Chapter 122
Chapter 122
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 121
Chapter Title: The Powerless Attacking the Powerless (4)
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Yohan got to his feet.
His body screamed in agony, forcing him into a clumsy stance, but his eyes burned with intensity.
He shot Juan a look that was part gratitude, part reprimand for showing up. Juan, hidden by a streetlight, responded by flipping him the bird.
“Who the hell is that guy?!”
“Kill him!”
“It’s just one more brat!”
The bullets from the gangsters hiding behind the van split into two streams.
One for Yohan, the other for Juan.
Rat-tat-tat-tat!
With the hail of bullets now halved, Yohan could aim at them with more composure than before.
Crack!
The heavy report of a gunshot tore through the darkness and blew off a gangster’s head.
“Aaargh!”
Bang! Bang!
Juan’s shots, fired without proper aim, didn’t kill anyone, but they were threatening enough to draw the gangsters’ attention.
Bang! Pfft! Rat-tat-tat!
Two boys, risking their lives in a downpour of bullets.
It was enough to instill an unbearable sense of shame in the adults watching them.
Bang! Bang! Pfft!
“Ugh!”
Just as Yohan, grazed by a bullet, let out a groan and clutched his side.
“Yohan!”
Juan cried out, and for the first time, the people who had been watching flinched. Their faces were tense, as if they themselves had been shot.
And then it happened.
Bang!
A woman emerged from behind Yohan, firing a rifle.
Bang! Bang!
Her eyes and the muzzle of her gun trembled—it was the first time she’d ever found the courage to stand up to the gangsters she had feared her whole life—but she kept pulling the trigger as she moved toward Yohan.
It was the woman who had shouted at Yohan to get lost from behind her firmly shut door.
Click.
There was also a man who placed his hand on the barricade, intending to open it.
“Hoo, hoo.”
His face tense, he pulled a box cutter from his pocket. He was the man Yohan had helped in the supermarket warehouse.
Snip, snip.
Many eyes fell on him as he cut through the zip ties, but no one tried to stop him.
Clank.
Another hand joined his on the barricade.
One hand soon became two, two became three, and then there were many.
Clang!
With everyone’s hands, the barricade that seemed like it would never open swung wide, and one by one, people holding guns walked out from behind it.
There was no selfishness on their faces.
Though fear was present, a clearer emotion shone through.
It was courage.
If not now, they would have to fear the gangsters until the day they died.
And there was someone fighting for them.
Yohan, younger than them and ignored by everyone, was at the forefront, fighting the gangsters for them.
“What the…”
The gangsters were stunned to see civilians emerge from behind the barricade, guns in hand.
But soon, their faces twisted as if they were looking at a dog baring its teeth at them, and they aimed their guns.
Bang! Crack!
Juan and Yohan fired lead at them.
Thwack! Rat-tat-tat-tat!
As the man who’d been shot in the head fell, pulling the trigger as he went down, the civilians took the gunshot as their signal and opened fire.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“You sons of…”
Anger spread across the gangsters’ faces at the unexpected counterattack from the civilians, which soon turned to bewilderment.
Thud!
The number of their comrades falling to bullets was rapidly increasing.
“Shit!”
The gangsters hiding behind the van gasped for breath, their faces filled with disbelief.
They had slaughtered countless civilians before, but none had ever fought back.
“How dare those bastards!”
No one had imagined that these people, who were supposed to die quietly like toys or trapped prey, would fight back.
The people here had been oppressed by the gangsters for so long, and between the gangsters and the civilians stood a seemingly unbreakable, solid wall.
Now, those people had crossed that wall and were pointing their guns at them.
It was a situation that felt like a dream.
Bang! Bang! Thwack! Clang! Thwack!
But the van, being torn apart by the bullets they were firing, proved this was no dream.
“Fuck, fuck.”
One of the gangsters, spitting curses and baring his yellowed teeth, lowered his body and began to crawl on the ground.
He was running away, afraid of the civilians.
“That idiot!”
For a moment, another gangster cursed him, but then he too started to crawl on the ground.
Thwack! Pfft!
A bullet pierced the van’s metal frame and whizzed past the last remaining gangster.
“Hngh! Fuck!”
He glared at the van being torn to shreds by the bullets, then pressed his palms to the ground in despair.
And then, like a defeated dog, he turned his back on the van and crawled away from the civilians.
Just then,
Crack!
The body of the one in the lead slumped to the side.
“Aaargh!”
The gangster, startled, fell back on his rear and looked in the direction the bullet had come from.
“Gasp, gasp!”
It was Yohan, his body a tattered mess, grazed by bullets all over.
Clutching his thigh with his left hand, bent over at the waist, he approached them, pistol in hand.
“Shiiit.”
Seeing Yohan, the gangster gave up all hope.
“Over there! There!”
“Come quickly! Hurry!”
The sound of footsteps and shouts from the civilians approaching Yohan could be heard.
Realizing it was all over, they glared at Yohan with eyes full of resentment, but it changed nothing.
Crack!
One fell, and the last one, trembling, shouted with spittle flying from his mouth.
“You son of a bitch! You’ll be… by the others…”
Bang!
The man staring at Yohan fell without even knowing who had killed him.
Immediately after, a woman lowered her rifle, its barrel radiating heat. The last gangster had been finished off not by Yohan or Juan, but by an ordinary civilian.
“We… we won.”
“Hoo, hngh.”
Breathing heavily, their hearts pounding with intense emotion, they looked at each other.
It was a first for all of them.
Raising a gun against the gangsters, fighting for someone else.
It felt like ice was trickling down their spines, but a wave of exhilaration and accomplishment washed over them.
And a feeling of guilt toward Yohan.
Tap.
“Are you okay? Can you walk?”
Yohan shifted his gaze to the man who had grabbed his shoulder.
He answered with a nod, and gradually, more people gathered around him.
“Give me your shoulder. I’ll help you.”
“I think you got shot earlier. Are you alright?”
“Let’s go to the supermarket first.”
“There’s cocoa in there. And biscuits, though they’re a bit past their expiration date.”
“To the new people, sorry about earlier. Please understand, given the situation.”
“More importantly, let’s grab the guns. We’ll have to fight if more gangsters show up.”
At that moment, Juan wore an expression that asked if these were really the same pathetic adults he had always seen.
These were people who barely scraped by day to day, their lives worn down by drugs and alcohol.
Yet now, those same people were moving about with more life in their faces than ever before.
People helping Yohan, others collecting firearms from the gangsters’ corpses with trembling hands, some pointing at the road and discussing how to set up the barricade.
Clap, clap!
“Let’s get moving!”
“Hurry! More gangsters could come!”
Mingling with the adults, Juan glanced back at Yohan.
He didn’t realize it, but his own face had softened, just like the other adults.
As if a small weight had been lifted from his heart.
Vroooom!
*It’s cold.*
Inside the sports car with its shattered driver’s side window, Kanghyeok clenched and unclenched his hand on the steering wheel.
He was playing a blindfolded game of hide-and-seek in the dark with Iron Mask’s men, the fate of the world on the line, and it was making him damn anxious.
Still, the fact that he could feel the cold was faintly reassuring.
I’m human.
No matter what strange abilities I’ve gained, making me immune to gunshots, I’m still a person with blood in my veins who can feel the cold.
“Hoo!”
Kanghyeok exhaled a breath that froze white in the air and clenched his jaw so hard it jutted out.
Sixteen minutes.
That’s how long it’s been since Protocol 8 started.
In that time, Kanghyeok had managed to catch two cars.
But they were damn decoys, empty, and he hadn’t found the vehicle transporting the hazardous material.
*Those bastards, where the hell did they…*
Time kept ticking away, and he felt lost.
He even felt like they were mocking him, and it probably wasn’t just his imagination.
He had thrown the driver of one of the decoy cars to the ground and pressed a gun to his forehead.
But before he could even ask a question, the man had only sneered at him.
Bastard!
Right, that’s the kind of people they were.
He had wanted to interrogate him out of some futile hope, but realizing it was pointless, he had just pulled the trigger.
Vroooom!
As he accelerated, Kanghyeok checked the time on his watch.
Another minute had passed.
Just over thirteen minutes left.
This can’t go on.
Screech!
He slammed on the brakes, stopping the car in the middle of the road, and pulled out a cigarette.
*Think. If it were them, they would have hidden it somewhere I’d never find.*
Put yourself in their shoes.
Kanghyeok gave himself the order and faithfully carried it out.
He focused all his senses, thinking and thinking again.
The damn cold air pouring in through the window helped sharpen his mind.
*The supermarket? No, not there.*
Leila and Yohan are evacuating civilians with the supermarket as their base.
They might order the gangsters to attack it, but they wouldn’t go there themselves.
*A tunnel?*
It seemed plausible at first, since it’s a good place to hide something, but there was one problem.
It’s too enclosed.
Their real goal isn’t to destroy the city, but to test the hazardous material.
The one I experienced in the future spread through the air.
*An open space.*
If it has the same properties, they’d need a wide-open area to spread it effectively.
And it has to be a place Kanghyeok would never go.
At the same time, not on the outskirts of the city, but somewhere with a decent number of residents.
Is there such a place?
Could there be?
Tick.
In the silence, the ticking of his watch’s second hand was audible. He glanced down and, damn it, another minute had passed.
After a long, deep deliberation that made the second hand seem to move in slow motion, Kanghyeok muttered quietly.
“There is.”
Having found the answer, the anxiety vanished from Kanghyeok’s eyes as if by magic.
Screech!
Kanghyeok yanked the steering wheel and stomped on the accelerator.
*The safe house!*
They think of it as Kanghyeok’s home.
They’re not wrong.
He actually lives there, so the safe house is basically his home. And no one would think to go home while dealing with an urgent matter.
They’re gathering the hazardous material at the safe house.
*If I were them, that's where I'd hide it.*
The sheer audacity of hiding it right under his nose was infuriating.
Vroooooom! Thwack!
Accelerating so fast that the side mirror of a junked car he grazed flew high into the air before crashing down, Kanghyeok sped toward the safe house.
It was a familiar route.
He had lived in this city for a year.
The darkness didn’t matter, nor did the lack of a satellite feed.
For the past year, he had lived his life hidden in the darkness of this city.
As if this kind of darkness was nothing to him, Kanghyeok expertly steered the sports car toward the safe house and arrived before long.
And then he knew.
“Found you.”
Just as he’d expected, they were converging on the safe house.