The Final Weapon
The chain tightened with a sickening crunch, and another human cocoon joined the others dangling from the ceiling. Groans echoed from every corner of the room.
“Fuck… Do you even know where the hell you are, crawling in here like that?”
“At least I can tell it’s a villain’s den.”
It had been roughly ten minutes since Catena arrived. The place reeked of sharp chemicals rising from steel drums scattered across the floor. Thick plastic sheets partitioned one side of the room. The setup was shabby, but the operation itself was anything but amateur.
“They wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble just to use it themselves… They were planning to sell it in the city, weren’t they?”
In the separated back room, the shelves were packed with vacuum-sealed bags of product. The crystalline granules, neatly packaged and stacked in orderly rows, looked almost like the kitchen of a luxury hotel. The stark contrast on either side of that single door made Catena’s eyes sparkle as she scanned every inch of the place.
“They caused two truck incidents, after all. Not once, but twice. I wonder why…”
“Mmph—! Mmmph—!”
The barrage of questions continued, but no answers came. Probably because the person being questioned was wrapped head to toe in chains, mouth included. Not that she had expected any answers in the first place.
“I need to find something useful to tell Jung-woo-ssi about later.”
She had felt the urge to call him three separate times, yet her phone remained in her pocket. Instead, she had subdued every villain she came across in the facility, experimenting with different knots as she strung them up like decorations.
“He doesn’t like it when I charge in recklessly. He works so diligently himself… Mm.”
That was also why she had dressed plainly and skipped the perfume. The biggest reason, of course, was that she hadn’t had time to prepare her hero suit.
“And what’s this room?”
She opened every door she saw, tying up every person she met, memorizing the different colored drug bags in each room. That was when she heard it.
“…Haa, huu, haaaa… haa.”
A savage, beast-like breathing that sounded like something feral locked in a cage. Inside, countless carts lay overturned. Colored powders spilled across the floor. Several bags had been violently torn open.
She slowly pushed the door wider and stepped inside.
Then she saw them. Blood splattered across the floor. Cold corpses. People stabbed, trampled, crushed, sliced, impaled—killed in dozens of different ways and left to rot.
“Ugh…!”
She staggered back, fighting the urge to vomit. She was used to helping people and occasionally using force against ordinary “criminals,” but this was different.
Her phone suddenly vibrated. She pulled it out. The name flashing on the screen made her freeze.
“…Ah.”
The person who cheered for her. The person who worried about her. The person who stayed by her side and genuinely wanted her to succeed. It was Min Jung-woo.
That was why she made her choice.
“Alright. Let’s do this.”
She ended the call and stepped forward again, forcing her gaze back to the corpses she had tried to avoid.
The room was thick with powder—more of it scattered here than anywhere else. And in the deepest corner, something was moving. Just barely.
“You. Inside there. Come out with your hands up.”
When she finally drew close, a low mutter slithered into her ear.
“You dare look down on me? Heh heh heh… Acting like you’re something special, huh?”
A wet stab. The sound of flesh being pierced. A faint groan mixed with leaking laughter.
“You think having that dickhead by your side changes anything? Fuck, even if you try your hardest, you’re still just a bug playing gangster!!”
A syringe clattered to the floor, splattering blood across her shoes.
Silence fell.
“…Hik!”
Her body moved on pure instinct, stumbling backward. Her brain screamed that whatever was behind the curtain was no longer human. When her foot brushed against the still-warm flesh of a corpse, the hero momentarily became an ordinary person again.
“Grrraaaa…”
She saw it. A beast drooling bubbles from its mouth, its body beginning to encase itself in dark steel-purple shell. From fingertips to toes, there wasn’t a single spot of its form that lacked sharp armor.
“GRAAAAAAAHHH!!!”
A high-risk individual. Recently evaluated as A-rank or higher due to its sheer ferocity.
A wolf wearing iron skin howled. That was Stahlleder.
“Catena! Goddammit…!”
I kicked open the rusted metal door. The room was filled with grunts tied up and left on the floor, others hanging from the ceiling with purple faces. Every single one of them was wrapped in chains. Catena had definitely been here.
—Rumble.
And not in good condition. A few were already pale and crawling across the floor… Had Stahlleder begun his rampage? Shit. I could only hope her injuries weren’t too severe.
—Groooan.
The building shook violently again. Dust rained from the ceiling. Don’t tell me the reason she wasn’t answering her phone was—
“Catena!!!”
I screamed at the top of my lungs as I charged down the corridor. More villains tied up like caterpillars, desperately inching away from the end of the hallway. That’s where she was.
I rolled up my right sleeve and disengaged the safety. It would activate with a single impact. If the original story’s description was accurate, even if he had weakened…
—Crash.
The sound came from right beside me. Chains smashing together. I immediately kicked the door open and rushed in.
“Catena!”
“J-Jung-woo-ssi…!”
Her legs were visibly trembling. The half-shattered chain she clutched with both hands. Her clothes were torn in multiple places, and blood flowed from beneath her eyes. She had already taken several direct hits. From that… steel wolf.
“Grrrk, grrrrrr…”
“Get back! This isn’t a villain you can handle right now!”
“I know that, but—!”
We needed to escape immediately. But how? On the surface she looked fine, but Catena had clearly reached her limit. She wouldn’t be able to move quickly.
“GRAAAAAHHH!!!”
“Watch out!”
The front paw, bristling with countless blades, slammed into the floor. Catena rolled out from the rising cloud of dust, but fragments had still torn into her in several places. Blood ran freely.
“Ha, haa—!”
Screaming at the top of my lungs wouldn’t bring her back to her senses. I needed to create an opening. Against a villain who could have reached S-rank if he hadn’t been addicted to drugs.
“Grk!?”
He looked like a rabid dog drooling everywhere, but the danger he posed was hundreds of times worse. Claws that could slice a car in half, walls torn apart like paper—this was no longer a human, but a monster. That was exactly why I had tried to starve him out by cutting off his drug supply.
“Kek, keghk…!”
He had already injected so much that he was coughing up blood. A final desperate struggle. I had underestimated him. His obsession with the drugs.
“Grrrr…”
I grabbed a smoke grenade from my belt with my left hand. The pin connected to the cord grew taut. Could this body react in time?
—Swish.
The moment only an afterimage remained in front of my eyes. The exact instant Catena reached out to me.
“Ugh…!”
I rolled across the floor, leaving the smoke grenade behind. In the rising cloud, the monster rampaged wildly, stomping the ground with its massive body. I ran toward the hero who was slowly dragging herself backward.
“Jung-woo-ssi…!”
“No time to explain. Get out of here right now. I’ll buy us some time!”
“B-but—!”
Her lips hesitated. Her eyes trembled. When her hand briefly touched her leg, it came away stained with blood. Damn it.
“I’m sorry… I wanted to do something, but I didn’t expect something like this. Hehe…”
“You always answered your phone so well before, but now you pull this!?”
“I didn’t want to disappoint you. I… I’m a hero now, aren’t I?”
All that enthusiasm had led her to do something this stupid. I pulled bandages from the bag at my waist, wrapped her wounds roughly, and tied them off. I didn’t know how long the smoke would keep him disoriented, but right now—!
“Agh!?”
“Endure it. Get as far away as possible.”
“N-no, if you go to him—!”
“We’ll both die if we stay like this!”
The hand trying to hold me back had no strength left. That alone told me how bad her condition was. So.
“The police will be here soon. If they’re not insane, they’ll put you in the ambulance they brought along. So go. Now.”
“I don’t want to. Even if I leave, I should be the one to—!”
“This is my fault!”
My fault for getting distracted by the two of them and failing to monitor Stahlleder’s condition. My fault for complacently believing everything would go according to plan.
“Go.”
“No, no, no!!”
Leaving only those words, I threw myself into the smoke. I shook off the hand clinging to me and pulled the flash grenade from my belt this time.
“Jung-woo-ssi!!”
I might not be able to kill him, but I had to land at least one solid blow. It would be a miracle if he fainted, but I needed to create an opening.
Stahlleder would die at Bianca’s hands, but I still needed to give Catena something. I had to hand even a small shield called “achievement” to a hero no one would support.
—Bang.
“Kyaaaaack…!”
He covered his reddened eyes and whined, but his front paws still slashed wildly around him. Shrapnel flew like fragments from a grenade.
“You son of a—!”
I had planned to rush in and plant the weapon, but I was forced to retreat. This was bad. If even a sliver of sanity remained in him…
—Click.
As expected. With a small sound, armor layered over his eyes. He was the most vicious among hardening ability users—the one who could create both weapons and armor this way.
Could I attack him without taking a single hit? Normal visual attacks wouldn’t work anymore. Wanting that would be greedy.
“Grrrrk…”
Then I would have to let him land one blow. To land a heavy, slow attack like this, I needed to take one hit first. Should I let him bite my arm? My leg?
Which one should I offer? Or rather, which one should I aim for while charging? No, he might not even bite.
—Shing.
Seeing the blades sprouting from his arm, it seemed he planned to slash and create distance. Troublesome… but if I could induce a bite. If I could make him charge at me emotionally. Perhaps.
“Hey, Stahlleder.”
“Grk?”
“A druggie who’s worse than Bianca—where do you get off acting tough?”
It was probably provocation. …Maybe a bit too much?
“Grrrrrrrr, ugrrrrrr…!!!”
Saliva dripped down as he formed a mane. His body swelled even larger than before, baring hideous fangs. Hmm. Maybe my words were a little harsh. I didn’t realize he had an inferiority complex.
“Kyaaaaack!!!”
“Good boy.”
But perhaps because his sanity was completely gone, his charging trajectory was clearly visible. Even if I could see it, dodging might be impossible, but I could at least let it graze me. Thinking that, I stepped my right leg back. I thrust my left arm forward like bait. I provoked him once more to ensure the weapon would hit cleanly.
“Come at me, you mutt!”
“GRAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!”
The berserk beast drove its fangs into my arm. My flesh tore open as if a spoon had been shoved into jelly. But thanks to that, I got the perfect angle.
“UAAAAAAGH!!!”
I drove my right fist straight into his temple. A hard surface met my knuckles, but it didn’t matter. The sound of metal clashing rang out as the fuse activated.
“Grk!?”
Did he hear the gunpowder burning? Or did he see the massive weapon inside my fluttering cloak? The bastard biting my forearm momentarily loosened his jaw.
“Too late, you son of a bitch…!”
The gunpowder burned and released gas. The loaded steel stake shot forward with terrifying speed.
—Boom.
A deafening explosion. The sharp tip surged upward.
“Kk—!”
The severed scream sprayed fragments everywhere. The head that failed to be pierced flew off and slammed into the floor.
“The power… is no joke.”
My makeshift weapon. The File Bunker. Its tip glittering in the sunlight seeping through the ceiling was breathtakingly beautiful. It felt like it had crushed my arm, but the power… Haha. Damn. I can’t pass out here.