Seeing Haruki Aizawa appear before her, Julis's face filled with a look of pure disbelief. She had been certain he was trapped, or worse.
"You... how are you here?" she stammered.
Silas Norman was equally stunned. His jaw dropped as he stared at the mountain of scrap Haruki had left in his wake. He couldn't wrap his head around it. He had sent a specialized squadron to intercept Haruki—puppets layered with physical damage resistance that should have made them impervious to any standard blade.
"How could you have broken through?" Silas hissed, his glasses glinting with a mix of fear and confusion.
"You seem to think your scrap metal is tougher than my edge," Haruki said, raising Onikiri. His gaze was as cold as a winter night. "Unfortunately for you, 'toughness' is a relative concept. To my blade, your alloys are no different than clay."
"Your blade... I see! You used the Ser-Veresta, didn't you!" Silas shouted, a look of realization crossing his face. "I forgot you took that cursed thing. It generates enough heat to melt my armor from the inside out! But listen to me, Aizawa—the Ser-Veresta is an energy hog! You might have cleared the first wave, but can you handle a real army?!"
Silas snapped his fingers twice.
From the shadows of the rafters and the dark corners of the construction site, more Al-D units began to descend. Dozens of them. Then hundreds.
Julis watched in horror as the numbers swelled. This wasn't just a squad; it was a battalion.
"Hohoho!" Silas laughed, his confidence returning as the sheer volume of his forces filled the courtyard. "This is my absolute limit! One hundred and twenty-eight combat puppets, all synced to my will! Not even the previous Festa champions could survive being swarmed by this many targets at once!"
"Dammit..." Julis gritted her teeth, trying to force herself to stand despite the wound in her leg.
Haruki, however, didn't move. He looked at Silas with the same expression one might give a clown performing a mediocre trick.
"You're Silas, right?" Haruki asked quietly. "Tell me... when did I ever say I was using the Ser-Veresta?"
"What?!"
The sheer weight of Haruki's presence made Silas stumble back an involuntary step. He frowned, his face twisting with irritation. "Don't lie to me! Without a Pure Stellar Lux, there is no physical way to cut through that reinforced plating! It's scientifically impossible!"
"Impossible is just a word for things you aren't strong enough to do," Haruki replied calmly. "In reality, everything is a matter of probability. And absolute power has a way of forcing that probability to 1."
"...Big talk! Let's see you back it up! Kill him!"
Silas snapped his fingers again. The legion of puppets raised their Lux weapons—rifles, axes, and swords—and surged forward in a coordinated wave.
Haruki didn't reach for the greatsword on his back. He didn't even flare his internal energy. He stood in a relaxed stance, holding the simple Varanium katana.
Then, he moved.
SHING!
To Julis and Silas, Haruki simply ceased to exist.
A violent gale swept through the courtyard. Haruki became a blur of motion, a dance of steel that left only sparks and severed limbs in its wake. Every second, three or four puppets were reduced to junk. His blade didn't "hit" them; it passed through them as if they were made of mist.
CLANG! CLANK! SHRED!
Silas stood frozen, his eyes darting frantically, trying to track the Sword Ghost. He couldn't. Even with his Dante-enhanced senses, Haruki was moving faster than his brain could process.
"How?! HOW!?" Silas shrieked. "That's just a standard blade! Why is it cutting through my masterpieces?!"
"The blade isn't the weapon," Haruki's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once. "I am the weapon. Your armor is hard, but it doesn't have a soul. To a true master, there is nothing that cannot be cut."
This was the realm of Absolute Transience—a state Haruki had reached through his obsessive training. When a swordsman's intent reaches its peak, the physical properties of the target become irrelevant. He wasn't just cutting metal; he was cutting the very space the metal occupied.
Within minutes, the "army" was gone. Silas stood alone in a graveyard of twisted steel.
"You... you... you...!"
Silas staggered back, his face pale and slick with sweat. He looked at the wreckage of his 128 "invincible" puppets, his mind unable to compute the destruction.
Haruki walked toward him, his boots clicking softly on the concrete. He wasn't even breathing heavily.
Julis sat against the wall, her jaw agape. She knew Haruki was strong, but this was beyond anything she had ever imagined. He hadn't used Star Pulse. He hadn't used magic. He had dismantled a battalion with pure, terrifying technique.
How? she wondered. How much blood and sweat did it take to reach that level?
She couldn't know that Haruki had spent every waking second of his life—across multiple worlds—pursuing this single goal. He was the culmination of genius and madness.
"Stay away!" Silas screamed, his composure finally breaking.
He lunged for a control panel, intending to trigger an emergency self-destruct for the building, but Haruki didn't give him the chance.
Haruki closed his eyes, focusing on the "vibrations" of the remaining energy in the air.
"Wave Cut!"
Haruki snapped his wrist. A crescent of pure kinetic energy—a focused "wave" of compressed air—shot from the tip of his blade. It didn't have the raw power of his Greatsword strikes, but it was fast.
THWACK!
The wave hit Silas's hand before he could touch the panel, the force of the impact knocking him off his feet.
Haruki blurred forward, closing the distance in a single leap. Before Silas could even let out a breath, the cold edge of Onikiri was resting against his throat.
"End of the line," Haruki said.
"WAIT! I surrender! Please! I was just following orders! Allekant paid me! I'll tell you everything!" Silas wailed, his eyes wide with pathetic terror.
Haruki didn't blink. He looked at the boy with a detached, clinical indifference. He focused his internal energy, preparing a technique to silence the traitor.
"Neutralizing Wave!"
Haruki flicked his blade upward. Even though he didn't physically touch Silas, a sudden, upward surge of gravitational energy lifted the boy into the air.
CRA-CRACK!
Silas felt as if he were being caught in a conceptual grinder. Every nerve in his body flared with a numbing, agonizing pressure. He let out one final, ragged scream before his eyes rolled back and he slumped into unconsciousness.
"It's over," Haruki said.
The silence of the construction site returned.
"Haruki..." Julis whispered, her voice trembling.
He looked back at her. "Can you stand now? We need to call the authorities."
As he moved to help her, his student terminal chimed. He checked the screen: Claudia Enfield.
"You seem to have handled the situation, Haruki-kun," her voice rang out through the speaker, sounding suspiciously smug.
"Were you watching?" Haruki asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Let's just say I have a very attentive 'eye' in the field. I've already dispatched the Guard. They'll be there in five minutes to collect our wayward student."
Haruki frowned. He extended his Sense of Fluctuation to its limit, searching for the observer. He scanned the dust, the rubble, the air—and then he found it.
In the deepest shadows of a nearby pillar, a figure was crouched. A boy with orange hair and a camera. Eishiro Yabuki.
The boy's presence was so suppressed it was practically zero. If Haruki hadn't been actively hunting for a signature, he would have missed him entirely.
Yabuki offered a small, nervous wave and a grin before vanishing into the darkness like a ghost.
Interesting, Haruki thought. This school is full of rats.
He put the phone away and walked over to Julis, scooping her up once more. This time, she didn't even try to argue. She simply clung to him, her head resting against his chest as the sirens began to wail in the distance.
The assassin was caught. The partnership was sealed. And the Phoenix Festa was finally within reach.
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