Sukuna Isekai Adventures 6

Boris sucked in a sharp breath, his weathered face twisting between alarm and disbelief.

“Wait,” he reached out again, fingers curling toward Sukuna’s coat, but the boy was already beyond his grasp.

Sukuna stepped into the open with an ease that should have belonged to someone who knew he was untouchable. His stride was slow, unhurried. It was like he was waiting for them to notice him. From this distance, he looked somewhere between a short adult or a particularly tall teenager.

The four men standing near the entrance barely registered his presence at first. Two leaned against the wall right beside the door they had just exited, too busy rolling a cigarette between their fingers. The other two were farther away. One stood in place, adjusting his coat to block out the cold, while the other spoke. Neither spared even a glance in Sukuna’s direction.

“Hey, do you really think Dan and the rest are dead?”

The shivering man gave a shrug before replying. “Wouldn’t be surprised. One of those chinks or spaghetti-loving bastards probably got to them. That would teach others not to act up recklessly. I hear our benefactors are planning to push for bigger territory too. They would prob—”

The man’s words cut off as he finally heard the crunch of feet on snow. He shifted his attention from his friend to the new figure with a frown while caressing the handle of the blade he kept hidden in his coat, an act obscured by the way he gripped his coat against the bone-chilling wind.

“What are you doing here, kid?” he finally questioned as the figure came close enough for him to confirm. His grip loosened until he saw the kid’s face in full, and the extra pair of eyes. His fingers instinctively clenched the grip back. His partner turned at his words and jerked back, his hand tightening around the barbed bat in his hands.

“What the fuck!”

Sukuna looked at the duo, then the farther pair that rested against the wall. Those ones hadn’t realized what was going on yet, distracted by their conversation and the cigarette. But he knew it would happen soon, so he refocused on the two before him. His diagonal-set eyes roved over their figures, categorizing them.

Healthy physiques for slum inhabitants. Armed, a wooden bat and a concealed weapon, probably a knife. Posture alert but loose. They were no different from the group that had come visiting, and a flicker of disappointment filled him. Then he shook it off and walked.

The duo stood confused as he walked right through their middle. Halfway past them, he said a single word.

“Leave.”

There was no fun in crushing such insects. Perhaps there would be better foes inside the building, people that would set his heart pumping again. And maybe, just maybe, he would come to that realization that had felt so out of reach.

His distracted thoughts came to an end the moment a heavy arm slammed onto his shoulder, fingers gripping him as the owner spoke.

“Hold on now, you bastard, who the fuck do you think—”

For the second time in as many seconds, the man was forced to cut his speech short because Sukuna acted.

Once again, his movements were instinctive. His right upper hand clamped down on the wrist gripping his shoulder, fingers tightening like a steel vice. Without even looking back, he yanked the man forward with a savage jerk. The fool tried to resist, tried to plant his feet and pull away, but Sukuna wasn’t having it. His muscles flexed, his shoulder rising like a hammer, and in the same motion, he wrenched the captured arm downward.

There was a sickening as bone split and the man’s elbow snapped backward over Sukuna’s shoulder. The agonized shriek that tore from his throat was raw, it grated on his ears so he silenced it.

He took a step back, spun, and drove his left upper elbow into the man's diaphragm with brutal precision. Ribs splintered. Cartilage popped The impact blasted the air from the man’s lungs, silencing and leaving him crumpling forward, a gasping, sagging heap. But before he could even think of collapsing, Sukuna’s lower hand darted into his coat, twisting the concealed knife from weak, trembling fingers.

A cruel grin split Sukuna’s face.

He buried the blade into the man’s throat. It was not a clean, quick puncture. He drove it deep, twisting until flesh gave way, until steel kissed the spine. A ragged gurgle spilled from the man's lips, his body convulsing, but Sukuna wasn’t done playing.

With a vicious tug, he ripped the knife free in a sharp, sideways arc, carving through muscle and vertebrae in one brutal motion. Sending blood flying from the gaping wound, and spraying across the snow in a steaming crimson arc. The man’s head lolled to the side, barely hanging on by a few strands of sinew.

It was over in two seconds.

He pushed the dead man aside, and before the other could process what had happened, burly arms snapped around his neck, locking him in a chokehold that forced him to drop his bat as he struggled for air. Sukuna took slow, bored steps, then, with a single vicious move, he buried the knife into the man’s gut. He twisted.

The pain in the man’s face, the utter and total anguish, was a balm on Sukuna’s soul. It almost made up for the time he was wasting.

He left the man to die in Boris’ grip as he picked up the dropped bat. He rested it on his shoulders and turned to face the other two men, only to realize there was only one now. A single man still at the door, watching as it slowly swung shut.

A single man who stared back at Sukuna with bloodshot, wide eyes.

Sukuna smiled at him.

“You should’ve run.”

Then the screams began.

...

“Yes, sir. Yes, sir, I’ll make sure my men are ready. Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

Then there was the sharp click of a disconnect, and Saint slammed the landline phone back into its cradle with a frown.

“Bastard keeps treating us like expendable puppets,” he muttered to himself as he sank into the leather-upholstered chair with a groan. He looked at himself in the cracked mirror ahead and to the side of him, and his frown worsened.

He was too old for this life.

The salt-and-pepper streaks in his hair were a testament to that.

The room he called his office sat on the upper floor, sparse yet weighed down by remnants of old grandeur. Time had taken its toll. Peeling paint curled away from the walls, and the wooden floor creaked under the weight of forgotten years. Dust clung stubbornly to the bookshelves, layering over cracked spines and forgotten titles. The few decorations that remained were faded and worn, their once-vibrant colors dulled by neglect.

Despite its decay, the office still clung to a sense of reluctant opulence. A massive desk, carved from some expensive hardwood, dominated the space, its surface polished to a dull sheen. His chair, a high-backed beast of original leather, creaked slightly when he leaned back, aged but still commanding. Beneath it all lay a Turkish rug, intricate in design but fraying at the edges, the only thing softening the relentless bite of the cold wooden floor.

The Burnley Slashers had been beaten and ruthlessly crushed between the sporadic cold and hot wars that constantly ran through Gotham’s streets, rapid violence followed by brief periods of calm.

Gotham, at its worst, was a no-man’s land filled with bloodstained streets, deranged cultists, ruthless mob bosses, and weirdo's that seemed to slowly crawl out of the woodwork. What was a small gang like the Burnley Slashers supposed to do in the midst of that?

So they had been beaten back until one of the bigger mobs extended a hand to them. The same group that had nearly destroyed them. But what could Saint do other than smile, bow, and kiss the ring?

For their loyalty and subservience, they had been sent out of mainland Gotham to the Narrows—just one gang out of many that had been ruthlessly culled, forced to bend the knee, and then shipped off to manage some rundown, godforsaken place.

There was a rough banging on his door, and Saint instinctively went for the shotgun he kept hidden beneath the desk. He ripped it from its hanger and aimed it at the door, paranoia from multiple assassination attempts fueling him.

He racked the shotgun.

It was the one thing completely devoid of the dust and rust that coated the building. The amount of care he placed on it was more than he did himself.

A relic of better days.

“Come in.”

The door opened, cutting off a second knock, revealing the worried face of one of his men—one of the nameless fools he had recruited when he was given control over this part of the Narrows.

“Boss, I think there’s something you should see.”

He frowned for a bit, then nodded his head. This time, someone new was dragged into the office by two other men.

“His name is Wyatt. He was one of the men stationed to patrol the north of our territory,” the man started by explaining as he waved at the man who had been unceremoniously dropped to the ground. “Tell the boss what you told us, Wyatt.”

The now-named man struggled to his feet. Other than his remarkable ability to stand, he didn’t seem hurt in any other way.

“It was some kid, boss man. I'm not even sure about what I saw, like fucking hell man. What sort of—” His demented and wide-eyed ramblings ended when Saint gave a signal, and one of the brutes beside him sent a brain-resetting blow to the side of Wyatt’s head, silencing him and forcing him to focus.

Saint leaned forward, then spoke. “Let’s try that again. Speak slowly.”

The man nodded from his spot on the floor, took a deep breath, then spoke. “He looked weird. Not the regular kind of weird we get in the Narrows. More like the kind you hear about farther away. I’ve heard some rumors about a group deeper into the Narrows that had some kid with four arms and two faces. I think he was the one. He killed the others. He was so fast I didn’t know what to—”

“So you ran like a fucking coward. From a freaking kid?” Saint cut the fool short, annoyance written all over his features. The nonsense about four arms and two faces was clearly just some exaggeration to make the person seem more dangerous than he was.

Saint took a sniff of the air, and the odor wafting toward him from Wyatt made it clear. The idiot was high as balls. “Get him the fuck out of my sight right now, and handle whoever—”

There was a thunderous bang that halted everything, cutting his words short and freezing everyone for just a second. Wyatt was the one to break the silence. “Oh Gods, he’s here. He’s here to kill all of us. I need to get out of here!”

Another brain-resetting punch was slammed into the fool’s head, and this one was enough to knock him out as he slammed his head against Saint’s desk.

Saint looked at the two bruisers and waved them away. “Get the others and fuck this asshole up. Whoever it is, he picked the wrong time to come knocking at our doors.”

This early meant that the full power of his gang was available and currently in the building. They might be a bit confused due to being woken up and told to fight, but they should be enough for a single bastard.

The bruisers were quick to leave, leaving him in the room with the still-nameless mook and an unconscious Wyatt. Saint frowned for a bit, then kicked his chair back before stepping out, gun in hand, with the man following after him.

Immediately outside his room was a corridor. It led into two other parts of the house on the right and left, and two stairs curved down and inward into the second floor. That was where they stopped. Already, with his height advantage from being on a higher floor, he could see his men coming out of different rooms, groggy and half-awake as they asked themselves what was wrong.

The majority of them carried weapons ranging from bats to shanks to cleavers, an assortment of homemade blades and mauls. Only his two lieutenants actually carried real weapons like he did—two smaller-caliber revolvers that he estimated had a 50/50 chance of being fully loaded. Still, those weapons would be enough for whoever came knocking. He doubted he would even have to step a foot in.

Not when he had the full weight of thirty bodies between them.

Another thunderous crash rang out, and the door at the far end of the downstairs caved inward and exploded, sending half of the heavy frame flying. It slammed into one of the still-groggy men that littered the area, hard enough to bury the broken sharp edges into his midsection, almost bisecting him but mercifully killing him on the spot.

The remaining part of the door turned into splinters that shot out like one of his shotgun blasts, slamming into a crowded group of three and shredding them. Their screams of pain echoed in the building, forcing the remaining half-asleep men to sharpen up as danger suddenly seemed so close.

Saint blinked as he was forced to automatically recount. Twenty-seven bodies. Then he remembered three men were already supposedly killed outside. Another blink, but this time, there was a lick of sweat trailing down the side of his face. Twenty-four.

His eyes darted to the side in search of that treasonous Wyatt. The force needed to blow that door inward was more than something a single person could apply. It had to be an explosive. Was this a rival gang raid? Did they send Wyatt ahead to misdirect and confuse him so he would have all his forces in place for a slaughter?

His thoughts were disrupted by the sound of footsteps ringing out, alongside a dragging and moaning sound. It didn’t take long for Saint to confirm it was a single person’s footsteps, and his worry lessened.

But only so much, considering how ominous the slow footsteps sounded as they echoed in the cavernous downstairs, with only the worried mumbling alongside the downed men’s groans and moans of pain for ambiance.

It didn’t take long for the figure to reveal himself.

The first thing Saint noticed was the pink hair, too bright, too unnatural. But it was his face that made Saint tense.

Four eyes. The right pair was slanted, narrow, and eerily inhuman, different from the left pair, like they were made of something tougher than skin. They didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Just stared. While the right pair had a human quality to it that Saint was familiar with. Cruelty.

Saint’s gaze dropped past the blood-streaked cheeks, still soft with youth but smeared in fresh red. His stomach twisted when a pink tongue slipped out, lazily dragging across the splatter like it was nothing.

Then there were the arms.

The fur-lined jacket draped over his shoulders did nothing to hide them. Two lower arms rested neatly behind his back, unnervingly still. The upper left hand dragged a groaning man across the floor like dead weight, fingers loose, uncaring. The right one propped a bat on his shoulder, its surface slick with blood and bits of something Saint didn’t want to think about.

He should’ve looked monstrous. Should’ve been horrifying. But instead, there was something about him that made it hard to look away.

Maybe it was the way his body moved, the casual strength beneath his skin. Maybe it was the way he stood—relaxed, unbothered, like none of this was worth worrying about. Like he already knew how this would end.

Then Saint realized the worst part.

Underneath all the blood, he was just a kid.

The kid stopped, and his four eyes roved over the assortment of men arrayed before him before drifting up to Saint himself. Then Saint saw something that made him, a killer and longtime cold-blooded gangster, take a step back.

What he had mistaken as a straight-lined scar on the kid’s stomach widened to reveal a malicious and wicked grin that sent a chill down his spine.

The kid’s attention shifted once more, and the voice that left his lips was nothing childlike. Neither were the words.

“Like sheep to the slaughterhouse.”

Then a deeper voice rang out, this one echoing with a deep menace to it.

“This is going to be a massacre.”

The words forced his men to flinch, and one of his lieutenants instinctively let out a shot from his revolver, a thunderous crack that ended with the sound of something small slamming into something meaty. Unfortunately for them, it was as if the kid was expecting it, because when Saint blinked, he was greeted to the sight of the groaning man that had been in the kid's hands, a man that was now interspersed before him, and his body took the bullet with a weak groan.

The kid laughed. A chilling sound that made the lieutenants squeeze the trigger in fright, burying multiple bullets into the meat shield until an empty click rang out, the click that somehow managed to sound louder than the earlier gunshots.

The kid threw the body to the side and smiled at the lieutenant. A smile that told Saint all he needed to know.

The kid had done it all on purpose. Unnerved his lieutenant to make them waste bullets. Underneath that monstrous physique and figure was a mind just as terrible.

The kid moved and just like he had promised, the ground floor turned into a massacre. Blood, bodies, limbs, and screams flew as the kid made a beeline toward the lieutenant who had shot at him.

Saint looked at the shotgun in his hand, then back down at the massacre happening beneath him, and wondered if this was going to be enough.

Another set of gunshots rang out, his second lieutenant no doubt, and there was silence for all of two seconds.

Then the screams began again. The results of that attempt were as clear as the first then, He mused to himself.

At this point, Saint turned back, shotgun in hand, and walked back into his office to get a drink. What would probably be his last drink, from the look of things. It seemed like Gotham had given birth to a new monster. He crossed over Wyatt's unconscious form and wondered if the man would be interested in joining him before what looked like their all too painful demise.