-Kiggiggiggiggigg!
It was an ear-splitting, mind-blowing sound. It was the sound of a moving train screeching to a halt and grinding against the tracks.
Shouts and curses erupted from all sides as people's bodies were thrown forward by the immense inertia.
"Holy shit, what the hell!"
"Get up!"
North Blinders mobsters slammed their heads into the front seats or slumped forward.
In the midst of the chaos, only Osian remained glued to his chair, as if defying the laws of physics.
When the train came to a complete stop and the commotion subsided, the mobsters moved in unison to assess the situation.
"Head count!"
"It's not an outside raid! There's no follow-up attack!""I hope no assholes got hurt in this!"
They quickly shook off their confusion, as if they weren't a unified organization for nothing.
Osian realized what had just happened.
‘They didn't attack the train directly, but the tracks.’
The train stopped with an explosion, indicating that someone had sabotaged the tracks.
Luckily, the train hadn't been derailed, but it was a big deal that it had stopped running.
At this rate, we're not going to make it to our destination city.
-Boom!
Just then, a roaring sound echoed from outside, it was the noise of scorched air colliding with the atmosphere.
All eyes turned to the translucent windows.
"Kaho!"
"Goodbye! Idiots!"
Screaming and speeding past outside were the bikers we'd seen before boarding the train.
Colorful hair, tattoos, leather, and funky style, they were the junkyard bikers of the late 40s districts.
‘What the hell is that?’
Osian stared at their machines in wonder.
It was a peculiarly designed motorcycle that looked like it had been lifted straight from a giant squirrel's wheel.
It was a mono-wheeled bike, with the rider stationary and only one large wheel spinning rapidly.
Boom!
The monowheel bikes spewed black smoke from the exhaust pipes sticking out the sides.
A dozen or so bikes, each with two riders, roared past the stopped train, mocking the bikers.
"You fucking junkyard bastards!"
"You plan ahead and destroy the tracks?"
The bikers had prepared their bikes as if they knew this was going to happen.
It was obvious who was responsible for the explosion.
‘I wondered why they all rode so close to the carriages. Did they plan for this?’
Before boarding the train, Osian recalled that the bikers had loaded something piled into a large cloth into the luggage compartment.
Apparently, it was the monowheel bikes they were riding now.
It was clear that they were preparing themselves for the ride and leaving everyone else stranded in this remote location.
Just then, the door to the first carriage opened and in walked Balud, dressed in a white suit.
"Brother, we're in trouble!"
"Didn't I tell you to call me Mr. Director outside?"
Balud shot him a sharp look of displeasure, and the gang member, realizing his mistake, apologized hastily.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Director!"
"What is the situation?"
"The scrapheap bastards destroyed the railroad tracks and left first. They even took the monowheel with them, so I guess they're pretty determined."
"Tsk. Since they can't fight us outright, they're going to try a trick."
It was a bad situation, but there was only a hint of irritation in Balud's voice.
‘What do you have?’
Just in time, Balud snapped his fingers and gave his men instructions.
"Bring out what you have prepared."
"Yes!"
Balud's men quickly exited the train.
Osian couldn't stand to be stuck on the stationary train, so he too stepped outside and saw an interesting sight.
Balud’s men made their way to the front of the train, to the first class car, and in unison, they pushed aside one wall.
The wall of the first carriage slid open with the ease of a sliding door, revealing its contents.
‘Vehicles?’
It wasn't just any vehicle, but a large military jeep that could seat several men.
There were four such vehicles, two in each of the first class compartments.
It was unbelievable that they secretly put a car in the first class compartment, which costs a lot of money for just one person.
I couldn't believe it when I saw it.
I wondered if they had prepared for this kind of situation from the beginning.
Usually, the first-class carriage is where valuable guests ride, so it is built quite strongly in case of an attack from the outside.
Naturally, that kind of strength doesn't make it easy to open the outer wall.
'They've modified the front of the train itself.’
At least as far as Osian knows, Tirna's trains are maintained by the 'Railroad Management Committee'.
The Railroad Management Board was a city-sanctioned public agency in name only.
To have a train in their charge modified, especially a first-class carriage for valuable guests, was probably the result of a lot of lobbying.
Tirna was the City of Gold, and there were few things that didn't cost money.
'To even prepare something like that means they vaguely expected things to turn out like this.’
At that moment, three shadows swept across the sky above Osian's head.
A gale of artificial wind followed in their wake.
‘Mages.’
One of the three mages generated wind and flew through the air like a bird.
At that rate, they'll reach their destination soon enough.
‘They're all moving in their own ways.’
Osian realized that the people involved in this were not like the city fixers he had seen before.
Just look at what the scrap yard bikers had done now.
They destroyed the tracks.
If there weren't other gang members on the train, they would have destroyed it.
"Let's go!"
"Let's catch up to those junkyard bastards!"
By this time, Balud's men had finished boarding the cars, and with a roar of engines, they were off.
Less than five minutes had passed before the train was stopped by the destruction of the railroad.
The sight struck Osian with a new realization.
To do anything in the city of Tirna, one must be prepared at all times.
'I see,' he thought, 'I've been solving everything with force.’
Indeed, fixers are a profession that relies heavily on force.
Osian's physical prowess and knightly prowess were a gift in this industry but there were moments when brute force was not enough.
Like now, when he was unintentionally stranded far from the city.
Now he understood why Ronan had had such a strange reaction when he'd entrusted him with this assignment.
‘I've still got a long way to go.’
Osian shook his head.
What's done is done, so he decided not to beat himself up too much for his complacency.
The important thing is not to make the same mistake next time. What he needed to do now was figure out how to get out of this situation.
'It's been a while since I've been out of the city, and if I stopped here, it means I'm halfway to my destination.’
He’s in the middle of nowhere with not a lot of traffic around.
It's an awkward place to go on, but it's also an awkward place to go back to Tirna.
Maybe that's what they were aiming for.
One by one, the people in the second carriage began to come out and assess the situation.
They looked at the broken tracks with serious faces and discussed.
"What are we going to do? At this rate, we're practically stuck here."
"It'll take the city half a day to send someone out and it'll take days to fix it."
"What if we could somehow move the front of the locomotive to the tracks beyond?"
Even though they were competitors, they didn't mind sharing their ideas in this situation.
The only possibility was to move the locomotive's header separately.
With an enhanced human, it wasn't out of the question.
"Hey, why don't you join us? Don't you think we should hold hands?"
One of the glazed-eyed fixers asked as he approached Osian.
"No. Never mind. I'll walk."
"Uh, uh, okay."
The attitude was so determined, the fixer found himself nodding.
He glanced at Osian's outfit.
It didn't seem like it would help much to join them anyway.
‘Walking on foot is one thing, but a sword at your waist, a sword.’
What's wrong with his head?
With that thought, he started to back away, but decided it was better not to encourage him one more time, so he turned around.
It bothered him that his senses were strangely focused on Osian.
"......What the hell, where did he go?"
There was no sign of Osian, who had been pacing around a moment ago.
In the brief time he'd been distracted, he'd disappeared.
Did I see something?
The man's face turned pale, as if he had seen a ghost.
*
Several cars raced along the railroad tracks and over the long plain.
"Mr. Director, I see the junkyard bastards over there!"
The mono-wheeled bikes of the bikers leading the pack were close enough to be seen with the naked eye.
They were fast, sure, but nothing compared to the jeeps the North Blinders had prepared.
The steam from their vehicles was pure white, it was the evaporating ether water that fueled their vehicles.
The monowheel bike's exhaust, on the other hand, was breathtakingly black, which meant incomplete combustion.
It was the result of using a low-grade fuel that contained a small amount of ether water mixed with various reagents.
Naturally, such fuel was not suitable for long-distance travel.
"Mr. Director. What do we do?"
The member of the organization sitting in the passenger seat turned around and asked.
Balud, who had the back seat of the lead vehicle to himself, crossed his arms and said sternly.
"Show them what happens if you cross us."
The gang members chuckled and stomped on the accelerator.
The distance between the two organizations quickly closed, and the lead car caught up to the monowheel bike in the rear.
-Boom!
The jeep slammed into the back of the monowheel bike.
The off-balance bike swayed precariously, then tipped over onto its side and bounced away.
The same fate befell the bikers on board.
"Those bastards are already following us!"
"Pull out what you got!"
The bikers on the scrap heap were not to be outdone.
Some picked up bombs and threw them, while others pulled out guns and shot at the wheels of the vehicles.
But the specially modified Jeep didn't even flinch when the bombs exploded.
It was specially built for the military and was practically armored.
The North Blinders fired back.
A member stuck his head through an opening in the jeep's ceiling and fired a Tommy gun.
There was a popping sound, sparks flew, and the closing monowheel bikes scattered like a swarm of dragonflies.
The bikers changed tactics.
Switching to weaving in and out of traffic, using the mobility of the monowheel bikes, they waited like ghosts to attack, keeping their distance but if they saw an opening, they'd close in and shoot.
"Those bastards."
The bikers shouted all sorts of taunts and insults at the jeep.
Even in a criminal organization, there's supposed to be a sense of decorum, but they had none.
It was low class.
Seeing this, one of the Blinders loaded a magazine into his Tommy gun.
He rolled his eyes, ready to give them the gift of bullets as they approached, when something surprising lit up in the corner of his vision.
"What."
It was a human.
It was definitely a human, running on two legs across the ground.
It was definitely a person, running on two legs, and what seemed like a long way away was getting closer by the second.
Then it was gone, speeding past a jeep and a mono-wheel bike.
"Was I dreaming?"
He asked himself, feeling dizzy.
The sight was too unreal for his rational mind to comprehend.
A human catching up to a speeding car on two legs? How could that be possible?
But it wasn't a dream.
The faces of the bikers were also filled with astonishment, as if they had seen something unbelievable and the gunshots that were continuously exchanged as if to keep each other in check stopped for a while.