The Savior
Swoo stood still, scanning the crowd of nearly thirty people.
The fact that they weren't spouting cheap, third-rate villain lines suggested they weren't low-grade mercenaries.
Looking at the utilitarian design of the gun pointed at Draco's head, it wasn't something purchased through official channels either. Unlike the world Swoo used to live in, firearms in this world clearly bore the logos of their respective corporations.
These weapons had been smuggled in from somewhere.
Judging by their quality, they likely originated from a reputable corporation.
Add to that their cautious demeanor, waiting and observing the behavior of the Noise rather than rushing in blindly.
Their discipline made them look like professionally trained agents, yet their bodies, crudely patched together with cheap implants, contradicted that impression.
Such patchwork bodies were closer to bio-cyborgs.
Yet, they weren't cyborgs either.
The bodily fluids smeared all over Draco's body proved they were undeniably human.
Therefore, those cheap-looking bodies were merely a disguise to make them look like low-grade mercenaries.
They were undoubtedly a professional black-ops unit. Of course, they must have played the part of cheap mercenaries in front of Draco. That would have been far more effective at breaking his spirit.
But now that things had come to this, they seemed to have dropped the act. Or perhaps there was simply no longer any need to pretend in front of a Draco who had outlived his usefulness.
"Draco, I'm here."
She didn't ask if he was okay.
He clearly wasn't, and asking such a question would have been absurd.
"You're alive, right?"
The naked body, coated in all kinds of bodily fluids, twitched. He offered a pathetic, servile smile through his distorted, torn face.
Was that smile a mockery of his own plight?
Or was he begging them to finally stop?
Perhaps he had learned that he would be beaten if he didn't smile.
A Sexroid's body was far more sensitive than a normal human's. They felt both pain and pleasure twice as intensely.
So he might have just smiled out of sheer instinct. Or maybe it was both.
"It's okay now."
His swollen lips contorted.
Instead of tears, yellow oil poured from his half-crushed eyes. From his gasping mouth, a thick, milky fluid welled up instead of a voice.
Grotesque tattoos were carved into what should have been a pristine body.
They weren't doodles drawn with a permanent marker; the red, swollen skin proved they were actual tattoos.
Tally marks were tattooed on his chest. A brand, like the ones seared onto medieval slaves with branding irons, marked his skin. Piercings were driven into humiliating places.
His teeth were completely gone.
His jaw seemed half-dislocated, refusing to close properly. A glimpse of his tongue revealed that the tip had been cut off. Cigarette burns, deep bite marks, and handprints littered his body.
Yet, there was not a single trace of blood.
The reason Swoo looked for blood was simple.
Even when broken, a Sexroid does not bleed.
However, they do bleed when they are 'used' for the first time.
And that blood was nowhere to be seen.
With that, Swoo's suspicion turned into certainty.
They wanted to break Draco's mind, keeping him just on the edge. They didn't want to push him off the cliff; they wanted to corner him right at the brink. And they had succeeded.
But it seemed Draco couldn't hold on at the edge.
Whether he jumped of his own accord or collapsed to beg for his life, she didn't know.
Regardless, he was alive.
He shifted his body and looked at Swoo.
Of course, Draco might only see the static of the Noise, or perhaps he couldn't see anything at all, but he was still alive.
"You can rest easy now."
Draco slowly closed his eyes.
Had he lost consciousness? Or had he simply powered down?
Either way, as long as he was alive, that was enough.
As long as he breathed, her task remained the same.
But that task was going to be incredibly difficult.
It wasn't that she was afraid of bullets.
She was worried about the gun pointed at Draco's head.
A Sexroid's body could be completely destroyed and still be repaired. But the head was a different story. If the data chip inside the head was damaged, the data would be lost, and Draco would die.
And there were thirty guns targeting that very chip. Unless she could use Thunder Breathing, Swoo couldn't cover all thirty targets on her own.
Swoo's magic was overwhelmingly powerful in terms of raw destructive force, but it lacked precision. While she could manage fine control against a few opponents, doing so against over thirty was simply impossible.
They knew this, which was why they were holding Draco hostage.
Scratching her temple, Swoo spoke.
"If you're done with him, let Draco go."
No answer came.
Not a single one of the thirty men opened his mouth.
They remained frozen in the same posture they had assumed when she entered.
This was a professionally trained group.
The kind that handled only the dirtiest of jobs.
A gathering of fanatics willing to completely swap out all their bodily implants just for a single mission.
With such distinct characteristics, it was hard to feign ignorance any longer.
"I'll pretend I don't know you're Zyrec's hounds."
Finally, they reacted.
The pupils of about five of the thirty men dilated slightly.
But immediately after, they fell silent once more.
It seemed they would rather die here than leave any evidence linking them to Zyrec.
That was typical behavior for hounds.
Their records had likely already been expunged by Zyrec. Even if they successfully completed this mission and returned, they would no longer be considered Zyrec employees.
This was a mission undertaken with failure or death as a predetermined outcome.
The reward was neither money nor power.
In exchange for becoming hounds, they were granted the right to personally execute their own sworn enemies.
In other words, Zyrec's hounds were a group of people willing to throw away their lives for the sake of revenge.
Swoo didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing.
Humans running toward their goals had a way of shining. Of course, their light was fueled by burning their own bodies, but Swoo respected that light nonetheless.
Therefore...
"Listen to me while I still respect you."
Swoo's voice dropped.
The ones before her were Zyrec's hounds.
Lewis and Philip had made a deal with them.
She didn't know what they had received in return, but it was certain they had handed Draco over.
There was a possibility of a third party wearing a camouflage skin, but she didn't factor that variable into her current deduction.
She chose to believe her certainty.
The connection between the Sexroid and Bori lingered in her mind.
Connecting the dots between the two, she had no choice but to be sure now.
This was a stage set by Zyrec and Legia.
A stage designed to create 'something' that would make the very existence of humanity look like a joke.
She didn't like the current situation.
It was fine to shine, but using that light to extinguish the light of others was not.
"Three."
The Noise rippled through the room.
It wasn't gentle like before.
It was wild and violent.
Reacting to the shift, the hounds moved. The twenty-nine gun barrels that had been aimed at Swoo pivoted toward Draco.
It was their response, knowing the destructive power of the Noise: make a move, and Draco dies.
"Two."
Swoo didn't back down either.
She wanted Eden to remain beautiful to the very end.
It was a cold, filthy world, but she wanted to hear the stories of those who hadn't lost their humanity within it.
So, she couldn't just let their plan succeed.
She raised her arm.
She didn't specify a direction for her magic.
Abandoning all restraint, she decided to obliterate everything in front of her.
As long as Draco's head remained intact, it would be fine. It would hurt, but she couldn't afford to be picky while saving him.
Even if this place collapsed, she could shield Draco to protect his head.
"One—"
She clenched her fist.
"Stop right there."
At that moment, a familiar voice called out from behind.
"Are you trying to bring the whole place down and crush everyone?"
It was a familiar, welcoming voice.
"Leave this to me."
"Yeah."
Swoo's heavy voice instantly brightened.
She opened her clenched fist and waved it wide.
"Long time no see."
Enoch.
Swoo, about to say his name, parted her lips and called him by another title instead.
"The Savior of Twilight?"
"...Are you calling me that too?"
Enoch grimaced, his ears flushing red.
Swoo smacked her lips in disappointment.
She had thought Enoch, upon entering the battlefield, had developed a late-onset case of chuunibyou and chosen an embarrassing alias for himself.
Apparently, that wasn't the case.
It would have been much more entertaining if it were.
With that thought, Swoo took a step back. Since Enoch told her to leave it to him, she would. It would have been impossible in the past, but now she could trust him.
Of course, she hadn't witnessed his current abilities with her own eyes. Still, she chose to believe. After all, Enoch possessed limitless potential.
It was a choice only Swoo could make, knowing his potential better than anyone else.
"Watch closely. Don't blink."
Perhaps he wanted to show off his skills, even if he hated the alias, because Enoch grinned and drew Mugeuk.
And then, light descended.
"Huh...?"
It was a light so brilliant and cold that even the ever-composed Swoo gasped in surprise.
A vivid moonlight that could never be seen in the present-day Eden.
The light radiating from Enoch resembled that very moonlight.
That was all Swoo saw.
"To think I'd see the day you get surprised."
Holding Draco in his arms, Enoch flicked Mugeuk.
Thick blood sprayed off the blade in a perfect arc.
Behind Enoch, crimson flowers bloomed in full.
Swoo blinked blankly, shifting her gaze.
It was an instant so brief that even Swoo hadn't perceived it. In that split second, nearly thirty hounds had been decapitated.
Raw power aside, Enoch now surpassed her in precision and speed. He was miles ahead.
I did think Enoch could do it.
After all, I added all kinds of debuffs when creating the character 'Enoch' just so he could unlock this kind of potential.
Still, she hadn't expected him to perform this well.
"It really is different from the game."
"What are you talking about a game all of a sudden?"
Draping his outer coat over Draco, Enoch chuckled and approached.
"Long time no see, Swoo."
"Yeah. You've gotten really strong, Enoch."
Scratching her temple, Swoo looked up at him.
He had no new implants.
His specs were exactly the same as before.
But he had more scars.
One scar in particular, running all the way from his jaw down to his neck, stood out. It looked as though he had been dragged across a jagged saw.
Staring at the scar, Swoo gently wiped away the blood splattered on Enoch's clothes and smiled.
"You worked hard."
"Yeah, I had a bit of a rough time."
Enoch glanced down at Draco in his arms, parted his lips, and spoke slowly.
"I have a lot of questions and a lot to say, but first, I brought the shard you asked for."
"Yeah."
"So, how do you plan on getting out of here?"
"Huh? Why are you asking me?"
"...Who else would I ask if not you?"
Swoo blinked.
Enoch blinked back.
"Enoch, how did you get in here?"
"From above, obviously."
"You didn't come through the underground waterways?"
"...Underground waterways? There's a path down there? I had the... subordinates who followed me draw their attention, and I slipped in through a gap. I don't know any other way."
"Huh."
"...What do you mean, 'huh'?"
At Swoo's cute little exclamation, Enoch's face darkened.
"...Don't tell me you didn't think about what comes next?"
"I thought the real culprit would be inside, so I wanted to send them outside to draw attention."
What did she mean by 'real culprit,' and how would causing such a scene draw attention to them? The more they spoke, the more questions piled up.
Dealing with 'Swoo-speak' for the first time in a while made Enoch's head spin.
"And I just killed them?"
"Yep."
"W-weren't you planning to kill them too?"
"I was just trying to save Draco first."
At the name Draco, Enoch glanced down at the Sexroid in his arms.
He wondered why she had gone to such crazy lengths to save a single Sexroid, and why on earth its name was Draco.
Draco sounded far too masculine for a name, didn't it?
But now was not the time to ask.
There was a much more important and pressing issue at hand.
"So, basically... you just rushed in without any sort of exit plan?"
"I was going to leave the aftermath to future me."
"And when is this 'future you' showing up?"
"She's hiding. I think she's shy because she hasn't seen you in so long."
"We're screwed."
"Hehe."
A heavy sigh escaped Enoch's lips.
Helping Swoo was all well and good, but now they had no way out.