“I could do without you making things any more difficult than they already are,” Ras muttered back, drawing his sword. It was a relatively short ceramic blade, not one meter long, forged of partially stabilized zirconia. For all its hardness, it was difficult to imagine its utility in a fight against an enormous Chasseur.
Yet Ras stared down his opponent and adopted a very peculiar stance. Turning his left side toward the enemy, he held his sword in his right hand only, taut with tension, like a bow about to snap. Aura began gathering in the blade, causing the material to glow brightly. A blinding light that seared the eyes of all who looked at it.
“An Over Art…,” murmured Fiarca, her voice trembling. She had never seen Ras adopt this stance before, but an Over Art was the only way any human stood a chance at damaging the body of a Chasseur. Against the Vildhjärta, however, success was anything but guaranteed. Even Princess Fiarca had no idea which way the battle would go.
“He’s using Vajra,” commented Fon. “One of the fundamental Black Arts. I suppose he’s right; that would be able to cut through the Vildhjärta’s hide…”
She looked rather disappointed, an understandable reaction given that Ras was getting ready to slice up her old Chasseur. However, it didn’t look like she planned to stop him this time.
“I didn’t want to have to use this…,” Ras said with a sigh. Partially, he felt guilty about damaging the Vildhjärta, but more than that, he was reluctant to reveal this Over Art to his master. He just knew that if she found out he’d picked up a new technique, she would be raring to challenge him to a fight afterward.
Meanwhile, the Vildhjärta noticed Ras’s stance and began trembling in anger. Crimson aurons spewed from every gap, shattering the ice at its feet and propelling it forward.
Even an Over Art couldn’t halt the Vildhjärta’s mad charge.
But Ras wasn’t expecting it to.
As the jet-black Chasseur raised a leg to stomp, Ras leveled his sword and unleashed the aura stored within.
Vajra was the only pure thrusting move among the twelve fundamental techniques of the Black Arts. Of all the attacks that Ras had learned from Fon, this was the one with the highest penetrative power. One hit could bore straight through a Chasseur’s armor and take out the delicate machinery inside, shutting it down in a single blow.
However, Ras wasn’t aiming for that. His target was not the Vildhjärta at all. Instead, he aimed his technique at the ground where the Chasseur was about to tread. The aura-charged blade cut a hole several meters deep into the solid rock of the mausoleum floor, catching the Vildhjärta’s leg and causing the Chasseur to topple to the side. Had there been a pilot in the cockpit, perhaps they could have avoided this with their quick thinking, but the Vildhjärta was currently unmanned.
As the Chasseur pitched forward, Ras prepared his true attack—not with his sword but by gathering aura in his bare hand. A magic-infused punch, delivered from the same stance as the Vajra. When Fon realized what technique Ras was planning to use, she called out its name.
“Vajra Dorje Strike!”
One of the forty-eight inner techniques of the Black Arts—an advanced form of the Vajra. Nine successive blasts of concentrated aura combined into a blast wave that struck the legs of the oncoming Chasseur. With both legs torn from under it, the Vildhjärta’s momentum brought it up and over, before it slammed hard onto its back. The entire subterranean chamber shook like there was an earthquake. Even Fiarca was stunned speechless by the sight.
Ras had planned to taunt the Vildhjärta with his Over Arts, before using the machine’s speed and momentum against it. In doing so, he had effectively executed a martial-arts throw on an opponent over five times his size.
“Now I have you, Vildhjärta!”
Ras calmly walked up to the jet-black Chasseur and entered the cockpit hatch, but the Vildhjärta still wasn’t ready to accept him. It spewed aurons in every direction in a show of intimidation, aiming to harm the pilot through auron feedback.
However, by establishing an auron link, the Vildhjärta was effectively handing Ras the reins. For it was through aurons that an auramancer asserted their control over a Chasseur.
Ras called upon his aura to intercept the incoming aurons, imposing his own will upon the machine. Through the link, he felt the Chasseur cry out in pain and anger, but he didn’t try to stifle those feelings. If the Vildhjärta lashed out any more, the entire underground chamber could collapse.
A voice echoed in his mind.
“Get out.”
A voice carried not through the air but through ripples in the aurons. It was the Vildhjärta’s voice. If it could no longer eject him by force, it had to speak instead. Hearing its voice in his mind was not an unpleasant feeling, but Ras was taken aback all the same. It was the first time a Chasseur had spoken directly to him.
“Get out of me. You do not belong.”
“Sorry, but my princess’s virginity is riding on this.”
Ras answered using his own aura. Usually, when an aura knight rode a Chasseur, external sounds were transmitted through their aura, allowing them to hear what was going on outside. It wasn’t too difficult to reverse the operation and transmit one’s own thoughts on that connection instead.
“I do not like you. I do not want you. I will kill you.”
Ras felt the Vildhjärta’s emotions, a red-hot ire, closer in quality to a child’s tantrum than true hate.
“Do you, now?” Ras replied. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t really hate you at all.”
Ras grinned. It was completely unheard of for a Chasseur to refuse its master, yet Ras didn’t begrudge the machine. In fact, he sympathized with it. A Chasseur was made to fight, so it was only fair to give it the choice of what to fight for.
Ras heard the Vildhjärta lash out in anger again.
“Humans die! Die so fast! Why join me…only to die?”
“What’s that? You feel guilty for getting your jockeys killed?” asked Ras, astonished.
The jet-black Chasseur was not refusing his control for no reason. It was scared. Scared of the fate that might befall those who rode it.
“We were not created to bring harm to those we carry,” said the Vildhjärta in an emotionless tone. Ras sensed the Chasseur was speaking from its heart.
“Then what were you created for?” he asked back.
“Shut up!”
“I never asked to ride you,” Ras said, “but after hearing you out, I’ve changed my mind. I realize now why Fon chose you.”
Ras looked around the cockpit and smiled. The seat height and controls were positioned for someone considerably smaller than Ras. He didn’t need to be told to know the Black Blade had once ridden here.
Sitting in the Vildhjärta’s saddle, Ras could feel a strength like nothing he’d ever felt, like that of a wild beast.
He knew the Chasseur possessed a multicore engine, with more than ten cores, if Ras recalled correctly. No ordinary aura knight was capable of handling that amount of power. They would be incapable of commanding it, and the Chasseur would drain them dry instead.
But if one could learn to command it, that would be a great leap toward fulfilling the Chasseur’s original task. The Chasseurs were invented to slay dragons.
“Lend me your strength, Vildhjärta. I’m a tough bastard to kill. Even a Greater Dragon couldn’t do it.”
“You lie.”
“I’m not lying. Fon was the same, wasn’t she?”
“Fon…” Ras felt the machine waver, and a little doubt crept into its determination. “You…and Fon… You fight the same.”
“We’re dragonslayers.”
The Chasseur recognized the Black Arts. It recognized the work of its old rider. Ras pushed it toward its conclusion. Fon had ridden this unit, killed a Greater Dragon, and lived to tell the tale. Ras was her successor. If anyone could inherit the Vildhjärta’s saddle, it was him.
All of a sudden, the hostility in the machine’s voice vanished, replaced with fear.
“Will you break your promise?” it asked.
It was considering whether to trust Ras. Perhaps it wanted to but couldn’t be sure.
“Why don’t you join me and find out?”
Ras rejected the Chasseur’s question and offered one of his own. Words were cheap in his eyes. The best way to prove one’s loyalty was through action.
Yet never had he encountered anything so bizarre. A Chasseur with a mind of its own; one that cared for the life of its rider. He still had no idea who would create such a machine, or how it had come into Fon’s hands. He would have to ask her about that.
“Okay. I will. Master.”
Ras seemed to have convinced the Chasseur. After it accepted, a bright flood of aurons filled the cockpit. It brought to mind the invocation of an auramancy technique, only Ras didn’t feel in danger. It was benign, a mere concentration of energized particles.
When the blinding light finally faded, it revealed a small figure standing before Ras. Ras tensed. He might have even cried out in surprise; he didn’t remember. The shock of being attacked by a Chasseur was nothing compared to this.
Suddenly with him in the cockpit was a strange new person: a young girl with a pair of animal ears on her head.