“Gandolf’s on the bench ‘cause of his ‘can’t hurt humans’ Restrictor, so it’ll be okay!”
“What’ll be okay, boy?! No way in hell am I gonna be okay!”
The kids hurled the rocks nonstop at the fuming Ouka who took advantage of a sudden turn in the rail to hop back on Dram’s back. Dram started running in a zigzag pattern to avoid the rocks. He picked up speed and drew nearer at an even faster rate than before, while simultaneously blurring as a target.
“Oh my gosh! This is bad! How can we hit that thing?!”
“It’s okay, Lovel, I’m pretty sure we’re coming up on—” Cliff glanced in the direction they were headed and spotted a five-meter-deep trench intersecting the rail. Only a small bridge spanned the gap. Cliff lobbed a rock at the middle of the bridge once the railcar had safely passed over it.
Dram easily sidestepped the projectile, but his legs went right off the bridge in the process.
“Huh? Eh? NO FREAKIN’ WAAAAAAAAAAAY!” Ouka let out with a death shriek.
Dram plummeted into the trench’s depths. A loud boom resounded from below a second later.
Lovel stared back, worried. “…Think he’s alive?”
“It is kinda worrying. Maybe I overdid it…?”
They heard an angry bellow echo up from the bottom of the trench as Cliff said that.
“You evil little brats have SERIOUSLY pissed me off! I’m gonna catch you good and whip your butts!”
It was literally a malicious voice wrung from the bottom of a pit. Cliff shuddered.
“H-He’s angry! He’s super angry!”
“He shouldn’t yell at us so much. He’s the one who decided to chase us.” Lovel pursed her lips. At that unfortunate moment, the railcar arrived at its final stop and decelerated to a halt where they disembarked, Gandolf a step behind Cliff. They weren’t far enough from Ouka to feel safe.
Erie quickly scanned their surroundings and offered, “The building I’ve been staying in is near here! Let’s hide there!”
“Nice save, Erie!”
“I’m all for that!”
It was only a matter of time before Ouka wormed his way out of the trench. Cliff and Lovel headed for Erie’s building before he could manage that.
The building was an abandoned refinery on the outskirts of the mine that everyone seemed to have forgotten about. Inside was spacious, dark, and devoid of people—the perfect spot to hide.
They heard Dram's feet pounding against the ground in the distance. So far, they were in the clear—Ouka hadn’t noticed the building the kids were hiding in. From the sounds of his footsteps, they could tell he was running around blindly.
“Phew… Want to wait here until that guy goes away at least?” Cliff whispered. Lovel nodded, but Erie meekly dipped her head.
“I’m so sorry. In my attempt to warn you about that man, I ended up bringing him right to you, Lovel…”
“Don’t worry about it one bit! If you hadn’t warned us, we woulda just waited for Ouka to come back and gotten apprehended on the spot. I’m super grateful to you.”
“Same here,” Cliff said, “Thanks a lot.”
Erie hung her head, her cheeks flushing red. Cliff noticed she seemed to be a bit of an introvert. Maybe Heath was one too, because he kept his head down and didn’t say much.
Cliff smiled wryly and asked Erie about a certain detail that had been bugging him. “By the way, Erie, why is that guy after you anyway?”
“I’m not too sure why, but he seems to be trying to steal back this cube,” Erie answered, pulling an object from her pocket. It was a black cube.
Cliff and Lovel were shocked to see it.
“This looks identical to the one Lovel has!”
“I-It does! But the color’s different…?”
Lovel pulled the red cube from her chest pocket. The three of them exchanged glances and carefully compared the cubes to each other.
Erie’s cube felt smooth and was made of an obsidian-like mineral. The letters spelling “emeth” were engraved in its surface. Meanwhile, Lovel’s cube was red. Though it featured the same “emeth,” other ancient letters inscribed its surface in succinct rows, and a tiny fissure ran along one of its edges.
“Hm…? Is there something inside?!” Cliff took Lovel’s cube from her hand and intently examined the fissure.
On closer inspection, the inside of the red cube was hollow. A black cube, just like Erie’s, was installed inside. In other words, the red shell deftly concealed its black contents, creating a two-tier cube.
Lovel seemed to realize what was inside as well. “Are there two types of cubes…? Red cubes and black cubes with different purposes?” she asked, dubious.
“The Torah Church seems to be after both,” Cliff said. “They must be valuable.”
“For sure. Erie, where’d you get ahold of this black cube?”
Erie wore a grim expression. “I stole it from a man called Jair. He used it to create Golems.”
“Jair?! I stole the red cube from him too!”
“That means both cubes originated from Jair then… But what in the world are they?” Erie muttered.
“You don’t need to know,” a sudden voice answered from the dark.
“…?!”
Cliff shoved the red cube in his pocket on the spur of the moment. He whirled around toward the voice.
For a moment, he thought it was Ouka, but it wasn’t. At first look, there was a shadowy figure standing in the refinery’s entryway. The shadow emerged from the darkness illuminated by the moonlight spilling in through the windows.
His white face looked like porcelain; his black hair was darker than night. His equally jet-black eyes held them captive. And gripped in his hand was a sledgehammer used for smashing ore.
“JAIR!” Lovel and Erie shouted at the same time. But Cliff reacted a different way.
“Eh? Jair…him? How?” Cliff knew who it was. He was very familiar with the face of the man they called Jair. “M-Master Roche?!”
“What?!” Lovel’s eyes went round.