novelraw Chapter 65
Chapter 65
Chapter 65
Gear.
A measure by which a superhuman’s capabilities were gauged.
A virtual organ that operated psionic energy generated from the heart of a superhuman, also called a Psychic Core or Psychic Furnace.
There were many hypotheses about how to grow one’s Gear, but most of academia explained it as ninety percent talent and less than ten percent effort.
Some even added that the remaining percentage was not a meaningful figure.
……Wasn’t it truly despairing.
It was no different from saying that once a Gear had solidified, there was no possibility of growth without talent.
“Then what if the Gear collapses?”
The wall of talent rendered the value of effort meaningless.
Even that alone caused no small number of people to break, so what would happen if one experienced the degradation of their Gear?
To a superhuman, a Gear was more precious than the body.
Even if an arm were severed, a leg cut off, or the internal organs ruptured all at once, a hundred out of a hundred superhumans would always choose their Gear.
It was only natural.
Wasn’t this a world where genetic engineering and replacement organs and bodies were so extremely developed that even disabilities had effectively been overcome?
But a Gear was different.
A damaged core was like a glass cup forcibly pieced back together after being shattered.
No matter how thoroughly one found and reattached every fragment, cracks and gaps would remain, and like water droplets leaking through those gaps, psionic energy could not be operated in its entirety.
And that was not all.
Every time it was operated, pain and burden befitting it pressed down on the flesh.
So much so that one might absentmindedly think that grinding one’s insides with a blender would hurt less than this.
“……Cough!”
After swallowing down the blood and saliva mixed into the cough she had let out without thinking, Satra forced back the bile rising from her stomach and, with eyes that had cleared just a little, stared at the battlefield—so ruined that even the word “mess” felt insufficient.
“Kkeuaaaagh!”
“Block them! Block them, I said!”
“It’s already broken through, what the hell do you want us to block, you idiot!”
“Th-the Genorua Family? Why are they here?”
“Those are the ones stuck to that bitch’s side! Are you out of your mind? Kehuk!”
The iron rear gate, reduced to scrap metal by a truck.
From that line onward, those trying to break through and those trying to block them became entangled, continuing a fight of mutual slaughter.
“Captain.”
“Yeah.”
At the words of the subordinate standing beside her, Satra nodded once and spoke while rotating her creaking, moving Gear.
“Support the mafia side. The rest comes after.”
“Yes.”
Their objective was unknown.
There was no expectation that they would be friendly toward them.
Even so, the reason she chose the mafia was not anything else, but the extremely simple logic that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
From the start, wouldn’t it look utterly ridiculous to stand on the side of the attackers?
“Do not allow suppression. Kill them all.”
“You’re stating the obvious.”
Moreover, the fact that they were connected to the Red Hand was more than sufficient reason for them to die.
Kill them all.
Kill and kill everything connected to those bastards, then throw that declaration of war piled up as corpses right in front of Kim Cheol, that damn old madman.
“Together…….”
“Was it Famille? You look like you overdid it. Rest.”
As a matter of fact, during the charge, Famille had moved psionic energy far more forcefully than she normally operated it, and as a result, her face was deathly pale.
“……Yes.”
Perhaps she herself felt the burden as well.
Famille silently nodded, and Miel was placing a hand on her back, eyes closed, rapidly replenishing her strength.
Of course, seeing her hands and shoulders trembling, Satra could not help but let out a dry chuckle.
“They’re coming from the back too!”
“Fuck! I’m going to lose my mind!”
Meanwhile, the enemies who had been cursing while bleeding soon muttered in voices steeped in despair.
Had they only just realized that there were enemies behind them as well?
Those who had somehow been holding back the mafia pouring in through the rear gate urgently shouted and turned around.
In truth, they must have known as well.
That the ones who had rammed a truck straight into the rear gate would never be friendly toward them.
“Block the rear!”
“Uaaaaaah!”
However, it was not as though there was no chance.
They had somehow been holding off the mafia bastards pushing in from the front, and those who had gotten off the truck numbered no more than ten at most.
‘We have to block them!’
It was not due to any great loyalty or sense of duty.
It was simply the pressure that if they failed to block them, they would die, that moved them.
“Uaaaaah!”
Charging at the front was a man who had just moments ago torn off an entire arm of a Genorua Family mafia member who had been alive until then, now panting roughly.
He turned back and reached out a hand toward Satra, and as his joints spread like a spider’s legs, the muzzle of a submachine gun emerged between artificial muscles.
“Die!”
The artificial eye embedded in his socket emitted a red glow, rapidly calculating the entirety of her charging trajectory, and soon he began pouring bullets precisely at the center of her brow.
Tadadadadadadada!
Along with a sound like a chainsaw spinning, the shoulder mounted with the gun muzzle shook madly from the vibration.
The muzzle was stained red, teeth ground as though they would shatter.
However, the man who had not doubted her death even for a moment soon had no choice but to let out a voice filled with shock.
“W-what!?”
From her movements, he had reasonably judged that she was a superhuman, or that she had combat implants in her legs.
But the moment her fist filled his field of vision, he had no choice but to realize it instinctively.
The traces of countless bullets scattering.
Tudadadadada!
A shaking muzzle. Tangled lines of sight.
A clearing steeped in deep darkness.
The flashing rear lights of the truck.
Overlapping bullet trajectories that struck the ground again and again.
“Ah—.”
That he had grossly misjudged his opponent.
And that was the end of the first enemy who faced Satra.
Paaaang!
She crossed a distance of a good thirty meters in a single burst, and the moment the bastard entered her range, she immediately planted her left foot into the ground, twisted her waist, and the fist she drove out blew his face apart like a balloon.
Fragments of the head that burst like a watermelon rolled across the ground, but neither she nor any of the former Rermal Planet Defense Force soldiers gave it a second glance.
It was only natural.
They were the ones who had lost their homeland to Creatures, lost their families, and even had their last hope deceived by the Red Hand, leaving them with nothing but vengeance.
‘Worms connected to the Red Hand, trading Creatures for humans.’
Truly, weren’t they the perfect opponents to kill without a shred of emotion?
“Kehuk!”
“A, aaaagh!”
Once they barged in, even keeping the mafia who had been gradually getting pinned down in check became difficult.
“……Damn it.”
The officer commanding the scene bit his lip hard and repeatedly looked back and forth, trying somehow to salvage the situation, but there was no way an answer would come of that.
No, it was not merely a matter of there being no answer.
Soon, as his face turned ashen, what slipped past his lips was a murmur close to sheer shock.
“What the hell is that now…….”
The mafia at least were hiding behind cover and spraying bullets somehow, but the rear had fewer numbers, and from the moment they let their guard down, they were paying a brutal price.
“W-what did we do wrong!”
“Uaaaaaah!”
The misery of those dying ran on a completely different track from the mafia, who were always mouthing vendetta and omertà and posturing about their ‘pride.’
Even when they could kill them outright, they would tear off arms, or else grotesquely smash heads to pieces.
As if they truly bore a blood feud.
Of course, the number of stragglers following her was only ten, and qualitatively as well, they were not particularly impressive, just as Baek Hui-young had absentmindedly thought.
The elites who had followed her had mostly died that day in the hangar where they faced Brigadier General Kim Cheol.
“Siten.”
“Yes, Captain.”
With an average Gear close to Dual, a final remnant of defeated troops made up of special-duty officers at the noncommissioned officer level—insufficient to be called proper officers.
As if venting the regret and helplessness of having had to simply let them go when they faced the Red Hand not long ago, they slaughtered the bastards before their eyes like madmen.
They broke bones and listened to screams as though they were music.
“Hah, uhgh. Agh.”
They trampled on pleading hands and snapped them.
Some might curse them, saying that they had not been brave enough when the real Red Hand was before them and were taking out their anger in the wrong place. However, they were relearning how to kill humans, all the while awaiting the day they would meet those bastards again.
“Haah, haah…….”
“Hoo. Ptoo.”
How much time had passed like that?
Naturally, the Genorua Family were not fools either, so they responded even more aggressively, and before long, they succeeded in completely seizing the rear gate.
If it had been only the mafia, they might have been able to stop them, but with the gate smashed open by a truck, special-duty officers grinding their teeth and charging from behind, and bullets fired by the mafia overlapping from the front, there was no answer for them.
“……S-save me.”
The situation began to settle rapidly.
Taang!
Now and then, there were fingertips that stubbornly twitched on, but once a lead slug doubling as ferry fare was planted into the back of the head, they soon found rest with peaceful expressions.
Though they could not place coins in their mouths, still, if the lead was flattened well enough, wouldn’t it be treated as a coin?
As someone was thinking that, the atmosphere began to turn strange in an instant.
It was only natural.
Even if they had joined forces because they shared the same enemy for the moment, now that enemy was gone, and neither side knew the other’s true intentions.
‘Where are they from? Reinforcements sent by Geum Young? No, if that were the case, they should have identified themselves. Besides, Geum Gang-hyeok isn’t reckless. There’s no way he’d leave his tail in something this risky.’
From the Genorua Family’s perspective, they were the prime culprits who had suddenly thrown their plans into disarray.
‘It’s certain that the mafia were involved in this. But for some reason, that side attacked this place. What’s their objective? An internal dissenting faction?’
On the other hand, Satra merely tilted her head slightly at the familiar scent of ‘Ku’ and stared at her.
However, one could not maintain silence forever, so the one who spoke first was Tita Genorua.
“Who are you?”
“That’s what we want to ask. Are you mafia?”
“I believe I asked first.”
With the battle of nerves between the two women, the atmosphere that had somewhat died down cooled again quite quickly, and each faction, still carrying the excitement of combat, began to regulate their breathing as if they would fight the moment an order was given.
From the start, it was unrealistic for them to harbor good feelings toward each other.
There was the gap in information they possessed, but more than that, soldiers and mafia were fundamentally such that even if they smiled on the surface, a visceral sense of disgust would inevitably well up inside.
And so the hair-trigger situation continued, right at that moment.
Bzzing-.
Cutting through the atmosphere, Tita Genorua’s wrist vibrated lightly, and after briefly checking the contents, she calmly accepted the call.
As if to say that she did not care about the likes of them.
At the moment when that subtle humiliation was about to cause Satra’s face to twist unconsciously—
〔I-I’m reporting that Jin Crow-nim entered the interior of the factory alone. We followed after him, but it seems we lost him.〕
Because it had been quieter than expected, the loudly ringing voice from the call reached Satra, as well as Famille and Miel, who were steadying themselves behind her.
“……Who?”
“An, an instructor?”
Famille and Miel blinked and looked at each other, soon doubting their ears before turning pale.
“……Why is that colony’s madman here?”
Not only Satra, but even some of the Defense Force soldiers who had experienced him directly muttered as if chills were running down their spines.
“……Instructor? And the colony’s madman?”
With Tita Genorua’s murmur at hearing their words as the last cue, everyone’s gazes tangled chaotically.
Soon, the thought circling in all their minds was the same.
‘Jin Crow.’
Why was that man here?
Meanwhile, at that time.
“Kehuk!”
“Aaaagh!”
Having inadvertently lost his way and wandered the corridors, Jin Crow entered a place labeled as the control room. Soon, after turning the resisting androids into ‘And/roid’ through disassembly in the reverse order of assembly, he sat down in a chair.
It was not because he was tired, nor because his physical condition had worsened.
The problem was simply that the back of his head suddenly started to ache.
Chik, sss-.
He held a regular cigarette in his mouth, not one containing awakening components, and stared at the CCTV beyond the control room.
“……Hoo.”
It was because, through the cigarette smoke mixed with the quiet sigh he let out, he saw familiar ash-gray hair and the back of a head with platinum-blond hair he had trusted.
He denied it for a moment, but soon, from the revealed profile to even their abilities, they were unmistakably Baek Hui-young and Beatus as he remembered them.
His head throbbed.
‘Just why are you two here?’
After chewing hard on the end of the cigarette, he roughly swept back the bangs covering his eyes and muttered quietly, eyes heavy with mental fatigue.
“……You damn problem children.”
It was a remark filled with quite a bit of genuine feeling.