The incident of Jimmy’s possession passed, and the orphanage returned to its normal routine.
Amon and Sonia, playing the roles of big brother and big sister, looked after their younger siblings as the children eagerly awaited Christmas.
They had already forgotten the fact that they had received gifts on Black Friday, and instead, they were excited about what gifts would be placed by their bedside this time.
Except for the fact that Jimmy had seizures whenever he saw a Bible, it was truly a peaceful scene at the orphanage.
In that peaceful daily life, Amon and Sonia headed to the swordsmanship dojo, which had now become a familiar place for them.
It had already been half a month since they started the lessons at the recommendation of their instructor.
By now, they had fully earned recognition as students of the dojo.
Of course, there was some noise.
Some students were jealous of the fact that the orphans were receiving free lessons directly from the instructor.
But, as with most martial arts dojos, dissatisfaction was mostly resolved in the ring.
After getting beaten to rags by Amon and Sonia, they had no choice but to acknowledge them.
At some point, they had become the dojo’s talented and beloved youngest students.
It took the two an hour to reach the dojo after leaving the orphanage.
“Hello.”
“Oh? You’re here. Go change your clothes.”
That day, just like any other, swordsmanship training began.
On the first day, the instructor had said that Amon and Sonia needed different kinds of training.
According to the instructor’s analysis, Sonia had a tendency to rely too much on instinct and reflexes.
This was a common trait among naturally gifted geniuses, and her weaknesses could be compensated for by focusing on psychological strategies and fundamentals.
In contrast, Amon appeared distinctly odd, even to the instructor.
“Why is your technique so patchy?”
Some techniques were present, while the foundational skills were missing, and suddenly, completely unrelated styles would pop out.
To compare Amon’s swordsmanship, it was as if he had cherry-picked only the good parts from various styles, resulting in a sword technique that lacked any harmony.
It was as if he had learned bits and pieces of swordsmanship from social media or books and was now perfectly applying them.
The strange thing was, Amon had partially mastered counters to techniques from different schools of swordsmanship.
To put it simply, his techniques were stitched together like a patchwork quilt.
Most instructors would see this as bad habits, erase them all, and impose their own swordsmanship style on him.
But this instructor was different.
He saw this as Amon’s individuality and strength, and he had no intention of correcting it.
“The reason you’re a patchwork is that you haven’t systematically learned the techniques. If you memorize them in an organized order, wouldn’t you become an all-rounder?”
Thus, Amon’s training involved him showing a sword technique, and the instructor would then teach him all the foundational moves of that technique, making him memorize them systematically.
At the same time, he would teach Amon how to adapt in various situations through sparring, increasing his flexibility in applying the techniques.
Amon liked this method very much.
‘I thought he was going to impose a specific school of swordsmanship on me.’
The instructor had studied many different styles while in Japan and had even won competitions in China.
So Amon naturally thought the instructor would instill a particular school of swordsmanship in him, but he didn’t.
In fact, when Amon mentioned learning specific schools, the instructor reacted with disgust, “What? A school of swordsmanship? That kills your individuality. I’d never teach that.”
Instead of teaching a specific school, the instructor strongly discouraged it.
For a genius, following a rigid style would be counterproductive, so the instructor avoided teaching standardized sword techniques to both Amon and Sonia.
This stemmed from his teaching philosophy.
[Weaknesses should be corrected, but flaws must be carried with you.]
According to his philosophy, a flaw was like a side effect that inevitably accompanied a strength.
While it was best to compensate for it, forcing a correction could ruin the strength itself.
‘After all, no one can do everything by themselves. A swordsman should be content with their own limits and leave their weaknesses to their comrades. If you try to cover every weakness, you’ll end up being mediocre at everything.’
He preferred to overwhelmingly amplify a student’s strengths rather than trying to cover their weaknesses.
This teaching method was a perfect match for Amon’s approach to fighting.
As a result, Amon trusted and followed the instructor wholeheartedly.
The instructor, seeing Amon’s rapid progress, spared no effort in teaching him everything he knew.
The synergy between the one who nurtured and the one who wanted to grow was extraordinary.
“Winner! Amon!”
Amon’s sword stopped just in front of the assistant instructor’s vital point.
It was an achievement that came only a month after he first picked up a sword.
A match where high-kill techniques and body enhancements were prohibited — purely a contest of skill.
Though he still had many opponents he couldn’t beat in no-rules matches that included enhancements and body augmentation, when it came to pure technique, the only person in the dojo who could beat Amon was the instructor.
This astonishing achievement was made in just a month.
At this point, even Amon had to acknowledge it.
He had a talent for swordsmanship.
Only then did he check off the ‘swordsmanship’ section on his list of talents and review his skill tree once again.
Swords, disguises, and charm.
Anyone could see it was a skill tree specializing in assassination.
As he nodded, clarifying his future path, someone approached him from behind.
“Congratulations!”
Sonia hugged him from behind.
Amon, nearly falling forward, barely caught himself with his reflexes and managed to support her weight.
He tapped her arms, which were wrapped around his neck, and Sonia slowly released her grip.
With a wry smile, Amon spoke.
“I’m all sweaty.”
“It’s fine. I’m sweaty too.”
Was that even an answer?
Amon nearly retorted but, acting like an adult, he silently accepted her nonsense.
***
After washing off their sweat in the dojo’s shower, the two left and headed back to the orphanage.
As always, they were on their way home.
The city was bustling with activity as Christmas approached.
It was a situation where they could easily be swept away by the crowd and separated.
Though they were teenagers and could find their way back to the orphanage, it was safer for them to stick together to avoid any unpleasant incidents.
Naturally, Amon and Sonia’s hands intertwined.
Looking at the crowd, Sonia exclaimed.
“So many people.”
“Don’t let go of my hand. Stay close.”
Blushing slightly at Amon’s words, Sonia pressed closer to him.
The two made their way through the throngs of people, heading towards the bus stop.
The path to the bus stop was so familiar that they didn’t get confused, even in the thick crowd.
However, just as they were one corner away from the stop, something unexpected happened.
“Linia!!! Linia!!! Daddy’s sorry!”
A loud man’s voice echoed from the direction of the bus stop around the corner.
Most people glanced curiously towards the source of the voice, but not Amon.
From his repeated experiences in Punk City, he knew that anyone shouting like that in the middle of the street would inevitably trigger a random event.
And 99% of those random events were not good.
‘Damn it!’
Sensing danger, Amon pulled Sonia into the corner, taking cover.
Sure enough, gunfire erupted from beyond the corner where the shouting had come from.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
Screams, crying, and the sound of people dying mixed into a chaotic scene.
Amon quickly assessed the situation with reflexes honed by countless dangerous encounters.
‘This is crazy.’
The thought carried multiple meanings.
The gunman was crazy, the situation was crazy, and the world itself had gone mad.
Amon knew exactly what caused such madness, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on that.
While most people around hadn’t yet grasped the severity of what was happening on the other side of the corner, Amon grabbed Sonia’s hand and started moving.
‘I could’ve sworn this year was supposed to be a white Christmas.’
To Amon, it looked like this street would be more of a red Christmas.
He didn’t run far but instead dashed into a nearby clothing store.
Sonia, following Amon’s lead, was pulled inside with him.
“Excuse us, sir!”
An elderly man greeted them.
From his features, he appeared to be of East Asian descent.
If the situation had been any less dire, Amon might have asked him about kimchi, but he didn’t have time for that.
The old man, perhaps hard of hearing or simply unaware of the situation, hadn’t grasped what was happening outside.
Amon quickly explained the situation to him, and the three of them sought shelter deeper inside the store.
They moved further into the building, seeking cover from stray bullets or ricochets.
As they entered the attic, which doubled as a fabric storage room, Amon asked the shopkeeper,
“Is there a back door?”
“Sorry, no. The building owner expanded with a container in the back.”
Amon clicked his tongue in frustration at the building owner’s blatant disregard for construction laws.
But with the gunman still firing wildly outside, going back out was suicidal.
With no other choice, the three of them hid in the fabric storage attic, surrounded by piles of cloth and clothing.
Sonia, nestled against Amon, voiced her concern.
“Wouldn’t it be better to run?”
“No, this is the best option right now.”
Running through the crowd was a huge gamble.
The chance of being trampled to death wasn’t small, and they wouldn’t be able to move quickly.
And the crazed gunman wouldn’t discriminate who he shot.
Once he finished mowing down the people closest to the bus stop, he would probably move on to the people just a block away.
The odds were high that Amon and Sonia would become his next targets.
Amon didn’t bother explaining all this in detail to Sonia.
Instead, he simply held her head close to his chest, hugging her to reassure her.
The storekeeper, seeing this, cleared his throat awkwardly and averted his gaze.
He mumbled quietly, almost to himself, “Ah, youth…”
***
A few seconds after Amon had taken cover inside the store, people outside began fleeing in panic.
The chaotic rush inevitably led to accidents.
Hell had broken loose.
Bodies littered the street.
It was impossible to tell whether they had been killed by being trampled, by gunfire, or by traffic accidents.
As Amon had predicted, most of the people who had tried to flee openly were dead.
Those within a block of the bus stop were mostly wiped out, and even half the people who were a block away weren’t spared.
Even those who hadn’t been shot by the gunman died for other reasons.
But Amon’s decision wasn’t necessarily the perfect one either.
Even those who sought refuge in nearby buildings met their end if they acted too slowly or chose a poor hiding place.
Amon’s choice was simply one with a higher survival rate — not the perfect solution.
In this situation, the only real answer was to never encounter such a madman in the first place.
“Linia… why won’t you eat the pizza I brought for you!!”
The source of all this chaos wailed sorrowfully.
It was a large man, with a hulking frame and thick, wild hair reminiscent of a gorilla.
Whether he was a beastman or someone who had undergone some kind of gorilla-related surgery was unclear.
But one thing was certain: the man had undergone extensive cyberware and magical augmentation.
The mechanical parts and magic tattoos covering more of his body than his flesh were clear evidence of that.
The crazed gorilla wept tears of artificial vitreous fluid as he fired the machine gun attached to his right arm.
On his back, a baby doll dangled limply, swaying with each movement.
The gorilla would cry uncontrollably, but whenever the doll played a soft “papa” sound, he would suddenly calm down and stroke the doll tenderly.
Then he would try to feed the doll a slice of pizza, which, of course, it couldn’t eat.
That’s when his rampage would start all over again.
The gorilla’s cycle of rampaging, mourning, and calming repeated every five minutes or so.
In the meantime, police, already on high alert because of the Christmas season, had arrived on the scene.
They quickly surrounded the gorilla with their squad cars and returned fire.
But the gorilla’s skin, as tough as it looked, didn’t even flinch from the bullets.
With a clear, almost cheerful ‘ping’ sound, the bullets bounced off his body.
However, the impact was enough to trigger the gorilla’s rage.
“You’ve come to kill Linia, you dirty cops!”
Spitting and slurring his words, the gorilla lashed out in fury.
His attention shifted from the innocent civilians to the police.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
A machine gun, something that couldn’t be found on the civilian market, roared to life.
Several police cars were torn apart like sheets of paper, and the officers who had been taking cover were hit by bullets and fell.
Those lucky enough to benefit from the combined protection of their patrol cars and bulletproof vests managed to stand back up.
However, the officers who were hit directly without cover, struck in areas not protected by their vests, or hit by ricocheting bullets in vital spots, never got up again.
“Damn it! That’s a military-grade machine gun! Where the hell did he get that?!”
One of the officers screamed.
But there was no one there who could answer him.
The police’s feeble handguns and rifles couldn’t even scratch the gorilla, and the officers were helplessly mowed down like extras in a movie.
***
“When is the SWAT team getting here!?”
“They’re on the wa—”
Whack!
The officer who was responding had his head blown off.
“Shit!”
There was nothing else his fellow officer could say.
Part of him wanted to run away.
But this world was not kind to police officers who ran.
For those officers, a dishonorable discharge would be the least of their worries.
What awaited them was a future where they and their families would be endlessly shamed on social media.
At least if they died a “heroic” death here, their families would receive benefits and compensation from the government.
The young officer, who had only worn the badge for a month, cursed under his breath while blindly firing from behind cover.
It didn’t matter if his bullets hit or not.
He didn’t even aim; he just extended his gun and shot randomly.
However, that was not a wise choice.
In a situation where they had formed a perimeter, reckless firing could lead to friendly fire or unintended targets getting hit.
Yeah, like the head of the doll on the gorilla’s back.
Whack!
The doll shattered into pieces.
At that moment, the gorilla’s rampage stopped.
Suddenly, everything was quiet.
One of the officers muttered,
“Is it over?”
Whether those words were the problem, or whether this was bound to happen regardless, one thing was clear:
Something was wrong with the gorilla.
He began to cry tears of blood.
The red liquid streaming from his eyes was no longer artificial vitreous fluid, but real blood.
And now that the baby doll was gone, his back opened up, revealing weapons like a rocket launcher and a plasma cutter.
With three pairs of mechanical arms sprouting from his back, the gorilla pounded his chest.
Watching this, one officer muttered quietly,
“Fuuuuuck.”
Phase 2 had begun.
Thank for the chapter!