Ch.204Danger Zone! (2)

#204

Dexter’s group, having arrived at the second entrance, formed a temporary battle formation.

Dexter and Himena, who had no issues with shooting, took the front as the firing squad.

Judy, who received regular shooting training, served as forward support.

Jessie and Emily, who had some shooting practice but were still uncertain, were positioned further back as rear support.

Being a bomb shelter, it was likely built to withstand most bombings, but with concentrated attacks, there was still a possibility it could be breached.

‘Especially if those bastards realize this is a bomb shelter.’

It was unlikely that some lunatics wanting to blow up the sewers would show up with perfect timing, so there was only one group that would come prepared with weapons knowing there was a bomb shelter here.

‘Obviously it’s the Boss.’

They were incredibly persistent.

Dexter wanted to ask Olivia, if he ever saw her face to face, why she couldn’t leave Howard Hughes’ legacy alone even after his death.

“Dexy, the crack is getting bigger.”

Himena, who was hiding behind cover and watching the second entrance, said.

As she pointed out, the crack near the entrance was growing larger, and it seemed like it wouldn’t hold if there were three or four more explosions like the current one.

“When it bursts, attack the moment they enter.”

Fortunately, bringing weapons with firepower in case something happened had been a good choice.

Dexter was still unaware of the modified hand cannon’s power and wondered how effective it would be.

After some time passed.

Looking at the entrance whose durability had dropped to a precarious level, Dexter switched the adjustment lever on his modified hand cannon.

Then, taking a slow breath in and out, he aimed at the area around the entrance.

-BOOM!

With a loud explosion, the entrance that couldn’t withstand the bombing was destroyed, and amid the explosion, conversations could be heard.

“Are you sure those bastards are here?”

“I’m telling you, yes. The receiver we installed shows traces of people entering and stopping in this area, and beyond this is empty space.”

A gang member with a cunning voice was talking with the man who seemed to be the second-in-command of this gang operation.

“Do you know how many explosives we’ve used? If they’re not here, I’ll break your back in half.”

They were talking so loudly that even Himena, hiding behind cover, could hear them. She exchanged glances with Dexter.

‘Should we attack now?’

Dexter slightly emerged from cover, aimed at the gang member at the front, and nodded.

As Dexter pulled the trigger, a blue beam shot straight forward from the modified hand cannon.

The blue beam hit the man standing at the front directly, and he noticed something bright flying toward his stomach.

And that was the man’s last memory.

The man hit by the modified hand cannon’s beam glowed blue all over, then disappeared with a ‘poof’ sound.

All that remained was a pile of blue ash, seemingly the only trace of the man.

When the man vanished in less than a few seconds, another gang member nearby looked around and met the same fate after being hit by Himena’s hand cannon.

Dexter examined the ammunition part of his modified hand cannon.

‘Capacity per shot?’

Out of 30 total gauge marks, only 2 marks worth of liquid had been consumed.

‘So I can fire fourteen shots?’

The current problem was that they didn’t know how many enemies there were.

As Dexter and Himena shot down gang members as they entered the corridor, the gang members stopped coming inside.

“What the hell!”

“Where did those bastards go!”

“Juan! Jose! Jorge!”

The gang members desperately called out names, but those who had already been reduced to dust couldn’t answer.

The opponents must have realized what kind of weapons they were facing by now.

The real fight was just beginning.

“Himena.”

Dexter called Himena in a very low voice.

“They might try to block our vision. Be careful.”

Himena nodded in response to Dexter’s warning.

Dexter guessed they would try to block their line of sight to halt their attacks, then use that opportunity to enter and attack.

-Ping!

Soon, as Dexter had predicted, a military green cylindrical object was thrown into the corridor.

‘Smoke grenade!’

It wasn’t homemade but a standard-issue smoke grenade used by the US military.

Dexter, who had seen the gang members’ attire, couldn’t understand how a Latin American gang was using standard-issue US military smoke grenades.

Before his vision became more obscured, Dexter pointed to Judy behind him, indicating the jetpack she was carrying.

‘Bring the jetpack over here!’

Not understanding why, Judy quickly ran over with the jetpack. Dexter pressed the panel on the side of the jetpack to switch it to manual operation.

Then, before the smoke from the grenade filled the area, he used the airflow from the jetpack’s engine exhaust to blow away the smoke.

‘In a confined space like this, smoke could suffocate us.’

Although there was a ventilation system in the bomb shelter, there was almost none in the corridor, so using the jetpack to blow the smoke away was the best option.

As the smoke was blown outside instead of accumulating inside, one confused gang member tried to enter to assess the situation but was hit by Himena’s hand cannon and turned to dust.

Unable to enter and continuously losing men, a rough-looking man shouted from outside the corridor.

“Throw grenades now! And call for reinforcements! Hurry!”

The rough-looking man couldn’t help but wonder what was happening.

Not only were they losing men as soon as they were deployed, but seeing his gang members turn into piles of blue ash from weapons he’d never seen before was unbelievable.

‘I didn’t expect this kind of fight, damn it!’

The rough-looking man had been told by the Boss’s secretary that they didn’t need to deal with all the government agents, just one man and several women. It should have been easy.

But instead of an easy victory like cutting cake, they were being thoroughly defeated, which made his blood boil.

Soon, gang members threw grenades into the corridor, and Himena and Dexter retreated to avoid the blast radius.

-BOOM!

Himena gulped as she saw the cover she had been hiding behind partially destroyed.

A few seconds after the grenade exploded, when no blue beams were fired despite gang members entering the corridor, several of them came in.

The gang members’ shooting posture was amateurish at best, but as is often the case with guns, there’s nothing more shameful than dying from a blind bullet.

Dexter, who felt bullets grazing over his helmet despite being behind cover, mouthed to Himena as soon as he heard the gang members reloading.

‘Magazine change! Quickly, before they form a firing line!’

For suppressive fire, a pistol was better than a hand cannon, so Himena drew the pistol from her waist and shot one of the gang members in the leg.

“Argh!”

As one fell and attention was diverted that way, Dexter quickly fired his hand cannon.

The downside of the modified hand cannon was its poor rate of fire, and despite backup from Himena, Jessie, Emily, and Judy with their hand cannons, gang members kept pouring in.

‘How many are there?’

It seemed like reinforcements were continuously arriving.

In a desperate situation, Himena took out a pulse grenade from her tactical vest and threw it, taking down some gang members, but it wasn’t enough.

‘I didn’t expect such a large-scale battle.’

They needed to do something with the high-powered plasma blaster, their personal armament.

-Ratatatatat, ratatat!

As bullets rained over their heads again, Dexter, who was handling the blaster in his pocket, signaled everyone including Himena to cease fire.

When he suddenly ordered them to stop firing, Himena looked at Dexter with a confused expression, lowering her gun barrel.

“Why?!”

Seeing Himena’s urgent look, Dexter assembled the blaster from his pocket and said.

“Don’t follow me.”

Seeing Dexter’s serious expression and his face turning red, Himena tried to stop him.

“What? Wait, Dexter! What are you trying to do!”

Dexter’s face turning red at times like this wasn’t simply because he was angry.

‘Nanobots’ adrenaline secretion!’

When Dexter decided to engage in combat, the nanobots helped stimulate hormones suitable for battle situations.

When Dexter’s group stopped firing, the gang members who had been randomly shooting to form a firing line also stopped and tried to assess the situation.

“Did we get them all?”

One of the gang members at the front snickered, but another, still suspicious, shook his head and said.

“No, we didn’t hear any screams.”

“They must have been drowned out by the gunfire.”

“What’s happening up front that made them stop shooting!”

“I think those bastards are all down now!”

The gang members were so careless that their giggling voices could be heard.

Dexter rolled out from behind cover, fired his high-powered blaster forward, and simultaneously fired his hand cannon tucked at his side with his left hand.

The gang members at the front, caught off guard by Dexter’s sudden appearance, either turned to ash or had parts of their upper bodies blown away by the high-powered blaster, collapsing immediately.

Unlike the modified hand cannon, the high-powered blaster left behind corpses with a pungent smell of burning flesh, creating a gruesome scene that made the gang members hesitate to fire and try to retreat.

-Bang!

The rough-looking man, who shot a bullet through the temple of a gang member visibly retreating, looked at Dexter in a crouched position with a flushed face.

“If you don’t catch that bastard, you’ll die! Get him now!”

With those words, the rough-looking man began firing his rifle at Dexter.

“He’s just a human, a human! He’ll die if he gets shot, just like anyone else!”

Encouraged by the rough-looking man’s words, the gang members reloaded and prepared to fire again, but Dexter fired his blaster and hand cannon once more.

With hot blood coursing through his body and adrenaline seeping into every part, Dexter was momentarily consumed by such a strong impulse that he forgot what he was doing and who was behind him.

Himena knew this aspect of Dexter’s nature, but Jessie, Emily, and Judy felt fear watching Dexter eliminate gang members without regard for the bullets raining down like a storm.

The kind and humorous demeanor he had shown them seemed fake as dozens of gang members turned into piles of corpses in less than a few minutes.

“…Is that really Dexter in front of us?”

“…He’s insane…”

The women, who had initially thought they needed to take care of Dexter, completely changed their minds today.

The rough-looking man, finding himself the only survivor after all his subordinates had been taken down—as if deliberately spared—looked with panicked eyes at Dexter slowly walking toward him. He tried to shoot his rifle, but when nothing happened despite pulling the trigger, he panicked.

“W-why isn’t it…”

“Because it’s empty, idiot.”

Dexter drew a pistol from his holster and shot the rough-looking man in the leg.

“Argh!”

“Where’s the Boss?”

“I-I don’t know. I just… follow what the secretary tells me…”

-Bang!

“Aaaah!”

“Then tell me where the secretary is.”

Despite his face turning red with veins bulging on his forehead, Dexter’s voice was surprisingly calm.

The rough-looking man, overwhelmed by both the pain in both legs and the look in Dexter’s eyes, lost all will to fight and spoke.

“D-definitely at our gang’s hideout…”

“Tell me the address.”

“Well…”

Every time the rough-looking man hesitated even slightly, Dexter unhesitatingly used his pistol.

-Bang!

With his left arm now shot as well, the rough-looking man, tears welling in his eyes, stammered out the address. Dexter then looked back and said.

“Himena.”

“Y-yes?”

“Tell the OSA rapid response team and all available personnel to guard this place. You and the rest stay here too.”

“Are you saying you’re going to leave us here and go after that secretary guy?”

“I’m not joking, Himena.”

Dexter, still heavily influenced by adrenaline, spoke briefly.

“I’m not telling you not to come because you’d be a hindrance in combat, but because I don’t want to lose you.”

After checking the remaining rounds in his pistol magazine, Dexter looked at all four women and said.

“I can’t lose any more.”

At Dexter’s words, Jessie was the first to approach and hug him.

“You jerk. Would it kill you to say it more nicely?”

Soon after, Himena, Judy, and Emily also hugged Dexter.

“If you come back injured, be prepared to die.”

“If it’s dangerous, just run away, please. Understand?”

“……”

Unlike Jessie and Judy who each had something sharp to say or expressed concern, Emily, the only one who didn’t say anything, just hid her face near Dexter’s side and remained still.

Expecting a sharp remark from her but receiving only a hug with no words, Dexter gently pushed Emily’s forehead to check her expression.

‘Is she crying?’

Emily, who rarely showed emotional changes, was crying silently.

Dexter said nothing and just patted Emily’s back, and the others remained silent as well.