"Immortality is a myth, yet it would soon not be if we don't stop Winceim Barbey!" Mr. Staker shouted at Haston and slumped on the concrete and steel rubble pile. Sunlight shined on his grimy face through the giant hole in the roof of IAO's base. Fresh blood slowly ran out of the bottom of the rubble. Haston could see a hand sticking out of the pile next to Staker's head.
"He just took down our entire branch in Darape," Haston, standing in the shadow, looked around, seeing nothing but corpses on the ground.
"You missed the point," Mr. Staker closed his eyes for a moment of slight resting, "We do not need to defeat him. We just need to destroy the dragon's heart. That's all. The headquarters will deal with Barbey."
"I have a strong feeling that you're preparing to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, which I won't," putting his hands in his pocket, Haston hesitated for a second before speaking his mind. His pockets were empty; all his magical items were expended. Now, he was just a guy in a tan blouson.
"I'm not asking you to die. If we get this right, we might not even encounter him."
"You're never persuasive. You know?"
"I just forgot it. Yet, Who's the one that recruited you?" Staker inquired, opening his eyes and grinning. He tossed a white rectangular prism from his navy blue overcoat to Haston.
"I promise I would not be an agent if I knew you better," Haston shoveled the cuboid into the inner pocket of his blouson.
"Think of it this way," Staker got up from the rubble, "You can get promoted to rank A if we accomplish this." The sole of his derby shoes landed on blood, not making a tiny splash.
"I hate you," Haston Tale followed as Staker walked toward the staircase.
While the two were heading twenty floors downstairs, Winceim had come to No.5 of Dokran Street, a quiet street on a workday like this. Building No. 5 was no more than a church on the outside. Barbey exited the taxi and ambled up the stoop. Before he could knock on the door, a shaft of violet laser burst the door from behind and went straight toward Winceim's chest. The old man wearing a chasuble stood in the center of the church with benches on his flanks and a podium behind him. The pattern on the front of his chasuble was made of seven flowers in different colors, ordered in the sequence of a rainbow. He stopped holding his right hand in the air as the violet laser ceased to gush out from his palm.
The aged man stared at Winceim, who appeared totally intact to the laser. Not a scratch was made on his white robe or his yellow shoulder sash. Winceim lightly smiled, squinting his narrow Tylian eyes. His satisfaction and vanity in his defending ability had sickened the old man.
"That sash…" disgusted rage leaked from his frown as he glared at Barbey's sash. It was puffy and huge, almost enough to cover his entire torso.
"Is the strongest immuno-sash, sash of million suns. Worn by an ancient Tylian emperor," Winceim explained with conceit.
"Capable of defending against any sort of magic," the old man had a drop of sweat gliding down his forehead after hearing the name of that sash. His left foot shifted back a bit unintentionally. He could barely ignore the fear in his mind, but he knew he could not back off. He was the chief priest of Flower Readers with all the seven powers of the Flower Thing. No one could stand against the devil at his door if he could not.
"Well," smirking, Barbey formed two circles with his thumbs and ring fingers, "Not really." He placed the two circles on each other and had the other three pairs of fingers attached by the tips. As he pointed the three pairs of fingers at the ceiling, a sudden gust started blowing. It was the immuno-wind cast by the chief priest to stop Winceim from casting his most powerful spell, Field of the Ceased.
"The supreme power of spell suppression from the blue flower," Winceim put down his gesture, commenting on the gust with his exaggerated bell sleeves and long black hair waving in the air, "I always despise this flower since it stops both you and your enemies from casting anything. Well, it's not like your flower powers have any use anyway."
"You really need to learn some manners when talking to elders," the chief priest reached his right hand toward the benches after sighing out a part of his fear. A blue-pole halberd, hiding between the benches, rose into the air and flew to the old man's grip.
"Are you expecting me to call you father?" Barbey pulled out the Obinese tanto in his left sleeve, "You know it's unconstitutional in Darape, right?" At that exact moment when his sentence was finished, he dashed forward. His speed was faster than the fastest human alive. His strength was beyond tremendous that he single-handedly deflected a long halberd with his short tanto.
"It's not like The Flower Readers has ever been a real religion," the monstrous man's smile widened.
Meanwhile, Staker's black coupe was parked in front of the vast garden of a giant flat with black, white, and teal walls. Stripes of LED lights were laid down on the boundaries between the three colors, and the lobby was a dozen meters high with fancy glass walls and shining chandeliers. There were even two fountains with mermaid statues in the front yard of the garden.
"What is your rank again?" Haston questioned. His eyes were locked on the flat.
"Rank B manager," Staker walked directly toward the lobby without an unnecessary glance at anything around him, "Think about it this way. You will have the same payment as mine when you become a rank A attendant."
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Sure," Haston answered, not hyped by Staker's words at all. Seeing his boss living in such luxury while he was struggling with money only bittered his tongue.
The receptionist mutely stood behind the counter as the two walked past them to the elevator. It was a part of their receptionist training not to annoy the wealthy residents here.
The only thing that slowed the two agents' paces was the ajar door of Staker's unit. As the owner of his home, Staker rushed toward it the moment he stepped out of the elevator. Completely pushing the door open, Staker froze at his door. He saw a black woman standing in the center of his room with a falchion in her hand and wreckage of his furniture on the ground.
Before the woman, the wardrobes in the entryway had their doors ripped off; at the woman's left, the television was lying on the ground facing down; Behind and around the woman, the couch was dismembered into pieces; at the woman's right, a wooden dining table had its legs pointing upward. Furthermore, the secret shelves of weapons and magical items were presented. The wall of weapon shelves was initially hidden behind the wall of dinnerware shelves. With broken dishes and bowls on the ground, it was evident that the woman flipped the wall to its hidden side before relocating his dinnerware.
Immediately, Staker had his right palm pointing at the woman. A weak, orange lump of light popped up before his hand and quickly forged itself into a translucent, orange bolt. "Wait! I can explain," the woman raised her silver falchion as the bolt flitted at her. The thin bolt simply disappeared after charging into the falchion.
"I'm here to fight Winceim Barbey," She claimed before Staker could cast another spell.
"Who are you?" Haston asked in a calm curiosity after scurrying to his angry boss's back.
"I'm a rank A attendant from the Dilonbian branch. I came to Darape with the teleportation spell from the Flower Readers. I know it is complicated, but you have to trust me. The headquarters won't be here in time. I'm your only support," the woman explained patiently with her hands in the air.
"Name?"
"Adea Haki"
"How the fuck did you find my house, and how the fuck did you know I have an armory?" Staker questioned with a loud voice. He was still mad about his broken furniture.
"People from the Flower Readers told me. And you're a rank B manager; it wouldn't make sense for you not to have one." Staker glared at Haki until she promised to pay for the loss.
"Fine," Staker sighed and finally walked into his home, looking away from the disaster on the floor.
Surpassing his boss, Haston rushed to the weapons. As Haston half-passionately went through everything on the shelves, picking them up and inspecting every detail, Staker strolled to Adea, "I suppose you are a fighter?"
"Yeah, you?"
"Spell caster," Staker pointed at himself, then pointed at Haston, "Operator."
"I guess we can make a good team," Haki sat on a couch segment, gazing at the floor. The stress and the potential consequences of possible failure had exhausted her before facing the enemy. She sunk her mind into her sole fantasy the way she always did. In her imagination, she was not a fighter in a T-shirt, trying to fight a monster, but a girl sauntering in a mall; she had tresses in all styles rather than baldness; she wore pink and yellow instead of black; she held handbags and purses in her hand rather than a blade; she had actual earrings instead of a rusted pendant pinned in her left earlobe.
"Shit," Haston murmured loudly in astonishment as he picked up a four-centimeter-thick encyclopedia. "You got the entire Book of Furnace?" He yelled at Staker, burying his criticism of stealing the organization's property in this question.
"If you really think about it," Staker went to his side, deciding what he should take, and answered, "It would've been destroyed by Barbey if I didn't steal it."
"Just take everything," Haki broke into the conversation, "We'll need everything to fight against—"
"I will not fight Barbey," Haston Tale abruptly declared, cutting off Haki's sentence.
Hurried toward Haston, Haki raised her voice, "What? Do you know what you are saying? For centuries, my family has been—"
"I have reasons to keep being alive! I won't stop you from wasting your life, but I need mine to—"
"No one will have a life if he—"
"What's all this about anyway? Why can't we just let him get the dragon's heart?" Haston shouted out the question he had been carrying since the beginning. The question brought a long silence to the room. Haston and Haki's eyes locked on each other. Nonetheless, Haston did not understand why she was staring at him. He was just responding, and it began to feel weird.
Eventually, Adea opened her mouth and spoke in both patience and stillness, "Do you understand what the dragon's heart is?"
"A thing that can grant people immortality?"
"Do you understand immortality?"
"Live forever?"
"It's more complex than that. It is a myth! Immortality is a myth!" Her voice rose a bit.
"What? Are you saying immortality does not exist?"
"No, immortality exists but not in a way that you understand it," she paused for a second to seek a way of explaining this, yet Staker took over instead, "You can only exist in a moment. The Haston that lived in the last moment was dead by now. The Haston that lived at this moment will be dead at the next moment. It is like your cells. A million of them die in a second, while another million are born. It is like the ship of Theseus, but to an extreme—"
"So you're saying real immortality is not living forever but freezing time forever? Someone decides to end the world because of some philosophical bullshit?" Haston interrupted due to his bewilderment and a sudden blast of anger. He could not stop himself from hating Winceim Barbey. Haston did not hate him for killing a whole building of people. He did not hate him for violating the law. He only hated him for trying to determine others' hate based on his own poor understanding of this world. Such narcissists always reminded him about his parents. Such narcissists were the sole reason that Haston had to struggle with money while having a wage higher than most people in this country.
"Correct."
"Wrong!"
----------------------------------------