Elara climbed the stairs and pried from the corner to scout. She wasn't too worried about her hostage shouting to alert others.
He had no such courage.
Seeing no one around except an empty long hallway and the double door at the end, Elara walked on.
Upstairs, the hallway stretched out like a gauntlet of flickering fluorescent lights and echoing footsteps.
Then—
Clang!
The end door burst open.
A dozen. No—two dozen or more roughly. Men and women flooded in like a tide. At the rear, two held pistols—leveled and ready.
No! Too fast! How the heck did she alert the gang members? There was no way. She had checked all communications and possible electronic surveillance downstairs.
She could accept the deadly encounter after she left the torture chamber because sounds could be transmitted. But a complete different floor and such large manpower.
Her prior action never leaked the slightest clue of her escape. Even if they came for the man she held, the timeline shouldn't be so short.
The hallway lights flickered as the crowd assembled—nearly thirty men and women filled the corridor, shoulder to shoulder. Their stances were wide, their grips steady. Not a word spoken, no panicked shouts, no chaotic rush.
They were calm.
Too calm.
Elara's brows knit. This wasn't the ragged street-level gang behavior she'd expected. These people… held formation. No overlapping. The gunners stayed in the rear, lines of fighters subtly staggered to avoid friendly fire. Eyes forward. Breathing controlled.
This was a trained unit.
A strange unease crawled up her spine. She'd seen this before—disjointed discipline in patched units. The kind of soldiers cobbled together across eras and loyalties. But this… this was too uncanny.
Given the firearm wielders stood at the back of the formation.
Understandable given the existence of criminal gang.
Many of the attackers were young women, nonetheless, yet their poise and posture screamed old souls—grizzled, war-hardened stances dressed in modern street clothes. The contradiction was bizarre.
Something was wrong here.
But she didn't have time to dwell.
Elara stood at the hallway's midpoint. Her left arm was raised, the short end of her L-shaped baton hooked beneath the hostage's armpit, pulling his body tightly against her front like a shield. Her right hand hung loose, close to the stun baton still sheathed at her waist. Beneath her windbreaker, the hidden weight of a shoulder-holstered compact pistol pressed against her ribs and shifted with her breath.
No one made a move. They were waiting.
For an order? For a signal?
Two women at the rear—taller, firm-bodied, possibly ex-military—gripped pistols at their sides. Not shaking. Not fidgeting. Their aim would be true.
But none fired. It seemed using guns was near impossible.
He's your leash, huh? Elara thought, tightening her grip on the hostage. "One step closer," she warned, voice calm and cold, "and your boss here eats the floor."
Still, nothing. Probably they had caution over their marksmanship and hurt the man they intended to rescue.
Elara grunted and shifted her grip on the man slumped in her arms. He was barely conscious—her former torturer—now her meat shield.
An irony of the twist of fate, just a flash, all it took.
Her left arm flexed with cold restraint, yanking him upright as a shield. Her right hand was loose, half-raised—ready.
She knew she had to fight but how to fight was the question. Being outnumbered, she must calculate each step properly. This needed time and the current precious seconds ensured advantages leaned toward her.
"Shoot, and you'll hit your own," she snarled.
They hesitated, weapons tracking but not firing.
That was all she needed.
With a grunt, Elara hurled the hostage forward and jerked her baton upward, lifting the man by the armpit and slamming him forward into the front line like a sack of meat and forced him as a human battering ram.
Hostage: "…" Not again! Three times!
Crash!
Bodies tumbled. Shouts rose.
He flew headlong, crashing into the front line.
The shooters flinched.
The line wavered.
She was already moving. And Elara moved like fire, heading for the most dangerous threat—two women with firearms or ensuring their lines of sight were blocked by their friends.
Elara followed like a hammer behind a thrown nail and darted behind her flailing hostage, using his body as a shield.
She sprinted into the chaos, ducking low as the hostage's body collided with two men. As they fumbled to steady him, she drove her knee into the nearest one's stomach, then struck the side of his skull with the long arc of her L-baton.
Crack. He went limp.
She spun, her momentum coiling.
The short handle of the baton was gripped tight in her left, acting as an extension of her forearm. She slammed it like a metal fist into another attacker's chin, then whipped the baton sideways into a woman's throat. The woman dropped, coughing blood.
Two down. Eighteen to go.
She pressed forward with no pause—no rest, no mercy.
Another attacker lunged with a baton. Elara sidestepped, caught the swing with her L-baton's hook, and dragged the attacker off balance, then delivered a bone-snapping stomp to the side of the knee. The crack echoed.
Another came at her with a steel rod. Elara dropped low, swept his leg with her baton, and plunged the tip of her stun baton—now in her right hand—into his ribs.
Zzzzzt! He screamed and collapsed.
As the hostage toppled into the first gunner's chest, Elara's right hand snatched the stun baton from her waist in a reverse grip. She dashed forward, tucked low behind the collapsing bodies. Gunner One raised her weapon, too late.
Crack!
The stun baton drove into her ribs—twice. She convulsed, dropped.
She dropped to one knee, sweeping her foot beneath the legs of another nearby. The man fell hard. Afterward, she kicked away the pistol, far from all her opponents.
Betting on their discipline, Elara exploited the weakness of not daring to misfire at their own.
Even if they shot, she didn't mind since these bullets were helping her instead. She welcomed their inhumane cruelty too.
Immediately, she launched toward the second gunner, who retreated after seeing her aggressive moves but to no avail.
Before she had the time to pull the trigger, Elara smashed her wrist and flicked away the gun out of her grip.
She was powerless to defend and could only endure after losing the gun, merely receiving two thuds snapping air out of her then a blow to the back of her head. Then, she was gone.
A second later, Elara caught sight of another charging thug wielding an expandable baton. As he raised it overhead, she surged forward and drove her shoulder into his gut, lifting and slamming him into the wall.
Bones cracked.
She pivoted, grabbed a baton off the floor, and launched it like a dart at another's face—thunk!—blood exploded from his nose.
Now fully inside the crowd, she became a storm.
Strike. Turn. Block. Redirect.
Every move conserved energy. Each hit ended a threat.
A man lunged with a chain—she stepped sideways, wrapping it around her L-shaped baton's protruding short end, and yanked. He stumbled into her rising knee, then fell twitching from a stun jab.
Still holding the chain, she looped it around a second foe's neck, yanked him in close, whispered, "Wrong hallway," then flung him over her hip.
Three more charged—no guns, just blades and bravado.
Elara stepped into the first, pivoted, using her hostage's body on the floor as a springboard. She kicked one man square in the chest, sent him flying.
The next swung a knife.
She leaned in, brought the L-shaped baton across his wrist—snap!—then reversed the grip and cracked his jaw with the short end.
He crumpled.
She noticed a tall, square-jawed man coming at her with a knife. His grip—formal. His steps—textbook. Too predictable.
She disarmed him with a baton hook and drove her knee into his groin, flipping him over her back with surgical grace. A few others took a while to reassess the situation.
Elara reversed her grip on the metal baton, keeping it close like a tonfa. A large woman with a cleaver charged—Elara blocked with her forearm, struck the woman's jaw with the butt, then brought the long end around to smash her collarbone.
She spun into a back elbow, caught another foe by the throat, and used his body as a barrier against the next attacker's club. The club landed, but Elara's free hand had already reached the attacker's throat—dug deep with thumb and fingers—he gagged.
She dropped both.
Five more.
They came from every side now.
Elara ducked under a woman's chain swing, grabbed it midair, yanked the wielder toward her, and headbutted her into oblivion. She wrapped the chain around her forearm, using it to deflect and bind. With each movement, she flowed—rippling through bodies like a current of violence.
She twirled the baton in her left hand, looping the chain she'd picked up from a fallen fighter around the handle, then hurled it like a whip into the legs of a group about to flank her.
Blood splashed. Limbs snapped.
Now Elara was moving too fast for them to adjust.
She was in their blind spots, flipping over fallen bodies, baton clashing, limbs cracking.
A fighter blocked her strike—Elara reversed grip and used the short end to hook his shoulder, yanked him forward, and hammered him with a sickening fist in the nose. He reeled, and she finished with a knee to the chin.
A man tried to stab her from behind.
She bent low, between his legs, reached back—grabbed him by the groin and throat—and flipped him hard onto his head.
The corridor became a slaughterhouse of precision. Not killing—but dismantling.
A woman tried to flank her. Elara twisted, her baton rising in a blur to meet the woman's cheek. Bone split. The woman dropped like a sack.
She didn't bother about genders when life was at stake. Woman or man, both deserved same treatment. Maybe, she wasn't killing them yet but incapacitating them wasn't out of options either.
A tall, scar-faced man tried to grab the hostage back—Elara pivoted and slammed her elbow into his neck, then hooked his ankle with the L-baton and sent him crashing to the floor.
Another woman, younger but with a gaze that felt far older, came swinging with a longer baton. Elara sidestepped, caught the pipe between the arms of her L-shaped baton, and yanked. The woman overextended—Elara drove her heel into the attacker's chest and sent her crashing into a crate.
The gunners were groaning. The others, knocked out hard.
Elara's breath rasped; her hair was matted to her face. Some purple-greenish bruises marked her cheeks, and small red droplets of blood dripped from the corner of her lips. Her arms bled from shallow cuts, but her grip never trembled.
Fortunately, she had advantages to overcome the group—the golden finger of hers from higher dimension since entering this new body. With her outrageous resilience and rejuvenating physique, she could keep fighting without worrying about her stamina or wounds. They healed pretty quickly, though the outer appearance hadn't yet restored to its original state.
Despite her skills and the abuse she endured, it was impossible to guard against so many attacks at once. She tried to leverage positioning angles to her best advantage. Several bitter smacks to her back when she wasn't paying attention or lucky blows landed. Her body wasn't spared either.
If these men and women weren't trained, she would be the first to express shock and disbelief. Maybe their techniques were lacking, and their tactics inefficient, but they worked together as a team, creating difficult challenges for Elara to overcome.
Of course, deep inside, Elara refrained from outright killing them, regardless of their dangerous presence and threat to her life. This wasn't like her at all. She would ruthlessly mow down anyone threatening her. Now, after what she had been through, she believed her instinct and intuition, as if they were reminding her that sparing them would benefit her later, even though she saw no sign of such events at the moment.
She didn't resist her surreal feeling with logic. Her sixth sense must be saying something meaningful. Let's wait and see.
Naturally, although she spared the use of sharp weapons, blunt ones could still be lethal and she resorted to incapacitate her opponents.
Perhaps they were still alive but not for long if they didn't get treatment. A few had been smashed so hard by her that they would die soon.
The hallway reeked of sweat, fear, and iron.
Elara wiped the blood from her lip, picked up the fallen pistol, and chambered the slide with a slick, mechanical snap.
She had yet to even fire the Colt holstered under her shoulder.
"Next time," she muttered, "bring a real fight."
She stepped over bodies, the baton still humming in her hand.
In barely less than two minutes, the hallway was a warzone.
Twenty had entered.
None were standing.
Elara stood alone, breathing steady. Sweat on her brow. A small cut on her cheek. The hostage groaning at her feet, dazed and terrified.
The corridor was lined with crumpled bodies—some twitching, some out cold, none fatally injured. She'd held back just enough.
The gang leader moaned beneath a pile of his own men.
Elara looked down at him. "You're lucky I still need you."
The gang leader had his eyes widened and jaws loosened, not from injuries but from fear. His fear spiked when he saw the woman staring straight in the eyes.
Those emotionless eerie pair of golden eyes brought him memories of the most vulnerable moment during his childhood against older bullies. Hopeless and helpless.
He never expected to reminisce the forgotten memory once again.
With the noise she had made, Elara had low hopes for her original stealthy plan. It turned out that even if she had killed him after unshackling herself, she would still face enemies outnumbering her.
It was the existence of the despicable man before her eyes that allowed her to win the fight easily, whether she liked it or not. Picking up the frightened man, she hurled him toward the exit, hoping bitterly that was all of his subordinates.
Damn, this man was totally incompetent, but his subordinates were deadly enough. There was no way this man didn't hide any secrets to command such loyal and disciplined gang members.
Otherwise, she wouldn't have received the slightest injury if she had been fighting against average gangsters.
Room after room, just when she expected no further opposition, she broke through the door in front, which opened up to a wide area.
Elara froze. The sight stunned her to silence. Her lips parted, then shut, and again, as if words struggled to come out.
There was an outrageous number of figures ready to enter. Their expressions were deadly stoic and aggressive.
They, too, were dumbfounded when they saw Elara, but their eyes hovered over the man, and a dangerous glint flickered.
Several at the forefront dashed forward. Still, Elara responded faster. She unholstered her pistol from under the windbreaker, cocked the slider against her shoulder, and aimed at the ground in a flash—one smooth move—and fired.
Bang!
She yanked the man inside and shut the door, quickly locking it and pushing furniture to barricade herself.
Damn, she knew this door was sturdy, but there would be other breaching points. For now, with her blockades, she had no choice.
However, the door shook inward repeatedly, rendering more worries that it might not be able to withstand the pressure. Given time, her defense would fail, and she would have no other path to escape. They knew the environment better than her.
If only there were several dozen, her face would not have paled so much, but she counted at least more than two hundred roughly.
The ample, spacious corridor was filled with people. Adding the figures she had eliminated before, the gang's strength was around 300 men and women.
Well, more women than men here, strangely, in this line of work. Perhaps the gang leader might be a lecherous one, too.
Elara glared at the man, who seemed to have regained his confidence and courage. She thought extremely fast about countermeasures.
Her brain sifted through multiple layers of simulation, an ability for which she thanked the Crisis Response System so much. Nevertheless, all scenarios ended in failure or Pyrrhic victory. The latter she could accept as long as she survived, provided her outrageous physique contained huge vitality.
Thud! Thud!
Annoyance disrupted her thoughts, and Elara pulled the trigger at the rumbling door.
Bang!
Shrapnels of wooden pieces burst. The hall went quiet.