Editing City Series:Volume3b Chapter 8 (section)

===Part 2===

The Earth Burns had torn into the crust during the Sixth Divine Punishment War, so Hong Kong Island’s shape had changed.

The east and west sides of the island had become cliffs of exposed volcanic rock.

The rock faces curved a bit as they rose about two hundred meters from the ocean surface. The sea breeze that had normally blown across the island ran into those cliff faces, collided with the ocean, and burst into the sky.

The sound of the wind was surprisingly loud and it created a great roar.

Facing the windy rock face on the eastern end of the island was enough to have the blowing wind drown out all other noises.

It was a space cut off from the outside world.

Two figures stood at the top of the cliff.

One was a large man and the other was a slender woman.

They were Fei and Rin.

The two of them were injured.

Fei’s left arm had been severed partway down and the spear of light from an anti-demon round was skewered into his left shoulder.

Rin had fallen to her knees, but the only visual damage was the scorched black hair behind her neck.

Rin was fighting much more evenly than during their previous matchup.

Rin had run across Fei almost immediately after landing at Central’s port on the north end of Hong Kong Island.

The General and the others had been with her, but they had started fighting J-Gun Maldrick and Genius Elias.

Rin’s first job was to draw Fei away from the others and her second was to finish him off.

She had accomplished that first job.

This cliff was three kilometers from Central because they had run at full speed as they fought.

She had used up all of the firearms on her person and thrown them away.

She was now armed with a flat black combat knife.

Fei had tensed the fingers of his right hand and five close-combat Hard Nails had jutted three centimeters out from the fingertips of his hard white false arm.

From there, close-quarters combat had begun.

Rin glanced at the watch on her left wrist.

The bluish-white digital display of the men’s diving watch said it was 11:40 at night.

In twenty more minutes, Hong Kong would be returned to China.

“…”

She said something, but it was drowned out by the wind tearing into the cliff.

She closed her mouth and faced forward.

Fei was close enough to reach immediately at a run and he was more damaged, but he was also larger.

She was not yet fully accustomed to her Custom Body and the difference in body size also worked against her.

It was hard to say which one had the advantage at the moment.

Fei was the first to move in order to determine which one of them had the upper hand.

The first thing he did was walk.

Almost immediately, the walk turned into a run.

The spear of light was still stabbed into his left shoulder as he charged toward Rin.

She stood up and kicked forward at the ground of volcanic rock. She made a shallow jump backwards so as not to give him an opening.

Fei’s nails stabbed into the space she had just vacated.

The jab using his elbow and forearm set the wind in motion.

As soon as Rin landed, she jumped forward.

At the same time, she kicked at the ground.

First to the right and then to the left.

Her position in the air shifted.

She made a quick and powerful feint.

By the time Fei lowered his hips in a combat stance, Rin had left his field of vision.

She was above him.

To maintain her momentum while leaping, she rotated her body once and used the centrifugal force to drop straight down.

She placed all of her weight on the knife she held in both hands as she launched her attack.

“!”

Fei was slow to react, but he was accurate.

His right arm caught the blade, so it dug into that false arm.

The sound of impact was crushed and the wind rising from the cliff sounded all the louder.

“…!”

One of them shouted something.

In midair, Rin briefly stood on Fei’s arm as if she had no weight.

And she kicked off his arm to pull out the knife.

With an impact, she flew spinning back through the air.

She twisted her body to absorb the blow from Fei’s arm.

Fei was the first to move the next time.

He leaped forward as Rin landed and lowered down.

He thrust the Hard Nails out from the hand held in front of his chest.

His stance and strength were far more powerful than Rin’s.

It was a sharp attack.

Rin took a defensive stance against the mass of great pressure launched toward her.

Instead of fleeing or fearing, she simply took that light stance.

“…”

Some words were spoken.

In that instant, Fei’s right arm scattered.

“!?”

The solid sound was somewhat audible through the wind.

Fei had been thrown off balance in midair and he fell onto his left knee.

Then he looked to his false right arm.

The arm had defended against the knife attack, but it had vanished starting halfway down the upper arm.

It now looked like glass shards.

The wind blew his arm behind him like a comet’s tail.

“…!”

This was the power of Tuning.

As proof, a torn piece of paper was attached to the bit of the false arm that remained past his right shoulder.

It was a charm.

Rin had placed it there when making her knife attack and it had paid off here.

She stepped forward at a speed one could call slow.

She targeted Fei’s head as he stood up and tried to fall back.

She started to run and in a straight line this time.

She was fast, so she quickly covered the distance between them.

She charged toward his chest and raised the knife in her right hand, but just as she gathered strength, she froze in place in that stance.

Meanwhile, Fei had no means of defending and no weapons with which to fight.

But he moved his thick neck and revealed his intent to fight.

“!”

He twisted his head around to bite into the handle of the spear of light stabbed into his left shoulder.

He moved just like a beast attempting to escape a trap.

The spear of light was pulled from his shoulder and the rest was simple.

As he held the spear between his teeth, the blade swept horizontally toward Rin’s throat.

She had no way of avoiding the slash and the blow sent her flying through the air.

A crack-like line ran halfway through her neck.

Blood spurted out at about the same time as the spear left Fei’s mouth.