“Aaaaaah—!”
Ashura let out a beastly roar. It wasn’t from the excruciating pain of losing his arm, but from the rage of having his dignity trampled.
“I’ll kill you!”
Ashura leaped up from the ground. The stump of his right shoulder, which had been gushing blood, suddenly stopped bleeding.
In its place, a mass of writhing, dark red flesh sprouted.
These buds moved as if they had a mind of their own, growing wildly.
In the blink of an eye, they condensed into an enormous arm even more hideous than before.
The newborn arm was a sinister purple-black.
Its skin was covered in a hard shell like a stratum corneum, and its fingertips had turned into five sharp bone spikes.
“So this is his Ability?”
Gluttony raised an eyebrow in mild surprise.
‘I didn’t expect this brainless brute to be able to enter Second Stage.’
How interesting.
This was the perfect chance to test the pressure limit of this “Gluttony” puppet.
“Die!”
Ashura bent his legs slightly. The concrete floor beneath him shattered instantly.
Boom!
Like a cannonball fired from its chamber, he shot forward with a piercing roar, charging straight at the second-floor corridor.
His purple-black arm left an afterimage in the air.
The speed of this punch was more than twice as fast as before!
Bang—
The railing of the second-floor corridor where Gluttony had been standing exploded into a cloud of wooden splinters.
Her petite figure flew backward like a kite with a broken string, sent flying by that devastating punch.
Rumble!
Gluttony crashed through the wall behind her, sending bricks and dust flying.
She fell from the second floor directly onto the street outside.
Dust billowed.
“Hahahaha! That’s what happens when you piss me off!”
Ashura stood atop the rubble, his chest heaving violently. The mutated arm still dripped corrosive mucus.
Grinning viciously, he walked step by step toward the gaping hole in the wall, ready to feast his eyes on the bloody mess of that arrogant little girl.
But he didn’t see what he expected.
On the street, under the dim yellow light of a streetlamp, the figure in the hoodie slowly got up from the pile of rubble.
She brushed the dust off her clothes, as calmly as if straightening a wrinkled skirt.
Aside from a few holes in her hoodie revealing skin as pale as a corpse, she was… completely unharmed?
Even the strange face mask hadn’t fallen off; it was only slightly tilted.
Gluttony raised a hand and straightened the mask. The one exposed right eye still held that chilling deadness.
“Nice punch.”
She spoke, her voice flat with no inflection: “But that’s all it is.”
……
On an electrical tower several hundred meters away.
The night wind howled, blowing through Yuki Asahi’s long hair.
He stood with arms crossed, his golden eyes locked onto the figure rising from the rubble.
Against the backdrop of Ashura’s overwhelming emotions—violence, fury, murderous intent—the girl’s emotions were a blank slate.
A true blank.
No fear, no anger, no irritation from pain, not even a trace of tension or excitement from facing a powerful enemy.
It was like a cold stone, or… a corpse.
“No emotional fluctuations?” Yuki Asahi furrowed his brow.
In this world, any creature with intelligence couldn’t be completely devoid of emotion.
Even the most rigorously trained suicide soldiers, or lunatics with their frontal lobes removed, or even the mindless Devourers, still had primal urges for food and killing.
But this girl was a void.
Unless… she had a Mental Shielding Ability superior to his own?
Or perhaps she wasn’t human at all?
Yuki Asahi’s figure flickered and vanished from the tower.
The next second, he reappeared on the roof of an abandoned building closer to the battlefield.
He needed to see clearly.
With these eyes, he would see what that “Gluttony” really was.
……
On the street, the battle resumed.
“Playing tricks!” Ashura was enraged by Gluttony’s contemptuous attitude.
He roared and charged again, his purple-black arm turning into a storm of fist shadows that engulfed Gluttony like a hurricane.
Every punch carried enough force to shatter rock. Each strike was accompanied by the sharp shriek of tearing air.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The ground was cratered again and again. The asphalt pavement shattered and sprayed like crackers.
Gluttony’s figure wove through the rain of fists.
Her movements weren’t flashy. They were stiff and almost eerie.
Like a doll whose joints weren’t fully lubricated, each dodge just barely avoided the most fatal attacks—sometimes by a hair’s breadth.
“Besides a little boost in strength and speed, his attack pattern is still so monotonous.” Jiang Jian Yue munched on shrimp crackers while commenting.
“Since you’ve only got that much, the game’s over.”
She was getting bored.
So, on the battlefield, Gluttony suddenly stopped dodging.
Facing Ashura’s ultimate overhead smash, she didn’t retreat. Instead, she stepped forward.
“Looking for death!”
A flash of ecstasy gleamed in Ashura’s eyes. This punch was concentrated with all his strength!
But just as the fist was about to strike Gluttony’s head—
Gluttony looked up.
The always-dead right eye flared with crimson light.
At the same time, her mouth—or rather, the lower half of her face beneath the mask—suddenly split open.
Not figuratively. Physically.
It split all the way to her ears, revealing layers of tiny, lamprey-like teeth inside, and an oral cavity that didn’t belong to any human.
“What?!”
Ashura’s pupils contracted sharply. A primal, instinctual terror seized his heart.
He tried to pull back, but it was too late.
There was no actual biting motion.
Gluttony simply made a “swallowing” motion toward the fist coming down.
Space twisted nauseatingly at that moment.
Like a black hole suddenly appearing on the surface of calm water.
Ashura, along with a large mass of air and light around him, was instantly sucked into that “black hole.”
No sound.
Only the silence of matter vanishing.
Gluttony closed her mouth. The fissure on her face healed rapidly, returning to that delicate yet eerie girl’s appearance.
She seemed to burp slightly, then patted her flat stomach.
“Done.” Jiang Jian Yue brushed the shrimp cracker crumbs off her hands, ready to pilot her puppet back.
‘I got so into the fight just now, completely immersed in the thrill of crushing that weakling, that I almost forgot I’m supposed to be a ‘newbie’ fresh on the scene. Was my performance a bit too flashy?’
‘Ah well, there’s no one around here anyway…’
……
The next morning.
When the first rays of sunlight streamed into the temporary housing at the Sky Ladder Construction Site, Sato Ai was already in her oversized reflective vest, pushing her cleaning cart down the main road of Zone C, just like every day.
“Morning, Foreman Wang!”
“Morning!”
Humming a tune, she energetically swept the rubble and dust off the pavement.
“This girl’s got real spirit,” a few passing workers teased.
Sato Ai wiped the sweat from her forehead, a layer of moisture fogging up her glasses.
Everything seemed normal.
But on the roof of the cafeteria in Zone D, several hundred meters away.
A man in casual clothes, holding binoculars, lay prone against the railing, observing without moving.
Nakamura Kusano.
“Target: Sato Ai.”
“Wakes at 5:30 AM. Washes up, eats breakfast, starts work at 6:00 AM on the dot.”
“Current behavior pattern fully matches that of an ordinary laborer.”
Nakamura Kusano whispered notes into his voice recorder.
Even though his superiors had ordered him to stop the investigation, he had sneaked in using his vacation time.
Last night’s big incident in Arakawa Ward—Kyokuto Construction’s top enforcer Ashura had gone missing near the Blessing Mutual Aid Society.
Though there was no direct evidence linking Sato Ai to the incident, Nakamura Kusano’s damned intuition told him it was all too coincidental.
Sato Ai joined the Mutual Aid Society.
A coup happened in the Mutual Aid Society.
Kyokuto Construction was the Society’s parent company and the labor dispatch agency for this site.
There had to be an invisible LINE connecting these three.
Nakamura Kusano put down the binoculars and rubbed his dry eyes.
Just then, a person who shouldn’t be there appeared in his sight.
At the dusty main gate of the construction site.
A man in a black trench coat, with a cold and stern demeanor, was striding in.
Even with sunglasses on, his unique aura made the surrounding workers unconsciously step aside.
“Is that…” Nakamura Kusano’s eyes went wide. He nearly dropped the binoculars.
“Yuki Asahi?!”
“What’s he doing here?!”
“Could it be… he also found out Sato Ai is suspicious?”
Nakamura Kusano’s heart pounded wildly.
If even that legendary “Executioner” was mobilized, it meant… his gut feeling was right.
“This is going to be good.”
Nakamura Kusano raised the binoculars again, adjusted the focus, and locked onto the two figures about to meet.
On the main road of the site.
Sato Ai, who had been bending down to pick up a discarded soda can, seemed to sense something. She straightened up and turned around.
Then she saw the man walking toward her.
A flicker of confusion crossed her face. She tilted her head.
“Mr. Yuki?”
Back in Fortune Village, Jiang Jian Yue sat up abruptly.
‘Damn it. If Yuki Asahi detects my emotional state… I’m exposed!’
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