It was a relief that I had checked the boss’s location in advance.
I thought as I crossed through the darkness.
If I got flustered just because the lights went out and couldn’t protect my employer, I might as well return my mercenary badge.
(Of course, there’s no actual item called a mercenary badge.)
After a short moment, my mechanical eye implant, attuned to the darkness, activated its night vision function.
And it wasn’t just me; those around me also lit up their lights and scanned the surroundings.
But.
I didn’t stop my rushing feet.
From all the ambushes I’ve done in similar ways, I knew that such incidents rarely ended in just a “power outage.”
Unpleasant predictions are never wrong.
I grabbed the boss, who was on guard facing the entrance. Then, I collapsed forward as if falling while still running.
– Kwaaang!!
Just hearing it was enough to know.
The ceiling had collapsed.
A beam of dazzling light shot through the hole in the ceiling.
The amount of light radiating inside the pitch-black party venue was blinding, probably around hundreds of thousands of lumens.
Power outage, then light.
It’s an old-school trick but an effective one for disabling most eye implants.
I didn’t bother checking the assailant’s figure by looking back.
Rather than that.
– Doo-doo-doo-doo!!!
First, I had to stop the hail of bullets.
I held the boss’s nape down to the floor. The startled boss let out a soft groan, quickly drowned out by the loud gunfire.
There was no time to worry about manners when our lives were at stake.
A small shield made of mana I created was forming behind us.
While it wouldn’t matter much against common types of ammo, minimizing the area hit was advisable just in case.
The assailants were likely targeting “everyone in the party venue.”
Screams erupted from all sides amidst a haze of dust and smoke, but the gunfire showed no signs of stopping.
– Ting, ting.
I heard the sound of bullets ricocheting from behind me.
A chill ran down my spine.
Making money in a cyberpunk world is this hard.
Eventually.
How many minutes had passed, feeling like an eternity?
The storm of bullets began to subside.
Sure, if they shot that hard, they had to cool off eventually.
I slowly prepared to use magic.
33. One Person Who Doesn’t Know the Answer (4)
“…It’s the Cyber Force, riot control team.”
“Looks like it.”
The circumstantial evidence pointed that way.
From the drone blasting strong light to the bipedal robots that could maintain firepower for long periods.
Groups capable of wielding such forces weren’t common in this city.
I cautiously scanned the surroundings.
It seemed we were the only ones left alive.
“……”
The boss was gazing down at the riot control robot I had taken down, lost in thought.
Honestly, guessing the forces behind all this was meaningless at this point.
There were too many options.
The robot system could have gone haywire, or someone could have hacked the system. There was even a chance that the city’s officials orchestrated this because they didn’t like the intermediaries.
Peering down at the broken robot, the boss now checked the bodies around us.
“…They might’ve been unpleasant to look at, but these people didn’t seem like ones who’d end up like this.”
Honestly, I didn’t recognize any faces here.
But it was hard to see the man I had just greeted, someone I had a brief acquaintance with, lying there.
I tried to shake off those feelings and said to the boss.
“Let’s move for now.”
“…You’re right.”
The boss started walking towards the exit.
I stopped the boss’s steps.
“Wait a minute.”
“…Huh?”
The boss looked back at me.
“What’s up? If we’re escaping, we should go out with the security personnel waiting outside─, ah.”
And he stopped himself mid-sentence.
Did he finally notice?
I could see his composure shaken, likely due to the life-threatening situation.
I pointed at the ground and spoke.
“There was a commotion here, so their condition wouldn’t be good. If they were fine, they would’ve already entered the party venue.”
I cautiously speculated that the earlier power outage might have been the signal for the operation.
“…Then what do we do?”
“First, we need to get out of this room.”
“How?”
I lifted the finger that had been pointing at the ground and pointed at the hole in the ceiling.
The blue night sky was visible beyond it.
“Through the ceiling.”
As a mercenary, one must always think flexibly. With a hole in the ceiling, it made sense to escape through it.
“……How?”
The boss’s “how” this time sounded different from the previous one.
The ceiling was quite high since this was a party space. The drop was significant.
I nodded lightly, meaning not to worry.
I never thought I would end up using the magic I learned from sending alleyway scavengers flying like this.
“Do you, by any chance, have a fear of heights?”
*
Well, the boss of No Answer didn’t have a fear of heights.
“……”
Yet it seemed he was unhappy with the speed. I had tried to go as slow as possible.
I felt his glare on my back.
No matter how much I could manipulate the wind with my mana, making him hover in the air was nearly impossible.
Not that it was too hard for me to do.
…I hope he doesn’t think I intentionally created a whirlwind to send us flying?
Now I’m feeling anxious.
“This way.”
I changed directions upon hearing the boss’s line. I moved slowly with my back against the wall.
I thought I might get lost in the mansion’s vastness.
But the boss mentioned he had brought a “floor plan” on a data module. Thanks to that, we avoided wandering around without a purpose.
It would be great if we could call the police.
But since it could involve the city, I didn’t even try. That could end up giving away our location.
Speaking of which.
I turned back to ask the boss.
“Have you contacted your subordinates?”
“…What about the upper class?”
Right, that made sense.
I hadn’t contacted them either because I was keeping the “signal emitter” that Drak had given me.
Honestly, if those guys came, they’d probably smash through all the city forces obstructing their path to rescue me.
But I also didn’t want that.
In the end, I had to escape by my own strength.
Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any other forces while traversing the mansion. For once, the mansion’s vastness was a blessing.
Then, the boss stopped at a massive wall.
“Here.”
“Here?”
“Just beyond here is the parking lot.”
Oh.
But just in case.
I placed my hand on the wall.
Gently drawing up my mana.
I closed my eyes and roughly sensed the external signals like sonar.
“…No people. There seem to be some cars, but they don’t look like air vehicles.”
The boss nodded at my words.
To him, it probably looked like I just rested my palm against the wall, but there was no suspicion in his expression.
“Up we go.”
Once again, I used the wind to scale the wall. It didn’t seem like there would be any thieves in the upper class. What kind of wall is several meters high?
The parking lot was vast, but there was only one vehicle in sight.
It felt unsettling, but.
I didn’t pay it much mind.
We hurriedly moved along the holographic parking line.
We stopped in front of a black SUV.
“But can you drive? This doesn’t seem like a vehicle you prepared in advance.”
“Hack chip.”
The boss showed me an unidentified device from his pocket and said.
He certainly had the potential to be a great car thief.
With no sense of presence around us, it appeared we could just get in the car and escape this place.
“……”
But why was I feeling so uneasy?
“Hey─.”
I tried to call the boss back before he got in the car.
Just then.
I spotted ‘something’ flying from above.
Time seemed to slow down for me instantaneously.
Fortunately, we kept our distance.
We had dodged a worst-case scenario.
I gathered my mana in a rush, just like when I first learned magic, without considering the risks.
Being blown up by mana or being hit by a missile, the outcome would be the same.
I grabbed the boss, who was about to get into the car. I enveloped him in my embrace and ducked down, using protection magic to cover our bodies.
From here on out, it was up to the sky.
The boss looked at me with an expression of confusion, but even that looked like slow motion.
Ugh, shit.
– Kwa──!
My vision turned a stark white.
The impact shook the ground.
I was really about to lose it.
– Aaaaang!!!
*
…So, am I alive?
…….
Looks like I am.
I peeked up slowly.
Checked if my limbs were intact.
I had no idea how far I was thrown.
Is this the power of magic? I must’ve flown dozens of meters.
There were scratches all over the ground, as if I had rolled several times. Still, nothing seemed broken.
The boss, who was in my arms, thankfully looked more intact than I was.
Honestly, if I didn’t have such a “delicate skin” negative attribute, I probably wouldn’t have any scratches either…
Anyway.
The boss seemed to have briefly lost consciousness.
I understood that.
I never thought I’d get hit by a missile in my life.
But I still had to move.
Ignoring the bone-jarring pain, I rose to my feet.
The fact that someone was still targeting the boss wasn’t over yet.
At least the good news was that the missile had flown from much further away than I had anticipated.
Did the assailants notice the riot control robot I knocked out? I felt a sense of caution from the incoming missile.
For now, I had to get moving from this spot.
I moved my creaky mechanical joints and attempted to lift the unconscious boss.
……
I was trying to get him up, to be exact.
“Ah.”
What a pickle.
He’s too heavy to lift.
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