The bullet blasted through the back of Revolver’s skull and came out of his forehead.

  Yuan’s revolver exploded in his hand, its broken pieces flying across the desert and its shrapnel piercing his palm. The weapon that signaled the beginning of his Gunsoul half-life had served its purpose.

  Not even the iron skin of the Gun, which had resisted almost all of Yuan’s attacks earlier, could resist Arc’s masterpiece. It blew a fist-sized hole straight through Revolver’s metal brain in a shot of heavenly light and continued its course through the desert, eventually hitting the ground and worming its way deep into the earth’s bowels.

  The impact blew the Gun’s malice away. Its malignant qi left Revolver’s body in a wave of bloodcurdling ghostly winds. They shrieked into Yuan’s ears with the last wails of a million victims and the countless gunshots that slew them. He covered his face to protect himself from the vile miasma flowing out of the defeated demigod of ultraviolence.

  When Yuan lowered his wounded hand, Revolver’s body laid on the ground at his feet. Though his ally hadn’t regained his true appearance, Yuen sensed none of the Gun’s evil dwelling within him. The demigod’s spirit had been violently expelled from its host.

  For a brief instant, Yuan stood still, his body frozen with tension. Was it over at last?

  Revolver did not rise to challenge him, and he could feel none of the Gun’s foul essence within him… yet the demigod’s power continued to hang over the desert like an ominous smog. Yuan had done everything right, hadn’t he?

  So why did his bullet-core continue to pulse in alarm?

  His eyes settled on the hole he blew in Revolver’s head, at that tunnel of iron flesh and nerves. He noticed something pulsating within the leftmost part of the temporal lobe; a seed of lead which Arc’s final projectile had grazed but not destroyed.

  A bullet.

  Yuan’s eyes widened in horror as the true weight of his mistake dawned upon him. Elder Polio indeed had Revolver shot in the back of the head, but much like Slash, his executioner had been a lousy shot. He had fired the bullet sideways rather than in a straight and optimal line of fire.

  And because of that chain of incompetence, Yuan had missed the bullet-core.

  The heart of Revolver’s being as a Gunsoul, and the lynchpin that bound him to the Gun, remained intact.

  The consequences became immediately clear. The Gun’s essence floated around them in a vortex of evil; its corruption briefly repelled, but its hunger undiminished. Ghoulish, ghostly skulls formed within its miasma to smirk at Yuan and taunt him over his failure.

  And the worst of all, Revolver’s corpse was rising back to its feet.

  No… Yuan couldn’t believe his eyes. He didn’t want to believe in what he saw. No…

  “You’re strong, Yuan…” Revolver whispered as he turned to face Yuan, a hole squarely in his skull. Though his eyes were his own again, the Gun’s malice had begun to float back to him in a desperate attempt to take him over again. “So unbelievably strong…”

  No, no, no, not now, not after everything, not after all the sacrifices he had to make…

  “You won,” Revolver told him, though it hardly felt like it. “I guess that’s why… you were always its first choice…”

  No, Yuan Guang hadn’t won. His ally was doing his best to weaken the blow, but they both knew the truth.

  His Perfect Shot had failed to destroy the Gun. It hadn’t even freed Revolver from the curse; it just woke him up from his eternal nightmare. He had blown up his chance to end it all.

  Even if he destroyed the core now, Yuan knew it wouldn’t end the Gun’s existence. He would simply prove himself worthy of its twisted mantle and inherit the curse. He had failed Arc’s last wish and everyone who believed in him.

  For the first time since he rose from the dead, Yuan felt the sting of absolute despair.

  “I’m… I’m sorry,” Yuan muttered in defeat. What else was there to say? “I really thought it would free you.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Yuan. No one else would have even tried.” Revolver let out a heavy sigh. “Thank you for being a friend.”

  Yuan would have clenched his jaw, if he still had the teeth for it. He still had enough qi left for a final Recoil Fist or maybe a last Gun Demon Incarnation blitz. Revolver’s bullet-core was exposed and an easy target.

  He could at least do something right.

  “I will lose control again soon,” Revolver whispered in defeat. “And when I do… I will kill you.”

  “Not if I kill you first,” Yuan replied, his fist raised. He was ready to pay the price for defeat, and spare his old ally the curse’s pain and guilt. “I’ll let you rest.”

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  Revolver hesitated for a brief instant, the thought of allowing himself to die crossing his mind. Yuan could tell he desired nothing more than to pass on the curse and escape the eternal gunfire hell wearing down on him.

  Yet he still shook his head.

  “I can’t let you suffer like I do,” Revolver replied, his hands joined into a mudra. “Not after you risked everything to save me.”

  A familiar wave of metal qi emerged from Revolver and engulfed Yuan in a ring-shaped Barrier. He immediately recognized these energies, and the incantation that would give them shape. The Gun’s essence hungrily flowed into it, tainting it with its corruption.

  Yuan lowered his hand. He knew what Revolver was trying to do; ending things without regrets and putting their demise outside of their hands.

  “I call upon luck, the fairest judge… Chambers loaded, let’s play…” The will of the Dao itself bent around Revolver as he activated his Authority. “Two pull the trigger, one walks away… Steel and chance no longer wait…”

  At least it would spare them the guilt of killing the other.

  Luck alone shall decide who would bear the Gun’s curse.

  “Death’s Roulette, seal our fate."

  The world became a prison.

  An Authority was an external expression of the caster’s core; a physical embodiment of their soul. Revolver’s had taken the shape of a saloon during the Fleshmarket clash, but the Gun’s presence within him had corrupted it into a jail of concrete held by barrel-bars and trigger locks. Bloodstains painted the gray floor red, while the stench of a fresh grave hung over the cell.

  Yuan sat across a table from Revolver. He was himself again, the very same gunslinger who gave Yuan a ride to Gatesville after his first death; a cursed man’s last vestige.

  His shadow, however, represented his Gun-tainted self. It loomed behind Revolver with crimson eyes shining in the dark and the most malicious of grins. It knew, the bastard. It knew that the game was rigged in its favor.

  The Gun would win a powerful host no matter the outcome.

  And as a six-chambers revolver magically appeared within Yuan’s bleeding hand—with one bullet meant for him and another for his opponent—the injustice felt unbearable. Why? Why did it have to end this way, with two men betting over which of them would live to suffer in the other’s stead?

  Czar Zoa and Mordiggian both believed in the wheel of karma; that what went around came around. Was this Yuan’s punishment for contributing to Fleshmarket’s destruction or failing Arc? Had saving Holster, keeping the Cube of Natho out of the wrong hands, and avenging dead friends not been enough to wipe away the karmic debt he owed?

  What went wrong? Yuan tried to figure it out even as the Authority’s power compelled him to put the revolver against his skull. If only he could pass on whatever information he found about why his Perfect Shot failed to another Gunsoul, then he would at least die content. Someone would at least learn from his mistakes and hopefully break the cycle. What did I overlook?

  Both duelists pulled their weapon’s trigger, and both shot soft blanks at their metal heads. Yuan faced Revolver across the table, and then glared at the Gun cackling in the background.

  The Gun had no revolver.

  Yuan froze in shock. While the Gun’s last possessed host participated in the last game of roulette, its disembodied incarnation didn’t. Its shadow observed the roulette duel, but did not partake in it.

  None of the players can harm each other, except through the game, Yuan thought as he recalled the Authority’s rules, his eyes widening in recognition. But the Gun isn’t playing. It’s targetable.

  And while Revolver’s Authority was the physical incarnation of his soul, the Gun’s shadow was the purest essence of the spirit infecting him. If it perished here… if it was wiped clean within the very heart of Revolver’s identity… then it might be exorcized without killing the host.

  The right place.

  This prison of a soul was the right place.

  Yuan’s bullet-core pounded in his skull. He knew, deep within his soul, that this couldn’t be a coincidence. He might still have a chance to turn things around.

  Would a normal bullet work? While the revolver in his hand only contained his and Revolver’s death, nor would it accept other projectiles, Yuan had enough qi left to use Item Materialization and fire at the Gun’s shadow. Would it be enough?

  No. No, it couldn’t be. The right shot with the right bullet, fired with the right gun at the right place at the right time for all the right reasons. A common projectile couldn’t put the Gun to rest. What could be powerful enough, special enough to—

  Click.

  The thought hit Yuan’s mind at the same time the blank hit his skull.

  That's it, he realized, his mind alight with burning insight. I had them all along. The bullet and the gun.

  Yuan immediately knew what he had to do to achieve victory… and its cost. The price he would have to pay to free the Unmade World from its worst calamity. The power no former Scrap would have been willing to give up, and the future that came with it.

  That his time on this broken earth was limited; and that the right moment only came once in a lifetime.

  As for the right reasons… Yuan could think of many. Holster, Orient, Arc, Revolver too. To the dead, he could offer peace; and to the living, hope.

  “I am a gun,” Yuan muttered to himself. “Quick to fire.”

  “What?” Revolver asked, his revolver pressed against his skull. The blank bounced off his temple, and so did Yuan’s shot.

  “Violence begets violence,” Yuan replied. Trying to kill the Gun while expecting to survive was a fool’s hope from the start, because the thing fed on the act of murder and the chain of revenge. There was only one way that kind of vicious cycle of revenge could truly end.

  He who seeks revenge digs two graves.

  “I’ve rarely reached three out of six,” Revolver noted with a joyless sigh, chambers moving for the next round. “Never gone any farther. The fourth shot is always death.”

  “Agreed,” Yuan replied as he gathered what was left of his qi. “Gun Demon Incarnation.”

  He tapped into the last of his strength to fuel the transformation, shedding his human flesh to become the living firearm he had always seen himself as deep down. Revolver looked at him in startled surprise, but Yuan had no time to explain to him the truth. He only had enough qi left for a single shot, and the Authority would kill one of them any second now.

  “Gun! Demigod of ultraviolence!” Yuan roared, his eyes glaring at the monster that was both his beginning and his end. A barrel burst out of his head, its chamber loaded with the only projectile it ever needed. “I swear it on this bullet that once gave me life!”

  The Gun wailed at him, and for the first time its scream carried not the malice of its malevolent hunger nor the joy of victory, but the sharp sting of fear. It had always been a cycle sustained by human suffering; and it would now be complete.

  “I’ll see you in Bullet Hell!”

  Yuan fired his own bullet-core at the Gun, and shot it dead.

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