66 — Chapter 66

As I observed the completed Powered Suit, heavy footsteps echoed from downstairs.

It seemed the private soldiers had breached the mansion. They likely used the armored vehicles as a diversion to close the distance all at once. A hot-blooded bunch, aren’t they?

“Well then, let’s get ourselves pumped—whoa!”

With a deafening roar of gunfire, a rain of bullets tore through the floor from below. I stopped talking and rolled away to evade. Alice stood there like a statue, but every bullet that hit her was deflected by the Powered Suit. Looking at her, there wasn’t so much as a scratch. Its defensive performance was as stable as ever.

Glancing at the bullet holes in the floor, I made a suggestion to Alice.

“Could you go wreck those vehicles outside? Let’s meet up afterward.”

“Leave it to me. I won’t let them bother you, Jack.”

Alice gave a blunt reply and leaped out through the hole in the wall. She used jet propulsion from the soles of her feet to fly, positioning herself directly above the armored vehicles. From there, she commenced an aerial bombardment using magic.

Taking advantage of the vehicles’ structural inability to aim their cannons directly upward, she began crushing them unilaterally. As for her occasional short-range teleportation, that was likely the blink-step formula from that magic sword she’d acquired a while back.

Alice was brilliantly toying with the armored vehicles and the private soldiers. The Powered Suit was operating without a hitch. At this rate, she’d be fine even if I left her to her own devices.

While I was admiring Alice’s prowess, I heard the sound of someone ascending the stairs. Dorgu’s private soldiers. A massive wave of bloodlust surged toward me.

‘I can’t let Alice have all the fun.’

I’d been blessed with such a wonderful opportunity. It would be a waste if I didn’t get in on the action. I moved into the shadows near the staircase—a perfect blind spot for an ambush.

“Okay, let’s deliver a flashy counter, shall we?”

I waited for a moment, suppressing my rising excitement. The soldiers began reaching the second floor one after another. Peeking out, I saw quite a few of them. No less than twenty.

As they leveled their rifles, I noticed their faces were somewhat familiar.

‘Hm? Those guys are…’

I searched my memory to identify them. They were the demi-human squad from within the organization. We’d passed each other in Dorgu’s castle from time to time. Those guys had looked down on me at every opportunity. Their blatant disgust for me had been so strong it left a lasting impression.

‘So these guys were assigned to the hit on me, too?’

That worked out perfectly. I’d wanted to eliminate them for a long time. Given the situation, we were officially enemies. Now I could kill them without the slightest hesitation.

The demi-human squad advanced down the hallway while maintaining their formation. They seemed to be on high alert. From their blind spot, I lunged at them silently. Mid-leap, I locked eyes with the nearest man.

“Wh—!?”

I grabbed his muzzle to shift his aim and fired my handgun point-blank into his startled face. The bullet exploded against the bridge of his nose, and the demi-human collapsed pitifully.

“Hey, look over here.”

I swung the rifle I was still gripping. The corner of the buttstock slammed into the temple of another demi-human.

“Gyuah…!”

The man sent spinning by the follow-through tumbled down the stairs, taking several others with him. As I tossed the rifle aside and laughed, one of the demi-humans’ eyes turned bloodshot.

“Jack Aaron! Why you…!”

“Hey there, how’s it going?”

Ducking under a shot fired from point-blank range, I slipped into the man’s guard. I pressed my handgun under his jaw and pulled the trigger.

“Bu-goah…!”

The enraged demi-human sprayed fresh blood and brain matter from the top of his head. He collapsed and stopped moving entirely. He was a guy who’d constantly spat insults at me. I’d have liked to make him suffer a bit more, but given the circumstances, I had no choice.

Meanwhile, the rest of them backed away from me. This guy must have been the leader. With their commander down, they were falling into a state of panic. They should have been counterattacking, but it seemed they were nothing but a bunch of chickens.

“Aren’t you guys a little too slow, babies?”

In that opening, I fired a rapid succession of shots, piercing the foreheads and hearts of the survivors. Once I ran out of ammo, I began stabbing them to death one by one with my knife. I made sure to finish off anyone who tried to run.

I used the corpses as shields to weather the incoming bullets and magic, meticulously snapping the necks of anyone who tried to fight back. In less than a minute, I had annihilated the demi-human squad.

“Good grief, they weren’t much of a challenge…”

I spat the words out as I wiped the spray of blood from my face and hands.

They called themselves a “demi-human squad,” but in reality, they were nothing special. As a race, they supposedly possessed superior physical abilities and reaction speeds, but even those stayed within the realm of common sense. As long as I anticipated their movements, they were at a level I could handle with ease.

They probably wanted to earn some merit by taking my head, but their expectations were laughably naive. If they seriously wanted to take me down, they should have brought three times that number. Thanks to them, I was left feeling unsatisfied.

‘I hope there are some left outside…’

Clutching onto that small hope, I took a wide look out at the mansion’s grounds.

There, Alice—clad in her Powered Suit—was still in the middle of a one-sided slaughter. She was crushing the organization’s forces with overwhelming firepower. Since she said she was using a Dragon’s Heart as a core, she probably didn’t have to worry about running out of fuel. That meant she could fire high-level magic without limit.

From the enemy’s perspective, it must have been a nightmare.

The armored vehicles caught in Alice’s rampage were being wrecked before they could even move. It seemed they didn’t even have the breathing room to fire another shell at the mansion. The private soldiers were so preoccupied with intercepting Alice that, aside from the demi-human squad, none of them had been able to breach the interior.

“I thought it was suspiciously quiet in here; turns out she was hogging all the fun.”

I needed to get in on this. I hadn’t even finished my warm-up yet. Since a deathmatch with Dorgu was waiting for me, I wanted to get my blood pumping.

Just then, a presence of bloodlust appeared behind me. It was so faint I almost thought I’d imagined it, but it was definitely there.

“—!”

I fired my gun the moment I turned around.

A metallic clang rang out. Flicking the bullet away with a knife as she charged was the woman dressed in black and wearing a mask—Shuna, an executive of the organization.

“Whoops.”

I fired again while dodging her thrust. As expected, she deflected it with her knife; the shot didn’t land. Her kinetic vision and skill were incredible. Judging by her practiced movements, this was likely Shuna’s true fighting style. In a world of guns and magic, she specialized in close-quarters combat with blades.

I holstered my empty handgun and spoke to her casually.

“Everyone from the organization is showing up. Did you guys get an invitation to a house party or something?”

“Jack Aaron. Just as I thought, you were the blight of this organization.”

Her flatly stated words triggered a memory. When Dorgu had recruited me into the organization, she had been the one to personally protest against it. She must have harbored doubts about me until this very day. Now that she’d been proven right, I suppose she had every reason to be proud.

I gave a small shrug and a strained laugh.

“The blight of the organization, huh? I certainly can’t deny that. I’m not exactly cut out for group activities. I’ve learned that the hard way this time.”

“Is that so? Then please, die for the sake of the organization.”

Shuna lunged at me, swinging her knife in a backhand strike. Based on the trajectory, she was aiming for my throat. It was the typical method of an assassin who lived by the creed of the one-hit kill.

‘But that’s a tactic suited for a surprise attack. It’s not meant for a frontal confrontation—’

I threw a punch as I dodged the knife. At that moment, Shuna’s body glowed, and her movements abruptly accelerated. She performed a sharp pivot just before my fist connected and followed up with a thrust from the side.

‘A fake using magic—a bluff to make me misjudge her fighting style?’

Even so, it wasn’t a speed I couldn’t react to. As the knife closed in, I grabbed Shuna’s wrist and twisted it upward. Instead of resisting, she performed a mid-air flip and brandished a strange dagger above her head. Held in her other hand, the weapon emitted a faint light and possessed a wavy blade. It was likely a magic-infused weapon.

‘One trick after another… what a troublesome woman.’

Shuna swung the dagger down from above. I immediately crushed the wrist I was holding. However, her movement didn’t falter. Even though her wrist was creaking and snapping, she didn’t show so much as a hint of pain.

“Impressive grit—but naive.”

I read the trajectory and speed of the descending blade and caught it between the five fingers of my free hand. Applying strength to my fingertips, I stopped the blade just short of the space between my eyebrows.

“…!”

Shuna gritted her teeth behind her mask. Apparently, she hadn’t expected her slash to be blocked like that. In other words, that had been her finishing blow.

“Nice try.”

I threw Shuna with brute force, slamming her against the wall. She let out a groan as her back hit the surface and she dropped to her knees. I followed up with a roundhouse kick. The direct hit sent Shuna crashing through the wall, tumbling into the room on the other side.

“…”

As she lay there, both of Shuna’s arms were broken. Her mask had cracked as well, with a portion of it peeling away. A single grey eye and the corner of her mouth were revealed. She stared at me without blinking.

“Heh, you’re actually quite the beauty. You’ve got that ‘capable secretary’ vibe.”

“You… to the very end…!”

As Shuna began to show her anger, I held out a hand to stop her. She froze in a half-risen posture. I spoke to her with a pleasant smile.

“Let’s end the small talk here. I’m on a tight schedule.”

With those words, I hoisted a nearby bookshelf and brought it crashing down onto Shuna’s face. The bookshelf, which gouged a massive chunk out of the ceiling on its way down, slammed into the floor with a thundering roar.

Blood splattered.

The lower half of Shuna’s body began to convulse, but it soon went still. There was no hope for the face pinned underneath.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and looked around with a sense of refreshment.

“Phew, that’s finally taken care of.”

With that, everyone inside the mansion had been annihilated. I didn’t sense anyone else hiding. All that remained were the ones left outside. I leaped out through the hole in the wall and down into the garden.

Wrecks of armored vehicles and corpses were scattered everywhere. The once-meticulously maintained garden was a ruined shadow of its former self, scorched in places with patches of bare earth exposed. In the center of it all, Alice stood quietly beside an armored vehicle. There were no moving enemies left in the area.

Unfortunately, it seemed I was too late.

“The results look good.”

“Yes, I’ve confirmed its performance. For now, there seem to be no issues using it in actual combat.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Exchanging words as if we were just making small talk, Alice and I walked side-by-side. We wove through the wreckage and corpses, climbing over the fence with the burning mansion at our backs.

“I’m going to kill Dorgu now,” I asked as I loaded bullets into my handgun. “Are you ready?”

“Of course. Are you okay, Jack?”

“Ha-ha, you don’t even need to ask.”

As if toasting with fine wine, we clinked my handgun against her metallic fist.