Free Web NovelChapter 386: 386. D-4
"What the—!?"
"Where the hell did he go!?"
Shouts of panic echoed through the alley as the enforcers spun around, frantically searching the shadows for me. But I was already right behind Mr. Zero. I reached out, casually tapping his massive shoulder.
"Looking for me, mister?" I smirked.
Zero whipped his head around, his smug composure shattering the moment his eyes locked onto my face. I watched the color instantly drain from his skin.
The two lackeys looked like they were about to choke on their own tongues. "No way... One second he was right in front of us, and the next... he’s behind the boss!" freewebnσvel.cøm
"He’s too fast!" another yelled, clutching his head in sheer disbelief. "I didn’t even see him move!!"
The four armed enforcers who had arrived in the sedan kept their guns raised, their hands shaking as they aimed at me. They were completely paralyzed, terrified that a single misplaced shot would put a bullet right through their commander’s head.
Unlike his men, Mr. Zero didn’t let the panic consume him. He remained unnaturally still, my hand still resting on his shoulder.
"Impressive," he muttered, his voice a low, neutral gravel. "Dodging bullets? That’s a first for a human being outside of a Steven Seagal movie."
"Oh, Steven Seagal!" I chuckled, leaning into the comparison. "The guy who never gets touched, never gets hurt, and walks away from an entire war zone without a speck of dust on his suit? Yeah, you could say he and I are pretty similar. I could wipe the floor with all of you right now and still make it home in time for dinner like nothing happened."
If this was the absolute pinnacle of what the Shinigami had to offer, then this syndicate was nothing but a collective of insects waiting to be crushed under my boot.
But just as I was riding high on my own arrogance, Zero moved. At an almost unnatural speed, his hand plunged deep into his pocket. Anticipating a hidden weapon or a dirty trick, my survival instincts kicked in and I leaped backward, creating distance.
What he pulled out, however, wasn’t a weapon—at least not in the traditional sense. It was a high-tech syringe loaded with a glowing red serum.
He held it up, staring at me with a manic glint in his eyes. "I am the Senior Commander of Division 4. In other words, I am the King of D-4. And a real King burns his own life to protect his empire!"
My brows furrowed, the cringe hitting me hard. "The hell are you rambling about, old man?"
He just smirked. For some reason, a sudden chill raced down my spine. There was something deeply unsettling about that smile, like he already knew I was a dead man walking. I glanced at his enforcers and saw their faces warp into absolute horror.
One of his men screamed out, "Boss... don’t do it! Don’t use the Cerberus! Think about the consequences!"
’The Cerberus? What the fuck is that?’
Ignoring his men entirely, Zero slammed the needle hard into his thigh, letting out a guttural groan as he plunged the syringe, emptying the glowing red liquid into his veins. He tossed the empty vial aside, bending slightly at the waist as a low chuckle vibrated in his throat.
"Tell me, kiddo... do you know what the word Shinigami actually means?"
I scoffed, crossing my arms. "Like I give a shit."
"It means God of Death," he growled, the texturing of his voice altering drastically, dropping into a deep, demonic register. "And do you know why they call us THAT!?"
Something was seriously wrong with him. The fabric of his reality was shifting. He was... changing.
The whites of his eyes were rapidly bleeding into a terrifying crimson. His lips pulled back over his teeth, saliva dripping from his jaws like a rabid hound.
I forced myself to stay calm, masking my growing unease with sarcasm. "I don’t know... because you guys thought the anime name sounded edgy and cool?"
"BECAUSE WE ARE MONSTERS!!!!" he roared.
The sheer force of his voice was immediately followed by the violent tearing of fabric. The buttons on his red beach shirt violently popped off, snapping into the brick walls like bullets. His jeans ripped into shredded rags, barely covering his lower half as his muscles expanded. His thighs, his chest, his entire skeletal structure became thicker, denser, and violently larger.
It was a grotesque, terrifying transformation—straight out of a live-action Hulk nightmare.
I frowned, my mind racing. ’I thought this kind of supernatural bullshit was exclusive to the fantasy world. What the hell is going on here? What kind of black-market science are these Shinigami bastards cooking up?’
Before I could process it further, Zero launched himself from the asphalt. His speed was entirely unnatural, leaping through the air like a monstrous werewolf closing in on its prey. He brought down a devastating, boulder-sized fist toward my head.
I threw my palm up, channeling my inner stats to block it.
My eyes widened. "What the—"
The explosive kinetic force behind the punch was overwhelming. The impact blew right through my guard, launching me violently backward through the air. I slammed hard against the side of the black sedan, the metal crumpling beneath my weight as a sharp groan of pain escaped my lips.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the four enforcers scrambling for cover, desperately trying to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of their boss’s rampage.
I forced myself back onto my feet, a hot trickle of blood dripping down from my hairline. My entire torso throbbed. I hadn’t felt this kind of raw physical trauma in a very long time—not since the days I fought the Behemoths of Terror in the other world.
This bold old man wasn’t bluffing; the Shinigami really were monsters on earth.
"HAAAAAAAH!" Zero roared, bringing his massive hands together into a double-fisted hammer of death, aiming to paste me against the ruined sedan.
I moved in the nick of time, throwing myself into a desperate roll across the pavement. Zero’s fists slammed directly into the car, the entire frame folding in half like a piece of cheap origami.
Missing his target only fueled the frustration painted across what was left of Zero’s face. He was completely losing his humanity. Not only were his eyes completely bloodshot, but thick red veins were actively etching themselves across his bulging skin. I caught a fleeting glimpse of him furiously scratching at his own flesh in irritation before he lunged at me once more.
I considered unleashing my full system magic to obliterate him on the spot, but a sudden observation stopped me. His attack patterns were frantic, sloppy, and desperate. He wasn’t pacing himself; he wanted to end this fight immediately. Meanwhile, those crimson veins were getting thicker by the second, and his frantic scratching was turning his own skin raw.
’Could this be the ’consequences’ his subordinate was yelling about?’ I wondered internally. ’The drug is killing him.’
If I was going to dismantle this syndicate from the shadows, I needed to understand their weapons. I needed to see exactly what this drug could do.
I stopped running. As Zero charged toward me like a runaway freight train, I planted my boots firmly into the cracked ground.
"Let’s do this then! Fist for fist. Tooth for tooth!!"
Taking a deep breath, I threw my weight forward, launching a heavy counter-punch directly against his oncoming fist.
"HAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!" he bellowed, attempting to overpower me with sheer mass.
I held my ground, matching his roar with my own. My fist was easily two times smaller than his monstrous hand, yet it carried the exact same condensed, terrifying output of power.
The shockwave echoed through the alley. Zero took a slow, staggering step back, his crimson eyes widening in absolute shock.
’Yeah, old man. I’m still stronger.’
The grueling system training regimens I had survived and the brutal torture Rose put me through when I descended into hell had forged a baseline biology too resilient to be overpowered by a bald mafia enforcer high on superhuman liquid cocaine.
Behind him, the remaining gang members were losing their minds.
"This brat... who the hell is he!?"
"Is he even human!?"
"The boss injected Cerberus—the most heavily guarded drug in the entire syndicate! It amplifies human strength and density five times over! How is an ordinary kid matching him blow for blow!?"
"He’s... he’s a demon! I’m out of here!!"
The two low-level lackeys completely lost their nerve. Turning tail, they sprinted out of the alleyway like terrified deer. Only the four elite enforcers remained, their weapons trained on us, desperately hesitating to interfere.
Or so I thought.
Just as I was about to completely overwhelm Zero’s guard and break his arm with my trailing punch, one of the enforcers snapped. His trembling finger pulled the trigger, unleashing a wild volley of gunfire.
Fortunately, my passive perception picked up his spike in killing intent a fraction of a second before he shot at me. I was forced to abort my strike and twist my body mid-air to dodge the incoming bullets. But breaking my momentum left me wide open.
Zero seized the micro-opening. Bracing his feet, he drove a massive, punishing counter-fist straight into my exposed solar plexus.
"Gurgh!"
I coughed violently, vomiting up the remnants of the meat skewer I had just bought as an agonizing wave of pain tore through my abdomen. It felt like his fist had possessed enough raw power to punch clean through my torso and leave a gaping crater in my spine.
The impact launched me violently across the alley. I crashed heavily against the brick wall, the masonry cracking into a web of fractures beneath the force before I slid down onto the pavement.
More than a couple of my ribs were definitely shattered.
Wincing, I reached into my system inventory, my fingers brushing against the glass of a high-tier healing potion. But Zero was too desperate to give me a single second of breathing room. He closed the distance at an impossible speed, his heavy tattered boot swinging out in a brutal kick that caught my wrist, sending the health vial flying across the pavement where it shattered into useless shards.
For a guy who had mutated to the size of a minivan, he was unnaturally fast.
"I am going to teach you a lesson you’ll remember all the way in hell before I smash your bones into dust, boy!!" he roared, towering over me as he raised his fist for the killing blow.
He was confident. He thought he had me cornered.
But the old bastard had made one fatal mistake.
He completely underestimated exactly what I am capable of.
To be continued...
