The White Wolf and the Shadow Demon
The yakuza charged toward the pillar where Hakuro was hiding. In that instant, Hakuro emerged from behind it, pistol already raised and leveled at them. Two gunmen snapped their own weapons up to fire, but bullets slammed into their heads before their fingers could even tighten on the triggers. They dropped dead on the spot.
"Damn it!" the rest of them roared, opening fire.
Hakuro holstered a pistol at his hip while slipping through the storm of bullets, then closed the distance and drew his knife in one fluid motion. He seized several knife-wielding yakuza and used them as human shields, weaving and shifting his body constantly.
"W-wait!"
"Don't shoot—!"
The yakuza who heard their comrades' desperate cries tried to hold their fire, but it was already too late. Several of their own men crumpled under friendly bullets while the rest lunged at Hakuro with blades raised. He moved with terrifying flexibility, dodging every strike while slicing or stabbing vital points and twisting the knife to finish them.
Hakuro's knife work was precise, blindingly fast, and utterly merciless. Men hit by his blade either bled out from severed throats and vital arteries or collapsed with their stomachs split open, spilling tangled ropes of intestine, blood, and fat.
Before the fallen could even hit the ground, Hakuro was already flowing into the next set of attacks—dodging, parrying, and killing without pause. His knife-fighting style was distinctive. While swinging at the yakuza, he would subtly alter the blade's trajectory at the last moment, striking on an offset rhythm that left opponents unable to respond properly. This off-beat technique was one taught by Katsuyama Junichi, and only three people in the entire organization could wield it naturally besides the boss himself: 1st Division Leader Sakaguchi Taiki, 2nd Division Leader Kanemura Yoshio, and Hakuro.
When a yakuza with a silenced pistol tried to take aim at Hakuro, Haneda Shinichi stopped him cold.
"Stand down. The distance between the target and our men is too close for gunfire."
Meanwhile, Hakuro continued carving through the knife-wielding attackers, blocking and evading with lethal grace as he dropped them one by one. When one swung at his throat, Hakuro slipped the strike, stepped backward, and set his back firmly against the wall.
"We've got him cornered!"
"Finish the bastard!"
They believed driving the masked killer into a dead end had given them the advantage. But a handful of puppies cornering a single wolf was still just a handful of puppies.
The moment they rushed in with knives raised, Hakuro flowed between their strikes, carving throats and stabbing vital organs with clinical precision. With his back protected by the wall, he no longer needed to guard his rear. His knife moved more boldly now, reaping lives with every swing. No matter how furiously they attacked, their blades never touched him. More yakuza fell screaming under his counterattack.
(Damn it... We outnumber him so badly... So why can't we even graze a single hair on that monster?)
Another yakuza thrust at him. Hakuro evaded and drove his blade into the man's abdomen repeatedly, using the body as a battering ram to shove forward. When more enemies tried to exploit the opening, he somehow slipped their attacks and cut down the very men who had swung at him moments earlier.
(He induces carelessness to reverse-engineer an opening... Bold yet calculated. Using his own body as bait to expose the opponent's weakness.)
Shinichi watched the massacre and quietly assessed Hakuro's combat method. As the number of attackers visibly dwindled, he issued new orders to Hashimoto Ryuhei and the remaining subordinates.
"Hashimoto. Take the others and provide support. The rest of you—look for any opening to use firearms."
"Understood."
Ryuhei drew two karambit knives and advanced on Hakuro, several yakuza falling in behind him. He lashed out with a dazzling series of cuts at the exact moment Hakuro withdrew his blade from a man's punctured lung. Hakuro retreated a step to evade, only for another yakuza to charge in swinging. Hakuro deflected the blade, drove an elbow into the man's face, then crouched and shredded his abdomen open.
The razor edges of Hakuro's knives opened throats and split stomachs. The yakuza died horribly. "Die, you son of a bitch!" The remaining attackers swung wildly, but Hakuro slipped every strike with contemptuous ease. Then the gunmen raised their pistols.
Hakuro seized a surviving yakuza as a living shield, drew his own pistol, and plunged straight into their formation.
"Create distance!" Shinichi shouted, drawing his own weapon and backpedaling. "Maximum distance!" But the men who hadn't heard the order in time were cut down the instant Hakuro spun among them, his pistol barking rapidly in every direction. The gunfire was so fast the yakuza never had time to react. They simply collapsed with fresh holes punched through chests and stomachs.
When Shinichi aimed at him, Hakuro kept the bullet-riddled human shield pressed forward and unleashed a storm of return fire. Shinichi dove behind a pillar and answered with his own barrage, ignoring the dying subordinate being used as cover. Hakuro continued shoving the bleeding corpse ahead of him like a gruesome battering ram, then burst out from the pillar and charged straight at Shinichi.
At point-blank range, Hakuro hurled the dying man aside, jerked his head back to clear the muzzle, and pressed his own gun against Shinichi's skull. At that exact moment Ryuhei's knife sliced toward his neck and torso. Hakuro kicked off the floor and hurled himself sideways, narrowly escaping the cut.
Then Sakaguchi Taiki, who had been standing motionless until now, exploded forward and swung his own blade. Hakuro drew a second knife with his left hand and whipped it through a frantic series of parries. He tried to bring his right-hand pistol to bear, but Taiki seized the slide with his left hand and yanked it back. Hakuro instantly dropped the magazine, slammed the gun forward to eject the chambered round, released the weapon, and retreated to open distance.
Taiki's follow-up slash missed by a fraction of a second.
(Damn it... Haneda and Hashimoto were already too much... and now even Sakaguchi...)
Hakuro glared at the three division leaders now arrayed against him. Shinichi held a silenced pistol. Taiki and Ryuhei gripped their knives with murderous intent. Hakuro's eyes flicked across the surrounding Katsuyama-gumi soldiers slowly tightening the encirclement.
(I cannot waste any more time here. From this moment on, I must devote everything to escaping as quickly as possible.)
He made his decision and began backing toward the exit. Ryuhei and several others immediately charged. The rest raised their guns. Shinichi bellowed at them.
"Wait! Do not engage recklessly!"
In the same instant Hakuro hurled several objects to the floor. They erupted in thick white smoke.
(Smoke grenades...)
Taiki stood perfectly still, pistol raised, calmly sweeping the area while focusing on every sound cutting through the smoke. A pained groan sounded from his left—he fired instantly. The noise of rapid footsteps came from behind him—he pivoted and fired again. When the smoke finally thinned, Hakuro had vanished.
(He's already gone... Crafty bastard...)
Taiki drew a long breath to cage his fury, then gave crisp orders to Ryuhei and Shinichi.
"Pursue him."
The yakuza, led by Shinichi and Ryuhei, poured out of the building and began hunting their elusive prey.
Meanwhile, at a secluded villa deep in the Japanese mountains. The heavily guarded estate belonged to none other than Katsuyama Junichi, boss of the Katsuyama-gumi. Security was appropriately ruthless. Yakuza patrolled the grounds under moonlight, armed with submachine guns and assault rifles.
One sentry suddenly sensed something amiss and advanced with his AKM at the ready. Another guard called out.
"Fujimori. What's going on?"
"I felt a presence. I'll check the perimeter."
"Probably just your imagination. Who the hell would be crazy enough to—"
A knife flashed from behind the second man and opened his carotid artery. He died without another sound. Fujimori spun at the noise and saw his comrade's body collapsing in a spray of blood.
"Tanaka...? What the—?!"
A second assassin stepped in and drove a dagger through Fujimori's lung. The same silent slaughter was happening all across the estate. The guards were being systematically eliminated by an unknown force.
"What the hell is this?!"
"It's an ambush! Protect the boss—!"
"Form ranks, you idiots! Stay alert!"
The Katsuyama-gumi soldiers raised their weapons and met the mysterious assailants head-on. A few assassins fell to random gunfire, but the rest never slowed. They moved like shadows in the confined spaces, carving through the defenders with blades or silenced pistols. Their movements were eerily reminiscent of ninjas.
Once every guard outside had been neutralized, one of the assassins keyed his radio.
"Control room?"
"Secured. Communications are cut."
Inside the control room, corpses riddled with bullet holes and knife wounds lay piled around the intruders. The man who appeared to be their leader asked the others.
"How many left?"
"Roughly twenty."
"That's more than enough. Move."
The assassins pushed deeper into the villa, clashing with remaining defenders in the narrow corridors. After a brutal running battle, several of them finally reached Junichi's private quarters. Having eliminated most of the interior guards, they moved in silence, carefully opening the door with silenced pistols raised.
The room appeared empty. (What is this? Where is everyone? Where did he go?)
From the shadowed space directly above the doorway, Junichi dropped silently behind them. The assassins sensed the presence too late. Junichi drew a knife with a blade over twenty centimeters long and began butchering them. A few tried to fight back with their own blades or pistols, but he snatched one man as a human shield, used the body to absorb incoming fire, and closed in on the nearest gunman. He drove his knife into the man's stomach repeatedly, then shoved the corpse into the others. Whenever another gun appeared, Junichi closed the distance in a blink, severing wrists, slashing arms, or opening abdomens.
Within moments every gunman was down. Only the blade wielders remained.
"Still amateurs. Guns are not toys to be used at this range..."
Junichi flipped his blood-slicked knife into a reverse grip and asked calmly.
"Who sent you? The remnants of Yamazaki? Or those Okudakai dogs?"
The assassins answered by attacking. Junichi evaded the first strike, deflected a second with his empty hand, then opened the attacker's chest and buried the blade between his ribs. When the others tried to exploit the moment, he twisted the knife free, slipped their counterattacks, and carved through the openings they inadvertently offered. To an ordinary person those openings would have been nearly impossible to spot. To Junichi—who had spent twenty-six years killing in every conceivable way—they were glaring invitations.
Watching the boss slaughter his subordinates without allowing even a single hit, Shunji broke into a cold sweat. He couldn't even bring himself to charge.
(This is insane... How can a man in his mid-forties be this strong?!)
Junichi's reputation as Japan's greatest killer—Kageki, the Shadow Demon—had not faded in the slightest. In the span of a few heartbeats every assassin except Shunji lay dead. Junichi wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand and stared at the lone survivor.
"Be honest. Who sent you?"
"Fuck you!" Shunji screamed, charging with his knife raised. Junichi sidestepped, deflected the knife hand, and thrust at the man's abdomen. Shunji reversed his own grip and tried to bat the attack aside. At the last possible instant, Junichi froze his thrust.
(He stopped cold...? Moving at that speed and halting so suddenly should tear his own muscles apart...?!)
Junichi took one light step backward, reversed his grip again, lowered his stance, and closed in. His knife flashed toward Shunji's thigh and severed the femoral artery in a single clean cut. He batted aside Shunji's desperate final swing and drove the blade straight through the man's heart. The entire sequence took less than three seconds.
(Impossible... How can any human move like that...?!)
Shunji died with shock frozen on his face. When Junichi withdrew the blade, the corpse collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Having slain roughly twenty assassins single-handedly with nothing but a knife, Junichi surveyed the carnage. One man was still barely alive. Their eyes met. The assassin began frantically moving his lips. Junichi lunged forward, pried his mouth open, and discovered a capsule hidden inside.
(Suicide pill. Not today.)
He knocked the assassin unconscious with a precise strike to the neck, then rose and tried to use his phone. No signal. The assassins had jammed all communications.
(Clever... They've cut us off completely.)
He pocketed the useless device and stared down at the unconscious prisoner.
(For now... I will interrogate him right here and extract every piece of information he possesses.)