150: Battle, Collapse

Chapter 736: 150. Battle, Collapse

Getting hit square in the face never felt good, especially when it was a headbutt delivered with full force.

The blow made Carl's entire face burn with pain. A sharp stab shot through her nose as if the bridge were about to break, and a sour sensation flooded her nasal cavity. The involuntary physical reaction brought tears to her eyes, blurring her vision.

You let your guard down.

Carl wanted to rebuke herself like that.

If the other person's head had been modified, or if their forehead bone had been implanted with reinforced cyberware, that impact alone could have cracked her skull and splattered her brains.

But she immediately realized it had not been negligence. In that lightning-fast exchange, her body had already made the most precise judgment—at that instant, she truly had not sensed any lethal threat from the blow.

That instinct was exactly why she had chosen to take the headbutt head-on.

The pain in her face was intense, but not fatal. If she let go of the kunai or pulled her fingers from the other person's shoulder, however, she would lose the hard-won advantage of restraining them.

Her muscle memory had made the choice faster than rational thought: better to endure flesh-and-blood pain than loosen her hold on the enemy.

There was an even deeper reason behind that choice.

The gray-clad person's reactions were astonishingly fast, their attacks far more vicious than expected. With Carl's fingers piercing their shoulder and their dominant hand's weapon restrained, they had still launched this headbutt without hesitation in the instant both of their guards were wide open.

The movement had been so clean and decisive that it seemed precisely calculated, without a trace of hesitation, as though they had expected to be restrained and prepared this