Chapter 141 - Chapter 125: A Tale of Throwing Away Guns and Attacking
They escaped into the soundproofed music room and managed to evade the eyes of the infected. However, this did not mean the battle was over; rather, it signaled the beginning.
The boy had wanted to lock out the three members of The Brotherhood who had been following him, but it was too late to say anything now; the situation wouldn't change. No friendship had sprouted from their flight from the infected, and they were now facing off with weapons in hand.
The boy kept a vigilant eye on the giant standing before him with a short sword and the brown-haired man. If he let his guard down for even a second, they would surely pounce. To limit the directions they could attack from, the boy stood with his back against the wall. However, the men also tried to corner the boy into a classroom corner with no escape, closing in gradually from the left and right to hem him in.
If he could use a gun, it would be nothing, but even in a soundproofed music room, the sound of a gunshot probably couldn't be blocked. While voices or loud shouts might be okay, the moment a shot was fired, gunshots would echo not only in the hallway but throughout the entire school, and the infected wandering in various classrooms and corridors would swarm all at once. The music room door was thick for soundproofing, but it wasn't sturdy enough to withstand the blows of the infected's superhuman strength.
If he fired, he could overturn the disadvantageous one-on-three situation. From The Brotherhood's perspective, they could kill the boy unilaterally without risking a melee. But the next moment, the opponent of the battle would simply change from a human to a swarm of infected. And dealing with them was much tougher than dealing with humans.
That's why guns couldn't be used. The boy readied his axe, and the men of The Brotherhood held their short swords, measuring each other's distance.
The first to move was the brown-haired man. With a small shout of spirit, "Hmph!", he raised his short sword and closed the distance with the boy all at once. The man swung the short sword down, and the boy leaped aside to dodge the blade.
The boy tried to swing his axe down at the brown-haired man's wide-open flank, but seeing the giant's figure in the corner of his vision, he canceled the attack and stepped back. Immediately after, the blade swung down by the giant sliced through the space where the boy had been.
It was a magnificent coordination. To prevent the boy from having an opening to attack after retreating, the brown-haired man now thrust the tip of his short sword repeatedly as if performing fencing. To the boy, who could only dodge them by backing away, the giant charged again. The boy, who had been cornered against the wall, managed to avoid the giant's charge by rolling sideways.
Of the three, one man stood near the entrance, constantly pointing the muzzle of his pistol at the boy. If it looked like they were about to lose, he intended to kill the boy even if he had to fire. But perhaps because The Brotherhood currently had the advantage, he showed no sign of trying to fire.
"Guh...!"
In the instant he was distracted by the man standing in front of the entrance, the tip of the short sword thrust by the brown-haired man sliced the boy's right arm. The sleeve of his fleece tore, and the boy's sun-tanned arm was stained with red blood.
The wound wasn't shallow; the skin had been sliced open for several centimeters. A sharp pain shot up to his brain, making him want to scream. But if he screamed or yelled, there was a possibility the infected in the school building would realize their location. Swallowing the scream, the boy readied his axe again with his painful right hand.
By wounding the boy, the men seemed to have concluded they could win. Their attacks became more intense than before, and unable to dodge them all, he took several more slashes. Every wound was shallow, but they were certainly damaging the boy's body. The fabric of his trousers and fleece was torn in various places, and bright red skin peeked through.
Perhaps the men had switched to a policy of wounding him repeatedly and waiting for him to weaken, rather than killing him with one powerful blow. In a long-term battle, a lone boy had no chance of winning. Moreover, if he was bleeding from being cut all over, his stamina would be consumed faster. As long as the men weren't in a hurry, they just had to wait for the infected to leave the vicinity after the boy died.
His entire body was screaming in pain, but contrary to that, the boy's thoughts gradually calmed down and became cool. Perhaps the blood that had rushed to his head was draining out due to the bleeding.
Looking at the brown-haired man's smirking face, the boy felt like landing a punch on it. He quickly scanned the classroom, looking for anything he could use.
While dodging the blades being swung down and thrust one after another, the boy grabbed a portrait of Mozart hanging on the wall with his free left hand. He pulled it with all his might to remove it from the nail holding it to the wall, and quickly held the portrait like a shield toward the brown-haired man who was thrusting the tip of his short sword.
The tip of the short sword thrust by the brown-haired man pierced the frame of the portrait, and the boy twisted the portrait he was holding. The brown-haired man lost his balance, and in that opening, the boy dodged the giant's charge by leaping sideways. Then, he took out a rifle magazine stored in his chest rig with his left hand and threw it at the brown-haired man. The magazine, filled with thirty 5.56mm rounds, had considerable weight, and the magazine that left the boy's hand struck the side of the off-balance brown-haired man's head directly.
"Ugh...!"
Letting out a muffled cry, the brown-haired man collapsed onto the floor, clutching his head with both hands. Bright red blood flowed from between his fingers and dripped onto the floor. The giant turned around to pounce on the boy, but before that, the boy threw another rifle magazine at the giant's face. While the giant raised his right arm to block the flying magazine, the boy closed the distance with the brown-haired man all at once.
The brown-haired man, while protecting the side of his head that had been struck by the magazine with his left hand, managed to swing the short sword gripped in his right hand. Even while injured, the movement was accurate, but the boy advanced without flinching and dodged the thrust blade with a paper-thin movement. Then, he swung the axe in his right hand down at the brown-haired man.
With a dull sensation, the axe blade bit deeply into the defenseless neck. Letting out a short cry like a squashed frog, the brown-haired man's eyes widened. The boy delivered a punch to his face with his left hand, and using that momentum, he pulled out the axe stuck in the neck, causing blood to spray from the wound like a fountain.
"A... a... a..."
The brown-haired man only muttered those words for a few seconds before his body lost strength like a puppet with its strings cut and collapsed onto the floor. Bright red blood continued to flow from the neck wound, creating a pool of blood on the linoleum floor around his body.
In a mirror placed in a corner of the room, the boy's face, with the right half stained bright red from the blood spray, was reflected. Injured and bleeding from all over his body, and covered in blood spray, he looked like a demon.
"You bastard...!"
With a roar of anger, the giant charged at the boy. However, consumed by anger over his comrade being killed and lacking composure, his movements became easy to read. The boy calmly grasped the giant's current position and the height of the short sword he gripped, and then charged forward all at once. Not sideways or backward, but forward. Seeing the boy's movement, which he hadn't expected, the giant's agitation was visible.
The giant swung down the short sword he had readied. However, the blow, which misjudged the distance, missed its mark, and his arm only struck the boy's shoulder. That blow alone had considerable impact and was tough on his wound-covered body, but the boy advanced without flinching. Letting go of the axe and drawing a knife instead, the boy dove into the giant's bosom as if slipping inside his wide-open body.
Before the giant could unleash the next blow, the boy used the momentum of lifting his hunched upper body to thrust his right hand, gripping the knife, high. The tip of the knife gripped in that hand pierced the giant's jaw from below, penetrating the oral cavity and reaching the brain. There was a dull sensation of grinding, and the feeling of the knife blade snapping traveled to his hand.
"Geh."
Such a pathetic sound escaped from the giant's mouth, which was sewn shut from top to bottom by the knife. The giant's eyes rolled back, and his massive body collapsed onto the floor with a loud thud. Only the handle of the knife, with the blade snapped off at the base, remained in the boy's hand.
He should already be dead, but the giant's body was twitching strangely. The boy calmly picked up the axe that had fallen beside the giant and turned his eyes toward the last man at the entrance.
They were supposed to have been overwhelmingly superior, but the reality of it being overturned in just dozens of seconds and his two comrades being killed in an instant seemed hard to accept. The man who had been holding a pistol at the entrance in case of an emergency was sending a gaze toward the boy as if looking at a monster. Their eyes met, and letting out a short cry of "Hie!", he hurriedly pointed the muzzle of his pistol at the boy. However, it was faster for the boy to throw the axe in his hand at the man.
The thrown axe rotated and its blade bit into the man's right shoulder. The man, who let out a scream, couldn't endure the pain, or perhaps strength left him because the axe was stuck in his shoulder, and he dropped the pistol he was holding in his right hand. The boy picked up the short sword the giant had held and approached the man sitting on the floor with it in hand.
"Don't come, don't come!"
The man screamed and tried to take a submachine gun out of the duffel bag his comrade had left before the battle. However, it didn't go well with only his left arm, and it was faster for the boy to kick the man's hand that was reaching for the bag. With a dry sound, several fingers of his left hand bent in an impossible direction.
Mounting the man's body as he was, the boy swung the short sword gripped in a reverse hold down toward the man's throat. However, the man grabbed the swung-down blade with his left hand with broken fingers. Blood flowed from his left hand gripping the blade barehanded, but the man continued to try to stop the short sword the boy was swinging down. However, when the boy gripped the handle of the short sword with both hands and applied more force, the tip gradually descended toward the man's neck.
"No, stop, help..."
"Shut the hell up."
The color of fear dwelled in the man's eyes, and his mouth spat out words begging for his life. However, in the boy's head now, only the impulse to kill the man before him existed. The questions about murder he had been thinking about until now had been blown out of his head in an instant. The simple fear of being killed if he didn't kill, and the anger toward The Brotherhood that had attacked and wounded him, dominated the boy. The boy blocked the man's mouth with one hand so he wouldn't make any more noise and draw the infected.
The boy pressing down with all his strength to swing the short sword blade down, and the man trying to prevent it somehow. The two clashed their strength, and the gripped short sword trembled slightly. However, between the boy, who was mounting him and could use both hands despite being cut all over, and the man, who was pinned under him and had no choice but to resist with only his injured left hand, there was no need to think about whose strength was greater. The descending tip finally touched the man's neck, and bright red blood flowed from the man's neck where a red line was carved.
"...!"
Immediately after the man let out a silent scream, the tip of the short sword stuck in his neck finally pierced his trachea. The man's eyes widened, and he tried to say something, but it was no longer words. When the boy applied more force and the man's trachea was completely severed by the short sword, only the sound of gurgling bubbles mixed with blood could be heard. Strength rapidly left the man's hand that had been gripping the short sword blade until now, and the face of the man, who could no longer send oxygen to his lungs, turned pale.
The boy saw his own reflection in the man's eyes, which had lost their light.
The boy's face reflected in the lightless eyes was smiling.
I look forward to your opinions and impressions.