Four Minutes, Forty-Seven Seconds
Somewhere within the ruins.
Beneath a red emergency light strobing in rapid pulses, a massive slaughter unfolded.
A chronometer floated up beneath Ash's optical sensors as he swung his blade.
The straight line his sword carved split the vanguard of the wave of flesh.
The head of the foremost Grotesque soared into the air; the next one charging in behind it was cleaved in two at a slanting angle.
The Grotesques, surging forward as if to crush everything in their path, were carved apart like minced meat radiating outward from where Ash stood.
Their dark-red fluids burst forth.
Severed limbs tumbled across the floor.
POWER LEVEL: 16%
WARNING!
WARNING!
CRITICAL ENERGY RESERVES!
The sudden exertion had driven his power consumption sharply upward, and his internal systems were firing off warnings in response.
Sixteen percent.
Exploration of the ruins and the relentless fighting had drained him down to that — and nothing more.
This power was, for Ash, a truly subtle thing. It was the resource that drove his body of steel, and at the same time the internal energy he channeled and transformed through his Neuro Heart Method.
If internal cultivation and innate true qi were fused into one, would it feel something like this?
Everything about the body of steel he'd been granted was governed by this power — it would be strange to claim otherwise.
And yet, that power was running short.
From this point on, every single move had to be made with the utmost care.
If his power ran dry and his body shut down, Ifrit and Akina standing behind him would be swept up by that wave of flesh and reduced to a handful of blood.
The moment the thought reached that point, Ash suddenly found himself recalling who he used to be.
Was there ever a time I swung this sword with someone standing behind me?
The self in his memories had always swung his blade for vengeance and destruction alone. He had craved blood with a vicious, obsessive fixity.
But now, there were people behind him who needed protecting. Akina — and perhaps even that loudmouthed swordswoman as well.
It was an unfamiliar sensation.
But it wasn't a bad one.
If anything, something in the corner of his chest — something long gone cold — seemed to pulse faintly back to life.
The fleeting reflection ended there.
Ash adjusted his grip on the sword.
His blade once more drew a straight line through the air, and grotesquely twisted hands and feet split apart where it passed.
Ash's sword moved like a living creature, finding the most expedient path and striking precisely at the vitals of his foes.
He had to be efficient.
He could no longer scatter sword-gang with the bravado of old, nor unleash a storm of Linked Sword Strikes.
His purpose was survival — and buying time.
Only a refined, compressed single strike was permitted to him now.
"Kya-hahaha!! Drop dead, all of you!"
The laughter of a madwoman rang out.
Gunfire followed in quick succession.
The rounds Ifrit fired targeted the Grotesques beyond the reach of his blade.
Truly overwhelming, the attacks radiated a domineering aura — but their frequency, too, was gradually thinning.
Ammunition was clearly running out.
As her gunfire grew more sporadic, the weight pressing down on Ash only grew heavier.
The anxiety he could feel radiating from Ifrit at his back seemed to bleed straight into him.
"Last magazine!"
Ifrit called out her situation as she finished reloading. The Bloody Heart Mk.7 spat out its final volley of flame.
Boom! KRA-BOOM!
Several Grotesques that had raised their heads through the whirl of Ash's swordplay burst apart and collapsed to the floor.
At the same instant came the hollow click of an empty chamber.
"Damn it!"
Ifrit hurled her pistol to the ground, cursing up a storm. She was out of ammo.
Ash's movements grew faster still.
After sweeping away the Grotesques charging straight at him in a single stroke, he flung his blade toward Ifrit — who stood clutching her fists in an awkward, half-formed stance.
"Catch!"
The blade flew like a thunderbolt, punching through the gaping maw of a Grotesque roaring directly in front of Ifrit and out the back of its skull.
The Grotesque fell dead in a single stroke, and the steel blade planted itself at Ifrit's feet.
"Whoa!"
Startled by the blade embedded inches from her boots, Ifrit reflexively grabbed the hilt.
"Ah, screw it!"
Wrenching the sword free in her clumsy stance, Ifrit hacked at the air like someone swinging an axe, chopping her way to Ash's side.
Standing beside him, bringing her blade down on a Grotesque's skull, she shouted at him.
"What about you?"
Ash didn't answer.
At the same moment, his stance changed.
Before, when he had held the sword, there had been something ponderous and immense about him — the hidden principle of Mount Tai Pressing Down, as if the weight of a mountain bore upon his enemies' heads.
But now it was different.
He extended one hand straight forward.
A posture that seemed to point at something.
Concealed within it was a razor-edged killing intent.
Immortal Points the Way.
A form that resembled an immortal gesturing toward the road ahead.
"I've got one more, as it happens."
LEFT ARM CYBER-CLAW ARRAY. . .
DEPLOYING. . . NOW<<<
With a mechanical clack, his left arm split open and blades sprang forth — sharp and sinister, like the claws of a savage beast.
Arm blades.
From that moment, Ash's entire method of combat changed. The blades deployed along his forearm were fundamentally different in use from a sword held in the hand.
They were less a sword than a set of claws.
And so Ash, too, shifted his stance — not into swordplay, but into the claw arts.
No longer did Ash cut his enemies down. Each outthrust of fist and claw punched through a Grotesque's skull, twisted joints apart, and tore flesh away.
He looked for all the world like a dragon roaming the heavens, snatching up the small creatures of the earth below.
The martial art of Kunlun.
Cloud Dragon Claw.
Precise, merciless attacks followed one after another.
He deflected a lunging Grotesque's arm and crushed its skull. At times he gouged out their vitals from angles no one could predict.
There was a lofty, flowing grace to it all — had it not been for the Grotesques bursting apart around him, it was beautiful enough that you might have mistaken it for a dance.
"Ugh — damn it!"
Ifrit's attacks, by contrast, belonged to the primordial. Like a monkey brandishing a cudgel, the flamboyant idol swung her steel blade with wild abandon.
Now and then she failed to even align the edge properly — instead of cutting her opponent, she sent it flying into the distance. But looked at the other way, it was proof her raw strength matched Ash's own.
At some point, the two of them stood back to back.
The warning light overhead kept strobing, dyeing everything in the corridor red.
Corpses piled up.
The corpses of the horrors piled higher and higher.
And yet even now, more Grotesques than that kept pouring into the corridor.
"Goddamn it! There's no end to them!"
Ifrit's voice was ragged.
Fighting an unfamiliar battle with an unfamiliar weapon was clearly taking its toll on her.
"Just hold on a little longer! Little A is opening that door — I'm certain of it!"
"Yeah, yeah, and WHEN is she gonna—"
That was the moment.
Ash's qi-sense detected a chilling danger.
Not just another Grotesque.
He could feel a domineering aura on an entirely different order from anything before.
"Swordswoman!"
Even as he shouted, Ash grabbed Ifrit — still mid-swing — and hurled them both backward. Almost simultaneously, a massive arm of unknown origin smashed into the spot where they'd stood.
KRA-BOOM!
The floor shattered, fragments scattering in every direction.
Ash hastily steadied his stance and stared straight ahead.
A single massive form filled his vision.
It was a dreadful sight.
It looked as though countless corpses had been churned together and pressed into a human-shaped mold — bizarre, grotesque, and terrifying.
Its whole body was twisted, bone jutting out through the flesh in places. At the sight of it, Ifrit let out a horrified gasp.
"...A Variant?"
Variant.
Ash had no idea what that meant.
No doubt a search of the database would tell him — but that hardly mattered right now.
Then the Variant roared.
"KWAAAARGH!"
At the sound, the frenzied Grotesques stopped dead in their tracks. Then — as if greeting a king — didn't they begin slinking low, heads bowed in fear?
The creature that had let out its mighty howl strode forward with an utterly unabashed gait, and the Grotesques parted to make way.
Watching all this, Ash retracted his arm blades. Then he spoke to Ifrit.
"Swordswoman. The sword."
Ifrit glanced back and forth between the two of them for a moment before collecting herself and handing over the steel blade.
"...Can you actually do it?"
Ash took the sword and stepped forward.
Then he answered, quietly.
"Wouldn't I have to?"
Blue-white arcs of lightning crackled and streamed from all over Ash's body as he spoke.
The manifestation of the Neuro Heart Method.
WARNING!
WARNING!
POWER LEVEL: 10. . . 9. . .
The battery he'd been rationing so carefully began draining in an instant. The surging power of his brain-force, coursing through the artificial neural matrix, pushed everything about Ash — main core included — into overload.
At this rate of consumption, I can use it exactly once.
Ash took his opening stance.
And one is enough!
It was a stance entirely unlike the one he'd shown against Santa — a posture that seemed ready to detonate at any moment.
Intense sparks flashed continuously around his body, coiled tight as a drawn spring.
"KRAAAAARGH!!"
The Variant, sensing something deeply wrong, roared.
And charged straight at Ash.
Its colossal bulk shook the floor.
But Ash never moved so much as an inch, holding his original stance perfectly still.
The Variant closed the distance to a stone's throw.
The creature raised one hand and brought it down, as if to crush its opponent flat. The very instant it came plunging down with the ferocious momentum of something intent on turning him into a bloody pulp—
Ash's cyan optical sensors flared.
He cut the sword straight down.
Great Void Dragon-Slaying Sword.
Dragon Rising, Thunderbolt Fall.
KRA-KA-KA-BOOM!!
Where Ash's blade had passed, blue-white thunder-light erupted violently upward. Like a great dragon awakening and ascending into the heavens, a violent wave of energy surged out in every direction.
The ruins, drenched entirely in red by the emergency lights, were swallowed by blue light for a single instant.
The giant Variant had no time even to resist before the azure thunder-light engulfed it. Its horrifying body began to burn away from the very ends of its limbs, then shattered in a flash of blue light, reduced to a handful of ash.
As if its very existence had been utterly erased — the instant passed, and the massive form was nowhere to be seen.
"...Huh?"
Ifrit, who had been watching the entire spectacle, exhaled a hollow breath, her soul seemingly left her body. Her red lips hung half-open, refusing to close.
Her heart-shaped pupils trembled, narrowed thin with disbelief.
"What the actual fuck did I just see?"
To reduce a Variant — famous for its tenacious vitality — to cinders with a single strike.
It felt unreal, like witnessing a scene straight out of myth.
Her gaze locked onto Ash, who had just performed the impossible, and would not leave him.
WARNING!
WARNING!
POWER LEVEL: 3%
A brief silence.
Ash's body lurched.
His optical sensors glowed faintly, and the artificial neural matrix spread through his body burned away in small sparks.
And through it all, the Grotesques — now leaderless — let out frenzied screams.
He had succeeded in felling the Variant, but nothing was over yet.
Even as he staggered, Ash straightened his blade. Ifrit, who had fallen back behind him, stepped to his side and clenched her fists.
"Come at us! Come on, you bastards! Get over here! Get ov—"
Amid Ifrit's shouting, there came a dull thud followed by a mechanical hum. It was, without a doubt, the sound they'd been praying for.
"It's open!"
Akina's cry was urgent — and triumphant.
The blue haze that had enveloped her body dissipated, and her floating form descended out of the air and settled onto the ground.
"It closes in five seconds! Hurry!"
Turning his head, Ash saw that the bulkhead door that had bound all their feet was nowhere in sight.
Ash and Ifrit locked eyes for a moment — then whirled and sprinted toward Akina.
As if determined not to let them escape, the Grotesques shrieked and gave chase.
Akina ran with her backpack clutched in her arms, and Ash ran with Akina gathered against him. Ifrit held the rear — then threw herself into a roll to slip free.
The quickest of the Grotesques closed in right on their heels. Ash's blade — and Ifrit's fists — smashed in the skulls of the closest ones.
The moment the chronometer in Ash's system marked four minutes and forty-seven seconds, the briefly opened bulkhead door plummeted down with terrifying speed.
-KRA-BOOM!!
With a thunderous crash, the bulkhead door sheared the space apart.
Several Grotesques caught in the gap were crushed flat, pulped on the spot.
And that was the end of it.
No threat remained.
"Whewaaaaaah..."
Ifrit glared at the bulkhead door for a long moment — then flopped spread-eagled onto the dust-covered floor.
A short while later, her deep sigh gave way to a burst of hollow laughter.
"Heh-haha. Haha. Hahahaha."
It was the laugh of someone emptied out — and at the same time, flushed with the relief of having survived.
Lying prone, she turned only her head, looking back and forth between Ash and Akina.
And then she broke into a wide grin.
"Wow. You guys actually pulled that off?"
Ifrit thrust her thumb up at the two of them.
Akina blinked a couple of times, then — all the tension draining out of her at once — beamed brightly and raised her thumb in return.
At length, the eyes of the girl and the woman turned toward Ash.
"... ."
Needless to say, Ash's expression didn't change in the slightest. But Akina and Ifrit laughed out loud anyway.
Because, just like them, Ash had raised his thumb as well.