In Cyberpunk, There are Just Too Many Unbelievers

The plasma cutter sprouting from the gorilla’s back slashed downward.

Wooong

With a trembling sound in the air, a red streak left an afterimage in the empty space.

Immediately after, what had once been a police officer was cleaved in two.

The gorilla showed no interest in the officer he had bisected.
He simply deflected bullets and magic with his bare body while deftly wielding the three pairs of arms from his back and his two thick original arms,
Indiscriminately massacring the officers who had surrounded him.

His right insect-like compound eye captured the entire battlefield, and the CPU in his brain analyzed every situation.

In just 0.1 seconds, the analysis completed, and the three pairs of arms autonomously executed efficient massacres.

The officers who had come to save the civilians were helplessly killed.

It wasn’t that the officers were incompetent.
They had undergone their own procedures and possessed their own specialties.
There were mages, swordsmen, and skilled snipers among them.
With this much manpower, they could have swept a gang branch clean.

But against that gorilla, they were no match.
What the gorilla was using was military-grade.
Not just one, but enough to cover his entire body – things the civilian market could not even get a glimpse of.
At that level, they should have called in the army and armored vehicles instead of sending police.

“ETA for the special forces!”
“10 minutes!”
“You bastards! You even have air vehicles, so why are you later than us!?”
“It’s the Christmas season today, so the airspace is congested!”
“Thanks for telling me, asswipe!”

Once again, the role of the ground officers was to be meat shields and buy time until the special forces arrived.
For officers of middling talent, connections, and funds, this was always the case.

However, their existence was not meaningless.
Thanks to the officers holding down the gorilla’s ankles, the civilians were able to evacuate the area.

Confirming there were no more civilians left at the scene, the officers changed their strategy.
From encirclement and elimination to stalling for time.
Instead of aggressively engaging, they switched to suppressive fire from safe cover positions.

The changed strategy was effective.
Just by shifting to a defensive tactic, the number of casualties significantly decreased.

Witnessing this, the rookie officer dared to have hope.
‘I can survive this!’

As a result, he ended up having the thought he should never have entertained.
He absolutely should not have.
But it was too late for regrets.

A rocket came flying in, blowing away the rookie along with his cover.
Some officers bit their lower lips tightly.
But there was no time to mourn the fallen rookie.
Because the gorilla had begun his rocket barrage in response to the officers’ strategy change.

Kwaang! Bang!

“Liniaaahh! Linia!!! I’ll kill you all, you bastards!!!”

Somehow, the officers had become the gorilla’s mortal enemies who had killed his daughter.
The sniper who had been active here and there was caught up in the rocket barrage.
Building facades collapsed, windows shattered.
This place had now transformed into a battlefield.

Within that hell, the rocket launcher was already aiming at the spot where the lieutenant was taking cover.

‘Damn it! I should’ve just stayed home and listened to my wife’s nagging!’

No matter where he looked, there was no other viable cover nearby.
As if sensing his fate, the lieutenant tightly shut his eyes.

It was at that moment.

Wheeeere!

The sound of something soaring through the sky, and

Fwoosh!

The sound of a rocket being fired.

Then,

Kwaaang!

The sound of the gorilla being caught up in the explosion of that rocket came from beyond the cover.

Though the thick cloud of dust made it difficult to grasp the situation where the gorilla had been, one thing was certain – the gorilla had been forced to kneel for the first time.

Before the lieutenant could comprehend the sudden change in situation, a young boy approached him.

Covered in dust and with tattered clothes turned to rags, he still did not lose his handsome appearance in that situation.

Moreover, his appearance somehow inspired trust.

As the dazed lieutenant admired the boy’s looks, the boy asked him a question.

“Do you happen to have a sword or anything?”

Rewinding time.
Right after the gorilla began his full-scale rocket barrage.
The walls of several buildings collapsed.
Included among them was the wall of the attic room where Amon and Sonia had been sheltering.

The wall protecting them crumbled away, fully revealing the battlefield where the gorilla was engaged in combat.
The gorilla’s compound eye turned toward the interior of the collapsed wall.
All that could be seen inside were clothes hanging on racks.
The gorilla lost interest in the attic room and returned to his task.

“Whew.”

And from the pile of clothes the gorilla had glanced over, a sigh of relief emerged.
Amon’s group, who had hidden their bodies within that pile of clothes.
Fortunately, the gorilla had not paid any attention to their side.

Convinced the gorilla had not noticed them, Amon decided to remain hidden within the clothes.
About 15 minutes had passed since the shooting started.
The special forces’ average arrival time was around 10 minutes.
Considering the Christmas traffic congestion, it would be around 20 minutes.

Amon’s thought was that if they hid here for another 5 minutes or so, they would be safe.
Sonia nodded her head and tried to hide her body in the pile of clothes.
The clothing store owner also moved toward the clothes pile to hide.

But before he could conceal himself,
“Ugh!”
The old man let out a cry of pain.

Amon asked with concern, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
The old man refused to answer, while struggling to walk properly.
But even if he could hide it with words, he could not conceal his limping leg.

Amon’s gaze turned toward the old man’s leg.
A pair of scissors was stabbed into his thigh.

‘Damn it… Was it from back then?’
When the wall had blown out, various shrapnel including that pair of scissors had flown into the attic room.
The shrapnel had been painful, but Amon and Sonia’s sturdy bodies had endured it.
But the old man did not seem to be as sturdy as them.

Whether this should be considered misfortune or fortune.
Since Amon and Sonia had taken most of the shrapnel, the old man was uninjured above the waist. But those scissors had ended up stabbing into his thigh.

Relying on the dim attic lighting, Amon checked the old man’s complexion.
He didn’t look to be in good condition.
Even without medical expertise, Amon could tell the scissors had punctured a major blood vessel.

There was no choice but to rule out carrying the old man while fleeing to somewhere else to hide.
Even in his dazed state, the old man kept repeating the Korean words “Just go…” to them.

Hearing the old man’s words, Amon tightly shut his eyes.
This was an old man he had just met.
And in this world, things like compassion or justice were not even jokes.

Even if they had made it to a hospital in time, who knew if the old man could have survived.
And before that, who knew if he could have even afforded the hospital bills.

So rationally thinking, it was right to just leave him.

With a furrowed brow, Amon entered into prayer.
“Lord, have mercy on me.”
His prayer was short, and his decision was swift.

He entrusted the dazed old man to Sonia and told her what she had to do.
“I’ll draw that gorilla’s attention. In the meantime, you cross through that alley. See that bakery? There’s a back door there, so if you pass through, you’ll see the hospital.”

“What do you mean by drawing his attention?”
“Sonia. Trust me.”

He could not bring himself to mention things like previous lives or patterns.
Instead, all Amon could say was to ask her to trust him.

The upright boy’s eyes were reflected in the maiden’s golden pupils.
After looking at Amon’s face, Sonia bit her lower lip and hoisted the old man onto her back.
Like Amon, she could not bring herself to abandon the old man either.

As if pouting, she said to Amon,
“I’ll be right back. You better not get hurt… until then!”
Swallowing the death flag she had almost uttered, Sonia shouted.

Sensing Sonia’s consideration, Amon responded with a confident expression,
“It’ll be over before then.”

Immediately after those words, Amon combined the tools present in that space.
The moment he had briefly seen the gorilla’s form, what came to mind was a one-man army.
Not only were heavy weapons mounted on his thick arms like the gorilla’s, but the three pairs of arms sprouting from his back were also armed to the teeth.
Just in terms of firepower alone, he was a monster capable of taking down two light-armored vehicles.

But he was not without weaknesses.
‘His lower body is lacking.’
Of course, even his thighs looked sturdy from the outside.
In reality, they were firm enough to shrug off ordinary bullets.
But what Amon was pointing out was not about durability, but rather balance.

‘To wield eight weapons with his upper body, he can’t mount any additional weapons on his lower body. His lower body probably only has the function of withstanding the recoil.’

And that level was probably just barely enough.
With just a slight disturbance, he could easily be knocked to the ground.

That’s why Amon viewed the gorilla’s lower body as his weakness.
Fortunately, the space Amon was in had been a workspace, so it was easy to find materials to exploit that weakness.

He calmly tied some ropes together and attached weights to one end.
Thus completing an improvised bola.

He waited for the moment when the gorilla tried to fire his weapons.
And at the instant the gorilla approached to aim his rocket launcher at an officer,

‘Now!’
Amon threw the bola.

The bola successfully wrapped around the gorilla’s legs, tripping him forward.
And though unintended, the rocket fired directly, engulfing the gorilla in the explosion.

Watching that explosion, Amon could not hide his bewilderment.
‘Why did he remove the safety on that rocket?’

Ordinarily, rockets had safety mechanisms to prevent the user from being caught in their own explosions, but that small rocket seemed to lack any such thing.

The most likely reason was that in order to mount the launchers and rockets on his back, he had removed the safety mechanisms and forcibly miniaturized them, but only the gorilla knew the truth.

In any case, that unexpected self-detonation was a stroke of luck for Amon, so he decided not to dwell on it too deeply.

Pushing the word “safety” to the back of his mind, Amon approached the lieutenant.
Toward the dazed lieutenant, Amon asked,
“Do you have a sword or anything?”

Caught off guard by the sudden question, the lieutenant still kindly answered.
He pointed toward a torso-severed corpse some distance from the gorilla.
On that corpse’s waist was a relatively intact Japanese sword.

Amon looked at that sword and clicked his tongue.
“Tch. That’s a bit unreliable.”

While saying that, he seemed to prepare a sprinting stance to retrieve the sword.
The lieutenant realized what the boy intended to do.
Ordinarily, he should have stopped him, but in such an extreme situation, people tend to cling to miracles.
Especially considering the gorilla had knelt for the first time, the lieutenant could not help but naturally want to trust this boy.

So instead of stopping him, the lieutenant decided to do his part.
“Take this with you before you go.”
He handed Amon a pistol with only one magazine left.

Amon gave a nod of gratitude and dashed out from cover.
On his way to retrieve the Japanese sword, officers who had already received the transmission covered him by firing at the gorilla to draw his attention.
Sprinting along, the boy reached the spot where the sword lay.

Instead of gripping it properly, he grabbed the sword reverse-grip and charged toward the gorilla.
‘I don’t think I can win.’
That thing was an army.
And in game terms, Amon hadn’t even started the tutorial yet.
No matter how much veteran knowledge he had, Amon was not delusional enough to try showing off based on that.

What he aimed for was not the gorilla’s incapacitation.
It was an emergency measure to maximize their survival until the special forces arrived.

Amon recalled the settings of a game from a neighboring world, not Punk City itself.
When facing boss-level enemies, focusing attacks on specific parts could sever or destroy those parts – this was called Part Destruction.
Succeeding at Part Destruction would significantly simplify the pattern.

While it was a mechanic that didn’t exist in Punk City originally, in this reality-warped present, it was a strategy worth considering.

Amon charged toward the gorilla.
The gorilla, caught up in the self-detonation of his own rocket, was in a sorry state.
His right arm was severely scorched, and the rocket launchers on his back were destroyed.
With some of his sensors also damaged, he had lost his ability to fully grasp the battlefield, too occupied with responding to the officers’ gunfire and untangling the bola around his legs.

Thanks to that, the gorilla did not notice Amon’s presence until he reached his back.
Approaching from behind, Amon thrust the reverse-gripped Japanese sword into the joint of one of the auxiliary arms.
To drive the ill-fitting sword deeper, he struck the hilt with his fist like hammering a nail.

Dudududuk!

The sound of something snapping came from inside the three right auxiliary arms.
Only noticing Amon’s presence when the remaining left arms turned toward him, by then Amon had already evaded.

The gorilla’s right auxiliary arms creaked before finally seeming to malfunction and stop moving.
All of the gorilla’s long-range weapons had been mounted on the right side.
With the auxiliary arms destroyed and the original arm holding the machine gun severely scorched,
His long-range patterns were nearly incapacitated.

The scorched arm creaked as it swiveled the machine gun’s muzzle.
But before the muzzle could even point at Amon, he had already taken cover again.
The cuts from rolling on the ground stung slightly, but were bearable.

The gorilla had made Amon his top priority target to eliminate.
He headed toward where Amon had taken cover.
But before he could reach Amon, the officers finally managed to accomplish something.
Their bullets destroyed the gorilla’s right eye.
With his targeting assistance system gone, the gorilla could no longer aim the machine gun as precisely as before.

Overload hit the gorilla’s computing system.
If he targeted Amon, the officers were a threat.
If he targeted the officers, Amon was a threat.
The computing system refused to calculate any further.
Instead, it chose to go berserk.

The enraged gorilla discarded the machine gun and began drumming.
Kung kung kung
“Oooaaahhhh!”
His magic tattoos began glowing.
To borrow Amon’s phrasing, it was the signal for Phase 3 to begin.

Sweating profusely, Amon surveyed the battlefield.
‘Is there anything here that can withstand this gorilla’s Phase 3…?’

But there was nothing.
No matter what item he considered, Amon’s amateur physical abilities held him back.
In the end, the only choices left for him were fleeing and evasion.

Amon hurriedly made some calculations.
The gorilla, having entered Phase 3, had his two thick original arms and the three arms on the left as weapons.
He roughly estimated the patterns those would create.
The problem was whether he could evade all of them, but…

‘I think I can last about 1 minute…’
After that, even he could not guarantee anything.

The excited Phase 3 gorilla’s eyes met Amon’s.
Amon raised the tension as he aimed the pistol he had received from the lieutenant.
While doing so, he also prepared to roll to the side in anticipation of the incoming charge pattern.

However, Amon did not have to face the gorilla’s Phase 3.

Kwaaang!

A massive silhouette dropped from the sky, smashing and pulverizing the gorilla as the road shattered.
Simultaneously, an ear-piercingly loud siren blared from above.

Amon looked up in startled surprise.
A flight vehicle with a very familiar emblem boldly emblazoned on it had taken position above the gorilla’s head.

From inside the flight vehicle, a sniper was leaning out at an angle, aiming a sniper rifle converted from her left arm at the gorilla.

Amon knew that logo on the vehicle all too well.
H.O.D.
Hyper Operation Department.
Ho’d.
They were the elite of American law enforcement.