Before Ji-hwan’s fist could reach them, all his enemies could see through their red optical lenses was contempt and mockery for the strange stance he had taken.
"Drop his guard? What a stupid move."
"Looks like some cheap back-alley martial arts BD pose."
He’d fought well so far, but now he was actually striking that ridiculous pose in the face of their overwhelming assault.
In another 0.1 second, that arrogant bastard’s whole body would be shredded beyond recognition by the crossing blue blades and steel fists they were throwing at him, torn apart into a spray of blood and meat.
But in that brief instant as Ji-hwan’s fist shot out into the air, the thousands of practiced motions behind his explosive [Gear 3] output and extreme relaxation technique unfolded. Even in the machine-stretched world of sticky slow motion, the last thing their red optical lenses caught was only a blurry afterimage of Ji-hwan standing loose in a combat stance.
"Huh...?"
Elite solos and gang lieutenants surged in from all sides, raising blue Mantis Blades and Gorilla Arms to tear Ji-hwan apart.
But just as they closed the encirclement and lunged in triumph, their heavy bodies were flung up into the air and blasted outward in all directions, as if they had slammed head-on into an invisible cannonball.
Kwaang!
Kugugugung!!
Red artificial blood and black coolant sprayed like fountains from the mouths and mechanical joints of the ones rolling across the concrete plaza and crashing into broken debris.
"Ghh... Hah...! Wh-what the hell?! What just happened!!"
"Cough! Was that a grenade?! That bastard pretended to be unarmed, but did he hide explosives in his wrist?!"
"Agh... fuck, my leg!!"
Mid-tier mercs and gang members caught in the shockwave rolled across the ground, coughing up blood and screaming in shock.
Their ordinary visual reflexes couldn’t possibly track the path of Ji-hwan’s fist.
All they could think was that the moment his fist shot out, a horrific explosion had gone off in front of them and swept them away.
But not everyone there failed to understand what had happened.
Wiiing-Pzzzt!
The top-tier solos with rare-grade [Kerenzikov] implants in their spines had triggered accelerated perception at the closest possible range to Ji-hwan.
Inside the sticky, slowed time opened up by [Kerenzikov], they saw the entire sequence of Ji-hwan’s strike with their own eyes.
Among them, Zack, an elite solo stationed on the shattered debris at the rear with a heavy pair of large-caliber hand cannons in both hands and a sniper rifle plus an assault rifle strapped to his back, saw everything. He had been about to squeeze the trigger at Ji-hwan’s brow the instant the melee team created an opening by pinning his limbs.
Even with blue blades flying in from every direction, that black-haired Asian man didn’t tense his muscles at all. Instead, he let the strength drain cleanly and perfectly through his whole body like water.
Then, the instant Ji-hwan’s fist, venting red steam, struck the thick titanium armor of an allied solo, the shockwave detonated.
"What the hell is that..."
One of the twin hand cannons in Zack’s grip went limp and dropped uselessly to the ground.
"Is that really possible with a human body?"
The absolute physical laws of machinery, which they had trusted all their lives and paid dearly to implant into their bodies, had been completely denied and shattered by a single bare-handed blow from that Asian man in front of them.
One mercenary, leaning against a broken concrete wall and staring blankly at the scene, trembled at the lips and finally let out a despairing breath.
"This is insane..."
A man decked out in top-grade titanium armor and high-end chrome worth hundreds of thousands of eddies was hanging there and getting dragged around by the hand of a man with no chrome at all, like some old rag doll or a trash bag. Ji-hwan, breathing hard and coughing up blood-flecked froth, strode through the dust while gripping the massive man’s throat with one hand.
"Kh... Hahh... Grrk..."
Ji-hwan casually tossed the giant body, whose lifeline was fading in his grip, aside like an annoying garbage bag.
Thud!
Glancing sidelong at the guy rolling around like scrap metal on the ground, Ji-hwan curled his bloodied lips and grumbled irritably.
"You’re the ones who came at me with numbers first."
But despite his relaxed tone, Ji-hwan was in no condition to look fine either.
His whole body was a mess, blood dripping from the skin all over him and mixing with the acid rain after the backlash from forcibly unleashing energy compressed to its limit.
Still, Ji-hwan’s eyes burned with a ferocious killing intent.
Soaked in both his own blood and his enemies’, Ji-hwan flashed a vicious, bloodthirsty smile.
Then he raised his bloodied palm toward the enemies still standing in front of him and crooked his fingers upward in a taunt.
"Come on, you bastards."
But the only answer to that savage call was silence.
The gang lieutenants and elite solos who had been charging in moments ago, eyes wild over the 500,000-eddy bounty, had already had their momentum shattered and been slammed face-first into the mud.
"..."
"...Tch."
Weapons still in hand, they began sneaking glances at the comrades standing beside them.
Who would be the first to throw themselves at that insane monster?
Facing a man who could smash armored plating worth hundreds of thousands of eddies with his bare fist, the whole thing suddenly felt pointless.
But Ji-hwan’s internal condition was far from calm.
His fingertips, faintly and very thinly, were trembling of their own accord, like rainwater dripping down.
"...Ugh."
A hot, metallic liquid seemed to surge up his throat. The taste of thick, sticky iron blood filled his mouth.
The price of explosively compressing [Gear 3] output into one point and detonating it. No matter how much he tried to bleed off the recoil with [Tempering], forcing physical energy far beyond his limits into reality had left his bones and organs with horrific internal damage.
But Ji-hwan clenched his teeth until they nearly cracked and swallowed the blood rising to his throat.
If he showed even the slightest weakness here, those hyenas would bare their teeth again and rush him in an instant.
So Ji-hwan didn’t move a muscle.
It was deception, a struggle to buy time to recover even a little. On the outside he was taunting them, but inside his body, super regeneration was stitching burned-out cells and ruptured organs back together at a furious pace.
"If I use [Gear 3] one more time here..."
Ji-hwan swept his gaze over the remaining enemies and calculated his current limit.
"My body... I don’t know if it can take any more."
But the people who had rolled around in the bottom of Night City had disgusting staying power.
For a moment they had been frozen under the pressure Ji-hwan was exuding, but then a few mercs and gang members clinging to the last lifeline of numerical superiority tightened their grips on their weapons with trembling hands and slowly began closing in again.
"He’s still alone... Push him!"
"Crush him with numbers!"
Footsteps cautiously closing the distance across the muddy ground. Hearing them, Ji-hwan gritted his teeth and forced strength back into both legs.
Kwaang.
The place Mammoth arrived at was a massive abandoned factory on the outskirts of Pacifica.
It wasn’t far from Mammoth’s own base, close enough to reach on foot in no time. From the start, they had set the trap right in front of Mammoth’s turf and waited for him there.
The brother-like man who had once died horribly at Logan’s hands while trying to protect his pride, Gunnar. And the bait they were holding was none other than Gunnar’s own daughter, Dorio.
A blatant trap that used his thirst for revenge and his brother’s bloodline as hostages. But for Mammoth, the options of running or looking away had never existed in the first place.
At the factory entrance, under the dim glow of streetlights, two big gang members who looked like Logan’s underlings were loitering around, trading stupid jokes.
They were clueless gatekeepers, completely relaxed because they believed there were ambushes set up all around them.
"You think that bastard’s really coming alone?"
"Who crawls into their own grave on purpose?"
"If he does, that’s great. When Logan takes that bastard’s head..."
That was the exact moment they were passing around cheap synth-cigarettes and snickering.
"Is Logan here?"
A metallic voice came out of the darkness. Before the two gang members could even flinch and turn their heads, a massive gray shadow blocked their path like a mountain.
"F-fuck, you scared the shit ou... Huh?!"
The gang member standing in front was just lifting his gun, face going pale as he met Mammoth’s burning eyes.
Krak-!!
Mammoth’s huge steel prosthetic arm split the air like lightning and slammed straight into his face. He didn’t even get a final scream out.
The gang member’s head, struck by a fist loaded with absurd brute force, burst apart on the spot with a sickening crack, like a watermelon crushed under a giant hammer.
Thud.
The body of his comrade, with everything above the neck blown away, collapsed lifelessly to the floor.
The remaining gang member, splattered with hot blood and brain matter, was so overwhelmed by the sheer reality of it that he couldn’t even scream. His legs gave out and he dropped to the ground.
"H-hiiik...!"
A rhino-like beast wrapped in gray synthetic hide was looking down at him, its crushed jaw implant rattling.
The smoke rising from the cigar in its mouth felt like the breath of the Grim Reaper.
The collapsed gang member, terrified out of his mind, clawed at the muddy ground with both hands and began scrambling backward like a madman.
"P-please... Aaaagh! A monster!!"
He ended up wetting himself, never even thinking to pick up the gun on the floor, and fled on all fours toward the inside of the abandoned factory.
"Boss Logan!! Mam... Mammoth!! Mammoth’s here...!!"
Listening to the wretched screams disappearing into the darkness, Mammoth spat the cigar from his mouth onto the ground and ground it under his boot.
'Wait for me, Gunnar. I’ll get your daughter out safely.'
"Boss Logan! Boss Loogaaaan!!"
The gang member’s panicked shriek, as he fled deeper into the factory with piss running down his pants, echoed through the damp, dark interior like it was being torn apart.
Even as he tripped over a rusted scrap of metal and fell, he crawled across the floor and desperately dragged himself into the wide open space at the center of the factory.
"Oh, he’s here?"
"Mammoth! That bastard really came alone!! He crushed a guy’s head with one shot at the entrance...!!"
Over the head of the babbling, terrified gang member, a heavy voice dropped from the darkness of the catwalk, mixed with obvious annoyance.
"Jesus, this is loud. My ears are ringing."
It was Logan Garcia, the Animal alpha who ruled the city center and Santo Domingo.
Holding a massive custom hand cannon in one hand, he slowly descended the catwalk stairs, scowling hard.
"Boss! Get the guys out here right now...!"
"Hey, you dumbass. We went to all this trouble setting up the trap and waiting for the hunt, and now your screaming is ruining the whole mood. Can’t you see that?"
"Huh...? W-what do you mean..."
Just as the gang member stupidly lifted his head, not understanding a thing,
Kwaang!!
Logan’s hand cannon spat fire without mercy.
The large-caliber armor-piercing round punched straight through the face of the subordinate who had crawled here begging for his life, and when the corpse, half its head blown off, toppled backward uselessly, Logan didn’t even care as he stood up.
"Haa, that’s better. Nice and quiet now, right?"
Logan was chuckling at the surrounding underlings, blowing the acrid smoke from the barrel, when—
Thud.
Very heavy footsteps began to sound from the factory’s huge entrance.
Slowly emerging from the darkness was Mammoth, dragging in his 3.2-meter frame and more than 400 kilograms of mass.
From his whole body, wrapped in rhino-gray synthetic hide, blood from the man he had just crushed at the entrance dripped down in thick, foul drops.
His gaze was fixed on the cold concrete floor beneath Logan’s feet. There lay Dorio, her silver undercut hair matted with red blood, her limbs bound in thick chains as she lay in a miserable heap.
The daughter of Gunnar, the martial artist Mammoth had once genuinely respected and cherished like a brother. The only bloodline left behind by the brother who had been torn apart and killed after being dragged into Logan’s turf war for no reason at all. The very pride Mammoth and Gunnar had risked their lives to protect.
"..."
The moment Mammoth confirmed Dorio’s bloodied state and his killing intent began to rise, Logan didn’t show the slightest fear. Instead, he spread both arms wide and let out an exaggerated cheer.
Clap! Clap! Clap!
Along with the dozens of armed underlings lying in ambush in the darkness, Logan’s laughter boomed through the abandoned factory.
"Hahahah!! Welcome, Mammoth!!"
Logan tapped the silver-haired Dorio’s hair with the studded toe of his combat boot and smiled greedily.
"I never thought you’d really crawl all the way here by yourself with not a single underling. Throwing your life away just to save the bloodline of some dead brother... You and that idiot Gunnar from back then are both just outdated fools!"
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