After his talk with Dakota ended, Ji-hwan stepped out of the garage and wore a look of utter disgust at the scene spread out before him.
To prepare for Maelstrom’s attack, which could come at any moment, Dakota’s people were constantly setting up one thing after another inside and outside the garage.
On the roof, two vicious heavy-caliber auto turrets had been positioned for crossfire, while another cleverly concealed turret glittered from the thick grass along the outer approach.
The inside of the building was no exception. Defensive turrets hidden between the ceiling structures were being installed in secret.
On top of that, smart mines that would erase anything that stepped on them without leaving a trace were being densely laid across the dirt around the garage, as if encircling the place in a ring of death.
And that wasn’t all. Heavy weapons were being mounted throughout the interior, turning the whole place into a fortress in the literal sense.
"How much is each one of those weapons even worth?"
Ji-hwan clicked his tongue.
Even he couldn’t say he’d survive if he had to break through that crossfire and minefield with nothing but his own body.
Even if some cyberpsycho hopped in wearing a military-grade [Sandevistan] and went berserk, that kind of firepower would shred them into meat pie without mercy.
It was the kind of defense that would take the firepower of an army or a corporate strike team just to punch through. Ji-hwan was once again impressed by the fixer’s capital and muscle, which controlled this harsh stretch of the Badlands, but at the same time, he felt a heavy sense of relief.
At the very least, this place wasn’t going to collapse while he was gone.
Ji-hwan walked over to Dakota, who was barking orders into a radio and driving her people hard as she directed the installation of the defensive gear.
"Dakota. I need to step out for a bit."
At Ji-hwan’s sudden words, Dakota stopped giving orders and turned her head.
"What, you scared of Maelstrom showing up and planning to run?"
"Not a chance."
When Ji-hwan answered flatly, Dakota gave a snort and asked, "Then what the hell are you going off to do in the middle of this mess?"
"I’ll need to be away for a few days."
Ji-hwan thought back to the sensation he had experienced once before, that strange feeling of time slowing down.
To stand against the huge enemies that were coming, he had to throw himself into the most extreme kind of combat and make that ability truly his own.
"In the meantime, if those Maelstrom bastards show up while I’m gone... make sure you contact me."
Meeting his cold, steady gaze, Dakota could tell he wasn’t making excuses or running away.
She gave a silent nod, and Ji-hwan started gathering the weapons he’d use from a supply crate set in one corner of the garage.
Several throwing daggers, fragmentation grenades, smoke grenades, and his Overture pistol. He also stuffed a duffel bag with the bare minimum of food and water to survive in the wasteland for a few days.
Once everything was ready, Ji-hwan climbed into the old Thornton Colby and drove out of the garage with a harsh burst of exhaust.
Dakota watched in silence as his vehicle disappeared beyond the Badlands, kicking up a trail of dust, and soon a short, deep sigh slipped between her lips.
"Haa..."
Then she turned sharply and started snapping at her people, who were standing there blankly.
"What the hell are you all standing around for? Move! Tighten the mine spacing, and pour more firepower into the approach! Don’t let even an ant crawl in here!"
With her icy shout, the garage began moving even more frantically, its steel edges sharpening as it prepared to meet the ones coming for it.
After leaving Dakota’s fortified garage, Ji-hwan slammed his foot down on the old Thornton Colby’s accelerator and raced toward the deep heart of the Badlands.
He had only one goal.
He wanted to bring back that extreme sensation from his battle with the cyberpsycho, the moment when the limiter in his brain had shattered and the world’s time had slowed.
Tatatatang-Kwaang!
Not long after, Ji-hwan ran into a small Raffen Shiv pack in a barren rocky stretch and charged straight into their firepower without trying to dodge.
"Kill that bastard!! Shoot! Shoot him!!"
Under the hail of rifle fire pouring in from every direction, Ji-hwan relied on his extraordinary reflexes to deflect what he could.
And the stray lead rounds flying toward his shoulders and thighs, he accepted with his own body as he closed the distance.
Thud-thwack!
"Tch... that hurts like hell."
His skin was pierced and blood sprayed out, but thick red steam immediately burst from the torn gaps in his flesh, new tissue surged back, and the crushed bullets lodged deep in his muscles dropped uselessly to the dirt with soft taps and clatters.
"W-what the hell is that?!"
As the men staggered back in terror, Ji-hwan’s hand flashed to his waist like lightning.
Swaaaash-!
The cold throwing daggers that left his fingertips, wrapped in a red haze, shot through the air like lightning and sank deep into the men’s foreheads and throats. The Raffen Shiv pack collapsed one after another onto the dirt, bleeding out before they could even put up much resistance.
When the fight was over, Ji-hwan shook off the dripping blood and looked down irritably at the bullets rolling around on the ground.
"Yeah, still not working."
He had deliberately taken the crossfire head-on, trying to force that sticky, stretched-out sensation of time awake again, but all he got back was the disgusting, searing pain of having holes punched through his bare body.
"Haa..."
With a deep sigh, Ji-hwan rummaged at his waist and pulled out one of the ration energy bars Saul had packed for him, then shoved it into his mouth.
He was trying to replenish the massive calories burned by his regeneration, but the dry, disgusting taste, like chewing wet cardboard, made his face twist on its own.
"Ugh... this is seriously making me want to throw up."
Forcing the vile lump down his throat, Ji-hwan thought hard.
Even if he couldn’t wake that extreme sensation right away, his goal was clear.
"At the very least, I need to get stronger than I am now."
To survive the vicious strike teams of Maelstrom that could show up at any time, and the violence of this insane city, he had to become stronger than he was now.
Ji-hwan roughly wiped his mouth with the back of a hand crusted with blood and climbed back into the old Thornton Colby in silence.
Then he drove off hard, looking for another prey.
For the next several days, Ji-hwan roamed the Badlands with bloodshot eyes every time he woke up, relentlessly hunting down Raffen Shiv packs and slaughtering them. Before long, a sinister rumor began to spread.
"The Red Wolf."
That bizarre rumor soon reached Dakota Smith, the fixer who controlled the information network of the eastern Badlands.
While receiving reports on the outskirts through a hologram monitor inside the garage, Dakota let out a faint, incredulous laugh at the recon drone data showing the Raffen Shiv being torn to pieces.
"So that’s what he was up to..."
Suddenly, she remembered Ji-hwan’s determined eyes right before he had left the garage.
Those weren’t the eyes of someone trying to hide and run. They were the eyes of someone trying to cut his way through a massive threat coming his way.
"What exactly is he doing out there... I’m actually looking forward to seeing what kind of face he comes back with next time."
At that same time, the terrified Raffen Shiv remnants finally stopped moving for a while and began laying low deep in the Badlands because of Ji-hwan’s merciless rampage.
But Ji-hwan wasn’t the kind of man to stop just because his enemies tucked their tails and hid.
To push beyond his limits even further, he hunted the traces of the bastards who’d gone to ground even more ruthlessly than before.
Then, one day, beyond a canyon where harsh sandstorms were whipping through the air, a group of armed Raffen Shiv vehicles moving with heavy engine growls came into Ji-hwan’s view.
They were military vehicles, their bodies reinforced with thick steel plates and armed with vicious heavy weapons.
"Where are they headed?"
Sensing that they were on their way to somewhere bigger, Ji-hwan quietly cut the old Thornton Colby’s engine.
Then he grabbed his heavy Overture pistol and a dagger, kept his distance behind the dust trail kicked up by the armored vehicles, and began stalking them in silence.
Not long after, Ji-hwan parked near a huge abandoned factory on the outskirts of the Badlands and pulled an old pair of binoculars from his duffel bag to study the place.
But the scene beyond the lenses was very different from the perimeter of a normal gang hideout.
Instead of patrolling, the sentries inside and outside the abandoned factory were hiding cleverly behind broken concrete rubble and piles of scrap, watching the outside with sharp attention.
It was an ambush, as if they were waiting for someone to come to them on their own two feet.
A dry laugh slipped from between Ji-hwan’s lips as he held the binoculars.
"Ha... these bastards are waiting for me?"
Ji-hwan’s eyes sank into a cold, murderous stillness.
He tightened his worn leather jacket and slipped into the factory’s deep shadows without hesitation.
"That crazy bastard, whatever his name is, if he walks right into this trap today, let’s turn him into a damn beehive."
"The boss is in a rotten mood, so if we catch him alive, we should tear him apart limb from limb."
One of the men, laughing and smoking, broke away from the group to take a piss in a dark corner.
Swoosh-.
"Huh...?"
Before he could even sense anything and turn his head, Ji-hwan’s thick hand shot out of the darkness, clamped brutally over the bastard’s mouth and throat, and dragged him into the blind spot behind a pile of scrap.
"Mmmph, mmph!!"
Holding the struggling man by the throat, Ji-hwan whispered in a cold, dry voice, "So you really are waiting for me."
Meeting Ji-hwan’s icy stare, the man realized that the so-called Red Wolf they’d been mocking was the man in front of him. His face went white, and he nodded frantically, shaking all over.
"Y-yeah! The b-boss... set a trap and was waiting for you...!"
Ji-hwan looked down at the man, who was trembling in terror and spilling everything, then let out a short breath and turned his gaze toward the inside of the factory with casual indifference.
That tiny opening was all the terrified man needed. Murder flashed in his eyes, and he quickly reached for the grip of the pistol at his waist.
But—
Thud!
Ji-hwan’s thick fist, which hadn’t even bothered to look his way, flew like a bolt of lightning and slammed mercilessly into his solar plexus.
"Kuh...!"
The man couldn’t even scream. His eyes rolled white as he collapsed, unconscious, in the midst of a horrifying pain that twisted his insides.
Ji-hwan roughly shoved the limp body of the man who had tried to draw his gun into a corner behind the scrap pile, then slipped deeper into the darkness of the factory.
The infiltration went smoothly.
Going a little farther, he found two gang members standing back-to-back and guarding a passage.
"Hey, do you really think that Red Wolf bastard is coming alone?"
"Don’t worry. If he shows up, we’ll put a hole in his head right awa... urk!"
Swaaaash-!
Before he could even finish speaking, a cold throwing dagger left Ji-hwan’s fingertips and sliced through the air, burying itself perfectly in the loud bastard’s skull.
"W-what the hell?! Gah...!"
As the man beside him stared in horror at the sight of his partner collapsing and coughing blood, he tried to raise his rifle.
But by then, Ji-hwan had already closed the distance. His rough hand seized the back of the man’s neck and jaw without mercy.
Crash—!!
"Kraaaagh...!"
Ji-hwan slammed the bastard’s head straight into the hard concrete wall beside him. With a dull cracking burst that shook the skull, the man’s eyes rolled white and he dropped unconscious to the floor.
And so Ji-hwan pressed deeper, silently breaking the enemy ambush apart one by one.
At this rate, it looked like he could reach the commander’s throat without any trouble at all.
But just as Ji-hwan was about to knock out another man patrolling a different section—
Beeeep!!Beeeep!!
A shrill emergency alarm suddenly began screaming through the entire abandoned factory, and at the same time, red emergency lights spun madly, flooding the narrow corridor Ji-hwan stood in with daylight-bright glare.
Someone had finally noticed the intruder after checking the outer sentries who’d lost contact and sounded the alarm.
"Intruder!!"
"It’s him!! The Red Wolf got in!"
Along with the blaring sirens, the sight of Ji-hwan standing beyond the body of a comrade who had just been kicked into unconsciousness was exposed to the eyes of dozens of Raffen Shiv members rushing in from every direction.
"It’s him!!"
"That bastard!!"
Dozens of icy gun barrels from every side were all aimed at Ji-hwan at once.
A crisis of life and death. For a very brief instant, a heavy thought flashed through Ji-hwan’s mind.
"Run... or break through this wall of violence?"
The answer was already decided.
Ji-hwan’s lips twisted upward into a grin.
His body was answering before reason could.
The moment Ji-hwan kicked off the dirt floor, thick red smoke exploded from his back and shoulders, trailing long behind him.
The Raffen bastards only noticed that reckless move too late and hurriedly swung their barrels around, but he was one step faster.
Swaak-!
As he charged, one smoke grenade with its pin already pulled flew from Ji-hwan’s chest and sliced through the air, dropping into the middle of the enemy formation.
Chiiiiiit-Boom—!!
Thick gray smoke burst upward like an explosion, swallowing the open yard’s visibility in an instant like muddy sludge.
"Kraaaah! I can’t see!!"
"That crazy bastard’s attacking!!"
Inside the smoke, urgent screams and heavy impact sounds burst out one after another.
The Raffen bastards outside, their vision cut off, raised their rifles in panic, but with their own comrades mixed into the smoke, they hesitated and couldn’t bring themselves to pull the trigger. Then, cutting through the dense smoke, a single black, heavy lump of metal arced overhead and flew toward the heads of the men who had frozen in place.
"G-grenade!! Move!!"
Kwaang!!
With a deafening blast that ripped through eardrums, five or six Raffen Shiv members were torn apart and sent rolling across the ground.
And before the fragments from the explosion had even settled, Ji-hwan’s massive body burst out of the smoke like a single red line, his whole frame pouring out thick red haze.
Swaaaash-!
Following the path of that red line, Ji-hwan’s hands flashed at his waist and split the air like lightning.
The cold throwing daggers that left his fingertips sank deep into the fatal weak points of the men trying to pull their triggers, piercing throats and foreheads with no margin for error.
"Kuhk!"
"Aaaagh!"
Blood fountains burst and the enemies collapsed, but there were still dozens of armed men inside the huge abandoned factory, all of them radiating murderous intent.
The surviving enemies, stepping over their bleeding comrades, began firing wildly at Ji-hwan in a frenzy of rage and fear.
Tatatatatang—!!
Ji-hwan quickly lowered his body and rolled across the dirt floor, then took cover behind an old container and a collapsed concrete pillar as he started weaving through the building’s interior.
It was physically impossible to dodge every stream of bullets pouring in from dozens of guns with nothing but his own body.
Thud-thwack!
"Khh...!"
As he moved from cover to cover and worked into the enemy’s blind spots, the stray bullets he couldn’t avoid tore into his shoulders, thighs, and ribs without mercy, and Ji-hwan gritted his teeth through the pain.
From the torn gaps in his skin, fierce red steam rose as his destroyed cells were stitched back together in real time, and he kept fighting through the blood-soaked struggle, forcing the crushed bullets lodged in his tough muscle fibers back out one by one.
That was the peak of the battle, as he circled through the building with brutal precision and cut the remaining stragglers’ throats one after another.
Then—
Taang—!
A sharp, destructive report from a large-caliber round tore through the air, completely different from the usual staccato of rifle fire.
"Ghk...?"
Ji-hwan, who had been about to slip into a blind spot and cut down the next man’s throat, suddenly faltered.
The bullet that had skimmed past his thigh had punched a fist-sized crater into the hard concrete floor.
"You’re a pretty interesting one."
Through the choking smell of gunpowder and drifting dust, a man walked out of the factory’s deep darkness.
He wore an old cowboy hat pulled low over his head, and both of his arms had been converted into vicious, finely crafted alloy implant prosthetics with no trace of human blood in them.
And in those machine hands, he held a pair of heavy-caliber revolvers.
He was the boss waiting for him in this place.
"The guys I sent out to the wasteland kept going dark for days, so I figured some rat had crawled in and hidden... but it was a tiger cub, huh."
Chill.
Ji-hwan sensed danger by instinct and hurled the dagger he had just drawn while lunging forward.
But—
Bang—!Clang!!
"...!?"
The dagger Ji-hwan threw was struck dead-on by the bastard’s bullet in midair and shattered to pieces. Before Ji-hwan even had time to react, the opposite barrel had already fired at the exact point where he was about to twist and leap.
He forced his torso sideways with his sharpened dynamic vision, but with a sharp tearing crack, Ji-hwan’s cheek and left shoulder were ripped open and blood sprayed out.
"You dare... dodge my bullet?"
The corner of the boss’s mouth curled up in a grotesque smile.
The body of the man in front of him was by no means fast.
He was simply standing there, casually extending his arms and pulling the trigger.
But he was using [Kerenzikov] freely, and to his eyes, Ji-hwan’s movements were already being read like slow motion.
Tatatatang—!
Acceleration of perception from [Kerenzikov].
Even Ji-hwan’s calf, as he slid behind a steel pillar, was struck by a round without fail.
"Khh...!"
Ji-hwan dragged his bleeding leg behind the pillar and sucked in ragged breaths.
With vision sharpened through countless life-and-death situations, he could see the bullets coming and barely dodge them, but he couldn’t break through the gap of having all his movements [predicted] with his own skill alone.
"This is completely different from that cyberpsycho..."
Ji-hwan clutched the wound burning with blood and clenched his teeth.
The woman he’d fought in the wasteland days ago had the overwhelming speed of a [Sandevistan], but she was nothing more than a simple killing machine, having lost all reason and charging like a beast.
Her path had been stupid and straight, so with Ji-hwan’s extreme dynamic vision and reflexes, he could read her actions in fragments and slip into the openings. But the man in front of him was keeping his reason, calculating Ji-hwan’s psychology and his next retreat like a chessboard, and through the perception acceleration of [Kerenzikov], he was overwhelming Ji-hwan by one step.
"Hiding won’t do you any good, you bastard!"
The boss clicked a fresh magazine into place and walked toward the pillar, aiming both revolvers while calculating the angle Ji-hwan would burst out from.
Both thighs and one shoulder had been turned into beehives, blood pouring down like a waterfall, and his ragged breaths carried the smell of iron as they rattled in his chest.
His regeneration was desperately spewing out steam and trying to seal the wounds, but it wasn’t enough to endure the shots being forced into him by that accelerated perception.
At last, the boss rounded the pillar, closed the distance, and pressed the revolver’s muzzle to Ji-hwan’s forehead as he lay on the floor.
No matter how Ji-hwan’s muscles moved, the man would read it and pull the trigger.
Then the boss’s torn smile curled up cruelly, certain of victory.
"You were a stubborn one, I’ll give you that... but it’s over."
Death.
The final moment.
The vicious muzzle of the boss in the cowboy hat was aimed directly at Ji-hwan’s head.
It was a life-or-death situation where nothing existed except those two syllables: death.
In the suffocating sense of standing with only his toes hanging over the edge of a cliff, something deep inside Ji-hwan began to stir.
Extreme, repeated battles. His reflexes were already so sharpened that he could read the path of bullets, and the extreme adrenaline surging up from his heart finally fused together as one.
The faint red smoke seeping from his wounds suddenly began to darken into a deep, blackish crimson.
Boom.
With an alien sound like some lock snapping open in his skull, his accelerated thinking finally unlocked.
Bang—!!
The gunshot ripped through the eardrums. The boss pulled the trigger with calm confidence, waiting for a red hole to open in Ji-hwan’s face.
But the next instant, Ji-hwan’s body twisted strangely and slipped past the fatal bullet by a hair’s breadth.
"What... ?"
The boss’s face flickered with deep confusion as he lost track of Ji-hwan’s movement for an instant.
He clicked his tongue and aimed again.
He intended to activate the [Kerenzikov] in his mechanical spine, read Ji-hwan’s movement, and fire preemptively toward the direction he’d dodge.
But Ji-hwan did not move early or change direction in advance under the barrage of bullets.
He stood perfectly still until the very instant the bullet was about to reach the center of his forehead.
Thud-Bang—!
The crack of Ji-hwan kicking off the floor and the gunshot rang through the factory almost at the same time.
Reacting with the bare minimum movement just before the bullet landed, Ji-hwan was there, standing tall, having dodged the shot and exhaling rough breaths through the thickened red smoke.
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