“Heh heh heh… fine, fine—here’s a better question. You wanna have a bad time? Take one step forward… you won’t like what comes next.”
Calm rose in Ling like moonlight on still water; words hit like rain on stone and slid off without a mark.
Since Sans wanted her to take a step, Ling wasn’t about to deny him.
Her right foot pressed forward, like a spear tip cutting the dust.
Sans shrugged, weary as a wind-worn scarecrow.
His right eye’s dark hollow flickered, not pure white now, but a neon pulse—yellow and blue trading places like signs in night rain.
“I always wonder why no one believes I’m serious.”
A bone-white hand, clean as sun-bleached shells, lifted level.
Out of thin air bloomed two skulls, dragon-like and fanged, like fossil heads waking in a storm.
“Gaster Blaster!”
At his call, the skull-drakes yawned wide.
Blue beams poured toward Ling, a river of light roaring like winter lightning.
She hadn’t guessed what those heads were for.
She’d taken them for décor or blunt clubs, and that mistake hit her like a wave—she got tagged clean.
That so-called Gaster Blaster burned on like her own Magic Cannon—steady, sustained, a torch that didn’t snuff just because it struck.
“Kid, folks call it the Dragonbone Cannon too. Not made with Dragonfolk bones, though. I’ve got no taste for dragon-slaying, and I won’t.”
He spoke like someone making a small fire in a cold cave, half an explanation for why Ling had come to the underground.
But he missed the ember at the core—Ling fought him for one reason only: he’d patted Alicia’s head.
His words took two or three seconds, and the Dragonbone Cannon faded in that span.
The blue beam narrowed like a river finding its bed, then winked out.
Ling stepped out of the light like a figure from mist.
Arms crossed in front, horse stance rooted like a pine against wind; her forearms showed no wounds, only the push of the impact.
She lowered her guard.
Two jade-green pupils met that neon eye, steady as twin lanterns; her reply was all iron and clean lines.
“Get this straight, Skeleton. I’m fighting you to vent, nothing more. The Dragonfolk? Not my business.”
To seal the promise, Ling’s right foot bit the earth.
Her still body snapped forward like an arrow; in one blink she stood under Sans’s nose.
No magic added—just a Yokai’s raw force, a fist swinging like a hammer at his ribs.
Boom—!!
The punch wind heaved the ground under Sans’s feet, dust surging like a tan wave.
Only dust flew; the Skeleton wasn’t in the things swept away.
“Whoa—almost missed that. That speed’s insane.”
His voice came from behind.
Ling turned, saw him fussing with his clothes, surprise flaring like sparks in her gaze.
Can’t see the speed? No… more like teleport.
She’d tagged him as a simple Undead Skeleton, a hollow breeze in a bone frame.
Teleport changed the silhouette—this wasn’t simple at all.
“If you slipped that punch, you must be one of the stronger Undead, right?”
She tossed it out like a pebble to test a pond, hoping to fish up a scrap of truth.
Whether Sans saw through her thought or simply answered, he pinched the fur on his hood and held it up, like a cat showing shed whiskers.
“Didn’t dodge. See? Lost a few tufts of fluff.”
Ling didn’t bother counting; even if true, the punch wind would’ve blown them off like chaff.
Who watches loose fur in a sandstorm?
“And point two.”
He smoothed his hood, then raised two pale phalanges like twin icicles.
“I’m not Undead. I’m just a Skeleton—ordinary life, then somehow I ended up here.”
Ling let that drift away like smoke.
Who’s seen an “ordinary Skeleton” that fights? No blush, no pulse, yet the lie sat without trembling.
Sans caught the disbelief clear as a mirror.
He pulled up his hoodie; in a world short on trust, fabric warmth was the one small fire he had.
“I met two humans. First, a jerk with strange ‘Determination’—slaughtered the whole underground to see something, then saved it to pay for the stain.
Second… that’s you. Someone who’ll fight for reasons that brush the edge of strange.”
As he spoke, the pupil under the hood’s shadow flared.
Neon yellow and blue traded places, and inside the eye a flame rose—blue, then white, then blue-white, like frost-fire licking steel.
“I’m not dying here before I see the day I can go back. Kid, make your choice. Ahead lies the Underworld, and Daemons are burning there.”
