Chapter 456: Even More Evil
[The Caracal] Billy Greco's eyes darted rapidly in their sockets.
"Mr. Shiroki, regarding the bad blood between us... if it's because of that time
I threw a match in the Kengan matches, would an apology cut it?"
The question was dripping with teasing sarcasm.
Yet, as things had escalated to this point, Billy was genuinely, deeply curious.
"Honestly... it's just so damn unpleasant—"
Billy bared his teeth, a blood-soaked, feral grin stretching across his face as
he locked his gaze onto Ren.
"When you boil it right down to the bone, before this contract to snatch Tokita
Niko came up, you and I didn't have any direct conflict of interests."
"And yet, I'm dead certain of one thing: even if we had crossed paths anywhere
else in the world, we still would've ended up trying to tear each other apart—a
fact I've always found baffling."
"..."
Hearing that, Ren paused to think for a moment. He tilted his head with a smirk,
"In a way, martial artists are actually way more evil than criminals."
"After all, all we really want to do is inflict unwarranted trauma on the human
body—no matter how you spin it, that's messed up, isn't it?"
With that, Ren threw his arms wide. Wisps of white vapor curled from the corners
of his mouth, and a razor-sharp brilliance lit up the depths of his eyes,
leaving twin trails of afterimages suspended in the air.
"And just like that, the two of us—guys who have zero reason to be talking this
out—are just standing here in the middle of a street brawl."
"Pretty great, right?"
"..."
Ren clenched both hands into fists, keeping his muscles half-relaxed as he
raised his guard. His elbows flared outward while his forearms curved slightly
inward.
His core and abs were locked tight, his spine maintaining a naturally neutral
alignment.
It was the hallmark posture of Pankration, putting the sheer, brute-force
durability of his torso on full display!
Billy took it in with absolute clarity. "I see..."
He lowered his center of gravity. "You've picked up a brand-new fighting
style—one built around aggressive, high-pressure offense. That's why you're so
confident you can suppress me and put me down."
Ren just raised an eyebrow with a dry chuckle, "Billy, you're only skimming the
surface..."
Tap!
Before the echo of his voice had even faded, Ren exploded forward, closing the
distance to Billy in a heartbeat.
The next second—Whoosh!
Billy had already prepped his momentum. Leveraging the speed advantage of his
low center of gravity, he surged toward Ren first, driving a ferocious right
straight down the pipe.
The suit-wearing brute struck with the raw fury of a wild beast!
"DIE!"
In the blink of an eye, his fist sheared through the air.
Since you're planning to aggressively pressure me, I'll preempt you and snatch
the initiative right back with blinding speed!
To Billy's utter shock, however, instead of meeting his punch with an attack of
his own, Ren preemptively crossed his forearms, locking into a watertight
defensive shell.
His fists were angled inward, forearms shielding his head, while his elbows and
knees tucked tight to his torso, maximizing the structural integrity of his
guard to an absolute extreme.
This posture resembled a karate Sanchin kata, but its roots traced back even
further, modeled after the shield-wall tactics of Roman legionnaires.
[MARISA: ROMAN TOWER SHIELD]!
Thud!
Billy's punch smashed squarely against Ren's forearm, failing to produce even a
fraction of the desired impact.
Wait, it's not an attack? It's a pure defense?!
Before Billy could recover from his surprise, Ren snapped his forearms inward,
using raw arm-strength to brutally swat Billy's right fist down out of the line
of fire.
Swish!
Taking advantage of the opening, Ren's fists sliced straight into Billy's inner
guard. He locked his ten fingers together and drove them upward with an
explosive heave, smashing both forearms squarely into Billy's jawline.
The counter-strike born straight out of a defensive stance—
[ROMAN TOWER SHIELD: THUNDER]!
KABOOM-SHATTER!
Billy's jaw took the full force of the double-forearm strike. The world spun
violently upside down as a mouthful of blood and shattered teeth erupted from
his lips.
"SHIT—!"
He cursed through clenched teeth, but before he could reset his balance, Ren's
hand shot out and clamped an iron grip around his wrist.
Ren's expression remained utterly serene as he casually continued his earlier
thought: "It's not just offense, and it's not just defense. Those are just tools
in the grand toolkit of combat. No matter how flashy the technique, I've been
studying fighting from the ground up the whole time—nothing more, nothing less."
Swish!
Ren dropped his hips and pivoted on his heel, using his shoulder as the fulcrum
and Billy's extended arm as a lever to hoist the IDEAL operative clear off his
feet before slamming him into the pavement.
[RYU: SEIOUNAGE (SHOULDER THROW)]!
KABOOM!
Billy slammed spine-first into the concrete, coughing up a fresh spray of blood
as the sheer kinetic recoil bounced his broken body slightly back into the air.
Seizing the rebound, Ren thrust his left sole outward, wedging it beneath
Billy's back before snapping his leg upward in a vertical, wheeling arc.
[JAMIE: CELESTIAL KICK]!
Whack!
Billy, who had barely grazed the ground, was launched right back up into
suspension. "Aha!"
Riding a wave of adrenaline, Ren tracked the rhythm of the bounce with
mathematical precision, timing his follow-up using [Linked Timing] as he
clenched his right fist tight.
[DEE JAY: MACHINE GUN UPPERCUT]!
Bang-bang-bang!
A rapid-fire barrage of savage uppercuts battered into Billy's frame.
Three punches? Four?
To Billy, it felt infinitely worse—as if seven or eight fists had somehow landed
simultaneously, tearing into every vulnerable joint and muscle on his body all
at once.
"Waaah—!"
Agony wrung every ounce of breath from his lungs. Billy's face contorted in pain
as the blooming flowers of his freshly coughed blood scattered wildly across the
air.
Over on the other side.
Guevara shoved his hands back into his pockets, his tone breezy and casual.
"Master assassin Paklong... let me give you a little lesson—"
"On the true terror of combat."
Meanwhile, Paklong's face was a dark, thunderous storm as he frantically scanned
for an opening in Guevara's posture.
He, too, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, mimicking Guevara's laid-back
composure in a psychological game of chicken.
The next second—
Whoosh-whoosh!
Two steel balls snapped out from the fabric of his white trouser pockets,
piercing right through the cloth from the inside out. They hurtled toward
Guevara's vitals in a lethal high-low pincer attack.
Faced with the sudden ambush, Guevara simply tilted his torso to the right while
lifting his left leg.
Thud-thud!
Almost simultaneously, the two steel bearings whistled past Guevara, burying
themselves deep into the brick wall behind him with terrifying, bullet-like
penetration.
"Oh! Not bad finger strength!"
Guevara raised an eyebrow in genuine praise.
Without missing a beat, Paklong capitalized on the micro-second of off-balance
recovery following Guevara's dodge to snap off a third shot.
Whoosh!
The steel ball tracked a straight line right toward Guevara's throat.
To Paklong's utter disbelief, however, Guevara simply reached out, snapping his
index finger and thumb together to catch the high-speed projectile right out of
the air.
Hiss—
The spinning steel ball screeched against Guevara's skin, grinding up against
his fingertips and kicking up a thin wisp of white smoke from the friction.
"Ha! My finger strength isn't half bad either, right?"
Guevara chuckled, palming the warm steel ball before rolling it around his
fingers like a baseball pitcher eyeing a batter. With a massive, highly-torqued
windup, he hurled the steel ball back at Paklong.
Whoosh—!
The ball sheared through the air, producing a sound completely different from
Paklong's signature [Flicker Shot].
Zing!
Paklong threw his entire focus into dodging, only to realize mid-evasion that
the projectile's trajectory was off—it wasn't even aimed at him.
Did he miss?
Just as that thought crossed his mind, Guevara closed the distance in a
explosive burst, appearing right in front of Paklong with less than half a step
between them.
"—So fast?!"
A jolt of panic shot through Paklong's chest. Before he could react, Guevara
drove a knee straight up into his groin, launching the veteran assassin high
into the air.
"Ugh—"
Suspended mid-air, Paklong's posture remained rigid, his expression fixed in a
mask of grim composure.
For a veteran of his caliber, attacks to the groin were entirely nullified!
Among the old-school masters, tucking the genitalia inward before entering an
operation was standard operating procedure.
He was using a legendary Ryukyu Karate technique known as [Bone-Hanging],
manipulating his abdominal muscles to draw his vitals up into his pelvic cavity
and render his soft spots immune to impact.
The real problem was—
J. Guevara was every bit as monstrous as the legends claimed!
Using urine to neutralize fire-spitting, catching high-velocity steel balls with
bare-handed friction alone, closing the gap with terrifying velocity...
Every single countermeasure he pulled out was casually swept aside!
"Tch..."
Paklong forced himself to lock down his panic.
His leg-spring power was just as monstrous; he could use it to maintain a brief
moment of hang-time, launching follow-up assaults from mid-air.
That angle of attack was wildly unconventional, baffling even seasoned combat
specialists.
Plus, it was afternoon; by leaping against the glare of the sun, he could use
the blinding backlight to completely shroud his movements from Guevara's field
of vision!
"Gotcha..."
Paklong thought, reaching into his pocket to ready another pair of [Flicker
Shots].
Yet, the moment he glanced down toward the ground below, Guevara was completely
gone.
—Where did he go!?
While Paklong was frantically scanning the pavement, he noticed something wrong
with his own shadow cast on the ground—it was being swallowed by a massive,
overarching shadow stretching over him from above.
He whipped his head up, and his breath caught in his throat.
Guevara had launched himself even higher, vaulting directly into the air behind
him!
"Tch—!"
Paklong instantly aborted his ambush plan, twisting his body to land feet-first
on the pavement before frantically side-stepping in a sliding evasive dash.
What terrified him even more was that no matter how he scrambled, pivoting and
juking in every direction, Guevara was glued to his blind spot like a shadow,
completely inescapable!
Paklong realized with a shudder that his proudest asset—his mobility—was being
toyed with just as easily as all his other tricks.
Even worse... why wasn't Guevara attacking?
"..."
Swish-swish!
After shaking and dodging for the fifth time, Paklong finally understood.
This was Guevara's psychological torture!
It was Guevara's way of showing him: I could end your life at any second I
choose.
Swish—!
Paklong vaulted over a courtyard wall, scrambling into a tight alley corner as
he sucked in ragged, burning lungfuls of air.
Before he could even catch his breath, Guevara was already standing there
waiting for him, casually resting a hand on the old man's shoulder. Paklong
jumped a foot in the air, startled out of his wits.
"My fights never truly stop."
"So... if you choose to cross paths with me again, what kind of nightmare are
you stepping into?" Guevara smiled lazily. "Do you understand now?"
☆☆☆
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