Bang bang bang!
Gunfire, shouting, then a string of blast-like sounds.
Thirty seconds later, Kira strolled leisurely across the room. Behind him, the goons lay sprawled everywhere.
In this world, goons with guns end up like this.
The door was blasted open. Kira stepped into the corridor outside. He moved along the hall; after only a few paces, someone slipped out from around a corner.
Black suit, sunglasses—a look straight out of The Matrix. Unlike the rabble who'd all been armed with guns, this guy wore a Duel Disk.
"Kid, you've got nerve barging in here. Do you know what this place is?"
"Mm... a baby products company?"
"Very funny." The man sneered and raised his Duel Disk. "Too bad you won't be laughing in your grave."
Kira unfolded his Duel Disk as well.
Moments later—
"Submarineroid, direct attack."
"Submarineroid No. 2, direct attack."
"Quick-Play Spell 'Flash Fusion'—fuse the two submarines on the field to Fusion Summon Pair Cycroid, direct attack again!"
"Quick-Play Spell 'De-Fusion'—split the bike back into two submarines."
"Submarineroid, direct attack."
"..."
Kira retracted his Duel Disk and stepped over the black-suited man, continuing forward.
The man's face was blank; his stylish shades were crooked, his body twitching now and then. His mouth hung open, emitting meaningless murmurs.
Two more duelists appeared along the way, each swaggering in and vowing to teach the intruder a lesson. They'd no doubt been local hotshots, proud of their skills.
Of course, after Kira shared a brisk, clarifying lesson in dueling, they seemed to change their minds.
The innermost room—that should be where Kagemaru was.
A heavy, reinforced metal door was secured with both password and fingerprints. Naturally, Kira let silence lead the way again—magic blew it open.
Inside, no lights—pitch-black, like you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
He stepped in. Almost the instant he crossed the threshold, mechanisms in the walls on both sides triggered.
Sounded like a pair of machine guns.
Automated guns that activated upon sensing an intruder. Barrels locked onto Kira's position and roared in staccato bursts.
Muzzles belched fire, bullets pouring downrange. As before, everything struck the invisible barrier about half a meter from Kira's body.
White magic circles rippled around him like raindrops pelting a river. Warped slugs spun away and clinked across the floor.
He didn't so much as flinch, walking through the hail of bullets like a man of steel.
A swordsman's silhouette flickered behind him—blade drawn. Two arcs of invisible sword energy slashed left and right. The steel guns were cleaved in half and exploded into fireballs.
A few more steps. His foot sank slightly—the telltale give of another trigger.
A thunderous crash from above—like the ceiling collapsing. A solid metal slab had been hidden overhead, designed to drop with crushing force when someone passed beneath.
If it landed, any human would be pulp.
But Kira moved as if unaware. Another flicker—sword energy slashed up. The massive alloy block split in two with a single, domineering cut, the halves whooshing past him to either side and slamming into the floor.
The Silent Magician waved her staff, casting light. A mote of mana rose, bursting into white radiance and turning the room bright as day.
It was an eerie chamber. Even under the bright spell, it felt shrouded in an intangible gloom.
Row upon row of tall shelves nearly reached the ceiling, crammed with instruments that glinted coldly. Beyond them were devices—some electronic, some alchemical.
He even saw something resembling Lyman's card "Chaos Distill": a gigantic alchemical cauldron.
If those still counted as research, what followed was downright chilling.
Transparent pods. The ones closest held animals—specimens. Some spread wings as if to fly; others curled in corners. Different poses, lifelike, capturing the moment their once-vibrant lives were frozen in glass, their postures telling the stories of their final moments.
A few steps further—humans in the tanks.
All kinds of people, fixed like specimens, as if their last instant had been preserved.
Some looked like mummies—like the dried corpse Kira found when he tracked down Lyman—dead for a long time, or drained of their last drop of essence.
Kira stopped before a particular tank.
Inside was a girl.
Unlike most of the other specimens, her expression was frozen in a moment of joy, as if she'd encountered something worth celebrating—perhaps never expecting death even at the very end.
A murky, aged voice sounded in the dark.
"Her name is Canon."
Kira turned. An old man's life-support pod, held aloft by mechanical arms, glided forward to meet him. Together they gazed at the girl in the tank.
"Three months ago, she was taken."
"By a dark duelist—someone using shadow powers to abduct. His methods were extraordinary; ordinary security forces could do nothing.
She was sealed into a card and carried off. Her fate would likely have been to be trafficked to some unknown corner of the world, condemned to a slave's life for the rest of her days—like the other victims taken with her."
"But they were lucky. They met me."
"I tracked the culprit down. I defeated him, dealt him his due punishment, and made sure he suffered before he died."
"I rescued them all."
"And now, excluding Canon, the other twenty-nine have received substantial funds. I helped them start new lives, solved their material difficulties, and gave them perfect lives they could never have dreamed of before."
"I saved them. I gave them new life."
The old man's voice was thick and rough, his gaze like a torch.
Kira said mildly, "You're not about to say that because you saved a life, that makes taking another one acceptable, are you?"
"No."
The old man answered calmly.
"I'm telling you that my being alive is more valuable than her life—or any of theirs."