After adjusting the final bullet that still posed a threat to him and ensuring he was no longer in mortal danger, Kobayashi was immediately ejected from "bullet time."
Papapapap—!
Amid a dense, chaotic chorus of bullets colliding, armed security personnel—and several unlucky researchers—cried out in pain and terror.
Yet Kobayashi, the primary target of the barrage, remained completely unharmed. He sat calmly in his wheelchair, unmoving, like an Immovable Wisdom King carved from stone.
The sheer absurdity of the scene left the armed guards with a profound sense of unreality. For a moment, some of them even began to doubt their own marksmanship.
"Vector Control!"
The middle-aged man, who had miraculously avoided every stray bullet, shouted excitedly. "That was Vector Control! The application technique!"
Though he was the overall director of the entire Dark May Project, the man himself was, at heart, nothing more than an ordinary person. He possessed no superhuman dynamic vision, let alone the ability to perceive something like "bullet time."
From his perspective, Kobayashi hadn't moved an inch—yet every bullet fired at him had inexplicably veered off course. There was no doubt in his mind: this was a specialized application of Vector Control.
He had seen this exact phenomenon only once before.
On Accelerator.
"Our experiment succeeded!" he exclaimed, arriving at that conclusion almost instinctively.
—As one of the earliest experimental subjects, Kobayashi had been implanted with Accelerator's complete personality data. Perhaps that was precisely why he could wield Accelerator's esper techniques with such proficiency.
Of course, this was merely speculation. The finer details would have to wait until they captured Kobayashi and conducted more thorough research.
Overwhelmed by his own excitement, the middle-aged man momentarily forgot the dire reality unfolding before him.
The other researchers behind him, however, were far more clear-headed.
"President, watch out!"
The man looked up—just in time to meet Kobayashi's gaze head-on.
Those eyes were so cold, so utterly devoid of emotion, that his heart seized. Only then did the warning cries from behind finally register.
Even so, Kobayashi Nana didn't spare the man any attention for now.
—Unarmed researchers were no threat. They could be dealt with later. The real priority was the heavily armed security surrounding them.
The guards, stunned by the complete failure of their overwhelming firepower, hesitated for a brief but fatal moment.
Torahachi Toumi moved.
She burst out from behind the wheelchair, skimming low across the ground like a golden blade of light, throwing herself at the nearest enemy without hesitation.
The pale-yellow ribbons stretched taut. Under the effect of her powerful ability—Absolute Penetration—they ignored the enemy's heavy ballistic armor entirely, piercing straight through.
Merciless. Clean. A single strike drove through the man's heart.
Using the collapsing body as a shield against the next wave of gunfire, Tora-hachi Toumi brushed her hand across her belt. A steel needle appeared between her fingers, and with a sharp flick of her wrist, she hurled it.
Thunk.
The needle skewered another guard clean through, bursting out from his back.
Two kills in rapid succession.
Seizing the moment of shock and disarray, Torahachi Toumi lunged toward her next target.
Kobayashi wasn't idle either. As he rotated his wheelchair in place to survey the battlefield, he coordinated with her using his psychic power.
Any enemy who raised a weapon to aim at Torahachi Toumi suddenly felt as though their arm were being twisted apart. Screaming in agony, they dropped their guns.
A few particularly stubborn individuals tried to endure it.
Their reward was bone-tearing from flesh, forcing them to release their weapons amid shrill, bloodcurdling screams.
Even after every enemy had lost the ability to fight, Toumi showed no mercy. The ribbon-blades in her hands became scythes of death—each swing claiming another life.
Outnumbered, cornered, and provoked by the horrific state Gang Rin and Kōru Jihō had been left in, Kobayashi did not stop her this time.
He didn't tell her not to kill.
In fact, the last two armed guards had their necks snapped personally, crushed by Kobayashi's psychic force.
The battle ended swiftly.
To the researchers watching from the sidelines, it was nothing but a storm of gunfire—followed by a girl weaving through the guards like a phantom predator, every pounce claiming a life.
As for Kobayashi, though he barely moved, his "low-spec Vector Control" was an even more nightmarish presence.
Measured in seconds.
In just a few dozen seconds, no security personnel remained standing in the training arena.
—or rather, none remained alive.
Only then did the researchers' faces turn ashen, finally grasping the gravity of their situation.
Given the arena's purpose—high-level destructive esper testing—and the institution capable of running such experiments, the Dark May Project should never have been wiped out by just two espers who weren't even Level 5s.
Not to mention, this training facility alone housed multiple systems designed to suppress rampaging espers. At full output, even Level 4 espers could be reliably restrained.
The problem was—
The researchers themselves were still inside the arena.
And among them was the project's supreme authority: the chairman of Black Moon Technology.
By protocol—and out of sheer self-preservation—they absolutely could not activate those systems.
That single moment of hesitation cost them their last chance to turn the tables.
Kobayashi seized two armored corpses with psychic force and hurled them into the far-side exit, blocking the researchers' escape route.
With all armed resistance eliminated, he finally turned his attention to Gang Rin and Kōru Jihō.
"She's alive," he said, probing Jiho's breathing and pulse with his psychic power. He let out a small breath of relief.
As if responding to his assessment, Gang Rin—who had lost consciousness from extreme mental shock—suddenly came to.
Seeing her rescuers, the tension she'd been holding snapped all at once. The psychic power on the verge of rampaging within her quietly settled…
Torahachi Toumi hurried over and gently lifted her into her arms, whispering soothingly,
"Don't be afraid. You're safe now…"
"Big Brother Nana… you came to save us?"
Gang Rin still sounded dazed, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.
"This… isn't a hallucination?"
"It's not a dream," Toumi replied with boundless gentleness.
"Rest easy. We'll get you out of here. And the others outside—they've already escaped."
At her words, the middle-aged man blurted out,
"You let all the test subjects—!"
But before he could finish, Toumi shot him a razor-sharp glare. Stung as if by a wasp, he averted his eyes at once and swallowed the rest of his sentence.
"Kōru Jihō!"
Gang Rin suddenly remembered her friend.
"She's alive, but she needs treatment immediately," Kobayashi said calmly.
"Tell me—who did this to her?"
From a glance alone, he already had a suspect. This was merely confirmation to avoid killing the wrong person.
Gang Rin didn't speak.
Her hatred-filled gaze shot straight toward a male researcher still clutching a stun gun.
(End of Chapter)
https://patreon.com/Omarfome