Strike the Blood - Volume 19 - Chapter 1.4

4

“They…got us good.”

Asagi was the first to recover from surprise. An expression of keen regret came over her as she ground a heel against an adjacent trash bin in a fit of pique.

“Hiding Kojou’s true identity really bit us in the ass,” Yaze said, covering his eyes with his right hand. “We never thought a fake Fourth Primogenitor would just show up and claim the name.” He was slumped against a wall as if he’d been slugged in the gut. He seemed humiliated by the fact their own plan had been used against them.

“On top of that, they picked a time when Kojou wasn’t on Itogami Island to strike.”

“Going out of their way to smash Keystone Gate up must’ve been to make their might easier to see, huh? Pretty damn thorough.”

“Hey, is this the time to be admiring the jerk?!” Kojou exclaimed, indignant.

He’d previously heard about the existence of the boy calling himself The Blood from Yukina. He was the ringleader behind the group that had shut Kojou and others in another dimension dubbed Onrai Island, toying with other people’s hearts to run experiments over and over.

Kojou was full of energy. “We’re gonna nab that brat and put an end to this Electoral War nonsense! What should I do?!”

“Hmm… Without checking out the situation some more, there’s not really much to say.” In contrast, Asagi’s reply was realistic.

“The first thing we want is intel,” Yaze said calmly. “We want to know the Order of the End’s numbers and strength, and I’m mindful of just how far the effects of this war have spread.”

Kojou could only call his assertion a truly sound one. They had too little info to work with at the moment.

Nagisa, who’d held her silence until that point, gently grasped Kojou’s sleeve. “…Hey, Kojou… Mimori and Gajou are safe, right?”

Asagi hopped right up and strongly hugged Nagisa from behind. It was the natural behavior you’d expect from real sisters.

“Yeah… I can’t help worrying over relatives and friends, too. Aw, darn it…! I could find out in a flash if only I could use Mogwai…”

“So the real problem is Keystone Gate, huh…?” Kojou clenched a fist as he shot a glance at the screen of his cell phone, still showing it was out of range.

The cessation of the communications network and the ritual magic using the demon registration bracelets were both happening because the Order of the End had taken over Keystone Gate. In other words, if they took back Keystone Gate, they could stop the Electoral War that The Blood had instigated.

Of course, the issue was that they didn’t know anything about the Order of the End.

Kojou didn’t think they could take on this level of foe by charging in without a plan and no idea as to the enemy’s strength. That’s why Asagi and Yaze were claiming they needed information first.

However, thanks to the communications network being down, they had no way to gather that information. Getting involved in the war was risky, as was blithely approaching urban areas.

The heck should we do? thought Kojou as he clutched his head.

Ugaki raised a timid voice. “Um…incidentally, how long did you plan on sticking around here, Big Bro?”

“Is it inconvenient for you if we’re here?” Kojou brusquely questioned back, too tired to correct the Big Bro part.

Ugaki’s shoulders tightened out of nervousness. “No, the other way around. I’m totally cool with it, but you used some pretty off-the-wall demonic energy back there. I’m just thinking, wouldn’t folks in other domains notice that stuff, too?”

“Oh, right…” Asagi gasped in sudden realization. “By conventional thinking, using strong demonic energy means you have a lot of subjects under your belt.”

Ugaki nodded firmly with a now you get what I’m sayin’ look. “Yeah, that’s what I mean, Sister!”

“No way I’m a ‘sister’ to you! Next time you call me that, I’m calling you Pork Troll!”

“P-Pork Troll…?!”

That extremely callous rebuke struck Ugaki at his core, as if he lived in a world bereft of pity. Kojou sympathized with the guy a little. It was doubtlessly a riff on his being a corpulent troll, but it was a truly awful nickname to be known by.

“More importantly, what happens if folks in other domains notice it?” Kojou asked.

“Huh, I wonder. It’d be great if they chickened out and ran…,” Ugaki replied, “but these are guys who think they can be rulers of Itogami Island in place of the Fourth Primogenitor an’ all.”

Certainly, if they were runts enough to run in terror from Kojou’s Beast Vassal, they could be left alone and that was that. However, ruler candidates coming to attack in spite of that would be a problem; the chances they’d come with a plan and the power to take on Kojou were rather high.

“…The chance of simple morons without any survival sense coming seems pretty high, too,” Yaze commented, staring at Ugaki.

Kanon abruptly squatted down at Ugaki’s side, like something had suddenly come to mind. “The ritual magic from earlier has a side effect of increasing the caster’s aggression. Am I correct?”

Ugaki blushed as Kanon stared into his eyes. He felt tense. “Ahh, now that you mention it, I get the feelin’ you’re right. It’s kinda like a high.”

Yaze clicked his tongue as he realized the gravity of the situation.

The ritual magic the Order of the End had put together had the side effect of making demons belligerent. Even normally laid-back demons’ personalities were becoming aggressive.

If not for that, even with Keystone Gate wrecked, there was no way demons would fight one another in unison. Normally, everyone wearing demon registration bracelets of a Demon Sanctuary were citizens who desired peaceful coexistence with humankind.

“So that’s what this is…,” Yaze said. “What a pain. It might be a good idea to change locations before weirdos start showing up.”

“Yeah, but where? And how?” Asagi asked.

Even if they left Ugaki, they were a group of six young boys and girls; wandering around in the dead of night would make them stand out like a sore thumb even in normal times. Doing it smack in the middle of this situation was practically begging to be attacked. They needed to think of some kind of countermeasure.

Before Yaze could come up with a tangible plan, he sensed Yukina going on guard.

“No…” She tightened her grip on her silver spear and moved toward the window in the wall.

“…Himeragi?”

“Unfortunately…it would seem we are too late.”

“Some new candidate bunch?” Kojou’s expression grew grave as he looked out the window.

Yaze swiftly turned off the room’s lights.

Kojou spotted a group climbing over the fence surrounding the base and approaching the building. Their numbers were greater than he’d expected—over sixty just from what he could count on the fly. They didn’t have a single defined outfit like Ugaki’s underlings had worn, but their movements somehow seemed to share similar quirks.

Ugaki poked only half his face up the window when his voice went shrill with fear. “This is bad… That’s the Rogues Alliance.”

“…That naming sense sure makes them sound dangerous,” Kojou murmured, unmoved.

Ugaki and his people had a terrible fashion sense. Meanwhile, Rogues Alliance sounded just right for a domain name. Kojou had to wonder if that wasn’t some name taken from a gang out in the sticks.

“You don’t have time to act all calm!” Ugaki’s eyes were in tears as he pleaded. “These guys are an alliance of four domains from around these parts. The leadership’s all beast people, and I heard they’ve got over seven hundred subjects…”

Kojou looked back at Ugaki in surprise. “That’s a lot of people to get in just two or three days, right…?”

“That’s how busy they’ve been crushin’ everyone else. Smashing big domains and grabbin’ their subjects is a pretty efficient way to build their own power…”

“Sure seems like it…”

Kojou understood the reason for Ugaki’s nervousness. It was a federated domain of street fighters that’d swelled in size through repeated conflicts. They would definitely be dangerous opponents.

“We are completely surrounded,” Yukina stated. Even so, she was calm.

“I don’t feel like talking things over will get us anywhere. What do we do? Bust through?” Kojou asked.

The Rogues Alliance supposedly had over seven hundred members, but it didn’t seem they’d gathered the whole crew before coming. However, it was possible there were as many as three hundred people surrounding the building Kojou and the others were in. Based on their battle formation, the officer-class beast men had between twenty and thirty people. Numbers like that were a bit tough to take on in a frontal brawl.

“No… Against beast men, it would be difficult even for the two of us to completely escape them,” Yukina said.

If it was just a matter of comparing offensive power, vampires able to summon Beast Vassals were on top, but in terms of physical demonic abilities, beast people were leaps and bounds ahead. There was a great deal of individual variation, but many beast people possessed explosiveness and endurance and excellent senses of smell and hearing, making shaking off their pursuit frighteningly difficult.

On top of that, the only people on their side capable of fighting such people were Kojou and Yukina—busting through under those circumstances just wasn’t realistic.

“If we can’t break through, should we hole up? But that’d be a siege with no hope of reinforcements…” Yaze sighed as he gazed at the center of the room.

“In the first place, this is a little cabin, not a castle,” Asagi said nervously. “If they light it on fire, we’re finished.”

Thanks to not expecting any combat on the surface, the coast guard station was a cheaply built prefab. It just wasn’t built to withstand siege warfare.

“Shit… This is a pain. So what’s the move? Kick all their butts instead?”

“You can’t, Kojou,” Asagi said earnestly. “If what Pork Troll said is true, they’re victims of The Blood’s magical manipulation, too, right?”

Kojou felt pained as he lowered his shoulders. Even the members comprising the belligerent Rogues Alliance were originally Itogami Island citizens wanting to live in peace. If possible, Kojou didn’t want to hurt them, either.

“Deceiving and controlling so many unrelated people… This is just like back at Onrai Island,” Yukina said in frigid anger.

Previously, the boy calling himself The Blood had employed devices known as nano-shikigami to make people run amok and attack Kojou en masse. This was surely his doing as well.

It was as if The Blood was mocking Kojou’s fate, betrayed by those he was meant to protect.

Kanon’s voice pulled Kojou’s mind back to reality from its momentary lapse. “Akatsuki!”

The skylight, which they’d neglected to take into account, split apart, and glass fragments poured down onto the floor. A bestialized wolf man poked his head through the skylight.

Kojou launched a ferocious punch toward the wolf man, dropping down from the skylight. “Kanase, get down!”

The wolf man evaded Kojou’s punch with ease. Even the vampirized Kojou couldn’t keep up with a beast person’s agility. In a cramped space, it was the other side with an overwhelming advantage.

But Yukina’s attack speed was even greater than that of a beast person’s. Using her Future Sight as a Sword Shaman, she could see an instant into the future and act accordingly. The wolf man could not evade Yukina’s attack, launched after already predicting which way her opponent would dodge.

“Roaring Thunder!”

Yukina’s ritual-energy-imbued kick exploded into the back of the beast person’s skull.

His brain ferociously shaken by the blow, the beast person was unable to even let out a cry as he collapsed onto the floor. Witnessing Yukina’s might firsthand unhinged Ugaki’s jaw.

But that single beast man hadn’t been the only enemy entering the building. Other beast people of the Rogues Alliance broke through windows all over the place, pouring down like an avalanche.

“We found ’em! It’s Ugaki!”

“Don’t let him get away! Circle round the back, too!”

“Whoo, chicks! There’s chicks here!”

With the guttural, hard-to-understand voices peculiar to beast people, the men let loose with excited cries. Kojou’s group was still on the defensive, forced into a corner of the room.

Kojou uneasily gritted his teeth, unable to summon a Beast Vassal in a cramped building. “Shit, there’s too many of ’em!”

Yukina was desperately fighting, but it was all she could do to keep the beast people at arm’s length, and the Rogues Alliance numbers kept on increasing. With numerous comrades of theirs surrounding the building, any chance for escape was slim to none.

Even if Kojou could intimidate them with a Beast Vassal, the Rogues Alliance members were in such an excited state that there was no telling if it would even have any effect.

So there really is no way but to beat them, thought Kojou, a look of despair coming over his face.

He had no clue about the depths of true despair that had already crept so very close.