The Mark III held the fifteen kilogram anti-materiel rifle in one hand like it was nothing. On Ijuin’s order, it pulled the trigger. Bang! The Frame pointed the muzzle at its next target. Bang! Another. Bang! Massive 12.7mm bullets ripped the gorilla macaques to shreds, one by one, and the Mark III made the intense recoil from every shot seem like nothing. With every sonorous blast from the rifle, a gorilla became minced meat. Like a needle popping a balloon.
A minute was all it took.
“Nice!” Ijuin shouted triumphantly. “Maybe we can actually take a look around now.”
“I hope there’s still some food left. Maybe some rice?” Yu said. “They keep cutting our rations down.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. The rats’ve probably gotten to that, but I can’t blame you for hopin’. Ugh, I could go for a steaming bowl of some right about now!”
“Hold on. Something’s not right,” Aliya interrupted the boys’ celebration. “Magic detected! Someone’s cast a spell!” A bewildered silence followed before she identified the threat. “L-Look!”
Ijuin let out a frightened scream. “W-What’s going on?!”
They started to rise. The eviscerated corpses of the gorilla macaques lumbered back to their feet, heads missing, stomachs agape, and arms torn to pieces. And then, they began to lug their dangling guts and organs over to their nemesis—the Mark III. Those without legs clawed their way closer, dragging along whatever was left of their torsos.
Yu shrieked. “This is a nightmare!”
“I wholeheartedly agree!” Aliya concurred. “I’ve identified the spell! Animate Dead! It turns nearby corpses into zombies!”
“Take this!” Yu willed the Mark III to slug one of the gorilla macaques, now a gorilla zombie, with its free hand.
The Mark III’s fist landed squarely in the zombie’s face and launched its head clean off. But even without a head, it clung on to the Frame unfazed.
“It’s still moving!” Yu cried.
“I-It won’t let go! Crap, there’s another one! We’ve been bit!” Ijuin howled.
One gorilla zombie after another grappled with the Mark III, punching and gnawing at the armor. If this were some American TV show, this would’ve been the clincher with blood and guts flying everywhere. That is, if the Frame’s plating weren’t more than durable enough to handle the assault.
Yu envisioned new orders for the Mark III. “Let’s see what happens this time!”
The Frame ejected jet streams from its thrusters once more. The incredible gust of wind swept the zombies away on all sides, rending limbs from many of the once-dead corpses. But this only slowed the undead horde’s attack. Undeterred, they began to trudge towards the Mark III all over again.
“Tenacious!” blurted Ijuin. “Yeah, those are zombies, all right! Whadda we do, Ichinose?!”
“I-I’ll try to find some sort of anti-undead weapon! Buy us some time, Yu!” Aliya pleaded.
While his friends panicked around him, Yu found himself perplexed. “What the heck is this message?”
English text had appeared in the middle of his display.
[Need assistance?]
“I don’t know what that means, but if you want to help, please do!” From what Yu could deduce, the foreign words seemed to be offering aid, but their sender was unknown.
Immediately after his reply, more English text began to fly across the bottom of the screen from right to left.
[Mantra Server Startup Complete. All PRAJNA running.]
[System Now Booting Spellbook “PRAJNA HEART SUTRA”...]
[Set Forth This Spell — Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha...]
“W-What’s happening?! I’m not doing this!” Aliya sputtered. Regardless, the Mark III was changing. Particles of light started to pour out from the Frame’s right hand. “Adaptive nanofactors?! What are they doing?! What is going on?!”
The mysterious particles, reminiscent of the very same machines that composed the Mark III, joined together and solidified into a single object. A long, thin, yellow piece of cloth that was strikingly evocative of something thoroughly mundane.
Yu blinked. “A scarf? What— Why— Whatever, there’s no time!”
The mangled bodies of the gorilla zombies were clambering on the Mark III, trying to weigh it down. Shake them off! Yu ordered the Frame. In response, it whipped one of the creatures with the yellow scarf in its right hand. Hard. It struck with a surprising amount of weight, similar to a wet towel, and the moment it made contact, the zombie burst apart in a shower of blood, guts, and other visceral liquids.
“It turned that corpse into chunks!” Ijuin shouted.
“Th-That could be our anti-undead weapon!” Aliya stuttered. “How did you do that?!”
Yu, however, had regained some measure of composure. “So the scarf’s a weapon, huh?”
Swing! he willed. The cloth promptly drove itself into another zombie and yet another deluge of gore followed. Again. Wham! And again. Wham! Somehow, amid the carnage as corpse after corpse exploded, the scarf remained spotless, unmarred by even a single crimson stain.
It only took twenty seconds for the Mark III to wipe out the gorilla zombies. But there was no time to rest. Once the immediate threat was gone, the Frame entered surveillance mode and positional data blipped into the lower-right corner of Yu’s display.
“On the roof?” Yu muttered. “There’s an enemy up there?”
The wheel affixed into the buckle of the Mark III’s belt—the superconductive turbine that powered the Asura Frame, referred to by Professor Chloe and Aliya as the Prayer Wheel—suddenly began to spin. Faster. Faster. When the turbine reached peak velocity, Yu commanded the Mark III to leap into the air. It shot up far above the top of the five-story mall, and there on the roof, he saw it. A fae, standing on the edge and observing the lot below.
It was stout, with arms long enough for its knuckles to scrape the ground and legs comically short in comparison. On its face was a stone mask, decorated with mysterious, alien designs. It carried a wooden staff and wore a horn tied to a string around its neck. Its clothes were made of animal pelts.
“It’s an Anomaly!” cried Ijuin. “A fae from the other side, Ichinose!”
“Analyzing species,” Aliya followed. “Got it! It’s a sub-species of goblin—a bugbear! They can use magic!”
Yu, however, was focused on another message that had popped up in his view.
[I recommend Excalibur Mode.]
“In Japanese, please!” he pleaded.
Then, he heard a woman’s voice flowing from the headphones on his HMD goggles. Captivatingly beautiful and in perfect Japanese.
“Unsheathe the queen’s blade. By the Holy Shroud, it is now yours to wield.”
“S-So I’ve got a sword. Okay. Got it.”
“I shall sing the traveler’s hymn. A song for the wanderers of the path, guided by the Perfect Wisdom of prajna to the far reaches of the realm—Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha...”
Yu was certain. It was the same voice he’d heard during the awakening experiment. Her song was strange, seemingly improvised like jazz music, and the lyrics made no sense. It was a gentle song, yet majestic. Divine.
“The Gospel Code?!” yelped Aliya. “Who’s sending it?! Mom?!”
The scarf began to harden in the Mark III’s hand, straightening out and condensing into something long and metallic. It had transformed into a sword.
Yu realized at last. “That’s what you meant!”
The sword’s handle was cylindrical and easy to hold, just like an actual hilt. The tip was tapered into a sharp point.
Yu roared, fighting spirit boiling inside him. He activated the posterior thrusters and jet streams rocketed the Mark III downward as fast as a whirlwind. Below, the bugbear waved its staff to cast a powerful lightning spell, but the electricity dissipated as soon as it struck the Asura Frame.
“Not even magic works against this thing! You got this, Ichinose!” Ijuin hollered.
Aliya could hardly contain her excitement either. “The anti-magic shell is doing its job well!”
By the time his friends’ encouragement reached Yu’s ears, the battle had already been decided. The whetted Holy Shroud pierced the enemy fae’s gut, and its body dissipated in a cloud of hissing mist.
“Look at that! Such clean maneuvers, and from long-range too! And that weapon!” The colonel was beside himself. They had just finished witnessing the artificial awakening and remote operation test from the top of the old observation tower. “I didn’t see the last Devicer use it all that much, but I’m impressed. It’s a fine addition to the arsenal.”
“The Holy Shroud can...” Professor Chloe remembered that what she was about to say would be lost on the man, but continued regardless. “It can only be bestowed in the name of the queen. It’s rarely, if ever, given to someone unworthy of it. As I recall, the previous Devicer only had the honor twice.”
“Oh?”
“At any rate, this means we can move to step two of the awakening experiments. Project Rebirth can proceed.”
Long gone were the days of monitoring the Asura Frame’s status from messy control rooms. A 3D stereographic projection on the desk reenacted every detail of the Mark III’s movements, as well as its surrounding environment.
Chloe could feel a bud of hope burgeoning inside her. She glanced back at the pod, where the elf girl with midnight blue hair slept without a word or even so much as a twitch of the eye. Her lips were still now, but moments before, they had been moving, ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, spilling tiny bubbles of air as she murmured whisperings to her new chosen one.