Chapter 32 - EP.1 The Butterfly Dream 5

CLAAANG!

A crash tore through the cavern's air as the two figures finally clashed. Each collision of their swords sent crimson sparks flying in every direction.

Those fleeting sparks illuminated everything in the cavern.

Blood. Corpses. Scattered Sentinel wreckage. Lamia crawling across the floor, and Siren groaning where she lay embedded in the wall.

"..."

Without realizing it, Ifrit tightened her embrace around Akina. The girl must have lost consciousness at some point; she simply let Ifrit move her.

Meanwhile, Jack O' Lantern and Dullahan exchanged a brief glance. Not that there were any eyes to meet, since both wore helmets.

"... Huh? Hey, hey! Where are you two going?"

Ifrit shouted at the pair as they headed into the cavern. Jack O' Lantern turned his head.

"What else? We've got a job to do."

"A job?"

"Haha. Come on, you haven't forgotten what we ROA guys do, have you?"

Dullahan gave her a thumbs-up.

[Be right back]

"... Huh?"

Before Ifrit could say anything more, the two entered the cavern.

Rider Of Apocalypse. ROA.

Specialists in transport and rescue.

Even now, they were acting in keeping with their group's purpose.

Keeping an extremely wary eye on the battle in the center, they hurried along the cavern walls—Jack O' Lantern toward Lamia, Dullahan toward Siren.

"Still alive, thank goodness. Lucky you."

Jack quickly checked Lamia's condition, then scooped her up and retreated.

Upon reaching Siren, Dullahan also performed a brief examination. All her limbs were still attached, but her condition was just as critical. Most of her cyberware had shut down, and the few organic parts she had were bleeding from deep gashes.

With practiced hands, Dullahan took out a portable medkit and applied a hemostatic spray. He then placed local-anesthetic jamming patches over the malfunctioning cyberware to reset its systems.

A sharp, stinging sensation spread with a hiss. Siren grimaced at the pain and regained consciousness.

"... Who...?"

Text appeared on Dullahan's visor.

[We met earlier and you already forgot? Kinda hurt]

"... Oh, ROA? Then that means..."

[Yep, heading back after looting the Nexus]

Dullahan's means of communication had the disadvantage of requiring people to look at his visor, but in a situation like this, it was also an advantage. Whatever appeared on the screen, he could continue administering first aid.

He took out a syringe filled with blue liquid and drove it into Siren's neck. It was a powerful narcotic painkiller.

"... What happened?"

[??? That's MY question. Why are you asking me?]

"That's... fair. Ah, what about my teammates?"

[Nymph is dead // Lamia's being rescued]

Apparently deciding he had done enough first aid for now, Dullahan carefully helped Siren to her feet.

[How'd you get your ass kicked so fucking hard?]

The narcotic painkiller seemed to be spreading through her body. Siren answered with a slightly dazed expression.

"... It was too strong... All I could do was hold on..."

She abruptly stopped speaking and raised her head, as though something had occurred to her.

"Speaking of which, what happened to that gray Sentinel? That thing's a complete monster!"

[A monster? LMAO, oh no, how scary]

"This isn't the time for jokes..."

[Don't worry]

Dullahan jerked his chin toward the center of the cavern.

[We've got a monster of our own, don't we?]

"What are you talking...?"

As though she had suddenly realized something, Siren's vacant eyes finally regained their focus. She turned to look where Dullahan had indicated.

Even now, two flashes of light were colliding violently there, each intent on butchering the other.

Her eyes gleamed like those of a fanatic in the grip of faith.

Was it a side effect of the narcotic painkiller?

Utterly enraptured, she let out a soft cry.

"Mr. Ash...!"

* * *

A furious dance of steel unfolded.

CLANG!

Sparks burst in every direction as their swords collided.

A ponderous weight traveled through Ash's blade. Yet there was something he needed to watch even more closely: the follow-up attack that darted in along their crossed blades.

Ash stepped back, groaning inwardly.

'What strange swordsmanship.'

The bodyguard's swordsmanship was exceedingly strange.

Unfamiliar, to be precise.

Even after all his years wandering the martial world, Ash could not recall facing a sword like this. It was as though its very starting point was different.

The bodyguard's sword possessed neither qi nor form. In other words, it had no internal power to augment it, nor any set configuration.

Thus it had no defined techniques, and its sword's path was never fixed. It simply received Ash's attacks in the most efficient manner, made the most rational judgment in that fleeting instant, and counterattacked.

Perhaps this was what it would look like to strip away everything but practicality and rationality, Ash thought.

A sword that pursued effectiveness alone.

It seemed to distill the sword's most fundamental purpose: subduing one's opponent.

But that was merely surprise born of encountering something unfamiliar for the first time. It did not mean the swordsmanship itself posed a threat.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

An even more violent series of air-rending crashes erupted. The two swordsmen's blades traced attacks and defenses too fast for the eye to follow.

There was one difference now, however.

Having grown somewhat accustomed to his opponent's swordsmanship, Ash no longer gave ground.

Practicality and efficiency.

Fine-sounding words, certainly, but put another way, they described moves that were utterly straightforward.

And so, against the bodyguard's sword, Ash unleashed the most inefficient swordsmanship he knew.

Supreme Clarity Dragon-Form Sword.

Originally paired with Dragon-Form Steps, it was a sword art of illusion, said to have been modeled on the unpredictable movements of a dragon amid the clouds.

The bearing of Ash's sword abruptly changed.

Its former stateliness and weight vanished without a trace, replaced by movements as hazy and elusive as a heat shimmer.

Like clouds of mist spreading in disarray, the steel blade produced dozens of afterimages.

"...!"

Confronted with this, the bodyguard's golden optical sensor flashed furiously, as though in great alarm. Unable to distinguish the false images before it from the real blade, his processor had overloaded.

Which strike was a feint, and which was real?

What should he block, and what should he ignore?

Everything worked both ways. Just as Ash had been taken aback by unfamiliar swordsmanship, now it was the bodyguard's turn.

"Wh... at!"

For the first time, the bodyguard's seemingly flawless sword lost its way. His hands had become confused.

Ash did not miss that fleeting opening.

Amid dozens of phantoms, a single true strike lunged toward the bodyguard's chest like the maw of a cloud dragon emerging from the mist.

This would end it.

At the very instant Ash felt certain—

THUNG!

His sword bounced away with a dull sound. A faint membrane, like a pale blue heat haze, rose around the bodyguard.

'... What?'

Ash immediately readjusted his stance, then analyzed what had just happened.

'That attack certainly caught him off guard. Yet it was blocked. Does he possess some divine weapon or artifact?'

He attempted several more attacks to test his hypothesis: a thrust concentrating his strength on a single point, and a swift barrage of consecutive blows.

The outcome was always the same.

Every attack came to nothing, stopped just short of the bodyguard's body by a transparent membrane that materialized in midair.

'... A barrier enclosing his entire body.'

It was technology he had never seen even at Santa's Rest Stop. Yet Ash thought little of it.

'Nothing in this world lasts forever. That barrier, too, must eventually reach its limit. Strike it enough times, and it will surely break.'

He adjusted his grip on his sword once more, resolving to rain down as many attacks as possible. Just then—

BANG!

A gunshot rang out from the passage where Akina and his companions would be gathered.

"Oh, fuck! Stop them!"

"Hey! I'm out of ammo..."

"You think I don't know? I get it, so stop them! Use your body if you have to!"

"I'll help too, senior!"

"Damn right you will! If you want to live!"

It seemed the Sentinels had drawn close before they knew it.

As Ash turned his head in alarm—

"Kh, khhh... Khhhahaha!"

The bodyguard suddenly laughed.

Coming from his ruined voice module, the laughter was so broken and distorted that it sounded almost ghostly.

"Swordsman! You... cannot... escape... this place!"

The bodyguard's golden optical sensor blinked mockingly.

"Now... what will you do? Do you... wish to go back? If... that is what you... desire, I shall... let you pass. I shall spare you."

If they left the Divine Lady behind!

That was what the bodyguard told him.

A brief silence fell.

After a moment, Ash asked in return,

"... So you propose a bargain?"

At Ash's quiet words, the bodyguard laughed even louder.

"A favorable... bargain, no?"

"Life is precious to everyone, is it not?"

"Khkh... You speak... truly."

"However."

His teal optical sensors flashed.

"Is there not another way?"

"Another... way? What... is it?"

"I slay you here and now."

"Slay me? Huhuhu! By what... means?"

Ash abruptly raised his blade vertically, as though performing an opening salute.

Then, focusing his entire mind, he drove the Neuro Internal Art through its orbital circulation with even greater intensity.

"You are a master. A first-rate master who may even stand at the threshold of the Peak realm. That is how I see you."

The accelerating lightning energy left the main streams resembling the eight extraordinary meridians and began spreading into even the comparatively thin artificial neural pathways.

"But did you know? In my world, there are several realms far above even that."

A vast current employing every part of his body's neuro matrix.

The greater orbital circulation.

"Beyond the Peak. The Transformation realm. The Profound realm. And even the Life-and-Death realm, said to transcend all things of the mortal world."

As he spoke, blue lightning energy erupted from his entire body like thunderbolts.

These were not the fleeting sparks he had displayed before. They were blue arc discharges with distinct shapes, roaming freely through space.

"Where among them do you think I stand?"

The bodyguard did not answer.

No, he could not.

Overwhelmed by the unfathomable aura each of Ash's words produced, he could only step backward despite himself.

As though his opponent no longer concerned him, Ash raised his left hand and laid it against his blade.

Then he began sliding it up the old steel blade, slowly, ever so slowly.

Following his hand, the blue arc discharges streaming from his body moved onto the blade as though being drawn into it.

By the time his left hand had traversed the blade's entire length, flashing blue lightning coiled around the old steel as though alive. The blazing heat it emitted was enough to distort the surrounding air.

CRACKLE! CRACK-CRACKLE!

Blue lightning shot from the blade in every direction, clawing savagely at the space around it as though to scorch everything it touched.

"Leave Miss Akina behind? You dare spout that filth, trusting in nothing but that paltry barrier? You dare?"

Blue electrical radiance.

Sword energy wrought not from internal power, but from electricity.

Plasma sword energy.