The Cult Leader's Challenge
The middle-aged man had neatly combed-back hair and a well-trimmed beard. If not for his gleaming yellow eyes, his face would have passed for that of a perfectly respectable gentleman.
He stared silently at the smoking revolver and Roque for a moment, then picked up the coffee cup he'd set aside. He took a sip and spoke.
"It's commonly said that Aura Masters despise guns. Even a mentally deficient fool who can't grasp the nature of struggle can divide life from death with just the strength to pull a trigger. I've even met an Aura Master who believed using a firearm would cost him his Aura Blade."
"You must be older than you look."
It was a superstition from before the World War. Once gained, an Aura Blade wouldn't vanish unless the owner's will did. Sure, some viewed even gripping a gun as a defeat of the spirit. But it didn't make the blade disappear. That much Roque knew from experience.
The middle-aged man set down his cup and leaned back in his chair, tilting his head slightly.
"What does my age matter? In this era, the future we forge counts more than the past we've endured. Especially here in Midland—a city where even those who've lived a hundred or a thousand years fall behind the moment they slip. I'm Hugo Russell."
"Roque."
Thanks to the gunshot, Kaylee had broken free from those yellow eyes' grip. She swallowed hard, eyes darting between the two men. Roque's revolver was still trained on the middle-aged man.
Yet Hugo Russell regarded Roque with unruffled calm, ignoring both the gun barrel and the corpse at his feet.
"Right, Roque. What sort of conversation brings you here, pointing a gun at me on our first meeting? Assuming you truly call this a conversation."
Roque pulled two rings from his coat pocket—the spoils from tonight. Hugo's eyes flicked toward them.
"We saw each other earlier, didn't we?"
That burning gaze when he'd touched the rings. Roque had sensed its owner was this man. Hugo's relaxed expression grew subtly strange.
"...Yes. We already knew each other. But this is odd. Such phenomena usually arise when magicians' spell worlds collide... Not that most who claim the title these days even comprehend their own spell worlds properly. And you're no magician to begin with, are you?"
Roque pocketed the rings again in lieu of an answer. Hugo gave a faint smile.
"...You don't like my questions much."
"Heard you were looking for me."
Hugo nodded.
"If you're the owner of that gray Aura Blade. And you've not only found her but also recovered my stolen relic—the lady beside you."
Absurdity flashed across Kaylee's face as she stealthily reached for the shotgun at her back. Being called a "lady" was ridiculous enough.
Roque's eyes narrowed.
"The relic in that trailer burned up with the lizardman from the factory."
"Don't lie. Relics aren't so easily destroyed. Whatever packaging fooled the megacorp that hired you won't work on me."
Hugo spoke as if he knew everything. Beside him, Kaylee clamped her lips shut and gripped her shotgun tighter, ready to raise and fire at a moment's notice.
He didn't look like some righteous, loving soul searching for Lije. Megacorps or secret societies—it was all the same to her, she muttered inwardly.
Then Roque spoke.
"You don't even know what it really is."
Hugo's relaxed facade stiffened for an instant. The emotion flashed by in a blink, but no Aura Master's senses could miss it.
Hugo realized it too and let the calm mask slip away entirely. A cold, parched dryness settled over his face like plaster.
"...It's a treasure, no doubt. Enough to tempt mercenaries like you into betraying your employer."
Roque thought of Lije's face for a moment. Those round eyes gazing up blankly. The girl from a century past. The weird kid who strummed air guitar when the mood struck her alone.
A faint smile tugged at Roque's lips.
"Who knows. Not sure it's a treasure."
This time, Hugo's eyes narrowed. He clamped his mouth shut and slowly gripped the chair's armrests. The room's air grew heavy with just that shift in posture. Kaylee tensed at the sudden change, hand pressed to her lower back. Roque cocked the revolver's hammer.
Hugo glared at Roque's eyes and the gun barrel.
"Looks like the conversation you have in mind is a bit more... violent."
"And you only just noticed the corpse at your feet?"
The next instant, Roque's finger squeezed the trigger.
The hammer sprang free, slamming back to strike the cartridge. An explosive chain reaction propelled a nail-sized metal slug forward. Spinning fiercely along the rifled barrel, the bullet rocketed toward the center of Hugo's forehead.
But at some point, it halted dead—like a lie. All propulsion and spin vanished, frozen in midair.
Roque's gaze shifted to Hugo's fingers on the armrest. Rings gleamed there now, ones he hadn't noticed before. Different shapes and sizes, but unmistakably the same as those in his pocket. Dragon relics.
Hugo's eyes blazed. Yellow flames seemed to pour forth.
"How dare you!"
He thrust up his left hand. White light flashed from the ring on his index finger, then the middle.
A storm of power erupted in the parlor.
Lije slept soundly in the Black Knight's back seat, clutching her robot companion Bini. The robot lay equally still in her arms, as if asleep itself.
Then a thunderous boom echoed from outside, shaking the car. Lije's head, resting on Bini's back, slipped from the jolt.
"...Huh?"
She lifted her head, blinking sleepily with half-lidded eyes, her face blank. Anyone could see she was still half-dreaming. Bini, waking with her, beeped and scanned around.
In that moment, Lije sensed something. Her eyes snapped wide. A ring of light around her black pupils shimmered.
She slowly turned toward the window. Beyond it, the mansion where Roque and Kaylee had entered—source of the explosion—reflected in her eyes. The circular glow began to warp and writhe, struggling to break its fixed shape.
Staring blankly at the mansion, Lije sluggishly grasped the door handle and pushed it open. Bini beeped in alarm, tiny legs snagging her collar to hold her back. But its small body could only be dragged along. The frantic electronic chirps pleaded for the mansion's crisis to end before she arrived.
Even so, as a little girl, Lije's already slow movements slowed further from the minor hindrance.
The spacious parlor, filled with plush carpets and antique furniture, was now total wreckage.
The sudden storm of power had shattered the furniture, shredded the carpet to rags. Fragments of broken teacups and porcelain pots glittered sharply amid the debris. Windows overlooking the garden had all exploded inward, letting cold wind howl through.
And at the center stood Hugo, adorned with gleaming accessories.
Rings sparkled on every finger, a golden bracelet glowed on his left forearm, an ancient-looking golden belt, even a large earring dangling from his right ear. He couldn't have donned them in that brief moment—some concealment spell or relic must have hidden them.
It might have seemed comically excessive, but "overdressed" didn't fit; "heavily armed" was more accurate. Roque sensed strange flows of power from each bauble.
"Even in an age where we hurl hunks of metal into orbit, magic still boasts its might. Do you grasp this power's grandeur?"
"No clue."
Hugo's lip curled at Roque's curt reply. He eyed the Aura Blade in Roque's hand—in place of the revolver—and the intact space behind him.
The reason was simple: When the storm raged toward him, Roque had swung his Aura Blade, and it dissipated like a mirage.
"Impressive ability. In my long life, I've met no few Aura Masters, but erasing magic with a sword? A first."
Hugo's eyes burned yellow, a gaze to instill dread and vertigo. Kaylee, who had dodged the storm and leveled her shotgun, gritted her teeth as it met hers.
"Fuck... what the hell is this guy? Some demon? Or what, a dragon?"
"Dragon. That's one name for those who grasp truth."
With that, he spread his arms wide. His rings lit up. Roque narrowed his eyes, tracing the power's flow. If it was another shockwave, he'd charge straight through this time. Failing to counter the same attack thrice would shame any Aura Master.
But the rings' energy didn't explode. It gathered in the air before Hugo. Moonlight through the broken windows scattered irregularly off it—like shattered rainbows.
"What the—"
The rainbow dispersion warped space bizarrely, soon forming a shape. A massive lion the size of a compact car—or rather, a lion-man standing on two legs.
"The ignorant see cyberspace as mere illusion confined to terminals. But a true magician, with his own spell world, can summon its realities into ours. What is illusion? What is real?"
The lion-man roared. No sound emerged. Silently bellowing, it swatted a obstructing table aside. The already tumbling furniture exploded into splinters from one gesture.
"That distinction has grown... hazy."
As Hugo finished, the lion-man gaped its maw and charged Roque. No sound from its throat, but its paws cratered the floor, proving its substance.
Roque glimpsed streams of numbers and runes in the creature's eyes, half-wondering if he was still jacked into cyberspace. The serpent with fangs at its tail only deepened the illusion.
The lion-man felt utterly alien to reality. No natural breath, muscle, or bone movement like a living beast. More like a hologram perfectly mimicking life. Roque's acute senses made the dissonance glaring.
Yet it had just demolished furniture and floor—its huge claws and white fangs were real enough to shred a human body on contact. Roque shelved questions of its nature and focused on the immediate threat.
He charged straight at the oncoming lion-man. Its gaping jaws and claws rushed close, deadly as any blade.
But Roque's Aura Blade sliced its throat first. The lion-man was fast, but not as fast as him.
"Oh! Nice!"
Kaylee cheered at the flashing sword's path, expecting the head to tumble.
But the lion-man swung its claws at Roque unscathed. The wind alone cracked the ruined floor.
Its neck was fine. Roque had to leap forward to evade the follow-up.
"What?"
Kaylee fired her shotgun at it, but the creature ignored the shots like tickles and kept targeting Roque. Predictably, the slugs didn't pierce its hide.
Hugo smiled at the sight. His rings still glowed.
"They say no Aura Blade fails to cut. True enough for real-world matter, perhaps. But in cyberspace? What of entirely new tissue forms? Hide made of hypothetical structures unknown to Earth? Could an Aura Blade even—"
Roque retreated a couple steps amid Hugo's boasting, dodging the silent lion-man's assaults. He ignored the prattle, focusing on the sensation from that earlier slash.
The next lunge came. This time, Roque didn't back away or falter. He simply watched it calmly with deep-set eyes.
What followed was a blur—even to Kaylee's augmented sight, just hazy afterimages. What shone was the gray flash cleaving the air.
"Born from cyberspace's infinite possibilities—"
Hugo's words cut off. He saw the frozen lion-man—and Roque casually flicking his Aura Blade.
"...What?"
As he blurted in shock, the cyber-summoned lion-man's limbs and head tumbled to the floor in chunks. The glowing relic rings on its fingers shattered with soft pops.
Roque eyed the broken rings and Hugo's unguarded yellow stare.
"Definitely not a dragon. Kinda disappointing."