But Clemente had no choice but to admit it—the other side had already seen straight through both his situation and the Clementes family’s precarious position.
They were counting on the fact that he would be forced to offer compensation. Because while the Kiryu-gumi could afford to fight, the Clementes family could not afford to bleed.
Helpless, Clemente could only compromise.
"All right. What kind of compensation are you asking for? Let’s hear it."
Kiryu Zanma grinned cheekily, that smug face of his just begging to be punched in Clemente’s eyes.
"Straightforward. As expected from the head of the Clementes family."
The two sides then went back and forth for quite some time, haggling over every detail before finally settling the terms.
Kiryu Zanma stood up with satisfaction, buttoning up his suit jacket, and extended his hand toward Clemente.
"Clemente-san, I see your organization’s sincerity loud and clear."
Clemente gave a faint smile in return, though his was far less carefree.
To be fair, what Kiryu Zanma was demanding wasn’t excessive—well within what the Clementes family could afford. It was the timing and the manner of it, exploiting the situation to shake him down, that filled Clemente with disgust.
But there was nothing he could do. The Kiryu-gumi weren’t their allies—
it was a transaction, nothing more.
No matter how much Clemente hated it, he could only hold his nose and accept it. He hesitated for a moment, then shook Zanma’s hand.
Internally, he was cursing him to hell, wishing the bastard would just drop dead already.
Shk—
A crimson blade suddenly burst through Kiryu Zanma’s chest, piercing clean out the front.
Blood was sprayed everywhere.
Zanma froze.
He slowly looked down at the blade protruding from his chest.
It wasn’t just him— Clemente was stunned too.
Everyone else in the room, from both sides, stood frozen in shock.
The blade was withdrawn.
More blood continued to spray out.
Zanma opened his mouth and vomited a mouthful of blood all over Clemente’s face.
Clemente instinctively shut his eyes, stumbling backward in shock and losing his balance.
He tripped and fell to the ground.
Only then did the surrounding men react like snapping out of a trance.
"Zanma-sama!"
"You idiot!"
Three Kiryu-gumi members panicked, drawing their weapons and taking aim at Leo.
But Leo was already moving— like teleportation, he crossed several meters in an instant and appeared behind one of the Kiryu-gumi men.
Grabbing the man’s arm, he fired twice at the other two.
The bullets punched through their skulls, splattering blood across the wall. The two dropped to the ground, eyes wide open, dying with disbelief etched on their faces.
Leo reversed his grip on Muramasa with his left hand and drew it cleanly across the throat of the man he held.
The entire exchange took less than five seconds— Kiryu Zanma and his three personal guards were all dead.
Ratatatat
Gunfire erupted from the other side—Clemente’s men had opened fire.
Leo didn’t even bother dodging. The rounds struck his exoskeleton armor and sparked harmlessly off its surface.
The three men Clemente had brought with him were loyal. They did everything they could to stop Leo, trying to buy time for their boss to escape.
While they fired, Clemente had already scrambled to his feet and reached the room’s door.
In just a second, he’d be twisting the handle and escaping.
But Leo’s speed suddenly exploded. He became a flash of motion—like a meteor streaking past—and reappeared behind Clemente in the blink of an eye.
He placed Muramasa against Clemente’s neck.
"Don’t move, or he dies."
Clemente’s three men instantly panicked.
They had seen what had just happened to Kiryu Zanma with their own eyes. They didn’t want their boss to end up the same way.
"Let go of the boss!"
"You’re not getting away! We’ve got this place surrounded!"
Being held hostage by an unknown assassin who had killed four men in seconds— Clemente wasn’t calm at all.
He was a gang boss who dumped bodies in concrete barrels, not a fearless revolutionary.
But he wasn’t going to piss himself just because of a blade either.
The sword was at his throat, but it hadn’t cut— and he hadn’t died on the spot like Zanma. That meant the attacker likely didn’t intend to kill him immediately.
Thinking this through in seconds, Clemente managed to calm down slightly.
He quickly began to guess at Leo’s identity.
"You... you’re the one who hit both us and the Kiryu-gumi earlier today? Who the hell are you? How much is Padre paying you? I’ll pay double!"
Leo smiled slightly.
But he gave no answer.
He wore his Falchion gear— a fully enclosed helmet hiding his face completely. Whether he smiled or not, Clemente couldn’t tell.
But Leo stayed silent. And the blade stayed where it was, against Clemente’s neck. He neither cut nor released him.
Clemente was left guessing, unsure of what Leo intended. His three lackeys were frozen in place, afraid that one wrong move would get their boss’s throat slit.
The standoff dragged on. Every second felt like an eternity— especially for Clemente, who felt like he was aging a year by the second.
Then suddenly, Leo spoke out of nowhere.
"It’s about time."
The words made Clemente’s hair stand on end.
Before he could ask what that meant, Leo withdrew the blade from his neck and shoved him hard from behind.
Clemente stumbled forward, off balance. One of his men instinctively reached out to catch him— while the other two seized the chance.
With their boss no longer a hostage, they opened fire without hesitation, slamming their triggers down in rage.
Their kinetic SMGs roared, spraying metal in fury.
But Leo vanished from where he had stood.
The bullets hit the Kiryu-gumi members who had just opened the door to investigate the noise.
...
Ten minutes earlier.
In the Kiryu-gumi crowd, two members were whispering.
"Hey, got a light?"
"You serious? You wanna smoke now? Clemente’s men are still glaring at us across the room."
"Don’t be a wuss. That business earlier today—it was all a misunderstanding."
"And how do you know that?"
"Give me a light and I’ll tell you."
Kuroda Kazuma gave his partner a sideways glance, exasperated, and fished a lighter out of his pocket.
He lit Ugaki Gorō’s cigarette.
Ugaki took a long drag, savoring the moment.
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