Chapter 180: Lead and Silver Coins (34)

Chapter 180: Lead and Silver Coins (34)

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Drip-

".Orpheus or whatever his name was, he really was a damn genius. Almost blew my mind."

Ian quietly muttered, wiping the blood dripping from one ear. It had been fun to dive among the snipers and thrash around, but since the men had clung to the slope of the valley and remained unresponsive until the bullets fell, he hadn't inflicted much damage despite his grand entrance. He had managed to capture their attention and stop the sniping towards the base, but because of that, all their barrels had turned towards him.

After kicking out spiritedly, he entered the dented truck's cargo area and for about ten minutes, was beaten up by ricochets off the bulletproof panels. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn't come up with a bizarre method like that guy and was about to rush in half-dead when-

Squeeeeek-!!!!

A strange resonance and light spread from beyond the rock canyon, paralyzing his thoughts.

When he opened his eyes, what filled his vision was a wide plain covered with burnt and shattered corpses, and his wife was nailed to a wooden post at the top of that mountain of corpses.

It was a familiar sight. During his days living as a madman after losing his wife, he had seen this vision several times a day. Back then, he used to carry a small pocket knife and slash his thigh every time he saw the vision, but Wujin used to threaten to cover his thighs with steel plates as the scars healed over the stitches and new cuts kept appearing.

Regrettably, he was naked in the pile of corpses, and his usual gun and knife were not beside him. According to his memory, there was only one way out of this vision.

The scar-covered man climbed the stairs made of bones and intestines towards his wife hanging there.

Her fingers and toes bore clear signs of torture, and her face was swollen beyond recognition from the beating. Frozen in place by that horrific sight, Ian couldn't stop the longing for her from rising.

".Molly."

".I.a."

The woman hanging from the post lifted her head to speak. The tip of her tongue was missing. Of course, he had never seen such a sight before, but it matched the last vision of her he had seen alive. The bloody trace at the corner of her mouth was enough to give the surviving Ian terrible imaginations every day. The pain sufficient for such a gentle and fragile woman to take her own life. Just because she was with me. Just because I was true to my own heart, she faced a horrific end like no other.

".I missed you."

Splat. Splat.

Ian couldn't stop himself from moving closer to his wife, despite the horrific disfigurement. He knew how it would end, yet he was driven by emotions strong enough to lose control of himself.

"A world without you is still boring. Filled only with black and gray, it doesn't feel like I'm alive at all. If the old you saw me now, you'd think I was someone else with all the strange things I've done. Running into armed enemies with just a shotgun, setting off a claymore in front of them. I've drunk harsh liquor until I thought I was dead, smoked cigarettes until I forgot my own name. Doing so made the colorless world seem a bit more alive. Ian Desmond, consumed by impulse and addicted to alcohol and cigarettes. If I confessed to you now, you might slap me on the spot."

What would Molly say as a witness to his life as Metal Jaw?

What would she say? Dressed in a white nurse's skirt that reached her calves, hands on her waist, squinting her eyes and scolding [What are you doing!]. Whether its a handsome young man or a rough bearded man with a fully shaved jaw.'

"Khhh that would be something to see."

Splat.

Finally, he reached her feet. Clearly battered by all sorts of tools, those small feet seemed to fit in one hand.

"Even now yes. I can distinguish at least the shades of light and dark. I've found someone not entirely boring. Manly. Spirited. And just as mad as me."

Even as he spoke, his body faithfully moved closer to his wife, following the scene in his memory. Those small feet, cold and limp like a corpse. He just wanted to hold them

"I've missed you so much. I love you, Molly, just as I did the first day we met."

The moment his hand touched his wife's foot.

Boom-

His wife exploded into pieces, scattering among the pile of corpses, some of them showering over him.

The heart of a man as tough as steel crumbles in his wife's bloody embrace, and hell arrives above him. He wants to gouge out his own eyes, unable to bear it, but the nightmare isn't over yet, and he must go further.

The wooden post where his wife had been hanging. A small ember burns beneath it. The shape of a child, charred black.

"Leoni"

My hell. The scaffold I created.

My beloved child. I wanted to give you more love than anyone else, but the days with you were far too short.

By embracing that small pile of ashes to his chest, his nightmare is completed. The bodies that had fallen rise up, snarling, and rush toward him.

"Even struggling to handle the death of just two people, I've killed enough to make a mountain. How could I ever repay the debt for those sins."

Amid the pain filling him from head to toe, he looked at his daughter who was left burning. The daughter crumbled to ashes in his hand. Remaining in it, a small, white two-barreled pistol.

His last refuge. The keepsake of his wife that made him think one more time' whenever he contemplated suicide.

Ian quietly placed the gun against his temple amid the undead surging towards him like waves.

If he became buried in memories this way, maybe he could be with her forever in this horrific vision. Although the thought was temptingly horrific.

".Take good care of Leonie. My love."

Bang!

With a gunshot, the man's body collapsed. He never intended to die, no matter what.

He didn't have a religion, but he firmly believed that there was a heaven prepared for his wife and daughter, and a hell for someone like him.

Wouldn't the distance between this world and heaven be shorter than that between heaven and hell?

He intended never to be far from his family again. That's why he did not intend to die.

****

After experiencing the nightmare hundreds of times, Ian returned to reality. Feeling like his head would burst if it continued, Ian impulsively stabbed his ear with his finger to pierce the eardrum.

Pop!

"Argh!"

Though it was a ridiculous idea that making a hole would relieve the pressure, the sharp pain helped his boiling brain gradually return to normal.

My physical condition has turned to rags. Even without any special trauma, my body stiffened as if I had been electrocuted.

Not firing, not exploding, but still, a weapon that kills a wide range of people in the world's worst way. How could such a shitty weapon exist? He wanted to smash it into scrap metal until it became just that, then blow it up with a heap of C4.

His hands trembling, he pulled out a mirror to check outside, but heard no sharp gunfire or tense breathing. Well, those snipers lying outside were probably more affected by the weapon that wrung people out compared to him inside the relatively sheltered truck cargo. Both he and the snipers had been using high-level personal shields at maximum output, but Ian nearly died, so anyone less resilient would likely be dead. It was a terribly frightening feeling, but since the enemies were dead, he had probably come out ahead.

Bang!

Crunch!

Mikhail couldn't bear it.

When news of BDSM first spread in the community, he hadn't recognized it. He was merely collecting information involuntarily because the name Ian was ingrained in his ears.

Even when they were revered as heroes of Dome, their preferred combat styles, appearances, and other details were posted on the community, Mikhail uncharacteristically chose to ignore the ominous premonitions. It couldn't be. Alexander Young would never praise the worst murderer of the era as the guardian of his city.

After dismissing memories of Ashfield as delusions for months, when he heard they had arrived in District 38 and went to see him in the middle of the night. Although completely changed, when Mikhail faced those deep, blue eyes filled with coldness, he could not betray his own convictions.

He had no intention of blaming Young. Young was a man who had found a more superior form of justice than Mikhail himself in every aspect. He was just a wayward cop messing things up again.

"It's okay if you commit more crimes. I'd even understand if you hid to escape your past. But you at least you should not have become good."

Click.

The revolver cocked, and Mikhail spoke as he saw the lead bullets face him inside the silver gun barrel.

"No matter how many people you save, no matter how much happiness you bring to others, your sins do not disappear before they are paid for. If the sinner forgives himself and becomes good, then who bears the resentment and pain of the deceased and their kin? Who gave you, or anyone in the world, the right to refuse the victims' suffering?"

Cough, hack!

Ian, staggering and aiming his gun, looked down at Mikhail, who was spitting blood. Mikhail's leg was crudely crushed and broken, bearing clear marks of gunpowder, showing where bullets had grazed his temple.

It was easy to guess who had done this to the leg, given the bloody, fist-sized rock lying next to Mikhail. As for the temple it seemed he had turned the gun on himself just in the nick of time.

A sniper without peers, and I wondered why he couldn't keep distance. He would have died even if left alone.

Blood from him was forming a small stream down the hill. This man, facing death yet unflinchingly spewing anger.

"You are huh. Yes, this kind of man."

If asked what kind of man frustratingly good. Not that I hate him or anything, but it's like he's angrily arguing that if I become good, what are those who should resent me supposed to do? Like a family seeing the murderer of their father becoming a pastor in a remote village church, living in repentance. An excessively upright fury, not because of belief, but simply because that's how he feels. That's the kind of man Mikhail Pletnev is.

Of course, he's an enemy now, and Ian should be blowing his head off and checking if his remaining friends are dead or dying. But until he could release the words he was holding in, the trigger was too heavy to pull.

".To clear up any misunderstanding on your last journey, only by your insane standards could I be considered having shifted between good and evil. I'm still the bad guy. Almost every day without fail, I killed people, and far from reflecting, I reveled in the easy money like a psychopath."

"."

"Just a few days ago, I killed a bunch of diligent inspectors from District 38, both for public and private reasons, so don't worry about me going to heaven"

".You can't pull the trigger."

"Huh?"

"The trigger. Is it heavy? Do you feel its weight now? Only after all that slaughter? If this isn't redemption, then what is it?"

".Damn."

".Huh. Huhuhu. Hahahahaha!"

Suddenly, Mikhail, reading the conflict and torment freezing over Ian's face, felt an uncontrollable delight.

"Damn You weren't just forgiving yourself for your own satisfaction. It's not pretense you've genuinely become a good person. Disgustingly, shockingly changed, Ashfield."

Sometimes, his simple justice aligned with the world's principles. The penalty assigned to Ian Desmond wasn't merely to die resented as a criminal. Unwittingly becoming a good person, haunted by his past crimes, he would repeatedly and endlessly feel the weight among the many people he would continue to kill. Mikhail couldn't help but burst into laughter thinking of the pain and guilt Ian would flounder in for the rest of his days. His death would also become his torment, eternally condemning him in memory.

"Shoot."

".Damn. I've never been like this in my life, but just this once, think it over one more time. Killing someone like you would disturb my sleep."

"Huhuhu Cough! If you don't shoot, I will."

Click!

Drip drip

Too weak to even lift the gun, a hand rose from the pool of blood, lifting a Beretta.

"Damn it! I don't want to kill someone like you! What am I supposed to say when I get to hell and the reaper asks why I killed a rare good man like Mikhail Pletnev? Huh! As if I don't have enough sins to repay already!"

".137 murders, 569 counts of accessory to murder, 2895 illegal detentions, 391 assaults, and for one count of manslaughter, I've executed the sentences for you lazy bastards."

He was at his limit. His contradiction. Maintaining his beliefs by betraying his own beliefs, leaving the murderer Mikhail Pletnev unchecked. Finally, his release from this complicated world was approaching.

".Put the gun down."

"You'll continue to be haunted by your past as you live."

"Put the gun down."

"I'm grateful to have been part of your life's sentence."

"Put the gun down, you bastard! You're gonna die anyway, just die nicely alone!"

Trembling click.

"May your remaining life be devoid of a single happy day. Ashfield."

"Damn you, you crazy son of a biiiitch!!!!"

Bang-

A gunshot rang out.

The man tied to his past died, and the man burdened with many pasts lived.

".God. damn God. If you have any conscience, just drop me a cigarette. please."

Ian sat next to the corpse, fumbling for his pack of cigarettes lost in the battle, and heaved a deep sigh.

In the distance, over the hill, a convoy of vehicles armed with all sorts of strange equipment approached the battlefield.

The mark of District 38's administration. Prepared against radiation and bizarre weaponry, something heavily laden had shown up.

Just as the cursed light seemed to have vanished like the setting sun.

"Coming at a worse time than the cavalry in a Western, or the cops at the end of a Hollywood movie."

Ian snapped a glow stick in his pocket, lighting it as he finally lost consciousness.

He was truly exhausted now. Having finished all his tasks, he felt just like Ezel said, wanting to go home and snack on something.

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