Chapter Twenty-Seven: Kidnapping

Page (1/3)

Yulia regained consciousness very quickly.

A concussion occurs when an external impact jolts the structure of the neurons. The metal-based proteins created by the Father of All Machines formed cells with far greater resistance than those of natural humans. And the shock-absorption systems built into industrial machinery were no joke. So even after flipping through the air and landing nose-first with tremendous force, Yulia had suffered no substantial injury.

Her left rear wheel, however, was gone. A steel rod had fallen from the sky and pierced it.

That was what had caused her accident.

A few minutes earlier—

“So the town has no protection now, does it?”

At that very moment, a voice suddenly rang out through the blowing sand.

At the same time, loud, chaotic footsteps began to pound the ground. Panic had already been building among the crowd when the welfare officer announced that their protection had been withdrawn. Now, those words set the fear ablaze.

Yuki’s eyes widened. Through the sandstorm, several vague black shadows gradually became distinct. He restarted his cameras, wondering whether he had seen incorrectly. In his vision, the shadows emerging from the darkness were nearly ten feet tall, their arms seemingly held straight out to either side. Yet their arms were wildly disproportionate to their bodies—far too long.

Yuki stared in astonishment. “What are those things?”

“Come with me!” Yulia reversed, skillfully catching Yuki around the waist with her unloading rack. The move would have been fatal to a natural human, but Yuki would at worst need to replace a few parts.

Those troublemakers were most likely marauders, and they absolutely could not afford to get caught up in a marauder battle.

But as Yulia fled with Yuki, the steel rod came plunging down from the sky.

—Yuki…

Yulia detected the sound of crying. She did not need to compare the voiceprint. That was her son.

Yuki was sprawled on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. One of his legs had come loose from his body in the accident, leaving him unable to walk.

“Good boy…” Yulia called out rapidly. “Put your leg back on. You learned repairs from Yorg, didn’t you? Hurry! Come on, hurry…”

“Mom!” Yuki cried in delighted surprise. “You’re all right! That’s wonderful!”

“I told you to check your leg!” Yulia shouted impatiently. She did not know what had happened. She did not know whether the attack had merely been collateral damage from a battle or whether it had been aimed at them. She only wanted her son to get away from there as quickly as possible.

Clang, clang, clang.

The sound of metal striking metal. Applause.

Rafe stood nearby with a mournful expression. “What a touching display of motherly love.”

“You’re… a marauder…” Yulia gasped in terror. “What do you want? My prosthetics? My brain lobe? You…”

“Now, now, relax.” Rafe pretended to wipe away nonexistent tears. “I have no interest in prosthetics like yours, madam. Anyone who has severed their corpus bridge so prematurely and left their brain lobe untrained has little value.”

He strode forward.

Yulia immediately understood what the giant intended to do.

—Yuki…

Her front wheel began to turn. She wanted to spend the last of her strength ramming the giant, but her industrial prosthetic body was simply too cumbersome. With her rear wheel gone and her power system damaged, she could not get herself moving in time.

Rafe seized Yuki. One hand was enough to hold the child.

“All right, little fellow. I heard that you were the one who dug that man out of the scrapyard.” Rafe smiled pleasantly. “He ought not to stand by and watch you die, would you say?”

Yuki’s eyes widened. “Your target is… Master…”

“Master?” Rafe repeated the syllable. “You mean… ‘Master’?”

Rafe: “Hey, Blast Kui, did you hear that?”

The distance had weakened the signal somewhat.

Blast Kui: “Ah, ‘Master.’ Unexpectedly, we’ve hooked a big fish? Only a famous knight-errant or swordsman would be worthy of having a student call him that.”

Rafe: “But isn’t it strange? Would a knight-errant really allow himself to fall into… such a state? A state where he had lost everything?”

A knight-errant would never lose everything. The moment they raised the banner of rebellion against the existing civilization, they had already prepared themselves to abandon their lives. They would rather die than surrender their internal force—rather than become slaves to tyrants once more.

They were also the most difficult people to capture alive.

Unless they were brainwashed, even after everything had been stripped from them, they would use their own strength to search out every crack in society and become knight-errants once again.

Page (1/3)

But if they truly lost their internal force and their ability to resist, they would choose death.

Even knight-errants who had been brainwashed into joining the Greenwood would be no exception.

The lords and other protectors of civilization understood this as well. Knight-errants were rarely taken prisoner. They were either executed on the spot, or their brains were dismantled and turned into another kind of resource.

That was why many people believed Shan to be a martial artist who had lost his martial-arts algorithm, rather than a true knight-errant.

Blast Kui: “Forget it… Find an opening and plant the Trojan first! Even if he really is a legendary knight-errant, once he loses his memory storage, there’s no way he’ll be able to recall his internal force in a short time!”

“Ah, wouldn’t that make things even better?” Rafe snarled. “That would prove our new brother is exceptionally gifted in internal-force cultivation! Get to the location quickly and lie in wait. Understood?”

Laughing loudly, he hoisted Yuki into the air on the end of his iron rod. Yuki struggled without pause, but Rafe merely kept adjusting the steel rod, firmly controlling the center of the child’s body. Yuki’s struggles disrupted the dynamic balance between his body and the rod, but Rafe needed only to twitch a finger to restore it.

Laughing, he walked through the streets and alleys of the town. Everyone fled from him along the way. The town’s self-defense force was meaningless before a martial artist of this level. People could only scream and scramble desperately out of his path.

“To your left.”

Following Blast Kui’s directions, Rafe kept changing course.

Blast Kui had infiltrated the surveillance network. In a city, it was as if he had activated an all-seeing map.

Then Rafe called out, “Hey, big brother Enoch up ahead! Where are you going?”

Enoch, who had been running for his life, immediately froze.

“Sir Rafe…” He desperately adjusted his voice toward the parameters of obsequiousness. “So it’s you…”

Although Rafe had changed his prosthetic body, that natural face of his…

“Oh, dear, I haven’t appeared before you in this form yet, have I?” Rafe laughed. “It’s just a matter of hot-swapping the brain. Once you have several prosthetic bodies, you’ll understand!”

“I… Of course I can’t compare with you, Mr. Rafe. I…”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to trouble you again, Enoch.” Rafe spoke gently. “Could you take poor Mr. Rafe to this child’s house? I’ve come looking for the martial artist.”

“Enoch!” Yuki exploded at once. “You told this man! You got my mother involved! It was you! You!”

He kicked and thrashed furiously, but Rafe merely gave the weapon in his hand another little shake, maintaining the same balance.

Enoch, however, was startled. “Yulia… What happened to Yulia?”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. I heard your love poems. I haven’t touched that piece of industrial machinery.” Rafe laughed heartily. “Lead the way?”

After hearing that Yulia was unharmed, Enoch relaxed. He dared not defy Rafe and could only obediently guide him.

Yuki continued to curse him. “You were the one who pushed Master back then, weren’t you? You bastard! You bastard!”

“Hey, kid.” Rafe bounced the rod in his hand. “This isn’t exactly the time to worry about that, is it?”

“What?”

“Have you ever wondered why I chose to capture you?” Rafe smiled.

Yuki’s expression stiffened.

Rafe burst into laughter.

Yuki was nothing more than a bargaining chip.

Although neither Rafe nor Blast Kui believed that the martial artist called Shan could match them, they still needed to prevent Shan from escaping. The Synthetic Fist was less aggressive than Rafe’s staff techniques, but a lightweight prosthetic body had a considerable advantage in a long-distance pursuit.

They had taken Yuki hostage simply to keep Shan from leaving.

Of course, there were other uses for him.

In the best-case scenario, they intended to use Yuki as a hostage and force Shan to accept the Trojan’s implantation.

Then Blast Kui could kill Shan at any time.

Soon, Enoch spoke. “It’s just ahead…”

Yuki’s home was not far away. Rafe looked at the shabby shack and shook his head.

Page (2/3)

A structure like this could not provide any meaningful defense. Who knew what that Shan was doing inside?

—Come to think of it, was he really in there?

The infrared vision of Rafe’s artificial eye showed a heat source inside the house, its temperature slightly higher than the surroundings.

He wondered whether he should use the wind pressure generated by his staff to blast the shack apart or simply kick down the door.

“All right. Step back.” Rafe waved his hand, ordering Enoch to get lost.

Enoch glanced at Yuki, as though he still had something in mind. But Rafe barked, “What is it? If a fight breaks out, I won’t have time to look after you.”

Enoch jumped and fawned, “Of course not. How could that ‘Yorg’ possibly compare with you?”

Though he said that, he still backed away slowly.

And quite naturally, he delayed for several more seconds.

A moment later, Blast Kui sent the signal that he was ready.

He had entered within thirty meters. At that range, the Wi-Fi signal was strong enough. His internal force could pass through the air without obstruction, traveling through Rafe’s eyes to perform the technique of remote observation.

“Excellent…” Rafe muttered, then shouted at the door, “Hey, nameless martial artist! You’re still in there, aren’t you? A fellow of the martial world has come to test your skills! Come out, please!”

There was no response.

“Oh? You’re refusing to show yourself?” Rafe called. “Then who knows what might happen to this benefactor of yours?”

“Master!” Yuki shouted from the air. “Don’t be fooled! I believe you’re strong! You just haven’t remembered yet! You can escape! Avenge me later! Master! You…”

“Shut up!”

The steel rod gave a light tap, compressing the air from his lungs.

Yuki had not yet replaced his internal organs. Blood immediately sprayed from his mouth and nose.

“Well? Are you coming out?” Rafe shouted.

Still, there was no response. The heat of the object inside, however, was gradually increasing.

“What the hell?” Rafe seized Yuki in one hand and prodded the door with his three-meter-long staff. To a natural human, the weapon was closer to a pillar or a gate bar, but to him it was merely a staff held at eyebrow height.

The main structure of the house groaned under the strain.

Yet the person inside still did not appear.

Yulia, who had struggled over with great difficulty, felt utterly despairing.

—If Shan refuses to save that child at a time like this…

“Tsk. Martial artist, are you trying to tell us, ‘This child has nothing to do with me. Do whatever you want with him’?” Rafe shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. That sort of trick is useless against the heroes of the Greenwood.”

He had not yet determined what the heat source inside the house actually was, or whether there was a trap, so he did not attack recklessly.

Without a clear view, he might not be able to grasp everything his opponent was doing. Conversely, the knight-errant inside might well have means of counterattack.

Even if he could destroy the house with half a move, that would still surrender half a move’s worth of initiative.

If the person inside truly was a master, half a move of initiative might be enough to decide life or death.

“In that case…” Rafe thrust the steel rod upward, sending Yuki soaring into the air. “You brought this upon yourself!”

Yuki flailed helplessly in midair, his hands and feet grasping at nothing. Rafe had already assumed a stance resembling that of a golfer.

Of course, it was only a threat. He had no intention of killing the child yet. If he did, the bargaining chip would truly lose all value.

At that instant, Yuki’s house exploded apart.

A streak of silver light gushed forth like flowing water, then wrapped softly around the steel rod.

—So fast…

That was Rafe’s first thought.

Page (3/3)