Chapter 108
“Hahahahaha—!”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Watching Mosco Vichakos laughing like a maniac beside me, I wanted to keep a little distance.
I wondered whether someone like this should really be raising five children.
Then again, maybe it was precisely because she was someone like this that she had betrayed the world in the name of doing it for the children.
One thing was certain: she wasn't someone I wanted to get too close to.
The important thing was that I had to get that woman in front of the children, and that I had to deal with a huge suit straight out of a movie.
“Shoot!”
“It’s a terrorist! Kill him!”
The Cyber City security guards’ muzzles turned toward the suited man.
A black suit resembling a rhinoceros.
Heat and blue eyes leaked from between its armor plates.
Bang! Bang-bang!
The bullets being fired ricocheted in all directions with absurd ease.
“Aagh!”
“Aaaagh!”
The ricocheting bullets caused damage even to the evacuating citizens.
At the citizens’ screams, the guards could no longer pull their triggers.
“I’ve heard of bulletproofing, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone forcibly ricochet bullets and cause collateral damage.”
When I murmured in admiration, Mosco seemed to come to her senses and approached me.
“What do I do now? They could cut the S.E.L.”
“Wait.”
No sooner had I finished speaking than Yoo Yena landed from the sky.
Not only had she helped bring me here today, she was also the only force Cyber City had allowed to come up for this incident.
“Ms. Vichakos, given the urgency, we’ll proceed immediately. Here, take this.”
What Yoo Yena held out was a device resembling a thin headband.
That was the key device the Tower Management Bureau had created to track down the Hierarchists.
No one could have guessed that Mosco Vichakos would end up using it.
As Vichakos slipped the headband on without hesitation, an earpiece emerged from its edge and attached itself.
- Hello! This is Axis!
“……!”
Vichakos’s brow furrowed sharply.
The volume was so high that I could hear it even through the earpiece.
Yet Yoo Yena continued with what she had to say without minding it.
“From now on, Axis will reverse-trace the S.E.L. attached to you, then hack the targets so they can’t sever the connection—”
“Done.”
“Huh?”
Yoo Yena blinked.
Vichakos calmly tapped the headband.
“It’s Axis.”
“…….”
Faster than expected.
No wonder it had once been an AI in charge of an entire city.
Because of performance like this, the Tower Management Bureau had probably removed Axis’s aggression and reused it as classified technology.
“This is kind of funny. Vichakos and Axis. They were both traitors to humanity, but now they’re teaming up on our side.”
Last time, they had been enemies.
This time, it was strange to have them on the same side.
“Don’t say pointless things.”
“Don’t badmouth Juseon.”
The two suddenly exchanged hostile looks.
I didn’t know why they were about to fight, but that wasn’t what mattered now.
Pshoooooook!
Blue flames burst from the back of the suit.
The fixer.
He was charging toward us.
The durability that deflected every attack could, conversely, become the strongest and toughest weapon.
Yoo Yena stepped directly in front of him.
She thrust both hands forward and pushed him back with telekinesis.
At first, it looked like she had stopped him cleanly.
He had been running in place before gradually beginning to get pushed back.
But that lasted only a moment.
Telekinesis is infinitely versatile, but it consumes a great deal of stamina, so it becomes disadvantageous in a battle of attrition.
It was especially vulnerable against stopping a specific individual with such overwhelming brute strength.
“Yena, go with Vichakos and deal with them.”
Her eyes turned toward me. Then she urgently shook her head.
“You’re going to hold that man back? No. I’ll do it.”
“Moving with telekinesis is fastest. There are security guards here too, and the Cyber Police will be here soon.”
The sirens were already drawing close, and I could see the Cyber Police’s Air Riders flying in from the sky.
“If it really looks like I can’t handle it, I’ll just use a little Law.”
I had only said it to reassure Yena, but she turned pale and hurriedly stopped me.
“No!”
“Huh?”
“Juseon, whatever happens, you must never use the Law again.”
“…….”
Just then, the Cyber Police appeared, dropping from their Air Riders and beginning to subdue him.
Only then did Yena release her telekinesis.
Her chest heaved as she gasped for breath.
Anxiety.
It came across to me exactly as it was.
No way.
“There’s movement on the Seventh Floor…?”
When I asked cautiously, Yena bit her lip hard, then—
Ever so slightly.
She merely nodded.
[Sheathkeeper, where are you going.]
A voice throbbed through my head like a headache. The past I shared with her, lingering like an afterimage, once again tightened its grip around me.
The Seventh Floor was on the move.
She had noticed I was alive.
She was coming down.
“Juseon?!”
Yena called me worriedly.
I stared blankly for a moment, then gave her a slight smile.
“I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
“…….”
“Go on. The Cyber Police are here, so there’s truly nothing to worry about anymore.”
I had to smile.
So she would leave without worrying.
Pretending to be fine even when I wasn’t had something in common with smiling in front of a client.
“All right. Be careful.”
“…….”
Yena’s telekinesis wrapped around Vichakos, and the two rose into the sky.
Vichakos stared at me to the very end, but she didn’t say anything else.
The problem was the fixer.
The Cyber Police quickly realized that bullets weren’t working.
Though they fired pulse guns, restraint tasers, and even EMP nets for binding, throwing everything they had at him, he didn’t budge.
As if he were a game character with a bug enabled.
The attacks were definitely landing.
They even left scratches on the suit’s surface.
But that really was all.
They were too insignificant to call wounds.
The moment he confirmed that his target, Vichakos, was getting farther away, his blue eyes flashed.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The ground trembled with every step he took.
He tore straight through the Cyber Police’s cordon as if ripping it apart and started running forward.
The horn mounted on the suit’s forehead was itself like a battering ram.
He smashed everything blocking his path.
The Cyber Police vehicle he hit rolled sideways from the impact, while the debris around it was crushed like sheets of paper.
Everywhere he passed, debris and dust erupted as if exploding.
“He’s in an Oversync awakened state! Presumed to be a high-risk fugitive!”
“Captain! They say his identity’s been confirmed! Fixer Rhino! Suspect in the Harlan Heavy Industries massacre four years ago!”
“Request backup from headquarters! We can’t handle this ourselves!”
Radio chatter and shouts.
The explosions around us made it unmistakably clear just how dangerous he was.
In his wake, only traces remained, as if a giant had forcibly carved a path through the city.
It was obvious where the end of that path led.
Mosco Vichakos.
He was pursuing her.
Several Cyber Police vehicles hurriedly restarted their engines and tried to chase after him, but—
Overturned cars and collapsed walls blocked their route.
“Get aerial support!”
“They’ve deployed a drone.”
“Control the entire road toward Block 3! Evacuating civilians comes first!”
The civilians’ safety came first.
The Cyber Police did not shirk their duty.
‘Then I have to do what I need to do.’
Amid the radio chatter pouring in, I turned my gaze toward the edge of the road.
Beside an overturned patrol bike.
Perhaps it had been brought along for storage; a folding Airboard had bounced free from the impact and was sliding across the ground.
There was no time to hesitate.
I snatched it up and slipped my toes into the slot. The Airboard naturally conformed to my feet and floated into the air.
Vrooooom—!
With a blue propulsion glow behind me, I lowered my body to steady myself as I was nearly pulled backward.
“Whoa, shit—!”
The Airboard I’d ridden a few times after begging Ryu Seoram to let me try it couldn’t reach full speed.
Airboard fuel was insanely expensive on the Third Floor.
Indulging a little selfishness, I raised the Airboard’s speed even higher.
Staying low, I skimmed across the road.
Shards of glass broken by the charging man’s shockwave and heat lingering like dying embers brushed against my cheeks.
Far ahead, Rhino slammed into another vehicle, then hurled the vehicle, torn in half, at the Air Rider chasing him.
Kwaaang—!
The Air Rider was unable to dodge the vehicle flying straight at it and toppled onto the road.
As it skidded, flames surged from the oil pouring out behind it.
Though he was turning everything around him into a sea of flames, his blue gaze remained fixed on the sky.
As if a beast were catching its breath before leaping at its prey.
He was gauging the timing for a single leap that would bring him to Vichakos and Yena.
Before I knew it, the road entered the skyscraper district.
An urban forest.
The moment the two entered between the densely packed skyscrapers.
Krrrk!
His foot slammed into the road.
Cracked pieces of asphalt flew into the air, and the black suit’s leg bent sharply.
Preparing to leap.
The moment I saw it, I poured all the Airboard’s output into it and lowered my body.
The air blasting out narrowed the distance between us in an instant.
‘I’m too late to reach them.’
The Airboard shot diagonally upward.
Its destination was the trajectory Rhino would take as he launched himself.
“Yena—!”
Hearing my approaching shout, Yena abruptly looked back.
Rhino, crouched low.
Me, flying toward them.
The instant she saw us, Yena grasped me and the Airboard with telekinesis and pulled us toward her.
And then.
Kwaaang—!
Rhino’s body shot toward Vichakos like a cannonball.
His compressed strength and the propulsion of Oversync erupted all at once, producing a shriek that sounded less like a jump than a launch.
Rhino closed in at tremendous speed.
I immediately released the Airboard’s foot restraints and used it as a foothold to fling myself upward.
Amid the rising wind, I drew the sword and scabbard from my waist.
Since it was a sword I’d brought from the Old Murim, I tried to do it justice in my own way, but—
A cool, blue-hued blade slid free.
Danya, the sword Yena had given me for helping capture Axis.
With its keen edge, the sword’s trajectory cleaved the space between Rhino and Vichakos.
Just before impact.
At the exact instant—
Shhk—!
The sound was strangely short.
It wasn’t the roar of giant metal splitting apart or the scream of flesh being torn.
Because everything had been sliced so smoothly, it all felt one beat slow.
“Gh, ack—!”
Rhino’s body twisted in midair.
The suit’s horn flew off first, and then the long slash running from his shoulder to his chest split open with cracks.
As I watched him plummet below, his suit’s propulsion sputtering out—.
“As expected.”
A billion-won sword really is on another level.
I curled up, hugging the sword with satisfaction.
“What are you doing?”
When I opened my eyes at the cold voice, I was already floating in the sky, still curled up like a child.
Two women were looking down at me as if I were pathetic.
Unlike Rhino, it seemed Yena had caught me as I fell.
“Thanks for saving me. But why are you curled up like that?”
Since Vichakos asked with an expression that genuinely didn’t understand, I answered awkwardly.
“I can get treated for a few hundred million won, but Danya isn’t covered by insurance.”
“…….”
“…….”
I can get treated for a few hundred million won, so protecting the billion-won sword comes first, right?
The story continues off the page
Floaties for Everyone
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