Chapter 10

The plasma cutter on the gorilla’s back slashed from top to bottom.

“Ugh.”

A red line lingered in the air, accompanied by the sound of trembling air.

Shortly after, the former police officer was split in two.

The gorilla didn’t even spare a glance at the bisected officer.

It simply deflected bullets and magic with its bare body, swinging its three pairs of arms and thick limbs in perfect harmony, slaughtering the surrounding police officers one-sidedly.

Its right eye, like an insect’s compound eye, captured the entire battlefield, and its brain’s CPU analyzed every situation.

In 0.1 seconds, the analysis was complete, and the three pairs of arms moved autonomously to execute efficient slaughter.

The police officers who came to save the citizens were helplessly dying.

It wasn’t that the police were incompetent.

They had undergone their own enhancements and had their own specialties.

There were mages, swordsmen, and skilled snipers.

With this many people, they could have wiped out a gang branch.

But they were no match for that gorilla.

The gorilla was using military-grade equipment.

The kind you couldn’t even see in the civilian market.

And not just one piece—enough to cover its entire body.

At that level, they should’ve called the military and armored vehicles, not the police.

“ETA for the Special Forces!”

“10 minutes!”

“Damn it! They have flying vehicles, why are they slower than us?!”

“It’s Christmas season, the airspace is congested!”

“Thanks for the info, jerk!”

Once again, the role of the low-ranking police was to buy time as meat shields until the Special Forces arrived.

For cops with mediocre talent, money, and connections, it was always like this.

But their existence wasn’t meaningless.

Thanks to the police holding the gorilla back, the citizens managed to escape the scene.

Once it was confirmed that no civilians remained, the police changed their strategy.

From a kill-through-encirclement to a time-buying tactic.

Instead of aggressive counterattacks, they focused on safe cover and suppressive fire.

The new strategy worked.

By switching to a defensive tactic, the number of casualties dropped significantly.

Seeing this, the rookie cop felt hope.

‘We can survive!’

As a result, he ended up thinking something he shouldn’t have.

He should never have done that.

But it was too late to regret.

A rocket flew in and blew the rookie away, cover and all.

Some of the officers bit their lower lips.

But there was no time to mourn the dead rookie.

In response to the police’s strategy change, the gorilla began its rocket barrage.

“Boom! Bang!”

“Rinihaah! Rini!!! I’ll kill you! Cops!!!”

Somehow, the police had become the sworn enemies of the gorilla for killing its daughter.

The sniper, who had been active intermittently, got caught in the rocket barrage.

The building walls crumbled, windows shattered.

Now, the place had turned into a battlefield.

In the midst of that hell, the rocket launcher aimed at the spot where the inspector was taking cover.

‘Damn it! I’d rather be at home listening to my wife’s nagging!’

No matter where he looked, there was no other cover nearby.

The inspector, sensing his fate, tightly closed his eyes.

Then.

Whoosh!

The sound of something flying through the air.

Fwoosh!

The sound of a rocket being launched.

And.

Kaboom!

The sound of the gorilla being caught in its own explosion echoed from beyond the cover.

Though the thick dust made it hard to assess the situation, it was clear that the gorilla had knelt for the first time.

While the inspector was still processing the sudden change, a boy approached him.

Covered in dust and with torn clothes, he still managed to shine in that situation.

Not only that, but his appearance somehow inspired trust.

As the inspector marveled at the boy’s appearance, the boy asked him a question.

“Do you have a sword?”

***

Rewind.

Right after the gorilla began its full-scale rocket barrage.

The walls of several buildings collapsed.

Among them was the wall of the attic where Amon and Sonia were.

The wall that had been protecting them crumbled, revealing the battlefield where the gorilla was fiercely fighting.

The gorilla’s compound eye turned toward the inside of the collapsed wall.

All it saw were clothes hanging on a rack.

The gorilla lost interest in the attic and returned to its task.

“Phew.”

A sigh of relief escaped from the pile of clothes where Amon and his group were hiding.

Luckily, the gorilla didn’t pay attention to their side.

Amon, confident that the gorilla hadn’t noticed them, decided to hide under the fabric.

About 15 minutes had passed since the barrage began.

The Special Forces usually took around 10 minutes to arrive.

Considering the Christmas traffic, it would be closer to 20 minutes.

Amon thought that if they could just hide here for another 5 minutes, they’d be safe.

Sonia nodded and tried to hide under the fabric.

The clothing store owner also tried to move toward the pile of clothes.

But before he could hide.

“Ugh!”

The old man groaned in pain.

Amon asked him with concern.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

The old man refused to answer.

But while he could hide it with words, his limping leg was impossible to conceal.

Amon’s gaze fell on the old man’s leg.

A pair of scissors was embedded in his thigh.

‘Damn… That must’ve been from earlier.’

When the wall collapsed, fragments, including scissors, flew into the attic.

The fragments hurt, but Amon and Sonia’s sturdy bodies could handle it.

But the old man wasn’t as tough as them.

Whether this was unfortunate or lucky.

Amon and Sonia had taken most of the fragments, so there were no wounds above the waist, but the scissors had stabbed the old man’s thigh.

Amon, relying on the dim attic light, checked the old man’s complexion.

He didn’t look good.

Even without professional knowledge, Amon could tell the scissors had hit a major blood vessel.

There was no way to carry the old man and hide somewhere.

In his dazed state, the old man kept repeating in Korean, “Go on…”

Hearing the old man’s words, Amon closed his eyes tightly.

He had never met this old man before.

And in this world, concepts like pity or justice were nothing but jokes.

Even if they got him to the hospital in time, there was no guarantee he’d survive.

And there was no way to know if the old man could afford the medical bills.

So, rationally speaking, leaving him behind was the right choice.

Amon furrowed his brow and began to pray.

“Lord, watch over me.”

The prayer was short, and the decision was quick.

He handed the barely conscious old man to Sonia and told her what to do.

“I’ll distract the gorilla. You cross that alley. See the bakery? There’s a back door there. Go through it, and you’ll see the hospital.”

“What are you talking about? Distract it how?”

“Sonia. Trust me.”

He couldn’t bring up things like reincarnation or patterns.

All he could say was to trust him.

The boy’s earnest eyes met the girl’s golden ones.

Sonia looked at Amon’s face, bit her lower lip, and hoisted the old man onto her back.

She couldn’t leave the old man behind either.

She protested as she spoke to Amon.

“I’ll be back soon. Stay alive… and don’t get hurt until then!”

Swallowing the death flag she almost blurted out, Sonia shouted.

Amon, understanding Sonia’s concern, replied with a confident face.

“It’ll be over before then.”

Right after saying that, Amon began assembling the tools in the room.

As soon as he saw the gorilla, he was reminded of the One-Man Army.

Like the gorilla, it had thick arms equipped with heavy weapons, and three pairs of arms on its back, each armed.

In terms of firepower alone, it was a monster that could take down two light armored vehicles.

But it wasn’t without weaknesses.

‘The lower body is weak.’

Of course, from the outside, the thighs looked sturdy.

And they were tough enough to shrug off bullets.

But what Amon pointed out wasn’t durability but balance.

‘To wield eight weapons on the upper body, the lower body can’t have additional weapons. Probably, the lower body is just for withstanding recoil.’

And even that was barely enough.

With just a little push, it could collapse.

So Amon saw the gorilla’s weakness in its lower body.

Luckily, the space he was in was a workspace, making it easy to find materials to exploit that weakness.

Calmly, he tied ropes and attached weights to the ends.

The finished hunting tool.

He waited until the gorilla was about to fire its weapon.

And just as the gorilla aimed its rocket launcher at a cop and moved forward.

‘Now!’

Amon threw the hunting tool.

The tool successfully wrapped around the gorilla’s leg, tripping it forward.

And though unintended, the rocket fired, engulfing the gorilla in an explosion.

Seeing the explosion, Amon couldn’t hide his confusion.

‘Why did they remove the safety from the rocket?’

Usually, rockets have safety mechanisms to prevent the user from being caught in the explosion, but that small rocket didn’t seem to have one.

The likely reason was that to fit the launcher and rockets on its back, they removed the safety and recklessly miniaturized it. But only the gorilla knew the truth.

Since the unexpected explosion was a stroke of luck for Amon, he decided not to dwell on it.

Amon pushed the word “safety” to the back of his mind and approached the inspector.

To the dazed inspector, Amon asked.

“Do you have a sword?”

Caught off guard, the inspector hesitated but kindly answered.

He pointed to a body, only the lower half remaining, a bit away from the gorilla.

On the corpse’s waist was a relatively intact katana.

Amon clicked his tongue at the sight.

“Tsk. That looks a bit unreliable.”

Despite his words, Amon prepared to sprint toward the sword.

The inspector realized what the boy was about to do.

Normally, he would’ve stopped him, but in such an extreme situation, people tend to believe in miracles.

Especially since the gorilla had knelt for the first time, it was natural to want to believe in the boy.

So instead of stopping him, the inspector decided to do his part.

“Take this before you go.”

He handed Amon a pistol with only one magazine.

Amon nodded in gratitude and dashed out from cover.

As he ran to retrieve the katana, the police, who had already received the inspector’s radio call, began firing en masse to distract the gorilla.

On his way, the boy reached the spot with the katana.

Instead of holding the sword properly, he gripped it in reverse and charged at the gorilla.

‘I don’t think I can win.’

That thing is the military.

And Amon hadn’t even started the tutorial in game terms.

No matter how much veteran knowledge he had, Amon wasn’t crazy enough to act recklessly based on it.

What he aimed for wasn’t the gorilla’s defeat.

It was an emergency measure to maximize survival until the Special Forces arrived.

Amon recalled a setting from a game in the next town over, not Punk City.

When facing a boss, focusing attacks on specific parts could sever or destroy them, called part destruction.

Succeeding in part destruction would make the patterns much easier.

Though Punk City didn’t have that feature, now that it was reality, it was a strategy worth trying.

Amon charged at the gorilla.

The gorilla, caught in its own rocket explosion, was in bad shape.

Its right arm was severely burned, and the rocket launcher on its back was destroyed.

Some sensors were also damaged, as its ability to grasp the battlefield was gone. It was busy dealing with the police’s bullets and trying to remove the hunting tool from its leg.

Thanks to that, the gorilla didn’t notice Amon until he reached its back.

Amon, having approached from behind, stabbed the katana, held in reverse, into the base of the auxiliary arms.

To drive the stubborn katana deeper, he hammered the hilt with his fist.

Thud! Thud!

A snapping sound came from inside the three right auxiliary arms.

Only then did the gorilla notice Amon, but by the time its remaining left arm targeted him, Amon had already dodged.

The gorilla’s right auxiliary arms creaked and eventually stopped functioning.

All of the gorilla’s ranged weapons were on the right side.

The auxiliary arms were destroyed, and the original arm holding the machine gun was severely burned.

With this, the ranged patterns were almost neutralized.

The burned arm creaked as it turned the machine gun’s muzzle.

But before the muzzle could aim at Amon, he had already taken cover.

The wounds from rolling on the ground stung a bit, but it was bearable.

The gorilla made Amon its top priority target.

It headed toward where Amon was hiding.

But before it could reach him, the police finally achieved something.

Their bullets destroyed the gorilla’s right eye.

Without its aiming system, the gorilla could no longer aim the machine gun as precisely as before.

The gorilla’s computing system was overloaded.

If it targeted Amon, the police were a threat.

If it targeted the police, Amon was a threat.

The computing system refused to calculate.

Instead, it chose to rampage.

The enraged gorilla dropped the machine gun and began drumming.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

“Uoooh!”

Its magic tattoos began to glow.

In Amon’s terms, it was the signal for phase 3.

Amon, sweating profusely, scanned the battlefield.

‘Is there anything here that can withstand that gorilla’s phase 3…’

But there was nothing.

No matter what he grabbed, Amon’s inexperienced physical abilities would hold him back.

In the end, his only options were to run or dodge.

Amon quickly estimated.

The phase 3 gorilla had its thick arms and three arms on the left.

He roughly calculated the patterns those could create.

The problem was whether he could dodge all of them…

‘I can last about a minute…’

Beyond that, he couldn’t guarantee.

The excited phase 3 gorilla and Amon locked eyes.

Amon, tensing up, aimed the pistol he received from the inspector.

At the same time, he prepared to roll to the side to dodge the incoming charge.

But Amon never had to face the gorilla’s phase 3.

Kaboom!

A massive shadow fell from the sky, crushing the gorilla and shattering the road.

At the same time, an ear-piercing siren sounded from above.

Amon, startled, looked up at the sky.

A flying vehicle with a familiar logo was hovering above the gorilla’s head.

Inside the vehicle, a sniper leaned out slightly, aiming a sniper rifle modified into his left arm at the gorilla.

Amon knew that logo all too well.

H.O.D.

Hyper Operation Department.

Hod.

The pinnacle of American police power.

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