A stone palace loomed atop a levitating mass of earth, but to Yu, it had long lost its wonder. He had grown quite used to seeing its ghostly form hovering across the horizon back during his confined days at Maizuru. From winter to spring, it had haunted the bay.
In fact, Yu was so intimately familiar with the portal-keep that he even knew its master, an archmage by the name of Quldald of the Whirlwind. He remembered how handsome the archmage’s features were, how striking they’d been. A history of bloody battles and bloodier victories in the other world comprised his character, his chivalry, and above all, the fear he could elicit in his enemies. He was, ostensibly, the very definition of a hero.
What Yu didn’t understand, though, was why it was so quiet. The so-called “Castle Whirlwind” didn’t dispatch a single Anomaly. It simply floated there.
“Weird,” Ijuin muttered, staring at the display in his HMD goggles. “What’re they doin’ up there?”
Yu, already having re-armorized, saw the same aerial video feed being streamed to both of them by a lone MUV Bumblebee. In it, they noted eight floating giants surrounding the solitary castle’s ramparts, each easily twelve or thirteen meters tall and with burly muscles rippling under pallid skin. They were all clothed in simple white tunics and pants. Turbans adorned their heads and golden bracelets decorated their wrists.
“Sorta look like the kinda people who’d live in the desert in our world,” Ijuin commented.
“Their boss wears one of those turbans too,” said Yu.
“Maybe it’s hot back home,” Natsuki supposed.
The three of them looked up at Tokushima’s sky from the top of a random building. Backdropped by the shimmering aurora, the airborne palace was an uncanny spectacle.
“The Mark III’s got their names,” Ijuin said. “They’re called cloud giants, and... Ugh, the note says they’re spellcasters.”
In other words, they couldn’t sit around and wait for them to make the first move.
Yu turned to Natsuki, nodded, and switched on the voice changer. “I’ll take point.”
“Right,” said Natsuki. “While you do your thing, I’ll be stayin’ quiet. See you inside the castle!” She strengthened her grip on the Green Dragon Crescent Blade—the glass cannon Mark VI Asura Frame, Vritra.
Yu took flight, the antigravity lifters carrying him swiftly into the air. He broke Mach 4 in an instant and reached Castle Whirlwind’s altitude just as quickly. The palace upon the body of rock levitated before him at 180 meters above the ground, and the eight cloud giants turned their harsh, piercing eyes towards the intruder all at once. But Yu was calm. Their gazes were those of wary gatekeepers, not of bloodthirsty attackers.
“Hail, warrior of black and gold, and well met!” someone called out to him. Yu looked up to find the archmage standing upon a palace wall. “I was just about to send a herald your way! How magnanimous of you to spare me the trouble.”
A blue robe cloaked the man’s body, and a turban of the same hue was wrapped around his head. He wielded a staff, thus embodying the very image of a classic magician. On his face, he wore an intrepid grin.
At that altitude, the winds were violent, and despite the two being separated by a solid thirty meters or more, the mage’s greeting resounded clearly throughout the heavens. Yu didn’t even need to resort to the Asura Frame’s sensors to hear him. Such were the astonishing powers the archmages possessed. But Yu wasn’t the same as the last time they had met.
“I assume you wanted to see me for a reason,” he said, undaunted by the alien champion.
“Well now!” Quldald’s eyes lit up upon hearing Yu’s pitch-shifted voice. “You’ve grown, yes. I can feel it. It’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it? War. Nothing changes a man, makes him stronger, quite like the blood-soaked soil and the wailing winds of a battlefield.”
“Unfortunately, that’s not how I see things,” Yu replied flatly. “Anyone looking for the bright side of conflict is a fool, and whoever might be celebrating the current state of the world is an enemy of Devicer Three.”
“Yes, indeed,” Quldald said. “And so it ought to be between mortal enemies such as you and I. For that shall be the stage upon which we decide whose might is greater!” Suddenly, the archmage leaned back from his impassioned posture and relaxed his shoulders. “Though, as eager as I am, my only business this time is to ascertain something. Rest assured, we will have a test of strength, but the true trial must come later.”
“And who’s gonna stop me if I refuse?”
“Now, now, all I ask is a mere taste. A meager fifty percent of your power, if you will.”
Quldald swung his staff, and a small Yu-sized twister suddenly spawned out of thin air. It whirled towards him and the Mark III as fast as the wind itself, but the anti-magic shell activated quickly. For an instant, as the twister swallowed him whole and continued to churn his body around like a laundry machine, Yu felt a sensation like he was being torn to shreds, Frame and all. But both the tornado and his torment soon dissipated.
“Yes, I should have known it would take more,” Quldald remarked. “Then let us see just how much more!”
The mage flailed his staff back and forth, summoning one twister after another. Each miniature cyclone flew right towards Yu and assailed him from every direction. The anti-magic shell worked well enough at first, but it didn’t last long.
Yu groaned in pain. “It’s taking longer and longer to dispel them!” A few seconds of agony was one thing, but the constant barrage was beginning to wear on his body beneath the armor. “How many twisters are there? 137...?!”
Yu’s eyes widened in shock. Meanwhile, Quldald was ceaselessly waving his staff, adding to their already overwhelming numbers. It didn’t look like he would be stopping anytime soon.
“Fine!” Yu snapped.
He accelerated, exploding past Mach 1, 2, 3, and 4. If he couldn’t deal with them all, then he’d just weave his way through them. The Mark III was the King of the Storm—the skies and its subjects were at his heel.
But just as Yu was bending speed to his will, a blast shook the air. The Devicer yelped in surprise. The explosion blew him away before he could see where it had come from.
“Such agility humbles me, truly,” Quldald murmured emphatically. “How long it’s been since an opponent last forced my hand to use my supersonic blast technique.”
A window popped up before Yu’s eyes, listing the names of the spells the mage had just used—Force Tornado and Hyper Sonic Blast. A glance at the accompanying tooltip explained that the latter was a kind of magic that could create powerful shock waves faster than the speed of sound. Without the anti-magic shell, Yu wouldn’t have been launched away. Instead, he would have been instantly decimated beyond recognition.