Chapter 170 Brothers

America, New York.

Garment District residential area.

21:34:56.

When Roy entered the room, his expression resembled that of an old man returning to a familiar place.

For a moment, he was unsure of what he was thinking or what his plans were, but a sense of nostalgia... perhaps there was a hint of it. No, there was, even though it shouldn't have, it still welled up.

He quickly spotted Gore sitting behind the coffee table, injecting himself with a high-intensity suppressant. He walked over, smiled at this long-lost relative, and said, "The plan to bring down the parliament is pretty good, but do you know where it went wrong?"

Gore didn't even look at him; he was simply calculating how long his own special ability would remain dormant and how long it would be before the next collapse. He knew this process and did it often; he just needed to endure it, and it wouldn't take long.

Roy's smile remained unchanged as he drew his gun from his back waist—he only carried this old-fashioned musket with the largest caliber, a collectible he had acquired from the Arctic Circle—and fired a shot at Gore's chest. Gore was sent flying three meters before collapsing to the ground.

He then stepped forward and slammed the butt of his gun down on the man's head, first once, then a second, then a third... The scene became like a primitive hand-to-hand combat.

As Gore retreated, a gun barrel was shoved into his mouth, spitting sparks, and his astonished face instantly contorted.

Roy pushed the body aside, wiped the blood off his face, and then turned to sit in the executive chair behind the coffee table: "After all these years, you still like to play these pointless tricks."

“Same to you.” Gore kicked open the bedroom door and walked out nonchalantly. He didn’t even glance at him, went over and dragged the corpse into the bathroom, then changed into a clean suit. After doing all that, he returned with a half-finished glass of Hennessy.

"I see you're quite cooperative, aren't you? Even though you know it's fake, you still want to make a scene, to vent your anger indirectly, huh?" He wasn't surprised by Roy's arrival at all; he simply walked to the table and pulled up a chair to sit down.

“I didn’t just ‘cooperate,’ I was practically doing everything I could to help you,” Roy laughed. “Or rather… who else do you think would be willing to clean up your messes besides me?”

“Stop, I don’t want to discuss this further with you.” He leaned back in his chair and continued, “I only have this one day off each month, and now that you’re back from the Arctic Circle, you naturally want to come to me for some brainwashing and persuasion.”

The entire hall was in a mess, but because most of the decorations were exquisitely designed, there wasn't much bloodshed. It just had a desolate feeling after a battlefield, as if it were a bizarre scene that had been deliberately planned.

"Is it so hard to get you to listen to me?" Roy asked, reaching out to grab the other man's glass of strong liquor and taking a sip.

"And—is it really that hard for you to quit drinking?"

Before he could finish speaking, Gore said, "Oh, I spat in there."

"Whatever, I just like ordering dirty stuff."

"well……"

Gore stopped, unsure of what to say next.

He saw Roy's face; the man was just smiling and staring at him, but he looked somewhat lonely.

"Parliament is divided, that's the result I wanted, isn't that what you hoped for?"

"Do you really think this kind of institution is necessary, Your Excellency the Executioner?"

Roy replied seriously, "I couldn't say it before, but now it's certainly necessary."

There was something burning and dazzling in that expression—an endless hope for reality. Sometimes you'll see that fleeting trust on the faces of people in the Eoubs circle—commonly seen when getting paid, in a moment of high on drugs, or when getting intense pleasure from sex.

He was so eye-catching that he probably saw it himself when he looked in the mirror.

But something was struggling and burning in those eyes, an undisguised attempt to suppress it, even if it would ignite everything.

He probably will never give up. How could someone so stupid give up? He will keep trying and gambling until the very last moment.

Gore recalled the first time Roy took over, when he thought the idiot was basically a madman, completely reckless. He couldn't understand why this man would still be so disregardful after losing so much. Everyone else was already reduced to ashes, living in the mud, yet he stubbornly insisted on building one gigantic, futuristic castle after another.

Thinking about all this filled him with nothing but anger.

"Why are you so unhappy? It's okay, I'll figure something out." Roy cheerfully opened his terminal and entered the keyword "What to do if I upset my younger brother" into the search bar. Then he browsed through page after page of answers.

"It says here, um... okay, if I buy you a Gundam, can you stop giving me that grumpy look like your whole family died?"

Gore couldn't take it anymore. He'd never seen such an idiot executioner. Logically, anyone who came back from that godforsaken place in the Arctic Circle, filled with forbidden things, and then spent a few years in Wave Layer 2, should be an incredibly tough and resilient man. Take He Yu, for example. He'd completely transcended all boundaries. The first thing he did upon returning to Eoubs was to beat up those idiots in the salon, taking on more than a dozen B-level enemies single-handedly. He killed without any scruples and without any sense of guilt.

How come you've become an optimist? Who taught you that?

"Okay, you have absolutely no sense of humor."

"I was corrupted by the people in Congress in the Americas a few years ago. Even my ability to joke was erased. I was really sad."

At this point, Roy suddenly changed the subject.

"No wonder you leaked the information about the 659 core fragments in the Heavenly Gospel to the higher-ups, allowing them to make a deal with that operative."

"In order to better control your pawns, you spared no expense in making all sorts of absurd deals with them, and even released Ethan."

"Don't you know he's been contaminated by the 'human head balloon'?"

"Gore, you've changed."

At that moment, Gore felt as if he were facing a colossal creature rising from the depths of an abyss, its darkness and boiling rage... so real it sent shivers down his spine. It was unlike the hallucinations of those worthless drugs; this feeling was alien and deadly, something he absolutely did not want to experience.

He couldn't help but shudder, and turned to run away. He swore that this was the first time in his life he wanted to keep his distance from that bastard as far as possible.

But soon, that aura dissipated.

Roy picked up his glass and drank it all in one gulp.

He raised his eyes to look at Gore.

"Don't worry, I will always forgive you, because we are brothers, aren't we?"

Damn it! Give me some data, you bastard!