Chapter 191
Whoooosh――――Thud!
The gunfire ceased, and beyond my field of vision as I struggled to climb up, a corporate private soldier flew through the air and fell. It would be better not to think too deeply about what that tomato-crushing noise was…
[Patron, please refrain from killing!]
The Shaolin Monk’s shout, the tearing screams of soldiers as if they were suffering something terrible, and the violent sounds of beating and smashing were audible.
[Oho, stay still.]
CRACK!
The sound of bones breaking and people groaning in pain was heard before they went limp.
Then, at some point, it grew quiet. As my arms trembled and I somehow tried to hook my foot over the railing, a cold Metal Arm grabbed me.
I was pulled right up.
Seeing him lightly pluck me out with one hand like digging up a radish or potato from a field, I thought, “The Shaolin Monk truly lives up to his name.” He sure is strong.
“Whoa, thank you.”
My legs gave out and I almost lost my footing and fell, but the Machine Monk caught me from the side.
As I awkwardly looked around, the scenery was truly staggering.
The rear line, where Angela presumably launched her Surprise Attack, was covered in blood. At a glance, she had stabbed with her hook arm, thrown them, clung to them and slit their throats; just the people who died like that numbered three
, including the poor friend who fell from the railing earlier.
The path the Shaolin Monk had passed through was no less formidable. Due to the fight with the enhanced soldier, the walls, ceiling, and floor were half-destroyed everywhere.
The Shaolin Monk had also neatly taken care of three people.
They weren’t all dead, but their bones were broken, their chests were caved in, bearing the imprint of a palm, or they had fainted while foaming at the mouth.
…Right, as long as they aren’t dead, Beggar.
For some reason, a corner of my chest felt cold, so I smiled awkwardly and spoke.
“Wow, I lived thanks to you. As expected, I believed in you! Both of your skills are…”
I paused while speaking with a smile. Somehow, the atmosphere was unusual.
“…”
[…]
Both Angela and the Shaolin Monk were silent, only staring in my direction.
What? Isn’t it all over? Why so serious?
After an utterly incomprehensible battle of wits, the first to open her mouth was Angela.
“Honey, you were amazing, weren’t you? As expected, you had a hidden Trump Card. You completely went easy on me when we fought, huh? What divine skill! Is that how you normally work in Neo Tokyo? You seemed a bit spaced out so I didn’t have high expectations, but what a surprise!”
How on earth did you do that, especially that, shooting while falling? Blowing off two heads, sure, I can understand that as you have an expensive implant in your nerves and tremendous shooting skill, but what was up with that bullet you shot at the enhanced soldier? He took one hit and completely lost it.
There’s no way that was a fluke, and I got a little turned on watching it. Do you happen to have any thoughts of working together? I know you’re already retired, honey, but no matter how I think about it, your skills are too good to waste. This is wasted talent. Hmm? Tell me if you’re interested. The way I see it, if the two of us team up, we could completely dominate the industry…”
Wait, was Angela always this talkative?
She must have really been excited like she said, because I grew dizzy at the sight of her grabbing my shoulders and pouring out words like rapid fire.
Well, even I think it was pretty badass.
I was in a half-panic state, so I don’t really remember what I was thinking or how I did it, though.
I only had one thought in my head: “I have to pull this off somehow.” And then, dropping down without hesitation, I fired three bullets accurately like a marksman…
Looking back, I am dumbfounded. If you told me to do it again, I don’t think I could even if you beat me to death.
Also, the thought that this was my second murder made a corner of my chest feel a little heavy.
I don’t feel guilty since they were the ones who shot at us and tried to kill us first.
Still, I didn’t want to get used to killing people.
I hate myself for seemingly adapting to it more and more.
I arduously pushed away Angela, who was clinging to me, uncomfortably close, linking arms and continuously urging me to work together while using the soft part touching my elbow as a weapon.
'Arduously' is not an exaggeration here.
It really wasn’t easy, because the soft weapon Angela possessed held a tremendous magical power that was nearly impossible for a man to resist…
This is a part where my superhuman willpower should be praised.
Angela was like that, and the Shaolin Monk remained silent for a long while, enough to feel extremely uncomfortable and awkward, before belatedly opening his mouth.
[Patron. The way this monk sees it… there is something in the patron’s head…]
Something in my head?
I tensed up. It was a situation where I had no choice but to be on guard.
Damn it, did I use the microchip too openly in front of the Shaolin Monk?
[…It seems a demon has taken residence.]
“A demon?”
That was an unexpected remark. When I panicked, the Shaolin Monk shook his head.
[No, it is nothing. How could it be in a human body… that cannot be. This Monk must have seen wrongly. There is no need to pay it any mind.]
He said so as he walked with a sweeping stride.
He said he saw wrong, but it was a remark I couldn’t ignore.
…A demon? Don’t tell me he’s talking about the In-Head AI?
* * *
At this point, a question popped into my head. Well, what do we do now?
True to the “Group of People Who Love Chainsaws”, our group had inadvertently become the Knights of the Apocalypse, bringing fear and destruction wherever we went.
In just a single day, we had caused a crazy ruckus in an apartment and a condominium in turn.
And to get straight to the point, even after sweeping through so loudly, we gained nothing.
“It’s not like we have no harvest. We found out Angela isn’t the culprit, didn’t we? And we smashed those corporate bastards too!”
“Right. And even after doing all that, we still don’t know who the culprit is.”
To be honest… I just couldn’t say it openly out of politeness, but I wanted to quit at this point.
I think we’ve done enough.
Nigel had disappeared to who knows where; corporate agents we shouldn’t recklessly antagonize were chasing us; it was a completely messy situation.
I had kept my courtesy sufficiently to a comrade-in-arms.
Hina and Angela, who had a close relationship with Chainsaw Man and were hungry for revenge, would want to chase the unknown culprit to the end, but I didn’t have such a strong motive.
I had already helped as much as I could.
My main job is not a detective, a ronin, or a gunman, but a trainee bartender.
I want to cut down on the intense and thrilling infiltration combat action now.
I’m done with matters of killing and dying. I want to return to my daily life of lounging around and resting like usual, worrying about going to work tomorrow.
The Shaolin Monk said, as if speaking for my exhausted self.
[Patrons, I do not consider other things superior… but many people have died. It is difficult to accept any more killing than this.]
In fact, he was the person most unrelated to this incident. He had merely followed me this far to repay my favor.
Actually, just catching Angela when she tried to run away and protecting us from the soldiers of Dysis Waste could be seen as his having already sufficiently done his part.
Did she understand this position? Hina couldn’t say anything more and looked hesitant.
Perhaps she herself had lost the certainty that she would catch the culprit and definitely get revenge.
However, there was one person here who had no hesitation whatsoever.
“We’re almost there, honey. We’ve come this far. Shouldn’t we see this through to the end? We should at least see the face of the bastard who killed Miguel.”
“And can we even find out who that killer is? We don’t have any clues now.”
“What do you mean we have no clues? We have two.”
We have two?
When I raised an eyebrow, Angela continued her explanation.
“First, we found out for sure that a trash corporation is involved. They’re extremely closely connected, seeing how they even set a trap and launched a Surprise Attack. They might even be hiding the culprit on their end.”
It wasn’t a very great clue.
Especially if a trash corporation was protecting the culprit, wouldn’t that rather be a reason to back out at this point?
Unless one was delusional enough to think that just because we beat a single team, we could win against a corporation too.
“Also, the note Nigel left explicitly mentioned, ‘To think the day would come when I’d be done in by a customer I took on.’”
Ah, that was what Angela and Hina were talking about when they exchanged glances and said things only they understood.
Now I wasn’t even that curious about it. Nigel’s customer or whatever…
“Do you know what Nigel’s job is?”
“What is it?”
“He’s a Cyber-Net Undertaker.”
A Cyber-Net Undertaker?
What kind of assailant profession is this? I’ve lived in Underground City for quite a while, but it’s my first time hearing of it.
Do they hold cyber funerals or something?
When explained, it was roughly similar.
It is a society where cyberspace occupies as large a portion as the material world.
It’s common to have more friends on the net than in reality, and to be more intimate with those net friends.
Human relationships, assets, wills, thread data left on various forums and sites… humans of the 22nd century might have more things to sort out in the Cyber Society than in the material society when they pass away.
A cybernetic undertaker is someone who presides over such cyber funerals for a deceased person.
They create a cyber space for memorialization to hold a small funeral on the net (they say this also gets more extravagant the more money you have), and dispose of assets like net accounts, items, codes, or forum access passes according to the will.
Also, upon the request of the deceased person, they perform cleaning of sensitive cyber records and legacies from their lifetime.
These details aren’t actually that important.
The core was this.
He is an undertaker.
The fact is that his customers are all already dead people.