I'll Show You Why Our Clan Has Been Guardians for Thousands of Years
The flames that had seemed ready to scorch the world around them vanished, as if they had never burned at all.
Sword was left where the fire had died. He scraped at the dirt and babbled, his eyes fixed on nothing, while something that might have been spit or vomit kept spilling from his mouth. It was a wretched sight. Unless you saw it yourself, you would never believe that the final boss of Forever, Part One, could be brought so low.
Sword was strong. Strong enough that even half-dead he could have laid Seoul to waste. A mastermind had aided him; it had not been his power alone. But the man who led it, who drove it, was Sword himself.
The reason was his daughter. Nothing else.
To bring her back he had turned a city of ten million into a sea of fire. Told that the Stone of Resurrection would need a vast store of energy to save her, he acted without a shred of doubt. He could have healed his own body with the Stone. He never did. The energy meant for his daughter, he said, was too precious to waste.
Lives beyond counting were harvested. Death ran rampant, and grief and screaming shook the heavens. Yet Sword, who had committed that atrocity, never reached his goal. He was only a sword, in the end. He died smiling, and even that death was a tragedy.
"Damn it... it hurts so much."
They had brought Sword down, and that was something, but the victor was hardly in one piece. He had slipped nearly every blow that monster threw and loitered right under his nose; it was luck enough that nothing had been cut off. Even so, he felt one breath from blacking out. His body shook past any hope of control. His breath lurched and staggered, sweat poured off him, and blood ran from the few wounds that had landed.
He swallowed the blood surging up his throat. The moment it went down, his head began to spin. He was still on his feet, barely, but this was a body that belonged in a hospital at once.
"Are you finished?"
Dan Miryu dropped out of the air above him.
The shock of the landing nearly tore his fading mind loose. He caught hold of it, just.
Could you come down a little more gently...
Dan Miryu had not been able to chase the fight between the phantom thief and Sword at once. Pulling citizens out of the carnage Sword had made ate up time, and more went to putting down Sword's men and handing them over to the police.
He arrived to find the phantom thief toying with Sword, and in that moment he learned, down to the bone, how fragile a human mind could be.
The phantom thief was kneading a man's spirit in his hands. He rewrote the world around him so the man would see what he least wanted to see, and the words he tossed out so lightly burrowed into the private places of a soul. It was not a sight one human being could forgive in another.
He worked the mind and took it apart, piece by piece. Shape one fragment, draw out another, and fit them together. Again and again. Resistance meant nothing. Denial meant nothing. Looking away was the shortest road into the swamp, and what waited at the end of it was a hell worse than hell.
An enemy Dan Miryu could not be sure of beating was neutralized without a struggle. All that remained was a madman, spilling meaningless howls and words no one could understand. Which meant Dan Miryu himself could be made into the same thing.
A chill crawled over his skin. He rubbed his arms. From that moment the phantom thief was someone he must never turn into an enemy.
When the fight ended, Dan Miryu dropped down at the phantom thief's side.
The man stood at his ease, looking straight at him. Under that gaze Dan Miryu felt his whole body being taken apart, inch by careful inch, and sweat broke out on him. He forced a calm face.
"Mr. Phantom Thief."
"I am Phantom."
"Ahem. Phantom... what exactly are you?"
"A greenhorn phantom thief who has only just attempted his first job."
His first job? Dan Miryu barely swallowed a hollow laugh.
"It isn't a lie. I became a phantom thief today. I'm an ordinary man. No special past."
An ordinary man? Has the meaning of ordinary changed?
How did someone ordinary produce a result like this?
If that's the truth, it's terrifying.
By instinct, Dan Miryu could tell the phantom thief was not lying. He found himself hoping the man was simply skilled enough at lies to fool even that instinct. Otherwise he was standing in front of something dreadful.
"Mr. Dan Miryu."
"Yes? Yes."
"I never properly introduced myself. I am Phantom. The phantom thief who will be the thief of the century."
Phantom offered his hand. Dan Miryu could not read the intent.
Just a handshake. Surely.
He worried that taking that hand would begin something he could not undo. Phantom was something worse than a devil. This handshake might be what someday drowned him in a swamp.
But he felt the necklace at his throat, and he shook the thought off.
Right. This man is a benefactor of our clan.
He had stopped a disaster that might have killed both Dan Miryu and his wife, and he had caught the enemy with his own hands. Fearing him was one thing. Dan Miryu was not so ungrateful a beast that fear alone would make him an enemy.
He took Phantom's hand.
"A pleasure to meet you. I am Dan Miryu, head of the Dan Clan and Guardian of the Stone of Resurrection. Thank you for your help."
Strange. The hand felt frail.
It was like looking at a precarious sailboat — one driving on through a storm, and yet refusing to go down.
I'm imagining it.
The hand was simply softer than he had expected. That was all that had startled him.
"This is my card. If you ever need help, contact me anytime. I'll aid you with everything I have."
Dan Miryu drew a business card from his coat and offered it.
"Thank you. Unfortunately I don't really have a card of my own to give."
In its place Phantom held out another card. On it was a drawing of a smiling mask beneath a fedora.
"Take this instead. I meant to use it as a Calling Card. Unfortunately I missed the moment."
Dan Miryu slipped the card into his coat.
"Forgive me, but I'd like to receive you tomorrow. Would you have the time?"
"Hmm..."
At that hesitation, Dan Miryu's eyes sharpened.
He had asked only on the off chance, and the man was actually thinking it over.
There's a great deal I need to hear.
Gratitude was one thing. There was much he wanted to ask.
Something I don't know is already in motion.
He felt it in his gut: the attempt on the Stone of Resurrection would not end here. The Stone was a treasure that could raise even the dead. It was more reasonable to assume that something else stood behind mere personal greed.
He was not only a Guardian. He was the head of a household, and he needed to understand what was coming. The first step was Phantom — the perfect timing of his help, and a skill beyond anything Dan Miryu could imagine. There was something there. There had to be.
"Hmm. Grant me one condition, and I'll meet you."
"And what would that be?"
"That would be..."
Phantom and Dan Miryu turned their heads at the same instant.
At the end of their gaze stood Sword, the man they had thought broken. Moments ago he had been crawling in the dirt. Now he was on his feet — a shabby figure, barely upright, braced on his sword. They could not laugh at him. Not when his killing intent was enough to dye the sky red.
"For my daughter, there is nothing I cannot do."
The voice was like steel scraping steel, unpleasant just to hear. If a devil existed, Dan Miryu thought, it might sound like this. The red aura streaming out behind Sword's back was like a devil's wings.
The stone in Sword's hand crumbled to powder and was gone. In its place he held a syringe of dark crimson liquid. Another already lay on the ground, as if he had used one. He drove the syringe into his own chest, drew out yet another, and drove that in as well.
The sky howled. Even the moon hid itself in fear.
Crimson clouds wound about the earth and blessed a single being.
A foolish evil spirit who had sold his soul to a devil descended here.
Dan Miryu looked at the evil spirit before him.
Red light had taken the place of his eyes, and killing intent streamed from his whole body in threads. Whatever that killing intent touched crumbled to dust. And it was drawing closer.
Dan Miryu knew death when he felt it.
"Phantom, please step back. I'll take it from here."
"Can you?"
Dan Miryu smiled at him — the same smile, brimful of confidence, that he had given his wife.
"If I had faced that back at the house, I would certainly have died."
"If he had used even one of those, we'd all be dead."
Dan Miryu was not offended. It was simply the truth.
He walked toward the evil spirit.
"Yes. And without even the time to use this."
But it was different now. There would be no future in which he failed to keep the Stone of Resurrection. No future in which he died, or his wife died, or their son was left alone.
Dan Miryu's necklace slowly opened.
A brilliantly clear light poured forth, warm as sunlight and gentle as a mother's embrace.
Where it touched, sprouts pushed up from the earth, and the wounded were healed.
It drove back the aura pouring from the evil spirit and announced its presence to the world.
"Th-that is—!!!"
"Yes. The Stone of Resurrection."
Dan Miryu already knew Phantom had used a trick. Of everyone there, he alone had seen the Stone's true form. He had brought it only as a precaution.
And in the end, it was the right call.
He could save the innocent and punish the enemy before him with his own hands.
The Stone of Resurrection lent him its power. Green light washed over his body.
"Come forth. You fool."
"Hand over the Stone of Resurrection!!!"
The transcendent who wielded Life and the red evil spirit collided.