards the Zone. Instead, they started attacking Matthew.
Apparently, attacking Parzival had made him the primary target of the surrounding NPCs.
But these NPCs didn't even pose a threat to Matthew. He quickly cleared the nearby NPCs with Heat Rays and Cold Breaths and reappeared in front of the now-rising Parzival.
But this time, Parzival responded with his own fist at a speed that rivaled his own.
It seemed the mini-boss was adapting to its opponent; otherwise, Parzival couldn't possibly match Superman's speed and senses.
And then Parzival and Matthew engaged in close combat.
Punches, kicks, elbows, knees... The two fought at a speed the others couldn't keep up with, and the air and shock waves from their attacks kept other NPCs at bay.
Now and then, powerful blows would clash, causing Parzival to retreat slightly.
Parzival would then use this opportunity to pull weapons and items from the Panel Inventory and fire them at Matthew.
Matthew then would retaliate with his Heat Rays.
Then they would close the distance and resume their close combat.
From the outside, it looked like a close fight, but Matthew knew Parzival's shield was gradually depleting.
To Matthew, Parzival's shield was like a health bar in the games. To defeat Parzival, he first needed to deplete his shield.
During another powerful attack that separated them, Matthew felt Natalie activate her Bio-Electric Field.
When he focused on Artifact Zone, he saw many avatars attacking Natalie en masse with all their might.
But before Natalie could answer, his Danger Sense skill warned him of danger.
And the danger was coming from Parzival's side.
When Matthew turned his head again, he saw Parzival with both hands drawn back to one side, gathering energy between them.
He knew exactly what this movement was and quickly moved to the side to avoid it.
Although the danger signal from his Danger Sense skill wasn't powerful, danger was still danger, and Matthew didn't want to put himself at a disadvantage.
"Hadouken"
And Parzival's attack hit the spot where Matthew had just been standing.
Matthew narrowly avoided the attack. And at that moment, he heard Natalie's voice in his ear.
"I'm okay. A group of players tried to attack together. They probably saw our separation as an opportunity."
"Did you see their names?" Matthew asked.
"Some of them. They were all supernatural beings from foreign countries. They were probably aiming to outdo me and claim a reward upon their return," she said.
They could see the avatars' character names in the Panel, but if they observed a Player, they could also see their real names.
This must have been how the other Players found Natalie.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to identify her, given her different appearance and name.
"I'll be back in a moment. Be careful in the meantime," he said.
"Okay."
Then Matthew lunged again towards Parzival. His eyes never left him when he was talking with Natalie.
He could see that Parzival was tired after using Hadouken and was trying to gather his energy.
But Matthew had no intention of giving him that opportunity.
The two engaged in another close combat, but this time Matthew was more aggressive, using stronger, faster punches along with Heat Ray attacks to try to deplete his armor as quickly as possible.
Finally, about 15 minutes after they first started fighting, Matthew managed to deplete Parzival's shield and finished him off with a final punch.
Then, after quickly gathering Parzival's items and transferring them to the Panel inventory, he immediately flew to Natalie's side.
He didn't want to leave her alone any longer.
But before the two of them could exchange another word, a new notification appeared on their Panels.
[You killed Parzival. Your hands are stained with the blood of someone's lover.]
[Art3mis will join the Battle Royale to get revenge. Get ready!]
[02:46:32... 02:46:31... 02:46:30...]
"Again?" Matthew said, adding, "Apparently, the Supernatural Realm isn't about to leave us alone."
This time, the warning timer started at 2 hours and 46 minutes instead of 3 hours.
Adding the time spent fighting Parzival still added up to 3 hours, which meant the Supernatural Realm would most likely send them a new mini-boss every 3 hours.
"Can you leave this one to me? Constantly guarding this place is getting boring," Natalie said.
"Sure. Oh... I earned 10 billion coins as a reward for killing Parzival. These mini-bosses give pretty good rewards."
And for about 3 hours after that, Matthew and Natalie continued to protect the Artifact Zone, and finally, the notification they were waiting for appeared.
[Art3mis has joined the Battle Royale.]
As they had discussed before, this time Natalie left the Artifact Zone and began fighting Art3mis.
Art3mis preferred fighting from a distance with various weapons rather than engaging in close combat. And her shield seemed stronger than Parzival's.
Therefore, the fight between Natalie and Art3mis lasted longer.
But Natalie regularly depleted her opponent's shield power and seemed to enjoy the fight.
After fighting Art3mis for about 40 minutes and finally defeating her, Natalie earned 20 billion coins and then returned to the Artifact Zone and rejoined Matthew.
And as Matthew had predicted, they saw another notification.
[Someone is watching your success with envy. He thinks that if he can't have something, nobody can.]
[Greedy Nolan Sorrento and the Army of Sixer will join the Battle Royale to thwart your success. Get ready!]
[02:18:15... 02:18:14... 02:18:13...]
It appears that this time the mini-boss was Nolan Sorrento, the villain from the Ready Player One universe.
And at the end of the specified time, as soon as Nolan Sorrento joined the Battle Royale, he used one of his special mechanical vehicles to mount a gigantic Mechagodzilla and began wreaking havoc on Planet Doom.
Matthew wasn't too surprised. Nolan Sorrento had used the same mechanical monster in the Planet Doom battle in the movie.
This time, Matthew went outside the Artifact Zone to face the Mechagodzilla.
At first, his attacks seemed ineffective because each attack was blocked by numerous hexagonal honeycomb-like shields that appeared around the Mechagodzilla.
But Matthew soon realized that the power of these shields was proportional to the number of Sixers surrounding the Mechagodzilla.
After that, his task became easier. After clearing the surrounding Sixers, breaking a single honeycomb took about 30 seconds.
But the honeycombs regenerated themselves within 10 seconds, and the Mechagodzilla's own material seemed quite powerful.
Matthew estimated that if he fought like this, the battle would last at least an hour or two.
So, he considered using the same tactic Art3mis used to defeat Mechagodzilla in the film: eliminating the user instead of the machine.
After breaking the honeycomb shield near Mechagodzilla's head, he shattered one of the small glass panels on top of its head with a heat ray.
Unfortunately, he couldn't see Nolan through this gap, but that wasn't a problem. He didn't need to see him to kill him.
The next moment, Matthew pulled a Holy Hand Grenade from his inventory and threw it through the gap.
And a few seconds later, Mechagodzilla's head exploded, destroying both the machine and Nolan Sorrento's avatar.
This earned him a reward of 30 billion coins.
Matthew quickly collected all of Nolan Sorrento's items. These included many mecha monsters and similar items and artifacts.
He didn't want them to fall into someone else's hands and cause him problems.
When Matthew returned to Natalie, a new warning appeared on the panel, and it seemed this would be their final obstacle.
[Your achievement triggered a special event.]
[The Planet Doom Frenzy event will begin 1 hour before the end of Battle Royale. Get ready!]
[01:50:42... 01:50:41... 01:50:42...]
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Next Chapters' Name:
Ch.124: Planet Doom Frenzy
Ch.125: Second Cataclyst
Ch.126: Artifact Hunt Event Prizes