EP.1 The Butterfly's Dream 5

—KAAANG!

The air inside the cavern split apart with a roar like tearing metal. Two figures had collided at last, and every time their swords met, scarlet sparks burst in all directions — each instant of that light briefly laying bare what lay within the cavern.

Blood. Corpses.

The wreckage of Sentinels sprawled where they had fallen — and Lamia dragging herself along the ground, Siren groaning where she had been slammed into the wall.

"..."

Without quite realizing it herself, Ifrit pulled Akina tighter against her chest. At some point the girl had lost consciousness, surrendering her whole body to whichever way Ifrit carried her.

In that brief window—

—Jack O'Lantern and Dullahan traded a look. Not that there was much of a look to trade, both of them wearing full helmets.

"...Hey? Hey, hey! Where do you two think you're going!"

Ifrit shouted after the pair as they moved to enter the cavern. Jack O'Lantern turned his head.

"What's it look like? We're on the clock."

"On the clock?"

"Haha. Boss lady, did you forget what ROA even does?"

Dullahan raised a thumb.

"...Huh?"

Before Ifrit could get a word in edgewise, the two of them had already stepped inside.

The Riders of Apocalypse — ROA. Specialists in transport and rescue. Even at this very moment, they were acting precisely in keeping with what their group existed to do.

Hugging the cavern wall and giving the battle at its center the widest of berths, the two hurried along — Jack O'Lantern to Lamia, Dullahan to Siren.

"Good news — she's still breathing. Somebody up top likes you."

Jack took a rapid read of Lamia's condition, hefted her up in one motion, and slipped back out the way he'd come. Dullahan, reaching Siren's side, ran a field-expedient assessment of his own — alive, but only barely, and her state was every bit as grave. Most of her cyberware had gone dark, and the few patches of living tissue she had left were bleeding from deep, gaping wounds.

With practiced hands, Dullahan drew out a portable medkit, doused the bleeding with hemostatic spray, then pressed local-anesthetic jamming patches over the malfunctioning implants to force their systems into a reset.

Chik — and a fizzing, numbing sensation spread outward.

The sting of it brought Siren back to consciousness, her face twisting in a grimace.

"...Who...?"

"...Oh — ROA? Then that means..."

Dullahan's way of talking had one glaring flaw: you had to be looking at his visor. In a situation like this, though, the flaw doubled as a virtue — no matter what the screen displayed, his hands never once stopped working.

He produced a syringe of pale blue fluid and drove it into Siren's neck. A powerful painkiller, laced with narcotics.

"...What happened to me?"

"...That's... fair, I suppose. Ah — my teammates?"

Judging the emergency care sufficient for now, Dullahan carefully braced Siren and eased her upright.

The narcotic was washing through her whole body now; Siren answered with a faintly dreamy look.

"...They were simply too strong... The best I could manage was to hold on..."

Then, mid-sentence, something seemed to strike her, and she lifted her head.

"Now that I think of it — what happened to that gray Sentinel? That thing was an absolute monster!"

"This is hardly the time for jokes..."

Dullahan tipped his chin toward the heart of the cavern.

"What's that supposed to—"

Then, in a flash, she understood — and the hollow light in Siren's eyes at last regained its focus. She turned her head, following the line of Dullahan's gesture.

There, even at this very moment, two streaks of radiance were colliding with everything they had — each bent on cutting the other down.

Her eyes flared like a zealot's seized by faith. A side effect of the narcotic, perhaps. Wearing an expression of sheer rapture, the woman breathed out a low, worshipful sigh.

"Lord Ash...!"

A dance of steel unfolded.

—KAANG!

Blade rang against blade, and the bursting sparks sprayed in every direction. A crushing weight rolled down the length of his sword with each clash — but there was more to guard against than mass. It was the follow-up strikes he feared: the ones that came hooking in along their crossed blades without so much as a breath's pause.

Ash gave ground a single step, a silent click of the tongue forming in his mind.

'What an uncanny sword.'

The guardian swordsman's art was profoundly strange. To put it precisely, it was alien. Even weighed against a lifetime spent wandering the murim, Ash could recall no sword he had ever faced that resembled this one. As though its very point of origin lay somewhere else entirely.

The guardian's blade carried neither qi nor momentum — which is to say, it added no internal force, and it took no form. And because it took no form, there were no set techniques; and because there were no set techniques, the path of his sword never ran the same way twice.

It did only this: receive Ash's attacks by whatever means was most efficient, and in that sliver of an instant, reach the most rational judgment and strike back. Strip away everything else and condense what remained into pure practicality and reason — would it not look precisely like this? So Ash judged.

A sword that pursued nothing but results. It was the blade's most primal purpose — the subjugation of one's opponent — compressed and distilled into its barest essence.

And yet.

That alienness was, in the end, nothing more than the startle of beholding something never seen before. It did not mean the sword was, in and of itself, a threat.

—KAKAKAKA-KANG!

An even more violent crack of cloven air detonated between them. The two swordsmen's blades traced out attack and defense faster ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠than the eye could track. One thing, though, had changed: Ash, now at least passingly familiar with his opponent's art, was no longer giving ground.

Practicality and efficiency. Fair-sounding words, to be sure — but turn them over, and they amounted to the most honest of moves: a style that showed its whole hand.

And so, against that sword, Ash unleashed the most inefficient swordplay ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he knew.

Taecheong Dragon-Form Sword.

A sword of illusion, so it was said — originally paired with the Dragon-Form Steps, its movements patterned after a cloud dragon that coiled and darted beyond all prediction.

Ash's sword-surge inverted all at once. The gravity and crushing weight of every prior exchange vanished without a trace, and in their place flooded a movement like heat haze — blurred, wavering, impossible to pin down. His steel blade threw off dozens of afterimages, dispersing like a maddening drift of fog.

—...!

Confronted with it, the guardian swordsman lost his composure outright, golden optical sensors strobing wildly — his processing unit had ground into overload, unable to tell the phantom images before it from the true one.

Which strike was false, and which was real? What to parry — and what to disregard?

All things in this world run both ways. Just as Ash had been thrown off-balance by a sword he had never seen, now it was the guardian's turn to be thrown.

"Wh... what—!"

For the first time, the guardian's sword — so seemingly flawless until now — lost its way and began to wander. His hand had gone dizzy. Ash did not let that hair's-breadth instant pass.

From among the dozens of phantoms, the single true thrust lunged for the guardian's chest — like a cloud dragon baring its jaws out of the mist.

'And with this, it ends.'

It was at the very moment of Ash's certainty.

—THUD!

With a dead, blunt sound, Ash's sword was knocked away. Around the guardian's body, a faint membrane like bluish haze had bloomed into being.

'...What is that?'

Ash reset his stance at once — then set his mind to dissecting the phenomenon from moments before.

'Without question, that was a strike into an open gap. And yet it was stopped. Does he carry some divine armament, some legendary treasure?'

To prove the hypothesis, he pressed several more attacks. A thrust that funneled all its force into a single point; a cascade of lightning-quick linked strikes.

The result was identical every time. Just short of touching the guardian's body, every attack was barred by a transparent membrane blossoming out of empty air — and every attack came to nothing.

'...A protective barrier sheathing his entire body, then.'

It was a technique he had never laid eyes on, not even at Santa's Rest Stop. But Ash thought little of it.

'Nothing in this world endures forever. That barrier, too, will reach its limit in time. Hammer it again and again, and it is certain to shatter.'

He was regripping his sword, vowing to rain down as many blows as his arm could possibly deliver—

—TAANG!

—when gunfire cracked through the passage where Akina and her companions had gathered.

"Shit—! Block it!"

"Boss lady! Those bullets—"

"You think I don't know? I know, which is why I'm saying block! With your body if you have to!"

"I'll help too, ma'am!"

"Obviously you will! If you want to live!"

Somehow the Sentinels had already closed to spitting distance.

The instant Ash whipped his head toward them in alarm—

"Keh, kheheh... khehehaha!"

—the guardian swordsman abruptly laughed. It came out of a voice module wrecked beyond repair, cracked and warped — a laugh that would not have been out of place rising from a grave.

"Swordsman! You... shall not... escape... this place!"

The guardian's golden optical sensors flickered in open mockery.

"What will... you do now? Do you wish... to go... back? If... that is your desire... I shall open... the way. I shall spare... your lives—"

"—if you leave the Holy Maiden behind!"

So spoke the guardian swordsman.

A short silence fell.

Then, after a moment, Ash gave his rejoinder.

"...So. You propose a bargain, then?"

At Ash's quiet words, the guardian's laughter swelled louder still.

"A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fair... bargain, is ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it not?"

"Is life not precious to every man?"

"Khekh... well... spoken."

"And yet."

His teal optical sensors glinted.

"Might there not be... another way?"

"Another... way? And... what might that be?"

"That I cut you down. Here. Now."

"Cut me down? Hoohoohoo! By... what means?"

Ash abruptly raised his blade vertical, as though assuming an opening stance — then drove the Neuro Heart Method, already circling through him in ceaseless heavenly circulation, into an even more ferocious acceleration.

"You are a master. A first-rate master — perhaps one who has only just set foot upon the threshold of Peak itself. That is how it appears to me."

The brain-force, gathering speed, spilled free of the main current — that great channel akin to the Eight Meridians of qi — and began to devour even the thinner artificial neural networks threading his body.

"But do you know this? In my world, there stand realms far, far higher than yours — several stages more."

A colossal current that commandeered every neuro-matrix across his entire body. It was the Grand Circulation.

"Beyond Peak. The Realm of Transformation. The Mystic Realm. Even the Realm of Life and Death — said to stand beyond all things worldly."

With the words, blue brain-force lanced out of every inch of Ash's body like forks of thunder. This was no momentary spark such as he had shown before. It was an arc discharge of blue light — a discharge that broke loose into open space wearing definite shape.

"In your eyes — where among them do I stand?"

The guardian swordsman did not answer.

No — could not. He could only reel backward, step by unwilling step, crushed beneath a pressure beyond all reckoning: the pressure born of every single word out of Ash's mouth.

Ash paid him no more mind than a passing wind. He raised his left hand and laid it against the blade.

Then, slowly — very slowly — he began to glide his palm up the edge of the worn steel. And in the wake of that touch, the blue arc discharge radiating from his whole body leapt onto the metal, as though drawn into it.

When at last his left hand had swept the blade's full length—

—crackling sapphire fire lay coiled about the old steel as though it were a living thing. It blazed so fiercely that the surrounding air buckled and warped with the heat it vented.

Fzzkrak! Fzzkrakrak!

Blue fire branched out from the blade in every direction, raking the space around it with such savagery it seemed determined to sear whatever it touched.

"You would let the likes of me walk away? Trusting in that one paltry barrier, you dare run your mouth so? The audacity."

A flash of blue-white light. A sword qi forged not of internal energy, but of electricity itself.

It was Plasma Sword Qi.