Holy Father-Style Tool-Person - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: The Fifteenth Day of the Tool-man

Hiiragi Eiji ran wildly. Past experience told him one thing—the more critical the situation, the calmer one must be.

He seemed to have formed a corresponding habit. In such a predicament, his chaotic brain became eerily calm, and he began to integrate the intelligence he had gathered from Dazai Osamu over these past few days.

The defector was a thrill-seeker who loved nothing more than letting humans experience the struggle between life and death; hope gained one second would be annihilated the next.

He was a paranoid who had an extraordinary preference for prime numbers. All previous crimes had occurred at the hour marks of prime numbers.

In the gaps of his running, Hiiragi Eiji glanced at his mechanical wristwatch. There was only one minute and thirty seconds left until 11:00.

At the same time, the system was flashing non-stop in his brain.

Because the death time of Hagiwara Kenji flickered in and out of existence—sometimes displaying normally as exactly today, but other times being shrouded in a distorted mass of light, making it impossible to see clearly.

Without any hesitation, Hiiragi Eiji summoned the system.

“Restore my original attributes, lift the restrictions.”

[In different worlds, NPC Hiiragi Eiji only has three permissions to lift restrictions, each time lasting exactly three days. Do you wish to lift them completely?]

Looking at the remaining two minutes, and then at the cordon surrounding the apartment building, Hiiragi Eiji did not hesitate and confirmed immediately.

[Because the individual quality of NPC Hiiragi Eiji in this plane is insufficient to support the complete lifting of capabilities, physical modification has begun. Power-up mode is enabled with step-by-step increments. Expected to restore full individual level within three minutes.]

Hiiragi Eiji almost threw out his back from this sudden “bad news.”

But after thinking about the gap between the police academy Hiiragi Eiji inhabited and the ninja world, he endured it silently.

He didn’t dare delay as he sprinted toward the target. Dazai Osamu had also said that only a few minutes remained until the explosion. It seemed 11:00 was the detonation time chosen by the defector. Because the bomb components had been analyzed as involving ability-user technology, both the controls and the interior were different from ordinary bombs.

If Kenji could correctly dismantle the bomb before 11:00, there wouldn’t be any issues.

But when Hiiragi Eiji rushed around another street corner at a speed that shocked passersby, his heart sank suddenly.

Even now, ordinary people were still continuously evacuating from the building surrounded by the cordon. This meant that Kenji’s dismantling work hadn’t even begun yet.

Moreover, he saw Matsuda Jinpei’s figure within the restricted line, but fortunately, he didn’t appear to have any intention of going upstairs.

But how could this be? It was clearly so close to the explosion time; how could the residents be evacuating so slowly?

Following that, another thought flashed through Hiiragi Eiji’s mind: what if the countdown hadn’t started yet? What if this bomb was only discovered just as it was hitting the time limit?

He looked up at the sky; the patrolling helicopter was also hovering above this apartment building.

However, the open-air cafe that Dazai Osamu had taken him to was completely blocked by several buildings, making it impossible for Hiiragi Eiji to see the scene behind the building; even the sound was muffled by the distance and the masking of the building structures.

He felt the power rising slowly within his body and confirmed the time again: eighteen seconds. He looked up at a certain floor in the middle; there were moving shadows inside. It seemed the bomb was on that floor.

Suddenly, Hiiragi Eiji stopped in a dark alley at a distance from the cordon. Airflow constructed from chakra coursed around his body. In the blink of an eye, Hiiragi Eiji opened the second gate of the Eight Inner Gates: The Gate of Rest (Shuumon).

The Eight Inner Gates was a taijutsu technique Hiiragi Eiji had learned in the ninja world; it allowed the user to obtain powerful strength in the short term by opening the acupuncture points that bound chakra within the human body. The side effects were naturally quite obvious. Hiiragi Eiji calculated carefully; with his current physical condition, he could barely manage to open the second gate. Any further, and he estimated he would drop dead in the street.

Hiiragi Eiji arched his back, his entire posture resembling a cheetah ready to spring. After taking a deep breath, his right leg exerted force, and his entire speed became so fast that the human eye could not track it. Almost in the blink of an eye, he rushed across the cordon from the least guarded spot.

The fully armed police officers guarding the downstairs felt only a gust of wind sweep past; they were completely unaware of what had just happened.

Matsuda Jinpei, also standing below, had just scolded Hagiwara Kenji sternly for not wearing protective gear, but in the next instant, amidst the hurricane, he glimpsed a familiar figure.

Almost instinctively, Matsuda Jinpei gripped his mobile phone and sprinted toward the building. Fortunately, the guard next to him reacted with extreme speed, raising an arm to block him just as he broke into a run.

“Officer Matsuda?!” The guard shouted his name in astonishment, “What’s wrong with you?”

Only then did Matsuda Jinpei stop in a daze. The guard’s voice mixed with Hagiwara Kenji’s voice on his phone. At the end, looking at the empty entrance, he muttered: “…Nothing, just had a hallucination.”

Otherwise, how could he possibly have seen that person’s figure?

…Besides, what human could run at that kind of speed?

And the protagonist of Matsuda Jinpei’s thoughts, Hiiragi Eiji, was currently climbing the stairs at a speed unreachable by humans in this world. Twenty-plus floors were trivial to him.

Although his power recovery was still far from enough, Hiiragi Eiji, whose five senses had almost fully recovered, heard Kenji’s roar from upstairs when he was only one floor away from the destination.

“Run—!”

And at this moment, only six seconds remained until the explosion.

This time was simply not enough to move everyone upstairs to safety!

In a flash, Hiiragi Eiji made a decision.

After identifying the room where Hagiwara Kenji was, he kicked the glass of the safety corridor into pieces—this was the blind spot for the guards downstairs. He sprinted from the outside of the stairs to the floor above, then directly smashed through the glass of the room from which the sound had come, successfully leaping into the room where the bomb was planted.

Almost as soon as he landed, Hiiragi Eiji saw the bomb. Everyone was pushing with all their might to get out because of Hagiwara Kenji’s roar earlier. At this critical juncture of life and death, their tense nerves left them with no time to care about the movement behind them.

Hiiragi Eiji used what he considered the most appropriate ninjutsu at this gap—Multiple Shadow Clone Technique.

In an instant, the entire room was packed densely with Hiiragi Eijis.

Perhaps the movement behind them was too strange; eventually, someone couldn’t help but look back. But someone was faster than their turning movement; almost with a single knife-hand strike, he knocked out these police officers who wanted to turn around and investigate.

Next, every police officer fleeing outward could not escape the fate of being knocked out. The Hiiragi Eijis ran out while carrying one police officer each, while Hiiragi Eiji’s real body ran for his life while carrying the already unconscious Hagiwara Kenji.

Just then, a huge explosion erupted behind Hiiragi Eiji. The Hiiragi Eijis who had piled up in the room, covering the bomb firmly to act as a human blast-shield, were swallowed by the bomb in an instant.

The pain of the shadow clones being dispelled was clearly transmitted to Hiiragi Eiji’s real body. The intense, unbearable pain made his legs go soft almost subconsciously. But just as he was about to collapse, his gaze fixed onto Hagiwara Kenji’s face.

Suddenly, it was as if strength had been poured back into his legs, and he ran forward firmly once more.

But the power of this modified bomb was truly too astonishing; even with Hiiragi Eiji’s clones blocking the front, there was still a formidable shockwave striking Hiiragi Eiji.

Just as the fire was about to swallow everyone, Hiiragi Eiji used shadow clones again. At the last moment, all his clones stood before the police officers, shielding them firmly beneath their bodies.

Ominous orange-red flames suddenly appeared inside the apartment building. The shockwaves shattered several windows, causing those stationed below to turn pale simultaneously.

After yelling Hagiwara Kenji’s name, Matsuda Jinpei sprinted toward the stairs without looking back.

He ignored the shouting of the guards behind him. As if he had spent all his strength, he reached the 22nd floor in one breath. When he ran out of the stairwell and saw the scene before him, he couldn’t help but freeze slightly.

Before coming up, he had already anticipated countless tragic scenes, but he never expected… at this moment, everyone seemed to be favored by a miracle. In the short time just now, they had run to the end of the hallway. They seemed to have successfully avoided being engulfed by this explosion, only to be collectively knocked unconscious by the shockwave.

He saw the bastard who hadn’t worn protective gear among the crowd at a glance. He actually seemed to be the one with the lightest injuries, having no scorched wounds on his back like the others, save for some scratches on his face.

Taking a few steps over, upon confirming that the other person was still alive, he slid onto the floor, his strength nearly gone.

But the situation at hand did not allow Matsuda Jinpei to think any further.

At this moment, Matsuda Jinpei had no extra capacity to ponder how these people had survived this explosion; his heart was filled with nothing but relief.

But just then, he suddenly heard the sound of someone stepping on broken glass. Almost instantly, he sprang up from the floor.

He thought this might be another person affected by the bomb.

But when he hurried around the corner to where the sound came from, he stopped abruptly.

What entered his vision was a battered back.

Light-colored hair was a mess, the exposed neck was covered in wounds, and the fragile body seemed ready to collapse at any moment. But even so, the person was still walking step by step toward the stairwell on the other side.

The obstruction in his throat made Matsuda Jinpei nearly unable to speak.

He suddenly understood why Hagiwara Kenji’s back had no obvious wounds.

Of course, someone had blocked all the shockwaves of the explosion for him.

“Eiji—!”