—————————————————————–
Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator:Bobt
—————————————————————–
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
With a whoosh, the whip lashed the factory floor, carving a deep furrow. Of course, Locke had already somersaulted back and deftly retreated.
Immediately after, Emily also leaped, following Locke’s movement. Her whips, imbued with lightning and glowing green, chased after Locke.
Locke, who had landed atop a pressure cooker-like machine, had to jump again right away. Emily’s whip struck the spot he had vanished from, splitting the pressure cooker machine in half. As a result, the unfinished cultured meat inside spilled out thick and messy, dirtying the floor.
Emily shouted as she pursued Locke.
“Are you just going to keep dodging, orc Master!”
Her two whips whirled around like a dust devil, slicing everything they touched in half. They were clearly not orc blades, but the majesty they displayed was no less than that.
The whips’ swirling movements were like tentacles chasing prey, so Locke couldn’t just keep evading either. He swung his right hand towards the whoosh of the incoming whip.
The orc blade and the lightning whip collided.
With a pzzzt, red sparks burst out as if exploding. The sparks that hit relatively close to Locke’s jacket fell in a flurry.
“Mmh…”
Emily, who had hurriedly pulled back the whip at the moment of collision, stopped in place for a moment. Locke, who had been swinging his orc blade and getting showered with sparks, also stopped right there in that posture.
Emily’s eyes glanced at the tip of her right whip. The end that had collided with the gray blade was slightly cut off.
As she turned her gaze back to Locke, he was staring at her intently with his orc blade held in the middle. Just standing there like that, it seemed as if not even a storm or tsunami could change his position.
Emily, who had been looking at him with slightly furrowed eyes, soon relaxed her expression and smiled.
“Really, it would have been better if we hadn’t met like this.”
As she shook her right hand once, the cut-off whip grew long again by the length it had lost. The green lightning crackling was a given.
“Hiyaaah!”
The next moment, she started swinging the whips in both hands while shouting like a wild woman of the forest. The two strands of lightning that began from her hands rained down towards Locke. It was an attack twice as fast as before.
However, Locke did not leap to dodge. He just slightly bent his knees to lower his center of gravity and quickly swung the orc blade held in both hands.
Once again, lightning and the orc blade collided. No, this time it was twice.
The result was the same. A strange deflating noise and sparks scattering in all directions. The cut-off tip of the whip flew off in a random direction, leaving a deep furrow in the factory grounds.
However, Emily’s attack did not end. She began swinging the whips like crazy. Flashes of green light whirled around.
At the same time, Locke also stood his ground and counterattacked all incoming strikes. Continuous noises and sparks burst out around his body. So many embers flew that it was as if a round wall of sparks had formed around his body.
Emily’s lightning whips kept getting sliced. But the length remained the same as in the beginning. Because they kept sprouting back as much as they were cut.
Instead, the fragments of the cut lightning scattered in all directions. With a pzzzt, the whip fragments that flew off were weapons in themselves. Not only the cultured meat production facilities and conveyor belts inside the factory, but the fragments that flew towards the walls or ceiling pierced through those walls.
“Locke! I evacuated all the factory workers! The guy with severed limbs outside- no, f*ck!”
It was around the time when the lights inside the factory shattered and holes were punctured in the ceiling that Daniel appeared in that violent mayhem.
Entering through the production facility entrance, he was startled to see the lightning fragments flying in all directions and the fight between the two people at the center. He reflexively took out his gun, but rather than aiming and shooting it, he chose to quickly hit the floor.
“What the hell is going on… Weren’t we here to stop a terror attack…?”
As his mutterings implied while lying flat, the state of the factory was already moving into the realm of no return.
If at first Locke and the masked ones’ fight had wrecked the interior facilities, the current fight seemed intent on collapsing the building itself. The lighting that had been pale bright was shattered, holes were riddled in the walls and ceiling, and rainwater was pouring in.
“Are you going to keep blocking like that! Then eventually this factory will completely collapse!”
Emily, who had been swinging the whips like crazy, shouted like that. And as if having waited for that opening, Locke’s body suddenly stretched out through the wall of sparks. A long gray afterimage of the orc blade followed.
“Hah!”
The moment that gray flash rushed up to her neck, Emily leaped far back with a short shout. Locke’s charge and her leap happened almost simultaneously. Emily’s body somersaulted back and landed on the floor with a thud.
The factory interior that had been filled with all sorts of noises briefly fell silent. A severed wire sparked and rainwater poured through the holes in the ceiling with a pitter-patter, but that moment was relatively quiet because the earlier commotion had been so intense. The dimness from the lighting being smashed also added to the silence.
At that moment, one of Emily’s antlers, who had leaped far back and landed, wobbled and fell off with a plop. The cross-section of that antler was charred black.
“…It hurts a bit.”
Her face was strange as she muttered quietly. Her once clean skin seemed to be hardening from the outside of her face. That shape was like tree bark.
She raised her head to look at Locke. Thanks to the wildly flying sparks, his jacket was riddled with pinhole-sized holes, but otherwise he had no notable injuries. He was looking at her with an expressionless face, holding his light sword.
Emily spoke as she slowly got up.
“That’s amazing. I can see why even now, those in power want to have orc Masters as bodyguards…”
Suddenly she flinched. Something had dripped onto her head. Looking up, she saw rainwater falling from the gaping hole in the ceiling. She stared at it blankly for a moment, then closed her eyes and let the rainwater hit her face.
“…Even if tainted by the factory’s acrid smoke, rain is still rain. Becoming a slow cloud and rising to the sky, in an instant becoming a slender stream of water falling like a blessing. Even the tiny weeds in the asphalt drink that blessing and grow. Longing for a forest full of grass and trees…”
Emily’s rain-soaked face looked at Locke again. She saw his expressionless face.
She said, “I could tell the moment our weapons clashed.”
“What?”
“Your loneliness and sadness. The one we all carry.”
Locke did not reply. Emily smiled a thin smile as if she understood.
“Actually, I don’t believe in small sacrifices like I mentioned earlier either. There is no sorrow that can be divided into large and small sacrifices. Such sorrows should not be tolerated. I just…”
Emily faltered, unable to finish her sentence. She seemed to hesitate. Whether to say she was just making a last-ditch struggle as the last survivor of a vanishing race, or to say she simply wanted to break people’s isolation and loneliness.
Since an orc blade is a blade of the heart that springs from the deepest part of the psyche, Locke also felt her thoughts, just as Emily had.
So he knew the words she couldn’t be sure of.
“You believed that was what you had to do.”
She nodded with a warm smile as she hesitated.
“That’s right. I think that’s how it was.”
Just then, someone shouted abruptly from the factory entrance.
“Freeze! MLPD! Drop your weapon!”
Daniel, who had been lying flat until now, finally got up and aimed his gun at Emily. He seemed to think that, even though he didn’t know what was going on, he had to help Locke for now.
Seeing him, Emily muttered.
“…Maybe preparing flowers instead of bombs would have been better.”
The next moment, her green eye light flashed. At the same time, the lightning in her hands shone and whirled incomparably more violently than before. It was as if she was holding a net made of lightning, not whips.
That net filled Locke’s front.
“Damn it! I said don’t move!”
Along with Daniel’s scream-like shout, his gun muzzle spat fire. At the same time, Locke’s orc blade also met the net of lightning.
The gray blade tore through the net effortlessly, as if what it had been doing until now was just playing around.
The fragments of lightning that flew past Locke’s shoulder smashed the remaining traces of the production facilities. The crashing noises were loud. It seemed that was the end, as Emily’s whips no longer glowed.
However, Locke did not rush to Emily to finish her off. There was no need for that.
“Cough, hack…”
Emily, who had been shot in the neck, had collapsed half-leaning against the debris of the broken factory equipment. Dark green blood flowed from her neck and mouth. She was looking at Locke, gripping her neck with trembling hands. Locke silently met those eyes.
“Grrk, dinner… hack, together, couldn’t, grrgle…”
Locke nodded.
“Yeah. It’s a shame.”
As she heard his answer and struggled to smile, Emily’s body soon fell completely backwards.
The factory ceiling riddled with holes and the cloudy Midland sky beyond it were reflected in her eyes as her breath faded. Countless rain streaks were falling towards her from that sky. Whether that was a blessing as she said, or just acid rain, only she knew.
The moment her last breath ended, the skin of that corpse hardened stiffly. To be precise, it turned into complete tree bark. Thick moss even grew on the concrete floor where green blood had spilled.
“Wha, what?”
Daniel said as if puzzled to see that. Locke answered as he retracted his orc blade.
“The last of a race. Ended with a single trigger pull.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means there won’t be any more terror now.”
Locke turned around. Raindrops fell on his shoulders as he left the factory.
Daniel, who had been alternately looking at his receding back and the dryad’s tombstone while blinking, hurriedly followed after him.
“Hey! But the property damage here is no joke? If this goes wrong, I’ll get a pay cut! No, I might even be put on unpaid leave…”
* * *
[…The MLPD wrapped up this case by naming Lieutenant Harry Wilson and Sergeant Daniel Gibson as the top contributors. Thanks to the two detectives’ persistent pursuit, they discovered the next target of the ‘Children of the Tree’ and were able to carry out a special operation to kill their leader, an ancient race known as a ‘dryad’. While Chief Marcus declared this case a victory for the Midland Police Department, some are of the opinion that the damage from that special operation was astronomical…]
“Hah. They finally got caught.”
The old man sitting at the bar table chuckled at the news on the television across from him. His attitude was as if he didn’t understand why they were bragging so much about only catching them now.
Perhaps thanks to his remark, the few customers sitting in the 24-hour diner ‘Change’ also focused their attention on the television. However, such focus did not last more than a few minutes. For people with their own worries and loneliness, the usual news of criminals being killed was not very impressive.
The same went for the diner’s chef. Thanks to the night shift waitress being absent without notice, he was out in front of the bar and had no time to pay attention to some worn-out race like dryads or whatever. Because trying to do both serving and cooking at the same time was a living hell.
Just then, one of the customers sitting at the bar gestured to him. Next to him was a girl who couldn’t even open her eyes, half-asleep and munching on pancakes.
“Ah, yes. What else can I get you?”
“Coffee.”
“Ah, coffee.”
The chef hurriedly picked up the coffee pot behind him and filled the customer’s cup. The customer lightly nodded his head in thanks.
“Hehe, just let me know if you need anything else.”
“Here, one more.”
The order came oddly from the girl next to him. That kid was already on her umpteenth plate of pancakes despite being sleepy. When the chef looked at the man, the man also nodded. It meant to bring out one more plate.
As the chef disappeared into the kitchen, the man looked down at the coffee cup in front of him. The black coffee was gently swirling.
Just then, the diner door opened.
“No, sir. I told you to just stay in the car. I can handle the greetings…”
“You idiot. Then why did I leave the hospital? Should I have just stayed lying down until I got new arms and legs?”
“Well, that’s… I guess, but…”
The ones who entered causing a brief commotion were a young blond man and an orc wrapped in bandages all over his body, leaning on crutches. The orc’s condition looked mostly critical, but especially his right leg below the thigh, which was empty, looked serious.
Nevertheless, as if such a leg condition was nothing, the orc approached the man looking down at his coffee without hesitation, using his crutches. However, even as he approached like that, the man showed little reaction.
The orc also sat down naturally next to him without any particular indication. And after letting out a long sigh, he soon opened his mouth.
“Thanks for helping that dimwit. And for preventing further terror attacks.”
“No need for thanks for a paid job.”
The orc’s eyes turned to the man, Locke.
“…Still, you should be thanked for something that deserves thanks. Thanks to you, we were able to prevent many people from dying and getting hurt.”
Locke neither replied nor looked at him. He just picked up the coffee cup and took a sip. Seeing that, an awkward smile appeared on the lips of the orc detective, Harry. He said, turning his eyes to the bar table.
“Somehow, you and that dimwit ended up taking the credit for this case. The chief pushed it through by force. Saying that if it became known that a mercenary solved this case, the police’s prestige would hit rock bottom…”
The orc, who had been making an unpleasant expression for a moment, relaxed his face and tapped the table with his relatively unharmed right hand as he continued.
“Anyway, thanks to that, I get to keep my ass glued to the police. I even get promoted. So if there’s anything you need my help with, just say the word anytime. If it’s something I can help with, I’ll roll up my sleeves and help out. Whether it’s legal or illegal.”
Locke just silently nodded once. But Harry got up from his seat with a satisfied expression as if that was enough. Then, as he staggered, seeming unfamiliar with the crutches, Daniel hurriedly supported him from behind.
“It’s fine, man.”
“What do you mean it’s fine? At least show some gratitude when someone’s helping you.”
Harry just chuckled at Daniel’s retort without arguing further. As Daniel supported him and left the diner, he glanced back for a moment. Locke still wasn’t looking at them, but the young detective bowed his head in greeting.
After the two left like that, the chef came out of the kitchen with pancakes. He tilted his head, sure he had heard the door open, but. However, he soon put the pancakes down in front of the drowsy girl and said,
“Enjoy your meal. Anything else you need?”
Locke shook his head. The black-haired girl next to him was also just stuffing pancakes into her mouth, still unable to properly open her eyes.
Just then, someone called the chef from one side of the diner. He hurriedly left Locke’s front.
Locke, who had been fiddling with the coffee cup in silence, picked it up and took a sip. A bitter aroma lingered in his mouth.
Outside the diner, the damp rain still fell.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
