The boss in the cowboy hat froze in place, unable to say a word.
He had seen it with his own eyes.
In the delayed time of his [Kerenzikov], that Asian man had twisted his head aside a split second before the bullet landed and dodged it.
It was a maneuver only someone equipped with an extreme neural implant like his could pull off.
But that was the strange part.
No matter how hard he looked over the man’s torn leather jacket and scar-covered bare skin, he couldn’t find even the faintest trace of cold metal or mechanical hardware implanted in him.
"How... how the hell are you!!"
A scream of shock and rage burst from between the boss’s lips.
His trembling mechanical prosthetic raised the twin pistols in both hands again and started hammering the trigger like a madman.
Tatatatang!!
As destructive heavy-caliber rounds spat fire and poured toward Ji-hwan, the moment he lifted his head, his eyes were clearly different from before.
Red light flickered deep in his black pupils.
Swish— saaat—!
He simply stood there straight-backed, rolling those red-tinted eyes as he stared hard at the trajectory of the bullets rushing toward him.
Then, with the smallest movements just before impact, he twisted his shoulders and bent at the waist, slipping every shot aside.
"You... son of a...!"
As nothing but wasted gunfire echoed through the air, the man in the cowboy hat went pale as ash.
He had realized that the rapid-fire technique he was so proud of was being completely overwhelmed.
"What the hell are you idiots doing!! Shoot! Shoot that bastard!!"
The cowboy boss’s desperate roar shook the abandoned factory.
But the shouting that reached Ji-hwan’s ears was stretched thin and muddy, as if it were coming from deep underwater.
In the middle of the thick gunpowder smoke, Ji-hwan stood venting dark red vapor as he slowly steadied his ragged breathing.
Deep in his eyes, a strange blood-colored haze had already seeped in and was glinting coldly.
The sensation was like reading every grain of falling dust and every tiny twitch of his enemies’ muscles in slow motion. As the lock on his neural pathways opened and the omnipotent feeling of [Thinking Acceleration] washed over him, Ji-hwan’s body trembled with a sharp thrill.
But that icy sense of superiority lasted only a moment.
"Ugh..."
A pained groan slipped through Ji-hwan’s lips.
A terrifying pressure, as if the blood vessels in his head were about to burst, began crushing the inside of his skull without mercy.
It was the deadly price of forcibly opening the phenomenon where the world slowed when humans saw their life flash before their eyes, using the adrenaline that raged at death’s door.
This [Thinking Acceleration], which violently overworked the brain, left behind a horrific aftereffect the longer it stayed active, burning away the neural pathways themselves. The duration Ji-hwan had been granted now that the lock had just been released was nothing more than a fleeting instant.
Besides, in that drawn-out time where a person’s life flashed before their eyes, the human body would normally freeze, unable to keep up with the speed of thought.
But Ji-hwan’s reflexes, evolved to their limit through countless battles, were different.
His senses caught that split-second tempo and dragged his body into motion, and with explosive [Body Enhancement] layered on top, he could finally move physically through what was otherwise a frozen world.
'Looks like I can’t keep using this state forever.'
Ji-hwan instinctively knew he couldn’t just linger in slowed time and take his ease. He immediately took control of his body and kicked [Body Enhancement] into gear.
Click, rattle.
Through Ji-hwan’s red eyes, he saw the Raffen Shiv thugs in the slowed world trembling with fear as they tried to raise their rifles.
Before their fingers even reached the triggers, Ji-hwan kicked off the dirt floor with both legs, his output compressed to the limit.
Boom!!
With a sound like something exploding, the solid concrete beneath Ji-hwan’s feet caved in and sent fragments flying in every direction.
Using that absurd recoil as propulsion, Ji-hwan’s body shot forward and split the air as a streak of red.
The instant they tried to pull the trigger, Ji-hwan had already vanished without even leaving an afterimage, breaking through the incoming wall of fire and crashing like lightning into the middle of their ranks.
There was no mercy in Ji-hwan’s movements as he plunged into the center of the enemy formation.
Heavy fists and kicks, trailing thick red smoke, tore through the bodies of the Raffen Shiv thugs with brutal force. The others, panicking at the one-sided slaughter unfolding before their eyes, hurriedly raised their rifles and fired. But to Ji-hwan, whose [Thinking Acceleration] was active, every bullet’s path was crystal clear.
The blind rounds they sprayed wildly were not piercing Ji-hwan at all, but the comrades standing behind him.
"Aaaagh! My leg! Don’t shoot!"
"Kraaaah?!"
"D-don’t shoot!!"
Every time the men who had been hit by friendly fire desperately swung their muzzles around, Ji-hwan was already gone.
In the choking gunpowder smoke, a single red streak cut through the thugs like lightning.
Saaak— crunch!
Every time that red trail flashed past, the thugs collapsed, vomiting dark blood from their mouths.
The chests of the men sprawled on the ground bore grotesquely caved-in fist marks and boot prints, and those who couldn’t withstand the force of the blows had their necks twisted at unnatural angles as they rolled across the floor.
Watching that horrific massacre, the boss in the cowboy hat was also using his [Kerenzikov] and pouring out every shot he could manage.
Tatatatang!!
But because Ji-hwan never once lost sight of the boss’s movements, he let every bullet slide past with ease.
Even while butchering the small fry, he deliberately ignored the boss’s attacks. Realizing that Ji-hwan was intentionally not taking him on and instead was savagely cutting down his men first, the boss’s face flushed red with humiliation and fury.
"You little... bastard!!"
Grinding his teeth in rage, the boss’s left alloy prosthetic gave off an unpleasant mechanical screech.
Clack, whirrr—! As the outer armor opened and the vicious [Projectile Launch System] hidden inside his forearm revealed its cold barrel, Ji-hwan’s brow furrowed.
'He’s planning to blow away his own men too?'
He couldn’t drag this out any longer.
The next instant, he brutally squeezed even more output from [Body Enhancement] in his legs and launched himself forward.
Crack, pop!
With a grotesque snapping sound from his joints, his body screamed in protest as it reached its limit.
Boom! Kwaang!!
A grenade launched from the boss’s prosthetic tore through the air, and Ji-hwan stared straight at its trajectory with blood-red eyes before twisting his body into the narrowest possible angle.
The grenades he slipped past flew behind him and slammed into the ground, mercilessly sweeping away the remaining thugs who hadn’t managed to escape.
"Kraaaah!"
Fire and explosions shook the abandoned factory, but the boss, seeing Ji-hwan close the distance like a madman, raged in desperation.
Kwaang!Kwaaang!!
Ji-hwan kept maintaining [Body Enhancement] while evading the ever-growing radius of the blasts.
But the simultaneous use of [Thinking Acceleration], which forcibly slowed time, and [Body Enhancement], which compressed his output to the extreme, was slowly reaching its limit.
Feeling his entire body scream as if every blood vessel were about to burst, Ji-hwan decided to end it here and now.
That was when it happened.
Ssshhhh—!
"Damn...!?"
Red heat and thick smoke burst from the cowboy boss’s prosthetic, which had been firing high-explosive rounds in rapid succession.
The system had overheated, and the barrel had seized up, unable to fire any more.
"Now!"
Ji-hwan broke straight through the swirling dust and flames, charging directly at the boss.
Even with the opening exposed by the overheating, the boss, quick on his feet, didn’t panic.
Instead of the frozen prosthetic, he yanked the [Overture] twin pistols from his belt and unleashed a merciless storm of fire at Ji-hwan, who was rushing him head-on.
Bang!Crunch!
Ji-hwan shattered the boss’s expectation that he would dodge by twisting his trajectory. He ignored the heavy lead rounds punching through his torso and limbs, taking only the hits that weren’t fatal as he closed the distance to the boss’s face in a single breath.
The stunned man had just raised his pistol toward Ji-hwan’s head when the latter suddenly appeared in front of him, having charged through his own gunfire without caring.
At the same time, the [Thinking Acceleration] that had forcibly opened the lock on his neural pathways finally reached a point his body could no longer endure, and his entire field of vision began to flood red.
At the same moment, the merciless strain of [Body Enhancement], which he had been pushing throughout the fight, tore through his muscles and shattered his bones.
Bang!
The instant the boss’s pistol finally spat lead, Ji-hwan’s fist, his body pushed to the absolute limit by the dark red haze, cut through the air and crossed paths with the shot.
Bang!Kwaang!! Crack!!!
How much time had passed after the thick dust settled? The Raffen Shiv thugs who had been knocked down by grenades and shockwaves began to groan and slowly pull themselves together one by one.
The eyes of one of them widened like crazy as he sucked in a horrified breath.
Where his gaze landed, Ji-hwan’s fist was still stopped dead in the middle of the boss’s chest, completely through the man they had feared so much.
Sshhk—!
As Ji-hwan roughly yanked his fist free from the hole in the boss’s chest, the boss, with a gaping red wound through his torso, coughed up a mouthful of dark blood and collapsed to the floor.
Then Ji-hwan, covered in blood, slowly turned his head to look at them. The thugs abandoned even the bodies of their dead comrades and began screaming as they ran for their lives.
"A-monster!"
"R-run!!"
"F-fuck, the boss got taken out!!"
After the fleeing enemies disappeared completely beyond the abandoned factory, Ji-hwan’s once-straight legs began to tremble, and then they gave out, dropping him helplessly to his knees in the dirt.
"Wheeeugh... cough...!"
Bright red blood spilled all at once from Ji-hwan’s mouth.
The fatal backlash from pushing [Body Enhancement] beyond its limit had violently twisted his organs and blood vessels.
Then he heard a faint metallic sound beside him.
The man who had been sprawled on the ground with even his cowboy hat knocked off was still barely alive.
Looking up at Ji-hwan’s monstrous body as he coughed blood through a dimming artificial eye, the man moved his broken lips in disbelief.
"What... the hell... are you..."
With that empty final line, the boss who had ruled here finally went silent.
Ji-hwan panted hard, bracing himself on the blood-soaked floor as he waited for his wounds to knit back together.
Watching the red vapor stitch broken bones back into place and mend torn flesh, Ji-hwan himself felt a deep curiosity rise about his own grotesque, seemingly limitless body.
But there was no answer to be found right now.
The abandoned factory had fallen into heavy silence.
In the empty space, where even the screams of the fleeing enemies had vanished, only Ji-hwan’s rough breathing remained.
The neural pathways burned out by [Thinking Acceleration], and the backlash from repeatedly pushing his body to 100 percent output, were merciless.
Though pale red vapor rose from the torn gaps in his flesh, slowly repairing destroyed cells, even that process felt like it was gnawing away at every bone in his body, leaving him with a terrifying exhaustion.
Ji-hwan could only take comfort in the fact that he had barely crossed back over the threshold of death, and he decided to let his battered body rest for a moment in a corner of the cooling factory.
"Haa..."
A heavy, deep sigh slipped long and slow from between his blood-crusted lips.
Ji-hwan collapsed beside the corpse of the cowboy boss he had just punched through the chest and killed.
The cold of the concrete and dirt floor rose through his back, but compared to the pain of muscles splitting and breaking from the inside, even that felt numb.
As his eyelids grew heavy as lead, the red-hot world before him slowly darkened, and Ji-hwan stretched out his limbs and slipped into a deep sleep as if he had fainted.
How much time passed after that?
Ji-hwan, who had cut down the cowboy boss and laid himself down in a corner of the blood- and dust-stained factory, had drifted into a light doze in the fatigue of his healing wounds.
A sharp mechanical tone cut into his ears.
Beep!Beep—
It was an emergency call from fixer Dakota Smith.
Ji-hwan’s eyes flew open, and he reflexively switched on the old communicator strapped to his blood-caked wrist.
"Dakota."
But the blue hologram that usually floated in the air didn’t appear.
Instead, a horrific wall of noise, enough to rip his eardrums apart, poured out of the cracked speaker.
Bang— Kwaaang—!
"Aaaagh!!"
Tatatatataang!!
It was the howl of hell itself, mixed with massive explosions, people’s desperate screams, and the chaotic rattle of heavy weapons firing wildly.
Through the noise, Dakota’s urgent, ragged voice came through.
[Ji-hwan...! ksshh... those Maelstrom bastards... they came at us like... boom...!]
With each blast, the unstable comm line jolted, and static kept cutting her voice apart.
"Dakota? What’s the situation! Dakota!"
Ji-hwan shouted back, veins standing out in his neck, but the situation on the other end was already spiraling out of control.
Ratatatatata!! Bang!
[Damn it...! ksshh... they’re already through... they’re here...!]
With that desperate cry,
click.
The connection cut out completely with a cold, final sound.
"Dakota?? Dakota!!"
Ji-hwan yelled into the communicator, but all that came back was static.
"Shit, damn it!!"
Ji-hwan ground his teeth and hauled himself up roughly.
Every second mattered. There was no time to wait for his old Thornton Colby to be called in remotely.
Hastily scanning the area around the factory, Ji-hwan’s gaze locked onto a heavy armored vehicle parked in a corner of the dirt lot.
It was the modified rig the cowboy-hat boss had been driving before Ji-hwan punched a hole through his chest and killed him.
Without hesitation, Ji-hwan sprinted to the driver’s seat of that vicious machine, yanked the door open, and climbed in.
Vroooom!!
With a rough motion of his bloodied hand, he brought the heavy engine to life. The vehicle let out a deep exhaust roar and tore up the hard dirt as it shot forward violently.
Ji-hwan’s red eyes, locked tight around the steering wheel as if he might crush it, were fixed fiercely on the direction of Dakota’s garage, where black smoke should have been rising.
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