“Holy shit! What the hell is that?”
“You said that stuff could put an elephant to sleep!”
It's a special sleeping anesthetic that puts even the toughest guys to sleep.
They had to change their gas masks within 10 minutes or their eyes would water.
In such an extreme environment Osian slowly walked toward the intruders, starlight streaming from his sword.
“Shoot, shoot!”
Someone shouted, fed up with Osian's ferocity.
They immediately pulled out their weapons. It looked like a machine gun, but it was modified to use chemical bombs instead of bullets.
Tut-tut-tut!
Green chemical bombs shot out of the muzzle, targeting every inch of Osian's body.Osian lightly swung the sword in his hand.
The anesthetic that filled the room cracked and shattered with each white trajectory as Emerald-colored liquid splattered everywhere.
Osian stepped over it and kept coming.
“Shoot! Shoot them all!”
The plan to capture them after anesthetizing them had been thwarted by Osian's awakening.
They now had to give it everything they had to survive.
The man in the lead fired his gun to keep Osian at bay but Osian kept up his pace, parrying each bullet with his sword as it flew by.
Some of the bullets even bounced off of him, returning to the shooter and smearing a green substance over his gas mask.
“Jack's been hit!”
“What the hell was that?!”
“Crazy freak, he deflected the bullet!”
“They didn't tell me he was like this!”
“You assholes, shut the fuck up and do something with your time!”
Someone pulled a vial filled with a green drug from his waistband and threw it. It was a poison grenade filled with chemicals.
-Pow!
Green smoke pushed out the anesthetic and spread. Even the people in gas masks had to back away angrily.
That's a dangerous thing that will melt your skin just by touching it. You could tell by the way the corridors and walls of buildings that were immediately in contact with the green smoke were burning.
But in the midst of it all, Osian was unharmed.
His left arm was now equipped with a shield. He swung the shield wildly, and a gust of wind pushed the green smoke back at the intruders.
“Kaaaah!”
“Argh!”
The men in front of him were swallowed whole by the green smoke and writhed in agony in their seats.
But their agony didn't last long. A teammate waiting in the back pulled a syringe from a pouch on his waistband and stuck it into their throats.
The antidote took effect, and they calmed down but the gazes inside the gas masks were filled with fear.
“You just woke up a sleeping man, are you ready to handle it?”
No. We were just trying to get you to sleep deeper.
The gas masked men all wanted to say so, but they couldn't meet Osian's murderous gaze.
He appeared unharmed through the green poisonous smoke, looking less like a man and more like a grim reaper.
“What the hell are you doing, haven't you dealt with this yet?”
Just then, a shout rang out from across the hall. People in gas masks shuddered and moved out of the way left and right.
What appeared with a clattering sound of footsteps was a giant a head taller than Osian.
Unlike the other gas masked men, he was not heavily armed.
He wore nothing but gauntlets on his arms that resembled prosthetic hands.
His face was also not covered by a gas mask, but a mask that only covered the corners of his mouth.
The only difference was that while the others wore purification canisters, he had an ampoule of green liquid attached to the spout of his mask.
‘And what's that?’
There were also clear cylindrical ampoules on each shoulder of the giant's mask, and he was still alive.
The green liquid inside the ampoules sloshed in time with his movements.
“How long has it been, and you still can't do anything? And what are these, the ones we sent to capture, drugged and knocked out?”
“That's because we used medicine on them, but it didn't work.......”
-Pfft!
The gas mask's head exploded under the force of the giant’s gauntlet.
“This is why you shouldn’t leave work to the lowest-ranking punks. If you struggle like this with outsiders, the discipline of the organization will be undermined.”
Despite the death of their comrade, the gas masked men said nothing, only shuddered in horror.
The gaze of the giant turned to Osian.
“A sword in one hand and a shield in the other? Are all the people outside like this? Do you think you can fight with such toys?”
“Toys?”
Ossian's lips twitched at the giant's words.
“As for whether it's a toy or not, let's see, shall we?”
“Haha, I like this little bastard's ambition. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let you off the hook.”
Without another word, Osian pointed his sword at the giant and flicked the tip.
The giant spun both shoulders once, then charged straight at Osian.
***
-Kwao!
The second floor wall of the house Osian and Diolan were staying in collapsed, sending a large shadow crashing down to the street.
It was a huge, masked man.
His once-steel body was covered in bruises.
Osian leapt from the shattered second-story exterior wall.
The street was bathed in neon lights. In the glow, Osian scanned his surroundings.
Around the mansion, on the sidewalks, in the narrow alleys, and near the rooftops of the buildings, stood men similar to the giant.
They all surrounded him, glaring at him.
It was a rough welcome.
“So many guests.”
They didn't react to his words.
The giant had walked in confidently thinking it would be a quick affair, but instead, he had been kicked out as a half corpse.
It was hard for their eyes to comprehend but they had to make a judgment call here.
Surprising the outsiders had failed, and they were better than they thought.
With a crunching sound, they moved in unison and surrounded Osian.
-Chijijizik.
The neon lights flickered, and then the entire area was plunged into blackness, as if a power outage had occurred.
When the light faded, it was replaced by the gangs surrounding Osian.
Purple glow from gang members with purple ampoules embedded in their shoulders or backs.
Green glow from gang members tattooed with special drugs.
The two colors subtly pushed back the darkness and colored the surroundings with their own.
‘Light overwhelms darkness.’
In the darkness of nothingness, the mere presence of those glowing beacons would be psychologically debilitating.
“Ha.”
Ossian, who stood in the center, snorted.
[Starlight Armor] FULL ARMOR
A dazzling brilliance illuminated the surroundings.
“......!”
The explosive spread of light caused the elite soldiers of the gang to stagger back.
Clad in dazzling white armor, Osian looked like a knight carved from the stars.
Considering where the light actually came from, they weren't wrong.
They could feel that Osian was far stronger than they were but those gathered here had also come this far by the skin of their teeth.
The ampoules on their shoulders clinked as they were injected into their bodies.
There was no reason for this group to be intimidated by a tiger.
“Grrrrr!”
“Shut up!”
As the purple drug coursed through their veins, some moaned in pain, others blinked in ecstasy.
Those who had the green drug implanted into their skin and tattooed on their bodies glowed even more intensely from their tattoos.
“So they were all in cahoots from the beginning.”
I'd heard Emerald and Amethyst were supposed to be at odds with each other, but this didn't seem to be the case.
Was Camilla lying, or was there something else going on?
It wouldn't be too late to find out after this fight.
“Come at once.”
The purple and green glowed as they lunged like beasts at white.
*
The neon sign half-swayed, then fell to the ground in a shower of sparks.
The street in front of the mansion was a mess.
The ground was crumbling, the exterior walls of buildings crumbling, some with sharp sword marks.
Green and purple liquids splattered and mingled on the ground, giving off a foul odor.
In the glow of the drug's light, people lined the streets, severely injured and near death.
In the center of all that chaos the white knight stood still, his sword sheathed at his waist.
With a click, the starlight extinguished, and Osian returned to his original form.
“Are you done?”
“What have you been doing all this time, just now showing up?”
Osian asked Diolan in a disgruntled voice as he poked his head out from beyond the broken wall on the second floor.
He had been gone ever since the anesthetic gas had seeped into the room.
“Haha, don't be like that. When something happens, the first thing to do is to get out of the way and take a look, right? I can't usually hit things head-on like you can.”
Come to think of it, that was true.
“So you're done cleaning up?”
“Yeah. they've got a story to tell, so I've kept them alive.”
“Oh, that won't work, will it?”
As Diolan spoke, the gang members Osian had left alive bit the poison between their teeth.
They shuddered, then jerked their heads to the side.
“Those guys, they'd throw their lives away in a situation like this.”
“They're a gang, after all, and yet they're so loyal?”
“Loyal, yes, but more than that, they're filled with evil, which is why they've eaten an area, and it's no laughing matter.”
Because they knew how to throw away their lives, they could become the kings of this area.
“I guess there's no point in saving their lives, now that they're all dead.”
“Still, I'm surprised. I never thought Emerald and Amethyst would join forces.”
“So, we came in asking for help from the enemy? We were betrayed by Camilla.”
“I don't think so.”
Diolan leapt from the second floor and landed beside Osian.
“Camilla says she hates me, but she wouldn't set a trap like this to kill me. If she wanted to shoot me, she'd shoot me. Besides, didn't those guys use tranquilizers to capture us in the first place?”
“You mean they didn't kill us right away, but they wanted to capture us alive so they could check something?”
“Exactly. Besides, there's no way Camilla would have done this on her own, she's not in a position to do so in the organization.”
“I thought you said she was like a caterer.”
“Yes. She's a fixer like us, operating in the 40th district as well as here, just based in Emerald.”
“Whatever it is, we need to find Camilla.”
She hasn't shown up when she should have.
Either she'd fled, or something had happened to her, just like it had to them.
Diolan suspected the latter.
“Trouble is, we hired a guide because we didn't know the way, and now that she's gone, we're on our own.”
It's ironic.
The streets are so crowded that it's hard to recognize what's where.
‘Even if we look around from the roof of the building.’
With irregular building sizes and dimensions compared to the rest of the city, the geography of District 45 is complicated, even from high above.
Perhaps it was because of this geography that the city of Tirna had abandoned it.
“Hmm. That's definitely a problem, I'm not that familiar with the geography here, it changes every few days.”
“I guess we'll just have to split up and look for it.”
“Keep this, just in case.”
Diolan handed Osian a handheld beacon.
It wasn't a scientific device, of course, but more like a whistle.
“If anything happens, blow it as hard as you can.”
“Sure.”
It was better to move separately than together here.
Diolan was not someone who would go around and take a beating.
“I think I'll just wander around the neighborhood, what are you going to do?”
“Me? I have an idea.”
“Oh, what is it?”
Osian told Diolan what he had in mind.
Diolan's expression was a mixture of surprise, admiration, and disbelief.
“...... You're kidding, right?”
“.......”
“Oh, no.”
*
Camilla opened her closed eyes.
The green glow of the Emerald Organization's trademark light shone softly around her.
Before she could process what was happening, the man in front of her spoke.
“Camilla. Why in the world did you do that?”
“What are you talking about?”
Camilla knew who he was talking to by the sound of his voice.
It was Sertus, the boss of the Emerald Organization.
He glared at Camilla, his face covered in tattoos designed to instill fear in his opponents.
“You've brought in an outsider, one with ties to the events outside.”
“Has that reached your ears already? And why is that? Is there a problem?”
“Yes. How dare an outside fixer trespass in our courtyard? That's a big problem.”
“It's just an acquaintance and I’m giving them directions.”
“Hah. Acquaintance? You mean the guy you threatened to kill but apparently not.”
“.......”
“The important thing is this: why did you let them get involved in our business, you know that, do you?”
“That's.......”
Just as Camilla was about to speak, one of his men approached Sertus with news.
“Boss, we're in trouble. The men we sent to the mansion have lost contact.”
“......You mean they're all dead?”
“Yes. I sent someone out just in case, but they say they're all dead.”
Sertus' expression sank heavily.
“I see. They've come this far, so they're confident of their abilities, but they're not going to find us.”
Just then, another of his men came running up.
“Bo, boss, we're in trouble!”
“What is it?”
“Boss, the Central Market! There's a riot in the Central Market!”
“What?”
“Some madman in armor is tearing up the Central Market!”
Sertus' expression changed strangely.
So did Camilla, who had been listening to their conversation.