Chapter 457: I Want to See You!
"You bastard—!"
Paklong's face was a dark, brooding mask. His aged yet fiercely alert eyes were
shot through with crimson veins as he spun around with blistering speed, hurling
a backhand strike straight at Guevara behind him.
Whoosh!
Guevara casually raised his right palm, dead-stopping the outer edge of
Paklong's fist.
"Ha, what an energetic old man."
Swish-la!
Without breaking rhythm, Paklong used Guevara's palm as a fulcrum to pivot his
entire body in a rapid spin, launching his legs off the ground into a suspended
mid-air flurry.
Instantly, a storm of fists and feet rained down on Guevara at maximum speed.
Whack-whack-bang-whack!
In that moment, Paklong looked like the ultimate manifestation of countless
concealed cold weapons, capable of delivering a fatal blow from any conceivable
angle.
Yet, the moment he brought that tempest to bear against Guevara, a crushing
weight of pressure pressed down on his chest.
No matter what kind of attack he unleashed, no matter how vicious or
bloodthirsty the assassination technique, Guevara met every single one with
absolute perfection, leaving not a single millimeter of vulnerability to
exploit!
Spear-hand thrust? His wrist was batted aside.
Elbow smash? He was forced back by a subtle shift in spacing.
Knee strike? Both his legs were batted down with heavy palms.
Eye poke? Blocked clean by an upright palm before it could even get close to its
target!
Whack-whack-swish-bang~!
Paklong's strikes grew faster and faster, but the despair gnawing at his insides
grew right along with them.
How about this move? Blocked—
What about that one? No good either!
The lethal techniques he had spent decades refining—methods that had always
served him like a well-stocked armory of a "hundred different weapons"—were
completely useless here.
The legendary assassin whose entire existence was dedicated to the art of
slaughter found himself with no moves left to play!
This technique—totally useless!
That one's the same!
Blocked, intercepted, evaded—
Paklong began to realize that while Guevara's combat tempo never stopped, his
own repertoire of "fighting techniques" had entirely run dry!
His mindset fractured, his strikes grew ragged and uncoordinated, unable to even
execute at his baseline level.
Faced with Guevara's "infinite combat," the legendary hitman dedicated to the
trade of death was walking step by step toward the absolute end of his fighting
life.
Hiss—huu—!
Paklong panted heavily, gasping for air. In a desperate final gamble, he
snatched his last two steel balls from his pocket, planning to pull off a
close-quarters suicide strike.
Yet, before he could even twitch—Swish!
Guevara slapped both hands down, his thumbs pinning down Paklong's thumbs just
as he tried to flick the balls loose.
Not again! Not again!!
Paklong's eyelid twitched violently. He jerked his head up to find Guevara
looking down at him with serene calm, their faces mere inches apart.
Snap!
Guevara delivered a brutal headbutt straight into Paklong's face, smashing his
nose and fracturing his nasal bone until it canted sharply to one side.
"Ugh—"
Paklong let out a muffled groan as he crunched down on a broken tooth loose in
his mouth, spitting the fragment straight into Guevara's face.
Guevara merely tilted his head slightly, letting his medium-long hair—exposed
beneath his bandana—sweep the flying tooth harmlessly away into the dirt.
The sheer, effortless absurdity of the feat made Paklong feel like [The Second]
J. Guevara wasn't even human!
"Hmph!"
Guevara puckered his lips in a casual pout, letting out a low grunt before
winding up and planting a devastating right palm strike squarely against
Paklong's left ear, rupturing his eardrum on impact.
Splitch!
A stream of bright, wet blood sprayed straight out of Paklong's left ear canal.
That wasn't even the worst of it. His left eye flooded with pooled blood,
crimson leaking from his left nostril as well. Half of his face was dyed a
vicious, weeping red from the sheer concussive force of that open-handed slap!
"Urgh—"
Paklong whimpered softly, his legs buckling beneath him. His eyes rolled up into
his head in opposite directions as he teetered unsteadily, on the verge of
collapsing.
Seeing this, Guevara moved to pull back, ready to call the match and declare it
over.
Then, something happened that even Guevara didn't anticipate—
Summoning the absolute last dregs of his dying strength, Paklong reached out
with both hands, clamping his fingers in a death grip around Guevara's wrists so
he wouldn't fall.
He still wanted to stand. He had to stand!
Because there was someone he still wanted to see!
"Tsubame..."
Paklong rasped out weakly.
The pooled blood in his left eye had swollen to a thick clot, blinding it
entirely as it rolled upward into darkness.
Only his right eye remained half-lidded, filled with a profound, aching
loneliness as it plunged him headfirst into a waking nightmare.
In the haze of that dream, Paklong drifted back into the past.
It was during his youth, in another lawless corner of the world.
Operating as a young, ruthless hitman, Paklong had once crossed paths with a
female kenpo master named "Tsubame" (Swallow). Underestimating her because of
her gender, he had suffered a crushing defeat.
Instead of turning into enemies, the two of them cleared the air through fists,
and through a bizarre twist of fate, ended up starting a relationship.
Naturally, neither of them was a saint. Even when they went out on dates, they
would occasionally catch wind of a "job" offer.
One day, Paklong accepted a new assassination contract to wipe out a punk who
had offended a local syndicate, and the payout was astronomical.
But Tsubame had acted strangely that day.
She told him she didn't want Paklong taking lives anymore.
Paklong had flatly refused.
In the eyes of the young Paklong at the time, taking on contracts and being
assigned to hunt down powerful men was the ultimate proof that he was alive, the
very purpose for which he honed his martial might.
Tsubame had countered: "I might not fully understand it either... but I think I
want to live the rest of my life as a human being."
A young, arrogant Paklong had scoffed, "How foolish. Tsubame, no matter what you
do, a human is just a human."
Then, Tsubame had asked him a question: "If your target ever turns out to be
me... would you come to kill me?"
Paklong had laughed it off. "If it ever comes to that, it sounds like it'd be a
hell of a lot of fun!"
And so, Tsubame had left—disappearing without a single word of farewell.
"..."
Years later, purely by chance, Paklong learned the truth: at that time, Tsubame
had been pregnant with his child.
For a man utterly consumed by the path of slaughter, that revelation stirred a
strange, unnamable ache in his chest.
He couldn't put it into words, so he tried to track Tsubame down to talk to her,
but she always seemed to vanish before he could reach her, as if she were
deliberately running away from him.
Not long after that, [The Hundredfold Slaughter] Paklong quietly retired from
the underworld.
Decades drifted away like smoke.
Then, just recently, IDEAL operatives had tracked him down by force, approaching
him with a fresh piece of intelligence—a recent photograph of "Tsubame."
Word had it that Tsubame—or rather, "Granny Tsubame"—was currently serving in
the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Secret Service Division, working as a
cop operating around the perimeter of The Inside.
Desperate to find her, Paklong had accepted IDEAL's commission and crossed into
The Inside.
Tsubame... are you out here? Where are you?
"..."
Paklong's body racked with violent tremors born of sheer agony.
In his delirium, he could almost see her—that graceful, striking woman, her face
blurred and out of reach, looking down at him.
She asked: "Why did you come here?"
"Could it be that a first-class killer and lowlife like you suddenly got lonely
now that you're old? Decided to come check in on your wife and kid?"
"It's way too late for that..."
"..."
A man who had drowned himself in bloodshed and battle to the bitter end, Paklong
still couldn't understand it.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Clamping his fingers down tighter on Guevara's wrists with desperate strength,
Paklong mumbled into the dirt, "Tsubame... where are you?"
"It's me! Don't leave! Where are you going?"
"I'm old now, too... I want to stop fighting. Once this job is over, let's live
together with the kid—all three of us! Okay?"
"I want to be with you..."
Paklong's entire face slumped slack against the ground, yet his arms refused to
unclench. "Tsubame, I don't want to fight anymore. I'm done... no more
fighting..."
Hearing Paklong's incoherent rambling, Guevara paused for a brief second. Then,
he swung his left arm around and violently flipped Paklong's battered body over
onto its back.
The motion was swift enough to crack open a skull against the pavement if
dropped carelessly.
In the end, however, Guevara didn't let him smash into the concrete; instead, he
caught him by the collar, breaking the momentum.
Noticing the veteran legend had finally passed out cold, Guevara casually tossed
him aside onto the pavement like a sack of garbage, losing interest immediately.
"Ugh! The pinwheel didn't spin, and the grand finale was a total dud. What a
rotten afternoon."
Guevara let out an exaggerated groan, turning his attention back toward Ren
Shiroki's zone—and immediately perked right back up, because Ren's fight was
absolute art.
Bang-bang-bang-bang!
A relentless chain of [Machine Gun Uppercuts] battered Billy's face, spraying
blood and forcing the IDEAL enforcer to his knees before he managed to stagger
back to his feet.
Drip—drip—drip—
Fresh blood poured from the [Caracal]'s chin, striking the pavement below in a
relentless, unbroken patter of crimson rain.
☆☆☆
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