Chapter 31 - EP.1 The Butterfly Dream 4

Ash was not the only one swept up in the energy wave.

THRUM!

The golden concentric rings originating from Akina swept beyond the altar and washed over everything in their path. The broadcast drones dropped from the air like birds whose strength had failed them, striking the floor with dull thuds. And so Ifrit's stream, which had been building toward its climax, came to an end.

But there was no time to worry about that. Ifrit and ROA had been caught in the wave as well.

“Whoa!”

Ifrit's heart-shaped eye lights flickered furiously before going out, while Dullahan staggered with [SYSTEM SHUTTING DOWN] displayed on his visor. Jack O' Lantern clutched his pumpkin-shaped helmet as though his head were pounding.

They were utterly defenseless.

Fortunately, the same was true of the Sentinel legion. They had all been flung away from the altar as though repelled by matching magnetic poles. Their optical sensors, which had glowed an eerie red, went dark, and they lay scattered across the floor, all functions suspended.

The battlefield, once a mixture of explosions, gunfire, shouts, and electronic voices, fell quiet. An untimely silence settled over the altar.

“Miss Akina...!”

Ash was the first to recover.

[RECOVERY MODE... ACTIVATED]

[SYSTEM INTEGRITY CHECK. . .]

Ignoring the notifications appearing across his optical sensors, he dragged his steel body toward Akina. It refused to move as he wished, as though seized by cramps.

The girl stood in the center of the altar just as before. Her eyes were still golden, still clouded and unfocused. She was also muttering continuously.

What made the muttering so strange and chilling was that two distinct manners of speech coexisted within it, as though she possessed two personalities.

Yet they had something in common. Both personalities were looking for someone.

“... Mister? Where are you...?”

“Where is my bodyguard? My bodyguard!”

He could not understand one of those pleas, but he understood the other. And so Ash spoke.

“Miss Akina. I am here. Right here.”

Akina did not recognize him. More precisely, she did not even look at the humanoid who had approached her. Her golden eyes simply continued wandering through empty space.

“Ow. My head.”

Ifrit approached, having finally managed to pull herself together. She looked between the darkened Nexus Port and the blankly standing Akina, then reached a conclusion.

“Damn it, what the hell is going on? Looks like she's finished the Deep Dive, at least...”

She let out a low sigh.

“... But one look tells me she's not all right. Let's get out of here first.”

Ash nodded.

“Agreed.”

Ash stepped forward and pulled out the cable plugged into the back of Akina's neck. As though that had been a signal, her small body crumpled. He caught her in one arm.

An old, battered steel arm.

Akina stroked it for a moment, then spoke.

“Mister...?”

“Yes. It is I.”

“Where were you?”

“Where else? I have been here all along.”

Ash suddenly remembered the sniper. While he wondered whether he ought to mention that he had briefly left to deal with the attackers, Akina smiled faintly and leaned a little farther into his arms.

“I'm glad.”

“... We intend to leave the ruins now. Let me carry you on my back. It is time to go home.”

“Home...”

Akina looked up at Ash.

“Then what of my bodyguard?”

Before he could ask what she meant, Jack O' Lantern's shout rang across the silent altar.

“Oh, fuck!”

He gestured below the altar.

“Th-they're getting up again!”

Everyone looked down below the altar. The Sentinel Walkers were rising, their formerly red optical sensors now glowing a majestic gold. Somehow, those lights looked remarkably like Akina's golden eyes.

They gathered without a sound, yet with uncanny order. There was no trace of their earlier behavior, babbling strange words and charging at random. They simply stared silently at the intruders on the altar. That chilling stillness felt all the more threatening.

“... Something is very wrong. Let us leave at once.”

“Agreed.”

Ifrit checked her remaining ammunition, and Dullahan pulled back his bolt to inspect the chamber. Having used all his explosives, Jack O' Lantern drew his sidearm and disengaged the safety. Ash held Akina securely in his arms.

“Move!” Ifrit shouted.

The four Pathfinders launched themselves forward. At that same moment, the silently standing Sentinels began to move.

“... Oh, sh—!”

They did not charge blindly. Some formed ranks to block the passages, while others encircled the group to take positions on every side. Like well-trained soldiers, each carried out its own task as they tightened the encirclement.

“What the hell's gotten into these bastards?!”

Ifrit fired Dragon Breath repeatedly ahead of her. The flaming shot blasted away a Sentinel in the front rank, but another Walker immediately filled its place. These were clearly the same enemies, yet fighting them had become twice as difficult.

“Stand aside! I shall clear a path!”

Holding Akina against him with his left arm, Ash swung his sword with his right. His steel blade drove into the thinnest part of the encirclement.

SHING!

He cut down the Sentinels blocking his way, one after another. Then, suddenly, Ash noticed something odd.

They were certainly tightening their encirclement and blocking routes more tactically than before, but their actual attacks were halfhearted. They made no ranged attacks whatsoever, and even those that rushed forward seemed intent only on blocking the way with their bodies.

As though buying time.

It was a peculiar defensive tactic, seemingly aimed less at actively killing their opponents than at keeping them here by any means necessary.

'... It matters not.'

Ash swung his steel blade.

'Whatever their intentions!'

He had only one objective: to escape the ruins and reach Sanctum, and thereby restore Akina to a stable condition. That was all that mattered.

At some point, Ash's sword began to gather speed. He was circulating lightning energy through his Neuro Internal Art. He pierced Walkers' chests, severed their arms, and sliced through their legs. Wherever his sword passed, scrap metal and fragments rained down.

There was no need to worry about his flanks. Ifrit and the two Pathfinders from ROA trained their guns on everything that approached. Advancing as though they had become a single sword, they finally broke through the Sentinels' encirclement. They had escaped the vast chamber containing the altar.

“Pick up the pace!”

At Ifrit's words, everyone hurried onward.

* * *

Their escape was anything but smooth. Sentinels were everywhere in the ruins. Even as they retraced their route toward the exit, Sentinel Walkers kept appearing from somewhere and swarming them, unerringly finding Ash's party with uncanny precision.

Their attacks were still not threatening. Their numbers, however, defied imagination. As a result, Team Elementary Girls was rapidly burning through its ammunition.

“Damn it. Almost out.”

Ifrit's mutter echoed along the straight passage. How much longer could they hold out? Anxiety showed on her face.

Still, she had not completely despaired. Ash was with them, and his primary weapon was a sword.

“Ash. Don't you need electricity this time?”

“That joke is not amusing.”

Unlike before, he seemed to have a fair amount of power to spare, and Ifrit took comfort in the sight of him.

How much farther had they run?

Eventually, they reached a very familiar cavern—the very one where they had encountered Siren. But when they saw the state of it, none of them could readily speak.

Witchcraft was still there. In a sense, that was only natural, since they had been blocking this key junction to prevent other Societies from joining the campaign. Unlike before, however, they were in an utterly wretched state.

In addition to the corpses they had seen earlier, the cavern was littered with the wreckage of Sentinels the women appeared to have fought. Among that wreckage lay Witchcraft member Nymph. Cut into dozens of pieces and scattered everywhere, she was scarcely recognizable as the person she had been in life. The nails she had worked so hard to groom now lay strewn carelessly amid blood and muck.

Lamia was in no better shape. She was still alive, but one arm and both feet had been severed, and she was crawling across the floor. Her face was drenched in terror as she desperately tried to escape something.

Finally, there was Siren. An unidentified Sentinel held her aloft by the throat. It had a grayish-white torso and, despite being a Sentinel, wore old silk robes.

“Siren!”

The Sentinel slowly turned its head toward Ash's party as they appeared in the cavern. Its head was half-destroyed, leaving only one golden optical sensor. That sensor swept over them all before fixing on Akina in Ash's arms.

“At... last...”

An old, badly broken electronic voice.

It hurled Siren into the wall.

“Gah!”

Dullahan did not miss that fleeting opening. Having already taken aim, he fired his Gauss rifle with a sharp crack and a streak of light. The hypervelocity round, far too fast for human eyes to track, flew straight toward the Sentinel's head.

But, astonishingly, the Sentinel drew the old single-edged sword at its waist and swung it. The movement was as fluid as flowing water, yet as swift as lightning.

CLANG!

A sharp report split the air. With no more than a slight twist of its blade, the Sentinel grazed the bullet and diverted its course.

Blocking a bullet with a sword. The movement called to mind the feats Ash had demonstrated.

As though unable to believe it, Dullahan fired again, but the result was the same. Each time, the Sentinel before them altered the bullet's trajectory with a mere twist of its blade.

Yet, as though none of that mattered, the Sentinel turned back toward Akina and spoke in its badly broken electronic voice.

“At... last... the Divine... Lady's... descent...”

Before it could finish, Ash concealed Akina beneath the folds of his cloak, meeting the Sentinel's gaze head-on.

“Is it you?”

His electronic voice echoed through the cavern, quiet yet firm.

“The 'bodyguard' she speaks of?”

Only then did the bodyguard's lone golden optical sensor turn toward Ash. The two mechanical swordsmen looked at one another.

In that fleeting instant, countless pieces of information flashed through Ash's main core.

Akina's inexplicable muttering. The Sentinels' optical sensors turning gold. Their strange defensive tactics. The bodyguard. The Sentinel before him.

Those fragments came together to form a meaning.

'Something extracted from the Nexus is drawing the Sentinels here. No. It is not merely drawing them. Is it something more deeply felt... more fundamental?'

One deduction followed another.

'But something is strange. Their behavior changed the moment her Deep Dive ended, as though they had been waiting for it. And this unidentified Sentinel has only now shown itself.'

Now that he thought about it, more than a few things did not add up.

'How did those unknown idols, supposedly the first discoverers, make it this deep into the ruins? No, there were not even any bodies. The altar was clean. Because the retrieval team had collected them? If so, they would have attempted a Deep Dive while collecting the bodies. They would have been right beside the altar.'

At that moment, Ash's optical sensors gleamed.

'They were moved. So the humans could easily retrieve the bodies. And thus learn of the Nexus Port's existence!'

That footage had been staged. For a single objective.

'But why? Are the Sentinels not a defense system meant to protect the ruins, and beyond that, the Nexus Port? What objective could possibly... Wait. Objective?'

The objective. Had that Sentinel not muttered it just moments ago?

At last, Ash understood the whole truth. He addressed the Sentinel.

“May I ask you something?”

The Sentinel—the bodyguard—did not answer. Taking that as assent, Ash continued.

“Was all of this your plan?”

“Plan? What plan are you talking about?” Ifrit asked beside him.

Keeping his gaze fixed on the bodyguard, Ash answered her.

“I mean that this entire expedition is a trap laid by that Sentinel. To lure Pathfinders—Technomancers in particular—to the Nexus Port.”

“You're saying a Sentinel tried to lure in Technomancers? What kind of bullshit is that? How does it make sense for a defense system to invite an attack? There's no reason for it!”

“No. That one has a reason.”

Ash continued.

“It sought to use a Technomancer's body to bring about the 'descent' of what lay dormant in that Nexus Port. The being it calls the 'Divine Lady.'”

As he spoke, Ash raised the sword he had held lowered at his side.

“Is that not so, bodyguard?”

Staring at Ash, the one-eyed bodyguard likewise raised its lowered single-edged sword.

“... Your... name...?”

“Ash. Ash Blade.”

“Ash... I... see. I am...”

“There is no need.”

Ash cut it off.

“What use have I for the name of one about to die? Remain simply the bodyguard. It will make you easier to forget.”

It was an icy provocation. The bodyguard's golden optical sensor flickered faintly.

“Heh, heh heh... How... amusing...!”

Meanwhile, Ash entrusted Akina to Ifrit beside him.

“I leave her in your care.”

Ifrit nodded without a word. Adjusting his grip on his steel blade, Ash stepped into the cavern.

The Techno Swordsman in his black Gore-Tex cloak, and the Sentinel warrior in its old silk robes.

For a brief while, the two glared at each other.

Then, at a certain instant, they charged simultaneously, without the slightest hesitation.