The gang’s support personnel knew the situation was critical—every second of hesitation could bring total disaster.
So, he followed Vesta’s order, grabbed another worker nearby who could still move, and the two of them dashed toward the second checkpoint like arrows shot from a bow.
Inside the second checkpoint, everything was a mess.
The grenade Vesta had thrown earlier landed with perfect precision. One guard was knocked unconscious by the blast; another was severely wounded, with dozens of shrapnel pieces embedded in his body, writhing in unbearable pain. A third could barely move, but faced with the gang members and the worker rushing over with guns raised, he was scared out of his wits.
“I surrender!”
That barely-mobile guard shouted at the top of his lungs, raising his hands high and crouching down with practiced ease.
Vesta arrived a little later, dragging the injured worker along, stumbling as he reached the checkpoint.
Seeing the scene, he couldn’t help but feel speechless.
These guards and police officers were only slightly better marksmen than him—so how on earth could they be this skilled at surrendering?
But there was no time to dwell on it.
Vesta quickly directed the gang members to stop the injured worker’s bleeding.
Then, together with the other worker, they dismantled the sandbag wall and piled it heavily onto the surrendering guard, pinning him down securely.
Once that was done, Vesta raised his rifle, locking his aim on the guards at the first checkpoint, who had their backs turned to him.
He took a deep breath, squeezed the trigger—and bang! The bullet whistled through the air.
Too bad Vesta’s aim was terrible. The shot missed its target completely and burrowed into a distant sandbag wall, kicking up only a tiny puff of dust.
The guards and police officers who had been locked in a fierce fight with Klereszy flinched hard at the sudden gunfire.
For a moment, they froze.
Then, in the next second, some of them finally realized—the second and third checkpoints had fallen in just a few minutes.
Suddenly, their minds were caught in fierce turmoil, like their left and right brains were wrestling each other. They couldn’t decide whether to deal with the unexpected enemy behind them or hold the line against Klereszy and his people attacking from the front.
In that split second of hesitation, Klereszy seized the opportunity. With a single command, all the gang members rushed out from behind the wall, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets. The gunfire was deafening.
Vesta and the other two at the second checkpoint saw this and got ready to join the fight.
But just then, a loud shout came from inside the first checkpoint:
“We surrender!”
The voice was so powerful it seemed to pierce the clouds—and it reached the charging gang members loud and clear. For a moment, everyone froze. The gunfire stopped instantly.
Vesta stood straight as a rod on top of the sandbag wall. The gang members who had been laying down fire had their fingers frozen mid-trigger, unable to pull, their eyes wide with shock.
As if worried no one had heard, the five people inside the first checkpoint yelled again at the top of their lungs:
“We surrender!”
Now, everyone understood.
Vesta and the other two climbed back behind the sandbag wall and started calming down the worker whose bleeding had just been stopped.
Finally, Vesta had time to think about the question from earlier. Why were these people so good at surrendering? He racked his brain, but no answer came.
Maybe it’s just instinct, hardwired into living beings. When faced with overwhelming power, surrender becomes their only choice for survival.
Klereszy waved the others forward to carefully collect all the weapons from the first, second, and third checkpoints. After a thorough count, they had four turtle-shaped grenades, ten pistols, and fifteen boxes of ammunition.
These spoils were a huge boost for the gang. They had been nearly out of bullets just moments ago—this resupply was like a lifeline in a snowstorm.
“Would’ve been better if you’d surrendered earlier, right? Then all those people wouldn’t have had to die…”
One gang member couldn’t help but complain.
The guards and police officers felt like crying but had no tears left. They had thought the gang wasn’t that many and figured they could put up a fight.
Who knew that while the gang had only lost two nobodies, their own side would suffer so badly?
“Hey, you—the one who threw the grenade. Come here. Everyone else…”
Klereszy looked around. The five men clearly had panic written all over their faces. The grenade thrower stepped forward. Klereszy didn’t say much else—just sent him to meet the goddess with a single bullet.
That made the remaining five even more terrified.
Their faces turned pale, and their legs wouldn’t stop shaking.
But then, Klereszy suddenly spoke, his tone surprisingly soft:
“You don’t want to live in fear, do you? You’ve got families—parents, kids. Go on, get out of here!”
Those guards and police officers felt a surge of gratitude from the bottom of their hearts. They never expected Klereszy to let them go.
All thoughts of resistance had already vanished. They didn’t plan on going back to those corrupt, chaotic guard units and police departments anyway. After all, those places were just shoddy outfits riddled with greed. They barely got paid, and besides—they’d nearly lost their lives just now.
Everyone had just sat down to rest when more shouting came from a distance.
Vesta immediately went on high alert. He sprang up, raising his pistol.
Klereszy looked closely at the panicked faces of the approaching group, then patted Vesta’s shoulder:
“Relax—those are our people coming back from the prison rescue. Not enemies. But… why is he yelling ‘Run’?”
The man running toward them was, of course, Manville. His face was flushed red from the intense exertion. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and clinging to his body, with the excess sweat dripping down his rough arms.
“Didn’t you go to free our members?”
Klereszy asked directly, a hint of confusion in his eyes.
Manville and his group had pushed themselves to their limits. Quite a few collapsed straight to the ground, gasping for air.
Manville barely managed to stay upright. He raised a hand, signaling Klereszy to hold off on the questions. He held his breath, cautiously looked around, and then exhaled like a deflating balloon.
After a long moment, Manville recovered a bit and finally responded:
“Yeah, we went to free them, but you have no idea what we just ran into. A monster—a full two meters tall! Two meters! It had a human head and could walk upright on the walls!”
“A monster? No way!”
One gang member laughed out loud, convinced Manville was making up stories without any proof.
Manville got flustered immediately, flailing his arms and waving his hands wildly to describe the creature, which just made everyone laugh even more.
“Don’t laugh!”
Manville’s face turned even redder as he shouted.
“And—what’s so funny?! There’s nothing funny about this! If we hadn’t run fast enough, you’d never have seen us again.”
Manville fumed, and the others who had escaped with him all nodded in agreement.
“But we hadn’t gotten far when that monster started chasing us. We heard gunfire over here, so we ran toward it. Figured if we couldn’t outrun the monster, we’d join forces and take it down together!”
There was a hint of false hope in Manville’s voice.
“But looks like… we lost it…”
Just as Manville finished speaking, a huge shadow slowly began to block out the sun above him.
Nearby, Vesta’s pupils shrank sharply. He instinctively gripped his gun tighter.
“Uh… is that the monster you were talking about? The one walking toward us?”
Manville spun around, staring at that massive body. His legs took two shaky steps back, then buckled beneath him.
In a trembling voice, he said to the others behind him:
“See? I told you… there was a monster.”
Now everyone truly believed him—because the monster was standing right there behind them.
A tense atmosphere spread through the air like a thick, heavy fog, making it hard to breathe.
Klereszy’s face changed dramatically. He quickly drew his pistol, aimed at the creature before him, and said to the people around him:
“Stay calm. Get ready to fight!”
The gang members snapped out of it and scrambled to their feet.
They quickly took cover, gripping their weapons tightly, their trembling fingers resting on the triggers.
Under the blazing sun, Manville and the others finally got a clear look at the monster.
It had a human head, but its face was twisted like a crumpled piece of paper. Its body was enormous and deformed, with muscles bulging like tangled tree roots. Its skin was rough and covered in scales, which gleamed with an eerie cold light under the sun.
“No matter how many of you come—it’s useless!”
The monster roared.
“Open fire!”
At Klereszy’s command, gunfire once again thundered across the battlefield like explosions. Bullets rained down on the monster like a storm, striking its body and kicking up sparks—but only left shallow marks on its scales.
“That guy was right—it’s like iron plating! Bullets can’t get through!” one gang member cried out in terror, a note of despair in his voice.
Just as the fierce battle between the group and the monster was raging, a team of students wearing neat uniforms and holding guns marched into the street—perfectly synchronized.
They were following their principal’s orders to come here, assist the guard units and police, and crack down on the gang.
“That’s them!”
One of them pointed at the gang, hatred burning in their eyes.
“But there’s a huge monster over there!”
Another student stared at the terrifying beast, their legs trembling uncontrollably.
“Shut up! That monster is a divine messenger. We’re only here to deal with those troublemakers who are destroying order.”
Upon hearing this, the others nodded in agreement and began moving slowly toward the checkpoint the gang had occupied.
The gang members weren’t blind—they could clearly see what the students were doing.
“Hey, this is suicide!”
Vesta was frantic. He yelled at the top of his lungs, but his voice seemed completely drowned out by the “gunfire,” unable to reach the students’ ears.
Those students were so immersed in their own sense of “justice” that they couldn’t hear a word he said.
They had declared the two-meter-tall monster a holy envoy. Only one thought remained in their minds:
Wipe out the gang. Protect so-called “order.”
“Don’t worry about them!”
The worker beside him tried to convince Vesta.
“I can’t just ignore them! They’re just like me—misled!”
Vesta couldn’t bear to watch these young lives throw themselves away for nothing.
