Taaang-!
The armor-piercing round spat from the pistol tore through the air, racing toward Ji-hwan, who had been driven past his limit and collapsed to the ground.
But the one who cut across its path was a giant gray man.
Perbububuk-!!
Instead of the horrifying sound of flesh being pierced and bone shattered, a heavy scraping roar rolled across the open yard of the abandoned factory, like a bullet slamming into thick rubber and steel plating. It was Mammoth, who had stepped in front of the shot and hidden Ji-hwan behind his back.
The impact tore his skin and dark red blood dripped down in thick drops, but Mammoth didn’t budge an inch.
Instead, he spoke, his voice low and thick with suspicion, staring at the man in front of him who was casually aiming at an unconscious target.
"What the hell do you think you’re doing, you bastard?"
Even then, Agila’s face under his deeply pulled-down fedora didn’t so much as twitch.
With mechanical ease, Agila smoothly swapped out the empty magazine in his pistol and replied in that same elegant, cold tone of his.
"A Havana greeting isn’t long. Usually, it ends with a single bullet."
Hearing that, Mammoth snorted in disbelief and twisted up the ugly corner of his mouth.
"Heh... I don’t know where some soft little rich boy like you crawled out of, but listening to you, I’d say your head’s completely fried."
Agila cut him off, lowering his stance in one smooth motion and answering in a flat, emotionless voice.
"Quiet. Agila is speaking."
The tone carried the certainty of someone who believed only he held control. Agila slowly lowered the muzzle and added dryly,
"Let me ask one last time of the beast blocking my way. Will you step aside quietly and open the road, or will you receive Havana’s greeting?"
"You crazy..."
The instant that name came out, Mammoth visibly flinched.
There was no way the boss of the Animals, who ruled Night City’s back alleys, wouldn’t know that infamous name.
The legendary hitman said to snuff out someone’s life somewhere in the world every time a cigar was lit in Havana.
There were stories that even gang leaders, police chiefs, and corpo executives would run or hide and beg for mercy when he appeared.
"...So the rumors were true..."
Mammoth froze for a moment. But he was a beast of conflict. Even if the opponent was a legend, his fighting spirit would not break.
"Heh... I don’t care if you’re Havana’s grim reaper or whatever."
Mammoth scoffed and raised his middle finger in disbelief.
"You think I’m going to sit still after you lay a hand on my people? Go fuck yourself."
At that answer, and at the sight of Mammoth willingly turning himself into a meat shield to hide the collapsed Ji-hwan behind his back, a tiny crack appeared in Agila’s usually machine-calm, pale face.
His cool eyes narrowed, and beneath the fedora, his voice carried a clear note of disgust beyond his usual languid tone.
"How unpleasant."
Agila tilted the loaded pistol’s muzzle ever so slightly and murmured coldly, as if he’d just seen filth.
"That foolish habit of throwing yourself into the line of fire to shield another. To my eyes, you and that fallen man are disgustingly alike."
To him, the blind sacrifice and solidarity of those who tried to protect others at the cost of their own lives was an incomprehensible, illogical variable. It was repulsive.
"In the end, the will you carve for yourself is what defines you. But your petty behavior, outside the rules... it makes me deeply uncomfortable."
And with that, Agila delivered the death sentence.
"Now that you’ve heard my name, there’s no point in further conversation. I’ll turn both of you into Havana’s ashes."
The moment he finished speaking, Agila’s body shot forward in a violent rush, leaving behind only a grotesque afterimage as he slid across the rainwater pooled on the ground.
"Fast. But before that..."
Rather than intercept Agila immediately, Mammoth carried the bloodied, unconscious Ji-hwan like cargo and set him down in a safe spot behind the broken concrete ruins, outside the line of fire.
Then he leaned down and whispered, very quietly, very heavily, into Ji-hwan’s ear.
"That settles the debt. Rest a little, idiot."
The man he’d been fighting until now was on a completely different level from the drugged-up trash, the half-baked gangs, and the mercs that usually crawled around the backstreets.
Recognizing that if he tried to tank this one with his body like usual, he’d end up like Ji-hwan before long, and that this was absolutely not an opponent to hold back against or let his guard down around, Mammoth reached without hesitation into the pouch at his waist and roughly pulled out a top-grade MaxDoc injector, the red liquid inside sloshing ominously.
Puk-! Chiiiiik-!!
He drove the injector mercilessly into the gap in the armor at the back of his thick neck. Powerful combat-grade synthetic adrenaline and emergency coagulant exploded through Mammoth’s massive artificial bloodstream like a pumping engine.
The horrific pain from dozens of torn wounds went numb in an instant, and the forcibly jammed vitality swelled his nearly shredded muscle fibers in a grotesque surge.
"Kruuuaaaah-!!"
Swallowing the pain with the effect of the MaxDoc, Mammoth let out a blood-soaked beast’s roar and met the incoming Agila head-on.
Kwaaaang-!!
The giant pneumatic steel knuckles and the legendary assassin’s twin pistols collided in midair with a dreadful grinding scream.
But the battle’s flow turned horribly against Mammoth from the very start, making his roar meaningless.
Ching-! Kagang! Seeeuk-!!
Agila didn’t bother taking Mammoth’s ferocious close-quarters assault head-on with brute force.
Through the Kerenzikov implanted in his spine, Agila had accelerated his perception to the limit, and in his vision Mammoth’s explosive rush was laid bare in sticky slow motion.
Agila slipped past Mammoth’s massive fist with a ghostlike step by a hair’s breadth.
Then, exploiting that fleeting opening, Agila’s cold knife and pistol tore ruthlessly and precisely into the gaps in Mammoth’s joints and the thinner sections of his armor.
"Kuhk...!"
Thanks to the MaxDoc, the pain receptors in his brain were numbed, but the physical damage accumulating in his body during the fight did not disappear.
His thick gray bio-skin was torn to ribbons, and artificial muscle kept bursting in sequence.
Mammoth’s huge frame was being brutally carved apart, blue sparks and dark red blood spraying nonstop.
And yet, even under that merciless shredding, Mammoth never retreated.
With a high-strength titanium skeleton holding him together, he stubbornly endured the slashing blows and kept Agila’s attention locked by using his own body as a giant meat shield.
And while that desperate resistance played out...
Behind the broken concrete ruins, just outside the line of fire, where Mammoth had carefully laid him down, a grotesque change began to occur.
Twitch.
The fingertips of Ji-hwan’s blood-soaked hand, which had been completely still, twitched faintly.
Predator cells that burned more fiercely for survival the closer they were driven to the edge of death.
His body, which had been pushed beyond its limit and was on the verge of collapse at the extreme edge of the line of fire, forcibly awakened its survival instinct, shattered the threshold of regeneration, and began pouring out explosive heat.
Chiiiiik-!
From the gunshot wounds tearing across Ji-hwan’s chest and abdomen, thick crimson steam rose like a mirage. The skin tissue pierced and ripped apart by bullets writhed like snakes and clung back together, while shattered bone segments ground against each other with grotesque friction and were stitched back in real time with stubborn force. The resurrection of a monster that would tear the reaper apart was surging forward at terrifying speed.
And to buy the time needed to complete that miracle, Mammoth threw his own body into the fight and launched a desperate close-quarters assault.
But before the legendary assassin Agila, not a single hit landed. Instead, the rhino-like gray bio-skin was torn to pieces by Agila’s knife and armor-piercing rounds.
Even so, Mammoth kept blocking every path toward where Ji-hwan lay, enduring like a giant meat shield.
At that foolish, blind resistance, even Agila’s pale face, which had always remained cold and elegant like a machine, finally showed a trace of weary disgust.
"Enough pointless struggle. Give up."
"Heh... Yeah, I’ll admit it. There’s no way I can beat you on my own."
"Yes. That is the fate Havana has given you."
Mammoth spat blood onto the ground without losing his fighting spirit and grinned.
"But I didn’t think you’d dodge every single hit... That’s really pissing me off."
He drew back both massive arms, letting out a heavy breath as if he were collapsing, and muttered low.
"Yeah... my part ends here."
Hearing that declaration, Agila adjusted his grip on the pistol and replied,
"A wise judgment. Then I shall grant you merciful rest."
But even facing death, Mammoth twisted up the ugly corner of his mouth and laughed like a beast.
"I wasn’t talking to you, you psycho."
"...?"
At that moment, Agila’s eyes widened.
Because an overwhelming, skin-crawling killing intent was pressing heavily against the back of his neck.
Agila jerked and turned his head back with eerie speed.
There, Ji-hwan had already crossed beyond the threshold of death and returned, standing amid billowing crimson steam pouring from his entire body.
But Ji-hwan’s actions once again defied Agila’s algorithm.
For a martial fighter facing an armed enemy, the obvious move would be to exploit the blind spot and close the distance to point-blank range. Instead, Ji-hwan held his ground, feet planted firmly in place, and took on a bizarre striking stance while keeping his distance.
At that incomprehensible behavior, Agila’s brow narrowed slightly.
"You’re not closing the distance. Foolish."
Trying to erase his confusion, Agila aimed the cold muzzle at Ji-hwan’s forehead.
But Ji-hwan drove the fist he had drawn back behind him into the empty air with merciless force.
Paaang-!!
From the empty space where the punch stopped, a dreadful tearing crack of compressed air burst out, as if the atmosphere itself had been forcibly squeezed and ripped apart.
The destructive technique Ji-hwan had only ever been able to unleash into an opponent’s flesh and bone by direct contact, [Explosive Strike]. He had been agonizing over it constantly in this beast-like struggle.
'Could I send this condensed energy outward instead of inward, like the fist wind from a martial arts novel?'
A delusion that normal thought could never reach. But through the endless horrific battles, the edge of death, and the razor-thin lifeline he had clung to at the brink, Ji-hwan’s extreme concentration had finally smashed that sealed door and forged a new miracle.
And then that compressed, invisible shockwave sliced through the air like a cannonball and slammed into Agila’s entire body.
"...?!"
Peruuk-!!
Agila’s old-fashioned suit hem tore under the bizarre blow from the air, and his body staggered backward with a dull thud.
But the moment he unleashed that astonishing strike, Ji-hwan’s own body screamed in agony as well.
Tuduk, Kwaajik-!!
"Ugh...!"
The recoil from firing the [Explosive Strike] shockwave outward was beyond imagination.
The skin on Ji-hwan’s right arm, the one he had thrust out, burst like a balloon, and muscle fibers twisted beyond their limit tore to shreds as dark red blood sprayed everywhere.
What’s more, because this was an unfinished technique he was trying for the first time in actual combat, the compression had been far too weak, and the actual power of the shockwave that reached Agila was so low it could barely manage a bruise, let alone break bones.
But the strength of the blow didn’t matter at all.
In Agila’s world, where he had always trusted only data, calculations, perfect physical laws, and rules, the illogical variable of "a human fist sending a strike through the air" simply did not exist.
"This... is impossible..!"
For the first time, clear shock and confusion appeared on his always-calm face.
Enduring the horrific pain ripping through his arm, Ji-hwan began throwing wild alternating punches into the air with both blood-soaked fists.
Paaang-! Pang-! Peuaang-!!
Each time his skin burst and blood droplets scattered, heavy, invisible waves of air crashed toward Agila in rapid succession.
But Agila was a legendary assassin of Havana. Even while he was thrown off balance by the unknown shockwaves pouring in, his pale hands instinctively raised the twin pistols and pulled the trigger without mercy at the charging Ji-hwan.
Tatatatataang-!!
Within the accelerated perception of Kerenzikov, the devastating armor-piercing rounds tore through the invisible waves of [Wind Fist] and mercilessly buried themselves in Ji-hwan’s shoulder, side, and thigh.
"Kruuuuagh-!!"
At the horrific pain of flesh being ripped away and bone shattered, a blood-soaked scream burst from Ji-hwan’s mouth.
But even as the bullets hammered into him and he coughed up blood, Ji-hwan never stopped moving forward.
On the contrary, he bared his teeth and, using the horrifying wounds where bullets had lodged as fuel, sprayed thick crimson steam and swung his fists even more madly through the air.
Paaang-!! Peruueuk-!!
"Kuh...! Th-this grotesque nonsense...!"
Weak in power, but impossible to read, impossible to evade, impossible to calculate.
For the first time, the perfect legendary assassin of Havana discarded his elegance and composure, repeatedly thrown into confusion by the bizarre shockwaves flying from the air, crossing his arms to shield his face and stumbling backward in a frantic defense.
Pung-! Peuong-! Kwaang-!!
"Kuh...! Kraaagh!!"
"Aaaahhh!!"
Invisible shockwaves burst from Ji-hwan’s fists with each shout. Enduring that grotesque barrage of [Wind Fist], Agila’s elegant suit had already been reduced to a tattered mess.
But Ji-hwan’s condition was just as miserable.
Every time he threw a punch, his skin burst, muscle fibers tore apart, and blood sprayed everywhere as he destroyed his own body to the point where bone was nearly visible. Yet Ji-hwan’s eyes burned bright like a beast driving prey into a trap, and he kept up the mad barrage without stopping.
"Kuh... th-this... illogical...!"
Agila kept being forced backward with his arms crossed over his face.
Normally, with the top-tier assassin chip and algorithms implanted in his brain, even a sudden, irregular attack should have been analyzed within seconds, with a perfect counter trajectory calculated.
But the attack raining down before him was, from the start, a wave of air without any physical mass.
An unknown strike with no visible form and no readable trajectory. Against that irrational assault, Agila’s perfect behavior-pattern chip glitched and failed to adapt, exposing a painful opening as he stumbled backward in defense.
And as Agila was driven back helplessly by the shockwaves, a huge, dark shadow had already fallen like a mountain behind him.
Tap.
Agila’s heel, pushed backward, struck something heavy.
"...?"
The moment Agila flinched and glanced over his shoulder, his pale face stiffened instantly.
There, in the spot he had been pushed toward, stood Mammoth, who had been cut apart by Agila’s knife earlier and left collapsed on the ground, now upright and breathing like a beast.
One arm, with its nervous system severed, hung grotesquely limp, but in the remaining intact arm, the pneumatic steel knuckles were compressed with a blazing red hydraulic pressure, ready to burst.
As if to vent all the resentment he had built up while being toyed with by Agila’s ghostlike footwork and cut down without landing a single hit, Mammoth’s ferocious eyes glared at Agila’s back as though they would rip it apart.
"Now!!"
Not missing that fleeting instant, the blood-soaked Ji-hwan roared, veins bulging in his neck.
Crossing his already shredded arms with brute force, Ji-hwan squeezed out every last drop of life he had left and unleashed his final [Wind Fist] like a cannonball straight at Agila’s entire body.
Kwaaaang-!!
"Kuhk...!"
A storm of shockwaves slammed down from the front with merciless force. Agila tried to twist away to the side at maximum Kerenzikov output.
But Ji-hwan’s [Wind Fist] pressed down on Agila’s entire body, pinning him in place, while from behind Mammoth’s giant steel knuckles, carrying 400 kilograms of body mass and the full output limit of his pneumatic cylinders, thundered toward Agila’s face like lightning.
The barrage of [Wind Fist] from the front and the devastating iron fist from behind.
It was a perfect pincer trap.
Even in the slowed time of Kerenzikov pushed to the extreme, Agila’s chip could not derive a single survival algorithm to escape the situation, and only a red error window reading [Calculation Impossible] flashed up before him.
In the slowed field of vision, staring blankly at Mammoth’s blood-red steel knuckles coming to crush him, Agila thought,
'How... absurd.'
The legendary assassin was about to be hunted down by the irrational teamwork of these fools, bound together by their petty emotions and pride. In a situation this unpleasant and grotesque, one his logic could never accept, the man called Agila simply could not understand it.
'I... Agila... can’t be taken down here...'
And with that final thread of thought,
Kwagagagang-!!!
Mammoth’s giant steel knuckles slammed squarely into Agila’s face, and a dreadful tearing blast ripped through Pacifica’s plaza.
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