Editing City Series:Volume2 Prologue (section)

===Part 3===

Jonathan saw two people in front of the warehouses lining the wharf.

One was a woman.

Her black hair waved in the wind where it extended below the shawl she wore over her shoulders. The features of her face were those of an adult.

She was the kind of adult who one could easily imagine crying.

He moved his eyes from the woman to the person next to her.

He was a tall man and he gave off a sharp aura.

He comfortably wore a long, dark green coat. The body inside the coat looked thin but not frail. He gave off a sense of defiance and dignity.

Whatever life he had lived, his face was almost entirely expressionless. However, great experience and sharp strength were visible in that face even from a distance.

The two of them looked straight toward the young man holding the shotgun.

The young man smiled as he accepted their gazes and he was the first to speak.

“It’s been two weeks, hasn’t it, Valeath?”

His smile grew a little before he continued.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you too, Moyla. Now, I’ve brought in the cargo and weapons as originally…planned!”

With that last word, he swung his empty left arm, but he instantly Overrode something in that hand to throw it. It was a long sword in a white scabbard.

It was seeing the afterimage of the scabbard rotating through the air that told Jonathan who this was.

Or rather, it was the smell.

This was the same smell as his prey on the battlefields of the world war a dozen or so years ago.

A monster’s prey was humans.

For the first time in over a dozen years, the smell of human flesh and the human world reached his nose.

And there was only one sort of human who would still fight with an anachronistic weapon like a sword.

“Hounds!?”

Some humans had been born to fight and, in some rare instances, one would appear whose power was equal or greater to a monster. A human who used their power to hunt “nonexistent” beings was known as a Hound.

Why would the likes of them be in the monster-filled country of England?

…''Why?

Valeath, the man in the long coat, caught the flying sword without answering that Opened question.

And he immediately drew the white blade.

The metal audibly sliced through the air.

A silver light at least a meter long appeared in the darkness and the light looked like it could cut through anything and everything.

Valeath stared at the blade that glowed as if wet.

“It really is like you to shoot him right away, Ralf.”

“It’s only natural for monsters to be killed by humans.”

“I meant that you went for the angel first.”

Valeath walked toward Jonathan as he spoke.

“Moyla.”

With the sword in his right hand, he called his partner’s name and Jonathan felt a deep tone in his gut.

“!”

Following the sound, all of the fog filling the wharf vanished in an instant. Wind raced through and formed a circle.

This created an isolate space.

The area expelling the fog grew wider and it encompassed Jonathan.

The woman named Moyla stood at the center of that empty space and she was folding her fingers in a strange shape without losing her seemingly powerless expression.

…''A barrier!?

Ralf, the young man dressed like a minister, must have read Jonathan’s unintentionally Opened thought because he smiled.

“Moyla’s barrier cannot be broken. Not even by an above-average monster.”

There was only one reason for a Hound to trap a monster in a barrier: to hunt it.

Jonathan clicked his tongue.

The battle had already begun. As proof of that, Valeath approached with drawn sword in hand and the look in his eyes expressed his intention via Open Words.

…''Fight.

Goose bumps covered Jonathan’s entire body before his heart could respond to the man’s will. His past combat experience, those memories permeating his body, told him escape would be impossible.

However, he could not let himself die here.

He had to tell someone about this. Humans were trying to do something here in the monsters’ city of London. The Hounds, those natural enemies of monsters, were beginning something.

“So I can’t escape without fighting, hm?”

He spoke that seemingly contradictory statement so he could hear it himself and he strongly Tasked himself.

His voice raced through his body as a Verbal Self Control of his Dis-Selfing thoughts.

He calmed himself down.

The old Hard Wolf looked up into the night sky.

The barrier had cleared away the fog and the moon floated unobstructed in the night sky.

The perfect circle of the moon was exactly the full moon a Hard Wolf desired.

He howled.

“Awooooooooooo!”

[[Image:City_v02_027.jpg|thumb]]

A howl was a primitive type of word, so it possessed great power. As a Hard Wolf, he desired the power of the moon and the power of a wolf. He looked up to the heavens in search of it and he howled. He howled with all his might.

Only a wolf could give a wolf’s howl.

He Overrode himself into a wolf. He desired to change.

He strongly Tasked himself: Altered, Altered, Altered!

The body exposed to the sunlight rapidly transformed. Before he could take another breath, his nose extended, his ears stood tall, fur sprouted up, his skeleton seemed to swell out, and the air exploded.

The fog, wind, and air swirled around him and his previously human form became that of a wolf. He exposed his true form as a Hard Wolf. His bluish-black fur had faded with age, but his build was well above average.

Powerful light filled his eyes. This was the light of a beast. His fur stood on end as if to reach the heavens. He opened his mouth, bared his fangs, and howled again.

“Awoooooooooooooooooooo!”

He faced forward, but not at the swordsman named Valeath. He looked past that man and at the young man named Ralf who had Ashed Gloss.

…''I’ll kill you first!

He shouted his bestial thoughts.

His Opened intent to kill shot out like a knife and shook Valeath’s coat, but Ralf only smiled.

“Valeath, this might be my job.”

He happily cocked the shotgun and the atmosphere of the battlefield linked directly between the Hard Wolf and the young man.

The man and beast faced each other with Valeath in between.

It began in an instant.

Jonathan made a sudden jump. The claws breaking out through his shoes kicked off the ground and launched him into the night air.

But instead of reaching the two men before him, the jump took him to the woman named Moyla.

“…Nh!”

He had used his Open Words as a feint. Faking one’s actual intent was much more convincing than only using actions. This slowed Ralf’s reaction and likely did the same to Valeath.

The great beast leaped over the men’s heads and he landed where only Moyla would be in his line of vision. He then dashed forward on all fours.

His bestial claws tore into the concrete.

His lupine eyes trained on his target. If he defeated this witch, the barrier would vanish.

Targeting a woman was not the gentlemanly thing to do, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Also, the easier target that would lead to the least bloodshed was best.

With the Hard Wolf after her, the witch folded her fingers below her shawl and in front of her chest. She showed no sign of fleeing even with Jonathan’s approach. She simply stared straight at him.

And her eyes held a look of pity.

Before he could wonder why, he had approached. As he ran, he held his left arm by his right side in preparation for a diagonal strike from below using the full speed of his charge.

He pulled down his body to pour as much momentum into the strike as possible, but then he noticed the concrete ground in his vision.

The moonlight falling from the night sky cast his shadow there, but another shadow was enveloping his own.

…''Someone’s above me!?

That thought was immediately followed by an impact.

“!”

He was thrown to the left and he rolled along the ground. Sparks flew when his false right arm struck the concrete.

The sparks were accompanied by the painful sound of scraping metal.

His body twisted as he rolled, the unpleasant sound vanished, and he attempted to right himself.

But when he tried to stand, he tilted to the right and collapsed. His right side was oddly heavy.

…''What’s going on?

As if to answer his Opened question, something descended from the sky in front of him. A familiar object struck the ground with a splat.

It was his own left arm.

“Wha-?!”

His groan of protest was followed by blood spraying from the severed arm and the stump at his shoulder.

As he doubled over and held his left shoulder with his false arm, a figure wielding a long sword stood in front of him.

It was Valeath.

“…!”

The kneeling Hard Wolf looked up at the man.

The swordsman had seen through Jonathan’s feint, jumped, and made his strike, but he was not even out of breath.

Behind him, Jonathan saw the witch sigh and remove the barrier. She looked like she wanted to tell Valeath something, but she coughed instead. It was the kind of deep cough that was unique to the ill.

Even so, Valeath did not turn her way. He continued staring forward without even looking down at Jonathan.

“Ralf, I will now show you how to remove their voice. Don’t waste them.”

With natural movements, the tip of his sword raced toward Jonathan’s throat.

It only took an instant.

No one spoke and Jonathan held his throat with his false arm. However, there was no blood. His fur remained intact and the skin below was not harmed.

Nevertheless, something white lay in a pool of blood between the Hard Wolf and the swordsman.

Valeath reached out and picked up the thumb-sized white object so Jonathan could see.

It was Jonathan’s voice.

“This is a solidified voice. It is an organ located in the throat called a Horn.”

…''What!? 

Jonathan tried to shout that word, but he found he could not speak.

That was unsurprising since his Horn was no longer in his throat.

“Your Horn has been removed, so act like it. Ash yourself like that corpse.”

The man was referring to Gloss. That angel was also meant to have had his voice removed before he was killed.

These three had indeed come to this city to hunt monsters.

…''Are you trying to destroy Aerial City – London!? If you do that, this will go beyond simply deserving revenge!

He used Open Words to ask his question and he received his response from behind.

“You don’t seem to understand. In all the many books out there, have you ever read of humans being destroyed by monsters? But you hear about the opposite all the time.”

He heard someone raise a gun just behind his ear.

“You monsters are so conceited if you think people are really afraid of you. Humans can hunt monsters. If we wanted to, we could easily destroy this entire country. There’s only one reason we haven’t done it yet.” The young man took a breath. “We took pity on you monsters and protected you. We joined you in your fear of what we could do.”

All of Jonathan’s fur bristled.

The bleeding from his left shoulder was stopping thanks to the regeneration of a Hard Wolf, but he still could not move. He was surrounded and his enemy was far more powerful than him.

He heard some metallic sounds behind him. He heard something fitting together and a trigger being pulled.

“…!”

But Valeath moved in front of Jonathan and placed a hand on the Hard Wolf’s false arm. The roughly bandaged hand had a circular emblem drawn in the colors of a burn.

The brown, discolored bandages loosened and instantly wrapped around the false arm like vines.

“Over Contract. Be destroyed by your own arm.”

Unlike before, Jonathan actually moved after Valeath’s expressionless words.

Except it was only his false arm that moved. It forcefully swung up as if to point toward the moon.

“!?”

It had left Jonathan’s control and the movement was horribly sharp and unhesitating. This was the precise movement of a machine moving as a machine.

The metal claws glittered for an instant. It was a cold and pleasant glitter.

And…

“!”

It struck.

The false arm stabbed deep into the left side of his chest.

It produced a pleasant sound that sent a shudder down his spine.

Needless to say, this alone was not enough. The false hand was embedded up to the wrist, but it began to move about in his flesh. The sound of severing bone rang loudly out. The intermittent sound of sliced muscles sounded painfully in his ears.

The Hard Wolf raised a voiceless scream. As only his breath escaped from his lips, blood burst from his chest, from his fang-lined mouth, from his nostrils, and from his left shoulder.

The blood stopped his silent cry.

A tremendous sound followed only a beat later. It was the wet sound of something being born. The false arm had come out of Jonathan’s chest.

…''!

The metal hand covered in blood and fat pulled something from his chest with a wonderful sound.

It was his heart.

The false arm crushed the bloody mass in its grip at the same moment as his body collapsed backwards.

“…”

A gun could be heard being put away.

“An Over Contract? I bet he never even imagined a human would use a demon’s contract spell. …But, well, it feels like we accomplished something here.”

Next, a sword could be heard being sheathed.

“This Hard Wolf was my opponent from the beginning.”

Icy killer intent rose like fog, but it was shattered by approaching footsteps.

A woman’s voice followed.

“Ralf, I will show you to the hotel we have a room at. It has space for mooring a boat, so can you bring the boat there with the cargo still aboard?”

“Y-yes. If you say so, Moyla.”

Even as the humans spoke, the Hard Wolf had yet to Ash.

His death was only a matter of time, but he was still alive.