Guide in the Darkness (7)
Gunfire cracked from beyond the wall, and Yuglerus flinched on pure reflex.
To check the enemy at his rear, he had no choice but to look back. As his body twisted the opposite way from the direction he had slipped into cover, part of his arm came free of the wall.
I did not miss that sliver of an opening. I pulled the trigger again.
Bang!
"Ghk—!"
The report slammed against my eardrums. A short scream tore free as the round punched clean through Yuglerus's arm. He never even managed a reaction to the ambush shot; the bullet wound was already his.
Blood welled from the injury and ran down the wall face.
"Sinel!"
"Moving."
At the sight of Yuglerus clutching his shot arm, I gave the order at once. Yuglerus favored a transformed close-combat style that leaned on magic. Even with magic's aid, every attack still had to be driven by his own hands. A gunshot wound to the arm would cut his combat power in half.
Sinel drew her dagger and accelerated hard, closing on him in a blur.
"You bastards—!"
Her blade cut the air as it swept toward him—a strike so fast under Haste that the eye could barely track it. Yuglerus, only just turned, forced his arm up with a desperate effort.
Clang—!
Steel rang clear as the daggers met in empty air. Ash-gray hair whipping, Sinel flowed into the next cut.
"Urgh…!"
Perhaps because he had taken the blow from an unstable stance, he failed to bleed off the force completely. Yuglerus began to topple back toward the far side of the wall.
If he vanished fully into it, every means we had of striking him would disappear with him. We had to hurt him before he was gone.
Sinel swung for the next blow as fast as she could, but the time left was already too short.
"…"
Screeech!
Her dagger scraped across bare wall and stopped. The groaning Yuglerus had already slipped beyond it. The blade, robbed of its target, left only a shallow scratch in the thick concrete.
Sinel stared at me with dazed eyes.
"…Boss?"
"We're going after him. Get ready."
"Yes."
I had wounded him, but not enough to put him down. That left only a pursuit. I shoved the door open and stepped out.
After the fight so far, he would already have realized that the whole of Lesert Industries was a trap. Wounded on top of that, he would choose flight—so we had to catch him before he cleared the grounds.
"Hostile is running. Rendezvous on the first floor."
I confirmed Sinel at my back and spoke into the earpiece. Moments later, Sword Saint's voice came back over the line.
"Percival, you want us on the first floor right now?"
"Yeah."
"Just come down? Got it."
"Will do."
Sword Saint and Usher answered in turn. If Yuglerus was bolting for the outside, there was no reason for him to climb higher. Going up only meant getting boxed in with nowhere to exit.
With their replies confirmed, I headed for the room he had been in. Beyond the firmly shut door, a faint moan carried through.
"It's locked."
"Not sure this will work, but…"
We had no time to wait for someone with a key. I leveled my pistol at the handle, intending to mimic what people called door breaching—forcing an entry with a weapon.
Bang!
I squeezed the trigger. A heavy metallic impact answered, and the handle crumpled under the round.
"…Looks like it failed."
"I can see that. Better to draw him out instead."
I nodded at Sinel's assessment. The shot had only slightly wrecked the handle; the door still did its job perfectly well. Copying something from sight alone was never going to be easy.
If we could not go through the door, another method was better.
"There's an intruder in here. Open the door."
I mouthed the words toward an imaginary listener and cast the spell. We could not pass through the door ourselves, so the answer was to pull Yuglerus out.
"Open the door!"
"Get the keys ready."
"The rest of you take the far side."
"Understood!"
The moment the magic finished, we sprinted hard for the building's exterior—to catch Yuglerus before he could slip the net. I had already stationed people outside as a precaution, but cutting down variables was still the wiser play. I also kept tracking his path over the earpiece.
"How's Yuglerus moving?"
"One mana signature just started leaving the central building."
"Copy that."
I answered Ney's report and hit the open button beside the automatic doors. They parted, and the cold night wind cut across my face.
The Lesert Industries grounds lay under sparse, murky lighting. Across the empty roadway, Yuglerus was running flat out.
"He's taken the bait."
I stopped when I saw something moving ahead of him. A human presence. A faint figure under the lights was drawing steadily closer.
Sinel halted as well and tilted her head.
"Is that the person you called, Boss?"
"There was a chance he already had the data. I brought in someone reliable enough to make sure he couldn't run."
"Someone… reliable."
"At least inside Lesert, yes."
A cold gust swept past as Sword Saint dropped in beside us. From the way her cape was still snapping, she had come straight off the roof. Her cheeks were faintly flushed—she must have run the stretch from the fourth floor up to the rooftop before jumping.
She landed, shook the wind from her cloak, and turned to me.
"The intruder? Where is he?"
"There."
"…There's another person."
Following my pointing finger, Sword Saint fell silent. She was not the only one. Yuglerus, who had been sprinting full tilt and gasping for air, also skidded to a stop.
The reason was singular.
From a little farther out than where he had halted, an unfamiliar sound began to roll across the grounds.
"What is that?"
"Armor. More precisely—a knight in armor."
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
A suit of refined plate armor advanced with heavy, measured footfalls. Black full-plate, wreathed in crackling lightning, strode forward. Behind the lowered visor, light flickered like a pair of eyes. Sparks leapt from it at irregular intervals, the whole figure calling to mind a knight out of legend.
With unhurried steps the knight came within speaking distance of Yuglerus and opened his mouth.
CRACK! BOOM!
Forks of lightning slammed down around him. Yuglerus, still catching his breath, jerked backward. Where his foot had been about to land, a dark scorch mark spread across the ground—a blurred black line drawn between Helio and Yuglerus, as if marking a boundary that must not be crossed.
"I have come to annihilate the enemies of Lesert."
In the world at large they called him the Flash Knight. A 5th Circle mage who had mastered Chain Lightning. An executive respected by every member of the Knighttail Knights. That was the true identity of the man known in this age as a genuine knight.
"…The Flash Knight? An executive of the Knighttail Knights?"
"So you know of me."
Helio's voice carried out through the fierce mechanical hum of the armor. Hearing the name, Yuglerus scowled and gripped his wounded arm. Blood still ran freely from the gunshot. He looked at Helio with an expression of pure incomprehension.
"Why is the Knighttail Knights here?"
"Because it is my lady's command."
"Lesert's young lady? Don't tell me she prepared this trap—"
"That was me. Not the master of the knight standing there."
At my voice, Yuglerus spun around. His gaze, thick with fury, locked onto me. He chewed his lip, then raised his dagger and leveled a threat in my direction.
"You orchestrated all of this?"
"I did. There's a fair amount of money riding on your neck, after all."
"…Is that so. Fine. I'll kill you with my own hands."
Pass Wall
The words were loaded with raw feeling. In the next instant Yuglerus moved—and under the spell's effect, his form vanished from sight. There was no structure near where he had stood. Judging by the terrain, he had used Pass Wall to sink straight down into the ground.
The man who had just promised to kill me was gone without a trace. Sinel raised her dagger and began scanning the floor around us.
"Boss, this is dangerous."
"No. We'll be fine."
I paid her worry no mind at all. I had asked Wilson to call Helio for more than raw strength alone. We simply had no means of striking an enemy hidden beneath the earth—and that was exactly why I could stay confident in the face of Yuglerus's threat.
The moment I finished speaking, Helio, still standing before us, raised his sword. The blade—hollow down its center—was aimed at the blood trail Yuglerus had left behind.
Crackle. Snap.
Massive sparks leapt between the split edges of the sword.
Chain Lightning — Maximum Output
FIRE
A brief, absolute stillness. In that hush, only Helio's voice rang out, clear and solitary.
And immediately after, blue lightning erupted from the raised blade.
CRAAAAASH—!
The bolt Helio unleashed raced violently along the red bloodstains scattered across the ground. A mage bleeding, and a razor-edged lightning strike riding that trail—no one present needed to wonder what end waited at the finish of that path.