Chapter 2 : Conflict

The man in shorts, who was nearby, heard this and his head drooped like a deflated balloon.

“It’s over… this time it’s really all over…”

“Did you think you were caught up in some ordinary affair?” Rachel said.
“The police chief asked me to send his regards.
He’ll miss you.”

“It’s over… hehehe… over, it’s all over… hee hee!”

The man in shorts suddenly started acting like a madman, endlessly repeating what he had just said and laughing nonstop.

“Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Rachel sensed something was off.
She grabbed the nearby Yellow Hair by his hair and asked:

“What’s wrong with your friend?
Does he have some kind of illness?
Is there any medicine in this room?”

“I-I-I… I don’t know, either! Did he take the wrong medicine?” Yellow Hair, standing to the side, was dumbfounded.

With a series of crackling sounds, the body of the man in shorts began to visibly and rapidly expand, swelling up like an inflating balloon.
His once scrawny frame filled out, and his height increased to one and a half times its original size.
Hair began to sprout all over his body, and he soon transformed into a hairy giant.

He let out a low roar, and with a sudden exertion of force from his arms, he snapped the handcuffs.
Metal fragments flew onto Rachel’s face, bringing a slight stinging sensation.

“Is this some kind of martial arts manual for turning into a miniature King Kong?
Or have you decided to stop being human?” Rachel took a few steps back and turned to shout at her colleagues:

“Get out!
Everyone get out!
Don’t fire your guns inside the room!”

She grabbed Yellow Hair’s head, yanked him up, and shoved him into the arms of a colleague.

“Take him with you!”

The man in shorts, now a giant, lifted the coffee table with one hand and threw it at them like a child tossing a toy.
Rachel quickly ducked to dodge.

Bang!

Her colleagues had just managed to escape through the door with Yellow Hair when the coffee table smashed against the doorway with a tremendous crash.

“What the hell did that guy turn into?
Is that even a person anymore?”

Rachel looked at the giant.
The facial features of the man in shorts were now twisted and distorted, bearing no resemblance to his former self.

Her colleagues dragged Yellow Hair out of the house.

“That’s enough. Since they’ve already left, I’ll finish you off right here,” Rachel said, walking towards the giant, ready to eliminate him.

The giant seemed unable to understand human speech anymore.
He roared, and his right fist shot straight at Rachel.

Rachel’s expression was impassive.
She reacted faster, extending her hand and using a parrying technique from boxing.
She slapped his punching arm from the outside, easily deflecting the path of his fist and neutralizing its force.

The giant’s straight punch, its trajectory altered by the parry, grazed past Rachel’s face and struck the wall heavily.
With a dull thud, it blasted a large crater in the wall.

“Not retracting your fist after a punch is a big problem,” Rachel scoffed.

She pushed off her back foot and threw a rear straight punch, striking the giant’s chin.
The giant took the hit and seemed stunned, his entire body swaying.
Rachel followed up with a front kick, sending the giant flying.

With another dull thud, the giant’s entire body was embedded in the wall.
Two seconds later, he fell vertically, collapsing face down on the ground.

Rachel watched coldly as the giant on the floor struggled to get up.

“Aargh!”

The giant could no longer speak human words.
He let out a sharp cry and charged again.

Just as Rachel prepared to face his next counterattack, the giant twisted his body and bolted straight for the doorway.

“Trying to run?”

Rachel immediately turned and lunged at the giant by the door.

Just as the giant was about to escape through the doorway, Rachel’s hand grabbed his wrist.

Black ice crystals seeped out from the point of contact between Rachel’s palm and his wrist.
They spread rapidly, and in less than three seconds, black ice had completely encased the giant, freezing him into a solid block of black ice.

“Phew, that should be the end of it, right?”

Rachel reached out and flicked a finger against the block of black ice, producing a crisp “ding.”

She walked out the door and said to her colleagues, “Call Old Luo. Have him send someone to handle this.”

“Also, take this thing back for analysis. Find out what material it is, how it was made, and figure out its exact composition.”

One of them took the box containing the enchanted bullet from Rachel and, with a colleague behind him, escorted Yellow Hair away.

Rachel walked around the giant frozen into a black ice sculpture, went back into the house, and with great interest, picked up the game console he had left on the sofa.

“I’ll skip the debriefing. You guys handle it. I have something to do, so I’m heading back first.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the colleague replied.

Walking down the street, Rachel was so engrossed in her game that she forgot to watch where she was going.

She was playing a fighting game similar to King of Fighters, where all the characters were very stylish.
She was controlling a beautiful female character with ice-blue hair, just like her own, who could use ice-based skills in combat.
Her AI opponent was a handsome male character in a suit who could use dual pistols as weapons for ranged attacks.

She had only meant to play casually, but she found herself getting more and more into it.

“This is bad. I feel like I’m going to lose if this keeps up,” Rachel muttered, breaking into a cold sweat.
“How can I not even beat the easy AI?”

“Ah~ Augh? Aah!” Rachel let out a theatrical shriek, but her desperate struggle couldn’t stop her health bar from dropping chunk by chunk.
“I’m gonna die, gonna die, gonna die, gonna die…”

Just as she was about to lose her fifth match against the AI, she bumped right into a passerby because she wasn’t looking.
Before she could react, the game console slipped from her hands and fell toward the ground.

She thought the console would smash onto the pavement, but a left hand suddenly shot out and caught it securely.
The ring finger on this hand was missing its top half.
To be precise, two knuckles were gone, leaving only the last one, which was fitted with a silver, metal prosthetic.
A leather cord was attached to the tip of the metal prosthetic.
The cord crossed over the back of his hand and formed a loop around his wrist.

Rachel looked up and saw a young man.
He looked to be under thirty, with black hair, brown eyes, and an exceptionally handsome face.
He was wearing a tailored black suit and black Oxford shoes with laces, a black fedora on his head.
A lock of hair fell over his forehead, and a gentle smile graced his lips.

He held the game console out to Rachel.
She paused for a moment before taking it.
“Th… thank you.”
She noticed the silver cufflinks near his wrist.

“My apologies, I accidentally bumped into you,” a pleasant voice washed over her, warm and gentle like a summer breeze brushing past her ear.

“It’s fine. It was my fault for not watching where I was going,” Rachel said, still in a daze, not yet recovered from her recent defeat.

The man gave Rachel a slight nod and turned to leave.

Rachel continued on her way, then suddenly froze.

Huh?
That man… he looked a bit like the AI-controlled character from the game just now.
And they were both wearing suits.

It was a strange coincidence.
Rachel shook her head.