*Whoosh*
The cold air of the province of Llanblethian blew. The heavy breeze carrying ice particles lightened as the dawning sun spread its warmth throughout the white land. It was a strange habitat, taking to account that it had a beach with the warm ocean on one side of the province. But that was how it was here; after that golden sand beach, the rest of the Iceland of Llanblethian never thawed, not even once.
Inside a well heated hospital room, Asher slowly opened his eyes to find himself sleeping on a white medical bed. There were small, pillow-like objects placed all over his body. And when Asher lifted one up, he saw that the purpose of those small pillows was to halt the internal bleeding of his body. He was in really bad shape as blood was even seeping out of the pores of his skin. The soul Yenn had fed him must not have been enough for a complete healing.
He looked down at his body. He was wearing a white dress and even fresh underwear. His eyes twitched, perhaps because he knew someone had seen him naked and changed his clothes...
"MY STUFF!!!"
... Or he was just worried about his possessions.
With vigour that his current body wasn't supposed to possess, Asher's voice blasted the blanket and thin pillows on his arms and legs off. He was about to jump off the bed himself, alas, he couldn't move.
"What the heck?!" Buster who was watching Asher from the side, exclaimed with surprise as he hit the back of his head on a wall.
Seeing as there was someone else in the room, Asher turned his head to him. "You... Where's my stuff?"
Buster scratched his head as he pointed to the wall behind Asher. A black dress was hung up above his bed, but Asher knew his outfit when he saw it, despite its different appearance.
'That's all that's left?' Asher thought. However, he understood that the undine's attack had ruined most of his equipment back then. It was a good thing his coat could grow back and change shape with the help of his energy and that his pouch was hanging on the safe side of his waist, or else he would have lost a lot.
Seeing at least some of his things, Asher was able to calm down. He turned his head to the open window, noticing that they were in a place filled with snow. "Where is this place?" He asked, hearing that Buster had brought him here, from the Old Man.
The red haired boy walked closer to Asher's bed and sat on the seat next to it, answering, "We're in Llanblethian."
"Another strange place on Ansel, huh?" Asher muttered as he stared at the surrounding area.
Ever since he had come to Ansel, Asher had realised one thing with the place, and that was its abnormal diversity. No province had the same habitat as the other, and every one seemed to have their own unique technology, specialties and most intriguing, their stories. This island was a place that could stir immense feelings of adventure in a man. Traveling around just the borders was like traveling around a separate word on its own.
But Asher had gotten enough adventure for now. If he went poking around again, he felt he might lose his life because of how everything here seemed to be out for his blood.
So to those who loved the thrills, Ansel was fun, but even if Asher did like it, this was just too much!
Apart from inside of STAR's training room, which he was in for like, a month but was actually ten days in the real world, Asher had only spent about three days roaming the island.
He was here three days and he had already lost his ability to use any of his powers! He was here three days and he had already lost most of the equipments he had spent years working on!! Three days and he had been on the brink of death more times than he had been all of his life before coming back!!!
Asher thought back to the time when Lucius had asked him to stay for a whole year attending the academy of Ansel, and coming out on top. He had thought it was going to be easy accomplishing just that but, school hadn't even started for the S-rank students yet and here was, beaten to a weak, powerless state. Why was this so?
'It's all that baldy's fault!'
Call it intuition, but Asher felt like all he had been through on this dang island was because of the Dean. What was his game? Not wanting Asher to leave here again? Asher thought.
All the strength he had been building up over the years was being plundered just like that. On Ansel, the world's most wanted criminal was just a leaning student.
'Tch!' Asher looked down as Buster kept placing back those pillow things on his body and asked, "How long will it take you to fly me back to Neath?"
"Neath? Where's that?" Buster sat back down as he finished.
"Oh yeah, you don't know. That's why we're here in the first place." Asher shook his head.
"Okay then, how about Ogmore?" He asked again, expecting Buster to be familiar with the place, since it was part of his division of the island. And as expected, Buster answered affirmative.
He told Buster to take him to the highlands and that he would go home from there, but Buster rejected. He said that Asher needed to rest here and that someone would come later to pick him up. But Asher was the one to refuse this time.
Seeing as Buster's hair was still glowing even with a suppressor on, Asher knew he was definitely a strong superhuman, and with his speedy fire skill, was definitely faster than Yenn or any vehicle she might want to bring over. Knowing that there was a faster and less stressful way for Yenn to pick him off, Asher couldn't accept any other means of going back home.
"Or is it too much trouble for you to handle?" Asher gave a fake sigh. "I just didn't want to trouble the sweet lady that would have to travel five thousand kilometres to come get me you know." His only way of making Buster agree to his suggestion was blackmail. And sure enough, it worked.
*Boom
Buster shot up from his seat. "Trouble? We can't have that! I'm a hero after all." He pointed to his chest and smiled at Asher confidently.
"Hahahaha! See boy, I told you it'll work. This child is just a stupid hero fanatic. Hahaha!"
'Well he's helping us out Old Man, so I don't think I like that tone.' Asher coldly scolded the voice in his head as he tried to sit on his butt.
Seeing him struggle to move, Buster's fiery eyebrows knotted. "But are you sure? Your body is —"
"I'll be fine, thanks." Asher smiled at him, sincerely grateful to the red haired boy. Buster had brought him here to safety by literarily using his own blood, and till now, hadn't asked for Asher to give him any kind of pay back for his actions. And now, he was going to do the same thing again, not wanting to trouble a person that was dear to Asher, which he didn't even know.
If it were seven years ago, Asher would have definitely seen Buster as someone stupid, however, having learnt a lot about human behaviour, and virtues, he had come to appreciate people who were still pure in heart like Buster was, they were rare in fact. And Asher had only seen three other people who had similar mindset of putting others first like he did.
Buster nodded his head and went to a drawer to pick up a blanket. Ripping it into thin fabrics, he used them to tie the small pillows around Asher's arms and legs, and then allowed the injured man onto his back.
Leaving a paper message on the bed, probably for the doctor of Asher's room, he jumped out of the window and set his and Asher's body on red fire, a warm, harmless fire.
———
Three hours later, Asher and Buster had reached the highlands of Ogmore, but as they went closer to the city, the view of the place quickly left them appalled. Hundreds of meters of the residential area were either completely wiped out or dilapidated, thankfully, seeing as no body was around the rubbles or craters, it meant the people who lived here, made it out before whatever caused this arrived.
BOOM!!!!!!!!!
From afar, the two heard a loud explosion and headed there to see what had caused it. But as soon as they saw the cause of the explosion from above, both Buster and Asher had their eyes opened wide.
"Alya?" Buster muttered as he stared at the woman whose body was over a gooey black moving creature.
But the reason Asher was surprised was because, even though he wasn't paying full focus to the faint light glowing in the monster's belly, he could recognised the purity and the smell of that white soul any day. Because her thread was just like Nova's, albeit, without the golden dots that surrounded her own thread.
A red circle surrounded by zodiac symbols suddenly appeared on the ground, teleporting Alya and the black monster somewhere else.
"What the —" Was that Nova? No, it must be the one they were looking for in the first place, the woman that had split from his little sister's soul. But... She is dying isn't she?
[Warning: This equipment still needs three more hours for its complete creation—]
"Screw that! This is all I have!" Without hesitating, Asher pulled out his black box furnace from his pouch, ready to unlock whatever piece of weapon he had created. Even if it ruins it, that was the only option he had at the moment.