Unlimited Fafnir:Volume 8 Prologue

Prologue

The crossdressing girl who belonged to the special forces team Sleipnir─Jeanne Hortensia─possessed rare "eyes."

Long-range vision discerning objects faraway, dynamic vision capturing objects moving at high speed, peripheral vision providing full awareness of everything within view─

All this meant that she, in possession of such excellent vision, also had mental functions capable of processing the information obtained through her truly outstanding sense of sight.

Her eyes were so sensitive that the information conveyed to her brain was more than ten times that of a normal person. In addition to processing this information fully, she also had high-level spatial perception and situational judgment.

Normally speaking, intuition was based on information provided by the senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch; sensory predictions borne from heuristics.

In Jeanne's case, sufficient information could be secured through vision to drive intuition.

Information obtained through vision was the fastest since light was the medium.

Consequently, she could act a step faster than other people without needing to depend on input from sound or smell.

Asgard's laboratory at Tokyo, Japan─Fourth floor underground.

Present at the awakening of the Kraken's child, she immediately made the split-second decision to evade.

A tiny split had appeared on the silver tentacle... The instant Jeanne caught sight of the purple eye through the gap, she understood faster than anyone else.

Over there was a monster that she could not handle.

Leaving behind the lab director Miyazawa Kenya, standing there petrified in surprise, Jeanne went back in reverse along the same way she had infiltrated the lab.

Reaching the ground took five minutes.

Due to electrical systems being down, the lab's premises were shrouded in darkness. The security system was also silent.

Wanting to get out the sooner the better, Jeanne was approaching the premises' fence when calamity struck.

The lab's front yard, a neatly trimmed lawn, swelled up, then dirt and soil was blown up into the sky.

This left a deep hole as a result.

Looking down the bottomless pit, Jeanne felt a chill run along her spine.

─It was coming.

Seeing the purple glow amidst the darkness, Jeanne turned around and ran as hard as she could.

However, it came chasing. Cleaving apart obstacles, the presence approached.

─Why me?

The question surfaced in her mind, but she did not even have the leisure to look back.

Continuing to escape while avoiding populated areas, Jeanne then heard a small crying sound.

"...Huh?"

Surprised, Jeanne looked back─And saw it.

Chasing after her was the figure of a young girl, crying.

The girl's eye glowed purple while her long hair undulated eerily.

It was totally non-human, a natural appearance of a monster's rendering.

However, the girls expression showed neither hostility nor the intent to kill.

In the darkness, Jeanne's excellent vision accurately read information from the girl's facial expression in the distance.

Uneasiness and sadness, as well as longing.

The girl was seeking her. That was what Jeanne intuited.

Then her fear subsided, because she understood that the monster wielding astonishing power was a crying child.

Halting her footsteps, Jeanne then approached the girl.

The wire-like silver hair shook, the girl who destroyed everything in her way stepped forward.

Despite getting hit by flying debris, Jeanne did not evade.

She had seen many examples of such children before.

Lost children, whose parents had died in battlefields.

Jeanne herself─was one of them.

Many of those who enlisted in the military this year were of such background.

Seeing that Jeanne did not move, the girl's surprised face stopped crying.

"It's okay. I won't run anymore."

As Jeanne looked her in the eye and told her, the girl broke into a run with an expression of desperation.

With silver hair rustling, the light sound of footsteps, the girl rushed at Jeanne─and hugged her.

Then she began to cry again, loud enough to echo in the surroundings, clutching Jeanne's clothing tightly.

Seeing the girl's flowing tears, Jeanne was convinced.

This child was─human.

*

"She is... not a dragon. Like us, she is—Human."

At the house where Mononobe Mitsuki used to live with her original family, in the second-floor bedroom...

Thus murmured the awakened Jeanne Hortensia, recalling her encounter with the girl.

In front of Jeanne, surprised expression surfaced on the faces of two girls.

Kili Surtr Muspelheim and Lisa Highwalker.

Jeanne had heard from Kili and Lisa that the girl─Kraken Zwei─was going to be put down.

But after actually meeting the girl, Jeanne had come to understand that Kraken Zwei was not a monster unlike other dragons of legend.

"Human... You keep saying that, Jeanne-cha─No, but weren't you captured by that thing? I nearly got killed, going all-out to rescue you."

Kili remarked with displeasure. She almost used Jeanne's real name but Jeanne usually called herself "John" under the guise of a man.

Jeanne was extremely afraid of her real gender coming to light. Despite finding it a nuisance, Kili reluctantly accommodated.

"Captured...? No, it was─I'm certain that..."

Jeanne felt her own body. In surprise, she swallowed the remainder of her sentence.

"What happened? Could you share in greater detail?"

Seeing Jeanne's puzzled look, Lisa asked in a serious voice.

Placing her hand on her own chest, Jeanne answered in a perplexed voice.

"I'm... supposed to be dead─She protected me."

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