The Second Nail

"What do we do, teacher? He—he calmed everyone in the restaurant down!"

Moke tried to make himself as small as possible, despite his massive frame, and whispered for help to the puppet beside him, whose appearance resembled that of a burly man.

But the puppet remained silent. His meaning was clear: this was Moke's trial.

At least, that was what Moke thought. It never occurred to him that his teacher might not have a good solution either...

"What do I do? What do I do..."

Moke dug his fingers into his scalp, unaware that blood had already stained his fingertips.

Lude was gradually making his way down the corridor toward him.

Lude hadn't spotted him hiding behind the bar yet, but it was only a matter of time!

At this rate, he had less than thirty seconds left!

Fear quietly gnawed at Moke's heart. That monster had been forged by Alchemy. There was no way he could win...

He had to hide. What should he do? What could he do...

As Lude reloaded the revolver in his hand, he moved clockwise through the restaurant, searching it methodically.

In fact, he had already sensed that his quarry was probably behind the bar.

But to be safe, Lude decided to search the restaurant bit by bit. What if there were more than two enemies?

Perhaps sensing what Lude was thinking, none of the Balloon Puppets attacked him along the way.

"Then..." Lude quietly cocked the hammer. He was ready for a fight.

He would feint with his pistol first, then, as his prey dodged, punch straight through their chest and crush their heart.

Lude wouldn't repeat the mistake of failing to kill Professor Beshe with a single punch.

Quietly tensing the muscles in his waist in preparation, Lude had now reached the back of the bar.

Once he was sure he was ready, Lude snatched up a cup and hurled it.

The instant the ceramic cup struck the wall at the end of the corridor with a shrill crash, Lude rolled tactically, aimed his gun at the space behind the counter, and fired six times without hesitation.

But after emptying the magazine and seeing what lay behind the counter, Lude couldn't help freezing for a moment. It wasn't Moke.

The man lying behind a pile of sacks had a build somewhat similar to the attacker's, but his face was entirely different. His clothes were nothing alike, either, and even their skin tones differed greatly.

Most importantly, Lude remembered this man.

Lude had a photographic memory. So even though he'd only glanced at the man when entering the restaurant, he remembered that the man had been there from the start. In other words, he wasn't a disguise.

Besides, the man was now lying on the ground with six bullet wounds, fresh red blood slowly flowing from them.

Lude's sense of smell was exceptionally sharp. He was certain it was real human blood, not something like a blood bag.

Balloon Men didn't bleed. They just leaked air.

This giant wasn't the spellcaster who used nails, nor was he a puppet made of balloons. So where had the nail-wielder gone?

Had he already left the restaurant?

Or had he hidden himself somehow?

Or had he slipped upstairs while Lude wasn't paying attention? That seemed unlikely, though. Lude had plenty of confidence in his powers of observation.

But just as Lude turned around, the giant sprang up and swung a fist at the back of his head, a nail clenched in it!

"What?!"

Hearing the rush of air behind him, Lude immediately realized something was wrong.

He knew it was too late to dodge, so he decisively raised his hand to meet the incoming fist.

Before the cursed nail, Lude's skin of bronze and bones of iron might as well have been fake. In an instant, it pierced straight through his hand.

A cold, sticky voice sounded in Lude's ear once more. "Two."

The giant had landed his blow and immediately tried to pull away, but after tugging twice, his hand... wouldn't come free.

He looked up and saw Lude grinning viciously.

"Got... you!"

Clamping down on the giant's fist, Lude roared and slammed a hard punch into his stomach.

With a dull crash like a truck hitting a wall, the giant went flying backward.

The tables and chairs along the way couldn't withstand that tremendous force. In an instant, they shattered into a heap of wooden splinters.

At last, the giant's body smashed through a wall with a bang and landed in the restaurant's first-floor kitchen. A jumble of bottles and jars clattered down from above, and a cloud of pepper made him sneeze several times.

He tried to force himself upright, but staggered and fell back to the ground. He looked badly injured.

Yet Lude wasn't satisfied with the result. He'd put all his strength into that punch. Against an ordinary person, it should have blown a hole in their chest—or at the very least, gone straight through them, just as it had with Professor Beshe.

He looked at his right hand. That punch hadn't felt like it had hit a person. It had felt like he'd struck a thick suit of armor.

This wasn't right, Lude thought with a frown. Especially since he'd hit the man in the soft, vulnerable abdomen.

Siana had once told Lude that spellcasters weren't, fundamentally, a fighting profession. They merely studied a few supernatural arts, but were still mortal in body.

That wasn't surprising, really. After all, not every spellcaster sought the power to dominate an era.

The pleasures of the senses,

the knowledge to glimpse the roots of all things,

the transformation needed to escape one's past,

the pursuit of a way to gain eternal youth and immortality,

or simply a never-ending war.

These were all common desires and pursuits among spellcasters.

For many spellcasters, force was merely a tool for achieving their desires, and a tool only needed to be good enough.

No one had ever heard of an auto mechanic who built a car and then made themself a wrench out of aerospace materials!

But a few spellcasters really would hurt themselves in pursuit of power.

Just as Lord Hypnos had said, they might transplant the organs of supernatural creatures into themselves, use Alchemy to alter their bodies, or resort to even more dangerous methods.

Recalling how that punch had felt like striking steel, Lude knew the man in front of him must have undergone Alchemical modifications.

Considering that the bullets had indeed pierced his arm, but the six shots to his chest and abdomen hadn't affected the precision of his movements, he'd probably installed subdermal armor or metal bones—or some similar Alchemical prosthesis—in his torso.

Hah, a spellcaster of the same kind as me.

Small-caliber pistols were useless against this kind of enemy. He needed a shotgun or rifle, or an Alchemical weapon—something capable of piercing the man's defenses--

--or a heavy enough blunt weapon to injure his internal organs with the impact, such as Lude's fists!

Lude was about to close in, but then he calmed down again when he heard the sound of hammers being cocked all around him.

"Tsk." Lude clicked his tongue. From that brief exchange, he was certain he could deal with the nail-wielder in a minute—if only the armed Balloon Puppets weren't so annoying.

There was more than one of them, their movements were precise, and they could pop up at any moment to shoot him when it mattered most.

To put Lude's fighting skills charitably, they were nothing special. Less charitably, he was a flailing brawler. That weakness became obvious as soon as the gap in strength between them narrowed.

Even though he only needed to land one punch on the man's head or neck to end the fight instantly,

as long as the nail-wielder could just keep up with his speed and deflect his fist with a block, Lude would be in for a rough time.

If that were all, he could still win, albeit with difficulty. But the man still had a third nail Lude needed to avoid, and there were also an unknown number of Balloon gunmen harassing him from the sidelines... Tsk.

Lude gritted his teeth. He couldn't keep tangling with the nail-wielder!

He needed to find a way to clear out all the Balloon Men—or take out whoever was controlling them.

With that in mind, Lude leaped backward and jumped out through the window.