From Bullets To Billions novel Chapter 54

Chapter 54: Dead Again?

Max watched as the sea of students rushed him from all sides. Fifty bodies. Fifty weapons. One target.

Being in the center of the chaos was a death sentence. He knew better than to stand still and wait for the pain to come to him.

No... I have to break through.

With a sharp inhale, Max sprinted forward, straight toward one of the groups, catching them off guard. One of the students, wide-eyed and too slow to react properly, swung his bat downward in panic.

Max’s leg snapped up fast. CRACK. His boot connected with the kid’s face, lifting his entire body off the ground. The student’s grip slackened, the bat clattering to the floor as he crumpled backward.

’I have to keep charging forward,’ Max thought, weaving between bodies. ’If I stop, the ones on the sides will collapse in and it’s over.’

Another student whipped a bike chain toward him, the sharp metal hissing through the air. Max raised his blazer-wrapped arm and caught the hit with a loud CLANG. The thick padding absorbed most of the damage, the chain wrapping around his arm like a venomous snake trying to sink in.

Using the distraction, Max twisted his body, his right arm still free. He slammed his fist into the jaw of the nearest attacker, knocking them back into another student. No time to hesitate. He pivoted and threw a tight elbow into the cheek of the next one, their head whipping to the side as they collapsed.

But then, in the corner of his eye, he saw them, the real threats.

One of the students came at Max, brandishing a small knife with wild, twitchy hands. But Max didn’t hesitate. He surged forward, fearless, smashing his heavily wrapped arm against the student’s wrist and knocking the blade off course. In the same motion, his foot shot up, landing a powerful kick straight into the kid’s stomach.

The attacker folded with a grunt, but Max didn’t stop to watch him fall. He dropped to the ground and rolled, scrambling toward a more open space, somewhere, anywhere, he could maneuver better.

Up on the sidelines, Snide was grinning ear to ear, perched on his seat like a spectator at a private gladiator match.

"He’s quite the feisty one, isn’t he?" he said, his voice practically buzzing with delight. "Watching it on video is one thing, but seeing him in person, this is something else."

Jay stood beside him, arms crossed, eyes sharp. "He knows how to fight," he muttered. "The second the crowd closed in, he moved like he’d been through it all before."

Jay didn’t miss the details others might have. Max wrapping his blazer around his arm, most would’ve thought it pointless. But Jay saw it for what it was: instinct. A natural response from someone who’d been through real violence. Someone who had fought weapon-wielding opponents again and again, and lived to tell the tale.

The same thing Jay saw in the video, he was watching it play out again right now. Max wasn’t improvising. He was surviving the way only someone seasoned by chaos could.

On the ground, Max kept using the bodies around him to block attacks, shoving stunned students into each other as he fought his way through the chaos. But there was something different this time.

Unlike real fighters, these delinquents didn’t care who they hit. Even when Max threw one of their own between him and a swinging chain, they didn’t stop. The bat cracked against the boy’s back. The chain whipped around an ally’s shoulder. They didn’t hesitate. They just kept swinging.

Eventually, Max managed to snag a bat off the ground. Just in time, another student came charging at him, swinging down hard. Max lifted the bat and caught the blow, the metal clashing with a sharp crack.

But pain followed right after. Another student had come up behind him and slammed a bat straight into his back.

"Grrgh!" Max gritted his teeth, his body screaming in protest. The impact rattled through his spine, but he didn’t stop.

He lashed out, slamming his knee into the guy in front of him, landing the blow square between the thighs. As the student crumpled, Max turned, jabbing the end of the bat into another kid rushing in. Then he twisted and smashed it across the face of the one who’d hit him from behind.

This isn’t good... I’m wearing out. This is getting way too tiring. Max thought, his breaths growing heavier with each second.

"I still can’t believe it," Snide said with a smirk, eyes locked on Max. "He was bullied for an entire year since he transferred here. Not once did he fight back... and now he’s doing this? Maybe if he’d been born into a different life, he would’ve been somebody."

Snide gave a light shrug, twirling the knife again. "Too bad. He was just unlucky. But hey, in the end, this was his decision."