Just as Putato let out a quiet sigh of relief and dropped to the ground, planning to slip around to the right, he suddenly heard approaching footsteps and an impatient bark.
"Executioner! Why aren't you answering?!"
Phuket's steady voice stood right around the corner of the container. His shadow stretched long, casting over Putato, who was holding his breath on the left. Yet, Phuket didn't take that final step forward, making Putato's nerves tense up as he suspected he'd somehow been compromised.
"Executive Gandao, the incident code has changed to 2-0. Though, I'm guessing it's just another one of the Thumb's lackeys playing games again."
BOOM!
A terrifying right hook directly pulverized the sheet metal of the shipping container, violently lunging straight toward Putato, who was calculating his repositioning. Phuket broke into a savage grin. "Found you. Backup, now!"
Without panicking in the slightest, Putato drew his Spiral Spear and thrust it forward, forcefully beating back the judge's ferocious momentum head-on. He couldn't help but marvel at Void Fist's battle awareness. Dropping any pretense of stealth, Putato stepped forward, his brutally heavy, over-weighted weapon instantly piercing through the air with a shriek.
RIP!
Even though Phuket only grazed it with his right flank, the sheer kinetic force knocked the man flat onto his back. Looking down, he saw that the skin where the weapon had grazed was already rapidly rotting away, sending a jolt of panic through him.
"Executive Gandao, quick!" Before Phuket could finish, he lurched forward and coughed up a massive mouthful of blood, staining his chest medals crimson. Without a second thought, he flipped around and bolted, leaving Putato staring in absolute bewilderment at the sudden retreat.
Wait, don't these guys have a strict "no deserters" policy? Plus, running away right after launching the opening attack?!
BANG!
Just as Putato wanted to give chase, he suddenly threw himself backward to dodge gunfire raining down from above. Glancing up, he spotted a sniper in the watchtower locking onto him. Ignoring it, he dashed forward and slid behind a shipping container, immediately closing in on the back of the fleeing Phuket.
THUD!
With a merciless swing of his spear, Phuket's waist and legs were blown completely apart into a spray of blood and gore. Only his upper torso remained intact, tumbling out from the shadows of the container amidst a froth of blood. His eyes bulged wide in pure terror as he spotted two squads rushing over. Using his dying breath, he choked out, "By the authority of Judge Phuket, I order you to execute your duty and eliminate the enemy."
TRAMP, TRAMP.
Without a single shred of hesitation, three advancing executioners trampled his head straight into mush. The medals plastered across the chests of the two squads, who had now completely surrounded Putato from the left and right, instantly flared with a blinding crimson light, radiating an eerie, suffocating pressure that even Putato could physically feel bearing down on him.
"Glory to the Men!"
Those medals pulsed like beating hearts, and purplish veins crawled across their chests like parasitic, inhuman monsters, making the executioners' veins bulge violently while faint wisps of dead aura evaporated from their skin.
The six-man squad operated in perfect synchronization, instantly clashing in a fierce, chaotic brawl with Putato. He could clearly feel that the medals on their chests were absurdly durable; even when grazed by the keen edge of his spear, they only left behind jagged, torn gashes.
"Death to the Heretic!"
WHOOSH!
Sensing an iron fist tearing through the air straight toward the back of his head, Putato instinctively tried to duck away, when suddenly, a suffocating, tangible pressure bore down on him from all directions. Waves of primal fear and an overwhelming urge to submit sprouted deep within his heart, rapidly growing until they completely choked off all his mobility.
The entire world plunged into darkness. The omnipresent air curdled into a heavy, suffocating abyss of deep-sea currents.
It was the kind of colossal, primordial terror one only ever feels in nightmares, an otherworldly anomaly surpassing even The City's own calamities, looming directly overhead and undulating slowly. Compared to worshiping that thing, anything in reality or dreams felt utterly absurd and meaningless.
And the fists of that shadow Leviathan were radiating out into the Void Fist members around him, draining away any lingering will to fight back.
"Stop playing god with me! Even if something fell from the starry sky, I'd still butcher it!"
Roaring in sheer defiance, Putato yanked out his Crusher and threw his entire body weight into a brutal, sweeping backhand slash. Suddenly, a strange, potent surge of energy flooded through the grip and coursed through his veins, blasting away well over half of the paralyzing fear.
Gladiator Exoskeleton, engage!
THUD!
Far more direct and brutal than any authority suppression, the terrifying, roaring chainsaw teeth ground effortlessly through the skin, flesh, and ribcages at the executioners' waists. Backed by sheer momentum and heavy weight, the Giant Workshop weapon shattered everyone's spines with brute force alone, splattering arterial blood and pulpy pink chunks all over the shipping containers flanking Putato's sides.
The swift, lethal meat-grinder of combat didn't even leave them enough breath to scream, leaving behind nothing more than a sudden squall of blood and gore.
Putato stood frozen, panting heavily as lingering dread still gripped him. That bizarre psychological pressure from just now was genuinely tough to shake off. Even he had nearly slipped into a daze; anyone else without items like Moonlight Stones to ward off mental attacks would probably turn into terrified lizards the second they crossed paths with Void Fist.
"No wonder they can go toe-to-toe with the Thumb. Aren't these guys straight-up natural-born counters to people who've had brainwashing about strict hierarchies drilled into them?!"
Collecting himself, Putato's confidence spiked. That forced feeling of submission born from pure terror was basically child's play to him!
"Shit! Philip and the others might be in deep trouble. I need to push through right now!"
At this point, the best strategy was definitely not holding back. After all, Putato had already spotted a scarred woman stepping out of the central canvas tent, her murderous aura so palpable that even an ordinary person could spot it at a glance.
"All personnel, fall back into the inner camp."
Putato wasn't about to let this broad herd everyone back together. Heaven only knows what kind of bizarre, game-breaking buffs this chick with the red prosthetic eye might slap onto her subordinates next. Without wasting a second, he gripped his Spiral Spear and unleashed a violent sweep, utterly flattening every single tent blocking the path ahead of him.
"To think they've breached this deep... These people really are useless."
Gandao turned her head, her prosthetic eye scanning Putato up and down. The visible half of her face was a crisscross maze of jagged scars, making her look like a botched sketch scribbled by a chaotic toddler.
"By the authority of Executive Gandao, I order you to execute your duty and annihilate the intruder."
No sooner had the words left her mouth than a violent explosion erupted from inside a tent, instantly halting Putato in his tracks. The white exoskeleton suit he wore was peppered with several scorched holes that were rapidly cauterizing themselves shut.
To Putato's absolute disbelief, throngs of tattered, ragged figures began crawling out of the tents. Strapped tightly across their chests were dense bundles of commercial explosives.
What the actual hell?!
Looking at those terrified people marching forward like unwilling suicide bombers, Putato felt his blood boil with white-hot rage.
Even the Syndicates of the Backstreets slaughtered the innocent for their own selfish desires, harvesting people for food or skinning them for art was just a regular Tuesday here. The City didn't even have a functioning concept of terrorism, yet Putato still found himself grinding his teeth in disgust at such cowardly, despicable tactics.
"Vanda! You alright?!"
Running alongside the retreating soldiers, Philip and Yuna both looked a bit battered, while only Salvador remained completely composed as he neatly hacked off the right arm of an executioner closing in on his flank.
FWOOSH!
Flames of the Brand materialized beneath Putato's feet. Moving with a blinding burst of speed that completely outpaced the reaction time of those walking bombs, he charged head-on, covering a hundred meters in the blink of an eye and shocking Gandao into frantically raising her metallic right arm to block.
BANG!
Putato clamped his fist tight into the Violent Knuckles and slammed it straight into a violent, direct collision with the enemy's iron fist. The resulting shockwave sent the debris beneath their feet flying into the air. The second Gandao looked up, she heard Putato's urgent, frantic shout: "By the authority of the Executive!"
But words could never travel faster than the gaze itself!
The Brand of Fire didn't give a damn about administrative authority; its only purpose was to incinerate everything lifeless in its path!
RUMBLE!
The exact second she locked eyes with Putato, Gandao felt a paralyzing, genuine wave of fatal dread wash over her as her face and chest suddenly split open.
Haase, who had just fallen back with his squad, along with the three members of Dawn Office, found their gazes entirely transfixed by the human torch suddenly blazing in the middle of the camp. The tangerine-tinted inferno erupting from Gandao's body was blinding and terrifying to behold.
The glaring flames had already swallowed Gandao's silhouette whole, and only hoarse, shrieked wails proved there was still someone trapped inside. Yet, she continued to shriek with raging fury: "All personnel! Annihilate all intruders!"
In that instant, Haase clashed swords with Salvador once more. Taking a few steps back, Putato didn't hesitate to detonate his Wrath, instantly snapping his boiling, overstimulated brain back to lucidity. At the exact same time, the Brand of Fire flared up to its absolute peak.
"You like strapping bombs to your chests, huh?! Go blow up, you idiots!"
Pulling out his Crusher once again, Putato gripped it with both hands, spun around, and swatted hard toward Gandao, who was just about to detonate. The heavy, roaring teeth of the blade slammed into her, launching her flying.
WHOOSH!
A rain of scattering sparks instantly illuminated the camp enclosed by shipping containers, making it as bright as day.
Putato stared at the corner of the wall where Gandao had been burned down to nothing more than a charred strip of skin embedded with all those medals. It was hard to imagine just how durable those things actually were. Suddenly, he noticed with a start that those suicide bombers carrying explosives hadn't stopped for a second; much like the Void Fist operatives, they weren't about to change course just because a superior had died.
"Damn it! Salvador, finish this fast!"
He tried to immediately pull back and clear out of the suicide bombers' encirclement, but the second he took a step forward, the closest one blew himself up right in his face. Putato instantly swung his Crusher horizontally across his front to block the blast. "Your commanding officer is already dead, and you morons are still self-destructing?!"
A man with a pained, conflicted expression lunged from behind, tears streaming down his face as he howled: "We willingly sold ourselves to Void Fist! Being able to escape that hellhole in the Outskirts and live a few extra years was already a massive win! This is just us fulfilling our duty!"
At that moment, Putato couldn't even tell if the guy was doing this of his own free will or if he'd been completely broken and brainwashed by authority suppression. All he could do was turn around and run.
"Dammit! Dammit! Executive Gandao, how the hell did you die?!"
A furious Haase completely shed his carefree demeanor from earlier. Not getting an answer from his old comrade turned his eyes bloodshot as he threw a punch. Even though Salvador managed to brace his sword and block, the sheer force of it forced him to stagger back repeatedly.
"Master! The chests of those guys are all glowing red!"
Yuna, who had just used her Workshop weapon to carve an advancing executioner into eight pieces, gripped her left arm in agony where a stray bullet had shattered it. Gritting her teeth, she and Philip flanked Salvador's back. "There are still three snipers up on the towers!"
BOOM!
Putato raised his Crusher and swung. The observation platform built from steel pipes and wooden planks was shattered in an instant, and the tall watchtower buckled and collapsed right along with it, abruptly cutting off all gunfire across the camp.
Hearing the escalating chaos inside the camp, Haase rapidly forced himself to snap back to focus and assessed the battlefield. Right now, only he and seven veteran soldiers were left tangling with the three members of Dawn Office, and it was clear as day that the enemy all possessed anti-mental-attack gear.
"By the authority of the Executive! I order you to execute a focused-fire protocol and kill those two!"
Instantly, every single executioner stopped messing around with Salvador. Even when a lethal sword was just a hair's breadth away from severing an arm, they forcefully twisted their bodies mid-strike, chanting in eerie unison: "Glory to the Men, death to the Heretic!"
Back-to-back, Philip and Yuna were visibly gasping for breath, their eyes swimming with terror and a deep urge to retreat. Plunged straight into extreme peril, Philip barely managed to block a flurry of heavy strikes before his weapon was knocked clean out of his hands, sending him into a panic.
Salvador desperately tried to break away to assist, but Haase kept him pinned in place with a vicious stranglehold. He yelled out in mounting panic: "Vanda!"
"Right here."
A stun grenade dropped right at Philip and Yuna's feet, its blinding flash forcing the executioners to stutter in their movements, leaving them to rely purely on instinct to strike.
When Philip and Yuna forced themselves to crack open their bloodshot eyes, all they could vaguely make out was that familiar branded armor, sending a sudden wave of immense relief through them as they lowered their heads to frantically rub away the stinging pain in their eyes.
Leaving the two behind to recover their bearings, Putato instantly lunged into the final fray up front. "You're the only one left! Is there any point in stubborn resistance anymore?! Call off those stupid suicide bombers!"
To his surprise, the moment Haase heard that, his previously rigid expression cracked into a bitter, barking laugh. "Hahaha! Salvador! Look at you now, living the high life. Did those Corporation dogs finally give you an answer you liked? But what about us?!
"The exact second the war ended, we were already a bunch of forgotten, unwanted castaways! Stubborn resistance? You're wrong, kid, this is the answer we chose for ourselves!"
Glancing up, Putato saw the entire group of suicide bombers converging on Haase's command. Without holding back an ounce of strength, and relying on Salvador's full-force cover, Putato thrust his Spiral Spear straight through Haase's throat, twisting it hard with a sickening crunch as the bastard's head came rolling off.
"Salvador, get these two out of here first. I'm gonna see what kind of game these suicide freaks are trying to play!"
"Got it."
Salvador didn't waste a single breath arguing with Putato over who should stay behind. He decisively hoisted up the heavily wounded Philip and Yuna, making a swift exit. Before leaving, he didn't forget to throw a reminder over his shoulder: "Vanda, we'll head to a clinic in the commercial district. Just check in whenever you're done, and I'll notify Director Xiao that the commission is successfully completed."
Recalling his weapons, Putato quickly noticed that the shipping containers that originally formed a perimeter around the camp had all been blown askew by the explosions. With a bound, he vaulted straight up onto the wreckage of the watchtower.
"The whole Void Fist camp has been completely leveled by me! What the hell else are you morons trying to achieve?!"
The Workshop Mindcord instantly loaded three throwing daggers into Putato's right hand. With a snap of his wrist, he pinned the palms of a man trying to crawl away to the ground, sending him screaming as he rolled down the slope.
The crowd froze, looking around in a daze, completely coming to a halt. But then, one of the men abruptly ripped off his shirt to reveal a medal pinned to his chest, and began shouting ecstatically: "According to the regulations, command authority now automatically passes down to me! All personnel, fall back!"
Putato frowned as he watched the orderly retreat of those guys. Splitting back up into squads and retreating like this probably meant they were just going to head back to a main Void Fist base. He hadn't busted his ass leveling this place just to let them walk away empty-handed.
"Automatic succession, huh?"
Putato flicked his wrist and threw another dagger. The guy still trying to bark orders hit the dirt right then and there, and the newly regrouped squad instantly ground to a halt once again.
"Let's see how many idiots you got left to pass the command chain down to!"
After repeating the exact same thing five times, nobody else dared to step forward.
"Night in the Backstreets is right around the corner. You guys know what that means, right?"
Under Putato's watchful gaze, the group finally unstrapped the explosives from their bodies and scattered in every direction, hesitating and looking back before fleeing. Only then did he feel like he had finally wrapped things up.
Putato wasn't too worried about them not being able to find a place to stay. In the Backstreets of The City, aside from the zones protected by the Associations, rental housing was absurdly cheap, sometimes even free. That's because there were always plenty of rooms left vacant due to people kicking the bucket from all sorts of sudden accidents. The only thing you ever had to watch out for was the local Syndicate.
With his hands shoved deep in his pockets, Putato slowly strolled back toward the commercial district. After the battle he'd just been through, he was feeling pretty exhausted. Fighting a Syndicate that could trade blows with the Thumb wasn't a walk in the park; his right earlobe had even been pierced clean through by a special-issue round.
"Olga? What are you guys doing here?"
Wiping a streak of blood off his cheek, Putato was surprised to run into the three members of Molar Office.
"What a coincidence, Vanda! We're just here to assist the Zwei Association in the commercial district. It's a pretty small-scale commission, all things considered."
Rain politely answered Putato, seeing as the guy was already a high-ranking Grade 3 Fixer. Beside her, Mika smiled and gave a little wave.
Only Olga uncomfortably rubbed the back of his neck. "Who are you guys even talking to? He's a big-shot now. Probably thinks we're beneath him and only saying hi to be polite. Deep down, he's probably screaming at us to get lost."
"Look, I'm sorry about last, time, Olga. How about I buy you a drink right now?"
"You think I'm a toddler? You invite me to one little round and expect me to bounce back up all smiley and happy? I've got commissions to finish, I don't have time to hang out."
Olga rolled his eyes and casually swiped at the air in front of him.
"Seriously, go take a bath or something. You reek."
Rain immediately looked apologetic and bowed toward Putato. "Big Sis, uh, I mean, Olga, you shouldn't talk like that. Vanda started out as a lone-wolf Fixer; jumping ship to a proper organization is totally normal."
Putato helplessly threw his hands up. "Whatever you guys want to do in the commercial district tonight, it's on my tab. Drinks and food, fully covered."
"For real?!"