Ch.99. Punk City and the Human Boy

After the incident with Jimmy’s possession, daily life returned to the orphanage.

Amon and Sonia took on the roles of big brother and sister, looking after the younger children as they all waited for Christmas.

Having already forgotten about the gifts they received on Black Friday, the children eagerly anticipated what presents might appear at their bedsides.

Except for Jimmy’s strange seizures whenever he saw a Bible, it was truly a peaceful orphanage scene.

In this peaceful routine, Amon and Sonia headed to the now-familiar fencing academy.

It had been two weeks since they started classes at the instructor’s recommendation.

They were already fully accepted as students at the academy.

Of course, there had been some friction.

Some students were jealous that orphans were receiving free lessons directly from the master instructor.

But as with most combat-oriented martial arts schools, grievances were mostly resolved in the ring.

After getting beaten until they were in tatters, the other students had no choice but to acknowledge Amon and Sonia.

Before they knew it, they had become the academy’s talented and adorable youngest members.

These youngest members arrived at the academy after an hour’s journey from the orphanage.

“Hello.”

“Oh? You’re here. Go change your clothes.”

That day, like any other, the fencing lesson began.

According to the instructor on their first day, Amon and Sonia each needed different training.

In the instructor’s analysis, Sonia relied too much on intuition and reflexes.

This was a common phenomenon among intuitive prodigies, and could be compensated for with psychological tactics and fundamentals.

In contrast, Amon was clearly unusual even to the instructor.

“Why do you have such scattered techniques?”

He had certain techniques without their foundational basics, and sometimes completely unrelated school techniques would suddenly appear.

To describe Amon’s swordsmanship, it was like he had taken appealing parts from various schools and pieced them together without any harmony.

Put differently, it was as if he had learned various techniques from SNS or books and was perfectly executing them.

Yet despite this, he had partially internalized countermeasures against each school, making it hard to define his style.

It was like his techniques were patched together like rags.

Most instructors would have called this a bad habit, erased everything, and imposed their own style.

But this instructor was different.

He saw this as Amon’s individuality and strength, and didn’t try to correct it.

“The reason you’re a patchwork is because you haven’t learned the techniques systematically. If I teach you in a systematic order, you’ll become an all-rounder.”

Accordingly, Amon’s training involved the instructor showing him a technique and then systematically teaching all its forms for memorization.

He also had Amon learn variations through sparring to increase his adaptability.

The instructor’s method suited Amon quite well.

‘I thought he would impose a specific school.’

The instructor had studied various schools in Japan and even won championships in China.

So Amon naturally expected to be taught a specific school’s style, but that wasn’t the case at all.

When Amon brought up the topic of schools, the instructor reacted with disgust:

“What? Schools? That kills your individuality. I absolutely won’t teach that.”

Far from teaching a school, he discouraged it.

Saying that formalized styles were poison to geniuses, the instructor didn’t teach the two any standardized swordsmanship.

This was due to his educational philosophy.

– [Flaws need to be fixed. Weaknesses are things you must carry with you.]

According to his philosophy, weaknesses were unavoidable side effects of strengths.

It’s best if you can compensate for them, but you shouldn’t forcibly try to fix them at the cost of your strengths.

‘You can’t do everything alone in this world anyway. A swordsman should be content with their own capacity and leave weaknesses to companions. If you try to cover all weaknesses, you end up being neither here nor there.’

He preferred maximizing strengths overwhelmingly rather than compensating for weaknesses.

His educational philosophy aligned perfectly with Amon’s play style.

As a result, Amon sincerely trusted and followed the instructor.

The instructor, seeing Amon grow day by day, gave everything he had to teach him.

One who wants to nurture and one who wants to grow.

The synergy between these two was remarkable.

“Winner! Amon!”

Amon’s sword stopped just before the assistant instructor’s vital point.

This was an achievement made just a month after picking up a sword.

In pure technical sparring where lethal techniques and physical enhancement were prohibited.

While there were still many opponents he couldn’t beat in no-rules sword duels with enhancements and physical abilities, in pure technical matches, the only person Amon couldn’t defeat in this academy was the instructor.

This amazing achievement was accomplished in just one month.

At this point, even Amon had to admit it.

He had talent for swordsmanship.

Only then did he add a check mark to the swordsmanship section of his talent list and reviewed his skill tree again.

Sword and disguise.

It was clearly an assassination-specialized skill tree.

As he was nodding his head, concretizing his career path, someone approached him from behind.

“Congratulations!”

Sonia hugged him from behind.

Amon almost fell forward but reflexively caught himself and supported her weight.

He tapped on the arm around his neck, and Sonia’s arms loosened.

Amon said with a wry smile:

“I’m really sweaty.”

“It’s okay. I’m sweaty too.”

Is that even a proper response?

Amon was about to retort but decided to accept her nonsense without complaint, being the more mature one.

Eventually, they washed off their sweat in the academy’s shower room and left.

As always, on the way back to the orphanage.

The city was bustling with the approaching Christmas.

In this situation, they could easily get separated in the crowd.

Although they were grown teenagers who could find their way back to the orphanage, they stayed together to prevent any unfortunate incidents.

Amon and Sonia’s hands naturally intertwined.

Looking at the crowd, Sonia exclaimed:

“There are so many people.”

“Don’t let go of my hand and stay close.”

“Okay…”

At Amon’s words, Sonia shyly pressed against him.

They pushed through the crowd toward the bus stop.

The path to the bus stop was so familiar that they didn’t get confused even in the dense crowd.

But when they were just one corner away from the stop, something unexpected happened.

“Linia!!! Linia!!!! Daddy is sorry!”

A loud male voice came from the direction of the bus stop on the other side of the corner.

Most people turned curious gazes toward the source of the voice.

But not Amon.

From his multiple experiences in Punk City, he knew that people shouting in the middle of the street always triggered random events.

And 99 percent of those random events were not good.

‘Yikes!’

Sensing danger, Amon pulled Sonia to the inside of the corner for cover.

Sure enough, gunfire erupted from beyond the corner where the shouting had come from.

Rat-tat-tat!

Aaaah!

A hellish scene unfolded with screams, cries, and death throes mixed together.

Amon assessed the situation with almost reflexive speed.

‘He’s insane.’

This was a statement with multiple meanings.

The gunman, this situation, and this world.

Everything had gone mad.

Amon knew the term for such madmen and their causes, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on that.

While people around them still hadn’t grasped what was happening on the other side of the corner, Amon grabbed Sonia’s hand and pulled her.

‘I thought they said this year would be a white Christmas.’

From Amon’s perspective, this street was heading for a red Christmas.

He didn’t go far, instead diving into a clothing store right next to them.

Sonia was pulled into the store by Amon’s hand.

“Excuse us, sir!”

An elderly man welcomed them.

Judging by his facial features, he appeared to be Asian.

If the situation had been better, Amon might have asked “Do you know kimchi?” but he had no time.

The old man seemed either hard of hearing or too old to grasp the situation.

Amon quickly explained the situation and retreated with him to the back of the store.

To avoid the possibility of stray bullets or ricochets, they headed to an attic room deeper inside the building instead of staying in the store.

While entering the back with the store owner, Amon asked the old man:

“Is there a back door?”

“Sorry, son. The building owner built a container extension over the back door.”

“Great.”

Amon could only click his tongue at the building owner’s disregard for building codes.

But going back outside now that the shooting had started would be insane.

With no choice, the three hid in the attic that served as a fabric storage room.

Surrounded by numerous fabrics and clothes, Sonia questioned Amon:

“Wouldn’t it be better to run away?”

“No. This is our best option right now.”

Fleeing in that crowd would be quite a gamble.

There was a significant chance of being trampled to death, and movement speed wouldn’t be very fast.

And a crazed shooter doesn’t discriminate between targets.

He would probably mow down everyone near the bus stop first, then start on people who were just a corner away.

And there was a high probability that Amon and Sonia would be among those victims.

Amon didn’t explain this in detail to Sonia.

He simply embraced her, cradling her head to reassure her.

The store owner watching them cleared his throat awkwardly and looked away.

Then he muttered in a barely audible voice:

“Good times.”

***

Meanwhile, a few seconds after Amon fled into the store.

People began to flee in panic.

The disorderly escape of so many people inevitably led to accidents.

A hellish scene unfolded.

Corpses were everywhere.

It was impossible to distinguish whether they died from trampling, gunshots, or traffic accidents.

As Amon had predicted, most people who tried to flee openly were killed.

Most people within a block of the bus stop when the shooting started were dead, and about half of those who were a corner away also died.

Even people beyond the gunman’s range died for various reasons.

But that doesn’t mean Amon’s method was the correct answer.

Even among those who took shelter in nearby buildings, those who acted too slowly or chose poor hiding places became silent corpses.

Amon’s method was merely a choice with a higher survival rate, not the definitive answer.

In this situation, there was only one right answer.

Simply not encountering such a madman in the first place.

“Linia… why won’t you eat the pizza I bought!!”

The perpetrator of this carnage wailed sorrowfully.

He was a man with impressive shaggy hair reminiscent of a gorilla and a massive build.

It was unclear whether he was a beastkin or had received gorilla-related modifications.

But one thing was certain: he had received many cyberware implants and technomagic modifications.

The mechanical parts and magic tattoos, more visible than his flesh, revealed this.

The crazed gorilla-man shed artificial vitreous tears while firing the machine gun connected to his right hand.

On his back, a baby doll was strapped, limply swaying.

The gorilla would cry madly, then suddenly calm down when a “Papa~” sound came from the doll, and he would start stroking it.

Then he would try to feed pizza to the doll, but of course, the doll couldn’t accept it.

This would trigger another rampage.

The gorilla’s rampage-depression-calm cycle repeated for about 5 minutes.

During this time, police who were already on alert for the Christmas season arrived at the scene.

They immediately surrounded the gorilla with police cars and opened fire.

But true to his appearance, the gorilla’s skin didn’t even flinch at the bullets.

With a clear, refreshing “ping!” sound that shouldn’t come from human skin, the bullets ricocheted.

The problem was that these bullets were enough to agitate the gorilla.

“You came to kill Linia! You cop bastards!”

With slurred pronunciation and spitting saliva, the gorilla exploded with rage.

His target shifted from innocent citizens to the police.

Rat-tat-tat!

The machine gun, unavailable in regular civilian markets, spewed fire.

Several police cars were torn apart like paper, and officers taking cover fell to bullets.

Lucky officers who benefited from the combined protection of police cars and bulletproof vests got up.

But officers who were hit directly without cover, hit in areas not protected by vests, or hit in vital spots by ricocheting bullets never rose again.

“Damn it! That’s a military machine gun! Where did he get that?!”

One officer shouted.

But there was no one there who could answer.

The officers’ meager pistols and rifles couldn’t even scratch the gorilla’s body, and they were helplessly swept away like movie extras.

“When will the special forces arrive?!”

“They’re com-“

Splat!

The head of the responding officer flew off.

“Fuck!”

That was all his fellow officer could say.

He wanted to run away.

But this world wasn’t kind to officers who fled.

Such officers faced dishonorable discharge at minimum, and a future where they and their families would be cyberbullied on SNS for life.

It was actually better to meet an honorable death here, as their families would receive national merit benefits and exemptions.

A young man who had worn a police badge for just one month kept cursing while firing from cover.

Since hitting the target was meaningless anyway, he didn’t even aim, just extending his gun.

But that wasn’t a wise choice.

In a situation where they had formed a surrounding formation, indiscriminate firing could lead to friendly fire and might hit unintended targets.

Yes.

For example, the head of the doll on the gorilla’s back.

Splat!

The doll shattered.

Simultaneously, the gorilla’s rampage stopped.

The scene suddenly became quiet.

An officer muttered:

“Is it over?”

Whether it was that comment that caused the problem, or if it was destined to happen anyway, is unclear.

One thing for certain was that the gorilla’s condition was strange.

He began to shed bloody tears.

The red liquid flowing from his eyes turned from artificial vitreous to real blood.

And as the baby that should have been on his back disappeared, his back opened to reveal launchers, plasma cutters, and more.

Waving three pairs of arms that sprouted from his back, the gorilla beat his chest.

“$#^&%@#!!!!”

Watching this, an officer quietly muttered:

“Fuuuuuck.”

Phase two had begun.