Leo noticed a dangerous red glow appear in her eyes.
In the next moment, the bodies of the three enemies suddenly burst into flames. The fire spread over them in an instant, turning all three into blazing human torches.
"Protect yourselves," Leo said, then charged toward the Holy Father—Joseph Seed—on the far side of the small chapel.
Splurt!
His Swift Blade cleaved a police officer—man and rifle both—clean in half. Warm blood splashed all over the Holy Father.
"You bastard!"
Another officer raised his gun to fire, but before he could pull the trigger, a guard pounced on him from the side and bit down hard on his arm. The officer cried out and fired wildly by reflex. One bullet whizzed past the Holy Father, never even grazing him.
The Holy Father stepped forward, driving the Swift Blade straight into the screaming officer's open mouth. A nearby policewoman went pale. A wound in her thigh kept her from standing. Yet the Holy Father did not kill her immediately. He seized her by the throat and lifted her off the ground. She gasped and struggled, but no matter how hard she fought, she could not break free.
Just as she was about to be strangled to death, the Holy Father let go and backed up several steps. An icy flash sliced through the air where he had been standing only a moment before. Had he stayed put, he would have been cut clean in half.
The Holy Father scowled at the young man who had foiled his plans again and again. "You?!"
The newcomer was clearly not with the NCPD—no uniform—and he had just blown through the chapel's ceiling to drop in from above. Who knew how long this "rat" had been lurking around?
The Holy Father's face darkened. "Who are you people?"
Leo said nothing. Real life had no dramatic pause for chatter. He lunged forward, closing several meters almost instantly, and thrust his blade straight at the Holy Father's heart.
Clang!
The Swift Blade knocked aside Leo's Muramasa. The Holy Father raised his left hand, the back of which split open to reveal rows of hidden barrels. Rat-a-tat-tat! A torrent of bullets exploded at point-blank range.
A triumphant grin tugged at the Holy Father's lips. "At this distance—there's no way you can dodge… What?!"
Leo lifted both arms to shield his head, and the hail of bullets did nothing but strike sparks off him. They all ricocheted away, deflected by his custom bulletproof combat suit.
The sheer shock of that sight left the Holy Father briefly stunned—even in the heat of battle. Though it lasted less than a second, any lapse in a fight was fatal. Realizing something was wrong, the Holy Father hastily moved the Swift Blade to block. But Leo's Muramasa did not slash toward his chest; it hacked through his knee instead. The blow to the kneecap toppled the Holy Father, sending him crashing to the floor.
Then came the final strike. In a flash of steel, the Holy Father's head flew high before rolling to the ground, his eyes wide with disbelief.
When the Eden Gang members caught sight of their Holy Father's severed head rolling across the floor, they stared in numb shock.
"The Holy Father… is dead?"
"He's dead!"
"How is that possible? Wasn't he sent by the main congregation?"
"They actually killed the Holy Father? They really killed him!"
While the chapel-bound Eden Gang members reeled in disbelief, Connor snapped back to reality and realized the opportunity before them. He swiftly directed the surviving police officers to retreat to the far side of the chapel, widening the distance between themselves and the Eden Gang.
As they pulled back, they signaled to Leo and Lucy as well. Though those two weren't NCPD, their actions had proven they were allies.
The officers who reached the wall were all wounded, their conditions dire. They scanned the chapel for any way out. But the sole exit was the same automatic door they had used coming in. There were no other doors.
"If we want out, we have to kill them first," Leo said, ejecting the spent magazine from his Crusher and slamming in a fresh one. Lucy reloaded her kang tao tech submachine gun beside him.
The officers paused, then hurried to reload as well. Accepting at last that the Holy Father was gone, the Eden Gang members did not flee. Their eyes, bloodshot with rage, burned into the police officers.
Their only reply was the chilling line of gun barrels.
Earlier, the officers had been surrounded by enemies on all sides, which had made it nearly impossible to fire without risking friendly casualties. Now, they had pulled together, side by side, with no allies in the crossfire. Both side's hands were stained with the other's blood, and words were pointless. Only a carpet of each other's gore could settle the score.
Gunshots thundered in a deafening roar throughout the chapel. The police officers poured their bullets into the Eden Gang, and some gang members collapsed. However, the Lexington pistols the NCPD used lacked stopping power; it often took an entire magazine to bring down just one or two foes.
Seeing that these crazed Eden Gang members were about to surge forward like zombies, Leo jumped in. Every boom from the Crusher pulverized multiple enemies at once, tearing them into bloody pieces. With the NCPD at his back, he no longer had to worry about friendly fire and could fight with full force.
Lucy's fire supported him until, at last, the chapel fell silent. Only a few half-dead adversaries remained, moaning in piles of bodies.
…
Though the fighting had ended for now, the danger was far from over. These Eden Gang members in the chapel were only a small fraction of the larger group, most of whom were locked outside—and they were much better armed than this fanatical bunch inside had been.
Even having cleared the chapel, nobody felt safe. Then, something unexpected happened. From the moment Lucy hacked the door and forced it shut, the Eden Gang outside had rammed it relentlessly, warping its panels badly. But all at once, their pounding stopped.
"Holy Father?" someone shouted from the other side.
When Joseph Seed was struck down, the people inside had erupted in howls reminiscent of a beast that had lost its young. But there was a door between them and the outside, and the chaos inside had blurred everything, so the crowd outside had only heard some terrifying screams, without knowing the cause.
Now that the gunfire had ceased and only the groans of the dying remained, curiosity overwhelmed them.
"Holy Father???"
"Holy Father—!!!"
Repeated calls yielded no answer. The fighting had ended, replaced by only the ragged moans of the fallen.
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