Attack and Defense Reversed (Three Chapters Today!)

You want to shake me, make me angry, and then gain the psychological upper hand...

But I'm not one of those four idiot mercenaries killed by an unarmed man. Don't even think about playing tricks on me!

Lodem was drawing closer and closer, and the outcome was about to be decided.

Now!

Baku Madarame said nervously, "Akagi, do it!"

Q Dalang, meanwhile, gave an order: {Lodem, pick "them" up!}

Whoosh!

Akagi Shigeru pulled a "steel wire."

Another handgun was hidden on one side of the corridor. Baku Madarame had secretly set it up earlier, while Lodem was fighting Shiraki Uke.

He had stuffed foreign objects into the muzzle, piled stones mixed with gunpowder on top of it, and tied the steel wire to the trigger.

That way, when the wire was pulled and the trigger squeezed, the gun would burst, sending the foreign objects inside and the rubble on top flying in every direction, with killing power comparable to a shotgun.

As Akagi Shigeru pulled the wire, a loud boom rang out, and countless stones flew toward Lodem.

But the next second—

Whoosh!

Lodem picked "them" up—the bodies of the mercenaries killed earlier on the sixth floor!

He picked up two bodies, one in each hand, and held them in front of him as "shields" against the barrage of stones.

Rattle, rattle...

The stones smashed the corpses into a bloody mess, but Lodem was unharmed.

{Hahaha! On the battlefield, there's no sturdier shield than a human being. I saw through your plan long ago!}

Q Dalang ordered in a low voice, {Throw them, Lodem!}

Whoosh!

Lodem hurled the bodies forward with all his strength.

The bodies flew ahead, but they didn't hit Baku Madarame and the others. Instead, "something" stopped them in midair.

It was a steel-wire trap!

The space between the three men and Lodem wasn't empty. A steel-wire trap, nearly invisible to the naked eye, lay hidden there!

Squelch!

The corpses struck the trap and were instantly sliced into several pieces. Blood gushed out, spraying across the entire corridor and drenching Akagi Shigeru, Baku Madarame, and Takaomi Kaji from head to toe.

{Hahaha! So that was what you were after! Did you think I couldn't tell?}

Q Dalang switched the communications speaker on and laughed viciously, his voice echoing through the sixth-floor corridor.

{Your real plan was to use the steel-wire traps that hadn't yet been removed from the sixth floor against Lodem!}

{Did you really think I'd forget about the steel-wire traps?}

{Hahaha, it wasn't a bad strategy, but Lodem and I are still stronger!}

But just then—

Whoosh!

Lodem suddenly turned around, pointing the camera at Shiraki Uke behind him. Shiraki Uke was crouching on the floor, seemingly unable even to stand steadily.

But no matter what, Lodem couldn't take his attention off him. His natural, beastlike instincts were screaming a warning.

{What the hell... Lodem, snap out of it and turn around!}

Q Dalang slammed his knife against the table and growled hoarsely, {Get ready to kill!}

But to Q Dalang's confusion, though he had given the order, Lodem didn't move.

{Guh! Lodem! What have you been doing this whole time? Kill them, now!}

Lodem paid no attention to Q Dalang's words.

At that moment, Lodem was rubbing his eyes hard with both hands, and he didn't stop even when they were streaming with blood.

{Keep your hands off the camera, Lodem! Can't you hear me?}

"Guh... guh..."

Lodem let out a series of strange cries, saliva and blood mingling in a mess across his face.

Baku Madarame kindly reminded him, "Ah, no, no. Lodem doesn't have time to pay attention to you right now. You're not here, so you can't see it, can you? Lodem is—"

"Covered in acid!"

{...Acid?!}

Q Dalang was startled. {Did you hide it among the fragments blasted out when the gun burst and use the chance to splash Lodem with it? You actually brought something like that...}

Baku Madarame chuckled. "But that kind of trap would only work if Lodem came close."

"So we also moved the mercenaries' bodies nearby and set traps on them that would spill dust if they were moved."

"Once Lodem raised the human shields, the dust would fall into his eyes. Lodem was bound to rub them instinctively, giving the strong acid fumes a chance to enter his eyes."

"On top of that, the poison from the acid Lodem breathed in has temporarily robbed him of his ability to fight!"

"..."

Q Dalang's face stiffened. {You actually...}

"Heh, was that underhanded?"

Akagi Shigeru smiled faintly and finally lit a cigarette. "Most contests are chaotic brawls, and unexpected things happen all the time."

Q Dalang was about to say something else when he suddenly heard heavy footsteps behind Lodem.

"It's hard for you to understand, isn't it? After all, you can only blindly obey Q Dalang..."

"Goodbye, Lodem!"

Whoosh!

Shiraki Uke threw off the corpse on top of him, leaped into the air, and flipped into a flying kick at Lodem!

[Zangief's Spinning Lariat Kick]!

Chapter 34: Attack and Defense Reversed (Three Chapters Today!)

Unlike the "Superman Flying Kick,"

a professional wrestler's flying kick involved flipping the whole body in midair, placing greater emphasis on the momentum generated by the spin and concentrating the body's full weight and power in the instep.

Using the instep as the point of impact, it struck the opponent directly with a whipping effect!

[Zangief's Spinning Lariat Kick]!

Bang!

Shiraki Uke's instep struck the side of Lodem's head.

At the other end of the monitor, Q Dalang heard a sharp crackling from the speakers. Then cracks appeared across the picture, followed by a mass of static.

Shiraki Uke's kick had also broken the camera beside Lodem's ear!

And in the final image, Q Dalang clearly saw the [Man of the Divine Realm] named Akagi Shigeru raise a handgun at Lodem and pull the trigger.

"Farewell, Lodem."

Bang!

The bullet fired, and the screen went black.

Q Dalang could no longer see Lodem.

So there was even less chance of him knowing what the man called "Lodem" saw at the very end—and Q Dalang didn't care, either.

After all, Lodem was just a useful "tool."

Lodem's eyes had been corroded by the "acid." They were blood red, and his vision was a blur.

When the handgun fired, the brief muzzle flash brought light back into Lodem's field of vision.

His beastlike instincts alerted Lodem to a mortal danger, forcing his brain into motion, and his life flashed before his eyes.

In that instant, Lodem's eyes were no longer those of a murderous demon. Instead, they became utterly clear.

It seemed he had turned back into that dazed "Maruk" from before.

He remembered—

When he was a child, he had been starving and skin and bones, sitting alone in a corner of the ruins, surrounded by the bodies of villagers slaughtered by mercenaries.

Just then, a mercenary had come to him, reached out a hand, and taken him away from his home.

Afterward, the mercenary had injected him with drugs and sent him to kill.

But killing is wrong, isn't it?

That was what Maruk had thought.

Thus, under the extreme pressure Q Dalang put him through, Maruk's brain activated a self-protection mechanism, giving rise to a second personality born solely to kill—Lodem.

But Maruk didn't understand any of that.

Under the influence of drugs and human experimentation, Maruk had now lost the ability to trace his memories.