The road snaked and twisted along for kilometers, and even though we had been traveling for almost two days, the moment I waved goodbye to Doc and the rest of the base was still fresh in my mind. I knew general Suda had been there too, since the System had warned me of a great energy trying to scan me, but somehow I also knew he meant well even though he stayed hidden.

I was being escorted by Ms. Shijima and two C-Rank soldiers, meaning they were firmly in middle class. Touka had told me that the Tokyo base was crucial for containment of the country’s second most dangerous quarantine zone, so they were the best they could spare. The loss of a high ranked supporter like her must have hurt a lot too, though she wasn’t strictly part of the New Japanese Armed Forces.

”We are almost there, ETA is about three hours,” announced the soldier currently driving hour overly large armored vehicle.

I leaned towards Touka, who was checking the most recent map of the region. This era couldn’t use GPS, since most of the satellites had either been shot down during the first years of upheaval, before the “mutants” and the “devils” settled in their respective territories and a status quo was reached, or they simply malfunctioned when Earth’s atmosphere was saturated by Mana.

I heard the other soldier shout: ”What the hell is that?! Qui-” before finding myself being thrown around, the whole truck apparently flipping in midair before crashing.

Fortunately, my guardian had been quicker than me, and embraced me tightly before enclosing us both in a protective Od barrier as we started to spin wildly.

”Are you ok? We need to get out!” Touka warned me as she helped me get on my feet.

I nodded, and soon after she kicked the truck’s doors off with little apparent effort. The defenses had probably been weakened by the impact or were simply inactive on the inside, still, I was both impressed and reassured by her strength.

We stumbled out of the vehicle, and jumped towards where the front part was. The whole thing had been cut cleanly off, and four figures stood atop the wreckage, one of them holding what was left of the mutilated torso of one of the soldiers, while the other three were all intent on ripping the other unlucky fellow apart with claws and fangs.

”They didn’t even let them scream...” I whispered.

---THREAT ☆☆ DETECTED---

---THREAT ✥✥✥✥ DETECTED---

---THREAT ✥✥✥✥ DETECTED---

---THREAT ✥✥✥✥ DETECTED---

The screen flashed before my eyes for a brief moment. This time, there was no “suggested course of action” like with my first meeting with the General, did that mean I had a chance if I chose to fight them head on? Each of those smaller beasts were currently weaker than I was, at least singularly, but judging from the flow of energy, the one toying with the torso was at least as strong as Touka, if not stronger.

While the smaller creatures were as big as large dogs, with sleek, oily black skin and no distinguishable features apart from a huge gaping maw filled with rows of fangs, the last was apparently civilized enough to wear some sort of armored suit, covering it from head to toe in olive green plates, with glowing white cables flowing between them. I had no idea of what sort of mutant it was, but I was sure it wasn’t human. Despite my bizarre looks, I still processed mana and emitted Od from my body to power my abilities, while those things produced Prana, which only inhuman creatures were able to generate.

”Watch out!” screamed Touka jumping between me and a beam of white energy coming from the raised palm of the bipedal creature.

She managed to deflect it with one of her kukris. I didn’t even notice the beast had shifted its attention towards me, much less the exchange that followed. Without second though, I assumed the fighting stance I was tought, and began circulating Od in my body to ready myself.

”I’ll take th-” as she began to speak, she was forced to dodge the chunk of flesh that had been thrown towards her at blinding speed, and in that moment, as I turned back my head to the truck, I found myself facing the bipedal warrior, standing at less than arms reach from me.

I barely avoided being hit in the gut, but I did not expect the creature to be fast enought to discharge a second punch straight into my sternum, so I couldn’t manage to reinforce the bone fully before I heard it soundly crack and I was sent flying about a a dozen meters. All breath escaped my lungs, and in the wave of pain I could only manage to curl into a ball before about three more booming strikes rang through the air.

My guardian was keeping the warrior busy, but I couldn’t just stand back and let her lift all the heavy weight, especially since the three “dogs” had just finished their gruesome meal and were now running towards me. The coordination of that band of mutants was incredible, were they telepathic?

In the next few seconds, I focused all my attention on my fight, dodging the beasts jumping at me with as swiftly and as efficiently as possible, while using “Hand of the Maker” to shift my cracked sternum and damaged flesh back into shape. After an interminable thirty seconds, as the roaring exchange of blows of my obvious betters continued to ring out, I finally moved into the offensive, hitting one of the dogs with a palm heel uppercut to its jaw, and felt the satisfying sound of its disgusting flesh parting and melting away as I pushed a sizeble chunk of my energy into it.

The next two followed suit as soon as I got my hands on them, but one of them managed to sing its teeth into my leg before I could turn its skull into sludge, since I wanted to minimize the use of my Od by carefully measuring my power. That mistake costed me about twenty holes in my thigh, and I barely managed to choke down a scream before falling to my knees.

One of Touka’s kukris had been shattered, and she was barely holding her ground against a being which was seemingly only getting stronger. Judging by the mere aftershocks of the hits, a single error could cost her her life, and I couldn’t hope to heal my leg fast enough to make any difference in the fight, so I gritted my teeth and centered my power on the area around me.

”Hand of the Maker” was a complex skill. It could scan the structure of matter and energy around me and, depending on my focus and energy output, it could manipulate it to achieve various effects. There was no difference between living and inert matter, but Od, Prana and other “living” magical energy could easily distort or even outright block its influence, especially when using it without direct contact, so taking advantage of the enemy’s ignorance was key.

I extended my influence to the outermost limits of my capacity, letting it encompass the creature, and started to analyze its bizarre armor. It was more advanced than most other equipment I had seen in the Tokyo base, but that wasn’t saying much, since most high powered stuff was kept secret from an outsider like me.

What really surprised me was that the “mutant” wasn’t a creature at all, but a machine. An android of sorts, capable of producing prana through a series of synthetic organs implanted within the outer shell. Its output was still a league above anything I was capable of in my best state, so I needed to time my sabotage right to avoid any disturbance from its energy flux.

I understood nothing of robotics or electronics so advanced, so I had no idea where its central processor was, but from the flow of its “fuel” I knew that it had a sort of “core” were a human’s solar plexus should have been. As my guardian was preparing to block the most powerful attack yet, I felt the android’s energy shift significantly into its right leg, and pushed all my Od into crushing its energy nucleus completely. The Prana furiously cycling inside burst out, bouncing along all of its circuits and causing its whole structure to stop on the spot and begin to creak ominously.

”Move away, it’s going to explode!” I yelled my lungs out to warn Touka, letting the pain of my wounds out with my desperate voice.

I collapsed, my eyes fixed on the azure, spotless sky for a moment before a great blast of Prana engulfed everything. I didn’t even feel my back move off the ground before losing consciousness.

(...)

A grunt escaped my throat as I slowly regained consciousness, my whole body numbed, like some sort of electrical current was still flowing within it. Opening my eyes, I settled my gaze on the fluorescent lights shining from the ceiling, the smell of disinfectant wafting clearly through the air.

”Where... am I?” Nobody answered.

In a moment, the memory of the battle against the weird cyborg flashed back into my mind, and despite my protesting limbs, I managed to jump into a sitting position and look around. Beside me, on another small bed, Touka was lying, still out cold. She had some slight burns on her arms and left cheek, some bruises of various shades, but nothing that looked too serious.

Relieved, I settled back on the bed and, after a couple of minutes, when the discomfort faded a bit, I pushed out with my power beyond the walls of the room. Again, no one was there, but the plaque on the door read “Infirmary” and bore the symbol of the New Japanese Armed Forces. I felt a slight smile open on my face, somehow we were saved... talk about luck.

(...)

As it turned out, we had been saved because the man’s sensors detected an abnormal release of Prana in an area near the route of one of the few patrols. Fukuoka was far away from any notable mutant or devil territories, and most attacks were on the parts of the very few strays who lost their way from up north, so they immediately sent someone to investigate.

We were found unconscious on the edge of the blast mark, with Ms. Shijima wrapped around me to protect me, and we were in the infirmary for about three days as the medics gave their all to put us back into stable condition. Well, they mostly worked on Ms. Shijima, since she took the brunt of the impact and somehow I managed to heal myself passively.

As soon as we were in working conditions, Mr. Miyazaki summoned us to ask us about the battle, but Touka immediately delegated to me, as she was “busy with my admission papers”. I barely had time to put on a uniform before Mr. Miyazaki barged into the infirmary and practically dragged me out.

“You guys managed to destroy this thing?” muttered the man as he unceremoniously threw the piece of the cyborg in a heap in a corner of the workshop and cleaned his hands on his oil stained overalls.

I nodded, looking at the man fidgeting with a mechanical arm hanging from a series of wires on the ceiling. Jubei Miyazaki was a middle aged engineer working at the Fukuoka command center, and he looked like the stereotypical mechanic: somewhat short, as wider than a door, with his whole body covered in thick ropy muscle... were it was still flesh and blood.

“Little Touka said she couldn’t have won without your help, despite you being just a student of the Academy. If you ask me, I’m skeptical about it... it was probably because she skipped the maintenance of her implants, no way she would have lost to this clod of scrap otherwise,” he boasted, banging on his chest with his cybernetic right arm.

”I got a good look at it while I was searching for a weak spot, but in the end I just sabotaged its core slightly and it exploded in a few seconds, my memory’s not that good, and I don’t have anywhere near the amount of knowledge you have on this sort of thing, sir. I’m afraid I won’t be of much help” I explained while pacing up and down.

”I see, I see. Well, little Touka exchanged blows with it, so she might be able to tell me her thoughts as an expert warrior, don’t worry”. He beamed a warm smile at me before returning to his examinations.

I couldn’t help but smile back when I tried to excuse myself and he just shooed me without even bothering to look at me.

”Weird guy...” I mumbled, closing the workshops door behind me.