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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator:Bobt
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The moment Locke opened the door and stepped onto the club stairs, customers came rushing up from below in a throng.
They were all screaming in fright. In Locke’s eyes, he saw the faces of young men and women and various races with their bodies barely covered in small pieces of cloth. They seemed to have no room to pay attention to Locke blocking their way, blindly pushing through with their bodies.
Mixed voices could be heard.
“Someone call the police!”
“They shot a gun! Run!”
“Fuck! Who stepped on my foot…”
Of course, there was no way for them to push Locke aside. Rather, he naturally slipped into the gaps between the crowd. Leaving the screams and cries behind, Locke began moving against the wave of people going down.
As he went down the narrow stairs against the crowd, the shouts, thumping music, and gunshots gradually grew louder. Continuous sounds like a machine gun firing toodadada- could also be heard.
Finally, when Locke made it all the way down the stairs and opened the steel door of the club, the scene that unfolded before his eyes was a complete mess.
“Shoot! Shoot him!”
“R-Run away! We absolutely can’t kill that thing!”
“Aaaargh! My arm! My aaarm-!”
On the stage with red and blue lights flashing crazily, there were gang members half out of their minds shooting into the air, gang members clutching severed arms and screaming, corpses that had already spilled blood and guts and died, and so on.
And in the middle of that, a figure had his back turned to Locke.
A long katana on his back, short daggers and knives hanging from his waist, a black and sleek armor suit that looked as if his muscles had been enlarged.
He swiftly turned to look at Locke.
Where his face should be, there was a black chrome mask with six camera sensors glowing red. Those sensors were capturing Locke’s image, opening and closing their apertures individually.
“…What is this, some cyborg ninja?”
The moment Locke muttered that in dumbfounded astonishment, gun-wielding gang members burst out of the door on the inner side of the club in a throng. They saw the cyborg ninja standing in the middle of the stage and raised their gun muzzles.
“There’s the bastard!”
“How dare you cause a ruckus here, do you know where this is!”
As they growled, the gang member who had originally been shooting on the stage shouted hurriedly.
“Stop yapping and hurry up and shoot!”
As if that shout was a signal, the cyborg ninja who had been looking at Locke leaped high into the air above the club.
At the same time, some of the gang members who were about to pull the trigger screamed and dropped their guns as something whizzed from his hand. Small throwing stars were stuck in the backs of their hands.
“Aaagh!”
“Wh-What the fuck!”
“Damn it! Just shoot-!”
The gang members’ gun muzzles began spitting fire wildly. So Locke quickly vaulted over a nearby bar table to avoid the bullets. In fact, he had no reason to get involved and sweat over there.
“…”
There were already a couple of patrons beyond the broken glass that rolled around on the bar. The girls, who had been hunched over in fright, looked at Locke with their eyes wide open.
After quietly looking at their faces smeared with tears and mascara, Locke winked at them playfully. While their expressions turned blank, Locke slightly poked his head out over the bar.
Amidst the chaotic club lights and loud music, the sight of the cyborg ninja gleefully slicing up gang members could be seen.
“Uwaaaaah!”
“Fucking son of a bitch! What a bastard!”
Romanos’ gang members, consisting of humans, orcs, Siberian werebears, and so on, displayed proper shooting postures, unlike typical gang members. Since Romanos himself was a former soldier of the old Soviet Union, it seemed he had given military training to his subordinates as well.
The problem was that no matter how excellent their hold and aim skills were, they couldn’t keep up with the movements of the cyborg ninja rampaging right now.
The cyborg ninja’s acrobatic jumps and movements were captured like a film camera under the flashing club lights.
He took out Romanos’ gang members with the daggers at his waist and seemingly endless throwing stars and shurikens. The daggers and throwing stars were not to be underestimated. The throwing stars stuck into the gang members’ skulls or eyeballs as soon as they flew, and the daggers with blades about two palms long brutally chopped up torsos and limbs with tremendous force.
Some werebears and orcs seemed to think close combat was better than guns, thrusting out their own knives, clubs, or innate fangs and claws, cyber arms, and such. Naturally, they too were gleefully sliced apart without being able to inflict much damage.
Sometimes there were cases where those who got close landed bullets on the ninja. However, those bullets bounced off without penetrating his black suit. After the gang members scored a couple of hits like that, the ninja’s blade would immediately pierce their necks.
“P-Please spare me!”
“Aaaaah!”
The gang members’ agonized screams continued.
“…A butcher, no less. But isn’t a ninja supposed to be stealthy? This is like beating drums to show off what he’s doing.”
The moment Locke, who had been poking his head out over the bar to watch the massacre, muttered that, something sparkled with a beep- and flew from the cyborg ninja, who had been cutting a polar bear’s scruff.
“…!”
The girls who had been slyly poking their heads out next to Locke were startled and covered their mouths. It seemed as if that light would pierce through Locke’s eyes.
Of course, that was an illusion. The shuriken that flew from the ninja was caught between Locke’s fingers, let alone piercing.
Locke picked up that shuriken to examine it. His eyebrows furrowed slightly. On the side of the blade, there seemed to be some kind of strikethrough lettering. Rather than letters, it looked more like a logo. Looking closely, it was a somewhat familiar-looking symbol.
“Um, excuse me…! That person is looking at you…”
At the girl’s voice next to him, he looked up to see six red holes staring this way. Those eye holes narrowed and widened according to the movement of the apertures.
On the stage at his feet, most of Romanos’ gang members lay dead.
Locke slowly stood up, holding up both palms.
“Hey. I’m not with Romanos’ gang. Rather, to settle things with that guy-”
His words didn’t finish. The cyborg ninja’s throwing stars were whizzing over.
But those throwing stars didn’t reach their target either. Locke lightly swung the shuriken he was holding and deflected the incoming stars with a tiding-.
Locke sighed and spoke.
“Listen for a bit. If the problem is that I came in here, I’ll just quietly leave. I just thought maybe it was the person I met this afternoon when you mentioned a ninja.”
The ninja, who had been looking at the throwing stars rolling on the floor, heard Locke’s words and tilted his head. Locke shook his head while looking at that chrome mask, then his expression stiffened a bit.
As the flashing lights became familiar, the corner of the club that had turned into a mess came into his view. And among the corpses strewn there, many definitely didn’t look like Romanos’ gang members. The appearance of young men and women who seemed to have come to have fun normally. There were many young faces.
Just then, without warning, the cyborg ninja charged at Locke. In his right hand was a dagger held in reverse grip, and in his left hand were three throwing stars.
Locke muttered as he faced that visage.
“…I guess you were never someone words would work on in the first place.”
The throwing stars that whizzed over were deflected by Locke’s shuriken once again. At the same time as blocking the stars, Locke supported himself on the bar with his left hand and leaped. The tip of his foot accurately dug into the solar plexus of the ninja who had jumped high.
The ninja, who flew back as if pulled by a wire, tumbled among the corpses he had killed, then quickly flipped his body to right himself and immediately charged again. A dagger was already held in his left hand as well.
Locke, who had vaulted over the bar, was standing there with only his right hand holding the shuriken slightly extended forward. At a glance, it looked as if he was just standing there blankly with his body slightly twisted. The cyborg ninja’s blade aimed for his neck.
The small blade of the shuriken deflected that dagger. The attack that followed from the opposite side was similarly deflected.
For a moment, the ninja flinched and a look of bewilderment flashed across his six camera eyes. The attack had been blocked too easily. The eyes of Locke and the ninja met up close. Just then, the club music paused for a moment and silence flowed.
Immediately after, as the music burst out again, the cyborg ninja’s two daggers began raging like crazy. Dozens of trajectories created by the reflected light of the blades aimed for Locke’s neck.
And Locke deflected them all with the single shuriken in his right hand.
Sounds of metal clashing ching ching-ching continued as if beating a drum. The cyborg ninja moved very intensely, fast enough to create a whirlwind around his body, but Locke’s shuriken allowed not a single gap.
The end of the metal sounds mixed with the club music came with a crack- as the ninja’s two daggers broke. The ninja immediately drew a new dagger from his left waist, but Locke’s shuriken, which had moved at some point, stabbed that wrist and made him drop the knife.
Having lost his weapon, the ninja hurriedly flipped his body back and rotated continuously to retreat far away.
Only after retreating almost to the end of the club did the ninja right himself, and in the distance he saw Locke still standing in the same spot, twirling the shuriken on his finger. All six of his camera sensors narrowed as if glaring.
Locke spoke as he watched him get up.
“This is getting fun. Got anything else?”
Whether he understood those words or not, the cyborg ninja slowly lowered his posture and grabbed the handle of the katana over his right shoulder with his intact right hand. At that moment, red lines appeared here and there on his black suit.
And the katana blade slowly being drawn out was a fiercely flickering red beam.
“…Well, well?”
Locke made a flabbergasted expression as he twirled the shuriken. Although it looked unstable and sizzling, at a glance, that katana looked like an orc blade. Locke narrowed his eyes as he looked at that blade.
“No. It’s not real. It’s like… they forcibly mixed in something like a plasma blade.”
While Locke chuckled, the cyborg ninja took a stance, pulling that beam katana up next to his face. The cyborg ninja holding the beam sword looked quite plausible.
Locke tossed the shuriken he was holding to the side and opened his right hand. Then the orc blade handle hanging from his waist scabbard flew on its own and nestled into his grip. He muttered as he looked at the ninja’s red blade.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re not junior Hayato.”
But it seemed the cyborg ninja’s ears caught that muttering amidst the still thumping music. The ninja, who had been taking a stance with the beam katana, flinched and froze.
“…Hayato? Tanaka Hayato? Why do I know that name?”
Locke furrowed his brows at that electronic-mixed voice. It wasn’t that he disliked the bizarre voice and incomprehensible words, but because he felt the bewilderment contained in it, and at the same time, because there was something stimulating his instincts on one side of the club wall.
The next moment, with a bang-, the club wall burst open. Pieces of shattered concrete flew into the club, raising dust. Club speakers broke and some lights shattered, and the music went out.
A pitch-black barrel poked out from that collapsed wall.
“Hahaha-! Yes, I knew you would come in person! I’ve known for a long time how strong the pride of orc Masters is! I knew that if I spread rumors, you would naturally come to settle things yourself!”
As the dust that had risen from the collapsing wall settled, the owner of that voice was revealed.
Neatly combed back white hair and a thick beard starting from the mustache, a height of two meters with muscles bulging as if about to burst his shirt. The barrel he had first poked out was a bazooka of ridiculous shape and size resting on his shoulders.
“Now! ‘Outcast’! This is your…”
The white-bearded man’s words stopped. He had already discovered Locke and the cyborg ninja confronting each other inside the club. He hesitated for a moment.
“What? Why are there two of you?”
But he soon grasped the situation as he saw the cyborg ninja’s red beam katana and laughed.
“Ha! It’s you!”
His bazooka immediately aimed at the ninja.
“Die!”
With a thunk-, a tank-grade armor-piercing shell was fired. The ninja, who had fallen into sudden confusion, failed to make the judgment to dodge and brought his beam katana to the trajectory of that shell.
The armor-piercing shell split in half and exploded simultaneously.
“Hahaha! You thought you could touch my club and get away with it!”
The white-bearded man laughed like a madman even as he faced the aftershock of the explosion head-on. Looking closely, not only his arms and legs but also parts of his facial skin were implants, enabling such actions.
“Hey.”
“Huh?”
The white-bearded man turned his head at the voice that came from the side. At that moment, a gray flash brushed past him.
The protective gear encasing his body and the bazooka resting on his shoulders were chopped apart like toys, clattering to the floor. The face of the white-bearded man, Romanos, turned dumb.
Locke’s gray orc blade loomed over his neck.
“…So it was you.”
Hearing that voice filled with lamentation, Locke shrugged his shoulders. While doing so, he slightly checked the spot where the cyborg ninja had been. There was no trace of the cyborg in that place that had turned into a mess with even fire burning. It seemed he had hidden in the explosion and escaped the club.
Locke turned his gaze back to Romanos. His face with gritted teeth could be seen.
“Alright. Now let’s settle our score.”
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