Chapter 38 - Uninvited Guests 3

A golden aurora rippled across the dark blue sky.

One by one, those staring blankly at the magnificent spectacle returned to reality. Before long, the rest stop's backyard was once again filled with the lively bustle of the party, as though nothing had happened.

"Ahaha! Cheers!"

Santa raised his glass high with a shout.

He had already proposed more than ten toasts. Even those who had initially responded to his cries were now quietly edging away.

All except one: Ifrit.

"Cheers!"

They clinked their glasses with a ringing chime and downed their drinks in unison, then grinned at each other.

This had to be their first meeting, yet somehow they were remarkably well matched.

Beside the pair pouring themselves another round, Siren seemed to inhabit a world of her own.

The food Ash had served her earlier remained almost untouched. She treated it with the utmost reverence, as though it were a sacred relic, taking the tiniest possible bites and savoring each one.

She had been like that ever since learning that Ash had cooked it himself.

The strange aura she radiated made her difficult to approach, and she looked so happy that no one interrupted her reverent meal.

Only Akina, sitting beside her, occasionally tossed out a casual question.

"Is it good?"

Each time, Siren nodded with a radiant smile.

Akina watched her with a pleased smile of her own. No one knew why, considering she hadn't made the food.

Meanwhile, Ash was talking with Jack O' Lantern inside the armored vehicle, the Revenant.

Enclosed in thick armor, the interior was relatively quiet.

Ash liked that quiet. The armor was thick enough to shut out even sound, and that felt like a guarantee of safety.

As Ash sat in the driver's seat surveying the many gauges and monitors, Jack O' Lantern continued his explanation.

"Basically, speed is everything for an emergency transport vehicle, right? So what's this baby's heart? An Apex V12 twin-turbo engine! Man, this thing's a beauty. You can pretty much assume there's nothing out there that can keep up with it."

He gave the vehicle's wall a few hearty pats.

"We sacrificed a little outer armor for speed, but that doesn't mean it's cheap. It's triple-compressed steel plating, so it shrugs off small-arms fire. Oh! The suspension's custom! Originally, it had magnetorheological dampers, but those were a bit of a maintenance headache..."

In truth, Ash understood less than half of what he was saying. But he was so enthusiastic that interrupting him felt awkward.

"I see."

And so Ash offered suitable words of agreement while inspecting the Revenant's interior with a somewhat more 'novice' eye.

It was smaller inside than Jack's newer armored vehicle, which he had ridden in before, but since the only regular occupants would be himself and Akina, that posed no particular problem.

If anything, having everything within reach gave him a curious sense of security. Even if he had no idea exactly what any of those things within reach actually did.

While he was briefly lost in thought, someone banged on the Revenant's rear hatch. It was Dullahan.

He tossed the beer can he was holding to Jack O' Lantern and displayed a message on his visor.

[Come on out. Need to talk schedules with Ash.]

"Aw, I was just getting to the good part."

Despite his disappointed grumbling, Jack cracked open the beer Dullahan had given him and stepped out of the armored vehicle. Meanwhile, another message appeared on Dullahan's visor.

[Normally, Ifrit should be handling this stuff too.]

He jerked his chin toward the open hatch.

[But as you can see, she's completely wasted lol. Guess it's on me.]

Watching Ifrit toast Santa yet again, Ash nodded.

"Schedules, you say. Is this about our 'deal'?"

[Yep.]

Settling onto a rear seat, Dullahan took a small data chip from inside his clothes.

[We need to transfer what's in Akina's head onto this, but there's no way that's happening today lol. How about we just enjoy ourselves tonight and start tomorrow? What do you think?]

Ash nodded at once.

"A fine idea."

[OK, we'll plan on that, then.]

"I shall let Miss Akina know as well."

[Yep.]

Their discussion ended quickly.

But Dullahan stayed where he was.

"... Is there something else you wish to say?"

Dullahan nodded at Ash's question.

[Nothing major. Just don't think I've properly thanked you yet.]

"... Thanked me? Whatever for?"

Dullahan hesitated, then displayed a somewhat longer message on his visor.

[Honestly, it wouldn't have been surprising if we'd all died on this expedition. But we made it back alive thanks to you.]

[Even got onto Today's Best lol.]

[Oh, and the food was great too. Seriously fucking good.]

Looking a little embarrassed, Dullahan scratched his helmet a couple of times before pointing to a button beside the driver's seat.

[Press that and you'll connect straight to our emergency channel. If anything happens on an expedition, hit it.]

The button looked different from the others around it.

It must have been newly installed before they handed over the Revenant.

Ash gazed for a moment at the red button protruding from the middle of the center console, then turned to Dullahan.

"Thank you."

[Nah, we're the ones who should be thanking you.]

Apparently finished with what he had come to say, Dullahan turned and left the armored vehicle without lingering.

Alone now, Ash looked around the driver's seat for a little while before stepping out and returning to the backyard where everyone had gathered.

It was alive with voices and music.

And so the first night of the rest season passed peacefully, amid comfortably full stomachs and pleasantly tipsy spirits.

From Team Elementary Girls to Siren, none of them had actually been invited, but Ash thought that had a charm of its own.

It was around then that a truly unwelcome guest arrived at the rest stop.

* * *

Even with music blaring, there are moments of quiet.

The brief interval between one song ending and the next beginning was just such a moment. That instant when the pounding beat stopped and even the melody fell silent.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

The sound of someone pounding hard on a metal door rang out.

Most of the drunken guests either failed to notice it or dismissed it as just another city noise.

Not Ash.

His audio input device registered that the sound was very close, and that the pounding continued even after the next song had begun.

And so Ash reached a conclusion.

Someone was knocking on the door of Santa's Rest Stop.

"Master Santa."

"Huh?"

Santa looked at Ash through half-closed eyes.

"It seems you have a visitor."

"A visitor? What visitor?"

"Someone is pounding on the rest stop's door."

"Leave 'em. We're closed today..."

CRASH!

Before Santa could finish, a heavy impact rang out, followed by the sound of something breaking.

Under the circumstances, it was clear that the 'visitor' Ash had mentioned had broken through the rest stop's front door.

"What crazy bastard—!"

Santa shot to his feet in fury.

His anger at someone wrecking his establishment mingled with irritation at having a thoroughly enjoyable party interrupted.

The others underwent a similar change.

Everyone gathered here was a Pathfinder, after all.

Every gaze sharpened. Hands reflexively went to weapons at their waists as they turned toward the source of the noise.

Amid the spreading cloud of dust and broken metal fragments, a figure appeared at the rear door leading into the backyard.

Then collapsed in front of them all.

The middle-aged man, dressed in a stylish long coat, spoke between choking gasps.

"S... Santa... brother..."

Hearing that voice, Santa lowered his sunglasses and examined the intruder. The old man's face promptly drained of color.

He all but ran forward, pushing past everyone as he shouted at the blood-soaked man.

"Rudolph!"

Santa hurried to his side and held him up.

Leaning into Santa's arms, the middle-aged man, Rudolph, coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, brother... This was the only place I could think of..."

Santa was about to say something at the sight of his wretched condition when Rudolph coughed up blood again.

At that very moment, with everyone's attention fixed on the sudden arrival—

CLANG!

A sharp metallic sound tore through the silence.

It happened before anyone could grasp what was going on.

Turning toward the sound, they saw Ash already standing in front of Rudolph and Santa, shielding them.

He held a steel blade, its edge trembling faintly as though it had just deflected something.

An oddly shaped black shuriken was embedded at his feet. Had he failed to stop it, it would have pierced Rudolph straight through the heart.

But wait. A shuriken?

"... A shuriken?"

Ifrit was the first to react.

Drawing her self-defense pistol and racking the slide, she muttered,

"What the hell? Who uses that crap these days...?"

In an age when smart guns could bend bullet trajectories and miniature drones could chase down targets and bore through their skulls, someone was using a throwing weapon that was nothing more than a hard, pointed piece of metal.

It looked less like a weapon than a primitive relic. Something that belonged in a museum.

But Ash thought differently.

He looked down at his faintly trembling blade.

Such destructive force that the blade was still vibrating. Its power was comparable to the sniper rifle he had encountered on the previous expedition.

And that throwing weapon had arrived without a sound.

It had been so stealthy that even Ash would have struggled to react this quickly without his electromagnetic energy sense.

A weapon's simplicity did not matter.

What mattered was who wielded it.

After all, wasn't Ash's own main weapon merely a high-strength blade, taken on its own?

Someone who could unleash silent throwing weapons with the destructive power of bullets. One particular profession immediately came to mind.

'... An assassin.'

His assessment was correct.

Ash's teal optical sensors blazed as he turned them toward the rest stop's roof, the direction from which the shuriken had come.

"Show yourselves."

There was no one there.

But only for a moment.

Against the golden Veil filling the sky, the empty air seemed to shimmer faintly. Then a group of figures emerged from that distortion in space.

They appeared with perfect naturalness, as though they had been there all along.

There were three of them, all dressed similarly.

They wore what was known as techwear: clothing designed with function and practicality in mind.

Each concealed their face beneath a deeply pulled hood and an animal mask.

But those were merely clothes.

That was not what caught Ash's attention.

LED lines ran densely over the fabric like blood vessels. Even now, they emitted a faint light, blurring the figures' outlines.

Those had to be the key to the optical camouflage technology that had made people appear out of thin air.

...

They said nothing.

They merely stared silently down, like predators watching their prey.

Their presence was eerily indistinct, and all the more chilling for it.

At the sight of them, Rudolph's face went deathly pale. He murmured in a voice barely above a whisper,

"The ninjas are already here...!"

Ninjas.

They were the final uninvited guests to arrive at Santa's Rest Stop that night.