The corridor of car eleven was not made for waiting.
Enji had known that for twenty minutes.
He was sitting against the partition, knees pulled up, glasses pushed onto his forehead. Yuma was lying beside him — unconscious, breathing regularly but too shallowly, his hair still faintly reddened at the tips by the residue of darkness mana. Archer wasn't blinking anymore. The tactical vest was silent.
In the rest of the train, Nathan was managing.
Enji could hear him from a distance — the deep, unfiltered voice explaining to the staff, the panicked passengers, the conductors who wanted answers, that everything was under control, that no there hadn't been an explosion in the proper sense, that yes the damages would be compensated, that no they didn't need to call anyone because the World Authority was already here and that was precisely its job to handle this kind of situation.
Nathan's agents were taking care of the rest. Two of them were still wearing improvised bandages. They were working anyway.
Enji lowered his eyes to Yuma.
"...You could've let me do something," he said, very quietly.
Yuma didn't answer.
Obviously.
Footsteps in the corridor. Enji recognized the rhythm before he looked up — that particular way of walking of a man who is never really in a hurry because he's already ahead of everyone else.
Nathan stopped in front of them. Looked at Yuma. Looked at Enji.
Then sat against the partition across from them with the sigh of a man who hasn't slept in a long time and doesn't plan to anytime soon.
"...The train stops in Vantarcity in forty minutes," he said. "I've arranged the explanations. Car eleven is officially out of service for technical reasons."
"...Plumbing issue," said Enji.
"...Exactly." Nathan drew on his cigarette. "Alright. Now you're going to explain something to me."
Enji waited.
"...Kids your age." Nathan looked at Yuma, then Enji. "With that level. On this train. By coincidence." He exhaled the smoke. "That doesn't exist."
"...We weren't here by coincidence," said Enji.
"...I know. You were going to Vantarcity for the Threshold Guardians admission test." A pause. "That doesn't exist either. Apprentice rank F gunning for the Threshold Guardians at sixteen."
"...We're not ordinary apprentices."
"...I'd figured that out on my own." Nathan looked at the ember of his cigarette. "So. Who trained you?"
Enji took a second.
"...Reishin Takamikaze."
The silence that followed was of a particular quality.
Nathan said nothing for a long moment. He looked at the ceiling of the car. Then at Yuma, still unconscious. Then at his own hands.
"...Reishin," he repeated.
"...Yes."
"...Rank S. Ethereal Arcanis. The one who neutralized the Kessarith dungeon rupture alone."
"...That's him."
Nathan exhaled slowly.
"...That explains a lot of things." He lowered his eyes to Yuma. Something shifted slightly in his expression — not tenderness, too hard for that, but something in that direction. "That kid absorbed the energy of eight mana-detonator bombs with a stabilization rate of seventy-two percent."
"...I know."
"...And you let him."
"...He asked me to trust him."
Nathan looked at Enji.
"...And you trusted him."
"...Yes."
Another silence. Nathan crushed his cigarette against the floor, slipped it into his inner pocket.
"...Alright." He reached into another pocket. "You saved Mireille for me. You neutralized explosives that would have destroyed three cars and killed everyone inside. You stood up to two members of the Phantom Twelve." His hand came back out. He was holding something small — a translucent sphere, the size of a marble, with inside it a light pulsing softly in white and gold. "That kind of work gets rewarded."
Enji recognized it immediately.
He straightened slightly.
"...That's a healing orb."
"...Good observation."
"...But that's... that's far more powerful than any standard healing potion or magic. It's worth a fortune."
"...Yes."
"...You really want to give that to Yuma?"
Nathan looked at him with the expression of someone who doesn't understand why the question is being asked.
"...For what that kid did today," he said, "it's plainly deserved."
Enji closed his mouth.
"...Thank you," he said.
Nathan stood up. Approached Yuma. Knelt beside him with a gentleness that contrasted quite sharply with the rest of his personality — gently opened his mouth, placed the orb on his tongue, closed it.
Stood back up.
"...Thirty minutes normally," he said, pulling out a fresh cigarette. "For it to circulate through the system. He's going to —"
Yuma screamed.
Not a small waking sound. A full scream, loud, that cut through the corridor and startled Nathan to such a degree that the cigarette slipped from his fingers. He watched it fall to the floor with an expression of pure surprise that probably no one on this train had ever seen on him.
Then he laughed.
Really. A short, brief laugh, but a real one.
Enji was looking at Yuma, who had shot upright and was blinking with the completely disoriented look of someone who doesn't yet know what century they're in. There was an expression on Enji's face that didn't know exactly whether it should be relieved or amused or both simultaneously.
He chose both.
"...Sleep well, princess?"
Yuma blinked again.
"...Yeah," he said. He stretched. Something in his tone was genuinely relaxed, like someone coming out of an excellent sleep. "I... actually I feel like I just got stronger." He looked at his hands, closed them into fists, opened them again. "It's a strange feeling but it's... it's good." He looked up. "But the Phantoms — where are they? Did we get them?"
Nathan had bent down to pick up his cigarette. He straightened, looked at it — still intact — and slipped it into his mouth.
"...You don't remember," he said.
Yuma looked at him.
"...Remember what?"
"...Anything. From the moment the bombs went off."
Yuma frowned.
"...The bombs went off?"
Enji and Nathan exchanged a look.
Nathan pulled out his lighter. Lit it. Drew a long drag while looking at the ceiling of the car with the expression of a man recalculating something.
"...Alright," he said. "Listen."
And he told him.
Without omitting much. The darkness mana deployed as a sheet over all the bodies around him. The explosion absorbed from the inside. The silence after. The voice that had said stop screaming from behind the sealed door. The fist that had sent that same door flying six meters down the corridor.
Then the loss of consciousness in Enji's arms.
Yuma hadn't said a word through any of it.
When Nathan finished, there was a silence.
Then Yuma lowered his eyes to his right hand.
Closed it slowly. Opened it. Looked at his palm.
"...I absorbed mana," he said, very quietly. Not to them. To himself. Like someone discovering something by saying it. "I... sucked in mana. All that energy. And I held it." He kept looking at his hand. "That's incredible."
Nathan exhaled smoke to the side.
"...Alright," he said. He stood. Looked at them both. "Kids. Don't do anything stupid."
He bent down. Picked up the cigarette that had fallen earlier — the one from the startle, crumpled at one end but still smokeable. Slipped it into his pocket for later with the seriousness of a man who wastes nothing.
And walked off down the corridor.
Enji looked at Yuma.
Yuma was still looking at his hand.
"...Hell of a trip," said Enji.
Yuma looked up. He thought for a moment — really thought, with that expression rare in him of a boy taking the time to weigh something.
"...Yeah," he said. "But this experience made us both a lot stronger."
"...Exactly."
Yuma stood up. Tested his legs. They responded without much negotiation — the orb had done its job.
"...You're up," said Enji. "Get ready. We arrive in Vantarcity in twenty minutes."
The effect was immediate.
Something lit up in Yuma's eyes — that particular flame that had nothing to do with fire or lightning or darkness, that came from somewhere deeper than all of that.
"...Finally."
He held out his fist.
Enji looked at it. That fist held out between them in this battered train corridor, with the morning wind still coming in through the hole in the roof of car eleven, with the rails vibrating under their feet and Vantarcity somewhere ahead of them.
He raised his own.
The two fists touched.
"...Always together," said Yuma.
"...Always," said Enji.
They looked at each other.
That will in Yuma's eyes. That determination in Enji's. Two boys who didn't have the same way of going toward things but who were going to exactly the same place.
The rails sang beneath the train.
Vantarcity was getting closer.
Vantarcity's central station was the size of a neighborhood.
Yuma understood that the moment they stepped off the train — the glass and steel canopy above them, twenty meters high, the platforms stretching in three different directions, the illuminated signs in several languages, the flows of travelers moving with the efficiency of a city that doesn't have time to stop.
And everywhere — hunters.
Not ordinary people with luggage. People with tactical vests, weapons holstered in regulation cases, guild badges clipped to their belts. Groups discussing dungeons with the casualness of people talking about their workday. Artifacts you wouldn't see anywhere else — solidified mana shards, equipment forged for specific bodies, things Yuma didn't even have names for yet.
He couldn't look in a single direction.
Nathan and his agents were waiting on the platform. Some had already collected their bags. Others were finishing calls. All had the air of people who have a long day of administrative paperwork ahead of them and accept it with the professional resignation of a team used to it.
When Yuma and Enji approached, something happened.
One of the agents — the one who'd had a bandaged arm since the car — stepped toward Yuma. Held out his hand.
"...Good work," he said simply.
Yuma shook it.
Another. Then another. Then all of them — not with grand speeches, not with effusions, with that direct way of field people who know how to recognize real work when they see it.
Yuma and Enji returned each handshake, each look, each brief word. Twice Yuma almost said something too enthusiastic and twice Enji looked at him just in time.
Nathan approached last.
He looked at them both.
"...Alright," he said. He had his cigarette but wasn't smoking it yet. "I have a proposal."
"...We're listening," said Enji.
"...Apprentice agents. World Authority." He said it the way he would have said the price of a coffee. "Training, accreditation, access to classified files. You work with us on cases involving hunters and criminal organizations." A pause. "At your level and age, you'd be operational in under a year."
Yuma didn't even wait for him to finish.
"...No."
Nathan looked at him.
"...No?"
"...My dream," said Yuma, "is to become the greatest hunter in the world. To build with Enji the best hunter team that has ever existed." He said it without aggression, without arrogance, with simply the certainty of someone who has known exactly what they want for a long time. "The World Authority isn't that."
Nathan turned to Enji.
Enji nodded.
"...Same for me. But thank you for the offer. Genuinely."
Nathan looked at them for another second.
Then he laughed — short, clean, with inside it something that resembled respect even if it probably didn't want to admit it.
"...Fine." He finally put the cigarette between his lips. "If you ever change your mind — which you won't, I understand that now — you come find me. I'll personally fast-track you."
"...Understood," said Enji.
"...Enji!"
The voice came from the left. High and clear, with inside it the familiarity of someone who has known the name for a long time.
Enji turned.
A man in his fifties was crossing the flow of travelers in their direction. Tall, broad-shouldered, salt-and-pepper hair cut short. He wore a thick jacket and walked with the ease of someone who knows this station by heart.
Enji recognized him immediately.
"...Soren."
Soren Aldric arrived at their level with the smile of someone who never overdoes it but is genuinely glad to see the people in front of him.
"...Been a while, kid." He looked Enji up and down. "You've grown."
"...The trip went fine, thanks," said Enji. He turned. "This is Yuma. My partner."
Yuma held out his hand.
"...Yuma Sekyhiro. Nice to meet you."
Soren shook it with the grip of a man who has forged or fought or both for decades.
"...Soren Aldric. Old partner of your father." He looked at Yuma a second longer than necessary — with that particular look of someone recognizing something without being able to name it yet. Then he turned toward Nathan and his agents.
Nathan had already understood. He gave Soren a brief nod — the nod of two men who don't need to introduce themselves.
Then he turned back to Yuma and Enji.
And bowed.
Not deeply. Not with ceremony. With exactly the right measure — him and all his agents, at the same time, heads lowered for a second before two sixteen-year-old boys who had done what a team of professional agents hadn't been able to do alone.
Yuma didn't know what to say.
Which was rare enough.
Nathan straightened. Finally lit his cigarette. Exhaled the smoke to the side.
"...Don't do anything stupid, kids."
He left.
His agents behind him.
Soren watched them go.
"...You worked with the World Authority," he said.
"...It wasn't really planned," said Enji.
"...No, I imagine not." Soren picked up their bags before they could protest. "Come on. The car's outside. I'll explain on the way."
Vantarcity.
Yuma had heard that name dozens of times. In Reishin's conversations. In Haruki's explanations about guilds. In the way Nathan pronounced it — with that tone of someone who knows what the city means.
None of those times had prepared him to see the reality from a car window.
The city spread in every direction with the architectural certainty of a place built to last and knowing it. Glass and steel towers stood alongside ancient structures no one had demolished because they still worked. Avenues wide as open dungeons intersected at crossings where dozens of people circulated constantly.
And everywhere — the arenas.
Not hidden, not discreet. Right in the middle of neighborhoods, open to the city, with their mana-reinforced structures that absorbed the impacts of training sessions and official bouts. Some were small — twenty meters a side, for individual duels. Others stretched across entire blocks, with stands that could hold thousands of spectators.
Hunter centers at every street corner — their emblems displayed without discretion, their notice boards covered in active missions, their lines of people going in and coming out with the efficiency of a city that treats dungeon exploration as a normal industry.
The guilds. Everywhere. Small ones of five people set up in narrow premises above artifact shops. Large ones whose headquarters occupied entire buildings with their banners in the wind.
"...It's something," said Yuma.
He had his forehead almost pressed to the glass.
"...It's Vantarcity," said Soren from the driver's seat. "Two hundred and forty officially registered guilds in this city. One hundred and sixty active hunter centers. Twelve sanctioned competition arenas." A pause. "And the Threshold Guardians at the center of all of it."
Yuma felt something contract pleasantly in his chest.
"...The test is tomorrow," said Enji.
"...I know. Kazuho told me." Soren turned at an intersection. "That's why I was at the station."
Yuma finally pulled away from the window.
"...He found us something here?"
"...Better than that."
The house was in a quiet neighborhood — not far from the center but enough for the noise of the arenas to become a distant murmur rather than a permanent backdrop. Two stories, dark stone facade, wide windows.
Ordinary from the outside.
Soren opened the door.
"...Here's your place," he said.
He gave them time to look — the entrance opening onto a spacious living room, the fitted kitchen, the two bedrooms upstairs that Soren showed them quickly.
Yuma nodded politely at all of it but his attention was elsewhere.
"...You said better than that," he said.
Soren had that quiet smile.
"...Yeah." He turned toward a door at the end of the hallway. "Kazuho wanted you to have what you need to work. Not just somewhere to sleep."
He opened the door.
The staircase went down to the basement.
They went down.
The arena was there.
Not a small training room. A real one — twenty-five meters long, fifteen wide, walls reinforced with mana-absorption panels, the floor in composite material that wouldn't crack under normal impacts. Clean white lighting. Training equipment lined up along one of the walls.
Yuma looked at the space in front of him.
He turned his head toward Enji.
Enji had already set down his bag.
"...No," said Soren. He recognized that look immediately. "You've just made a long journey. You have a test tomorrow morning. You should —"
"...We're fresh," said Yuma.
"...Completely fresh," said Enji.
Soren looked at them both.
He sighed with the resignation of a man who understands he's talking to people who have already made up their minds.
"...As you like."
He went to sit on a bench against the wall.
The two of them took their positions at the center of the arena.
Yuma struck first.
Not out of impulsiveness this time — out of strategy. He knew Enji. He knew Enji preferred to react, analyze, build from defense. Cutting that option from the start was the right opening.
Thunder Dance.
The electric propulsions from his sneakers launched him forward at a speed that closed the distance in a heartbeat. He changed angle at the last moment — right, left, right again — the Blazing Fist charged in his right hand.
Enji didn't dodge.
Frost Coffin.
Three ice columns surged from the floor between them. Yuma broke through them with the Inferno Mantle ignited — the heat of fire against ice, shards flying in all directions.
Enji had stepped back three paces in that time.
He was reading.
Active glasses, mana flows visible, that focus in his eyes counting angles and speeds and reserves.
"...You've grown," he said.
"...So have you," said Yuma.
Lightning Chain.
Five electric strikes from different angles — Enji parried the first two with Whistling Blade, the thin horizontal ice plate deflecting the impacts, dodged the third with a lateral step. The fourth caught him on the forearm.
He didn't step back.
Scarlet Nova.
The ambient mana fire explosion covered half the arena in a second. Yuma jumped back — the flames grazed his shoulders — and landed low.
He smiled.
This was what he'd missed.
Double Detonation. Both fists simultaneously charged with fire — the first explosion broke Enji's guard, the second drove in. Enji took the impact square in the chest and slid two meters across the composite floor.
Stood up immediately.
"...Good," said Enji.
He wasn't angry. He was thinking. Yuma could see it in the way his eyes moved — something being built.
Ember Wall on one side to cut off Yuma's movement angles. Polar Column underfoot to force verticality. Yuma propelled from his sneakers before the column reached its maximum height — Lightning Chain from his gloves, the propulsions chained in flight changing direction with each impact against the arena walls.
Enji tracked every trajectory.
"...Guided Spark."
The fire sphere controlled by thought — unpredictable trajectory, perfect decoy. It appeared to Yuma's left as he changed direction, forced a correction, lost half a second.
Enough.
Absolute Blade.
The ice lance precise as a sniper shot caught him on the right shoulder — not to wound, training arena, but clearly enough that the impact point was clear.
Yuma landed. Looked at his shoulder.
"...Well played."
He charged both hands.
Final Conflagration.
Fire at maximum in both fists simultaneously — the heat rising in the arena all at once, the air vibrating, Soren on his bench raising his eyebrows despite himself.
Enji didn't step back.
He did something Yuma didn't expect.
He extended his right hand. Open palm, facing up. And from that palm, slowly, with the concentration of someone feeling something for the first time and sensing it responds — a narrow flame, longer than it was wide, that took the shape of a taut thread between his palm and the air before him.
It held.
Enji looked at it.
"...Fire Arrow." His voice was calm but with something new inside it — the way of a boy who has just heard a sound and understands he can reproduce it. "I'd been feeling it since the start of the fight. Fire compressed in a line instead of a sphere."
He released it.
It crossed the arena in a perfect line and struck the floor thirty centimeters from Yuma with a precision Yuma's fire techniques didn't have.
Yuma looked at the impact point.
"...What is that?"
"...I don't fully know yet," said Enji. But he had that look. That particular look that appeared when something was clicking into place inside him and he'd see the consequences of it much later. "But it works."
He extended the other hand.
This time the cold — the inverse sensation, compressing ice into a linear axis instead of a column or plate. Harder. Ice resisted this shape, wanted to spread, wanted to solidify in mass rather than in a line.
Enji forced it.
Ice Arrow.
Finer than the fire arrow. Faster. The trajectory slightly curved by the density of the ice in flight but precise enough to be dangerous at range.
Soren had stood up from his bench without realizing it.
"...Alright," said Yuma.
He charged.
Scorching Lightning — the instinctive fusion of fire and lightning in a strike combining heat and electric discharge simultaneously. Enji countered with Boreal Flash — his Supra-Awakening signature technique, the fire dilating from the outside and the ice contracting violently from the inside at the same point.
The two techniques met.
The impact was strong enough that Soren instinctively stepped back.
Both boys were sent flying in opposite directions — Yuma sliding three meters, Enji landing on one knee.
A silence.
The smoke from the impact dissipating.
Yuma looked at Enji from across the arena.
Enji looked at Yuma.
Neither got up immediately.
Then they both rose at the same time.
They looked at each other for another second.
"...Draw," said Yuma.
"...Draw," confirmed Enji.
Soren was standing in the middle of the arena without quite knowing when he'd gotten there. He was looking at the two boys in front of him — their vests slightly scorched in places, their breathing steadying, their eyes that hadn't lost an ounce of that intensity since the first strike.
He thought of Kazuho.
He thought of what Kazuho had told him on the phone three days earlier: take them to the place, show them the arena, and let them do what they do.
He understood now what that meant.
"...At your age," said Soren. His voice was measured but with something inside it he wasn't trying to hide. "With that level. In this arena." He looked at them both. "Kazuho knew what he was doing sending you here."
Yuma and Enji said nothing.
Not out of modesty. For the same reason — they knew it was true and saying it out loud would have added nothing.
"...Go wash up," said Soren. "I'll make you something to eat. You have a test tomorrow."
They toured the house after dinner.
Two bedrooms upstairs — one facing the street, the other facing the back with a window looking out over the neighborhood rooftops and, further, the lights of Vantarcity's arenas that never really went out.
A library in the first floor hallway — full of dungeon guides, mana classifications, technique manuals that neither Yuma nor Enji had yet had time to read but that they looked at with the appetite of people who know they'll need them.
The kitchen where Soren had cooked something simple and warm and where they'd all eaten together saying little — the right way to eat after a long day.
And the living room.
Wide, with a sofa facing a window looking out onto the street.
They sat there — not in the bedrooms, not upstairs, there — with the same unconcerted impulse of two people who haven't quite finished the day even if the body says otherwise.
They didn't talk much.
Yuma looked at his hands. Closed them, opened them. Thought about the darkness mana, the absorption, that sensation of something pulled inward. Thought about the Phantom 7 and 8. Thought about tomorrow's test.
Enji looked at the ceiling. Thought about the Arrows — how they had formed, what it implied for what came next, the angles it opened in his fighting style. Thought about Nathan. Thought about Vantarcity seen from the car.
The silence between them wasn't empty.
It was full.
Yuma fell asleep first — his head tilting slightly, his breathing changing rhythm, his hands loosening on his knees.
Enji looked at him for a second.
Then closed his own eyes.
Soren came down the staircase twenty minutes later. Stopped in the doorway of the living room. Looked at them both — shoulder to shoulder on that sofa, unconscious with that particular way of being unconscious of people who have no more energy left but a clear conscience.
He went to find a blanket in the hallway cupboard.
Laid it over them carefully.
Looked one more second at these two boys who had this morning stood up to two members of the Phantom Twelve in a rigged train car and who were now sleeping like normal children on a normal sofa in a city that would test them tomorrow morning.
He turned off the living room light.
Went upstairs.
And left them to sleep.
End of Chapter 27