Mosco Vichakos

They say forgetting your first love is the hardest thing for a person to do.

Business is much the same.

The customers from the early days, my clumsy handling back then, and the experience that piled up little by little because of it.

Especially in those early days, there were a lot of customers who left a strong impression.

For me, one of them was her.

Mosco Vichakos.

“I should have smoked a little more.”

Vichakos looked regretfully at the cigarette on the floor. There was no hesitation or wavering at the muzzle of her gun.

“I didn’t expect to have to look at your ugly face.”

“Ahem, Ms. Vichakos? Could you hear me out first?”

“No.”

Bang!

The trigger was pulled, and the bullet sprang out in a hurry.

Clang-!

Of course, it couldn’t get past Namgung Pachon’s sword.

“I am not idle enough for small talk.”

Namgung Pachon seemed a little relieved to finally have a proper opponent to fight instead of a noisy drone.

No matter how much of a clan-head-level figure he was, a martial artist was a martial artist.

In any case, he was the kind of person who found it much easier to settle things with a sword than with words.

“Ah, yes.”

Blowing “hoo” at the smoking muzzle, Vichakos’s green eyes flashed.

“That suits me too.”

Kuuung!

The Sentinels began moving at the same time.

Sentinels were autonomous defensive machines equipped with AI models made by a government agency.

The ones with specs that completely outclassed the Hauser I had seen outside were moving as if they were Vichakos’s own hands and feet.

“Could it be…….”

- I have transferred authority to Ms. Vichakos.

This is bad.

The easy part about fighting Sentinels was that, in the end, their heads were just tin cans.

Now, on top of their overwhelming specs, Vichakos’s battle-hardened brain had been added.

“Hoo…….”

White breath slipped past her thin lips. She usually tried to hide it by smoking, but that was a power only the chosen of Cyber City could wield.

Oversync.

Bang!

Vichakos’s bullet fired again. This time it flew straight for my forehead.

“……!”

Same trajectory, same weapon, same person.

Everything was the same, but this time Namgung Pachon’s sword was a beat slow.

Kaaang!

The bullet was sliced at an angle, and fragments lodged into Namgung Pachon’s body.

Beyond the torn silk robe, a faint wash of blood formed at Pachon’s waist.

“Hmph.”

More confusion than pain.

As far as he knew, a gun produced the same result no matter who fired it.

That was why martial artists hated guns.

With neither intent nor chivalry.

A mysterious tool that could kill someone just by pulling the trigger, even in the hands of street thugs.

A thing meant solely for killing, with neither responsibility nor anguish attached to power.

But Vichakos’s bullets were much faster than before and far more powerful too.

“Hasn’t the old man even gone farsighted yet?”

Deflecting even that bullet seemed to surprise Vichakos a little.

Namgung Pachon calmly put away his sword and sliced the air.

“I didn’t know the realm of sword-and-self unity could be reached with a lump of metal like that.”

“Oversync. A technique that forcibly synchronizes the frequency of a machine or weapon with your own.”

“…….”

“If we’d just fought normally, I wouldn’t have beaten you.”

Kuuung! Kuuung!

The Sentinels aimed their muzzles.

The light within them turned green.

Oversync.

Cyber City’s cutting-edge machine bodies fused with Vichakos.

“It’s a bit of a special situation right now, so let’s not blame each other.”

“It’s been a long time. To feel death at my heels.”

Thoom!

Namgung Pachon’s body blurred out and reappeared.

A speed the eye couldn’t follow.

But—.

The Sentinels’ muzzles aimed at him were exact, with not a bit of wasted motion.

Aimbot.

It was the kind of scene that fit the term you’d use for hacking in a game.

In the end, Namgung Pachon could no longer advance and had no choice but to swing his sword and deflect the bullets.

The others didn’t hesitate either. The two Chilgeuk members dashed forward, and Paladin Gawain also shielded them with divine power.

Baek Yeonhwa thought for a moment before asking me.

“Sir, it seems like you know that person... are you all right?”

“We do know each other... sort of. Ahem, the important thing right now is the card key. We’re not here to take down Ms. Vichakos.”

Baek Yeonhwa clenched her fists and steadied her breathing as she looked over the Sentinels.

While searching with sharp eyes, she suddenly realized something and asked the cat drone.

“Axis, which Sentinel has the card key?”

- The card key is stored in the core of the massive bombardment unit you see on the right, Uranos.

She really knows her way around AI.

As I stared at her in a daze, Baek Yeonhwa smiled and stuck out her tongue a little.

“If I’m curious, I look for a book and check. Mr. Axis is like a really huge book.”

- Thank you for the compliment!

- When I wipe out humanity, I’ll be sure to remember Ms. Baek Yeonhwa!

“…….”

Baek Yeonhwa immediately felt the distance and took a step back.

On the other hand, I once again felt something strange toward Axis.

Kind, yet hostile.

I needed an explanation for the warped feeling this oddity gave me.

Meanwhile, the battle continued.

As they realized Namgung Pachon was the main threat, the Sentinels unleashed concentrated fire.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Also, the bullets Vichakos fired from her dual pistols showed no sign of stopping.

She was firing and reloading bullets at such a ridiculous speed it was as if she’d put herself on fast-forward, and Victor Brook was already on one knee with a bullet in his thigh.

“I’ll be the wall, so break through.”

When Paladin Gawain planted his spear in the floor, pure white divine power surged toward the ceiling like a cloud of explosions.

What had been spreading like mist took on the shape of a wall.

Joanna Carlson immediately took a sprinter’s stance after realizing what it meant.

Unlike my clumsy handling, this was the real thing.

Joanna’s toes kicked off the floor.

Air burst from the tips of her running shoes.

She easily surpassed the limits of human acceleration and moved toward Vichakos as if walking through her own world.

Clack-!

A chilling cocking sound, and a gun muzzle pressed against Joanna’s forehead.

Joanna snapped her waist back, and the bullet brushed past her forehead.

It might have been unfamiliar to her, with her acceleration ability, but if she had been a little slower, it would have punched a hole through her head.

“Down below, you think speed is a realm unto itself. But in this city, it’s just a numbers game.”

“Fucking android.”

Vichakos gave a short nod as she reloaded.

“I’ll admit it. Fucking android.”

With a faint sneer at the corner of her mouth, Vichakos put her pistol away and took a cigarette between her lips.

At first glance, it was carefree mockery.

But the moment the Sentinel called Uranos began its all-around bombardment with the twin cannons on its shoulders, Joanna hurriedly took cover inside the wall of divine power.

“Convenient. Having a gun that moves however you want it to.”

Exhaling cigarette smoke, Vichakos looked at the wall of divine power.

A brief pocket of time.

Namgung Pachon, who had been holding back most of the Sentinels, also caught his breath, and Victor Brook began self-treatment with a medical kit.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

After a massive bombardment passed.

The wall of divine power had disappeared, and Gawain was kneeling with his head bowed.

He had held out to the very end like a paladin, but part of his body was shimmering with a faint translucent light.

If divine power is overused, the backlash makes the caster’s body unable to hold up.

“Why…….”

Gawain, his lips trembling, asked Vichakos.

“Are you betraying humanity?”

“Hoo.”

With a long plume of cigarette smoke, Vichakos looked back with an emotionless gaze.

“Because the contract is still valid.”

“Con…tract?”

“A fourth-floor paladin wouldn’t understand. Fixers work as much as they’re paid, and no more. That was the contract.”

It wasn’t that she had been moved by AI.

Nor was she harboring hatred toward humanity.

It was simply the contract of a fixer.

That was the principle governing Mosco Vichakos’s actions.

“For that pathetic money—! Are you betraying humanity!”

“Hoo, I am.”

“If humanity is going to be destroyed anyway, money won’t mean a thing... How can you not know that?”

Gawain had a hand on the floor and looked determined not to collapse until he got an answer.

Blowing out another plume of smoke, Vichakos answered calmly.

“I backed this side because I knew humanity wouldn’t be destroyed.”

“…….”

“What would change if I betrayed just one of you? I’m simply standing where the money is best in this situation.”

“You bitch-.”

“I work because it’s a contract and the money is coming in. If that pisses you off so much-”

Ka-chak!

The muzzle pointed at Gawain.

“You should have brought a bigger advance.”

Bang!

Once again, the bullet was fired at an abnormally fast speed, aiming for Gawain’s forehead—

Baek Yeonhwa blocked it in advance as if she’d been waiting. The yin and yang qi gathered in both her hands formed a perfect balance, knocking the bullet aside.

“……I thought you were just a brat.”

“M-my hand hurts.”

As Baek Yeonhwa grumbled, blowing on her tear-swollen hand.

I quietly moved closer to Namgung Pachon.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m still in good shape.”

He said that, but he had taken most of the Sentinel firepower head-on.

The sweat on his forehead and the hand still tight around his sword showed the situation was far from easy.

“...You see that one.”

He pointed at the Sentinel with cannons mounted on both shoulders, Uranos.

The monster of firepower that had just razed the surroundings was now cooling its hot barrels.

“The card key is in that thing’s core. I’ll try to draw Vichakos’s attention, so could you cut it down, sir?”

“If you give me time, I can do it.”

“Understood.”

After catching my breath briefly, I looked toward Vichakos. She spat out the spent cigarette butt and prepared to start again—

“Ms. Vichakos!”

“...Kim Juseon.”

At my call, she immediately looked this way and ground her teeth.

“If it weren’t for the contract, you’d be the first one I’d kill. You didn’t look like much of a fighter, so you got pushed down in priority—”

“How are the kids doing?”

Vichakos’s body stiffened.

Not only that, but the others looked at me too.

I forced a smile and added in a sly tone.

“I never expected someone with five kids to come looking to get married. Sorry. Back then, I didn’t know much about the marriage market either—”

“H, haha…….”

As she lowered her head deeply, her white bangs covered her eyes.

A faint tremor.

And smoke leaking from her entire body.

Oversync accelerated even further.

“How dare you mention the kids with that mouth?”

In an instant, she had pistols in both hands.

The eyes of the Sentinels fused by Oversync all turned toward me.

“I’ll kill you.”

‘Elder, please hurry.’

I’m going to die.