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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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The plasma cutter on one of the arms sprouting from the gorilla’s back slashed downwards.
Whummm.
With a sound of vibrating air, a red line left an afterimage in the air.
Immediately afterwards, what was once a police officer was split in two.
The gorilla didn’t even glance at the officer it had bisected.
It simply swung its thick arms and the three pairs of arms from its back in a coordinated flurry, deflecting bullets and magic with its bare body,
and unilaterally slaughtering the police officers surrounding it.
Its right eye, like the compound eye of an insect, captured the entire battlefield, and the CPU in its brain analyzed every situation.
After completing its analysis in 0.1 seconds, the three pairs of arms moved autonomously, executing an efficient massacre.
The police officers who had come to rescue the citizens died helplessly.
It wasn’t that the officers were incompetent.
They had also undergone augmentations and had their own specialties.
There were mages, swordsmen, and skilled snipers.
This force could have wiped out an entire gang hideout.
But they were no match for the gorilla.
What the gorilla was using was military-grade.
Equipment you couldn’t even see in the civilian market,
and not just one piece, but enough to cover its entire body.
At this level, they should have called in the army and armored vehicles, not the police.
“SWAT ETA!”
“Ten minutes!”
“Those bastards! They have air vehicles, why are they slower than us?!”
“They say the airspace is congested because of the Christmas season!”
“Thanks for letting me know, asshole!”
Today, as always, the role of the low-ranking officers was to be meat shields, buying time until the SWAT team arrived.
This was the usual fate of officers with mediocre talent, money, and connections.
However, their existence wasn’t meaningless.
Thanks to the police officers holding the gorilla’s attention, the citizens were able to escape the scene.
After confirming that no civilians remained, the police changed their strategy.
From trying to kill within the perimeter to simply stalling for time.
From aggressive return fire to warning shots from secure cover.
The changed strategy was effective.
Just by switching to a defensive tactic, the number of casualties decreased significantly.
Seeing this, the youngest officer felt a glimmer of hope.
‘We can survive!’
As a result, he had a thought he shouldn’t have.
He should never have done it.
But it was too late for regrets.
A rocket flew in and blew the youngest officer and his cover to pieces.
Several officers clenched their jaws.
But there was no time to mourn the fallen officer.
Because, in response to the police’s change in strategy, the gorilla’s rocket barrage began.
Kaboom! Bang!
“Liniaaaa! Linia!!! I’ll kill you all! Cops!!!”
Somehow, the police had become the gorilla’s sworn enemies, the murderers of his daughter.
The sniper, who had been active intermittently, was caught in the rocket barrage.
Building facades crumbled, windows shattered.
The place had transformed into a battlefield.
Amidst this inferno, the rocket launcher now aimed at the lieutenant’s cover.
‘Damn it! I’d rather be at home listening to my wife nag!’
No matter how he looked, there was no other cover nearby to hide behind.
As if sensing his fate, the lieutenant closed his eyes tightly.
That was when it happened.
Whizz!
The sound of something flying through the air, and
Whoosh!
The sound of a rocket launching.
And then
KABOOM!
The sound of the rocket detonating on the gorilla reached him from beyond his cover.
A thick cloud of dust obscured the gorilla’s position, making it difficult to assess the situation, but it was certain that the gorilla had been brought to its knees for the first time.
While the lieutenant was still processing the sudden change, a boy approached him.
Covered in dust, his clothes torn to shreds, yet his appearance hadn’t lost its luster, even in this situation.
Moreover, there was something about his appearance that inspired trust.
While the lieutenant was admiring the boy’s appearance, the boy asked him,
“Do you have a sword or something?”
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Rewinding time.
Immediately after the gorilla began its full-scale rocket barrage.
The walls of several buildings collapsed.
Among them was the wall of the attic where Amon and Sonia were hiding.
The wall that had protected them crumbled, and the battlefield where the gorilla was rampaging came into full view.
The gorilla’s compound eye turned towards the inside of the collapsed wall.
Only clothes hanging on racks were visible.
The gorilla lost interest in the attic and went back to what it was doing.
“Phew.”
And from within the pile of clothes where the gorilla’s gaze had fallen, a sigh of relief escaped.
Amon and the others were hiding within the piles of clothes.
Fortunately, the gorilla hadn’t noticed them.
Confident that the gorilla hadn’t noticed them, Amon decided to remain hidden under the fabrics.
About 15 minutes had passed since the shooting started.
The SWAT team usually took about 10 minutes to arrive.
Considering the Christmas traffic, it would probably be around 20 minutes.
Amon figured they’d be safe if they hid here for another five minutes.
Sonia nodded and tried to hide herself deeper into the pile of fabrics.
The shop owner also tried to move towards the pile of clothes.
But before he could hide,
“Ugh!”
The old man cried out in pain.
Amon asked the old man with concern,
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
The old man refused to answer.
But while he could hide it with words, he couldn’t hide his limping leg.
Amon’s gaze fell on the old man’s leg.
A pair of scissors was embedded in his thigh.
‘Damn it… that’s when it happened.’
When the wall exploded, all sorts of debris, including a sewing kit, had flown into the attic.
The debris had been painful, but thanks to Amon and Sonia’s sturdy bodies, they had endured.
But the old man wasn’t as robust as they were.
Whether this was misfortune or fortune…
Because Amon and Sonia had absorbed most of the debris, the old man had no injuries above his waist, but the scissors had pierced his thigh.
Amon checked the old man’s complexion under the dim attic lighting.
He didn’t look well.
Even Amon, without any medical expertise, could tell that the scissors had hit a major blood vessel.
The option of carrying the old man somewhere else to hide was out of the question.
Even in his hazy state, the old man kept repeating in Korean, “Go quickly…”
Hearing the old man’s words, Amon closed his eyes tightly.
He was a complete stranger.
And in this world, compassion and justice were nothing more than a joke.
Even if they reached the hospital in time, he didn’t know what the old man’s chances of survival were,
and he didn’t know if the old man could even afford the hospital bills.
So, rationally, it was right to just leave him.
Amon furrowed his brow and began to pray.
“Lord, guide me.”
The prayer was short, the decision swift.
He left the half-conscious old man with Sonia and told her what to do.
“I’ll distract the gorilla. Meanwhile, you cross that street. See the bakery? There’s a back door there. If you go through there, you’ll see the hospital.”
“What are you talking about? Distract him how?”
“Sonia. Trust me.”
He couldn’t bring himself to explain about past lives or patterns.
Instead, all Amon could say was, “Trust me.”
The honest boy’s eyes met the girl’s golden ones.
Sonia looked at Amon’s face, then bit her lower lip and hoisted the old man onto her back.
Like Amon, she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the old man.
She said to Amon, as if complaining,
“I’ll be back soon. Stay safe… until then!”
Swallowing the death flag she almost uttered, Sonia exclaimed,
Realizing Sonia’s concern, Amon replied with a confident face,
“It’ll be over before then.”
Immediately after those words, Amon combined the tools he found in the space.
What came to mind as soon as he saw the gorilla was a one-man army.
Not only did the gorilla have heavy weapons attached to its thick arms, but it also had weapons equipped on each of the three pairs of arms sprouting from its back.
In terms of firepower alone, it was a monster capable of taking down two light armored vehicles.
But it wasn’t without weaknesses.
‘Its lower body is weak.’
Of course, its thighs looked sturdy on the outside.
They were indeed tough enough to withstand bullets.
But what Amon was pointing out wasn’t durability, but balance.
‘To wield eight weapons with its upper body, it can’t equip any additional weapons on its lower body. Its legs are probably just there to withstand the recoil.’
And even that was likely at its limit.
Just a little push would send it tumbling to the ground.
That’s why Amon saw the gorilla’s lower body as its weakness.
Fortunately, the space he was in was a work area, so it was easy to find materials to exploit that weakness.
He calmly tied some cords together and attached weights to the other ends.
Thus, a bolas was completed.
He waited for the gorilla to prepare to fire its weapons.
And the moment the gorilla aimed its rocket launcher at a police officer and started to approach,
‘Now!’
Amon threw the bolas.
The bolas successfully wrapped around the gorilla’s legs, tripping it forward.
And, unintentionally, the rocket fired, engulfing the gorilla in the explosion.
Watching the explosion, Amon couldn’t hide his bewilderment.
‘Why would it remove the safety device from the rocket?’
Usually, rockets had safety devices to prevent the user from being caught in the explosion, but this small rocket didn’t seem to have one.
A likely reason was that the safety device had been removed to accommodate the launcher and rockets on its back, resulting in a forced miniaturization, but only the gorilla knew the truth.
Anyway, the unexpected explosion was a stroke of luck for Amon, so he decided not to dwell on it.
Amon put the word “safety” out of his mind and approached the lieutenant.
To the dazed lieutenant, Amon asked,
“Do you have a sword?”
Startled by the sudden question, the lieutenant nevertheless answered politely.
He pointed to a corpse, only the lower half remaining, a little distance from the gorilla.
At the corpse’s waist was a katana that looked to be in relatively good condition.
Amon clicked his tongue at the sight of the sword.
“Tsk. That one looks a bit unreliable.”
Even as he said so, Amon got into a sprinter’s stance, as if preparing to retrieve the sword.
The lieutenant realized what the boy was about to do.
Normally, he would have stopped him, but in this extreme situation, people tend to believe in miracles.
Especially considering that the gorilla had been brought to its knees for the first time, he couldn’t help but want to believe in the boy.
So, instead of stopping the boy, the lieutenant decided to do what he could.
“Take this before you go.”
He handed Amon a pistol with only one magazine.
Amon gave a nod of thanks and dashed out from behind cover.
As he ran towards the katana, the police officers, who had already received instructions from the lieutenant via radio, fired simultaneously, drawing the gorilla’s attention.
The boy reached the location of the katana.
Instead of gripping the sword normally, he held it in reverse grip and ran towards the gorilla.
‘I don’t think I can win.’
That thing was an army.
And Amon, in gaming terms, hadn’t even started the tutorial yet.
Even with his veteran knowledge, Amon wasn’t crazy enough to get cocky based on that.
His aim wasn’t to incapacitate the gorilla.
It was an emergency measure to maximize his survival rate until the SWAT team arrived.
Amon recalled a setting from a game, not Punk City, but a neighboring one.
When facing bosses, focusing attacks on specific parts could sever or destroy them; this was called “part breaking.”
If successful, the boss’s patterns would become much easier.
It wasn’t originally a feature in Punk City, but now that it was reality, it was a strategy worth trying.
Amon ran towards the gorilla.
Caught in the explosion of its own rocket, the gorilla was in bad shape.
Its right arm was severely burned, and the rocket launcher on its back was broken.
Several sensors seemed to be damaged as well; its ability to perceive the entire battlefield was gone, and it was struggling to deal with the police officers’ gunfire while trying to remove the bolas tangled around its legs.
Thanks to this, the gorilla didn’t notice Amon until he reached its back.
Approaching from behind, Amon thrust the katana, held in reverse grip, into the base of the auxiliary arms.
He hammered the hilt with his fist, like driving a nail, to push the katana deeper, as it wasn’t going in easily.
Crack!
A tearing sound came from inside the three right auxiliary arms.
By the time the gorilla noticed Amon and aimed its remaining left arms at him, Amon had already dodged.
The gorilla’s right auxiliary arms sputtered and finally stopped working, as if broken.
The gorilla’s ranged weapons were all concentrated on its right side.
Its auxiliary arms were broken, and the original arm holding the machine gun was severely damaged by burns.
This alone almost completely neutralized its ranged attacks.
The burned arm creaked as it turned the machine gun’s muzzle.
But before the muzzle could point at Amon, he had already taken cover.
The scrapes from rolling on the ground stung a little, but they were bearable.
The gorilla switched its primary target to Amon.
It headed towards where Amon was hiding.
But before it could reach him, the police finally managed to do something useful.
Their bullets destroyed the gorilla’s right eye.
With its aiming assistance system gone, the gorilla could no longer aim the machine gun with its former precision.
The gorilla’s processing system overloaded.
If it targeted Amon, the police were a threat.
If it targeted the police, Amon was a threat.
The processing system refused to calculate.
Instead, it chose to rampage.
The enraged gorilla discarded the machine gun and began drumming its chest.
Thump, thump, thump
“Roarrr!”
Its magic tattoos began to glow.
In Amon’s terms, this was the signal for the start of Phase 3.
Amon, sweating profusely, looked around the battlefield.
‘Is there anything around here that can withstand the gorilla’s Phase 3…?’
But there was nothing.
Amon’s underdeveloped physical abilities held him back, no matter what he tried to grab.
In the end, his only options were to run and dodge.
Amon quickly made his calculations.
In Phase 3, the gorilla’s weapons were its two thick arms and the three arms on its left side.
He roughly estimated the patterns those would create.
The problem was whether he could dodge them all…
‘I think I can manage for a minute…’
After that, he couldn’t guarantee anything.
The enraged Phase 3 gorilla’s eyes met Amon’s.
Amon tensed, aiming the pistol he received from the lieutenant.
At the same time, he prepared to roll sideways in anticipation of the incoming charge attack.
However, Amon never had to face the gorilla’s Phase 3.
Crash!
A giant figure fell from the sky, crushing the gorilla and shattering the road.
Simultaneously, a deafening siren blared from the air.
Amon looked up in surprise.
A flying vehicle, emblazoned with a familiar mark, hovered above the gorilla’s head.
Inside the vehicle, a sniper leaned out, aiming at the gorilla with a left arm modified into a sniper rifle.
Amon knew that logo very well.
H.O.D.
Hyper Operation Department.
HOD.
The pinnacle of American police power.
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Nice, please continue translating.
Maxtac is that you?