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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator:Bobt
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Locke, upon seeing that masked figure, spoke first.
“Nice mask.”
The masked one looking down at him from atop the cultured meat facility responded with an elegant bow without a word. Locke continued.
“What should I call you? Children of the Tree? Or Emily?”
The masked one, who had been silently bowing, slowly straightened her waist upon hearing those words. And she slowly removed her mask. Sparkling green eyes turned towards him.
“…Just Emily is fine.”
Afterwards, the two remained silent and gazed at each other intently. Locke’s black eyes and Emily’s green eyes reflected each other’s appearance.
Locke opened his mouth.
“Quite a dramatic transformation. From part-time diner waitress to corporate terrorist.”
“Having a regular income and not having one is a huge difference. In the latter case, even if you’re not a terrorist, you easily get frisked by the MLPD. The Midland police think so little of diner waitresses that they might ask for contact info, but they never ask if you’re carrying bombs or firearms. It’s a decent cover identity.”
“And by the way, you also make dinner plans with diner customers?”
Emily’s answer was a bit delayed.
“…I didn’t know you were that ‘Outcast’ orc Master Mercenary. I didn’t know you worked for the MLPD either.”
“So that’s why you hitched a ride in my car last time. To quickly escape the area where you carried out the terror attack.”
She readily nodded.
“Like you said, killing two birds with one stone. With the intention of also making a dinner date with a guy I liked.”
A small chuckle escaped Locke’s mouth. Seeing him, Emily continued.
“You said my transformation from diner waitress to corporate terrorist was dramatic, but you’re not too shabby either. If someone said that the loner who visits 24-hour diners alone late at night is one of Midland’s urban legends, who would believe it?”
“But it’s true.”
Emily nodded.
“That’s right. It is true.”
Silence again. The gazes of the man and woman intersected. There was no intense emotion like hatred or anger there. It was just an atmosphere of a man and woman meeting at a late evening cafe, subtly observing each other.
Emily spoke.
“We don’t need to fight.”
Locke nodded.
“Yeah, maybe so.”
At that answer, Emily’s expression brightened a little. However, Locke, who had said that, slowly drew out the orc blade handle that was hanging from his belt with a leisurely motion.
“…What do you mean? Are you going to stop us?”
“If you stop here, I’ll stop too.”
The green pupils inside Emily’s eyes began to flicker like flames.
“You’ll protect this disgusting factory? The corporations that suck people’s blood?”
“This is a cultured meat factory though. The expression about sucking blood is a bit strange.”
“Cultured meat or whatever, it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it belongs to the corporations. The ones who turn people into parts, into mindless consumers, who made this city called Midland. That’s why it needs to be destroyed. The people shackled by the corporations need to be liberated like that. So that people can live like people.”
Seeing Emily’s attitude as she spoke as if she were some freedom fighter, Locke scratched his eyebrow.
“A lot of people die and get hurt in that liberation process.”
“…Small sacrifices are inevitable to bring down giants.”
“Like the people who died at the market this afternoon?”
“…”
Emily’s eyes narrowed. It was as if green flames were flowing from her pupils. No, it wasn’t a metaphor; an emerald luster was literally overflowing from the corners of her eyes.
Seeing that light in her eyes, Locke also lowered the hand he had been scratching with and took a step forward with his left foot. Just standing diagonally like that made his leisurely atmosphere turn as sharp as a blade.
Emily spoke.
“I don’t think we need to talk anymore. Then there’s no other choice.”
“Yeah. We’ll have to cancel our dinner plans.”
Seeing Locke’s slightly regretful expression, she brought her hands behind her waist. And as she pulled those hands, the string that had been wrapped around her waist smoothly unraveled. It was two short whips.
At the same time, those who had been hiding behind the cultured meat facilities here and there in the factory began to reveal themselves. Individuals wearing glossy masks and loose-fitting clothes. In their hands were ultra-vibration blades with glowing hot wires.
Locke smiled wryly as he looked around at them surrounding him.
“Using expensive weapons ill-suited to you.”
From katanas to spears, longswords that medieval knights might use, and hefty axes that didn’t look practical at all. Their weapons were of all sorts. However, one thing they all had in common was that the blades of those weapons were heated until they glowed red.
When their appearance and encirclement were complete, a gray blade also sprouted from Locke’s right hand. Seeing that light, tension seeped into the masked ones’ movements.
Locke, who had drawn his orc blade, suddenly made eye contact with the masked one standing at the very front, holding a katana. The eyes glaring at him from inside the holes of the smooth mask.
Seeing him, Locke spoke lightly as if joking.
“What are you doing? Come at me.”
The masked one flinched at those words, then immediately raised his sword high and let out a strange voice.
“Kiyooooh!”
His blade slashed down like lightning. Aiming for the top of Locke’s head with a force that could split rocks and a blade that could actually split rocks.
Simultaneously with that swordsman’s attack, the other masked ones also charged at Locke. In an instant, blades covered Locke’s surroundings. If one couldn’t fly, there seemed to be no escape for Locke at that moment.
So Locke flew.
More precisely, he leaped forward and did a somersault in the air. The masked ones’ ultra-vibration weapons stabbed into the spot where he had vanished, sparking.
The masked one who had swung down the katana hurriedly craned his neck to chase Locke with his eyes as he jumped over his head. It was an amazing leaping ability, but Locke didn’t have wings after all. So while he was in the air, he was as good as defenseless.
He immediately turned his body to stab Locke’s back as he landed. However, the next moment, he froze in surprise, unable to slash down that blade.
“Huh…?”
The tip of his katana had already been cut off from above. And while he was frozen in shock at that fact, Locke’s orc blade, which had long since turned around, smoothly entered the center of his chest. The ultra-high temperature blade instantly burned his heart. The masked one, his breath cut off, toppled backwards.
At the same time as he fell with a thud, the remaining masked ones attacked Locke with a war cry. The heated ultra-vibration blades drew crimson trajectories.
Locke calmly retreated and brought his orc blade to meet those trajectories. As the inexplicable ultra-high temperature blade of the orc blade and the expensive ultra-vibration blades met, strange noises and sparks flew.
The moment those sparks flew, the ultra-vibration blades bounced off as if they had met the opposite pole of a magnet.
The masked ones flailed as they were dragged by their own weapons that couldn’t break through the wall of Locke’s orc blade swung around as he stepped back. Those distorted trajectories also sometimes sliced the surrounding cultured meat production facilities by mistake.
“Kuhuargh!”
A beastly roar, perhaps from a lycanthrope among the masked ones, resounded inside the factory. It was the one holding a large axe.
The one who let out the roar held the axe with both hands and leaped high. Just then, there was a huge pressure cooker-like cultured meat machine behind Locke, leaving no room to retreat. His axe flew as if to split Locke’s body in half.
Locke did not step back. He just took a step to the right and swung his orc blade.
The orc blade, which was almost weightless and thus that much faster, brushed past the masked one’s body with a swoosh as if playing. The masked one’s severed arms and upper and lower body, along with sparks flying, collided with the stainless steel machine and fell with a thud like discarded objects.
Locke, who had been defending against the masked ones’ attacks while retreating, started advancing forward from that moment on.
The one holding a spear was startled by Locke’s sudden approach and tried to counterattack, but was vertically split in half along with the spear shaft.
The masked one with the longsword tried to aim for Locke’s neck, taking advantage of his comrade’s death, but was blocked by the lightning-fast orc blade. The gray blade that had deflected the longsword cut off his wrist with a snap and stabbed into his head, ending his life as well.
As Locke’s advancing movements grew larger, the facilities inside the factory were also sliced apart along that trajectory. Conveyor belts, cultured meat facilities, pressure nozzles, etc. were cut through relentlessly. Glowing red molten stainless steel dripped down at times.
The masked ones who had charged with ultra-vibration blades followed the fate of those factory facilities. They were sliced into pieces of various shapes, just like the diverse weapons they were holding, and collapsed to the floor with a thud. Dry deaths, just as dry as Locke’s attitude, with no messy body fluids like blood flowing out as the parts cut by the ultra-high temperature blade were scorched.
After a while, Locke, who was left standing alone in that mayhem, raised his head while shaking the orc blade in his hand. His eyes saw Emily still standing atop the cylindrical facility. She had not joined the masked ones’ offensive.
“Just spectating?”
At Locke’s question, she opened her mouth.
“As expected of an orc Master, Locke. I can see why they were called invincible in the old days of blades.”
Instead of answering the question, irrelevant words. At the same time, something began to sprout from between the strands of her hair.
“…But even someone like you is just an outdated existence in this day and age. In a time when everything is replaced so quickly and easily.”
It was as if vines were sprouting and intertwining to form the shape of deer antlers.
“Most living in this city are like that. The beastfolk who used to frolic in the mountains and fields have become packs of hyenas rummaging through back alley garbage, and the dwarves who used to live and die by honor have become misers just counting money with their stubby hands.”
At those words, Locke’s gaze suddenly turned to the dead masked ones. There were those whose true appearances beneath the masks and baggy clothes were revealed as they were sliced apart by the orc blade.
The one who had been waving the axe just before was a lycanthrope, the one wielding the katana was an elf, and the one thrusting the spear was of an unknown race with a short single horn.
“The elves who used to love nature and enjoy pastoral immortality now consider themselves quite long-lived if they live just as long as humans. Orcs at best reminisce about old romanticism while singing songs, and goblins and gnolls secretly sneak into abandoned old houses to get high on drugs. And humans. Humans are… ah, yes…”
Emily with the sprouted vine antlers, combined with the two eyes emitting a green radiance, looked as if seeing a forest demon. She took her eyes off Locke and looked up at the factory ceiling. Her blazing eyes were gazing far beyond that wall.
“Humans are the most pitiful beings. A race that transforms everything in the world, only to eventually lose their own form in that vortex of change. Losing their souls in the illusion called cyberspace, losing their real flesh to the chrome shell called implants.”
Green lightning crackled from the whips held in her hands. And the length of the short whips slowly began to grow.
“This Midland is a city where the souls of all those races are deteriorating. Millions gather to live in one space, yet most are sleepless at night from loneliness, and addicts readily shoot bullets at anyone for a few bucks to buy cheap drugs. Those who claim to uphold law and order are all busy licking the backsides of corporations. As a result, the people who truly need help just quietly die in a corner of the city.”
She lowered her head to look at Locke again. Her appearance, with sprouted vine antlers and gripping lightning whips, was mystical, like an ancient being.
So Locke could recall the name of an old race.
“Dryad…”
Emily smiled wryly.
“That’s right, Locke. As expected, you as an orc Master could tell. I’m a dryad. The last dryad in this world.”
“…Lightning doesn’t really suit a forest race though.”
Locke muttered as he looked at her whips with crackling electric currents trailing down, stretched out long above the cultured meat machine. The electronic eyes of Detective Daniel, who had simply seen those as some sort of laser whips, must have had some issues for sure.
“Old races have old secret arts. Isn’t this much needed to face an orc Master?”
As she lightly shook her hands, the whips that had been wriggling like snakes licked the stainless steel surface of the cultured meat machine. Charred black marks were left where the whips had brushed past.
“Anyway, Locke. I cannot tolerate the megacorps that created this city. Both for turning the holy ground of the ancient dragons into a hotbed of corruption, and for sucking up all the nourishment and erecting those lofty skyscrapers over there. Only when they disappear can people live like people again.”
“So you’re going to start with the factories and destroy all corporations?”
Emily nodded and spoke.
“This is your last chance, Locke. Just turn around and leave now. Don’t interfere with my work anymore.”
She lit up her eyes as if it were truly a final consideration. But Locke only silently shook his head.
“…That’s a shame.”
The moment her muttering, which truly sounded regretful, ended, the two lightning-imbued whips flew towards Locke as if alive on their own.
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