Irnis was heading back to the Princess with a satisfied look on her face.
"Now it feels better. Haven't hit someone in a while. I am in a good mood now. Well then..." She saw one of the guardsmen, who looked a bit shocked.
"What's wrong? Let's go back."
He was looking behind her in confusion, so she turned back to see.
K was still breathing.
The indomitable human spirit wasn't a myth, he was still alive! His body was shaking, and his hands were clenching in. And then, in a move that belied the agony that had just ravaged his body, K stood up.
Unbroken. Unwavering.
"Ugh, I hate these persistent pests." Irnis face-palmed and looked at him. "Don't you think you should just lie down and act dead until I'm out of this place?"
K didn't speak.
"Well, not that I'm complaining. If you remain standing long enough, it might become a good warmup for me."
K remained silent.
His hair fell across his eyes. His breathing was unnatural, body was still shaking.
Irnis frowned in disappointment at K's quietness. "At least try to waste some time talking while you prepare yourself again. You humans do lack some intelligence."
Irnis bolted towards him, carelessly and tried to smack him again at the same place. The pressure crushed the surface of the ground. With a smile on her face, she struck.
But she only punched the air. "Wha-"
K dodged it.
Irnis' eyes widened in surprise *"What was that?"* but she didn't stop.
Undeterred, she stepped forward and tried once more, only to miss her mark again. *"What's wrong with my aim? I don't get it, I'm usually on target."* She thought.
Without wasting time, she launched several attacks but missed again and again.
*"Why can't I hit him?"*
On the other hand, for K, she looked way too slow to him. He can see her every movement. It was almost as easy as breathing. He was dodging while maintaining a close distance from her.
For a moment, flickering, his hair lifted a bit. His eyes were glowing, intensely. His pupils shone like moonlit water, their depths burning with an eerie, otherworldly light. But it went unnoticed.
Irnis got frustrated. She jumped forward and landed a punch, finally. A bit of dust blew up around them.
"Hah, too bad for you. You were fast, but I am the fastest Dramon alive. I might have lost my grip these days, but not enough to be defeated by a human. Quite unlucky, aren't y-"
K blocked it!
He stopped it with his hand on his chest.
Irnis jumped back. *"How can a mere human withstand an attack from my fist? Is he really that strong?"* She pondered.
The Princess and her guards were looking at this scene, wondering if they should believe what they were watching.
K stood there like a statue, and then he shook as if he had regained his consciousness. He was in complete shock. His mind was trying to comprehend what had just happened while he looked at his hands.
*"What was that? For a moment, everything I did... it just felt like a reflex action."*
He smiled a little. *"I don't care what was, but now I think I can defeat her."*
Then his face twisted into a sneer, raised an eyebrow, and let out a mocking laugh. "Was that all?" he taunted, his voice laced with disdain.
"I thought you were some big shot among your species." His words were laced with sarcasm, and he took a step closer to Irnis.
Irnis got furious as K's taunt struck a nerve. She laughed in a provoked tone. "A mere human dares to mock me? Haha, I've had enough! You're going to die here and now..."
Her armour started glowing, and its energy field began to pulsate with intense energy.
She flicked her thumb, resembling a button, and a substantial greatsword, half a meter wide and two meters long, weighing approximately two tons, materialised in her hands... or so it seemed, but it teleported out to her from the hovership.
"...And my Dephon will end this." Dephon's tip fell on the ground, penetrating it and making a little quake.
At the same time, some people started coming towards that park. They all somehow, somewhere and sometime had become acquaintances of K, though most of the time, he forgot about them.
"What's this now?" Irnis got distracted.
Those people from before, who had run away when the duel was starting, had gathered the crowd and called some news reporters too. By some, there were only two reporters and a cameraman because, after the war, there had been a shortage of News reporters in many places.
Recognising K, some of them collectively gasped in horror, while some ran towards the park. Their faces reflected their shock and dismay. The crowd's murmurs turned into noise.
"Go and quickly set up Megravent! I'll deal with them later. I don't want an interruption right now." Irnis ordered the guardsmen.
*"I've never seen humans coming out of their homes during a duel. This is the first time humans are gathering against a Duel... for this human?"* The sudden turn of events seemed to shift the balance, as Irnis' grip on Dephon tightened, her eyes flicking between K and the agitated crowd.
Those guardsmen came out from that hovership with four sleek, silver boxes with dark, gritty self-repeating patterns resembling electronic circuits etched into them.
Each one was about a foot tall and had a fancy, see-through screen on the front. There are some glowing blue lines and a handle on the side. They looked as if something was emanating from them, like Irnis' armour. Those four boxes had a rugged, industrial feel, but it was still somehow sleek and modern.
They put them on the four corners of the park and erected a barrier effectively trapping K and other Dramons within the park, isolating them from the frantic crowd.
Megravent is just a smaller version of another barrier, Regravent, which was used in Shadowfall to prevent any damage to Dramon's army. But still, the Magravent barrier is strong enough to stop an atomic bomb.
Unlike its stronger version, Megravent was limited to a single place. It cannot be moved without removing the barrier. Once four of those, pyramid-shaped machines are placed, it starts to generate a rough outline of the area to cover and simply starts to create the barrier block by block, but the process is always too fast for someone to notice. It is just a self-sustaining, energy-latticed, impact-neutralising, meta-material barrier with geometric patterns on it. It works greatly but only from the outside, because from the inside, it neutralises everything.
And so, people running towards K got blocked by that barrier.
The townspeople's attempts to breach the barrier were met with futility, their blows and screams echoing off the impervious energy field.
"Seriously, these humans annoy me." Irnis swung Dephon with her one hand, which made the ground beneath Irnis crack. "Do you know about my Dephon, Human?"
"I know only what everyone else knows. I mean, many have heard in the news about this... Dephon." K looked at it acutely.
"It was strong enough to tank around hundreds of hypersonic missiles, and yet remained unscathed. I would even say that this was the MVP of The Shadowfall. Cutting through the armies of many strong nations and doing all that in a few hours was its most popular feat... maybe."
K didn't show it, but he was scared at this moment. He has seen the clips from the dead soldiers' camera shown on the news, and looking at this abomination right in front of him looked less like a weapon and more like a nail in his coffin.
"You are well informed, but you should know that without me being its user, it can't do much. Just look who your enemy is right now." Irnis chuckled.
K leaned forward a bit, getting ready. "Don't tell me that my luck sucks. I already know that."
Well, seeing how things turned out, it couldn't be something else.
"Heh. You bet. I don't usually kill humans without orders, but I guess you are already going to die at my hands. I hope you are ready."
K was right. Those people knew what she was holding was Dephon. And as they saw this, their anger and sorrow reached a fever pitch. The reporters and some people were recording this scene, though this fight was already being recorded by something.
A drone was flying above the park, watching everything happening there... from the start.
••
In a heavily fortified, high-tech command center building, the third floor was full of staff, lazily sitting on the chair and looking at their computer monitor screens.
There was a noise coming from some computers, while others were just on.
Dust was in the air.
The noises were coming out from those screens, though not too loud, but almost every person there was just looking bored and slacking off. What was being displayed by those screens was people getting brutally killed by Dramons in Duels, and the noise was basically their screams, but it wasn't even fazing these people sitting on their chairs.
Those screens were showing all the Duels happening in the world, and right now, twenty Duels are going on. It was being recorded through high-tech, self-operating drones controlled by the satellite.
These drones always reach the duel location as soon as it even starts and record all of it.
"Oye, Berth. Want anything? I'm going to get cold coffee downstairs."
"Yeah, get some orange juice for me." He pointed at a person sitting next to him "And get this guy something too. He looks like he's gonna pass out."
"...ok then."
"Wait a minute!" Berth's eyes widened in surprise. "Come here, Ajit."
"Hm? What's going on?" Ajit turned back towards Beth.
"Just look at this!"
And now both of them are shocked. They were stunned to see what was going on their screen. That guy beside Berth looked at what they were looking for. Now, his sleepiness flew away.
Watching them, some other people around them also gathered there and saw the same thing and were astonished.
They were watching Irnis and K's Duel.
Some of them started talking.
["Is that the third Dramon Commander?""Wait, he's still standing?""Why are there so many people?""He made that Commander use Dephon!""What's with this guy? How can he do all that?""He can block her punches too!""Look! He's dodging that!""What the hell is going on?"]
The ruckus caused their supervisor to come there. An overweight, haughty guy went towards them, clearing them to their positions. "What are you people doing? Go back to your places!"
"Sir, look at this." One of them said.
"Hm? It is just a Duel. What are y-" and now he had the same expression too.
But he calmed himself down. "Give me the location and information about this guy."
He took the coordinates and K's other information printed on a paper from one of the workers on his computer nearby and ran towards the elevator to reach somewhere quick and hastily pressed the...wrong button...so he ignored it and pressed the button for the twentieth floor with his finger shaking and then....he waited for a while...then it opened up on the wrong floor so he waited more...and then he was going to go out when the lift stopped but someone had pressed for the elevator on sixteenth floor and left it... so he waited more...
And then he rushed out towards one of the rooms with some numbers written on it and then got interrupted by someone.
"Woah there! Are you okay?" He came in front of a handsome, pale-looking man in a white suit with eyeglasses on.
"Ah, Mr. Noah, I-I'm just-I want to show you something."
"Hmm... I believe you are from the 9-H block of the third floor."
"Yes, you are correct. I never thought you would remember me... No wait, Sir, I want you to check the Duel recording of this area."
He gave him a device that looked like a glass slate and entered a few numbers which made its transparent screen opaque and showed the recording.
*"I haven't seen someone standing against a Dramon for this long and like this before, and his enemy is a commander on top of it. Just who is this person?"* Noah wondered as he looked at K dodging Irnis's attacks.
"I think it should be informed to the Eccen. This is something that needs thei-"
"Yes, it indeed is a serious matter. I should tell it to them as soon as possible. Thanks for showing this to me." He started rushing towards the elevator.
"Ah, sir w-wait!"
"Hm? Is there anything else?"
"Uh, I'd like if you, uhh, I mean- not now but... if you would..."
"Ah, yes, sure. I will make sure you will be compensated for this." Noah smiled and went away in the elevator.
That supervisor waited for him to go away. "Haha, finally I'll get promoted. Yes!" He was happy... for a minute at least. "Shit, I forgot other elevators are still being repaired and he took away my Sphurna too. Fuck it!" Sphurna, the same device he used to show that duel. It's a mobile device, just as a tablet, but it is completely transparent when it is turned off.
Meanwhile, Noah, in the lift, was concerned about the consequences of this Duel. He was looking at its replay and thinking about something.
He arrived at a certain floor named 'S.N.' and moved towards a hall as quickly as possible but he wasn't running.
"Wait a minute, Sir." A security guard stopped him.
"Five of Sapta-Niyantā are inside for an important meeting. Please wait."
"Well, I would have waited, but this is more important."
"As much as I believe, it cannot be more important than an emergency."
"Oh, but this is an emergency too." then Noah lowered his voice down a bit, "And I don't think they would even mind me interrupting their meeting but you can surely be punished as 'you' are stopping me from informing them something which is probably more important than your life. You cannot even imagine how important this moment is."
That security guard silently stepped aside.
Noah opened a door and entered a small room, as big as a closet. He straightened his clothes.
There was a futuristic metal door in front of him so he used it as a reflection. He then came closer to it, entered a password by just tapping on the door, and went inside the meeting hall.
"I hope I am not interrupting you all."
"Oh, certainly not. Instead, we were anticipating you and we even know why you are here right now. We are just talking on that matter too." A feminine voice came from the seat written "II" on it but Noah couldn't see her face in the dark.
"Then, I guess I should not be here. Lest I 'disturb' your meeting." But Noah does know her.
"Haha, just ignore that guard from before. He's just a newbie here. You should stay here because I think you will probably have to deal with something later."
"So, what do you think about this guy?"
"Well, it depends on what the result of this Duel would be."
As she said that, a three-dimensional holographic image popped up showing K. Its light fell on other chairs, written I, III, IV, V, VI, VII.
A holographic image on the V chair said first. "It's not going to be good no matter who wins, but if that man wins, at least we are going to have a weapon of war in our hands."
"We cannot decide this without all seven leaders present here." The lady in the II chair raised her voice. "And we still haven't got the results yet."
"Yeah, yeah." Someone said among them
They all went silent and looked at the hologram.
"He's not going to sit back and watch." Noah hinted to the lady on the II chair.
And then in the hologram....
••
Irnis lifted her sword.