If I just take Funaho-dono with me, as Asumi-dono wishes… The fleeting thought crossed his mind as he regarded Funaho sleeping beside him, but he shook it off in a hurry. Don’t be ridiculous! Why did I leave my parents and come to Jurai? Was it because I wanted to be Emperor? No. Remember how I felt when the pirates pointed a gun at me? Yes, the desire to become stronger to protect people he cared about. Now, I can do that! He leapt up, left Funaho a simple note, and went after Asumi.
He ran through game trails at superhuman speed and took out the Master Key from his inside pocket. “Jijii, can you hear me?” he said as he focused, releasing Jijii’s actual body, and a message came back.
“Young Master! What have you been…?”
“You can lecture me later.” Azusa cut Jijii off and explained the gist of the situation while he hurried on.
“I cannot believe it… Leave it to me. Kirito-dono has already broken through the jamming and detected the enemy vessel. We shall teach those scum a lesson.”
Around midnight, Asumi reached the location specified in the letter tied to the arrow. A hush fell all around, with no signs of living things. Actually, the absence of animal sounds meant something they feared was lurking close by. Just as Asumi sensed this, a number of red eyes flashed in the forest and grew slowly closer. They belonged to the eight-headed serpent. There were occasional eerie mechanical sounds, but being born in this era, Asumi had no chance of recognizing what they were. His eyes only saw the mythical monster.
The serpent spoke, the eight heads weaving in the air. “Where is the sacrifice? Where is she?”
An ordinary human being would be petrified with terror, but the courageous man who had dared to defend the village all by himself smiled and declared, “Hah, my granddaughter has left with Azusa-sama to where you will never reach her. Too bad.” He then drew his sword and attacked.
With a roar of rage, the serpent also lunged at Asumi, who dodged the attacks with an agility that defied his age and swung at one of the serpent’s heads! A high-pitched clang of metal on metal rang out, and Asumi’s sword snapped at the hilt. It should have been able to sever living flesh, but for the price of the sword, all he got was a glimpse of dull metal behind the scales around the serpent’s neck.
“Monster!” Without a target, Asumi retreated from the serpent. Realistically speaking, a serpent would only use close-range attacks. Asumi wanted to see them coming. But the serpent’s true identity was a robot built by space pirates. It did not try to chase Asumi, but turned its head and opened its large mouth, which was fitted with a beam cannon. It locked on to its target and the beam fired!
“What the…?!” Unable to even finish his utterance, Asumi was enveloped in the beam. Or rather, the beam had dispersed. The serpent’s roar echoed as if surprised. In front of Asumi were wings of light—the Light Hawk Wings!!
“What is that light?!” yelled the leader of the pirates controlling the serpent from its cockpit.
All the pirates monitoring from the mothership in orbit were also in a panic, witnessing technology that should not exist on this undeveloped planet. “What’s going on?!” Before the pirates could figure it out, a flash of light severed one of the serpent’s heads.
The pirate leader had no idea who had done it and tried to use the sensors to find a target, to no avail. “Does he have a small jamming device?! Dammit!” When he picked up a slight reading, he focused the laser beam on it. But the effort was fruitless, as more heads were chopped off. “Am I reading the afterimage?!”
Azusa, holding the Master Key sword of light, was attacking the serpent, moving at high-speed through the forest. This was easy for him, as trees densely covered the planet of Jurai. Indeed, martial arts on Jurai showed their true essence in combat among obstacles, weaving between thick trees. Even with the serpent’s high-performance sensors, they could only detect Azusa’s afterimage due to how fast Azusa was moving.
Azusa wielded the sword of light extending from his Master Key and destroyed the serpent’s heads one by one. The robot, down to one head and its body, thrashed and writhed like a real serpent, and then stopped moving.
Asumi stood and stared, stunned, and Azusa stepped before him. “A-Azusa-sama!”
“I apologize for breaking my promise, Asumi-dono,” Azusa smiled.
“Who are you?”
“I’m just a traveler. Yes, that’s all I am…” But the battle was not over. From deep in the woods, he heard a girl scream. Only Azusa, with the heightened perception of a Jurai warrior, could hear her. “Funaho-dono!”
“What’s the matter, Azusa-sama?”
“I apologize. It seems I was thoughtless again. They’ve taken Funaho-dono…”
“What?!”
They saw the pirates, dressed as bandits, beside the serpent, pointing a gun at Funaho. “Come on out if you value her life!” One of them must have been using a loudspeaker, as his voice rang through the woods.
Azusa heard Funaho’s muffled cries, struggling to endure her pain. “Funaho-dono!” Unable to contain himself, Azusa headed towards the pirates, but Asumi stayed him.
“You’ll be killed if you go.”
“No, I will protect her. If I don’t do this here, there’s no reason for me to have ever gone to Jurai!” Shaking Asumi off, Azusa revealed himself to the pirates.
“Azusa-sama!” Funaho cried, overcome with emotion, and Azusa smiled gently.
The pirates were flabbergasted. They had assumed a soldier in a motorized combat suit or a war machine had defeated their robot serpent. They could not believe that someone of flesh and blood could have pulled it off! Alone among them, the pirate leader calmly accepted the facts. He saw Azusa’s attire and inferred that he was from Jurai. The shield used when they first tried to kill Asumi was the Light Hawk Wings, which only the Jurai Imperial Family could use. If so, it would make sense that he could have pulled off such a feat. Looking sidelong at the frightened Funaho, he asked Azusa, “Are you someone with a connection to the Jurai Imperial Family?”
“Indeed, I am Masaki Azusa, Crown Prince of Jurai.”
The pirates were ecstatic upon hearing Azusa’s identity. If they could capture him, they could command not just an enormous ransom, but Jurai’s biggest secret, a Royal Tree. “Hah, hah, we’ve found the most wonderful treasure in this neck of the woods. Prince, how about we exchange you for this girl and the hostages we have on our ship?” One of the pirates yanked Funaho’s hair to make a display for Azusa.