Chapter 53: Your next sentence is.
[Hardened skin, impact absorption, pain suppression, slow regeneration, and mild berserking—these blood-red curse tattoos pack quite a punch. Their foundation is scarlet magic… and the intricate circuitry of special pigments harmonizes the effects across the body. Whoever crafted these is a master of human anatomy. That’s even more suspicious.]
Musing, Suna snapped a gang member’s arm as he swung a machete, then shattered another’s spiked club with a swift right hook, sending him and his broken teeth crashing into a roadside trash heap.
She grabbed the heads of two more—one still reaching for a dagger with his unbroken arm, the other charging—and smashed them together.
As the pair collapsed, concussed, Suna stood over seven downed gang members, stretching her wrists.
“Seriously, do I look that weak?”
“Who… who are you?” the gang sub-leader, limbs broken and sprawled on the ground, demanded.
Suna shrugged, rapid-fire mocking him. “Why’s it always that question? Let me guess your next line: ‘You’ve crossed the Iron Corrosion Fist Gang, and our brothers won’t let you go!’”
As she spoke, the sub-leader’s delayed threat came, half a beat late. “You’ve crossed… the Iron Corrosion Fist Gang… our brothers…”
He froze, stunned, as his words matched her prediction.
Before Suna could probe for intel on the tattoos, she sensed two gang gunners with magic rifles rushing from a street corner.
They fired without catching their breath.
Suna dodged the high-speed bullets with slight movements, while Skoll, having just dispatched his opponents, scrambled to evade and deflected a bullet with his sword.
The first two shots missed, the third was parried, but as a gunner aimed at Skoll’s head, Suna heard only a faint click of a misfire.
[A dud? That’s rare!]
Noticing a pulse of Skoll’s blessing, she held off deploying a hexagonal golden shield.
Skoll, gripping his sword, assumed a thrusting stance and unleashed magic from twenty meters away.
“Radiant Hammer.”
A golden light pillar erupted from his blade. The gunners dodged the direct hit, but the beam struck a wall, exploding in a hemispherical blast.
Suna shrugged as the shockwave sent them flying.
Using her [Veil of Truth], she enveloped the sub-leader’s head in golden mist, blooming like a flower. Shimmering memory threads connected to her mind.
Filtering out irrelevant fragments, she extracted the desired intel, leaving the sub-leader foaming and unconscious.
“That’s some serious side effects. He’ll be out for a couple of days,” she muttered.
Suna strolled to the two gunners, gravely injured from burns and shrapnel, in shock-induced comas.
Though Skoll had restrained his magic and they’d used defensive spells, he’d overestimated their strength—they were barely bronze-tier, enhanced to low silver-tier by tattoos.
“Kur, work on your magic control. Except for their leader, they’re just bronze-tier, barely silver-tier with tattoos.”
While advising Skoll, Suna used water magic to extract a dud bullet and remaining ammo from a broken rifle.
Sensing the primer was damp and untriggered, she compared it to the magazine’s bullets, narrowing her eyes.
[As expected of a hero’s blessing—powerful luck that turns threats into low-probability failures and guides its bearer to a better future. If he grows, he’ll be a massive threat!]
As Suna pondered the blessing’s implications, Skoll approached. “Su, find something?”
“Nothing. Let’s head to the Rust District’s core.”
She released palm-sized radiant orbs, healing the comatose gang members minimally.
Skoll, puzzled, asked, “Su, we just fought these guys. Shouldn’t we hide?”
“No need. This was just a test. We sent a warning and showed courtesy.”
Suna shrugged, glancing at the true “eyes” watching from the shadows. Skoll, catching on after a moment, realized this was merely the gang’s “threshold.”