167 Aguilar, Death

Carl felt the scorching breath of the gun barrel against her jaw.

—Death Apple's bullet had already left the chamber.

In the instant no ordinary person could react, her body generated tension that nearly tore her muscles apart. Her cervical vertebrae bent backward in a perfectly calculated arc, and the bullet grazed her Adam's apple, drawing a thin line of blood.

The searing wind of the shot scorched her skin, but Carl's pupils remained icy calm.

It was an extreme dodge, and also the optimal evasion distance Carl had calculated.

Because if she moved any farther, she would no longer be able to see Aguilar's next move.

Aguilar's attack was not over.

A hidden sleeve blade connected to his wrist, seemingly modified from his hand, sprang from his arm. Using the blade Carl held, still pinned beneath his ribs, as a fulcrum, he pressed forward fiercely like a lever. The tip aimed straight for Carl's right eye, closing to within three centimeters—

The cold gleam of the sleeve blade reflected a silver star in Carl's iris.

Three centimeters—

By normal human reaction limits, that was already a fatal distance.

But Carl's brain was racing. Her pupils contracted sharply, breaking down every movement of the muscle fibers in Aguilar's wrist into quantifiable streams of data.

Trapezius contraction range and anterior deltoid exertion pattern identified.

Predicted blade trajectory: penetration of the right eyeball.

Estimated injury: fatal.

The data flashed through Carl's brain in an instant. She chose a move that looked suicidal: instead of leaning back to evade, she slightly raised her head toward the blade!

"Sshk—"

The sleeve blade skimmed past the edge of her eyeball. Carl could even feel the blade slicing through her eyelashes.

But that millimeter-level shift caused the tip to miss the eyeball itself, only cutting a