Amidst the high, ear-splitting noise, Hoaphilen quickly turned up the sleeve of her non-gun hand and pulled out a hidden object.
In her hand was a syringe with a sharp needle, and a green liquid sloshed inside.
The plunger, which pushes the contents into the body, was missing.
It was a special type of syringe designed to automatically inject the contents as soon as the needle was properly plunged into the target.
Clenching her fist tightly, Hoaphilen aimed directly for Roilnia’s neck without hesitation.
“Ugh!”
Roilnia, who had reflexively covered her eyes, sensed the movement and swung her arm, grasping Hoaphilen’s shoulder.
The moment she was seized, a horrible pain shot through Hoaphilen as her collarbone and shoulder blade fractured.
It was a pain so intense that all the strength in her body instantly drained away.
Hoaphilen, giving strength back to the arm that had nearly dropped the cylinder, gritted her teeth, moved the momentarily halted arm, and plunged the needle in with all her might.
It pierced!
The thick needle punctured the skin and dug in deep.
As the needle was fully embedded, the liquid in the cylinder rapidly diminished, bubbling.
It was a sign that all the contents had entered Roilnia’s body. However, this was not all.
To ensure a definite finish, Hoaphilen switched the gun to her unharmed arm and raised it.
Crunch—!
Roilnia, whose sight was beginning to return, frowned heavily, released Hoaphilen’s shoulder, and snatched her wrist.
The sound of breaking bone resonated sickeningly due to the immense strength.
Seeing Hoaphilen with broken bones in both arms, the woman smiled grimly, her lips stretched in the fading light.
It wasn’t that Hoaphilen hadn’t expected Roilnia to recover quickly, but the time given was simply too short. Hoaphilen clicked her tongue in regret.
“Gasp—!”
Next, her throat was seized.
The woman slowly, definitively squeezed the life out of Hoaphilen.
It didn’t take long for her vision to narrow from lack of oxygen.
It was obvious that her breathing would stop if the woman applied even a little more pressure or if this state persisted.
Still, it was a relief that she didn’t break her neck immediately.
Even as she gasped for breath, Hoaphilen managed to raise her trembling, barely functional hand and aimed the gun at Roilnia.
A look of contempt flashed, deeming Hoaphilen’s pathetic movement ridiculous.
Good, be careless.
Be as careless as you want.
‘The enemy of my family, the woman I must absolutely kill.’
With this singular focus, Hoaphilen wished for her failing breath to hold out until she could observe a bizarre piece of change within those hateful red eyes.
She could not give up.
That arrogant woman would regret not snapping her neck immediately.
So please—! Please, let the chance come!
“You, what kind of… trick is this…!”
A moment of confusion flickered in the red-haired woman’s eyes.
Hoaphilen desperately moved her finger to pull the trigger, unwilling to miss the moment.
“Die…!”
Bang—!
A second gunshot tore through the air.
The gun, which had been modified to take a special flashbang for the first shot, now fired a live bullet accurately.
Simultaneously with the gun shot, the sound of both Roilnia and Hoaphilen slumping to the floor was heard.
Following this, a mist of blood, rising like a fountain of spray, enveloped them.
The area where the flash had faded was now filled with explosively released smoke.
“Cough!”
Hoaphilen, whose breathing was now free, sat on the floor, gasping for air.
Her sight, which was slowly returning from black, was frustratingly blurry.
She looked at Roilnia, who had collapsed nearby, but she was too obscured, as if trapped in a fog, to be seen clearly.
But what was certain was that this time, Roilnia had failed to dodge her bullet.
Even though both her arms were broken and she couldn’t aim for the forehead properly, Hoaphilen had clearly seen the bullet pierce the woman’s neck at close range.
The splatters of blood on her face and hands proved that Hoaphilen’s strike had landed.
“Huff… huff… You deserved that…”
Ever since the tragic events that befell her, Hoaphilen had constantly pondered a means to counter Roilnia as an ordinary person.
Relying on others for revenge introduced too many variables.
Hadn’t Haimar properly retaliated for her touching a Guide?
Because of that, her diligently planned work had nearly been ruined.
Therefore, the prepared cylinder was Hoaphilen’s countermeasure against Roilnia, which she had secretly and carefully developed.
“Fortunately, it seems to have worked… The medication I created… was a substance to neutralize the effect of the drug you stole.”
It was a drug she had engineered solely for Roilnia.
Normally, there was no need or demand to create a drug that specifically counteracted the effect of a specific, failed drug. Bluntly put, it was garbage.
But Hoaphilen needed it. Because her opponent was none other than Roilnia.
It was to bring down the woman who despised Guides and thought only she was superior, who sought to become the sole, unique Esper through substitute drugs.
Furthermore, what the woman had achieved was the result of taking her husband’s life.
Hoaphilen had to be fiercely determined.
Otherwise, she couldn’t bear her own powerlessness in the face of the deaths of her beloved family.
“Did you feel a sense of incongruity? Didn’t your instincts tell you that you needed a Guide, the very being you look down upon as primitive?”
She wanted to see the woman who would not tolerate a Guide collapse because of one.
She wished to see Roilnia acknowledge the being that could not be complete on its own and beg at her feet.
“But what to do. Your Irregular Guide… my daughter is already dead and gone. Isn’t an Esper without a Guide more miserable than a Guide without an Esper?”
Objectively speaking, Roilnia Ranilgref was an exceptional Esper.
The uniqueness of her ability was so great that she could have entered [Integra], and by continuously delving into the fields where she already excelled, she even acquired new abilities in addition to her original one.
Although she had recklessly misused indiscriminately developed ability-enhancing drugs whose stability was not verified and committed all sorts of illegal acts in the process, the outcome was clearly unprecedented, regardless of the means.
Not all Espers could do that. The woman had luck on her side and the talent to pursue her goal.
So what?
Does that change the fact that she viciously led her husband and daughter to their deaths?
Hoaphilen designed a drug that would counteract the effects of the medication her husband had created, and after intense research, she developed a new drug.
In addition, she devised a way to make Roilnia even weaker by mixing in components that would detoxify the ability-enhancing drugs.
She wanted to make the woman bitterly realize the limits of her own power.
She had to teach her that the talent gained through clumsy trickery, by trampling on precious lives, could never last forever.
The path she was treading was a thorny one, with no one to help her, and it was a massive gamble.
When she witnessed the subtle flicker of confusion in Roilnia’s eyes, Hoaphilen felt a rush of ecstasy.
If it had worked correctly, her drug would have neutralized the guiding agent working in Roilnia’s body and counteracted the ability enhancers, weakening the parts sustained by the drugs.
Even if the result wasn’t exactly what she anticipated, it was fine.
She only wished for any outcome that would lead to the woman’s death.
She could even happily accept Roilnia’s body reacting to the overused drugs and going berserk.
The end of a frenzy that no one could stop was certain destruction.
Even if she were to be caught up in the rampage and killed, if she could die alongside the woman, that would be the outcome Hoaphilen desired.
“How does it feel… for a drug addict… to be defeated by a drug?”
Hoaphilen, dragging her exhausted, aging body and crawling on her knees toward Roilnia, sneered.
She wanted to mock her more, but she judged it was too early to assume the woman had reached the outcome Hoaphilen desired.
Moreover, the smoke continuously billowing from Roilnia was greatly obstructing her vision, so she couldn’t let down her guard.
If a breath remained, she had to thoroughly extinguish it at this opportunity.
Hoaphilen crawled closer to examine the woman’s appearance in detail, confirming the sliced neck where bone and muscle were on the verge of being severed.
Blood streamed onto the floor, and the twisted neck was bent at a grotesque angle.
Although the continuous emission of smoke was bothersome, this could be called a fatal wound.
For confirmation, Hoaphilen tried to force her immobilized arm to lift up.
She would dedicate the severed head to her family and tear the limbs to shreds to be thrown to the hungry birds.
With this, the end of her revenge would be complete.
“Ha… haha… Ahaha.”
“……!”
Just then, a sound of laughter she didn’t want to hear came from within the incessantly rising smoke.
Hoaphilen desperately wished that the unpleasant laughter, which sounded like a hallucination in her ear, was a mistake.
But contrary to her wish, what Hoaphilen witnessed was the blood slowly stopping and the severed muscles and broken bones rapidly regenerating in real-time.
The neck bone reattached, the muscles regrew, and the skin regenerated.
The contorted face, which had been leaning back at a strange angle toward the sky, slowly began to return to its place, creaking as it turned toward Hoaphilen.
The half-turned red eyes rolled once and fixed upon her.
