It was like I was there again. I was face down on the floor with a pool of blood under me. I saw my face in its reflection, harried, breathing harder than I ever had in my life. My eyes, my entire body was trembling.

  “Hahaha! Finally done with your tricks aren’tcha!?” Dalan nearly yelled out.

  Every member of my squad was heavily injured. Rasa was awake but could barely move. Carmine and Mikoko were both unconscious, and I was unsure if Carmine was even alive. Dalan did suffer his fair share of injures as well, but he was clearly the victor.

  “Hah… hah….!” Dalan breathed with wild energy.

  “Oh, I’m gonna tear you apart! I’ll see that purple Erebus bitch cry when she sees her sister’s corpse!” Dalan yelled as he slowly approached Mikoko’s unconscious body.

  Dalan’s daggers were enveloped in his rotating shredding blades at an intense ferocity. They spun so fast that they created noise, sounding like a chainsaw just about to burst. Whirling whitish-yellow mana could even be seen on them. This was his strongest technique, Grinder Drive.

  That was how far we pushed him. But it wasn’t enough.

  ‘We… never figured out the frequency…’

  We tried so many things. Carmine couldn’t understand the frequency, so she tried connecting a blood line to Rasa while she fought, but Dalan saw through her. I bet he didn’t understand why she did that, but he thought that it might have been some sort of trick so he cut it down anyway. We tried having Carmine leave behind puddles of blood on the floor so that Dalan’s flying slashes would reverberate on the puddles while Rasa was touching it. But even that wasn’t enough. The oscillations of the shredding mana died down before Rasa could learn them.

  We came to a conclusion. Rasa absolutely had to clash with him. But Rasa was not a melee fighter. His string gauntlet was cut apart and it was all we could do to prevent him from going unconscious.

  My heart was racing a million miles an hour. My breath hitched as I watched Dalan inch closer and closer to Mikoko. The mana around his daggers rotated so furiously. The air whirled around with him, making the air where I was shift ever so slightly. The pool of blood all around him rippled. Everything in the environment was disturbed by his rotating blades. The constant grinding noise, the slight shifts in the airflow, the heat displaced because of that, the ripples in the pooling blood. I began to notice all of it.

  My body, no, my soul, took note of everything. How everything shifted just because one man swirled his mana around as shredding blades. With every step he took, the entire environment would be affected. A disruption of its natural state.

  My eyes peered into his daggers, solely focused on understanding them. 1 oscillation, 2 oscillations. My heart slowed and my breath calmed. I suddenly understood what I was feeling at this moment.

  ‘This is how it feels to be one with the world.’

  I understood the frequency. By studying its disruptions on the natural state of the environment, I gleaned its frequency and the oscillation. But I couldn’t have done it solely because I had World. No, I could only understood because I had witnessed Severance affect the world countless times.

  “Have you ever known me to lose a battle of swords?” The Suka in my mind spoke to me.

  I had sparred with and witnessed Suka fight an unimaginable amount of times. He was the boy obsessed with swords, the boy obsessed with cutting everything, the boy who could never let go of his sword, even while he was asleep. He trained everyday, he fought everyday, and I watched him everyday. How his blade affected the environment, that was already engraved onto my mind and body.

  So, I understood how a sword can affect the world. And because of that, I understood Grinder Drive.

  ‘Rasa!’ I screamed in my head as I furiously tapped the blood pool that connected to him.

  Rasa’s eyes widened when he realised what I was sending him. He closed them soon after and focused solely on understanding.

  As Dalan grew closer to Mikoko, his mana just itching to cut her, I slowly shambled up. I grasped ahold of Carmine’s axe that had fallen next to me. It was encased in crystals formed out of blood, a technique Carmine was reluctant to ever use. It was called Blood Crystalline: Encase. She may have been reluctant to use it, but I was grateful she chose to. This was going to have to be it.

  I took a deep breath. In and out, trying to cycle my mana appropriately. My mind was clear, and my vision entirely focused onto the image of Suka’s blade. That clear, perfect sword. The sword that could cut anything, wielded by a man obsessed enough to try. If I could just instil even a little bit of his spirit in the axe.

  “Say goodbye…” Dalan raised a dagger to plunge it into Mikoko’s skull.

  At that moment, Rasa sprung with his bow-sword and slashed his leg. No, it wasn’t a slash. It was more that he played a stroke on his leg. The loud screeching noise broke out between Rasa’s bow-sword and Dalan’s leg.

  “What the-!?” He screamed as his Grinder Drive came apart.

  I lunged. I held Carmine’s bloody axe in my hands and thrust as much mana into them as possible. That gleaming blade that could sever anything. I needed that in my hands.

  Dalan turned around just in time to see my strike. But it was too late. I swung.

  [Bloody Shard Sweep!]

  The axe cut through Dalan’s meagre defences and swung through his neck. Blood gushed out of his neck instantly and he dropped a dagger to hold his hand up to it.

  Despite the fact it was a fatal blow, Dalan was still standing. He shambled around and gazed into my eyes with a look of the most intense furiousness. I stared back as he tried to make his way to me. Tried to raise his hand to stab me. For a brief moment his Grinder Drive reappeared.

  But the next, he stumbled over and fell down.

  “Hah…” I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  ‘We won. We actually won. We won!’

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  A wave of emotions washed all over me. The exhilaration, the joy at having survived. I was fulfilled, happy that I could do Ernest justice. Dalan was dead before me, and Ernest’s soul could rest in peace. Everything was made right.

  ‘I did it, Ernest. I did it.’

  With that thought in my head, I felt free to collapse on the ground, my mouth stretched into an unconscious smile.

  ———————————————————————

  ‘I wanted to be there.’

  I wanted to revel in the victory. I wanted to be there with my friends as we overcame challenge after challenge. I wanted to struggle with them, to support them. To just be left behind…

  ‘I wanted to be there!’ I almost wanted to scream it out.

  It was then that another face appeared in the mirror. Ernest’s face, with his curly brown hair, and bandages wrapped around his bear ears. His face was… not angry. Not furious.

  “I don’t know what your deal is. But…”

  Ernest stared at my reflection’s eyes.

  “I’m only alive because of you. I’m standing here, talking to you, breathing the same air as you, because you saved my life.”

  I couldn’t help but think I was imagining things. Ernest was a corpse. My very first mission, I failed. I failed to protect my charge. I got justice for him, but compared to a life, that didn’t mean much. But then he placed his hand on my shoulder. I reflexively turned to him.

  “I don’t know if you’re a selfish person. Maybe you are. Maybe you shouldn’t have done those things. But at least, you did one thing right. You kept your promise to me.”

  I didn’t say anything. I let Ernest continue talking.

  “All that’s left is seeing me through. And then… I guess you’ll be handing me over to the Bureau with your report. They’ll have to gimme compensation right?”

  Ernest smiled. A genuine, sincere smile. The sort of thing I longed to see, day by day.

  “You know, I used to dream of becoming an airship pilot. Wind’s the perfect Aspect for it. With the money I can probably pay for tuition, right? Or at least I can be a navigations officer. Maybe the captain even? It’s not too late to try right? I mean, I got nothing else to lose.”

  Ernest suddenly stopped, as if he realised something.

  “Oh, what’re you gonna do after this? I mean, after your mandatory service. Are you gonna keep being a Hunter or…?”

  “I,” I spoke without thinking, “I want to run a patisserie. A dessert shop, or a cafe maybe. I want to make fancy little desserts and pastries that make my friends smile.”

  “Nice. I’ll have to visit when you set it up. How long you got left?”

  “5 years. This is our first mission after all. Though… to be honest, I don’t think it’s happening for at least 10. I’ve got too many things to do.”

  “You’ve got this, man. Those 10 years, you’re gonna see it through to the end, right? Just like me.”

  “Ha…” I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling. “Yeah. Just like you.”

  The two of us continued chatting and laughing for a while. We just kept going and going, Ernest felt like an old friend to me. The two of us kept talking for so long that time was almost up.

  “Thanks, Ern. But… can I just be a little more selfish today?”

  “Sure, Machi. What do you wanna do?”

  “Let’s go and check up on them. They should be done by now.“

  I guided Ernest outside the house and took out one of my favourite vehicles from another dimension. Out popped a motorcycle with a little sidecar.

  “Come on Ern. Let’s go celebrate their victory.”

  ‘Machu… You’ve got this.’

  ———————————————————————

  Quite a few minutes before…

  “Hup!” Machua wrapped her mana around a water tower. She managed to store the entire thing in a dimension, water, and all.

  The squad was standing on a rooftop that overlooked the abandoned mall they were heading to. According to Mikoko’s tracker, Dalan had stopped inside it for quite some time now.

  “I want to propose a plan,” Mikoko spoke. The squad turned their eyes to her.

  “Ah, before you speak,” Rasa said. “Machia told me the frequency of Dalan’s shredding spell before we left. However, I do not know how effective it will be.”

  Mikoko raised an eyebrow before deciding to shrug it off. “That will be very helpful.”

  “Now. Allow me to explain my plan. Dalan is a strong target who has purer mana and more mana than each of us individually. I know that some of us will be sick just by being in his presence. Fighting him, even as a group, is dangerous. However, we still have the number advantage.”

  “What’re you saying?” Carmine asked.

  “We should draw out the fight to drain him of his mana. If he wastes his mana, then it will make our actual clashes safer. In an abandoned mall as big as that, we can have him spend his energy chasing us. We can give him the illusion that he’s split us up while in reality, Plue can coordinate our actions so that we can support each other.”

  “What about the time though? We don’t know how long we have,” Machua questioned.

  “I doubt he has enough mana to last even 10 minutes. Especially after duelling with your brother and my sister.”

  ‘Duelling with Reina? He got surprise attacked and almost died in one shot. Though now that she mentioned it, he can’t heal that up fully even with a Devouring Ampoule so we should be focusing on his neck wound.’

  “As a part of this plan, I would suggest we scout out specific areas that we trap and lure him to. During those times, we ‘hand over’ the role of target to another person and we keep chaining this until his mana is drained. At which point, we all gather together to finish the job.”

  ‘Should we be trying to make him use his neck as much as possible? Force him to turn his neck?… That’s kind of an absurd thing to try to do.’

  “Something on your mind, Machua?” Rasa asked.

  “Ah ha, it’s nothing. I was just remembering he has a pretty big wound on his neck. Right here.” Machua pointed to the left side of her neck.

  “I’ll lop his head off there then. But I have to ask, horns.”

  Mikoko’s eyebrow twitched at the nickname.

  “Why don’t we just jump him with one trap? If you wanna drain his mana, the fastest way would be forcing him to defend,” Carmine pointed out. “I’ll be the main attacker of course.”

  “It’s life or death. Dalan will be using his biggest moves. It’ll be dangerous.”

  “You all can just watch me then,” Carmine responded with a careless smile.

  “He won’t have any reason to conserve his mana for this battle. Facing a strong attack would injure most of, if not, all of us as we don’t have a way to properly defend against it. We would have to rely on Rasa to neutralise it if he even can,” Mikoko stated.

  “You’re forgetting that we have our own big moves too. I haven’t used my full power against him back then, and I know you haven’t too. And hell, he’s even scared of clashing with your staff. I don’t care about getting cutting up, so if the two of us tag team him with support, we can end this in one go,” Carmine argued. With actually reasonable points.

  “Machu, should we put it up to a vote?” Plue asked.

  Machua nodded at the idea but chose to abstain from voting. She would act as tiebreaker, and as expected, it was indeed a tie. Surprisingly though, Rasa agreed with Mikoko, while Plue agreed with Carmine.

  “I don’t want to risk any of you getting hurt. If any of us messed up while acting as the target then if the others don’t get there fast enough they could die,” Plue explained.

  “I have an idea that could assist in Mikoko’s target plan. Carmine has some idea of it. Shall I explain and demonstrate it?”

  The squad all nodded at him, while Carmine wordlessly handed him her phone. Rasa took out his phone as well.

  “My Trait is Symphony, which means that I cast spells via sound. Any sound I make is a potential spell that could be cast, and I do not have control over this. This applies to my mana as well,” Rasa explained.

  “You all understand that many devices are powered by mana batteries. Each of them can utilise only a specific type of mana, which would ordinarily mean that a mana battery could only ever be filled up by a single person. However, most mana batteries are equipped with mana converters that convert any mana fed into it into the corresponding type.”

  Rasa held out his phone and Carmine’s phone, showing the squad their battery. Rasa’s mana flowed into them, filling the battery up.

  “That’s an extremely high conversion rate. Unless…” Mikoko murmured.

  “These phones have mana batteries custom manufactured to contain my mana. Thus, when they play any sound, they will replicate the same effect as if I was the one playing it.”

  Rasa held out the phones, activated a recording app and played a tune according to the frequency. The sound that screeched out of his string gauntlet resembled that of a chainsaw. The squad could all recognise the magic that was cast as a result of that, a counter melody that sought to neutralise or at least diminish the spell that was its intended target.

  Rasa pressed the playback on his phone and the same sound was played. The same spell was cast as a result of it.

  “However, due to my Resonance Aspect that I instilled into the melody, if there are two sources of the sound…”

  Rasa played the sound back on Carmine’s phone as the first sound looped. The two sounds resonated, resulting in a much louder sound than they should have had.

  “Then the spells will synergise, merge, and become stronger. I myself can also play to make the resulting spell stronger, but it won’t have as much effect as my playing is much stronger than these phones can output.”

  Rasa recharged both phones to full and held them out. “This is why I am siding with Mikoko’s plan. The designated target can hold one of these phones and use them when necessary to protect themselves in the event I cannot reach them. We could have the target hold both phones as well and have them pass the phones on to the next during the handovers.”

  Before Machua thought over the use of this, she had to ask a question. “Do we have more of these phones?”

  “They’re burner phones,” Carmine answered. “Using a phone to cast spells can damage it, so we both got extra phones for cheap.“

  “How about mana batteries? I can change out the mana batteries real quick, I worked at an electronics store for a bit.”

  Rasa shook his head.

  Machua’s mind went on overdrive. A spell that could be cast purely because it could play a certain sound was very useful. A very interesting tool to play with. When she thought of the number of things that could be done with that, it felt like a new world opened up to her. The possibilities felt nearly endless.

  ‘You can place mana into objects without it having a storage, but because of that the mana will slip away. So, in reality, we aren’t actually limited to these 2 phones.’

  Machua began pacing a little bit. She slowly walked in a circle around the group and at times she could walk backwards or turn the rotation.

  ‘But an object that has a mana battery cannot have differing mana placed into it. Mana doesn’t mingle so that mana would have to be removed first. If so…’

  “Uh, Machu?” Plue stood in her path. “What’re you doing?”

  Seeing the perfect person appear right in front of her made all of her thoughts come together.

  “I’ve got a plan guys. Let’s huddle up.”

  Machua grabbed each member of the squad and forced them into a huddle. They all looked to her, eager to listen to what the plan was.

  “We’ll do a bit of both. But there’s a lot of finer details I’ve got in mind. If I wanna be able to do them all, then we’re gonna have to do a lot of scouting. Plu, we don’t have time to let you scout out the whole place, so we’ll all have to enter, but I’m counting on you to scout as much as you can, got it? I especially want you to-“