Chapter 168
Chapter 168
Red Ticket (2)
Due to the haphazard landing, I tumbled across the ground several times before springing up like a coil and regaining my stance.
Dozens of broken tentacle fragments stabbed into the spot where I had landed, scattering with a sharp, slicing sound, almost like a bow.
"That's brutal."
Had I been even a second slower, those tentacle shards would’ve ended up doing flower arrangements in my gut.
"That bastard!"
As soon as the people from the Upside saw my face, they froze. The news of the Red Ticket being issued had already spread throughout the city.
"What are you staring at, assholes? Come at me if you’ve got the guts, otherwise piss off—unless you want to get caught in this and die."
Either way, the Red Ticket issued to me wasn't something these half-baked punks could retrieve. That’s why the Operations Committee had sent everyone in.
‘I would've liked to grab that broom too, if I could.’
Even with the Veil of Plumed Mist, being able to force someone into sleep was always useful. But I didn’t have the luxury to grab it while fleeing.
"So you've chosen a bustling street for your grave?"
My body flinched at the voice.
I was dead. Already dead and just a corpse now.
A dead person’s heart doesn’t beat. So mine shouldn’t either.
The dead don’t breathe. So I had to stop breathing too.
Corpses don’t move. So I couldn’t move either.
The pressure radiating from Dana Watson was pure oppression. It was a formless force pressing down, making resistance impossible.
That kind of pressure, often called presence, is usually like that. But Cecilia’s was different.
‘Death.’
It was death itself. A formless force that forcibly made people accept the fact that they were already dead.
"Urgh… krgh, haaak!"
The people in the Upside rolled their eyes back and collapsed with froth bubbling from their mouths.
"What the hell are you standing there for?!"
As Cecilia’s presence faded, what appeared before my eyes was Lukas, his entire body glowing vividly with tattoos.
His spinning back kick struck me hard, and I flew off like I'd been hit by a train.
"Ugh… gah!"
In that moment, I caught a glimpse of Cecilia watching me calmly, and several threads extended from the Night Thorn in her hand.
‘This is…’
While still midair, I forced my body to halt with a turbine-like whirr, barely managing to stop in place.
"What a shame."
Cecilia’s voice carried disappointment.
Black threads hung in the air in the direction I had been flying. Had I not stopped, my neck would’ve been severed clean.
I had endured Lukas’s blow, and I hadn’t been caught by the Night Thorn—but it still wasn’t over.
A massive fist, formed from a mass of silvery-white metal, was coming for me. I raised my sword to block it.
Kairus, still suspended in the air, was struck by that punch and sent crashing down into a five-story building.
With a resounding boom.
His body broke through the rooftop and smashed through multiple floors before slamming into the ground floor.
With a thunderous rumble, the unstable building trembled and then collapsed entirely.
Kairus was buried alive under the debris of the crumbled structure.
Thanks to the output from the Veil of Plumed Mist shielding his body, the damage was minimized—but his entire body ached.
"Ah, fuck… this is too much."
In the darkness beneath the wreckage, Kairus changed his mind. Sure, he had to endure, but facing those monster-like bastards in a fair fight was too much.
‘I need a hostage.’
When people think of a hostage, they usually imagine a person—but really, it doesn’t have to be human.
"This city is my hostage."
With that decision made, Kairus ramped up the output of the Veil of Plumed Mist.
As he quietly observed the collapsed building, Wesson Barenza finally spoke.
"Think he’s dead?"
In response, Donovan shook his head, peering through a monocle.
"He’s alive."
No sooner had Donovan declared that than the rubble began to stir—and then exploded upward, soaring into the sky.
Standing in the space cleared by the flying debris was Kairus, his hair billowing wildly.
With a slight lift of his head, Kairus looked up at the sky. Threads extended from the Night Thorn in Cecilia’s hand, crisscrossing above and blocking the sky. On this dark night, Kairus had no means of identifying the locations of those black threads while flying at high speed.
It meant flight was no longer an option.
That was fine. Kairus had no plans for flight right now anyway.
"This city is entering redevelopment."
If he started destroying everything in sight, those five people—who could be considered the city’s true rulers—would be forced to sit at the negotiation table that much sooner.
The countless turbine sounds roaring behind him gradually transformed into a monstrous exhaust noise. It was the Veil of Plumed Mist at full power.
"This bastard?!"
Watching the situation unfold, Lukas dashed in with Rear Node, delivering a spinning kick at Kairus.
Boom!
The pavement shattered with a blast, scattering fragments in every direction.
Locking eyes with Lukas, Kairus grinned.
"I’ll show you a hurricane."
Dark clouds in the sky began to swirl. Glancing upward, Cecilia chuckled.
"Looks like it needs some time to be complete."
"That's right."
Kairus didn’t deny it. But once complete, the damage it would cause to the city would be irreversible.
When it was complete, what would sweep through this city would be a hellish natural disaster with average wind speeds reaching 80 meters per second.
No exaggeration—it was powerful enough to sink an entire island.
"Try and stop it."
"We’d better hurry."
Now it wasn’t Kairus who was out of time. It was the Operations Committee—who had to kill Kairus before the hurricane was complete.
"Uwahahahahahahahahaha!"
When there’s a time limit, the weaker side never fights the stronger pursuers head-on.
Kairus began a game of tag. If caught, he dies; if they fail to catch him, the city is destroyed—a completely unhinged game of tag.
‘When it comes to speed, I definitely have the advantage.’
The only reason he could make such a choice was thanks to the Veil of Plumed Mist’s capability for ultra-high-speed movement.
Even if he couldn’t fly, he could still tear across the ground at unbelievable speeds. He couldn’t leave the city, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be caught easily.
“Catch that son of a bitch!”
With Wesson Barenza’s shout, a battle with twisted rules began.
“Waaah, aah! Guh—oowah!”
Kairus had expected it to be tough, but the danger was far greater than he had anticipated.
With a whipping sound, hundreds of silver-white tentacles lashed toward him.
As he frantically dodged them, Lukas caught up and launched a barrage of vicious kicks, smashing buildings and pavement tiles to bits.
Judging by the way he moved his legs, it was unmistakably the Royal Dae-yeon Kingdom’s striking martial art. There was clearly a reason why Lukas was close with the hunters.
“Busy?”
While dodging Lukas—who was chasing him like a rampaging wild boar—and those tentacles writhing with killing intent, a familiar voice came from his side. It was Cecilia.
“Can’t you see? Go away.”
Kairus snapped as he swung his sword. His Veil of Plumed Mist clashed with Cecilia’s Night Thorn.
‘?!’
In that fleeting moment, what Kairus saw was the black blade of the Night Thorn smoothly slicing through the Veil of Plumed Mist.
Reacting on instinct, Kairus leaned backward and went into a sliding dodge at full speed.
With a loud crunching sound, he tore up the pavement, and as the slide ended, he resumed running—utterly shocked.
‘It just passed through my sword. What the hell? What kind of mechanism is that?’
There was no time to think it through. For her to attack with such a weapon meant that even if it passed through his sword, she was confident it could still hurt him.
That meant he had to dodge all of Cecilia’s attacks—no matter what.
‘But conversely—’
It also meant Cecilia’s dagger couldn’t block Kairus’s attacks either. Seeing her catch up again, Kairus turned and struck back.
“Oh my.”
But the attack didn’t reach her. His blade stopped short—less than a millimeter away—blocked by something unseen.
At the same time, the Night Thorn’s blade barely grazed Kairus’s back. Blood streamed down from a light cut.
“A duet?!”
But Kairus couldn’t even focus on the wound. Cecilia was using two battle gears simultaneously.
His gaze dropped to the cat-shaped plush dangling from her waist.
Its original name unknown, Cecilia called that battle gear “Fluffy.”
Its ability was singular: it generated an immensely durable barrier directly over the skin, blocking all attacks.
‘No need for defense if it works like that!’
A sword that pierced everything and a shield that nothing could pierce—Fluffy erased the weaknesses of Night Thorn.
Kairus’s expression twisted in frustration. Meanwhile, tentacles as thick as beams pounded the space around him.
“Scorching Blade.”
While dodging and blocking the blows from the silver-white tentacles, Lukas’s crescent kicks, and the slashes of Cecilia’s Night Thorn, Kairus caught sight of powder scattering around him and grit his teeth.
‘It’s going to blow.’
As soon as he had the thought, the powder exploded. The shockwave rocked his insides, and he was flung away.
“Gahk!”
Black smoke burst from his mouth.
Tumbling through the air in a backflip, Kairus batted away a tentacle and deflected a kick aimed at his jaw by using his leg. He used the rebound to launch himself away again.
He dove through a gap between the crisscrossed black threads of Night Thorn. Cecilia moved her hand.
The threads closed in, aiming to slice his waist—but missed.
‘They even passed through the sole of my shoe?! What the hell is that thing?’
It should’ve been a clean hit, but the metal plate reinforced into his shoe sole was intact.
“Modified repeating crossbow. Fireworks.”
With a whistling sound, colorful bursts flew toward Kairus.
They were projectiles fired from Donovan’s massive crossbow.
Kairus swung his sword wide, and a sudden gust of wind blew in, reversing the incoming fireworks.
“Screaming Twin Blades.”
Donovan’s suitcase transformed into a pair of long sabers. As the blades scraped against each other, a grating dissonance pierced the air like a knife to the ear.
Normally, such a tactic wouldn’t work on Kairus, who moved faster than sound. But with all the relentless attacks, his speed had dropped.
The discordant note reached his ears.
“Ugh… kh!”
With a sudden bout of tinnitus, Kairus lost focus and tumbled across the ground several times.
“Die, bastard!”
Lukas launched a kick at the rolling Kairus. Crossing his arms, Kairus managed to block the kick.
“Gu—urghhh!”
The force from Lukas’s strike transmitted through his arms and launched Kairus again. He crashed through three buildings before slamming into a wall.
He’d blocked it, but the impact had landed directly on his core. All the strength drained from his body.
Trembling slightly, Kairus pulled himself from the wall and spat a large mouthful of blood onto the ground.
“Fuh… cking hell.”
He could handle one of them. There was a high chance it’d end in a draw. Hell, if he’d fully recovered after fighting Tapas, he wouldn’t have been in such a state.
But what did that matter now? Looking down at his arm, filled with shards of shattered Evergreen, Kairus let out a long sigh.
“You lasted quite a while.”
Donovan slowly approached, watching Kairus’s condition. Kairus, head lowered, wiped his mouth and casually pointed a finger toward the sky.
“The turbines are still spinning.”
The Veil of Plumed Mist was still operating at full output. And though no one had noticed during the chase, the entire city was now swirling with powerful winds no one could ignore.
“It’s almost complete. Even if I die… the hurricane is coming.”
Just because the whip that spun the top disappeared didn’t mean the top would stop spinning immediately.
Same with the hurricane Kairus had created. It had already passed the point where killing him could stop it.
In other words—
“How about we call it a draw?”
It meant Kairus now had bargaining power.