Kwaang—! Kugugugung—!!
Deep beneath the abandoned shopping mall in Pacifica, the underground arena rumbled.
The heavy booms shaking the surface and the relentless crackle of gunfire kept echoing through the thick concrete ceiling without pause.
The Animal gang members trapped inside the Safe Bunker could only grind their teeth and fidget with the vicious weapons in their hands, helpless and frustrated that they had to sit there and listen while the outsider, Ji-hwan, fought alone and bled in their place outside.
That same suffocating frustration was eating at Mammoth too.
Standing frozen in the VIP room monitor booth, he ground his teeth with a harsh metallic rattle, the crude steel implant set into his shattered jaw clacking irritably.
Then it happened. His holo-call network suddenly rang, and the moment he checked the caller ID, the fierce red glow in Mammoth’s eyes froze over in an instant.
The caller was Logan Garcia, an Animal executive in charge of the city center and Santo Domingo. The moment Mammoth picked up, he snapped,
"I told you if I ever heard your voice in my ear again, I’d rip that mouth apart and kill you, Logan."
Even after that savage threat, Logan only gave a snake-like, sneering chuckle.
[Easy there, Mammoth. That wanted bastard you’re protecting outside is tearing things up. Doesn’t it itch sitting there like a rat and just watching? If you’re feeling wronged, crawl out to the covert zone where I am.]
Anyone could see it was a trap meant to lure Mammoth out and kill him, so Mammoth ground the cigar between his teeth and snorted in contempt.
"Hmph. For an obvious trap, that’s a pretty cheap provocation."
As the boss, Mammoth was already about to hang up, as if the call wasn’t even worth his time.
[Wait! Hey, don’t hang up!!]
Just as Mammoth was truly about to cut the line without hesitation, Logan—panicking because his provocation had failed—swallowed his breath and threw out the trump card he’d prepared.
[I-I’ve got "Dorio" right under my feet, and you’re still going to hang up?!]
At that desperate shout, Mammoth’s fingers twitched to a stop.
He fell into thought for a moment, then snorted again and furrowed his brow.
"Dorio? Who’s that? Don’t throw around names I don’t even know and try to bullshit me."
Mammoth genuinely had no idea who the owner of that name was, and his cold reaction made it clear he was about to dismiss the call as a nuisance. On the other end, Logan suddenly burst into a bizarre laugh, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
[Kwahahah! What? You really don’t remember? The daughter of your old brother, the one you cherished and slobbered over so much! The daughter of that "Gunnar"!!]
Thunk.
The moment that name—Gunnar—came out, Mammoth felt as if his heart had stopped.
The horrifying memory came flooding back: the day he had been dragged into Logan’s filthy gang war, clutching Gunnar’s mangled corpse and weeping blood tears as his unjustly torn-apart brother died. That meant the bastard was now holding Gunnar’s last remaining blood relative hostage and humiliating her.
[Oh, and... don’t even think about bringing your underlings with you. Because then...]
Logan’s slimy voice coiled around Mammoth’s ear like a snake.
[I might accidentally... blow the head off the bitch under my feet.]
Ding.
Along with the threat, a single photo was sent and popped up on the holo screen.
A dark concrete floor in an abandoned factory. A huge woman lying unconscious, her head split open and blood pouring out in streams. And there was Logan, brutally captured in the act, grinding his studded boot down on the back of her crushed skull.
"You... son of a bitch."
Thick veins bulged beneath Mammoth’s gray skin, ready to burst, and his ferocious eyes flickered as if they might smash through the door at any second.
But he knew.
He knew that if he went there, he’d die. He knew it was a perfect killing ground designed to take him out.
Mammoth stared at Dorio’s photo without blinking, caught at a crossroads.
Kwaaang—! Tatatatang—!!
Mammoth’s glowing eyes darted back and forth between the photo of unconscious Dorio Logan had sent and the black-and-white external security monitor connected to the surface.
Through the noisy, distorted screen, he could see Ji-hwan fighting.
Under the merciless crossfire unleashed by corporate hounds and mercenary teams, bullets slammed into Ji-hwan’s shoulder and side, scattering dark red blood through the air.
And yet he didn’t take even a single step back. Instead, coughing up blood, he charged straight into the storm of fire and tore his enemies apart with every weapon he had.
Watching that crude, noble struggle, Mammoth suddenly remembered the back view and the words Ji-hwan had left behind just moments ago when he went up to the surface alone.
"As the boss, you just make sure your people stay behind locked doors, Mammoth. I’ll handle the bastards coming in from outside by myself."
Even an outsider with no blood ties was bleeding out there to protect the people bound together under the name of family.
And yet he, the boss, knowing full well that the last blood relative of someone he’d once cherished like a brother was being humiliated and left to die, was hiding in a safe bunker because he was afraid of a trap?
"...Heh."
A self-mocking laugh slipped from between Mammoth’s crushed jaw joints.
For Mammoth, this was a humiliation worse than death—himself throwing the pride and loyalty he had worshiped all his life straight into the gutter.
He snatched up the holo-call device on the table and dialed back the line Logan had just used.
The call connected before the signal could even ring once.
[Kwahahaha! That’s right, you stupid beast. So you finally decided to come—]
"Until I get there,"
"if you touch even a single hair on that girl’s head, I’ll rip your throat out alive and chew your guts to pieces. Clean your neck and wait, Logan."
Click.
After that one-sided declaration, he yanked open the personal locker in the corner of the VIP room and layered his massive upper body in the matte-black heavy combat armored vest he usually found too cumbersome to wear.
On both hands, he fitted brutal steel knuckles built to crush bone.
Once he was armed, Mammoth opened the VIP room door and stepped outside. Bison, his right-hand man guarding the arena entrance, saw Mammoth coming out in full combat gear, radiating a ferocity unlike his usual self, and rushed over in a panic.
"B-Boss?!"
"What is that loadout...? The outside is dangerous right now!! Don’t tell me you’re going out alone?! Wherever you’re going, no, I should... uh... I’ll gather everyone right now and go with you—!"
"Stop."
"Where are you going? If you’re going to help K, it’s impossible!"
He had no intention of explaining to his subordinate about the filthy threat call from Logan, or about walking straight into a trap.
"This is..."
Mammoth’s voice was so low and calm it was almost chilling.
"Purely my own personal business."
This was not the man who usually ruled the arena with an iron fist.
This was the look of someone who had already resolved to throw everything away.
"...!!"
The instant Bison met that gaze, he had no choice but to swallow the words of protest that had risen to his throat.
Maybe he wasn’t smart, but his instincts were sharper than anyone’s. Bison understood at once.
What Mammoth was heading toward now was a burden he alone had to carry and face. Forcing his way in here and dragging the underlings along would only trample the boss’s final pride as he walked toward death.
"..."
Bison clenched both fists.
He bit down hard on his lip until it looked like blood might seep out, then finally stepped aside and cleared the way for Mammoth.
"My order hasn’t changed."
Mammoth gave Bison’s shoulder a rough pat as he passed.
"Until I come back, seal the bunker door completely. No matter what happens outside, do not let anyone out. From here on, you’re the boss."
Bison couldn’t bring himself to look straight at Mammoth’s enormous back as it moved away. He bowed his head and answered in a strained voice.
"...Understood."
Mammoth gave a short nod, then turned his heavy steps toward the side emergency steel door of the underground bunker, which had been firmly shut.
Kigigigik, Kwaang—!
As the heavy steel door opened, the sounds of Ji-hwan’s desperate firefight on the surface rushed in, sharper and clearer than before.
Mammoth hurled his massive body toward the dark, abandoned factory district of Pacifica, and a moment later the steel door slammed shut behind him with a dull thud.
In the empty corridor, countless Animal gang members held their breath and stared blankly at the sealed steel door where Mammoth had disappeared.
And standing before them, Bison was sinking into the helplessness of his own powerlessness, caught between Ji-hwan’s lone battle and Mammoth’s giant back walking into the darkness for a fight of his own.
Click.
When the holo-call cut off unilaterally, Logan burst into a sneering laugh.
"See? Just like I said. That stupid, stubborn beast heard the name of his dead brother and lost his mind—came crawling out all on his own."
Where Logan turned in triumph, four red artificial eyes glinted ominously in the deepest darkness of the abandoned factory.
The other man was Faraday, a fixer operating out of Santo Domingo.
Faraday brushed lightly at his collar with a gloved hand and looked down coldly and calculatingly at Dorio, who lay unconscious and bloodied on the floor.
In truth, it was Faraday’s intelligence work that had designed this trap and prepared Dorio as bait.
Not long ago, he had been looking into Mammoth, who refused to listen to reason, in order to wipe him out and put someone else in his place.
Using his information network, he traced the movements of Dorio, Gunnar’s daughter, who had been roaming Pacifica’s back alleys seeking revenge for her father, who had died in a past Animal gang conflict.
He immediately deployed his private soldiers and ordered them to abduct her quietly from the street.
Though a few useful underlings had broken bones or lost their lives while subduing her resistance, to Faraday, the sacrifice of a few pieces was nothing more than the loss of minor consumables.
All that ran through his head was profit and loss.
The plan was simple: use this chance to drive the eyesore of Mammoth, who had grown independent and slipped beyond a fixer’s control while talking about pride and family, into a dead end and eliminate him completely. Then seat the simple, greedy Logan—whose eyes were fixed only on the power and eddies in front of him—as a puppet boss. If that happened, he could fully control the gang and underground arena interests of Pacifica.
"This is why I call you my best partner, Logan. Unlike the other stupid beasts in Pacifica, you’ve got the judgment and decisiveness to read a board this big."
Faraday praised Logan in a soft voice, as if genuinely impressed.
Outwardly, it was a perfect compliment from one business partner to another, but behind the four red artificial eyes of this sadistic control freak who ruled Santo Domingo, a very different intent was hiding.
He meant to use this simple lump of muscle as a puppet on the chessboard, and ultimately seize and manipulate all of Pacifica’s interests for himself.
Completely unaware of that disgusting intent, Logan puffed up at the fixer’s praise and grinned with smug satisfaction.
"Hah! Of course! That stupid old rhino Mammoth should’ve been weeded out long ago. Once his throat is cut tonight, the prime district of Pacifica will all be mine! The true owner of Pacifica is changing hands!"
As an Animal executive who had long coveted Mammoth’s position, Logan prodded the hair of the woman lying on the floor with his studded boot and bared his teeth in greed.
"Then I’d better go finish setting the trap to tear that rhino apart. That wanted bastard you’re after, I’ll have him delivered to your feet after I’ve fully taken over Pacifica. Just like our deal!"
"I’m looking forward to it. Mammoth is a beast with sharp instincts, so don’t let your guard down. Once he crosses the threshold of the abandoned factory, make sure the ambush and crossfire are tight enough to turn him into a sieve from every direction. Show me the full extent of your ability as Pacifica’s new owner."
With Faraday’s pleasant encouragement behind him, Logan became completely cocky and led his men into the depths of the abandoned factory, chuckling all the way.
The stupid back of a puppet walking straight into a dead end to catch Mammoth. Watching that, Faraday’s lips finally curled into the chilling, snake-like smile he had kept hidden.
It was the moment his cruel nature was laid bare—his habit of treating mercs and gangs as disposable pawns and consumables he could use up and throw away whenever he wanted.
'Stupid hunting dog. You’re nothing but a meat shield that’ll bleed for me and hand over all of Pacifica.'
Tatatatang—!!
Cutting through Pacifica’s darkness, Ji-hwan kept sprinting through the rain of shells and bullets, a faint red haze trailing from his body.
Most of the enemies in his wake were now missing legs or reduced to wheezing, crippled wrecks with their mobility destroyed.
He had deliberately left them alive, using them as obstacles so they would flail and beg for their lives and interfere with their allies.
And the tactic was working, to a degree.
The mid-tier veteran mercs chasing Ji-hwan could barely react to his movement path and tried to close the encirclement with smart rifles, but they hesitated because their comrades were crawling in the line of fire, bleeding all over the floor.
But Ji-hwan’s tactic only worked on "reasonable humans."
Kkwajik—!!
"Aaaagh!!"
With horrifying bursts and screams, the gang leaders and solos from other crews who were relentlessly tracking Ji-hwan didn’t care at all about the lives of their comrades crawling on the ground.
They crushed the faces of lower-ranked mercs who reached out for help and blocked their path with merciless titanium boots.
"Fuck, get out of the way, you trash!!"
Driven mad by the 500,000-eddy bounty and the lust for slaughter, they used the bones and flesh of their own allies as stepping stones and surged after Ji-hwan like beasts.
'What a bunch of stubborn bastards.'
Ji-hwan immediately cranked his ability output higher and boosted his burst mobility to the limit at [Gear 2].
But the high-end solos with rare-grade [Sandevistan] and [Kerenzikov] implants in their spines crackled with blue sparks and still managed to react to Ji-hwan’s movement, keeping right on his heels.
Wiiing—!
"Got you, you rat!!"
Before long, one of the high-end solos had closed the distance completely, and a massive [Mantis Blades] strike came crashing down like lightning for the back of Ji-hwan’s neck.
Ji-hwan reflexively swept his thigh pocket, but there was nothing there. The throwing knives he’d been hurling like a madman through the hail of gunfire were already gone.
Without hesitation, Ji-hwan rolled across the ground and snatched up the chipped katana he’d just cut from one of the gang member’s corpse, meeting the slash head-on.
Kaaang—!!
Blue sparks flew as a horrible, ear-splitting grinding noise rang out.
But the cheap steel katana, already worn down to the limit, couldn’t withstand the pressure coming off the high-end solo’s absurd chrome.
Chijjeok, jjanggeurang—!!
The katana in Ji-hwan’s hand shattered into dozens of sharp metal fragments that sprayed through the air.
"Kwahahaha! Now what’s a bastard with no weapons supposed to do?!"
The high-end solos, having watched the only melee weapon in his hand break, let out triumphant metallic laughter.
They raised vicious Gorilla Arms and blades and rushed in from every direction.
To anyone watching, it was a perfect rat in a trap—utterly hopeless.
But.
Ji-hwan tossed the broken katana hilt to the ground without hesitation, and in his pitch-black eyes there was no despair at all—only fighting spirit burning fiercely.
'Something this crude and half-baked...'
They didn’t know that at this very moment, with the weapon gone, Ji-hwan’s body itself—honed by extreme training—was the most overwhelming killing machine of all.
"No weapon? Then what?"
Ji-hwan smiled faintly and clenched his bare fist toward the air filled with flashing steel.
"Try it yourself."
Thump-thump-thump-thump!!
Inside Ji-hwan’s chest, his heart began pounding like it was about to explode, roaring with violent force.
The sound of [Gear 3] surging through his entire body like an engine at full throttle.
The blood flow that had been accelerating his thought and visual processing now surged into his muscles instead.
As the amplified central nervous system issued an explosive contraction command to the muscle fibers in specific parts of Ji-hwan’s body, the muscles compressed to their limit suddenly released, fully primed to unleash massive physical energy.
Through the acid rain pouring over Pacifica, a vivid, rough red vapor flared up all over Ji-hwan’s body like a sudden blaze.
All around him, enemies were charging in with [Sandevistan] active, vicious Gorilla Arms and [Mantis Blades] in front, while others behind them used [Kerenzikov] and fired their weapons, rushing in to tear Ji-hwan apart.
But even before that merciless storm of steel, Ji-hwan didn’t rush. He didn’t panic.
Instead, even in this situation, he entered a state of complete relaxation, stripping away every unnecessary trace of tension from his muscles like water flowing cleanly away.
In contrast to that emptied-out body, Ji-hwan’s feet were planted so firmly they seemed ready to crush the concrete floor of the ruined plaza.
The immense rebound force generated the instant he grounded himself surged up from his toes, climbed through his calves, and merged with the furious rotational power of his violently twisted waist.
That enormous kinetic energy, flowing through the open channels of a body freed by relaxation, was finally condensed with razor-sharp precision into a single point at the end of Ji-hwan’s outstretched fist.
This was on a completely different level from the foot strike he had used earlier against the solo wielding the [Mantis Blades], when he had slipped away from the blow in the middle of the rain of bullets.
Back then, he had been forced to create an opening in the middle of a chaotic, ultra-fast melee from all directions, so the compression of power had been far too weak, and the impact had scattered into half its strength, only enough to shake the enemy’s shallow internal organs.
But now was different.
That foot strike, packed with 100 percent energy through a perfectly grounded stance and the preparatory motion of relaxation, had a density of destructive force that couldn’t even be compared to before.
The instant before the blue blades from all directions were about to carve into Ji-hwan’s heart and throat,
his fist shot out at them like lightning—silent, but carrying overwhelming destruction.
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