8.5. I Thought I Was Going to Die.
My goggles. My goggles.... When did she take them off?
To block Sirin's star-shaped pupils, I need my goggles....
“Looking for these?”
The goggles dangled from her finger, swinging back and forth. My head throbbed.
“When did you...”
“You never had them on from the start, Team Leader. Fufu.”
“You...”
“You really hate goggles, don't you, Team Leader! They make your eyes feel stuffy, so you're never wearing them again!”
Ah.
A researcher not wearing her goggles was only natural and right.
My head hurt.
Crunch!
I bit down on my tongue.
“Hoo...”
Stamp the thoughts down. The Cube was still pulling at Sirin's arms and legs in opposite directions. I still had the upper hand.
I was exerting enough force to dislocate the shoulders and hips of an ordinary human being, and yet Sirin showed no sign of pain at all.
“Let go, Senior.”
“...Shut up.”
“Releasing me is just the obvious thing to do. That's common sense, isn't it? Right?”
“You think... I'd fall for that... twice?”
“Hmm... well, I'm sure you won't, Team Leader. But what about that woman over there?”
Sirin's gaze slid toward Yukel.
She lay crumpled on the floor.
“Yukel has no mental immunity or resistance. The moment she heard your voice, she must have ended up like that.”
“Wow. You know me so well.”
“Yukel and I... we know each other very, very well. Lee Sirin.”
“......”
“I'm at my limit. Yukel — I'll leave the rest to you.”
Kkaduk.
Lee Sirin's brow furrowed. Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy! It felt like her chest was going up in flames.
Flinch.
The fingers of the fallen Yukel twitched.
Boom.
Just as it had when Seolrin summoned her Cube, an explosion sounded from the far side of the facility.
CRASH—!
What finally burst through the wall was...
“You're late, you damned sword.”
Yukel rose to her feet.
An anomalous object drains the user's psyche every time it is used. Seolrin had only been able to hold out this long because her mental fortitude was extraordinarily high.
And Seolrin — who had endured the psychic assault of an off-the-charts monster like Lee Sirin while fighting her at the same time — was, like Sirin herself, an off-the-charts monster.
If the two of them had fought each other in earnest, under equal conditions, it might well have been Lee Sirin who lost.
“You're already out, Senior... so what exactly do you think you're going to do to me alone?”
“Don't let your mouth run loose, monster.”
“...That tone.”
“The time Seolrin bought for me. I won't waste it.”
Frankly... Lee Sirin had looked down on the woman called Yukel immensely.
Even across this entire facility — no, this entire country — humans with mental fortitude rivaling Seolrin's were exceedingly rare.
The woman called Yukel was clearly beneath Seolrin. Combat power, mental strength — all of it, beneath.
With Seolrin down, Sirin had judged, Yukel could never possibly stop her.
“And what can you possibly do?”
“I'm weak. Weaker than Seolrin. My mental strength is low too. I can't even wield an object for long. I'm such a pervert I'd secretly touch myself while watching myself get violated by a machine.”
“Um... I didn't actually ask about any of that.”
“But when it's time to do something, I do it. You damned freak.”
Squish.
Yukel gouged out her own eyeball with her fingers.
Thud.
Flesh and blood streamed down her cheek and dripped beneath her jaw.
The fallen eyeball shimmered faintly, shifting.
“You...”
“Shut. Up.”
Yukel drove her finger into her ear.
Hoo.
A short breath in — then she pushed.
Pop.
Her eardrum burst, and blood trickled from her ear canal.
Sirin stared at the scene, mouth hanging wide open.
And then — she saluted.
“That's incredible. Sincerely!”
“I cannot see. I cannot hear. But still... I can fight. For ki-sense and flesh-sense belong to humankind. Proof of a noble soul the likes of which you could never hope to imitate.”
“Then let's fight. Sincerely!”
Bang!
Yukel seized the longsword.
A double-edged blade gaudily decorated with a golden hilt and a blue jewel. Radiance and brilliance gathered around it from all sides.
Clack.
The sword fused with Yukel's hand.
Yukel, Team Leader of Research Team 2. A mutant discovered near the Black Gate after the Transference Incident.
A madwoman who claimed she had once lived as a hero in another world, died, and been reborn on Earth as a woman.
When she was found, a sword possessing extraordinary power lay at her side.
The Facility returned the sword to her and brought Yukel into Research Team 2 on the condition that she take up a new identity.
Working as an agent, Yukel resolved countless incidents and anomalies, was promoted to Team Leader, and claimed ownership of the blade.
The holy sword.
Yukel calls this sword Balisarda.
Forged by the witch Falerina to slay knights — in the age of the greatest king of the Frankish kingdom and his Twelve Paladins.
Its rightful master is Ruggiero — Yukel Ruggiero — the rightful owner of the hippogriff, and the slayer of Mandricardo.
“Kept you waiting long?”
“...No. Not particularly.”
Unable to see, Yukel faced Sirin with blood streaming from both eyes.
Press.
She pushed down against the floor.
BOOM!
In a burst of detonation, Yukel's body vanished.
The floor caved inward, and the observation room glass shattered to pieces. Yukel was already in front of Sirin.
Whish!
She swung the holy sword in a horizontal arc.
Sirin bent her spine backward to dodge. The blade sliced through her golden hair by the narrowest of margins.
“Ah! Seriously! Do you have any idea how long this hair takes to style?!”
Yukel did not stop.
Low to high. Proper Western swordsmanship never traces multiple trajectories in a single motion.
Because it's inefficient. Human strength and stamina have hard limits, and technique exists precisely so that human strength and stamina are not squandered...
But what if the one wielding that technique possessed infinite strength and stamina? What if she could chain inefficient techniques together, over and over, without pause?
Then even the techniques of myth could be reproduced at her leisure.
Tsubame-gaeshi.
The holy sword surged upward from below.
It carved through Sirin's shirt and collarbone, leaving a long gash. Red blood beaded across her white skin.
Yukel smiled.
Sirin immediately threw herself sideways, tearing open the distance between them.
'...The damage from Seolrin's grip has taken a real toll. My body's performance has dropped way too far. If I were at full strength, I'd have won by now!'
Kirik.
The black Cube turned.
The hand of the unconscious Seolrin was moving.
> TARGET: LEE SIRIN
> GRAVITY: INCREASE, DOWNWARD — x10... x10... x10... x10... x10... x10... x10... x10... x10... x10
Kirik, kirik, kirik...
The Cube turned, again and again.
“Kyaaaah—!”
Her first genuine scream in a human body. Clotting the wound on her shoulder, Sirin put even more distance between them.
Her speed had dropped more than tenfold.
Yukel read the scent of blood and the shift of air through her skin and her nose, chasing at her heels.
“Going somewhere?”
The light of the holy sword—
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Three blinks.
Wounds opened on Sirin's thigh and throat. A long, straight slash had torn down the very path she was trying to flee along.
Swordsmanship with the process omitted...
So what did Sirin choose?
“Got it!”
Screech.
She caught the blade with her bare hand.
The sacred blade, burning away all things impure, seared her palm and sent wisps of white smoke curling into the air. Gritting her teeth, Sirin shoved the holy sword aside.
Thud!
Yukel twisted her grip again. The sword flared with light.
“That's a foul!”
Pang!
Sirin was blasted backward off the blade.
Kudangtang!
She slammed into the wall, staggered — then rose to her feet once more.
But...
“Got you. You fucking bitch.”
The tip of the holy sword leveled at Lee Sirin's throat.
Yukel was certain of her victory.
Sirin's right hand slipped inside her coat.
A small glass vial. Coiled up inside it was a single tendril of flesh.
The recovering Seolrin screamed with all her might — but the sound never reached Yukel's ruptured eardrums.
“Yukel! Get away!”
Clink.
Sirin shattered the vial.
The tendril burst free. It slid up her finger, wound around her wrist, and kept climbing.
It moved as though it were becoming a part of Sirin herself. Yukel belatedly sensed the danger and tried to create distance — but it was already too late.
The tendril — it was closer to Lee Sirin's true body... her true essence. Like the blinding flash of Yukel's holy sword, like the black Cube that Seolrin wielded, it was a thing that transcended perception.
Sirin charged at Yukel.
Yukel thrust the holy sword straight at her chest — and Sirin did not dodge. She took the blow head-on.
Squelch.
Sirin was skewered through, impaled on the holy sword.
But... that body was a fake. Lee Sirin's true body was the tiny tendril that had been sealed inside the glass vial.
“Heh... heheh...”
The slender tendril burrowed into Yukel's ruptured right ear.
“......!”
Yukel's body went rigid.
The tendril bored deeper, toward the depths of her ear canal.
Crunch.
The sound of bone giving way.
Bone conduction. Her eardrums were gone, but her bones could still hear. And so Yukel — tears spilling from eye sockets that no longer held eyes — listened, in real time, to the sound of her own skull being drilled open.
The tip of the tendril touched her brain.
“Now you can hear my voice, can't you?”
Spurt!
Blood burst from Yukel's nose.
Her head snapped back, her whole body shuddering violently. The holy sword slipped from her hand.
Clang.
The holy sword fell.
Spurt, spurt...
Slumping, trembling—
Yukel sank to her knees.
The blood that had flowed from her gouged eyes mingled with the nosebleed at the tip of her chin. She tried to brace her hands against the floor, but her arms would not obey.
Sirin caught the collapsing Yukel in her arms.
Kkadeuk, kkadeuk.
With a last effort, Yukel dragged both hands across the floor — and that was the end of it.
The strength drained out of her body.
Sirin laid Yukel down on the floor and drew the tendril out of her ear. It slunk back into her palm, slick and heavy with blood.
“Senior — now every last person who could've gotten in our way is gone.”