"Graaah...!!"
Ji-hwan fought to keep his collapsing knees braced against the wall as he writhed in horrible pain.
Cold sweat poured off him like rain, and blood from his bitten lip ran down his chin.
Amy and Rachel, seeing the state he was in, rushed over with pale, stricken faces.
The man who had sacrificed both his arms to save them. Rachel covered her mouth and stared at Ji-hwan with eyes full of shock and deep concern.
But Ji-hwan barely held himself upright, trembling all over, and turned to meet her gaze. Then he forced a smile through his bloodied face twisted by pain.
Braaang-!!!
At that moment, the air inside the camp turned rotten in the ugliest way possible.
The adults who had been cursing Ji-hwan just moments ago for not getting the door open now lunged forward like starving animals the second an escape route appeared, shoving Ji-hwan and Rachel aside as they rushed for the opening.
"Move! I’m first!"
"Don’t shove me, you bastard!"
They didn’t spare even a shred of concern for the wounds Ji-hwan had torn into his own arms to open the door for them.
Only the selfish instinct to save themselves remained, and they screamed and clawed at each other to squeeze through the narrow gap first.
In the chaos, frail women and old people were knocked down and trampled underfoot.
Ji-hwan leaned against the wall as his body sagged, watching the filthy mess with a cold mutter.
"Trash."
Even after his mocking remark, the terrified people paid him no mind and vanished one after another into the darkness.
Ji-hwan ignored them and turned instead to Amy, who was looking at him worriedly, and Rachel, who was helping the people who had fallen to the ground.
That was when it happened.
'Huh...?'
Something grotesque began to happen in Ji-hwan’s bloodied arms, which had gone completely numb and limp.
Ssssshhk- A faint red vapor rose from between the shredded muscle fibers, and with a searing pain that felt like his nerves were being scraped raw, the fingertips that had been paralyzed twitched and started to move.
It was the manifestation of that inhuman [regenerative ability] that had forcibly restored his body after the fall that had turned him into a pile of meat before.
He had poured out an enormous amount of energy, so the recovery was slow, but the severed nerves and torn muscles began to knit back together and regain strength little by little.
'Thank God. I thought I’d lost the use of my arms for good.'
Ji-hwan clenched his teeth against the agony, but still felt relief.
Still, he couldn’t properly use his arms yet, so he couldn’t touch Amy, who was coming toward him, with his blood-soaked hands. He only lowered his head to meet her eyes.
"Amy. Go out first with Rachel."
His gentle voice slipped through his split lips.
Seeing Ji-hwan covered in blood for their sake, Rachel and Amy had tears welling in their eyes.
"Let’s... go together..."
Amy stretched out her small hands and gripped Ji-hwan’s huge hand, blood dripping from it, without even a moment’s hesitation to pull away.
At that warm, pure touch, a quiet smile spread across Ji-hwan’s hardened face once more.
"Yeah, okay. I’ll catch up soon. But in the meantime, you can take good care of Mom, right?"
When Amy wiped away her tears and nodded bravely, Ji-hwan didn’t pat her head. Instead, he gave the mother and daughter a gentle look and motioned for them to hurry up and go.
Right then, red-hot sparks began flying wildly from the main steel door behind him.
Buck’s laser cutter had nearly melted through the heavy slab of metal, and the lock was on the verge of giving way.
Ji-hwan quickly calculated the situation. The selfish bastards had already gotten out, but the women and elderly who remained with Rachel still needed more time to crawl all the way through the cramped pipe passage. If he followed the mother and daughter into the tunnel now, Buck’s merciless chrome arm would catch up and wipe them all out like rats trapped in a jar.
'I need to buy time.'
Ji-hwan’s eyes fell on the rusted steel bar that was barely holding the door shut.
Then he reached out with his trembling hand and pulled out the "old tool screwdriver" he had kept tucked against his chest like his life depended on it ever since the moment he was first kidnapped, all the way from inside the armored truck’s trunk.
His skin peeled and his knuckles screamed, but the fingers that had recovered just enough to move forced themselves around the screwdriver’s rough handle with animal strength.
His body was shaking like a leaf and already at its limit, but his eyes, fixed on the door that was about to burst open, burned bright with resolve.
"Get out! Hurry!"
Ji-hwan urged Rachel, who was pushing the last of the survivors into the tunnel.
Rachel, tears in her eyes, shoved the final old man into the opening and shouted in panic.
"You need to come now too, Ji-hwan! The door’s breaking!"
Clang-!! Bang-!!
Before Rachel’s scream had even finished, the iron crowbar Ji-hwan had jammed in as a stopgap couldn’t hold any longer and flew loose, clattering to the floor. At the same time, the red-hot warehouse door burst apart with a violent crack and was torn open in pieces.
"Huff... huff...!"
Beyond the gap, through the drifting smoke and sparks, Buck’s huge and monstrous silhouette emerged, breathing hard with barely contained killing intent.
In Buck’s narrow, slanted eyes there was only one thing: the desire to tear apart and butcher the rats in front of him.
Clang-!! Bang-!!
Beyond the smoke and sparks, Buck’s vicious eyes, dragging his hulking frame forward, flashed toward the women and old people crawling into the narrow pipe passage, and toward Ji-hwan standing in their way.
"You little rat, how dare you!!"
Infuriated to the point of madness that more than half of the "goods" they were taking had already escaped, Buck surged toward Ji-hwan like a rabid beast.
Ji-hwan rolled desperately to the floor in shock, and with a thunderous KWAANG-!!, Buck’s merciless chrome fist slammed down on the concrete where Ji-hwan had been standing a moment before, driving into the steel wall and sending a chill down Ji-hwan’s spine with the sheer destructive force that brushed past his skin.
"I’m going to kill you, you rat!!"
Buck chased after Ji-hwan as he rolled away, pounding the floor with his monstrous boots like he was trying to stomp an ugly insect to death.
Ji-hwan’s strength had not yet recovered, and though he barely managed to roll out of the way, he was eventually driven completely into the corner of the cramped cell.
With his retreat cut off, Ji-hwan gasped and lifted his head at the very instant Buck closed in.
Paaang-!!! KRAAACK-!!
Before there was even time to dodge, Buck’s crude chrome fist smashed straight into Ji-hwan’s face. The horrifying crack of his skull and facial bones shattering at once ripped through the tiny space.
Buck’s massive fist drove deep into Ji-hwan’s face without mercy, and Ji-hwan’s body was slammed into the wall, going limp like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Tch. Where do you think you’re going?"
Buck yanked his blood-soaked fist back from Ji-hwan’s crushed face and spat contemptuously at the body that lay there like it was dead, but Ji-hwan, whose face had been completely caved in, didn’t move at all.
Then Buck’s bloodshot gaze snapped toward Rachel, who was trembling at the end of the pipe tunnel as she tried to flee.
"Where do you think you’re going?!"
"Aaaah!!"
As Buck reached out his vicious hand and grabbed Rachel’s hair, half of her body already shoved into the pipe opening,
"Mom!! Waaah, Mom!!"
little Amy, who had gone into the tunnel first, saw her mother get caught and burst into tears as she tried to run back out.
But another woman inside the passage screamed and desperately grabbed Amy around the waist, pulling her back in.
"You have to go, Amy! Hurry!!"
Rachel, screaming as though her scalp was being ripped away, was lifted into the air by Buck’s hand like a sack of luggage.
Buck ground his teeth, venting the fury of having missed the rats that were escaping, and began to squeeze Rachel’s slender neck with his other hand.
Crk-
"Ghk... kkh...!"
Rachel’s feet kicked helplessly in the air. She clawed at Buck’s thick arm, eyes bulging as she struggled for breath, but the gap in strength between them made her resistance meaningless.
Just as her vision flickered black and her breathing was about to stop completely, the moment of absolute crisis arrived.
Beyond Rachel’s fading sight, an unbelievable scene unfolded.
Ji-hwan, who had just had his face completely crushed and should have died instantly, was somehow hanging silently off Buck’s back.
Even more horrifying was Ji-hwan’s face.
Only seconds earlier, Ji-hwan’s skull and face had been smashed apart by Buck’s chrome arm, but now they were being stitched back together in real time, giving off a faint red vapor until they had already restored themselves to a flawless state without a single visible wound.
The only proof that his face had absolutely been destroyed a moment ago was the horrifying crust of dried blood caked all over his skin.
Buck, feeling the heavy, unnatural weight clinging to his back, jerked in shock and turned his head.
"How the hell are you-?!"
At the grotesque reality that the man whose head he had just crushed was somehow alive and hanging on his back, shock and confusion flashed across the hotheaded Buck’s eyes. Instinctively, he lurched and violently flung Rachel away, trying to tear Ji-hwan off his back.
Ignoring Rachel as she coughed and rolled on the floor, Buck swung his heavy chrome arm back to smash Ji-hwan off him. But instead of dodging the blow, Ji-hwan locked both bloodied arms tightly around Buck’s thick neck.
It looked like the desperate struggle of a mere human hanging off the back of a giant brown bear and trying to choke the life out of it.
"Grrrr...!"
As Ji-hwan’s arms tightened around Buck’s thick, beastlike neck, Buck panicked and reached back wildly to rip him off, but then he realized his own massive frame and thick chrome arm had become a fatal weakness.
With his oversized muscles and the structure of the heavy mechanical arm, he simply couldn’t reach Ji-hwan, who was clamped to the center of his back and choking him from behind.
"You bastard!!"
Admitting that he couldn’t shake the rat off his back with his hands, Buck roared and thrashed.
With the pressure in his airway tightening by the second, Buck desperately tried to tear Ji-hwan’s arms away, clawing at the forearm wrapped around his throat with vicious chrome fingers.
Crack-! Snap!
The sickening sound of Ji-hwan’s arm bones breaking raw and his muscles tearing echoed through the camp. Any normal person would have screamed and let go at once from that agony. But Ji-hwan gave no ground, twisting the angle of his broken arm in a grotesque way and tightening his grip on Buck’s neck even more viciously.
"Y-you crazy bastard...!!"
Completely rattled by Ji-hwan’s murderous tenacity, which didn’t let go even with his arm bones shattered, Buck changed tactics and hurled himself backward with all his strength, slamming Ji-hwan into the camp’s thick steel wall.
Bang-!! KWAANG-!! Bang-!!
"Ghk...!"
Buck’s 200-kilo body and brute force ground Ji-hwan into the iron wall mercilessly, and every massive impact dented the camp’s hard steel surface inward.
Each time, Ji-hwan’s spine shattered and the bones throughout his body crumbled.
KWAANG-!!
With every blow, dark red blood burst from between Ji-hwan’s split lips like a waterfall, but even while his organs were tearing and he was coughing up blood, he glared with bloodshot eyes toward Rachel, who had collapsed to the floor trembling, and shouted desperately.
"Get out!! Now!!"
Snapped awake by that blood-boiling scream, Rachel flung herself toward the pipe tunnel where Amy was waiting, tears scattering from her face as she crawled.
"You bitch, where do you think you’re going?!"
Still dragging Ji-hwan along as he crushed him, Buck reached out his chrome arm to snatch Rachel’s ankle again, but then—
Crack-!! KRAAACK!!
"Ghhk...?"
Buck’s airway suddenly locked up, and the arm he had been reaching out with froze in midair, convulsing.
To stop Rachel from escaping, Ji-hwan had once again poured a mad, superhuman grip into his already ruined, dangling arms.
Fragments of Ji-hwan’s broken arm bones burst through the skin, but those grotesquely bent arms crushed Buck’s thick carotid artery and windpipe like a hydraulic press.
With the awful pressure of oxygen being cut off, Buck no longer had the luxury of worrying about Rachel escaping through the hole. His eyes rolled back as he flailed helplessly in the air.
"Kkh... kkh...! Hhk...!"
In the agony of being unable to breathe, Buck reached back again toward Ji-hwan, but the distance was still too far, and all he could do was claw at empty air.
As the panicked Buck struggled, his eyes accidentally met Ji-hwan’s face reflected in a rusted shard of metal nearby.
"...!!"
In that instant, Buck’s vicious pupils contracted violently with terror. In the reflection on the scrap of metal, Ji-hwan’s eyes were completely unfocused, showing only the eerie whites of his eyes.
Ji-hwan had already blacked out from the shock of the brutal wall impacts and the pain of his bones shattering.
But even in that state, with his reason completely severed, his broken arms kept slowly, horribly tightening around Buck’s neck.
The sheer monstrosity of those arms, bones jutting out and flesh torn open, never stopping as they continued to choke the life out of him. For the first time in his life, the bloodthirsty Buck felt the same kind of [deathly fear] he had only ever seen in his boss.
"Get off me!! Get off, you crazy bastard!! Aaaagh!!!"
Buck, completely out of his mind, screamed as he hurled himself wildly into the camp walls and floor, trying to shake off the unconscious beast strangling him.
"Ghk...!"
At last, Buck’s eyes rolled back grotesquely, and his massive arms, flailing in the air, went limp.
Thud-!
Then the upper half of Buck’s body, now off balance, pitched forward and crashed face-first into the filthy camp floor with a heavy thoom.
How long had it been since silence fell?
"Kh... haa..."
Ji-hwan, who had been hanging dead-like off Buck’s back, let out a faint groan and came to first.
Instinctively, he tried to release the arms wrapped around Buck’s neck, but his bones were already shattered and his muscles torn, so his arms only dangled uselessly.
Because Buck had slammed himself into the steel wall dozens of times in his frenzy, the horrible pain of his entire skeleton collapsing hammered through Ji-hwan’s brain.
But even through that searing agony, Ji-hwan twisted his body stubbornly and rolled off Buck’s back.
As he coughed up blood and crawled across the floor, Ji-hwan’s eyes were fixed on the dark pipe tunnel where Rachel and Amy had just escaped.
He had to crawl out of here somehow, even if it killed him.
As he dragged his bloodied body across the floor and managed to crawl a few steps,
"Ugh... ngh..."
he felt a creepy groan and the movement of a huge mass of flesh behind him.
'Shit.'
Ji-hwan flinched and turned his head. It was Buck. A normal human would have already died from a broken neck or suffocation, but the stubborn life force of the cheap implants he had accumulated while living as a filthy raider was dragging Buck’s consciousness back into reality.
'This won’t do.'
In his current state, with every bone in his body broken and both arms turned into rags, he couldn’t fight that monster hand-to-hand again.
Ji-hwan, suddenly panicked, scanned the area wildly with bloodshot eyes. Then, in a corner of the floor, he spotted the heavy lump of metal Buck had dropped while thrashing in agony from suffocation just moments ago.
It was the absurdly destructive revolver he had only ever seen in games: an [Overture].
Ji-hwan bled from his bitten lip as he forced his broken arm out and grabbed the heavy pistol’s grip.
Then he sat half-reclined with his back against the wall and held his breath, waiting for the right moment.
"Huff... huff..."
Before long, Buck let out a rough breath and fully came to.
He shook his head like a beast, looked around, and then immediately spotted Ji-hwan, battered and sitting against the steel wall.
Uncontrollable rage and killing intent burst into Buck’s slanted eyes.
"You... you... you son of a bitch...!!"
Buck staggered to his feet, towering over the man who had filled him with the terror of a horrible death, and strode toward Ji-hwan.
As if he meant to crush that rat’s head into a perfect meat pie this time, Buck raised his crude, monstrous chrome arm high overhead.
"Die, you filthy insect!!!"
Just as Buck came close enough to bring the finishing blow down, a cold glint flashed in Ji-hwan’s blurred pupils.
As though he had been waiting for this exact distance, he snapped up the hand that had seemed limp only moments ago and drove the heavy muzzle of the [Overture] straight at Buck’s forehead.
"...!!"
The black muzzle was shoved right into his face. Buck’s eyes bulged as he stared straight into the mouth of death.
"W-wai-..."
Before the frantic warning could even leave Buck’s mouth, Ji-hwan pulled the trigger without the slightest hesitation.
TAAANG-!!!!
A deafening blast tore through the air. The [Overture]’s large-caliber round punched straight through Buck’s face at point-blank range, scattering half his skull into a mist of blood.
"Bang. You’re dead, bastard."
With that dry murmur, the smoking muzzle slowly lowered. The giant body of Buck, whose head had been erased at point-blank range by a large-caliber round, toppled to the floor with a dull crash like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Khh...!"
At that moment, a stifled scream burst from between Ji-hwan’s split lips. The relief of having finally cut Buck’s throat was instant, but just as the adrenaline that had been keeping him together began to fade, horrible pain surged up from his right hand, which had been gripping the heavy revolver.
Thud.
The [Overture] slipped from his hand and dropped uselessly to the floor. Ji-hwan looked down at his trembling right hand and saw that the wrist joint, which had been bearing the weight of the heavy gun grip, was bent at a grotesque angle, the dislocated wrist hanging limp.
"Goddamn..."
He cursed at the sight, but after the struggle with Buck his arms were already a wreck, so it was hardly surprising. Taking the full recoil of a monster like the [Overture] with a bare body and no chrome at all was, in a way, the inevitable result.
"Haa... haa..."
Cold sweat poured off him from the pain, but Ji-hwan kept breathing hard through it, then suddenly frowned at the strange sense of wrongness spreading through his arm.
'What the hell...?'
From the forearm where flesh had been brutally crushed and torn away, the muscle fibers twitched grotesquely with the blood stopped cold. Over them, only the faintest red vapor rose, and the wound grew hot like it had been burned, accompanied by a disgusting sensation as if it were trying to force itself back together.
But when he saw it, Ji-hwan simply dismissed it as a hallucination from the extreme adrenaline rush or the filthy smoke, and focused on the fact that he needed to set his dislocated bones right immediately.
'No, this isn’t the time to worry about that. I need to fix the bones first.'
Ji-hwan bit down hard on his bloodied lip and forced the stray thoughts away. With his blood-soaked left hand, he gripped his grotesquely twisted right wrist tightly.
Deciding that if he applied force carelessly he’d only damage the nerves further, Ji-hwan resolved to pour all the remaining strength in one go.
"One... two...!!"
With a shout, he snapped his wrist back up without hesitation. The horrifying crack of misaligned bones grinding together raw ripped through the camp, but even through the extreme pain that felt like it was burning his brain white, he clenched his teeth instead of screaming and refused to lose consciousness. He spat out ragged breaths from the blood-soaked floor and staggered to his feet.
Tatata-tang-! Bang-!
Outside, the firefight between unknown forces was still raging. The explosive blasts and gunfire that had been tearing the air apart at the start had clearly died down compared to before, but the acrid smell of gunpowder drifting through the smoke was a cold warning that this was still no safe zone.
Ji-hwan had no idea exactly what was happening outside, or who had decided to attack the raiders’ base, but one thing was certain: he had to get out of here right now.
He didn’t care if the selfish bastards who had run off first to save themselves ended up as bullet bait outside.
But the small warmth of Amy, who had held his bloodied hand tightly in the dark tunnel while trembling, and Rachel, who had tried to protect her child to the very end in that hellish camp—those two were different.
'I’m saving that mother and daughter. No matter what.'
Drip. Drip.
Dark red blood kept running from the shredded skin and the wrist he had forced back into place, but Ji-hwan didn’t care.
Even the horrible burning pain scraping at his nerves was just something to swallow as proof that he was still alive. Enduring the pain, he reached down to the blood-slick floor, grabbed the grip of the heavy [Overture] he had dropped when his wrist gave out, and hauled himself over Buck’s headless body.
Then he shoved himself without hesitation into the cramped auxiliary pipe tunnel where Rachel and Amy had gone ahead.
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