Heart part 1

Chapter 37 - Rotten Luck

For a moment, the air in the hall stood still and all things remained frozen as if they had just entered into a different dimension. Once the space finally resettled, a fiery tension overtook the hall like a raging storm.

" Juzo!!" Esther and Jaqueline triumphantly shouted.

Standing by the unconscious Bagon with a gargantuan shadow hand floating over him, Juzo parted his eyes open and stared Dandy down. In the corner of his eye, he noticed Sandy lying in a pool of blood to the side and her torn-off arm not far off. Turning his attention back to Dandy, his face darkened and tensed.

Eyeing him from the corner of his eye, Dandy's usual high-strung, over-confident, and zealous veil was drawn back, revealing a hard, humorless, and dour face. Looking at him with unblinking eyes, Dandy's iron lips swung open. " How...how are you still alive? Bagon should've killed you!"

A room-tearing quake shook across the room.

Juzo's eyes shifted to the floor. " 'Why am I alive?' 'Why do I get to live while others don't?' For all my life, I've always pondered the answer to such questions. But quite a while ago, I was finally answered."

Unexpectedly, his arms swung out wide. " I was saved to live! After some thinking, I realised I was never alive this whole time, I was just a corpse wandering with no grave to rest in. But now I finally know! I am living!"

With his eyelids widening further, his translucent teal eyes shined brightly even in the darkness of the hall. " For now and forever, my eyes have been opened! No longer will I waste this life that god saved! I will use every last ounce of it to carry out god's holy will! And right now, they're telling me that you need to be defeated! I have a feeling you are not the worst evil lurking within this world, but you are still one who threatens god's holy kingdom, and for that, you must be punished! And so, as the flow of god's will entails and by the name of god...I will demolish you!"

Slamming his palms together, dozens of shadow hands materialized out of thin air in front of him. " Shadow Arrows!"

As the words left his lips, the hands twisted into dozens of ghostly arrows and immediately shot off toward Dandy's direction.

" It seems your luck's run out!" Esther gloated from the side, having regained a bit of her spirit.

Unfazed by her words, Dandy let out a groan and placed a palm over his face. " How annoying...but no matter..." An outstretched grin began poking out from the sides. "...this is simply just another hurdle I need to overcome. If I start getting weak now, then my country will never be saved!"

" Pure Luck Attack!" He shouted, pointing one of his meaty fingers Juzo's way.

Arrow after arrow cut through the air at high speeds. There was no chance any of them could miss, but in the face of ultimate pure luck, of course, anything was possible. As the arrows drew closer to Dandy, Juzo couldn't help but notice some of them begin to act strange. As if a window had been opened, a large gust of wind blew into the room from the hall's entrance and swept past everything like a wave.

" Wha-what in god's name...?! Where did this wind come from?!" Juzo screamed out, getting pushed down onto one knee. Latching onto a nearby statue, he held on to not get blown away. The lanterns in each of their hands were blown away and shattered across the floors and walls. From there, the wind fed the flame and carried it all across the room. Statues, rocks, and even the wind soon caught fire. In mere moments, the hall was a catastrophe of heat and a light show of blaze.

When the shadow arrows were mere inches away from riddling Dandy with holes, they began to bend and curve. Due to the wind, their trajectory was changed and they ended up gliding narrowly past him. Pulling a hand back, Juzo tried to wrap them back around to hit him from behind, but even so, they still missed and spun out in the opposite direction. Several more times, he tried whatever he could to pull the arrows back around, but he couldn't control them in this sudden wind. Round and round, all Juzo's arrows could do was do circles around Dandy in the air amidst the flames.