Wisps of smoke rose from the slightly reddened barrel.
Gavo tilted her head slightly and looked at the muzzle that had shifted away from her skull at the very last moment, feeling a chill in her heart.
If she had panicked and turned her head to dodge just now, she would not have had a head left to wonder with.
Gavo looked at the man, who was showing a surprised expression.
Earlier, although bubbles representing malice had been churning inside him, there had been even more emotion symbolizing curiosity.
That gave Gavo a bold guess.
He did not actually want to kill her outright.
In that moment, she had to gamble, and could only gamble, that he did not truly intend to kill her on the spot.
Fortunately, she had guessed right.
"Why didn't you dodge?"
Griffin asked in slight surprise.
He really had pulled the trigger in a teasing mood and shifted the barrel at the last instant.
But the little thing in front of him had not shown the slightest trace of panic, which made her very interesting in his eyes.
"Because I wasn't afraid."
Gavo endured the intense pain from her broken bones and answered in a calm voice.
"And why weren't you afraid?"
He lowered the gun with obvious interest and crouched down to ask.
"Because I'm more useful alive than dead."
"If you want to use me to kill the chicken and scare the monkeys, then keeping me alive and making me suffer is more suitable than blowing my head off with one shot."
"If you want to absorb the children under me, then keeping me alive will stop them from panicking."
"I believe you understand that too."
Hearing that, a slight smile curled at Griffin's mouth.
"And that's why you think I wouldn't kill you?"
Gavo closed her dizzy eyes and gave a small nod.
Emotion Visualization could not be used infinitely.
This unique perspective drained Gavo's mental energy enormously. Using it for too long would leave her dizzy and faint.
It could even cause severe side effects such as temporary blindness and distorted hallucinations.
While Gavo was trying to ease the dizziness in her head, a teasing look appeared in Griffin's eyes, and he slowly stood up.
"That was a good answer. Unfortunately..."
The moment he said that, a massive sense of danger exploded in Gavo's heart, making her curl up instinctively.
In the next moment, a heavy, brutal roundhouse kick slammed into Gavo's fragile abdomen.
Even with the resistance of her strong abdominal muscles, the violent impact still churned her soft internal organs upside down.
Although Gavo had curled up while kneeling on the ground, she had no way to use the force-dispersing techniques she excelled at and could only take the savage blow head-on.
Emotion Visualization was of very limited use against someone as moody and unpredictable as this.
And clearly, Ironarm Griffin was exactly that kind of person.
Gavo's tiny body flew away like a torn sack and smashed heavily into the ground in the distance, while pain erupted through her from the inside out.
[You are suffering internal bleeding. Seek treatment immediately.]
As she writhed in pain, bloody foam seeped out through the gaps in Gavo's gas mask.
"There's one thing you've got wrong."
"I don't want to kill you because I'm strong enough to decide whenever I feel like killing you."
He raised the gun and walked slowly toward Gavo, who was trying to struggle back to her feet.
"You think we want to absorb a bunch of little brats like you? What do you think we are, some kind of daycare?"
"Only the fiercest and strongest scum among scum are qualified to join the Tearblood Gang."
"Only the bravest and toughest shooters in the Tearblood Gang are qualified to join the strike teams."
"And only relics who have survived in a strike team for over ten years can still become one of the Weepers while they're young enough to hold a gun."
As he spoke, he viciously planted one foot onto Gavo's back.
[Your ribs are fractured. Seek treatment immediately.]
"Tell me. This time, do you think you're going to die?"
The muzzle pressed against the back of Gavo's head once more.
The fear of death crashed through her body like a tidal wave.
At that moment, she finally truly understood what it meant to be underhive scum.
A life treated like grass, with survival or death decided entirely by a stronger person's whim...
...
But she could not die.
Her adoptive father still had not awakened.
Old Bill still had stories left to tell.
Her dream had not yet been realized.
...
That's right.
Live.
So what if she was scum?
Even if she was underhive scum, then she would become the cockroach among scum and keep clawing out a life in this dogshit world.
A stubborn fire of survival ignited inside Gavo's chest and set her heart ablaze.
She gritted her teeth, swallowed back the blood rising in her throat, and forced herself to endure the agony of her broken ribs as words were squeezed from her trembling lips.
"I'm more useful alive... than dead..."
"I run fast... I can fight... let me do the jobs you don't want to do..."
"I know how to scavenge... I can support myself..."
Griffin's beast-like eyes suddenly contracted as if something had stabbed them.
Yes, stabbed.
He had been pierced by the stubborn light of survival in Gavo's eyes.
That light was something he knew all too well.
On the night he had been abandoned in the underhive by his parents...
When he had successfully killed two "carnivores" in return at the cost of his right hand, he had looked into the pool of blood on the ground under the moonlight and seen the same light in his own eyes.
Exactly the same as the one in this little thing before him.
It was the gaze only the toughest scum and the most desperate survivors possessed, and it said only one thing.
I will live.
"She's really damn similar..."
Griffin muttered inwardly.
Gavo did not know what was going through his mind. She only knew that the foot pressing down on her chest and the gun threatening her life had both been removed.
"Stand up."
The hoarse, low voice sounded out.
Gavo struggled to prop herself up. It took her a full minute before she barely managed to stand back up from the ground.
Before Gavo could even catch her breath, Griffin suddenly drew a sharp short knife from the strap at his waist with his iron hand and drove it viciously into the inside of her right thigh.
Empowered by the strength of the iron hand, the blade pierced clean through the bone, avoiding the fatal artery and punching two holes with one thrust.
In an instant, blood sprayed everywhere, and the pain of flesh and bone being skewered together almost made Gavo black out on the spot.
After doing that, Griffin turned and walked off into the distance.
Counting his steps silently, he stopped roughly three hundred meters away, then drew a line across the ground with the butt of his gun.
After pulling an old pocket watch from his coat, he spoke coldly.
"Aren't you supposed to run fast?"
"Get to me within five minutes."
"If you can't do it, not only will you die, those two little brats over there will die too, and every little bastard in your base will die as well."
"Oh, and I started timing from the moment I said that."
"So I suggest you move fast."
(End of Chapter)
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