EP.1 The Butterfly's Dream (2)
— Cease function. Cease function.
Hundreds of panels split open across the walls and ceiling on every side, and a legion of Sentinels revealed itself.
Perhaps it was the sheer, uncountable span of time that had passed. The Sentinel legion that emerged was both rusted with age and falling apart. One unit plunged from the ceiling and shattered where it landed; another, missing a leg from the start, limped along on its remaining three.
But the crimson glow that lit up above their optical sensors burned as fiercely as ever.
As one, they churned out that inhuman, skin-crawling electronic drone — cease function, cease function — and surged toward a single point.
Toward the stone altar rising like a pyramid into the air — and toward Akina, suspended above its peak like an offering.
"Sweep them all away!"
Akina was not alone.
The four Pathfinders arrayed around the girl each raised their weapons. Ifrit's Dragon's Breath spat flame, Jack O'Lantern's grenade launcher set off cascading explosions, and Dullahan's Vortex Gauss Rifle drew a single streak of light that punched through a distant target. All of it became a roar that filled the plaza and shook the very air.
Now and then, a few of them managed to claw their way up the altar, pushing straight through the hail of fire that Ifrit and ROA poured down.
— Cease functi—
Shk!
Ash's steel blade, revealed before anyone had noticed its arrival, drew a straight line. Every Sentinel walker that line touched was bisected and went tumbling down below the altar.
"Ash, big bro!"
It was Jack O'Lantern who called out to him.
Ash moved before he had time to think, cleaving in half a Sentinel walker that had crept up on Jack. There was no time for thanks or pleasantries.
Even in that fleeting moment, the Sentinel walkers clambering up the altar were too many to count.
Ash sent the hem of his Gore-Tex flying robe billowing once more and ran rampant across every corner of the altar.
Broadcast drones swarmed busily back and forth, capturing every scene. Each time an explosion or a brush with death entered the frame, the viewer count spiked like mad.
"Kyahaha! Yes! Very good!"
It was a desperate, life-or-death bloodbath — and at the same time, a sensational show. The venue, as it happened, was perfect.
An endless tide of Sentinels flooding toward a towering altar. And the four Pathfinders standing in their way.
At some point, Ifrit had begun pulling the trigger with a maniacal laugh bursting out of her.
"Come on! Come on, you f*cking bastards!"
"Wahaha! This is nothing! We could hold out 'til tomorrow at this rate!"
The very moment Jack answered Ifrit's frenzied shout—
'...!'
A sharp killing intent was caught within Ash's electromagnetic sense.
It was killing intent of an entirely different order from the Sentinels' emotionless hostility — sticky, reeking of something raw and fishy.
Without even a moment to warn the others, Ash wove the subtleties of the Flying Dragon Chasing Lightning into his footwork and cut in front of Dullahan.
[yo back off, blocking my line of sight—]
CLAAANG!
The instant the message finished printing across his visor, sparks burst from Ash's steel blade, angled obliquely overhead. A bullet from somewhere had struck it.
The staggering kinetic energy rocked Ash's body for a moment.
[wtf was that]
Just as the profanity printed itself across the visor, Ash shouted.
"There's a sniper!"
The unidentified attack did not end there.
Ash hurriedly steadied his wavering stance and raised his blade once more.
Clang! Ka-clang!
Another round of sniper fire. The opponent was obsessively fixated on Dullahan — probably because he was the one handling long-range attacks for the team.
Having grasped the situation, everyone dove behind makeshift barricades.
"Damn it!"
Bullets hammered against the cover without pause.
"Dullahan!"
[on it]
Dullahan activated his sonic resonance device as usual. The unpleasant sound spread outward, and after a moment, Dullahan shook his head.
[f*ck, noise pollution's way too bad]
The Sentinels' electronic drone, the explosions, the gunfire — all of it had rendered his sonic resonance device useless.
"Sh*t! An attack during a Deep Dive? This has another Society written all over it. Those f*cking bastards!"
Ifrit slammed her fist into the ground.
"What do we do, sis?"
"What do we mean, what do we do! Dullahan! Try again—"
And at that very moment—
"I will go."
Ash spoke.
"I have a rough fix on their position. If I can manage to close the distance, I can deal with them."
"..You're serious? You're going after a sniper with a sword?"
"There's no time, yeohyeop."
Ifrit met the cyan optical sensors staring at her, then nodded, apparently having made up her mind.
"I know it's insane, but somehow I figure you can pull it off. I'll lay down covering fire. Go and get back fast."
Ash answered with a brief nod. It was enough.
Ifrit roared.
"Jack! Dump everything you've got!"
"Wahah! You heard! The man!"
Jack, mimicking Ash's archaic speech, sprang to his feet, aimed his grenade launcher at the direction the bullets had come from, and began firing on full 'automatic.'
"Eat this, you sonsofb*tches!"
With a rhythmic thud-thud-thud, explosives rained down in every direction. The small cylindrical charges detonated in chain after chain of blasts.
Ifrit and Dullahan, rising in unison, pulled their triggers toward the same direction as well.
"Ash! Now!"
It was a true concentrated barrage — and into it, Ash threw himself.
Boom! BOOM! Boom!
Jack O'Lantern's lobbed grenades and the firebombs from Ifrit's Dragon's Breath erupted all across the field. The flames and smoke cloaked Ash's headlong charge from view.
Leaping down below the altar in a single bound, Ash swung his blade in one great arc and suppressed every Sentinel around him in one stroke.
— Cease function. Cease function.
But that was only a fraction of them.
Even at this very moment, Sentinels were pressing in with no room to set foot.
His optical sensors flashed for an instant. If there was no room to set foot — then he simply would not touch the ground.
Ash drove his Neural Cultivation Art to its maximum and launched his body forward.
Using the heads and shoulders of the onrushing Sentinels as stepping stones, he pressed ahead. Toward the sniper.
Once more, that killing intent flashed. This time, it was not Dullahan being targeted — it was an attack aimed at Ash himself.
Rather than deflecting it with his blade, Ash chose to unfurl the Dragon Form Steps at full intensity and evade. He planted his foot on a Sentinel walker's head — and slipped past the sniper's shot in the same breath.
Tracing a sinuous, winding trajectory like a living dragon, Ash ran rampant across the battlefield, end to end.
If gliding over grass is called Grass Flight, and running across water is called Water Flight, then what should this be called? Advancing upon a legion of machines as stepping stones — Iron Flight would have been the fitting name.
At a certain moment, Ash leapt high into the air. Then he dropped like a stone toward a single point — one of the many passages connected to the altar.
KRAANG!
Having deliberately slammed into the ground as though driving it down with him, Ash rose slowly amid the fine cloud of dust that kicked up. Then he flashed his optical sensors at the figures glaring his way.
"Let me say this first."
He raised his sword.
"The situation is urgent, and I cannot afford mercy in my handwork. Bear that in mind."
It was a declaration of sorts. A declaration that he would kill every one of them gathered here.
But the leader of the Pathfinder band scoffed.
"What's this tin-can bastard prattling about?"
Truthfully, 'scoffed' was the wrong word. For he had no nose to scoff with.
The Pathfinders who appeared before Ash were uniformly grotesque — shapes that had strayed violently far from the human form. One had four enormous metallic legs in place of ordinary limbs, evoking a spider; another wriggled with multiple mechanical arms sprouting from its spine. There was a man who had peeled off his own face and jammed in a single huge optical sensor, and still another who had rebuilt one entire arm into a massive firearm.
They were unmistakably from another Society. Their aesthetic ran on a completely different track from Halloween, which prized beauty above nearly all else.
In the meantime, the one who appeared to be their leader gave the order.
"Dispose of him."
At the short command, the grotesquely shaped Pathfinders raised their weapons as one — and those weapons were, naturally, all firearms.
They did not charge. Instead, they smothered the relatively narrow passage beneath a single vast net of fire — firepower sufficient to turn anything that stood against them into a mass of flesh in an instant.
But the one standing against them was Ash.
With an almost casual motion, he lifted his sword.
Crackle-snap!
Blue sparks burst from the ground beneath his feet.
The humanoid swordsman ran.
But what he kicked off from was not the ground. It was the walls — and the ceiling. As though freed from the pull of gravity, he used every inch of the narrow passage as a foothold and closed the distance to them in the blink of an eye. Each time, the hem of Ash's black Gore-Tex flying robe whirled behind him, becoming a black afterimage that dazzled the eye.
"What the—!"
Ash's sword danced. No — it swept over them like a storm.
The first was the spider-legged man. Before his cyberware could show what it was even capable of, he became the first sacrifice.
"Gwaaak!"
Severing two legs in a single stroke, Ash spun the blade in a great arc and drove it into the man's heart. A short death-rattle became his last words.
Next was the man with the firearm rebuilt into his right arm — in all likelihood the very Pathfinder who had been sniping at Dullahan. He raised the enormous gun barrel and tried to take aim at Ash. It was impossible.
Shk!
The moment he so much as willed it, his modified arm had already been sliced off clean at the shoulder. The massive weapon hit the ground with a dull thud.
He did not manage even a death-rattle. While he gaped in horror at his own shoulder, Ash's already-swinging sword had neatly taken his head.
"You f*cking—!"
The one with a centipede's profusion of arms lunged in. If bullets wouldn't land, he seemed determined to at least grapple it out hand to hand.
It was a badly mistaken judgment. If those arms could not move faster than bullets to begin with, catching Ash was a forlorn hope.
Ash swung at the onrushing man. The left arm came off. He swung again. The right arm came off.
Ash swung, and swung again. Under that merciless chain of blade-work, the man who had been a centipede was stripped of everything he possessed.
Dozens of fragments of something that might have been machine or might have been flesh splintered apart and slapped wetly against the floor.
It had all happened in the space of a breath.
Left alone by sheer happenstance, the one-eyed man kept adjusting the aperture of his optical sensor as though he could not believe the scene before him. It made him look like a pair of trembling eyes.
"What the hell... is this...?"
At those half-muttered words, Ash took a step forward without a single syllable of reply — to sever the last one's windpipe as well.
"W-wait! Just wait a moment!"
Ash did not wait. He simply raised the sword in his hand.
"I told you."
The falling blade split the man in two. From the parted seam poured blood and oil, along with thick, viscous coolant.
"I will show no mercy in my handwork."
Having cut down four in an instant, Ash lightly shook the oil and blood from his blade. Then, without a sliver of hesitation, he hurled himself toward the altar.
And that was the very moment—
—KYAAAAAAAAAK!
A scream tore at his ears. The one who had loosed it was none other than Akina.
Ash adjusted his optical sensors and zoomed in on the altar.
Akina's body, which should have been floating in serene silence wrapped in a blue haze, was convulsing in terrible spasms. The pain was evidently immense; the girl clutched at her own head with both hands, screaming without end.
Her eyes burning gold — different from before.
"Akina!"
Loosing a cry like a war howl, Ash shot toward the altar.
Something had gone very, very wrong. That much was certain.