During the pursuit

Chapter 11

It was a nice, peaceful day in Valebryn, as normal as it has always been. Nisha stood on her apartment balcony, finishing up her latest artwork while the instruments in her room played beautiful tunes from her childhood, ones that she would always play to inspire her creativity to flow. As she slowly and carefully brushes the finishing lines onto the canvas, an explosion racks her room out of nowhere, blasting a hole through her roof and sending smoke and debris flying everywhere.

Her instruments fell silent, and her artwork was smeared with dust and a splatter of blood. She leaned on the balustrade, her eyelids feeling heavy, and something warm was dripping down her face. Before her consciousness faded, she heard another explosion nearby, and saw several people appear with a brief flash of light in the remains of her room. One of them, a girl wearing a beret, ran towards her.

…

Captain Eiren casts another spell, this time summoning several clones of himself which head into different directions, phasing through the walls and checking the building for other civilians. Lance jumps through the broken roof to run after and keep track of the fugitive.

“How’s her condition, Astrea?” the Captain asks.

“Not good. Severe trauma. Head injury. Upper body too,” she replies nervously as she closes her eyes and surveys the lady’s body.

“Stay calm, Trey. I’ll put pressure on her wounds, and then let’s try moving her to a better position. Don’t move her neck, okay?” Naoya calmly says, conjuring a piece of bandage to cover the lady’s wounds.

After stopping the bleeding, he and Astrea steadily move her body to a simple cushion, and a green glow starts covering her entire body, similar to the one Naoya saw when the Canopy blessed him. Branches start sprouting from the ground, nestling her in a protective cradle.

“You okay?” Naoya asks Trey, who looked quite stressed.

“I’m fine. Just… blood. Not used to,” she softly replies, taking a deep breath to calm herself down.

“Nice job, Naoya, you know your first aid well,” the Captain says as he floats out of the hole in the roof. “Lance is on the fugitive’s trail, and we have to catch up fast. Let’s move.”

“Wait, I can go too?” Naoya asks eagerly.

“Yes, so you can witness the Order in action, but stay as an observer only, alright? Follow closely, but do not join the action, and most importantly, keep yourself safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir!” he replies, and they immediately teleport again, this time onto another rooftop just as Lance passes by, who was holding a massive shield and a spear as he darted after the running fugitive. The rest of them swiftly follow, with the Captain and Astrea flying and Naoya holding onto the girl’s hand.

“Have you identified the target?” Captain Eiren asks Lance as they catch up.

“Male dwarf. They’re using a hammer to create massive explosions, sir, riding the blast wave for mobility. ”

The fugitive suddenly looks back at them and swings his weapon into the roof.

“Leave me alone!” he exclaims.

Another explosion. This time, not causing any damage, but simply creating a thick cloud of smoke. The group quickly runs through it, jumping onto the next rooftop to continue the chase, but as they left the smoke, their target was nowhere to be found.

“Where?” Astrea asks.

“Don’t always rush forward, guys. You need to stop and look around sometimes,” a man suddenly says from within the smoke. A calmer, friendlier voice than their target.

The cloud starts swirling, gathering in the middle. It slowly turns into a thin, spiral column, revealing a tall man with dark curly hair and a smile on his face. He wore the Knight’s uniform and a jacket with its signature color, his right hand outstretched towards the pillar of smoke.

“Captain!” Lance exclaims.

“Wait, Captain?!” Naoya asks.

“Nice to meet you, Naoya. I’m Captain Bellan of Cipher Unit. Let’s talk again later since we’re kind of busy right now.”

The smoke pillar moves into the building below him, following his arm’s movements and winding in and out of the windows like a snake. After a while, they hear the dwarf scream, being carried by the smoke and dropped in front of Captain Bellan.

With a look of pure rage, the dwarf starts swinging at the Captain, who effortlessly dodges the attacks. He suddenly blocks the hammer using his right arm, and Naoya braced himself for another explosion, but nothing happened. Captain Bellan simply stood there, his right arm unmoved as if the impact was nothing, but his left arm is now surrounded by a violently twisting gust of wind, and before the dwarf could react, the Captain punches him with his left arm. He had absorbed all the force the explosion generated, let none escape into the surroundings, and returned everything back to its caster.

The Captain seemed to just lightly tap the dwarf with their fist, yet they were still sent flying high into the air, crashing back down in front of the group a few moments later.

Lance approaches the enemy, holding up his shield and poking with his spear. Without warning, a small explosion occurs under the dwarf, sending him high up. He hovers in the air above them, his battered and bruised form holding his hammer over his head as a swirl of dark energy gathers around it like a black hole. The weapon grows bigger and bigger, crackling with energy and heating up its surroundings.

Captain Eiren opens his book and summons a wide, transparent barrier above everyone, intending to shield them from the incoming attack, but to his surprise, the barrier cracks into pieces and gets absorbed into the weapon as well. The injured dwarf sneers at everyone, mocking Captain Eiren’s attempts at damage control.

Everyone racks their brains for a solution in the face of imminent destruction, while Naoya could only watch in awe at the scale of magic he was witnessing, making his miniature sun feel underwhelming in retrospect. Though he didn’t understand how the dwarf was doing it, he knew what it was capable of. The image of the lady earlier flashes in his mind, realizing the consequences of letting these fugitive roam free.

But not all hope was lost.

A gentle wave of blue light suddenly sweeps through the air, passing through both the weapon and its wielder. The dark, pulsating hammer harmlessly dissolves into a million pieces, and blood erupts from several cuts that suddenly appear on the dwarf. He falls onto the rooftops, this time with no more explosions.

Naoya looks around for the source of the wave, and a red-haired lady with casts on her legs flies towards them, her expression as serious as always.

“Sorry I’m late, everyone. I just finished my checkup,” she explains to the group.

“No worries, Greta. You were right on time,” Captain Bellan says as they join the group. “We’re not done yet, though. You guys should head north from here. I sense more operatives trying to escape in that direction.”

Sure enough, as the captain issues his order, they hear several loud crashes from the distance. Buildings started cracking, and dust was spreading around them, as if something was bulldozing straight through everything.

Cipher Unit, with Naoya in tow, rush towards the scene. Astrea flies ahead of everyone, setting up a trap on the target’s path. It leaves a human-shaped hole several stories tall as it crashes through the buildings, revealing its massive form: a man wearing dark leather pants and suspenders, leaving his unnaturally large, swollen muscles exposed. He continues running into an open park area but slowly starts sinking into the ground, which has now turned into quicksand because of Astrea. The target eventually disappears, as if he were never there.

“Target contained,” says Astrea.

“Well, that was fast. Now we just have to carve out a huge chunk of the park and bring it back for questioning,” Lance jokingly replies.

“No, it’s still moving somehow,” Greta warns them.

The ground erupts and the target jumps back out, this time looking pissed. It grabs a large piece of concrete with one hand and throws it into the knights, all of whom scatter and surround him. Greta destroys the airborne chunk with a quick slash of her sword to prevent damage to the surroundings, and Lance jumps in with his weapons, exchanging blows with the enemy with his seemingly infinite arsenal of weapons.

They proceed to batter the giant, targeting his weak spots and restraining his movement. After pulling it off the ground with chains, Lance, summoning the weapon that shares his name, jumps into the air and shoots forward with blinding speed, pinning the enemy to the ground with his weapon. He emerges from the dust cloud, brushing dirt off his clothes as the giant lies motionless behind him, a massive lance piercing its chest.

“They said we can kill them, right?” he asks his teammate as they regroup, Naoya joining them after witnessing the intense action from his hiding place.

“Alive if possible. Command said so. Not possible here. So we’re good,” Astrea replies.

“I don’t think we’re good yet, guys. He’s taking the lance out,” Naoya warns them.

They look back and watch as the giant pulls out the lance and slowly gets back up. With a gaping, bloody hole in its chest and a furious roar at the knights, it charges towards them.

But before it could even take two steps forward, a massive, pink, heart-shaped object lands on the enemy and brutally crushes them, sending blood and gore flying everywhere and splattering the pink object with dark crimson blood. A girl was sitting on top of it, wearing a frilly pink dress and her hair tied in twin tails with red ribbons. She held on to the handle of the object, which is shaped like a wand and covered with colorful patterns.

Naoya never thought he would see a person like her, even in this fantasy world. Even more so, he didn’t expect a magical girl to be completely unbothered but this much violence.

She looks down at the bloody mess beneath her, and with a guilty expression, she speaks to the group.

“Oops, sorry about the mess. I thought the bad guy could handle it, hehe… do you guys think Sir Valiansteel can still pull out their soul like this?”