I Have Returned, but I Cannot Lay down My Gun

Chapter 469

I wasn’t aiming for a clean demolition like real-life buildings. To do that, I would have needed to drill holes in various columns and plant bombs, but I didn’t need to go that far.

I had already scoped out escape routes and paths to the nearby buildings. I wasn’t planning to rely on them, but if things went sideways, I always had the option to fight on my home turf.

So, as soon as I encountered them, I would destroy them as quickly as possible.

“How long has it been?”

“You’ve gotten good at hiding your presence.”

“I guess I’ve been caught already.”

“How could you not have noticed?”

When I opened my eyes, I saw a new silhouette standing at the entrance of the second floor where I was.

I had hoped for a bit more of a surprise, but the world doesn’t work that way.

Harmonie’s eyes gleamed mischievously.

“I was supposed to be running from others, but... I’ve wanted to get revenge on you like this, Yu-jin, for a long time.”

“I get the gist of it.”

“Hehe.”

Boom.

At the same time, Harmonie disappeared. 21 shots with freeze rounds and flame rounds were loaded into a handgun, and as the shots rang out in the air, her words echoed.

“I’ll wrap you up with my tail.”

“Try it if you can.”

With a speed close to an afterimage, Harmonie moved. Although she probably knew that my body couldn’t take much damage from unarmed strikes, she was likely going to try hitting me a couple of times.

I predicted her trajectory, timed it, and threw a jelly bomb while gripping my lightsaber in one hand. The shot rang out, and as the freeze round pierced the jelly bomb, a pink block of jelly instantly froze in midair.

Boom. Harmonie, who was nearing me, slammed into the ice block, and her speed was reduced by nearly half. I followed up with more shots and tossed another jelly bomb.

The battle began.

‘Just for a moment.’

I waited for the moment Harmonie’s foot landed on a certain spot.

With my lightsaber in one hand, I fired my pistol continuously and threw two grenades, pulling their pins in one smooth motion. Even though my physical abilities had decreased, my tail was still intact, and I had enough strength left to throw grenades.

The map itself was designed around the theme of sweetness, and as the bombs exploded, jelly poured down into the building, causing the floor to start collapsing.

As the floor we stood on began to collapse, I knew our standing area was shrinking rapidly.

Boom!

The area where Harmonie had been collapsed.

Of course, as a manifestor, her jumping ability allowed her to bridge the gap, but that wasn’t the point. What mattered was that, just before Harmonie arrived, the ceiling collapsed, and tons of pink jelly began pouring down.

It was simple. I had anticipated that the vibration caused by the explosion would be detected by Harmonie, and to prevent that, I set up a bunch of bombs on both the top and bottom floors.

Harmonie was far from the window, so she couldn’t just jump. I had forced her into a position where only one option was left for her — if I didn’t hold back and charged full force, the situation would have been worse for me too.

“You’re too late.”

The building collapsed to the ground, leaving only the skeletal framework. Harmonie must have been buried somewhere beneath the jelly and crumbled cookie sludge. According to the system settings, taggers couldn’t die, even if they got covered in jelly, but I wasn’t aiming for that.

As expected, just as the collapse finished, Harmonie burst out from the jelly and melted cookie sludge. By then, I had already scattered about 300 freeze rounds from my inventory into the air.

The transparent blue rounds fell like rain, and I fired a shot in the middle of them.

Crunch!

“Take the tail.”

???????????????

No way, what is this hahaha!!!

He froze the whole area!

I guess that’s how you catch a manifestor... but is that really okay?

Harmonie is screaming all the way from here, haha!!

Everything was done for this moment.

I wasn’t trying to incapacitate them or anything. The key was how to block the manifestor’s mobility, and the answer was simple. Manifestors don’t freeze easily with freeze rounds, so freezing them along with the jelly was the best way to stop them.

The depth of the jelly-cookie sludge was just enough to temporarily trap Harmonie, and as I jumped down and placed my finger on her tail, she was held for the required five seconds.

“Thanks for letting me off.”

5 seconds.

4 seconds.

3 seconds.

2 seconds.

And then—

Boom!

The next thing I knew, my view was spinning with the sky above me.

Before I could figure out what was happening, I saw a familiar yellow figure of a manifestor caught in the corner of my vision.

And then I realized.

“This game is ruined.”

Dice had come to save Harmonie.

I didn’t know what he threw, but whatever it was, I was hit and sent flying far away.

Of course, my soft muttering couldn’t be heard, and after that, I spent about 10 minutes slowly wearing down the remaining users, but once Harmonie recalled the pattern and learned from it, she didn’t fall for it again. Dice wasn’t fooled either.

I had to admit, manifestors were unreasonable.

“...Hehehe, finally got you...”

“I’ll never let you go now.”

“Can you stop saying things that’ll make people misunderstand?”

And then, 10 minutes later.

I ended up becoming the "trophy" of Dice and Harmonie, wrapped in their tails.

It was autumn.