"Immortality is a myth! And it needs to stay that way. We can't let Winceim Barbey bring it to reality!" Mr. Staker said as he lay on the concrete and steel rubble pile. Sunlight shone on his grimy face and the greasy ducktail through the giant hole in the roof of IAO's office building. Fresh blood slowly ran out of the bottom of the rubble. A hand stuck out of the pile next to Staker's head. In front of Staker, his attendant, Haston, stood in shadow.
"He just took down our entire branch here in Darape." Haston looked around through the gaps between his messy curtain hair. There was nothing but corpses and rubbles on the ground. Pushing his curly fringes backward, he showed no expression but coldness as always. His eyes were ajar like usual. The attendant did not care about these deaths as much as his boss. He very much wanted to find a place and hide until someone fixed everything, but that was not how he got paid.
"You missed the point." Mr. Staker closed his eyes, "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," Haston hesitated for a second before speaking his mind, "I will never choose to die, not even with you." He knew he would not give his life to this mission. The only reason he became an agent of IAO was for the money.
He put his hands in his pockets. 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. We don't need to encounter Winceim Barbey if we get this right. And I've done all the calculations. We will get to the dragon's heart much faster than Barbey. We don't even need to rush."
"You're never persuasive. You know?"
"I just forgot it. Can you tell me who's the one that recruited you?" Staker inquired, grinning. He tossed a white rectangular prism from his navy blue overcoat to Haston.
"I promise I would not have become an agent if I knew you better." Haston shoveled the cuboid into the inner pocket of his blouson. He did not mean what he said. Being recruited as an agent was perhaps the best thing in his life.
"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, making no red splash.
"I hate you." Haston Tale followed as Staker walked toward the staircase.
Barbey 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 beam of violet laser burst through it and went straight toward Barbey's chest.
The view of the church became clear; The long windows were the furthest from Barbey. They were painted in seven rainbow colors. Sunlight went through the stained glass. The sun fully lighted the red, narrow carpet in the middle of the church. The rows of benches on the carpet's two sides were shadowed yet visible. On one end of the carpet, there was Barbey. On the other, a small podium stood behind a wrinkled old man.
The old man had a hoary bowl cut above his narrow face. Sweat glided off his convex nose. He was wearing a chasuble. 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 Barbey, who appeared totally intact after being hit by the laser. The intact man lightly smiled, squinting his narrow Tylian eyes. Not a scratch was made on his white robe or his yellow shoulder sash.
"That sash…" Disgusted rage leaked from his frown as the old man glared at Barbey's sash. It was puffy and huge, almost enough to cover his entire torso.
"Is the strongest immuno-sash, the Sash of Million Suns. Worn by an ancient Tylian emperor," Barbey explained with conceit.
"Capable of defending against any sort of magic," the old man finished the sentence. A drop of sweat glided down his forehead. The fear in his visage was not visible to anyone but Barbey. Despite the fear, the old man stood there.
Barbey knew what this old kid was thinking: I am the chief priest of the Flower Readers! I am the wielder of the Seven Powers of the Flower Thing! I can not back off! I am the only one who can defeat this monster!
Barbey had already seen too much of this in Dilonbia. He was tired of it.
"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. This was the gesture of Barbey's strongest spell, Field of the Ceased. Even the Sash of Million Suns can not stand against his spell.
He pointed the three pairs of fingers at the ceiling. Before he could cast his spell, a sudden gust started to blow. Barbey recognized this wind. It was the immuno-wind of the blue flower.
"The supreme power of spell suppression from the blue flower." Barbey put down his gesture, commenting on the wind 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 a heavy exhale of air. 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.
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"It's not like The Flower Readers has ever been a real religion." the monstrous man's smile widened.
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 teasingly. His eyes were locked on the flat. He would like to make fun of the pay gap between him and Staker, yet the other part of him felt offended by himself.
"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."
"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. His eyebrows were as low as they always were.
The receptionist mutely stood behind the counter as the two walked past them to the elevator.
Staker and Haston stepped out of the elevator and froze. The door to Staker's unit was ajar. Staker rushed forward and threw the door wide open. He saw a black woman standing in the center of his room with his collectible falchion in her hand and the 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 weapon shelves were 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 without 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 black 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.
"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, failing to hide his anger.
"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 Adea until she promised to pay for the loss.
"Fine," Staker sighed and finally walked into his home, looking out the window to avoid seeing the disaster on the floor.
Haston, not bothered by his boss's grief, rushed to the weapons and magical items. He quickly went through everything on the shelves, picking them up and inspecting every detail. He was not the type to be interested in work-related stuff. However, studying these did eventually become one of his few hobbies. He was somewhat passionate about them but refused to admit it.
Meanwhile, 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." the black fighter 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 wearing a dull T-shirt but a girl wearing dresses; 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, browsing through the armory, and answered, "It would've been destroyed by Barbey if I didn't steal it."
"Just take everything," Adea broke into the conversation after exiting her fantasy, "We'll need everything to fight against—"
"I will not fight Barbey," Haston Tale abruptly declared, cutting off Adea's sentence.
Hurried toward Haston, Adea raised her voice with her temper, "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? What's wrong with an evil guy gaining immortality? We can always lock him up," Haston shouted. The question brought a long silence to the room. Haston and Adea's eyes locked on each other. Adea's eyes gradually softened as she cleaned her anger.
Eventually, Adea opened her mouth and spoke in both patience and stillness, "Do you understand what immortality is?"
"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, yet Staker took over instantly, "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. He did not do this often. His eyes widened, and his eyebrows pinched. A few puffs of air escaped his mouth. Such expression of wrath concerned Haki. It stopped her from responding immediately.
"Correct," Staker answered like usual.
"Not really," Haki carefully said while shifting her eyes constantly between the two men to avoid provoking any of them. She had a clear understanding that infighting was not what they needed.