Two hulking giants of steel leaped across the battlefield as quick as the wind, like birds of prey locked in mortal struggle. Two titans struggled for supremacy, while flashes of crimson illuminated the wasteland like flowers.
“Good show, Mr. Talion!” Hunlahan loudly declared. “Why, it’s like you’re not in a Gent at all!”
The power output of Ras’s Chasseur was not even a third of the Ahajia’s. Even just keeping up with the major general’s movements was an impressive feat.
“However,” he said, “it would reflect poorly on me if I struggled much longer. I suppose it’s time we brought this battle to a close.”
“Right you are, Major General. I think I’ve finally figured it out.”
“Figured what out, pray tell?”
All of a sudden, Hunlahan’s unit rocketed toward Ras’s at twice its usual speed. For any other unit, this would be a suicidal charge, but the Bergfried rendered the Ahajia’s advance unstoppable.
However, just then Hunlahan spotted an attack coming from an angle he didn’t expect. It was aimed directly at the unit’s head, imperceptible until it was nearly too late. Right at the very last second, the Bergfried activated, deflecting the crimson blade.
“A second sword?! So this is the trick you’ve been hiding up your sleeve, Mr. Talion!”
The sword was none other than the left hand of Ras’s Gent. From its outstretched fingers rose a blade of crimson light. Ras had used the Aura Edge, and the base was not a ceramic blade but the metal body of the Chasseur.
If the Bergfried had not activated, that single slash would have ended the duel. Nobody understood that better than Hunlahan.
“Very impressive…but tough luck, Mr. Talion. I shan’t be falling for the same trick twice.”
Hunlahan swung his two-handed sword, which Ras narrowly avoided.
Logically, striking with two Aura Edges instead of one doubled the base power, but even that wasn’t enough to breach the Ahajia’s defenses. Ras, on the other hand, was rapidly losing aurons due to having to keep two blades active. The performance of his unit was plummeting, and he could no longer move fast enough to do anything but defend.
“That’s all right,” said Ras. “I already learned everything I needed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Bergfried’s protection is made up of four shields,” he calmly stated. “Each shield is only large enough to cover a small portion of the Chasseur. Those shields move to block incoming attacks automatically, making it seem as if there’s one cohesive barrier enshrouding the whole unit, when there isn’t.”
“And what makes you think that?”
“Because it didn’t block the low-level aura attacks I fired. I’m assuming that’s because whatever system is in control of moving the shields determined those techniques weren’t a threat. But if the Bergfried really was impregnable, it wouldn’t let any attacks through at all.”
Ras had been disguising his auramancy techniques as distractions, fired in desperation, when in fact they were anything but. All the time, he had been testing—how strong of an attack caused the Bergfried to react? How many shots could it respond to at once?
“The fact of the matter is, it can’t block everything. Only four attacks at once. Any more than that, and it has to let something through. Isn’t that right, Major General?”
“Hmph. I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose you’re right,” replied Hunlahan in genuine admiration. “Still, how do you intend to take advantage of that? You’re close to shutdown already, and you need to come up with five attacks at the same time.”
“That I do. So would you mind doing me a favor and giving up now?”
Hunlahan froze for a moment. “Giving up? You expect me to throw in the towel here?”
“I know I may not act like it, but I do work for the empire now,” Ras said. “I’d hate to be responsible for damaging one of Central Command’s most treasured Chasseurs. They aren’t as easy to fix as the Gents, after all.”
“Is that so, now?” The line fell briefly silent, and then… “Bah-ha-ha- ha-ha!”
Howling laughter, esteem mixed with incredulity, echoed through the comms link.
“You truly are a gentlemanly sort, Mr. Talion! But don’t worry; the Ahajia has been with Central Command for many years, and our engineers are more than capable of putting all its parts back in the right place! If it’s a show you’ve got planned for us, then give us a show!”
“I’ll hold you to that, Major General.”
“Splendid! Let’s make this a battle to remember, Mr. Talion!”
Aurons began flooding out of Hunlahan’s bronze-plated Chasseur, the crimson light shimmering like a mirage. The next second, his two-handed sword started to glow.
“An Aura Edge!”
“Ha-ha-ha! I’m afraid it’s not quite as impressive as yours!” Hunlahan admitted. The particle-amplification device installed in his blade, plus the Ahajia’s four-core engine, simplified the feat considerably. Yet a decent level of auramancy skill was still required to keep the blade edge stable. Without it, the particles would instantly disperse.
“There’s no need to be humble, Major General. In fact, I should thank you. Now that you’ve given me a reason to go all out, Fon can’t complain if I use this technique.”
“Fon? You mean Fon Cigel? The Black Blade?”
A slight tremor entered Hunlahan’s voice. There wasn’t an aura knight in all the land who didn’t recognize the name—the name of one of the four most powerful swordsmen and -women on the continent. Hunlahan had never even suspected that Ras had trained at her hand until now.
The Gent-23 lowered its sword. Both of Ras’s Aura Edges dissolved, and the particles making up those blades of light disappeared back inside the machine’s core. It was the same technique Ras had used in his battle against Custer, only with two crucial differences.
The first was that this time, Ras had no need to recover his particles. In the time he spent talking to Hunlahan, his unit’s auron levels had already returned to full capacity.
The second was that Ras had dispersed two Aura Edges.
The amount of aurons stored in both blades of light, combined with the brimming auron batteries of Ras’s Chasseur, created an instantaneous concentration of particles far beyond what a single Gent could contain.
Ras called upon this dense concentration to unleash his next Over Art. The crimson shroud of his Chasseur flickered as a new technique was born.
A set of boomerang-shaped Aura Edges appeared at the Gent’s back, making the Chasseur resemble a six-winged angel. These wings were made of aura, and they were sharp enough to cut through steel.
“The Black Arts of Fon Cigel!!”
“This one’s called Seraphic Blade. Let’s see how impregnable that Chasseur really is, Major General.”
All six wings closed simultaneously around Hunlahan’s unit. With no hope of dodging an attack from six different angles, Hunlahan braced for impact.
“Raaaaaahhh!”
The air around the Ahajia appeared to burst alight. A shower of aurons cascaded outward as four of Ras’s blades met with the four invisible shields of the Bergfried.
Meanwhile, Hunlahan caught the last two on his greatsword. The Black Blade’s techniques might have been mighty, but there was no way they could contest the overwhelming superiority of a custom unit. With a sweep of his energized blade, he shattered the two light beams to dust.
To everyone watching, it seemed like Hunlahan had weathered the devastating attack unscathed.
Perhaps the major general thought so, too.
That was his fatal mistake.
Ras sighed. “You really made me work for this one.”
Igniting the Gent’s thrusters, Ras flew into close range. His unit’s auron stores were almost depleted, but he had enough power remaining for one more blow. Hunlahan, meanwhile, couldn’t get his machine to respond at all.
“Wh-what?!”
He had just deployed four impenetrable barriers while swinging an auron-sheathed greatsword. Even a quad-core engine couldn’t handle that kind of immediate power drain. As a result, his machine had entered shutdown. In that state, even a custom model like the Ahajia became nothing more than a sitting duck.
“Marvelous… Mr. Talion, you’ve done it!”
As he sensed his imminent defeat, a satisfied smile appeared on the major general’s lips. The next moment, Ras’s ceremonial sword pierced the torso of the bronze-plated Chasseur.