EP.1 The Dream of the Butterfly (6)
Sword Qi (Sword Qi).
At its core, sword qi was the crystallization of internal power. The deeper a practitioner's cultivation, the richer its color became, and the more tightly it condensed into a single point upon the blade, the mightier it was judged to be.
The distilled essence of perfectly controlled power.
That was sword qi.
But the azure lightning coiling around Ash's blade right now had abandoned that path entirely. Far from refined or condensed, in this very moment it scattered its furious blue fire in every direction like a rampaging thunder dragon. Wherever an arc discharge licked past, the air burned away with a strange crackling hiss, and black scorch marks bloomed across the floor and walls of the cavern.
This was not controlled power. Rather, it was a runaway force whose reins he had merely clutched in his hands for the moment.
Was this what it felt like to hold a bolt of lightning from the heavens?
> [POWER LEVEL: 71%... 68%...]
>> [WARNING!]
>> [CORE TEMPERATURE RISING...]
> [NEURAL MATRIX STABILITY: 21%]
'Control isn't easy.'
System warnings cascaded down in a ceaseless stream. The battery drained in real time, the artificial neural network screamed, and the main core running calculations for all of it was hot enough to melt at any moment.
Merely sustaining the plasma sword qi pushed him to the edge of overload.
And yet Ash was satisfied. He had glimpsed, however faintly, a way to fuse the world of martial arts he once knew into this body — and its destructive power was nothing to scoff at. He had never been one to wish for an easy road in the first place.
So this would do.
For dealing with that arrogant 'guardian warrior.'
"Then, here I come."
Ash's new body, wavering with blue light, surged toward the guardian warrior — a lightning-fast charge carrying the subtle artistry of the Flying Dragon Coiling Dance.
The guardian warrior suppressed the ominous premonition rising within him and met the blue lightning head-on, steeling himself to fight with everything he had.
But.
-CRACK!
A single collision. That one collision was enough to shatter the barrier field shielding the guardian warrior's body into scattered fragments.
The sharp momentum of the plasma sword qi tore apart everything made of electricity and energy, rending it to ribbons.
-···!
Staggered by the unthinkable result, the guardian warrior scrambled backward, his golden optical sensors flickering erratically. But Ash was not the kind of thing one could shake off by retreating.
Driven onto the back foot without even a moment to dodge, the guardian warrior met the rain of sword strikes with the single-edged blade gripped in both hands.
A steel blade wreathed in blue thunderlight. It trailed streaks of azure afterimage, flaring with even denser arc discharges that dazzled the eye. Nothing filled his vision but blue lightning.
Crack! Craaack!
Each time blade met blade, blue current flooded down the steel into his hands. With every exchange, sparks burst from the guardian warrior's frame and his internal systems lurched into wild instability.
Blocking was meaningless at this level.
-Th-this can't be...!
The guardian warrior yanked his blade back, but his hands were already numb, as if paralyzed.
Ash did not miss the opening. The steel blade steeped in plasma sword qi trembled for an instant — then began pouring out a blur of afterimages.
The Taiqing Dragon-Form Sword unfolded at point-blank range, rising like storm clouds.
It was no longer mist. It was closer to a thunderhead laden with lightning itself.
The illusion sword (Illusory Sword), already unpredictable in its movements, now layered with destructive plasma qi — the pressure was overwhelming, as if a thunder dragon had descended from the heavens.
The guardian warrior could only stare, dazed, at the blue thundercloud swallowing him whole.
-KRAROOM!
Lightning struck.
In the flash that bleached his optical sensors white, the guardian warrior's left arm was ripped away from the shoulder down. The single-edged sword he had barely raised gave out under the impact and clattered to the floor, broken in two.
His silken garments charred and crumbled, their remains clinging to his frame like ash.
-..Kheh!
Having lost an arm and his sword at once, the guardian warrior collapsed to one knee before he could even find his balance. His golden optical sensors gazed blankly at the blue lightning in Ash's hand, as if unable to believe it.
'...No.'
In the depths of despair, the guardian warrior thought:
'I cannot die like this. Not like this!'
He had sworn to see his role through to the end.
-Kh, khh... khhhh...!
The guardian warrior raised his head. And he spoke to Ash, who looked down upon him.
-Re... remarkable! Truly... tremendous... skill...!
Sounds that might have been praise, or might have been awe, spilled from his ruined voice module.
-Your... sword... is unlike... anything... I have ever... known.
Ash gave no answer. He simply regarded his opponent in silence.
-That power... what is it?
Then, at some point, Ash slowly lowered himself to one knee, bringing his eyes level with the guardian warrior's. And he began to speak of something entirely unexpected.
"The ones I faced in the past — the demons (Demon), that is."
-···?
"They regarded their own lives as no more than a fly's."
His low electronic voice reverberated through the silent cavern.
"They were never easy opponents. When a foe throws their life away like so much straw, it becomes devilishly hard to read their next move."
-···.
"Still, they did share one thing in common."
The guardian warrior found himself asking before he could stop.
-And that... would be?
Ash's teal optical sensors glinted with a cold light.
"Before death took them, they would self-destruct — grasping for mutual destruction."
Ash extended the sword-finger (Aiming the Sword) of his left hand and pressed it lightly against the center of the guardian warrior's chest plate.
"Did you think that clumsy little trick — stalling for time with pointless chatter — would slip past me?"
-Crack!
The condensed thunderforce that lanced out through his fingertip flowed in like a needle, expanding rapidly inside the guardian warrior's body and precisely severing the overloaded power core before it could detonate.
The faint crimson glow smoldering within the guardian warrior's frame fizzled out, spent and hollow.
Electric Point-Strike (Electric-Acupoint Stimulation).
It could be called another of Ash's arts — one born of the electromagnetic sense that now let him wield microwaves at will.
-···!!
His last desperate gambit, seen through with humiliating ease. With even his final means stripped away, the guardian warrior turned his head toward Akina — toward the far end of the cavern, behind Ash.
-Priestess... my... lady...
Ash blocked that gaze. And so what was reflected in the guardian warrior's golden optical sensors was not the sleeping Akina, but the steel of Ash's foot.
"She is not your priestess."
Ash reversed his grip on the blade.
"Akina Greenwood. A Technomancer."
His teal optical sensors flickered with a small light.
"So I suggest you wake from your dream at last."
With those words, Ash's blade pierced the guardian warrior's head squarely through.
-CRACKLE!
With a sharp shriek, the arc discharge erupting from within burned everything the guardian warrior was into white.
In a world bleached blindingly pale, the guardian warrior recalled, from the far shore of distant memory, the figure of a woman. A woman in magnificent silken robes, striking for the pair of horns rising above her head.
She had been the priestess (Goddess).
She was smiling. As if she were forgiving him.
But even that smile dissolved into pale noise and shattered to nothing.
And so the golden optical sensors lost their light.
"..."
Ash regarded the guardian warrior for a moment, then turned and walked toward where his companions waited. The blade in his hand had already returned, at some point, to an ordinary steel blade.
"God, that's obnoxious."
Jack O'Lantern grumbled and killed the car radio. With Sanctum's top DJ Chatterbox's excited voice gone, a heavy silence settled over the interior of the armored vehicle. Only the occasional jolt as they climbed over a ruined slope broke through at intervals.
Ash's crew — that is, Team Elementary Girls — had made it out of the ruins.
Even after the battle in the cavern, they'd clashed with Sentinels several more times, but nothing posed any real threat. For a long while, the group trudged along on bloodstained, oil-smeared bodies toward where the armored vehicle was parked. It had been ten minutes ago that they finally climbed aboard and set out for Sanctum.
And so the eventful Halloween Festival came to an end.
With Elementary Girls' victory.
But no one celebrated that victory. Perhaps it was because far too much had happened to simply laugh it all off.
The armored vehicle jolted once more.
"Nnngghhh...!"
"S-Sis! Are you okay?"
Siren and Lamia were riding in ROA's armored vehicle too. Saving Lamia, gravely wounded as she was, required the state-of-the-art life support systems waiting inside ROA's rig.
Dullahan moved to Lamia's side and checked over the life support equipment.
"...How is she? Will she be all right?"
With that short reply to Siren's question, Dullahan took out an ampoule and hooked it into the vital hoses connected to Lamia.
While emergency treatment was underway, Ifrit turned to Ash, who sat across from her, and struck up a conversation.
"Ash."
Ash, who had been gently brushing the hair of the sleeping Akina, turned his head.
"Hey, so, um..."
Ifrit hesitated for a moment.
"...Those things. What do you think they were?"
"Those things?"
"The Sentinels, I mean."
At her words, everyone riding in the armored vehicle turned their attention to the conversation.
"I've never seen anything like them. Eyes that turn gold, or that — whatever it was — guardian guy attached to you."
Jack O'Lantern, hands on the wheel, chimed in with passionate agreement.
"That's right, boss lady! I've been in the idol game three years now, and I've never even heard of Sentinels like that! Weren't they supposed to just be a defense system or something? Ugh, gives me the creeps."
"Same with the priestess and the guardian warrior and all that. So what, are you saying the Sentinels were actually serving something? Because if you follow that line, it's almost like they were..."
"Almost like people, right?"
Siren joined the conversation too.
"...Calling them a simple defense system just doesn't fit. They were too... cunning, I'd say. That's how it felt to me."
Everyone seemed to share the same thought, and they nodded along with her.
Even after that, the inside of the armored vehicle buzzed with talk of those peculiar Sentinels.
In the middle of it, Ifrit turned her head toward Ash, who was still keeping his silence.
"What do you think? I mean, isn't there some kind of... connection you machines all share with each other?"
"Boss lady. That was an incredibly dangerous thing to just say out loud."
Ifrit flailed both hands at the ROA crew's jeers.
"N-no! That's not what I meant!"
Siren looked up at her with half-lidded, dead-fish eyes.
"Senior. Don't tell me you're actually a puri—"
"I'm not! I couldn't care less about any of that — ugh, dammit, why are you making that face?! I'm telling you it's not true!"
Watching her carry on, Ash let out a low electronic tone.
"Everyone has their own story, don't they? Even if they happen to be machines."
He gently swept back the sleeping Akina's hair.
"But there's no need for us to know every single one of those stories. Especially not when they're our enemies."
With those words, silence returned.
So Ash added one more remark.
"By the way — what is a 'purist,' exactly? This fine swordswoman seems to know a great deal about it. Might she enlighten me?"
"Wow. Didn't have you pegged that way, boss lady."
"Senior, don't tell me you really..."
Ifrit scrambled to defend herself.
"N-no! Seriously, no!"
The inside of the armored vehicle erupted into noisy chaos.
Beyond the horizon, far in the distance, the lights of Sanctum seemed to be coming into view.