Chapter 31: Welcome to the Game of Cowards

“Boom!”

The rust-eaten iron gate of an abandoned factory in the industrial zone was smashed open with brute force, and three motorcycles streaked inside like meteors, plunging into the tangled maze of roads.

The wild, turbulent wake they left behind hurled everything around them into the air, only for it to be instantly shredded by the violently rushing airflow.

The speed of these three motorcycles had nearly reached the absolute limit of what humans could possibly control.

Even professional racers, if they drove at such extreme speeds for too long, could lose consciousness due to oxygen deprivation and excessive physical strain.

And yet, the section where these three machines were now clashing was the part of the race mockingly known as the “High-Speed Maze”—the industrial district.

This stretch was packed with factory buildings of every kind.

Massive smokestacks rose almost into the clouds.

The night sky overhead was cut into fragments by pipelines and conveyor belts used for transporting coal.

The ground was littered with coal slag, gravel, and heaps of waste materials and coal piled up like small hills along the roadside.

All of it forcibly created countless obstacles that had to be avoided.

And there was no proper road here at all.

The racers had to weave through the interlocking, labyrinth-like factory complex, reach the roadway by the canal, and then follow the canal road back to John Bridge.

In other words, this was the final stretch before the finish line.

On a track like this—filled with obstacles and nearly devoid of any path suitable for normal driving—even moving at an ordinary speed would be deadly.

One moment of carelessness, and a racer would slam violently into an obstacle, flipping both rider and bike, dying on the spot.

Yet now, tearing through this maze-like track at terrifying speed were three motorcycles whose riders were anything but ordinary.

Or rather, none of them were normal humans.

The flaming motorcycle surged forward, scorching flames warping the air itself.

Already transformed by fire into the likeness of a Ghost Rider, Cage twisted the throttle.

His flaming steel wheels tore through everything ahead like chainsaws.

And the fiery ruts he left behind had already turned into a vast sea of flames.

Following him at a measured distance was Cyril, riding the White Widow.

“Hm? You seem… different from those other boring guys…”

Cyril crouched low over his bike.

When the raging inferno left by Cage surged toward him, it was split apart by an invisible force half a meter in front of his front wheel, as though a saint were parting the sea in scripture.

This blazing firestorm—something that would trouble almost anyone—posed no obstacle to Cyril at all.

Likewise, as a half-demon, he could clearly sense that the skeleton wrapped in flames riding ahead of him was unlike other demons or demon-possessed beings.

Judging by appearance alone, Cage could no longer be considered human.

Yet by instinct, he felt more like a human wielding demonic power.

“Boom!”

High above, a brick wall of an abandoned factory suddenly shattered.

Moonlight poured through the opening—and along with it fell the massive, pitch-black body of the Hell Mammoth.

That enormous bulk was about to crash straight down onto Cage’s head!

“Vroooom!”

The flaming motorcycle let out a thunderous roar like a warhorse’s neigh, tilting sharply to the side at a precise, masterful angle.

The Hell Mammoth’s massive rear wheel skimmed past Cage’s skull by a hair’s breadth before slamming down to his right.

When Evelyn landed, the Hell Mammoth’s huge front and rear wheels smashed two craters into the ground, yet its speed never dropped as it pulled level with Cage.

“Tch… missed him?”

Evelyn pressed down on the handlebars.

The two motorcycles drifted side by side through a ninety-degree turn inside the factory, bursting through a rusted iron gate and charging deeper into the complex.

This guy Cage really was a superb rider.

Even a sudden ambush that unfolded within a single second hadn’t caught him off guard—he’d reacted and dodged it cleanly.

Evelyn didn’t really want to admit it, but if they were talking purely about riding skill, Cage far surpassed her.

That gap hadn’t been obvious on the earlier, less complicated sections of the track.

But once they entered the industrial zone, with its complex terrain, the difference in skill became painfully visible.

Not only Cyril, who had been following from behind, but even Evelyn herself was gradually being left behind by Cage after entering the industrial district.

And the sea of fire Cage left in his wake was just as much of a headache for her.

So, the unhinged nun once again lived up to expectations and chose the most insane solution possible.

She drove the Hell Mammoth up a conveyor belt that transported coal to the blast furnace, climbing straight onto the factory rooftop.

As long as she wasn’t on the ground, no matter how vast Cage’s sea of flames became, it couldn’t affect her.

At the same time, with a floor slab separating them, Cage couldn’t immediately know Evelyn’s position.

That meant he also couldn’t predict her crushing descent from above.

But now, everyone knew the result.

Even without being able to foresee it, Cage had relied on intuition forged by years of experience and superhuman reflexes to dodge it effortlessly.

“Hey, bonehead! Your reaction speed—can you squeeze it under a hundred milliseconds?”

Evelyn suddenly asked casually, turning her head toward Cage’s flaming skull.

“Clack, clack!”

Cage’s bony jaw opened and closed a few times in response.

But a skeleton clearly lacked the vocal organs needed for human speech, and only the dry clacking of bones reached Evelyn’s ears.

An ordinary person’s reaction time is around 200 milliseconds.

Those with professional training can reduce their response to specific stimuli to 150–180 milliseconds.

A few exceptionally gifted individuals can reach 100–130 milliseconds, close to the theoretical human limit.

That alone is already astonishing.

But Cage’s reaction speed was clearly far below 100 milliseconds.

That kind of speed was outright inhuman.

To put it another way, a typical human blink takes about 100 milliseconds.

Cage’s reactions were far faster than a blink.

That was more than enough to support high-speed riding through a complex industrial zone.

“Then do you know how fast my reaction speed is?”

Evelyn suddenly raised Shut Up and aimed at a steel beam spanning between two factory buildings ahead.

“The answer is—”

“Bang!”

The muzzle of Shut Up erupted with exaggerated flames, and two bullets spun out of the barrel.

“Twenty milliseconds! Welcome to the Game of Chicken!”

Time seemed to slow to an absurd crawl.

With reaction speed and dynamic vision far beyond human limits, Evelyn could almost see the bullets leaving continuous streaks of light through the air.

They struck the weakest points of the steel beam with pinpoint precision.

Shut Up’s overwhelming power instantly destroyed the beam’s joints, and under the stress, the tens-of-tons structure twisted apart, breaking into massive chunks of iron that rained down from above.

“Boom! Boom!”

Steel sections weighing several tons crashed down one after another, skimming past Evelyn and Cage before spearing straight into the ground like tombstones fallen from the sky.

The two factory buildings began to disintegrate and collapse as the beam failed, kicking up clouds of dust.

In an instant, visibility across the entire factory area dropped to less than five meters.

And still, Evelyn and Cage continued racing through a track with visibility under five meters, steel beams constantly falling—a zone of near-certain death.

Evelyn’s normal reaction speed fluctuated between fifty and eighty milliseconds, depending largely on whether she was fully awake.

When she focused completely and adrenaline surged, her reactions could plunge to a terrifying twenty milliseconds.

At that level, she could even see the light trails left by bullets flying through the air.

It was precisely because of this monstrous reaction speed and dynamic vision that Evelyn—despite being a complete novice who had never ridden a motorcycle and had only learned the basics of how to operate one—could crush the vast majority of seasoned competitors.

But no matter how absurd her reaction speed or how powerful her dynamic vision, there were some things that raw numbers simply couldn’t compensate for.

Such as years upon years of accumulated experience and technique.

And that absolute sense of control over a motorcycle.

Cage was exactly that kind of opponent.

To him, the motorcycle was as familiar and responsive as an extension of his own body.

He knew every component, every bolt, every gear.

He knew every corner of the track, every braking point.

That allowed him to maintain maximum speed and optimal control at all times.

It was a gulf that numbers alone could never bridge.

That was why, once they entered the complex industrial zone, Cage could so easily pull away from Evelyn.

If Evelyn had been given more time, she might have used her inhuman reaction speed, dynamic vision, and learning ability to catch up—or even surpass Cage’s riding skill in short order.

But the problem was that she had only had a few days to prepare.

That was nowhere near enough time to overtake him.

But what if the road became even more complex and dangerous?

Like now—when visibility was under five meters, steel beams kept falling from above, and collapsing factories lay ahead.

Even Cage, now a Ghost Rider, riding a motorcycle transformed by hellfire, couldn’t withstand steel beams weighing several tons or an entire factory roof exceeding a hundred tons crashing down.

On a track where a mistake of even one centimeter meant death, all driving skill and experience lost their meaning.

Here, the only things that mattered were reaction speed, strategy, and nerve.

This was Evelyn’s solution.

With a single precise shot, she had flipped the situation into a game of chicken.

And in this game—

The one who flinched first would lose everything.

Including their life.