CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2
-
I
-
He’d already slain three opponents: a parasitic organism that came back with tougher armor every time it was cut down, a hallucination beast that cast an illusory corridor leading straight into its maw, and a flesh-eating virus that tried to enter the Hunter’s DNA and devour him on a genetic level. Each and every one of them had fallen before D.
“I suppose that’s the last of them,” the hoarse voice said, sounding rather tired of the whole affair. Its nerves must have been made of stern stuff, because the tiny mouth on the hand’s palm yawned. “We’re finally coming to the exit, but there’s one thing bugging me.”
Though its beady eyes looked up at D thoughtfully, the Hunter ignored them as he advanced coolly.
Spitting a remark of disgust so that D wouldn’t hear it, the left hand continued somewhat obstinately, “You know, everything you’ve slain up until now has sent out a kind of message just as it gave up the ghost. Assuming it was about you, it’d have to be about your strength—in other words, they threw themselves at you just so they could tell Valcua what kind of skill you’ve got.”
As D continued to disregard it, his left hand finally started to sulk, snorting, “Hmph!” before falling silent.
“Powering himself up, is he?” D remarked.
“Don’t try buddying up to me now,” the hand replied, still in a perfectly foul mood.
“After the way he fought earlier, I could still beat him,” D said, baiting the trap.
“Ha! Are you soft in the head?” his left hand sneered, springing back to life. “He’s the freaking Ultimate Noble! There’s no way of knowing if even you could take him. Plus, if I’m reading this right—”
“No rest for the wicked, eh?”
“Damned straight. He’s got that magic sword, and if he’s as good with it as you are with a blade, he’ll murder you. Worse yet, if he’s gotten even more power, you don’t stand a chance. We’d better get out of this labyrinth quick and find where Valcua’s hiding himself. Before it’s too late.”
D turned the corner. A glow enveloped the figure in black.
“It’s dawn, is it?” the left hand asked, seemingly blinded by the light. “Well, time to go find Valcua.”
D looked around. He was in a bizarre and spacious chamber. In it were arrangements of stone slabs that were triangular, rectangular, and other strange shapes.
“Looks like that won’t be necessary,” said the Hunter.
“What?”
D was gazing ahead to the left. A figure in a golden robe stood without moving. In his right hand, Glencalibur glowed with a disturbing sheen.
There was no need to say another word. D glided closer without making a sound. Valcua raised his longsword to strike.
“Watch yourself—from that stance, it looks like he aims to finish this with one shot!”
The hoarse voice sailed through the air. The blow would come down on the motionless Valcua from directly overhead.
D slashed through space. Though Valcua remained motionless, he wavered like a heat shimmer. Just as D touched back down, he made a leap back.
“Damn!” the left hand groaned. It realized that if Valcua had swung his blade down at that point, they couldn’t have dodged it. Even if the Hunter had parried it, his sword probably would’ve snapped.
“Fall back—this clown’s gotten stronger!”
This only seemed to give D more impetus as he charged forward. From a mighty thrust the blade scraped the ground, rising to strike at the right side of his opponent’s neck—and while each blow was on the mark, Valcua moved like a ghost to parry them all. It was unbelievable footwork and twisting.
Likewise dodging a horizontal slash to the right, D slammed on the brakes. As the Hunter tried to right his slumping pose, Valcua came right at him.
“Don’t!”
The cry rang out in response to the thrust made a moment later at Valcua, who seemed to be inviting it. The fully extended sword robbed D of his stability. The Hunter was left in no position to dodge or parry when Glencalibur was finally brought down on the nape of his neck.
-
“Outstanding!” Kima declared from behind him.
Valcua didn’t respond, his shoulders heaving as he struggled to take a single deep breath. If he didn’t do something, it felt like his heart would explode—yet nothing happened.
“That’s the strength of D when he reached the end of the labyrinth. And you were able to just stand there and dispatch him with a single blow. The only way to describe that is remarkable.”
Raising Glencalibur, Valcua returned it to its sheath. Doing even this made his arm feel like it was about to fall off.
What an opponent that young man in black was! Though Kima spoke of dispatching him with a single blow, if the two of them had crossed blades one more time, it was probably the Ultimate Noble’s head that would’ve left its shoulders. What’s more—
“He has yet to face his final opponent. His true strength remains unknown. Do you think he could beat me the way I am now, Kima?”
“That all depends on you, milord.”
“The Ultimate Noble has pushed his body to the limits,” Valcua said, digging his fingernails into his own chest. He coughed, and bright blood splashed around his feet. That was what it meant to be strengthened.
Wiping his lips with his fist, Valcua whipped around.
“Beyond a doubt, the power this Hunter possesses comes from him. Which would mean that he and I are—ah, that’s where things get interesting.”
Halting there, he stared at the figure in the red robe and said, “If necessary, I’ll split your head open and search your brain. However, at the moment I have something else to amuse me. Look at what has become of Valcua, even if it is at my own request. I don’t suppose the Sacred Ancestor will punish me for having a little fun with this.”
Once Valcua had gone, Kima was left alone with an expression on his face that defied description as he murmured, “I believe that if all of this were to be erased from the very start, it would be best for both of them—my present lord and my former lord. Let the price of my life be payment for overstepping my bounds.”
-
D was silent. If he hadn’t already said he knew this was the way to the exit, anyone traveling with him would have been nervous.
It was unclear how much time had elapsed, but further down the passageway a golden coffin came into view.
“Interesting—maybe this is the last assassin?” the left hand whispered.
When he was ten feet shy of the coffin, D halted.
“Hey! This is . . .” the hoarse voice exclaimed, its fear evident. “It’s his aura. A fitting final obstacle for this labyrinth. But that sure is one hell of a plan to come up with. Leave it to good old Daedalus!”
That was the legendary craftsman who had constructed King Minos’s labyrinth. He also built a flying machine using feathers, but when his son Icarus used it, the boy flew too close to the sun and plummeted to his death when the wax holding the feathers melted.
The lid of the coffin opened slowly. Once it’d finished, a shadowy figure sat up. Under the circumstances, that was hardly strange. However, the mere act of sitting up sent out a howling air that was terribly weird and unholy.
“Oh, crap!” the left hand cried, pulling its features back in.
“D!” the figure said, and now he stood beside the coffin. It was unclear what he looked like or what he was wearing. He was just a black shadow. However, even if D’s vision didn’t serve, his other superhuman senses perceived the figure towering before him like a mountain.
“It’s been so long since we last met. Perhaps we just needed a suitable place?”
D kicked off the ground. As he swung his sword down, it was like a gale-force wind, but the figure was now standing behind D, swaying.
-
II
-
Not even turning around, D made a backward thrust by his left side.
Though he was stabbed, the figure didn’t fall.
Pulling his blade back, D turned to face his opponent.
“So, is this your land?” he asked.
“The ruler’s name is Valcua.”
“I hear you banished him into space, but let him bring this kingdom with him. The same kingdom that bears your mark a little too plainly. Who is he?”
The shadowy figure shook violently—perhaps this showed the turbulence of his mind. A pale hand reached out from the shadow’s chest—his right hand. The great ring on his little finger gave off gleams of gold. The back of his hand had a single tuft of black hair, which lent a touch of ferocity to his aristocratic elegance. From the third joint up his forefinger moved, beckoning the Hunter.
Suddenly, D was beyond the earth’s atmosphere. His remaining oxygen swelled his lungs to the point of bursting, and his blood boiled.
“Can you make the cut?” the left hand inquired in a voice he shouldn’t have been able to hear. “Valcua did it. We’ve got no earth, water, fire, or air. But this might be your best chance. Even without a Glencalibur, you of all people could probably do it.”
It was unclear what D thought of that inaudible voice, but he raised his blade. Watching over him was nothing save the pitch-black void of space and the stars of the Milky Way a thousand light-years distant.
D’s eyes were ablaze, burning with the color of blood. Not saying a word, D swung his right arm. Simultaneously, his lungs exploded.
-
The last scrap of the sun stained the distant plain a deep red as it sank, and when it was gone, Matthew’s lips twisted into a grin. Valcua’s will still remained in his brain, and it was telling him what he should do next. It wanted him to take command of all the members of the survey party, and it must’ve had some way of making that possible. The destruction of the guardroids and all information pertaining to the survey party had been hidden from Braujou. The computer was fed data that suggested Sue had gone out on an ordinary walk.
Before Braujou awakened, the boy was to go outside and use Valcua’s will to bully the survey-party members into servitude. He had no instructions beyond that.
Getting out of the vehicle was easy. Everything was controlled by the computer, and as long as the computer was fooled, they could do whatever they wished—this was undoubtedly the doing of Valcua’s will. All the boy had to do was reach for the doorknob, and it simply unlocked. The reason he’d had Sue ask Braujou for permission to go outside during the day was because they wanted things to appear as normal as possible.
Today, he’d made a lot of progress in brainwashing Sue. The day when his foolish younger sister would become a vassal of Grand Duke Valcua couldn’t be far off.
Taking care to muffle the sound of his footsteps, Matthew ran toward the survey party and opened the door to the same vehicle they’d entered before. He was greeted by glowing red eyes and hungry fangs.
“It’s a human being.”
“A human!”
Their voices, now nearly those of beasts, crept through the darkness that held sway over the vehicle’s interior.
“Don’t get worked up, now!” the boy said, sounding worked up himself. He’d noticed that the group was looking at him as nothing but prey.
The men stopped. Already clinging to the walls and ceiling, their pale hands reached out for Matthew from above and below.
“I’ve received instructions from Grand Duke Valcua. I have a matter to discuss with you,” said the boy.
“What kind of . . . matter?” one of the fiends asked as they looked at each other.
“From this day forward, all of you will become servants of Grand Duke Valcua.”
“Oh—and who the hell is that?” another one asked.
Matthew became furious. “You bastards have become creatures of the night and you don’t even know the grand duke’s name? What idiots! I’ll have to punish you immediately for your insolence.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” one of them laughed loudly. “Ha, ha, ha . . . Oh, ho, ho, ho!”
Suddenly his voice and its laugh became that of a woman. Matthew was stunned—not by the strangeness of this, but by the fact that it sounded familiar.
“But—but you’re . . .”
“How pathetic are the creatures known as humans.”
Now Matthew understood.
From behind the pale-faced men, a Noblewoman in a white dress suddenly took shape.
“How foolish of you to forget me or my name—but before I punish you for that, you would do well to remember me. I am Duchess Miranda.” Walking easily through the cramped vehicle toward the speechless Matthew, the lovely Noblewoman added with a haughty laugh, “And these men are my servants, one and all. I won’t allow them to be commandeered.”
A pale hand reached out.
Perhaps it was due to Valcua’s will that Matthew was able to jump through the door. Nearly tripping over his own feet, he backed away five or six steps before bumping into a thick tree trunk and stopping.
The pale Noblewoman and her men alighted from the vehicle. Red embers glowed in the darkness.
“Where are you going? Didn’t you come here to scout my underlings?” Miranda called out to the boy.
“Quite an interesting discussion you’re having,” said a voice that called to mind a lion’s roar, raining down on Matthew from the tree above him. The voice resembled Count Braujou’s.
Just as the boy was about to bound away, he was snagged by the collar and hoisted high into the air, giving him a panoramic view of the wasteland.
“I have only one thing to say to you,” Count Braujou informed Matthew in a tone that crushed down through the night as the boy dangled from the Nobleman’s hand. “I’ve been following every move you’ve made. I also know that Valcua’s brain is inside yours. The only reason I gave you free rein was to learn what you were plotting. I was going to let you run a bit more, but unfortunately the situation no longer allows that. I may have to get rough, but I shall show you things through something other than Valcua’s eyes. Miranda, would you be so good as to overlook the commandeering incident?”
“I suppose I can, given our relationship.” When she spoke, Miranda smiled in such a manner it was plain she was hiding something. “In return, will you entrust me with the task of correcting the boy?”
For a second, hints of surprise and displeasure skimmed across that gigantic face, but they immediately gave way to a tremendous smile as the count replied, “I suspect you may prove a tad harsh, but they say the best medicine tastes the worst. I shall leave it to you.”
“Let go of me!” Matthew shouted. “Let go! Let go of me now! I’m not plotting anything!”
“You don’t know when to give up. I suppose I could make you one of my followers, coarse as you are. I proposed that once already.”
“Do something to him that will make him wish you had instead. That should suffice.”
“Very well,” Miranda said, bringing a dainty hand to her lips and laughing haughtily.
It was at this point that Count Braujou looked up into the sky. A woman’s voice had just echoed in his ears, telling him, “Sue has escaped.”
“What?” the Nobleman bellowed, his words shaking the darkness and changing not only the expression Matthew wore, but those of Miranda and her lackeys as well. “How—how on earth did she manage that?”
“I’m terribly sorry. Some external consciousness forced my network to experience electronic hallucinations. It seemed as if she were in her room. Please forgive me.”
“No, this is unpardonable!” the giant roared, kicking at the ground. A great clod of dirt landed at Miranda’s feet. Matthew’s body followed it. “He’s all yours, Miranda. Work him over thoroughly, and leave him purely human again. I’m going in search of the girl.”
-
Sue raced blindly across the steel plain that stretched on without end. Though it was level ground and she was running, she was still just a girl on foot. There was only so much distance she could cover. And she would be exhausted long before that.
Sue ran on calmly. Another personality had slipped into her head, and it seemed to have altered her metabolic functions. She could keep running forever—and Sue glowed with joy.
There was only one reason why she’d fled Count Braujou’s car: Matthew had been caught. It was only a matter of time before his brainwashing of Sue was uncovered. Therefore, Matthew had instructed her to flee if it came to that.
In just a single day, Sue had been brainwashed to an incredible degree. She had complete confidence that she would escape. As evidence of this, she had only to look at the countless pale lights ahead, rolling toward her like a cloud of smoke. To her rear there was the sound of an engine. And that was far closer.
Never giving up, she kept moving, but the girl mouthed a prayer that was both unthinkable and impossible: “Help me, O great Valcua!”
It was at that instant that a streak of light from the sky struck the car. The girl’s eyes were seared as midday sprang to life in the darkness of night, and when they finally regained their sight, what they found was the halted vehicle trapped in a pale-blue cage of electromagnetic waves.
Her relief gave her the strength to run as the source of the glowing points—cylinders each equipped with a single yellow eye—swept by her, their innumerable tentacles swaying back and forth all the while. Having no time to watch what transpired between them and the car, Sue ran for all she was worth, but then her body rose into the air without warning. One of the cylinders had used a trio of tentacles to scoop her up before shooting off for the far reaches of the plain at incredible speed.
Sue smiled.
Who could’ve predicted it would come to this? The same girl D had defended, Braujou had rescued, and Miranda had protected was now all too happy to run headlong into a deadly trap.
Her fears forgotten during the smooth flight, Sue began to drop off to sleep. Suddenly, she was violently jostled by a series of tremors. When she opened her eyes, they were filled with the rapidly approaching ground.
Dropping at a sharp angle, the cylinder barely managed to regain its composure and glided down to the steely terrain. It was faithful to its duty to the very last, setting Sue down on the ground after it came to a stop.
Escaping the tentacles as they opened, Sue was wary of possible explosions as she moved away, watching the fallen cylinder and the bizarre tree that towered behind it.
A woman stood between the cylinder and the tree. Her lips pursed the tiniest bit, and the faint humming that came from them like a night breeze crept into Sue’s ears.
“You’re—”
“Callas the Diva,” the bewitching singer said by way of introduction.
“Why—why did you do this?” She was talking about the cylinder. As far as Sue was concerned, both of them were on the same side, acting on Valcua’s wishes to return her to his castle.
“Bringing the two of you back to the grand duke is my job. It’s hardly something to entrust to an android.”
At this point, Sue could’ve been considered one of Callas’s compatriots. Yet as the beauty closed on her in her alluring manner, it was true and undeniable horror that paralyzed Sue.
-
III
-
Halting but a step away, Callas arched one willowy eyebrow a bit as she stared at the girl.
“You’re smiling, aren’t you? Is there something funny about this? Are you having a good time?”
“It’s okay now,” Sue replied. “I don’t have to be afraid of any of you anymore. I’ll be happy to go see the grand duke.”
Sue’s face was colored by a strange glow. The girl’s complexion reflected the gleam Callas’s eyes gave off as she stared at Sue.
Letting all the tension drain from her body, she smiled at Sue. “And to what do we owe this change of heart, I wonder?”
“My brother—Matt told me all about it. All about the grand duke’s vision, and about how wonderful his world is. It all made such great sense.”
Sue’s voice was level, her tone smooth—like she was conversing with a friend.
Turning her eyes toward the ground, the diva said softly, “Is that so? That’s wonderful. Now, would you be so kind as to listen to what I have to say, too?”
“Sure—but out here?”
“Yes. Out here.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
Tilting her head a little to one side, Callas began to speak.
Off in the distance, the androids and Count Braujou were probably locked in deadly battle.
-
“Five thousand years ago, my mother was a soprano in an opera troupe that traveled the Frontier.”
The people who dwelled on the Frontier were positively starved for recreation. The Nobility had their grand parties and balls, but the people had only seasonal festivals and troupes that traveled from village to village to relieve the depression and tedium of their daily lives. One of the divas of that nameless opera troupe was Callas’s mother, and on a visit to a remote village, she caught the eye of Valcua, who gave her a rather insistent invitation to visit his manse. At the time, Callas was only three years old, yet she was already quite popular and the highest soprano in the troupe.
“From that day forward, my mother and I remained at the grand duke’s mansion. I heard the rest of the performers had been handsomely paid and sent on their way—it was only much later that I learned they’d all, in fact, been slain. The grand duke preferred our voices to our blood. Every night, he would listen, enraptured, to mother and me singing. In starkly moonlit gardens, in great halls that held only the three of us, in the grand duke’s bedroom. But the passage of time that was meaningless to him was an all-too-apparent foe to us. The wrinkles were multiplying on my mother’s face, and her singing voice was losing some of its zing. In time, all that would remain for us was the same fate the rest of the troupe had met. Day by day, my mother grew thinner and weaker, perhaps because she could read the grand duke’s fickle mind more plainly than anyone. When we found favor with the grand duke, we seemed to frolic in heaven. But the knowledge of the fate that awaited us was more than my mother could bear. And so she came up with a proposal to ensure the grand duke’s opinion of us wouldn’t change.”
As the mother’s beauty and voice faltered, Valcua shifted his affection to Callas, whom she’d raised into a beautiful jewel of womanhood. The first night her mother had entered Valcua’s mansion and sworn she would sing for him alone for the rest of her days, she’d extracted a promise from the grand duke. He was never to give the kiss of the Nobility to Callas. She must’ve been filled with mettle and maternal love when she struck that bargain.
“Please keep my daughter and me with you—me until I die, and my daughter forever more,” her mother had suggested.
Twenty years had passed.
“One night, the grand duke crept into my bedroom and gave me the kiss.”
However, it was a strange phenomenon that awaited Callas. She didn’t thirst for blood or loathe the sunlight. She didn’t even succumb to madness like so many other victims.
As she wallowed in her despair, Valcua told her, “I’m able to do incredible things. I alone. You will not be my servant, but you will live so long you shall forget all about your human life. However, it won’t be forever, and you shall require the aid of some unholy devices. In return, your voice shall have a power more wondrous than any song that ever came from a human throat.”
Presently her mother died, and Callas buried her with all due ceremony. Afterward, Callas continued her days in peace, elegance, and unimaginable loneliness.
All that came to an end about a hundred years later, the instant the grand duke decided to fight the Sacred Ancestor. Whether it was during his deadly conflicts with fellow Nobles or in the universe-spanning war against the aliens, up until that point there hadn’t been a time when Callas wasn’t by the grand duke’s side, filling the air with her song. However, the opponent the grand duke now faced wouldn’t offer him even a moment’s respite. One after another, Valcua’s vassals were slain—struck down by assassins. In response, the grand duke selected seven of his strongest retainers for a new unit that would guard him against assassination. Callas was chosen to be one of them due to the power of her song.
“I don’t know how many Nobles or humans my songs brought death to. Those were not pleasant days.”
At some point, Callas had circled around behind Sue. Though her hands rested on the girl’s shoulders and a breath like ice blew over her lobe and into her ear, Sue wasn’t scared. She was one of them now.
The second that breath became a song, an acute pain shot through every inch of the girl, for Callas had just sung, Pain, make your rounds.
“Stop it! Why are you doing this?”
Sue tried to escape, but she was held in place with fiendish might as Callas whispered to her in a normal voice, “There’s something I’d like to ask you. How do you think I feel about the grand duke?”
“That’s silly . . . Surely you must love such a—”
“I hate him,” Callas said softly. “The man who turned me into a killer, the man who forced a merciful mother to sell out her own daughter, the man who never noticed my love for him, or if he did notice never returned even an iota of those feelings—what else could I do but hate him?”
Now revealed, the emotions that had smoldered in her heart of ice bore down on Sue like a wildfire.
“I thought you were just like me,” Callas whispered in the ear of the girl whose fears had been revived. “Thought you were like us in the old days—five thousand years ago. I thought you were a human scared of the Nobility and unable to do anything but scamper about. And as you fled, I thought you’d hate the Nobility more than anyone.”
“That . . . was a long time ago.”
Delivered in robotic fashion, Sue’s reply made Callas grin.
“A long time ago? A long time, as in five thousand years? You were a foe of the Nobility until the day before yesterday! And all it took was some persuasion on the part of your older brother to make you love the grand duke—that I can’t stand for. No matter what the grand duke may do to me later, I’m going to deal with you myself right here. Now, listen to my song.”
The deadly words were borne on a melody that tried to fill the girl’s trembling ear.
Just before it could, Callas felt a pall of terror take over her face and turned to look.
D was standing there. The hem of his coat fluttered in the night breeze that had just started to blow, and the handsome features reflected in his foe’s gaze were enough to make even the moon pale in comparison. And then he began to walk toward Callas and Sue with bewitching strides.
-
Almost everything had been taken care of. Artificial lightning bolts of several hundred million volts hammered relentlessly at the car, and the androids’ laser cannons blasted at Braujou and the survey party, but they didn’t budge at all, meeting the attack with the weapons in the car and monstrous strength, and in the blink of an eye their mechanical assailants had been reduced to scrap.
“Ha, ha! Valcua’s stupid octopuses! Did they actually think they could do anything to Count Braujou’s car?” the count jeered.
By his side, Duchess Miranda spat, “Octopuses? How uncouth.”
This time, the beautiful woman had been the only one to refrain from fighting, but now she was out of the vehicle and looking over the sprawling android wreckage.
“Long ago, a battle this size would’ve left the entire plain reeking of blood, but now all that drifts in the air is the stink of melted circuits. What a lamentable age we live in.”
“There are no survivors. Well, let’s go look for Sue. Back to the car,” Braujou told the former survey-party members, who bared their fangs.
But a second later, a strange phenomenon occurred. A gigantic, club-wielding arm reached out of empty space, and before anyone had even noticed it, the gale it whipped up had sent thuds and vermilion flying as half their number dropped to the ground with heads split open.
“Oh, who do we have here?” the count asked, sounding delighted.
After the five surviving survey-party members had fallen back, a crimson mist danced in space, and then a giant appeared from thin air.
After taking a glance at the bloodied club he carried and the animal hides he wore, Braujou asked, “You’re Seurat, aren’t you?”
He just wanted to be sure.
One giant nodded to the other. “Indeed . . . I . . . am.”
“If you’re one of Valcua’s seven, I can slay you now, and that will only leave the woman known as Callas. Now, to take care of another small fry . . .”
Whipping out his long spear, Count Braujou started to walk over to him.
“Have at you!”
The count made a jab with his spear. It was somehow gentle, and yet no one could’ve dodged it, and any attempt to parry it would’ve been knocked aside.
Batting the spear away with his club, Seurat pounced. After going about a yard, his body leaned forward and to the right, and with the club in his hand, he crashed back to earth about fifteen feet away. Seurat hadn’t batted Braujou’s spear away—he’d been sent flying, but it was unclear if the gigantic assassin understood as much. However, he used all the spring in his body to leap up and hurl his club at Braujou.
Sneering at such a simplistic and primitive attack, Count Braujou knocked it aside, and then leveled his spear for a second assault. But his spear wasn’t there. Not realizing that all five fingers that had gripped it were broken, the count turned his gaze behind him and to the left. The look he gave to the weapon jabbed into the ground at an angle some twenty yards away was a strange one. He couldn’t believe it. No other creature in the world had ever attempted to best him with pure brute strength and actually succeeded.
Hurrying over to his weapon, he pulled it out and aimed the tip of it at Seurat once more. The other giant had already assumed a stance. The count did likewise. Now, it wasn’t electromagnetic waves that began to rise from the steely earth but rather a hunger to kill.
-
D brought his blade down on Callas’s head.
-
The count’s spear made a horizontal swipe toward the base of Seurat’s neck.
-
Before a control panel in a strange laboratory, Valcua suddenly looked up into space.
-
At that moment, the entire plain was struck by a deadly gleam of blistering heat and crushing weight. The asteroid missile launched by a technician in the Capital had slammed into the earth’s surface without warning.