Lilac Ward (3)
The heavy double iron doors began to slowly part with a grating mechanical beep.
Since I’d just blown the heads off those hulking janitor bastards right outside with my absurdly oversized revolver, there was no way the people inside hadn’t noticed.
No matter how well soundproofed a bunker was, that kind of insane vibration and explosion would definitely carry through.
The gap hadn’t even opened thirty centimeters yet.
“Open fire! Shoot the fuckers dead right now!!!”
A desperate scream erupted from within, followed by a storm of bullets.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tang—!
Sparks flew in every direction as rounds ricocheted off the thick iron doors.
I was already tucked into the blind spot created by the opening doors, Eve’s pink head gripped firmly by the nape of her neck as I used her for cover.
“Ugh, fuck. My ears are ringing. I knew the welcome would be rough, but they’re throwing a full-on tantrum the second it opens. These assholes have zero flexibility.”
I leaned against the wall and let out a lazy yawn.
The moment the gunfire paused for a magazine change, I slipped through the gap like a goddamn eel.
Inside the dissection room, four heavily armed Red Cross guards were using the operating tables as cover, barrels trained on the entrance. Behind them, two researchers in white lab coats were frantically hammering away at the main console.
“He’s in! That fucking—!”
Before the guy in front could finish loading, my revolver spat fire.
Bang—!
The armor-piercing round slammed dead center into his forehead. His skull burst like a watermelon.
I used the recoil to spin, driving a kick straight into the second bastard’s jaw and shattering his neck bones.
The remaining two panicked and tried to swing their guns around, but my combat knife was already flashing.
Schlick—!
A sound like carving meat rang out as blood fountained from both their throats.
This wasn’t luck. The guy was just a natural-born monster.
“E-extraction at 98 percent…! Just a little more, just hold on a little longer…!”
The bespectacled researcher clinging to the console trembled violently even as blood soaked him, his hand still stretching for the enter key.
“Hello there~ I’m the handsome problem-solver, Ban. Cancel the download, you son of a bitch. You’re over capacity.”
Bang—!
The bullet from my revolver obliterated both the console screen and the researcher’s upper body in one shot.
The assistant next to him pissed himself on the spot, foamed at the mouth, and passed out.
The dissection room reeked of blood.
Once the situation was cleaned up, I casually wiped the blood off my knife onto a surgical gown and walked to the center of the room.
There sat a restraint chair so grotesquely designed I’d never seen anything like it.
A small-statured girl was strapped into it, limbs bound tight.
Her outer clothes had been stripped off—probably to attach electrode patches—leaving her in nothing but sweat-soaked underwear and tiny hot pants.
I approached and took a closer look at the bound girl.
Porcelain-white skin. A face that screamed what the fuck is this bullshit.
And most striking of all were the vivid X-shaped pupils etched into her purple eyes.
“I don’t get the Red Cross’s taste at all. What kind of restraint device looks like this? You match the request item, though. You’re Haze’s little sister, Yui, right?”
At my question, the girl—limbs still bound—didn’t tremble. Instead she spat out her words in pure irritation.
“Ugh, fuck!!!! Why the hell are you so late!!!!”
“Huh?”
“I was seriously three minutes away from getting my entire brain scooped out, you know?!”
What the hell. This kid had balls of steel. I let out a dry laugh.
“Should I just leave you here on display and go?”
“Sure, try it. If I die, my sister’s gonna spend the rest of her life stalking you and putting bullet holes in your skull.”
What a nasty personality. Right then, Eve—who had been hesitating outside—scrambled into the room in a panic.
“M-Master! I’ll release her! If you rip those out by force she’ll turn into a vegetable!”
Eve jammed a keycard into the sub-terminal beside Yui and started typing furiously.
Yui’s brow furrowed deeply as she watched.
“Wait. You… aren’t you that crazy bitch from the Third Lab? Red Cross full professor Eve? What are you doing here?”
“C-crazy bitch?!”
Eve glanced nervously at me, then snapped back at Yui with venom.
“Watch your mouth, shorty. I’m Master Ban’s one and only exclusive navigator now, got it? If our magnificent Master Ban feels like it, you’re finished!”
It was a desperate survival instinct and blind courtship, trying to prove her usefulness to me at all costs.
Click—hiss—
Thanks to Eve’s operation, the bizarre restraints holding Yui’s limbs released, and the disgusting cables slid out with a wet sound.
Now free, Yui stood up from the chair and stretched, working out the stiffness.
“Heh, so that’s how it is. Pathetic. A full Red Cross professor clinging to a mercenary’s pants and wagging her tail like a bitch in heat. Whatever. Not my problem.”
Yui glanced around, snatched a doctor’s coat hanging on a chair in the corner, and threw it on.
Then she shoved Eve aside, sat down at the sub-terminal, and took control.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard at blinding speed.
“What are you doing, Miss Request-Item Eyeballs? Showing off your typing speed? Aren’t we leaving? I’m tired, you know? I need to crawl back up and breathe some real air.”
“Shut up. After I came in here guns blazing and killed everyone, you really think we can just politely ride the elevator up? Heavy assault teams are pouring down the emergency stairs like crazy right now.”
Yui restored the temporary internal network on the monitor and pulled up the troop deployment map, firing back without missing a beat.
It was clean work, exactly what you’d expect from the former Intelli Master hacker.
On screen, soldiers in pitch-black tactical gear were rushing down toward the lowest floor like madmen.
I scratched the back of my head.
The face that had been stone-cold while murdering people earlier had returned to its usual half-dead fish eyes.
“You’re pretty damn fast. So what now? Other than punching straight through, got any other ideas?”
At that moment, the X in Yui’s purple eyes flashed with murderous intent.
“Don’t underestimate an Intelli Master. First, manual bulkheads on all sectors connected to the lowest floor—forced closure and lockdown!”
She shouted it like it was her ultimate technique, completely shameless.
Rumble—!!
The entire ward shook with a massive roar as thick lead bulkheads slammed shut one after another, sealing off the upper floors.
“Fuck, that’ll only buy us three minutes! These lunatics will either blow the bulkheads or weld them open and still break through!”
“Whistle~ So the typing speed wasn’t just for show. I’m impressed.”
I whistled in genuine praise.
“But how do we get out of here in three minutes? Punch through the ceiling?”
Right then, Eve—who had been stuck to my side watching nervously—shouted urgently.
“M-Master! There’s a disguised direct elevator hidden in the back, used only by high-ranking researchers when they need to escape! I can call it with my master card!”
“Oh, for real? Like a private getaway ride they use when they think they’re about to get butchered with their own specimens? Elite course, my ass. That’s some real VIP shit.”
I grinned.
Boom! Boom! Boom!!
From upstairs came the dull, heavy sounds of the assault team trying to smash through the bulkheads.
No time to waste.
“Lead the way, Breast Wallet.”
Eve nodded and ran to what looked like an ordinary cabinet in the back of the dissection room, swiping her card on the hidden terminal.
Beep—slide.
The entire wall split open, revealing a secret elevator reserved for full professors and above.
“Get in, quick!”
At Eve’s frantic shout, Yui and I piled in.
The doors closed, and the elevator shot upward through the bunker’s vertical shaft at insane speed.
My stomach lurched from the sudden ascent.
Yui clenched her teeth. Eve clung to my forearm like it was a lifeline.
“Ahh. Finally gonna breathe some real air.”
Only I was humming cheerfully while reloading bullets into my revolver.
Ding-dong.
The cheerful chime announced our arrival.
The disguised abandoned building on the surface, a short distance behind Lilac Ward. Its ridiculously spacious first-floor lobby.
The elevator’s old iron doors slowly parted.
But the air up here was bitterly acrid.
Click—clack-clack-clack!
“Move and we’ll turn you into a honeycomb! Hands up and crawl out slowly!!”
In the middle of the lobby, two armored vehicles bearing the Red Cross emblem had their headlights blazing, barrels trained directly on the elevator entrance.
Behind them, over twenty fully armed mobile strike team members formed a perfect semicircle, heavy machine guns and rifles locked on us.
“N-no way… this can’t be…”
“Ah, fuck. We’re really screwed.”
The murderous intent radiating from dozens of gun barrels made Eve’s legs give out as she collapsed. Even the usually tough Yui went pale and muttered curses.
A perfect encirclement.
Not even a rat could slip through.
But I, standing at the center of the elevator, simply shoved both hands into my pockets and squinted against the blinding headlights.
“Ugh, so annoying. Traffic on the way home is fucking terrible. Hey, you assholes, turn off your high beams. Can’t you see?”
“Shut your mouth and put your hands—!”
Ignoring the strike team leader screaming into his mic, I drew my beloved revolver.
But instead of aiming at the dozens of soldiers blocking our path, I pointed it at empty air.
I lazily raised my arm toward the lobby ceiling and pulled the trigger.
Bang—!
The cannon-like gunshot echoed.
The strike team flinched and prepared to fire—
Clang—!!! Creeeeak—!!!
A massive antique iron chandelier hanging precariously from the ceiling.
My bullet had precisely shattered the rusted joint of the main wire holding the monstrous hunk of metal in place.
“Huh…?”
The moment one of the strike team members looked up with a stupid sound, several tons of steel chandelier came crashing down without warning onto the armored vehicles and the soldiers’ heads.
Rumble—!!!!
“Aaaaaaaaagh!!!”
There was no time to dodge or do anything.
The strike team members crushed beneath the chandelier’s insane weight screamed as they were pulped.
One of the pinned men thrashed in agony and accidentally pulled the trigger of a heavy machine gun.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!!
The uncontrolled tracer rounds sprayed everywhere, slamming straight into the fuel tank of the armored vehicle parked right beside them.
Kwaaaaaaaaang—!!!!
A chain of massive explosions.
In an instant the abandoned building’s lobby turned into a blazing red sea of fire, swallowing the entire Red Cross strike team and reducing them to ashes.
A single bullet had triggered a miraculous massacre.
An impossible stroke of luck—and the signature cheat-level divine bullshit luck this guy was famous for.
“Ow, it’s hot. Let’s go. Path’s clear.”
In the middle of a hellscape where burning armored vehicle debris flew everywhere, I walked forward, casually putting bullets into the heads of anyone still twitching.
Yui and Eve following behind could only stare at my back with their jaws on the floor, watching the insane slaughter like they were looking at a madman.
On the dirt road beneath the ashen sky.
There stood Haze, the Grim Reaper, leaning against the hood of a Humvee and anxiously smoking a cigarette.
At the massive explosion that erupted from inside the building, she raised her sniper rifle, her cross-shaped pupils widening in shock.
The man casually stepping over the burning lobby wreckage.
And right behind him, the sister she had been desperately searching for—Yui.
“Ban… and… Yui…?”
As Haze muttered blankly, I raised my scraped palm and gave a lazy wave.
“Hey, client. Delivery complete. Thanks for waiting outside. Time to pay the balance, yeah?”
In the middle of an apocalypse that stank of blood, dust, and gunpowder, the lucky problem-solver’s smile shone brightly beneath the gray sky.