"Soichiro, the reason I have come here today is actually to ask a small favor," Adrian announced from the rooftop. He spoke with a smooth, disarming smile, carefully observing the tactical deployment of personnel within the courtyard below.
Judging by their protective positioning and body language alone, it was evident that—aside from his wife—the three individuals standing immediately behind Soichiro Takagi constituted his core inner circle. All three had noticeable, heavy bulges at their waistbands, clearly indicating they were carrying concealed firearms. Meanwhile, the dozen or so hard-faced men flanking them were likely the loyal backbone of the Yuukoku Isshinkai—the syndicate's core strength.
As for the scattered stragglers cowering on the periphery? They were utterly worthless tactical noise.
"Master Busujima, whatever your request may be, please do not hesitate to command me!" Soichiro gazed up at the Sword Saint perched upon the roof.
The syndicate boss couldn't quite fathom why the esteemed Grandmaster insisted on remaining at such a high elevation just to converse—wouldn't it be far more sensible and polite to simply come down into the courtyard? Of course, it was also possible that the surrounding walls were simply too high. With the reinforced eaves towering over four meters off the ground, an average man certainly wouldn't dare attempt a casual leap down.
'Perhaps I ought to dismiss the refugees and fetch a ladder for our esteemed guest?' Soichiro wondered nervously. After all, the man was a renowned master. If the onlookers were to witness such a martial legend having to clamber awkwardly down a wooden ladder like a common laborer, wouldn't it be a humiliating spectacle for the Grandmaster?
"Actually, it is nothing particularly difficult," Adrian's voice cut through the silence, loud and clear over the moaning of the undead outside the gates. "I merely wish to borrow two things from you."
"Master, whatever it is you desire—provided it is something I possess—please, take it without hesitation! There is no need to speak of 'borrowing'; that is far too formal between men of our standing!" Soichiro responded immediately, his tone brimming with political magnanimity.
Given that the man before him was a Sword Saint, Soichiro confidently surmised that his guest had likely set his sights upon the legendary Murasame blade currently held within his private, climate-controlled collection. That antique blade had cost him a considerable sum on the black market back in the day. Under normal, peaceful circumstances, even if Masao Busujima himself had come to borrow it, Soichiro would have hesitated for a long time.
But given the current apocalyptic situation, a mere piece of steel was nothing; how could it possibly compare in value to securing the protection of a superhuman? With Busujima's prowess, surely slicing through a few dozen corpses to secure a supply line would be no trouble at all.
"It is nothing much," Adrian smiled darkly, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his katana. "I merely wish to borrow your head, and your wife, for a while."
"Master, you—"
Soichiro looked up in stunned, absolute bewilderment. The arrogant politician couldn't even process the sheer audacity of the words. He was a man who fancied himself a cultured leader; didn't this brutal exchange sound exactly like the villainous dialogue from an old warlord epic?
However, before his brain could even begin to formulate a response, all he saw was a blinding flash of silver light streaking downward across his vision.
Thwack!
Soichiro Takagi's final, fleeting sensation in this world was the bizarre, weightless feeling of his own perspective suddenly soaring high—so very high—into the air.
*'So that is it,'* the severed head thought in its final millisecond of consciousness. *'It turns out a human head really can detach itself from the neck and fly.'*
"Bo—"
Behind the falling head, his three most loyal, armed henchmen watched in paralyzing horror.
The so-called "Grandmaster" had suddenly leaped down from the four-meter rooftop like a hunting falcon. With a single, invisible flash of the blade in his hand, their boss's head had been sent spinning into the air. The headless corpse remained standing upright for a grotesque moment, a fountain of bright arterial blood erupting from the severed stump like a geyser.
The three inner-circle guards frantically scrambled to draw their concealed guns.
But before the first man could even extend his arm to aim, a horizontal arc of silver cleaved him cleanly in two at the waist. His upper torso slid off his hips with a wet, heavy thud.
The second man had just managed to wrap his fingers around his holster when all sensation in his body vanished. A vertical strike split his skull down to the jawline.
The third man had successfully drawn his pistol, but before he could even raise his arm to level the barrel, both his forearm and the heavy firearm were severed entirely, hitting the concrete in a shower of sparks and blood.
Within a radius of five paces, a master's blade moves infinitely faster than a gun. Even an average soldier with rudimentary training would be faster in unarmed combat at such extreme close quarters than an ordinary man with a holstered weapon—let alone a superhuman vessel like Masao Busujima, whose physical prowess had already shattered the absolute ceiling of human capability.
From effortlessly severing Soichiro's head with a falling strike to cutting down his three elite guards in succession, the entire sequence took Adrian less than 1.5 seconds—barely the time it takes an ordinary person to blink twice in surprise.
He paid absolutely no heed to the third wretched guard writhing on the bloody concrete, clutching his spurting stump and howling in agony. Although protagonists in cheap movies were often depicted heroically killing their enemies with their remaining hand after being maimed, everyone knew such scenarios were pure, cinematic fiction. The shock and blood loss alone incapacitated the man instantly.
Swish! Click.
Adrian sheathed his blood-slicked katana with a fluid, terrifyingly calm motion. Before the ringing of the blade had even faded, he leaped swiftly to Yuriko Takagi's side.
Yuriko, displaying far more composure than her dead husband, had just reached inside her blouse to draw the compact pistol she kept concealed there. However, she found that the monster's movements were far swifter than her own.
With a lightning-fast extension of his right arm, Adrian reached directly into her cleavage and snatched the cold steel of the pistol away before her fingers could even find the grip.
"The scent of luxury perfume is quite strong," Adrian murmured smoothly, holding the compact pistol he had just retrieved from between her heavy breasts. He raised it to his nose, took a deliberate sniff, and offered her a dark, terrifying smile. "Might I ask if you are wearing it to mask the scent of fear, Madam?"
"Kill him! Avenge the Boss—!"
Witnessing such blatant arrogance and utter, terrifying disregard for their numbers, the dozen remaining syndicate thugs finally snapped out of their shock. They raised their crude weapons and katanas, roaring in fury, ready to swarm the lone swordsman and exact vengeance for their fallen leader.
Bang!
However, before the lead thug could even finish shouting his battle cry, a sharp gunshot rang out from above. The shouting man's head instantly shattered like a dropped watermelon, painting the thugs behind him in a spray of bone and brain matter.
Hachiro Takahashi lay prone on the rooftop, the scope of a heavy rifle pressed to his eye, while holding a smoking pistol in his secondary hand. He glared menacingly down at the circle of freezing men below; clearly, anyone who dared to make the slightest aggressive move toward his Master would be executed on the spot.
"You bastard! I will take you down with me!"
Seeing that all of her remaining subordinates had been scared senseless—too terrified of the sniper and the swordsman to even twitch—Yuriko gritted her teeth. Her eyes burning with lethal fury, she lunged toward the severed arm lying on the ground, intending to grab the dead guard's discarded pistol.
Clearly, this aristocratic woman was far more fierce and resolute than Manami Katsura. Although Yuriko knew that grabbing the gun likely wouldn't result in killing the superhuman monster before her, at the very least, she could manage to take her own life rather than submit to his depravity.
Unfortunately...
Smack.
A crumpled piece of light pink fabric was suddenly tossed directly onto the bloody pistol by Adrian.
Yuriko, who had been fully prepared to fight the monster to the bloody death, instantly froze, shuddering from head to toe.
"Saya...? Where is Saya?!"
Naturally, she instantly recognized the expensive lace panties belonging to her only daughter—especially since there appeared to be faint, unmistakable traces of virgin blood staining the gusset.
"Madam, you are a highly intelligent, aristocratic woman. Surely you know what you must do to ensure her continued survival?"
Adrian stood there with perfect, terrifying composure, his arms crossed casually as he gazed down at the ripe, beautiful matron before him. Although—judging by their explosive breast size alone—this woman's bosom was roughly the same impressive volume as her daughter's, neither her mature, commanding allure nor her incredibly voluptuous hips could be compared to that of a green, inexperienced teenager like Saya. They were entirely different, top-tier flavors.
Of course, Adrian mused darkly, if the pink-haired brat were properly 'developed' over a few months—fed a steady, heavy diet of chemical supplements and perhaps even bred in the process—he could probably cultivate her hips to be just as luscious as her mother's.
"I surrender."
Clutching her daughter's soiled, bloody panties tightly to her chest, Yuriko Takagi cast one final, sweeping glance over the courtyard. She looked at the headless corpse of her ambitious husband, then at her surviving subordinates—who stood frozen in terrified, pathetic silence—and finally, gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached, she bowed her head.
The moment those humiliating words left her aristocratic lips, the syndicate thugs—who had been trembling with apprehension just moments before—all let out a collective, unspoken sigh of massive relief.
Had their formidable mistress insisted on fighting to the bitter end in a desperate, mutually destructive struggle, they truly wouldn't have known how to proceed. After all, these low-level thugs actually possessed a surprisingly strict code of gang loyalty. To blatantly betray their master's wife for personal survival while under the watchful eyes of their peers would have been an incredibly shameful thing for them to do.
But with Yuriko surrendering, they were absolved of their duty to die. The Takagi syndicate had officially fallen.
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