Based on the fighting so far, Rock estimated that at least five or six people were still hiding inside the stronghold.
He intended to finish them off completely.
There was an old saying that when the enemy was on the run, you should press the advantage and pursue them to the end.
That was exactly what Rock was doing.
Without realizing it, he had gone from an ordinary man who had only ever dared to kill chickens and ducks to a gunman with dozens of lives on his hands.
Worse, he was beginning to enjoy it.
He treated everything as a real-life shooting game, and the steady rise in his experience and Skills had made him addicted to the feeling of growing stronger.
Back when he had been working himself to exhaustion, he never could have experienced a life like this.
Any discomfort he once felt about killing had long been buried beneath the System screen and his constantly improving Skills.
The favela fell into an eerie silence after the gunfire stopped.
It felt as though something was building beneath the stillness.
Rock jogged quietly through the alleys, using walls, stairways, and other obstacles to conceal his movements.
In the military, attacking enemies entrenched behind cover or inside buildings was known as breaching a fortified position.
The term alone showed how difficult such an assault could be.
Rock was not attacking a position defended by trained soldiers.
However, he was not a soldier or tactical police officer trained in close-quarters combat either.
Aside from his Skills and physical abilities, his confidence came from the fact that only a handful of enemies remained after his two ambushes.
The people inside also had no idea how many attackers they were facing.
Rock knew they were all hiding inside the buildings.
A dark gun barrel could be aimed outward from any window or corner.
Even so, he carefully concealed himself as he approached the two buildings serving as the gang’s headquarters.
Inside, Moraes was close to losing his mind.
He had sent most of his men out to complete the operation he had stubbornly committed himself to.
Instead, the moment they stepped outside the base, they were ambushed by a mysterious gunman.
Out of more than a dozen men, only two or three managed to crawl back inside.
With no idea how many attackers were outside, Moraes immediately sent men to the roof to locate and suppress the enemy.
He even had his only machine gun carried up there.
He also sent an RPG with them in case they needed to destroy enemy heavy weapons or fire into a concentrated group.
Everyone else was ordered to defend the entrance from the first floor.
Moraes had expected the enemy to attack through the main door.
The men on the roof could then divide the attackers, while the gunmen downstairs drove back anyone who reached the entrance.
Instead, the enemy had ambushed the rooftop team from another building.
Of the seven men he sent up, only two escaped into the stairwell.
The men guarding the entrance had seen nothing.
From the sound of it, the enemy only had one rifle, but whoever was using it was terrifyingly accurate.
Moraes gathered everyone who remained between the first and second floors, with every weapon aimed at the doors and windows.
The moment anything moved outside, they would tear it apart with gunfire.
Moraes crouched behind a second-floor window, clutching an AKS-74U.
Two of his men stood behind windows facing different directions, each armed with the same weapon.
In keeping with the local gangs’ obsession with overwhelming firepower, all three AKS-74Us were fitted with ninety-round drum magazines.
Their supply channels were impressive.
They had even managed to acquire Russian drum magazines that had never been officially adopted for service.
All three men nervously watched the surrounding streets.
They paid particular attention to the narrow passages between the houses.
They knew that anyone approaching the building would most likely come from one of those directions.
But no matter how long they stared, they saw no sign of the attacker.
“Lucio, do you see anything?”
“Nothing, Boss.
There’s no movement on my side.”
“Pietro, what about you?”
“Same here, Boss.
Do you think he already left?”
“Shut up and stay alert.”
After Moraes snapped at them, both men continued watching the intersections outside.
No matter how hard he thought about it, Moraes could not figure out which group he had offended.
It certainly could not be one of Rio’s largest criminal organizations.
Groups such as the Red Command, Capital First Command, and Capital Third Command would never bother with a minor favela gang and brothel operator like him without a specific reason.
Had he truly offended one of those powerful organizations, Moraes might as well have prepared himself to die.
He probably would not even make it out of Rio de Janeiro.
Could a business rival have hired an assassin?
But where could anyone find a killer this dangerous?
One man had already taken out nearly twenty of his subordinates.
That level of combat ability was terrifying.
Now the assassin was somewhere outside the base, and Moraes had no idea how long he planned to remain there.
No matter what happened, Moraes refused to take even a single step outside.
While everyone inside was gripped by fear, the situation outside was completely different.
Rock approached the two buildings and observed them for a while.
He spotted eyes watching from behind a second-floor window.
He also occasionally saw heads moving inside the entrance.
For the moment, he could not think of a good way to force his way inside without risking serious injury.
Rock regretted not bringing the rocket launcher he had seized from Ricardo’s men.
One rocket through the entrance would have made everything much easier.
But regret would not eliminate his enemies.
He needed a solution.
The thought of a rocket made Rock wonder what else could serve as artillery.
His mind immediately turned to the improvised gas cylinder cannons used in the Middle East.
He could not build one of those now, but he had spotted several gas cylinders while scouting the area.
As soon as the idea occurred to him, Rock acted.
He did not need anything large.
The important thing was finding cylinders filled with liquefied gas.
A large cylinder might bring down part of the building when it exploded.
Rock was reluctant to destroy too much.
While he was still short on money, anything he captured from the gang could prove useful.
He quietly carried over two small gas cylinders.
He placed one beside the main entrance and the other beneath a window on the opposite side of the building.
A gas cylinder would not simply explode when shot, so Rock opened both valves before quickly retreating behind a corner several dozen meters away.
The hiss of escaping gas soon reached the people inside.
None of them dared to go out and investigate.
Fear of the unknown sent them into a shouting panic, and the entire first floor erupted into noisy chaos.
Moraes looked toward the stairs in confusion before speaking to the man beside him.
“Lucio, go downstairs and find out what’s happening.
Tell everyone to be careful.”
“Yes, Boss.”
The words had barely left his mouth when two explosions thundered through the building.
“BOOM!
BOOM!”
Flames blasted through the walls and floors, collapsing part of the structure.
Curtains and other flammable objects on the second floor caught fire immediately.
The shock waves hurled Moraes and his two men against the walls like rag dolls, leaving them bloodied and dazed.
The gunmen on the first floor were torn apart by the wave of fire and the storm of flying stones, bricks, and nails.
The instant the explosions sounded, Rock charged forward with a fresh magazine loaded into his SIG SG551.
He did not wait for the smoke and flames to clear.
He had to finish them before they recovered.
…
(Translator’s Note: Some readers may notice that certain faction names, locations, and regional names are rendered in English rather than kept in their original Portuguese.
This is a deliberate choice to make the text easier to follow for a broader audience.
These translations are used for readability and should not be taken as the official names.)
…