Chapter 291
I made eye contact with Kali Haywood. The moment our gazes met, I knew we were thinking the exact same thing.
Now. It was now or never.
This was the golden opportunity Iron Dog Invincible had created by sacrificing his last remaining arm, the very moment the Chrome Monster was at his most vulnerable.
The Cutting Wire tightly wrapped around the burning exoskeleton. Ms. Kali tied the monster down from the opposite side of his back to prevent him from escaping the crater and shouted.
“10 seconds! I’ll hold him!”
I knew what she meant without any explanation.
'Just buy time and hold him down so he can’t move. I don’t even need 5 minutes, just 10 seconds.'
Ms. Kali risked everything to keep her promise. Now it was time for me to keep mine.
I approached the monster, who was wreathed in acrid acting and crimson flames as if he had crawled out of Hell.
Just getting close made my skin flush red from the heat, but I had to endure it.
10 seconds.
The monster pulled the wire taut with his monstrous strength as if to snap it, approaching me in turn.
His eerie titanium skull, like a Terminator stripped of its skin, and his metal hand with its peeled surface drew closer, sparking with electric currents.
9 seconds.
Looking into those madness-filled crimson laser eyes, I felt as if I could see all the intent hidden within.
He was probably thinking that the guy he wanted to kill anyway was stupid for closing the distance himself, that a mere Bug was daring to let its guard down, thinking it had caught this Rodrick Smith, and that he had to make me pay the price.
In my opinion, it was quite the opposite.
8 seconds.
He was already close enough to touch my nose. The Chrome Monster looked down at me from above and smiled hideously.
[Thank you. You saved me some work, bug.]
“Don’t mention it. I should be the one thanking you. And…”
I pushed the output of the microchip to its maximum and spoke.
“…As I look at you now, no matter how I see it, you look much more like a bug than I do, Rodrick Smith.”
7 seconds.
Rodrick Smith flew into a rage and reached out to grab.
Thanks to Ms. Kali desperately pulling the wire, those hideous burning fingers, left with only metal bones like thorns, stopped right before touching me by a hair’s breadth.
Instead, the Chrome Monster forcefully twisted his body to aim the Plasma-flashing Photon Cannon on the opposite side.
At that point, I was keeping my stance low and opening the leather case.
An essential supply for the mission.
I had desperately saved it and waited so that the Chrome Monster couldn’t predict it or prepare for it. For the optimal moment, only for this moment.
After all, a special move is originally meant to be pulled out at the very end.
What lay inside the storage box was a single Jet-Black Katana that felt like it would suck you in just by looking at it.
A special material that seemed to absorb light, an beautifully engineered and elegantly curved blade that would make even a layman marvel.
6 seconds.
Vwoom-
The activation sound of the Laser Beam cannon rang out eerily. However, I didn’t care and calmly grasped the handle of the Schneider Family heirloom, Otto.
Right, there was a reason the Iron-faced Family Head Eugene Schneider had sent me this far.
It was because, excluding him, I was the only person who could demonstrate the true value of this treasured sword.
Did he foresee things going this far? Probably not.
5 seconds.
The moment my fingers touched it, the sword read my biometric information.
[Bio-ID recognition complete. Welcome, Aaron Jo Nakamura Schneider.]
Back at The Consortium Club, I had been so startled by this stiff voice ringing out the moment I inadvertently grabbed the sword that I dropped it.
Not here.
It was an action driven purely by my own will.
Schneider’s sword was grasped in the hands of Schneider’s Escort.
The sharpest iron that made the current Schneider Family what it is today hummed and shone to fulfill its duty once again.
4 seconds.
KWA-BOOOOM―――!
A beam of tremendous firepower poured out.
If there had been distance between us, I wouldn’t have been able to dodge that wide-area wavelength.
Rather, because I was close, I was able to roll my body underneath that cauldron-lid-sized muzzle to avoid it.
In a world that appeared disjointed frame by frame, I flattened my body beyond the surging blood-red wave, then soared up from his blind spot as if gaining momentum.
Even when I used a leap with all my might, I barely reached the height of the Chrome Monster’s solar plexus. It was truly the gap between David and Goliath.
And I know how Goliath’s end is recorded in the Bible.
Did the Chrome Monster know too?
It might be too outdated a piece of common knowledge to discuss in the 22nd century.
3 seconds.
[Biometric conditions met. Physical and mental requirements met. Confirmed as a special privileged User.]
[Activating built-in Technique, laser aura Blade.]
The katana split open, revealing the void within.
As I swung the sword, the blade split in half mid-swing and disappeared.
The Chrome Monster Rodrick Smith seemed flustered when I suddenly leaped into the air, but upon seeing me slash at the unreachable empty space with a hollow, deformed katana, he pulled up the corners of his mouth.
If it were me, I wouldn’t have let my guard down so easily.
2 seconds.
It was truly quiet. Without any precursor, light simply poured out.
A chillingly blue energy blade extended as I swung, lightly cleaving the target placed before me.
Swish.
I didn’t feel any resistance. It wasn’t even like cutting tofu; it just felt like brushing through the air.
But I definitely cut him.
1 second.
――――Thud.
It was almost simultaneous with my soaring body’s landing.
The red Photon Cannon, contrasting with the blue Lightsaber, dropped cleanly, having a smooth cross-section.
The cannon-arm, thick as dozens of woven steel rebars, collided with the underground and emitted a crackling electric current.
The length of that severed arm alone was almost equal to my height.
I looked at the Chrome Monster, who was now back to having only two of his four expanded arms remaining, and spoke.
“You know what? My nickname is the hand butcher, so I decided to demonstrate a bit of skill. I don’t know if you’ll like it.”
0 seconds.
CRACK!
It was truly precise timing.
Kali Haywood, who had been holding onto the Chrome Monster with all her might, lost her strength and was thrown back.
The wires snapped all at once against the overwhelming power of the full-body prosthetic, which had been overclocked in total disregard for bodily damage.
[I’ll―――kill you――――!]
The Chrome Monster Rodrick Smith charged to trample me at such a tremendous speed that his movements were clearly visible even in the territory of extrasensory perception.
For me, it was something to be thankful for.
If he had tried to run away with that rapid speed reminiscent of a missile or a bullet, things would have become much more exhausting.
The pain that felt like it was crushing my brain was severe. The microchip was truly at its limit now.
I would end this long raid with one last strike.
Likewise, I ran while swinging The Deep blue flames spewing from the handle.
It didn’t matter how hard the Chrome Monster’s exoskeleton gauntlet was. There was no material in the world that this laser aura Blade couldn’t cut.
I just had to properly bring the blade to him at the right time.
As long as I had the microchip, it was the thing I was most confident in doing it best in the world.
Of course, I couldn’t be off guard. The opponent was none other than the Chrome Monster Rodrick Smith.
Apart from his force that ranked among the strongest in the setting, there was a reason he was the leader of a massive terrorist group commanding numerous Machine Fetishist subordinates.
Master craftsman The Chrome Monster was inherently a cunning being.
It was just that his personal force was so mighty that he often solved all his problems with strength alone, without even needing to exercise that cunning!
A chilling intuition flashed through me. The cold, momentary intuition that calculated not only the movements of celestial bodies but even human madness revealed the cause.
His eyes, the Chrome Monster’s red prosthetic lenses!
Within my accelerated cognition and nerves where everything in the world flowed in slow motion, those red eyes moved sluggishly. Slowly, but surely, they were following my movements.
The monster’s prosthetic body, activated by overclocking to the extreme, was catching up little by little to my perception speed.
Originally, only I could act ahead as if foreseeing what would happen, but not anymore. Rodrick Smith was also gradually entering the same time frame as me.
Indeed, this was the cunning of that monster who pretended to run wild among the opposite sex.
If I hadn’t noticed, I would have suffered greatly. Perhaps even now, it might be too late to realize it.
BZZZZT!
The Chrome Monster extended the Plasma diffusion device on his fourth arm, the only one that maintained an intact form. It was half a beat faster than what I had read with my extrasensory perception.
What was the point of noticing it with accelerated nerves when my physical speed couldn’t keep up!
A crimson wavelength in a conical radial pattern spread out on an unavoidable trajectory.
I glared with my dazzled eyes until the very last moment.
With the beam of death right in front of me, I entrusted everything to a single sword.
Relying on a faint sensation in a blood-red vision where I couldn’t see an inch ahead, I swung my arm down from above.
It was far too late to turn back. Whether it worked or not, I just had to clash head-on.
―――――――――――――――.
Blue and red touched.
In a short, intense moment, a cold flash streaked by. Everything chaotically bent, tangled, collided, and exploded.
Holding onto the faint feeling left on my fingertips, that vague trace, I rolled into the darkness.
“…”
What followed was a heavy silence.
It was only after a few seconds passed like that that my optic nerves returned. In the middle of the crater in the ruined Lounge, the Chrome Monster stood behind me.
More accurately, he had been standing.
[You…]
The Chrome Monster turned that terrifying face, the kind that would haunt your dreams, backward and reached his broken arm toward me.
Even though I already knew the result, my heart dropped at that gesture.
It was an unavoidable automatic reflex because the impression that horrifyingly powerful monster had left on me was so intense.
But there was no need for that.
Srrk.
The monster’s full-body prosthetic frame split diagonally just like that. A portion of his severed upper body, still reaching forward, slid down and crashed into the ground.
The monster’s red eyes emitted a vicious light for a long time until their final power source faded.
The bluntly melted cyberarm that was still attached twitched like a post-mortem spasm, but it had already been over for a long time.
Slowly, the movement stopped, and the light went out.
That was the end.
Rodrick Grant Smith died just like that.
It might have been thanks to Otto’s laser aura Blade, or it might have been because of the clean sword path provided by the suit’s Kinetic Drive.
Perhaps all of that was merely a secondary factor, and in the end, it might all be the mysterious harmony of the microchip in my head.
Either way, it was my doing.
I cut down the Chrome Monster.
I defeated a named boss.