Leila walked out of the back room, but there seemed to be some “small changes” about her.
“You…”
Bres and Qiao Anni were speechless.
“Ah? This?”
Leila raised her arms.
They appeared to have swollen to a larger size, becoming angular and blocky, not even covered by bionic skin—the purest form of combat prosthetics.
“Military grade?”
At this moment, Bres could only think of those military prosthetics used on the front lines, whose fully armed users usually stood more than two heads taller than before.
“No way, how could military grade ones have leaked out?”
Leila replied with a smile.
“I studied and replicated them myself after visiting an exhibition. Ah, it’s public knowledge! Of course, the performance definitely can’t compare to the originals.”
‘Is it really necessary to go this far?’
Bres was about to ask that, when he saw Leila take a massive gun out of the coffin.
Strictly speaking, that was an anti-materiel rifle.
“Without this, the prosthetic’s output wouldn’t be enough.”
Leila stroked the gleaming barrel of the anti-materiel rifle, as if caressing a newborn baby.
“…Are you sure that’s okay?”
“This kid is definitely fine!”
Leila deftly loaded the ammunition.
“I wasn’t asking about that.”
Bres’s expression turned solemn.
“I’m asking you: are you really okay?”
Military-grade prosthetics of the same specification, even under strict supervision, have limitations on usage time and dosage of auxiliary drugs, and require real-time monitoring of vital signs by specialists.
Yet Leila seemed to have taken the gun and come up without any safety measures.
In Bres’s view, the severe side effects of doing so were no different from slow suicide.
“Me? It’s fine, fine! I’ve used it a few times before!”
“…What?”
“I’ve used this prosthetic several times before, and I’m still alive and kicking. Don’t worry, the Lord’s blessing and flesh and blood are with me. I’ll be fine!”
What is this person doing?
Watching Leila’s completely unconcerned expression, Bres seemed to understand something.
The onset of cyber psychosis is not only due to excessive modification but also factors like psychological resilience and self-awareness.
Troken is a fringe religion that believes in Iron and Fire, and Leila is a devout follower of this religion.
As a member of an organization often regarded as a cult and rarely treated with kindness, Leila has extremely strong mental fortitude.
As a believer of the Troken Church, in her eyes, steel and flesh are probably not that different.
In other words, her self-perception has been skewed from the start.
This is, in a sense, a double negative making a positive.
Bres shook his head and sighed, when the loud sound of an engine from outside approached.
“It’s coming.”
Hearing Qiao Anni’s warning, Leila’s expression also grew serious.
She opened the coffin behind her and turned it around; inside was a small arsenal.
Leila pulled back the heavy bolt of the anti-materiel rifle.
“Let us pray, and then pull the trigger!”
Just as the demolition ball was about to smash down, the church door was pushed open from inside.
Leila stood firm, rifle in hand, aiming at him.
“Why come out on your own?”
The engineering machine operator, confused by the sudden situation, hadn’t reacted before the several layers of steel plates in front of him were torn apart.
A shock came from above, followed by warm liquid flowing down from his head.
Oil leak?
The operator struggled to lift his head to find the source of the liquid, but he couldn’t.
“What the hell?”
In the distance, Adrian suddenly noticed that the once ferocious engineering machine had come to a halt.
The loud noise just now had startled him, but he didn’t think they had large-caliber weapons capable of piercing the engineering machine’s defenses.
Bang!
The sound of shattering glass exploded in his ears.
Adrian timidly turned his head and saw the driver, who had just poked his head out of curiosity, slumped in the driver’s seat.
But his entire upper body had exploded, leaving only half a torso twitching futilely.
The smell of entrails and blood assaulted his senses.
An unidentified object slid down from the top of his head.
Trembling, he took it off—it was a cybernetic eye.
It seemed to be malfunctioning, constantly contracting and dilating, while its owner was no longer alive.
Adrian wanted to scream, but his throat felt as if it were being strangled; he wanted to turn and run, but the bloody reality robbed him of his courage.
“F-fire! Forward! If you want to live, move forward! Bury them alive inside!”
Only after another subordinate fell beside him did Adrian finally snap out of it.
He frantically directed the remaining engineering machines and men to launch a desperate charge at the fortress that looked shabby but was actually indestructible.
Facing the dense rain of bullets, Leila turned around and slammed the coffin onto the ground.
With the sound of a mechanism being triggered, the side of the coffin began to deform and expand, forming a portable shield.
The storm of bullets was all stopped by this shield.
Then, she took out two machine guns from inside the coffin and began to fire outward from behind the shield, creating the spectacle of a single person suppressing fire.
At the same time, the now smarter Adrian and his men began to advance using the bulletproof vehicle bodies, and the machine guns couldn’t cause enough damage to them behind cover.
In fact, Adrian’s charge command was correct.
By using numerical advantage, they might have been able to suppress Leila—provided she was alone.
Several smoke grenades flew out from the side windows of the church and rolled onto the ground.
With a muffled explosion, smoke spread throughout the street.
In the gray-white mist, a fast-moving black shadow darted through, consuming lives within.
Adrian’s men frantically fired at every corner of the smoke that showed signs of movement, but each time they only heard bullets hitting the ground and walls.
In contrast, every missed shot was accompanied by someone falling.
An engineering machine raised its mechanical arm and swept it horizontally through the smoke, trying to kill or force out the lurking enemy.
Boom!
The howling mechanical arm churned the smoke into shapelessness, but only hit one of their own cars.
The entire car seemed to be crushed flat, and the flesh on it belonged to one of their own unlucky comrades.
A figure flipped up and landed on the mechanical arm.
Qiao Anni ran along the arm, charging toward the cockpit.
She moved agilely, like a black cat running along a rooftop.
Naturally, Qiao Anni’s emergence from the smoke caught everyone’s attention.
One man overcame his fear, raised his rifle, and aimed at Qiao Anni sprinting on the arm.
Qiao Anni caught a glimpse of the muzzle aimed at her from the corner of her eye, but she ignored it.
The shooter’s finger pressed the trigger.
Bang!
A small bloody hole appeared in the center of his forehead.
“Thanks~”
Hearing Qiao Anni’s response in his earpiece, Bres in the church shook his head helplessly and put his eye back to the sniper rifle’s scope.
Qiao Anni landed lightly on top of the cockpit, found the viewing port, and stuffed a grenade with the pin pulled inside.
With a muffled explosion, the last engineering machine also stopped moving.
Qiao Anni straightened up and looked at the other two machines.
Now all three engineering machines on the street were out of commission—one taken out by Qiao Anni, and the other by Leila.
The bulletproof shield began to contract, reset, and finally returned to the shape of a coffin.
Leila’s figure reappeared.
Leila casually wiped a few drops of sweat from her face and bowed to Qiao Anni with a smile, as if she had just finished a minuet.