As Carl walked toward Patrick, Patrick, whose target had been an NCPD officer hiding behind cover, stopped.
His instincts had sensed a threat.
A beast that had lost its reason and retained only madness would instinctively sense who its greatest enemy was. Compared to the little rabbits around him, so insignificant that it did not matter which one he dealt with, Patrick could now feel a tiger approaching him.
Tiger Claws.
The term flashed through Patrick's mind. He did not know why he could remember those words so firmly now, as though they had been branded into his mind and could not be erased.
"Tiger Claws."
So he murmured it aloud, and Carl, who seemed to have heard him say something, stopped twelve meters away.
Does he still have his reason?
Just as Carl thought that, those yellow eyes streaked with crimson met his.
Looks like he doesn't.
Looking at the cybernetic eyes, reddened by the torn flesh around their sockets yet unable to conceal their bright yellow glow, Carl felt that all he could see within them was madness.
"Come."
Carl merely chuckled and invited Patrick to fight. As if the invitation had been acknowledged, Patrick's figure blurred the instant Carl's words fell.
Time seemed to slow, and he activated his Sandevistan once more.
The Sandevistan Patrick used was a Dynalar Sandevistan Mk.1, a Sandevistan designed specifically for mercenaries and soldiers—in other words, combat cyberware for special situations. It not only accelerated the body's reactions and stimulated the flesh, but also contained a certain degree of combat-assistance functions.
With those combat-assistance functions, even though Patrick had descended into madness, he could still keenly identify his enemy's vital points and attack them.
In less than the blink of an eye, Patrick reached Carl's side. A Mantis Blade thrust straight at Carl's body; judging by its trajectory, it intended to pierce Carl's right arm, then pass through his lung from the side before reaching his heart.
"I can see it."
In the time stretched out by Patrick's perception, he saw a slowly widening smile, the turn of Carl's head, and words that should have been impossible to speak continuously.
He had kept up with his speed?!
Though Patrick should already have been consumed by madness, he still felt a surge of dread and cold.
But the Mantis Blade he had thrust out could no longer be withdrawn. He could only maintain the motion and continue stabbing forward.
Carl watched it all, his smile growing brighter.
He had guessed right.
From the first time he saw this cyberpsycho use a Sandevistan, Carl had formed a basic hypothesis. After organizing it in his mind, he had already identified the other man's movement pattern.
A mind consumed by madness would only act according to the movements it was best at and most instinctively familiar with. That meant a cyberpsycho would not change his fighting style, and in a life-or-death fight, that was simply the most laughable weakness imaginable.
The first piece of information: this cyberpsycho called Patrick had used his Sandevistan twice before, and each time, he had circled around to attack from his opponent's right side. In other words, in his instincts, attacking from the opponent's right was both the position he was best at and the one most comfortable for him.
The second piece of information: every time he used the Sandevistan, he could take fourteen steps. Both times, it had been fourteen steps. Aside from instinctive warnings, someone consumed by madness would not possess the reason to stop using his cyberware. That meant fourteen steps were the limit of his Sandevistan. The average adult man's stride was eighty-five centimeters, so fourteen steps came to 1,190 centimeters—eleven point nine meters.
Carl stood twelve meters from Patrick.
He could not circle behind Carl. He could not use the smooth, practiced method from the previous two times—circling behind for a backstab kill. He would only stop in front of Carl's right side, or at his side, and attack from there.
As long as Carl understood where the other man would attack from and roughly which part of his body would be struck, responding to speed with slowness was not difficult.
The Monomolecular Wire snapped up and lashed the side of Patrick's arm without the Mantis Blade. The razor-sharp wire easily sliced through Patrick's Subdermal Armor, severed half his arm, and reached the Mantis Blade.
A Mantis Blade was not something the Monomolecular Wire could cut through directly, so when it encountered resistance, the wire displayed its nature as a wire.
Just as a string wrapped around a spinning top at the instant of contact due to the force used to whip it, the Monomolecular Wire began spinning and coiling around the Mantis Blade. With the force Carl had swung it with in advance, Patrick, whose Sandevistan had already reached its limit, could only watch as the Monomolecular Wire wound around his entire arm.
The flow of time returned to his body.
Patrick instinctively tried to pull his arm back, to tear the Mantis Blade free from the coil, but his madness-addled brain had forgotten that the Monomolecular Wire had wrapped around not only the Mantis Blade, but half of his arm as well.
If he had not pulled, it would have been fine. But the instant he did, the Monomolecular Wire wrapped around the flesh smoothly began cutting through Patrick's flesh in the opposite direction with the force of his pull. With just that single tug, the flesh of half his arm was "removed" from his arm by Patrick himself.
In the end, the Monomolecular Wire caught at his wrist. It was not that the wire could not cut any farther down; rather, restrained and pulled by the Mantis Blade in the other half of his arm, the wire had reached the limit of its tension. The two pieces of cyberware ground against each other, producing an unbearably shrill metallic screech.
Feeling the pain, Patrick gained a moment of clarity amid his madness. Realizing something was wrong, realizing the danger, he finally understood that his right hand was beyond saving.
He raised the Mantis Blade on his left hand, preparing to attack with it under the circumstances, but after struggling for so long, Patrick found that Carl had long since prepared his response.
A pistol pressed against Patrick's brow.
"Nice meeting you, yellow-eyed uncle."
Carl looked down at Patrick, whose body had been pulled slightly lower than his own, and at the cybernetic eyes now completely stained crimson, their yellow glow dimmed. He bid farewell to this madman.
"Then, goodbye."
Before you continue