Rise of the Cloud Dragon
Darkness hung thick and heavy over the waste processing plant.
The sudden appearance of the humanoid had frozen everything, if only for a moment.
The restmen stared up at the figure on the hill of scrap, a tangle of bewilderment, wariness, and a nameless unease written across their faces.
The humanoid facing them down—Ash—did not avert his gaze either, his cyan optical sensors flaring to life.
A brief standoff. A brief silence.
Ash's eyes, which had been sweeping the crowd, soon locked onto the small figure of Akina. He saw her left arm too—the one she had fought so desperately to keep, the arm that might well have become his last spare part.
Old memories flickered through his main core.
That girl, leaving the workshop every day and returning only much later, caked in dust and buried under all manner of junk.
Back then, he had simply assumed that was how life was.
But now.
Seeing her trembling like an aspen leaf, surrounded by cutthroats, he thought differently.
Every single step she took, she gambled with her life.
Ash knew a little about this world. He had not lived it himself, but the data card had made it possible.
This world—Sanctum—was hell itself.
A place that recalled the inescapable Asura realm, where the strong devoured the weak and death was a daily occurrence.
And that fragile girl had walked through it alone. Through this waste processing plant, no less—the place even Sanctum's own citizens feared above all others.
Every single day.
With her life on the line.
To repair me. To repair Ash.
Behind the bright smile she always wore, there had been shadows deep enough to fill all of that. Recognizing it now, Ash let out a short, bitter sigh.
O Primordial Heavenly Sovereign...
For the first time since arriving in this world, Ash understood what he had to do.
His gaze turned to the restmen.
Every one of them bore an unusual emblem on his shoulder—a pair of interlocking yellow gears.
Though it was his first time seeing it, Ash knew exactly what it meant.
> R.E.S.T. — RECORD LOCATED
> RETRIEVING DATABASE ENTRY...
The information stored in his database unfolded in an instant.
With Akina's personal commentary included, it was immediately clear that these were villains deserving of heaven's wrath.
His optical sensors flared with a cold light.
Swish.
The humanoid, who had been looking down on the humans below, leaped lightly from the top of the scrap heap.
Though his massive steel body had cleaved through the air, his landing made no sound at all—eerily, impossibly silent.
"W-what the hell is that thing?"
The stunned atmosphere ratcheted the tension higher.
"Who are you, you damn tin can!"
A restman's shout. But Ash gave no answer, sweeping his gaze around the surroundings for a moment. Then, apparently finding something to his liking, he pulled something out from among the scrap.
A metal pipe, rusted through and through.
He gave it a couple of experimental swings, then spoke to the restman who had been shouting a moment ago.
"At present, I am called Ash."
It was an absurd sight.
A humanoid appearing out of nowhere, clutching a pipe, insisting that the [ASH] printed on his own head was his name.
Thrown off by the unexpected response, the restmen burst out laughing.
"What'd he say? What a retard!"
"Hah hah hah! Look at him, hauling around a pipe like it's a weapon!"
Mockery. Derision.
That was all it was.
But the laughter did not last long.
Because Ash, very slowly, took the stance of a swordsman with the pipe in his right hand.
In an instant, an indescribably strange atmosphere seized hold of the entire scrapyard.
A suffocating pressure.
A chill that crept into the bones.
A raw, honed sensation—as though death might be plucked from your body at any moment.
Killing intent.
The vicious murderous aura that only one who had waded through decades of blood-soaked battlefields could give off.
"The fuck is this? You wanna go, is that it?"
The largest of the men stepped forward. He looked ordinary enough at a glance, but he had his own distinguishing feature: a metal arm that gleamed unnervingly even in the dim alley light, catching the glow of the work lamps. A cyborg, both arms replaced with cyberware.
"Where do you get off posturing like that, you worthless tin can!"
BANG!
He clapped his hands together, and a violent sonic crack rippled outward. Ash merely stared back, unmoved from his initial stance.
Apparently that displeased him, the hulking restman spat a stream of curses and charged.
The distance between them shrank—and in that instant,
a low, muffled tearing sound rang out, brief as a whisper.
The giant, whose fist had seemed certain to come crashing down at any moment, froze mid-motion. Disbelief was plain on his face.
A moment later,
his upper body slid down along the clean diagonal line of the cut and dropped to the ground.
Sliced neatly in two.
By the rusted pipe they had all been laughing at just moments before.
He cut a man apart—with a rusted pipe?
"Aaaagh!"
"What the—this is insane...!"
Witnessing their comrade's silent death, the restmen scrambled to draw their weapons.
The weapons in question: pistols.
"Light him up!"
Rat-tat-tat-BANG!
With muzzle flashes, a baptism of lead began.
But Ash's new body was already gone from where it stood.
He blurred like smoke, then moved with strange, unpredictable grace to slip past the bullets—or so it seemed.
One moment he drifted sideways; the next he was dead ahead of them. One moment he fell back; the next he had bored into their flank.
Strangest of all, whichever direction he moved, his body always faced his enemies head-on.
Like a dragon roaming within the clouds—a footwork at once fluid and slippery, elegant and utterly unfathomable.
Dragon-Form Step (Dragon-Style Step).
"What is this? What the hell IS this?!"
"Just hit him, you bastards, HIT HIM!"
"Fuck! FUCK!"
The restmen squeezed their triggers like madmen, yet not a single round found Ash's body.
Then, at some point, the sharp cracks of gunfire tearing the air gave way to nothing but the hollow clatter of empty slides.
Their bullets had run dry.
The moment of reloading.
Which meant the exchange of defense for offense.
Ash's optical sensors blazed.
A burst of straight-line movement erupted from him—nothing like the fluid, unreadable footwork he had shown until now.
Flying Dragon Chasing Lightning (Flying Dragon Chasing Lightning).
A charge too swift for the eye to follow, as if leaping clean across space itself.
"Khhk!"
Another restman, who never even registered the strike, collapsed with the word dying on his lips. The fountain of blood that burst from his body painted Ash crimson.
And that was only the beginning.
The restmen, huddled together in a cluster, fell one after another. It was a scene they were watching with their own eyes and still could not believe.
Before long, only one remained.
The yellow-toothed bastard who had been the first to kick Akina and threaten her.
A massacre born of a single reloading interval.
"Uh... uuuaaah...!"
He was completely hollowed out by the overwhelming sight unfolding before him.
"A m-monster... he's a monster...!"
The yellow-toothed man instinctively searched for a way out. Sweeping his panicked gaze around, he spotted Akina, staring blankly at Ash.
Come to think of it, they seemed to know each other.
Then—why not use her as a hostage?
He reached out toward Akina.
"Hey! You, get over here! I'll—"
But before his hand could touch her, a flash of light flickered.
FWOOSH!
His right hand shot up into the empty air—along with the blood fountaining from his wrist.
"AAAAAGH!"
Ash had closed the distance before anyone noticed, and with a single swing of the blood-slicked pipe, severed the man's wrist clean through.
"Gah—aaah, AAAHHK!!"
Clutching his gushing stump, he screamed. But even that scream did not last long, for Ash took his head.
A vicious, wet burst of sound.
And the waste processing plant fell silent.
Traces of the slaughter lay scattered all around—so gruesome that the traces alone were enough to raise gooseflesh.
Far too cruel, far too steeped in bloodlust, to be called the swordsmanship of a Kunlun Sect Taoist who took the pure qi of the towering Kunlun Mountains for his companion.
And that judgment was correct.
Ash was no Taoist.
He was merely a blood-drenched swordsman who had cast aside everything for the sake of vengeance.
"..."
Ash stared at the pipe, blood dripping from it in slow beads, then turned his head. His coldly glowing cyan optical sensors came to rest on Akina.
"Are you all right, young miss?"
At the sound of his voice, Akina flinched and shuddered before she could help it. A humanoid drenched head to toe in blood was exactly that terrifying.
Watching her, Ash's optical sensors flickered faintly. Suddenly, old memories overlapped across Akina's terrified face like static.
It was at a mountain stronghold, long ago, when he had cut down a band of brigands. Back then too, there had been a girl frozen in fear, just like now.
The sword immortal of Kunlun had reached out his hand to the kidnapped girl. Told her to come down the mountain with him. The girl had shrieked and stumbled backward.
—Stay away from me, you monster!
He had been her savior—and at the same time, the very object of her terror.
Why do memories of that era surface now?
An unfathomable bitterness eroded Ash's processor. Even in the netherworld, he had not changed in the slightest.
Then—
"Mister."
Akina spoke.
"Ash, mister... right?"
Ash nodded slowly.
"That is so."
Wham!
Through the glitching static where memory and reality overlapped, Akina's face suddenly filled his vision.
Because she had thrown her arms around Ash's steel body, slick with blood and machine grease.
"...!"
It felt as though every system in him had come to a halt.
"You came to save me?"
"...Something like that."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"...Thank you. I was really, really scared."
The girl's words were true.
Even in this very moment, she was trembling all over, fine as a plucked string.
Ash hesitated a moment, then let the blood-soaked pipe fall and patted the girl gently on the back.
Warmth. He could feel it.
Come to think of it, it had been far, far too long since he had known such warmth. Not only in this life—in his past one as well.
The glitching static that had been conjuring ghosts of the past shattered and scattered before that faint, fragile warmth.
After a while, Akina spoke.
"Mister. What are you, exactly?"
"I do not follow the question."
"You haven't installed a single combat software yet—how can you fight like that?"
How was he to explain this?
Ash deliberated briefly, then answered thus:
"The body simply remembers."
"Huh? I'm the one who put your body together, though?"
"...That is not what I meant. But, speaking of which."
Ash turned his head toward the mechanical arm lying on the ground.
"Is that mine?"
"Oh! Right!"
Akina, still clinging to Ash, hurried over and picked up the mechanical arm.
"This thing is super expensive. It's even got a built-in blade! Want me to show you?"
The girl fumbled with some part of the arm's controls. The back of the forearm split open with a snap, and a long blade shot out with a hiss.
"Pretty awesome, right?"
"...It does look rather ingenious. But more to the point—where in the world did you come by cyberware like that?"
"Stole it?"
Ash was briefly at a loss for words.
"Hee hee. Right, we've gotta get your left arm on too!"
"...Young miss. Perhaps we should get moving first. If I recall, that gang of cutthroats was no small outfit."
"Oh, right!"
Akina scampered over to Ash's side.
"We should probably abandon the workshop too. It's a little earlier than planned, but oh well, nothing we can do about it."
Ash nodded.
"I agree."
"There's someone I know. He used to be a pathfinder with a real reputation, but he's retired now—just runs a bar and takes it easy. He's in the Gateway District, so let's head there first, okay?"
To Akina's ceaseless chatter, Ash simply nodded along.
"As you see fit. But—Gateway District, you say...?"
"Hm? Oh. Right. It's in Sanctum."
"Sanctum..."
The waste processing plant where they stood belonged to Sanctum's 'outer zones.'
Ash found himself lifting his head.
"That place, there?"
"Yes."
Not far away.
A colossal rampart made of pure light—or rather, structures like sheer cliffs of radiance—towered endlessly toward the sky.
Nothing grandiose castle or mountain range could compare: it radiated an overwhelming scale and a strange, unearthly beauty.
As he gazed at that citadel of light as though bewitched, he felt a faint warmth at his fingertips.
Akina had taken Ash's hand. When he turned to look at her, the girl said, a little sheepishly:
"I-I just... my hands won't stop shaking yet..."
Ash said nothing, and simply held the girl's small hand in his. Apparently pleased by this, Akina broke into a bright smile.
"Hee hee. Well then—shall we go?"
"Let's."
A girl and a humanoid.
The two of them turned their backs on the darkness of the scrapyard and set out toward the city where five-colored lights blazed in dazzling profusion.
Where those footsteps would lead, no one could yet say.
But one thing was certain: neither of them would be walking alone.