Lucas could feel the unease in the surrounding. The usual bustling market was quiet with all the shoppers seemingly rushing home and the owners eyeing everyone suspiciously. It seemed his boss wasn’t the only one that was set off by the people snooping around for the core.
Speeding up his pace, Lucas wasted no time making his way out of the market. But when he was nearing the edge of the market, an explosion erupted. There was probably more than one explosion, but Lucas didn’t notice with first one sending him tumbling across the ground.
However, it didn’t knock him out, so everything hurts, which was probably a good sign that he still had everything. His ears were ringing, but he didn’t need to hear to know that everyone was screaming in panic. People were running around, either trying to get as far from here as possible or doing their best to save their shops from burning down.
When he tried getting up, the pain on his right shoulder intensified. Injured, but not broken. He considered that a positive in such a situation. The same could be said for his legs, so he’ll at least manage to move. His left arm was in a bad state though. He couldn’t move it, so he needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible.
As he was getting up, Lucas noticed traces of mana circuits on the ground, leading towards where the explosions seem to have occurred. It was already established that the explosions were intentionally done, but seeing how they were done was another story.
That just gave Lucas another reason to get out of there faster. Forcing his body to move, he dragged himself away from the area. His hearing was gradually returning, allowing him to hear people screaming in agony or asking for help.
“Fucking hell. You blew things up to early,” Lucas heard a somewhat familiar voice. “It’ll be harder to find the core now.”
“We weren’t going to find it anyways,” a raspy voice responded. “Might as well start cleaning up early.”
Turning towards the source of the voices, Lucas saw a tall well-dressed man, and a shorter pale-skinned man. With them was a short woman wearing a track suit with an annoyed expression on her face.
“Screw this! Let’s just get this over with,” the short woman yelled as she leaped into the air.
Soaring towards one of the buildings, she landed a powerful kick that made the building explode. The sound of the explosion attracted the attention of the enforcers, calling them over from wherever they were.
They aimed their weapons at the trio. “Identify yourselves!” one of the enforcers shouted.
As all this was happening, Lucas took cover behind a pile of rubble. It was clear the trio didn’t want to leave any witnesses, and getting spotted trying to escape was the last thing Lucas wanted.
“I’ll deal with this,” the tall man stated.
Lucas peaked from behind the rubble and saw the man’s arm get covered in small magic circles. A metallic liquid moved around his arm before turning into spears.
“Fire!” the enforces fired their weapons.
The man flicked his hand, turning the liquid metal into a solid wall, while the spears soared through air and impaled the enforcers. The spears then proceeded to morph into buzz saws, ripping the impaled enforcers to pieces.
Lucas nearly fainted after watching the gruesome sight if his entire body wasn’t in pain. A couple more enforcers arrived, but they quickly met the same fate.
The sound of sirens was getting louder, grabbing his attention. Drones made from golem technology came from the sky, their weapons aimed at the trio of criminals. “Looks like I’m a bit late,” a gruff feminine voice spoke.
Looking up, Lucas found a woman with short spiky gray hair. She was wearing a forest green tank top and camo cargo pants along with combat boots. She has a muscular figure with a lot of scars on her visible skin. But the most eye-catching thing about her was that she was standing on a glider.
“Three executives of Viper runners. It’s my lucky day,” the woman replied. “Mercury,” she pointed at the tall man controlling liquid metal. “Jupiter,” she pointed to the short woman next. “And lastly, Venus,” she pointed at the pale man.
“I’ll handle this bitch,” Jupiter shot towards the woman.
“Fire!” the drones began firing.
Mercury created another wall to block the magic bullets, while Jupiter closed in on the woman. “Die bitch!” Jupiter aimed a kick to the woman’s head.
“Too slow!” she ducked under the kick and landed a punch to Jupiter’s gut.
The short woman was flung into the air, clutching her gut in pain. The military woman proceeded to use her glider to avoid the spears that shot towards her.
“She’s the Marquis rank mage, Leona!” Venus yelled as he got surrounded by a dozen red magic circles. “Hit her with everything you’ve got!” the magic circles fired a beam of fire.
Leona maneuvered her glider with amazing accuracy to avoid all the beams. She went higher into the sky with her drones following beside her, then flipped and began raining down attacks from her glider and drones.
Jupiter spun from the ground and launched off the ground, bouncing from building to building to avoid the rain of fire. Mercury sticked to creating metal walls to block attacks, while Venus was left scrambling to avoid the attacks.
Lucas noticed that Venus was heading right where he was hiding. Thinking fast, he grabbed a loose metal pipe and waited. The moment Venus rounded the corner, the metal pipe went right through his chest.
Lucas stared into Venus’s eyes as the pale skinned man stared at him in surprise. “Motherfucker...” Blood began dripping from Venus’s mouth as Lucas pulled the metal pipe from his chest and caused the wound to bleed.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
At that moment, Lucas saw mana circuits began tracing Venus’s body, all of them leading to his chest. “Die you bastard,” Venus said with his dying breath.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going to happen.
Lucas sprinted out of cover and crashed through a glass window just as Venus exploded. The explosion was so powerful that the building he jumped into had its roof blown off by the explosion. Lucas could also feel the scorching heat on his back as the flames rushed over him.
When the flames died down, Lucas tried getting up. This time, he couldn’t. His back was definitely scorched and the ground itself was hot but not enough to burn him.
Despite his situation, Lucas was surprisingly calm. He couldn’t hear any more fighting, so he guessed that the explosion affected them as well. But footsteps alerted him that someone was heading towards him.
Someone grabbed him by the back of his neck and lifted him of the ground. “You’ve got guts kid,” Leona said.
With her lifting him up, Lucas got a good look at the surrounding. Everything was scorched with a crater being left where Venus’s body was. Leona didn’t seem to come out unscratched from that as her cargo pants had a few burned patches.
“Your little stunt took out the other two as well,” Leona pointed at two charred bodies with her thumb. “And a bunch of my drones.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucas tried bowing, but that agitated his burnt back, so he gave up on that.
“Save it kid. It’s not over yet,” Leona dropped him on the ground as a pillar of red light shot down from the sky. “Three executives died here today, so a big fish will show up.”
A man was revealed as the red light vanished. He wore a white three-piece suit and had a silver helmet covering his entire head. The only thing distinguishable from him was the red glowing eyes coming from within the helmet.
“Lost quite a lot today,” the man said as he began walking towards Lucas and Leona.
“You’re going to lose a lot more,” Leona replied as a white magic circle appeared on her back.
“I could say the same for you,” the man raised his arm and multiple red magic circles appeared and immediately fired a barrage of attacks.
Leona blasted into the air, soaring through the sky like she was flying. Her remaining drones returned fire from where they were, but a mana shield blocked their attacks, and then they were quickly shot down by the man.
The fight began to intensify with attacks turning from simple beams and fire balls to full on lasers and bombs. Leona was like a fighter jet trying to shoot down a turret.
Lucas was thankful that he wasn’t being perceived as a threat, but that could change fairly quickly so he did his best to crawl his way back to where Leona had grabbed him from. Once he reached cover, Lucas noticed something on the ground. It was the monster core that the criminals were after.
A part of him was stupid enough to think that if he gave it to the man, he’d leave. But Agatha was right, no matter what, they wanted to leave no witnesses.
Lucas reached for the core with his bloody hand, and what followed was something he did not expect. All of a sudden, he wasn’t in the battlefield. Instead, he was in a dark void.
He tried calling out, but no words came out of his mouth. Then all of a sudden, a purple lance shot through his chest from behind him.
----------------------------------------
“Gah!”
Lucas panted heavily as he looked around. He was no longer in the battlefield, nor the empty void of darkness. He was in a small hospital room with the lights off, but the sunlight coming through the curtains still illuminated the room enough to see his surroundings.
With his mind clearing up, Lucas reached for the button beside his bed that called for a nurse. He expected a single nurse to arrive, so he could receive an explanation on what happened. Instead, Leona entered the room along with a doctor and a group of nurses.
She was wearing a complete military uniform with a bunch of medals pinned above her chest.
“Finally awake huh,” Leona mentioned, while Lucas just silently observed the sudden crowd. Leona quickly noticed he was uncomfortable. “Everyone out except for one nurse to check his condition.”
They all nodded and left except for the nurse that was currently testing Lucas’s blood pressure.
“We would have called your family, but you didn’t have any identification on you and DNA testing wasn’t useful,” Leona mentioned.
“Ah...” Lucas remembered that his bag was literally burned off his back, destroying his wallet that he hurriedly packed.
“Just give them their contact information for later,” Leona stated. “I want to ask you about what happened at the market area.”
“All I know was that they were looking for a core,” Lucas explained. “I think it was the one I had just before I fainted.”
Leona raised an eyebrow. “I’m not asking about that,” Leona showed him a video on a tablet. “I want to know about this.”
In the video, it showed Lucas standing with a white magic circle under his feet. A moment later, some sort of black tar began coming out of the ground and gathering in front of him. Forming a spiraling blob of tar.
The man in the white suit attacked, shooting a powerful beam of fire at him. Leona rushed to try and save him, but a purple sword came out of the black tar and sliced the beam of fire.
Once the black tar fell to the ground, a familiar suit of armor was revealed. Lucas recognized the monster lord he had recently researched.
Percival.
Jet-black armor that seemed to absorb light and gleaming purple mana circuits that traced the knight’s whole armor. In its right hand, Percival wielded a great sword with a purple edge and in his left hand was a lance that was flaring with purple mana.
In the video, Lucas raised an arm forward towards the man in the suit, and Percival immediately moved. In a split second, Percival impaled the man with his lance and proceeded to decapitate him with the great sword.
The video ended there.
“Anything to say?” Leona spoke.
“I... don’t remember any of that?” Lucas replied.
It was true, but he doubted Leona would accept that answer.
“Alright,” she accepted.
“Huh?” Lucas stared at her in confusion.
“It’s pretty obvious you weren’t in control of yourself,” Leona stated. “And there’s no criminal charges against you, so I can’t interrogate you.”
Leona took a seat on the chair beside the table, and Lucas was reminded that they weren’t alone in the room. The nurse that was doing a check up on him somehow managed to finish the check up without Lucas even remembering she was there, and quickly left the room.
“She’s good. Forgot she was here,” Leona commented as the nurse left. “Anyways, I have three good news for you.”
“You do?” Lucas was surprised to hear that from Leona.
“First, you’ll be receiving a monetary reward for aiding in the capture of three Viper runner executives and one senior executive,” Leona took out a black card from her jacket and held it up to Lucas. “That has 784 thousand credits,” Leona revealed.
Lucas stared at the card in shock.
Before he could even speak, Leona continued. “I would like to offer you a job in an artifact research department. You will be taught and trained how to make artifacts, and you’ll also be provided an allowance for personal projects.”
“I’m going to be making artifacts for the military?” Lucas asked.
“Yes and no. The place offering you the job is partnered with the military, but isn’t part of the government and operates independently,” Leona explained. “I’m only extending the offer. More details will be provided by someone from that place,” Leona said.
“I see...”
“The last news is that you don’t need to pay for this place, so rest comfortably,” Leona said as she got up to leave. “Information about this event will be kept confidential, but even if you blab about it, nobody would believe you,” Leona smiled. “We’ll be watching you kid,” she said before leaving the room.