Strike the Blood - Volume 19 - Chapter 4.6

6

His entire body enveloped by raging, tornado-like winds, Kojou landed on artificial ground that threatened to break apart.

He was on the sub-float off Island South, formerly the location of the coast guard runway. To Kojou, it was the place where the Electoral War began.

The sub-float destroyed in the predawn battle had split apart into countless units, floating atop the sea like drift ice.

Of course, there was no sign of human life anywhere, nor were there buildings to worry about breaking. There was no battlefield more suitable for Kojou to really let loose.

The Blood, impressed with Kojou, spoke to his foe. “I see. So your initial attack was to lure me to an unpopulated area.”

Even though he’d supposedly taken an attack from Kojou’s Beast Vassal head-on, he appeared unharmed. He’d summoned his own Beast Vassal to cancel out Kojou’s attack. In other words, The Blood’s Beast Vassals possessed power equal to that of the Fourth Primogenitor.

“Who the hell are you, The Blood?”

Kojou summoned a new Beast Vassal. This was Dabih Crystallus, the mind control Beast Vassal. The Blood countered Kojou’s summons immediately, rendering the Evil Eye useless with his own Beast Vassal.

“Why did you lock me in Onrai Island?”

Kojou summoned yet another Beast Vassal, one with purple flames—Shaula Viola. This, too, was fended off. The Blood’s dark manticore blocked Shaula Viola’s venomous flames.

“Why did you start this Electoral War? Why do you use the same Beast Vassals that I do?!”

Kojou summoned Natra Cinereus. The enormous carapace-covered beast’s silver mist was pushed back by black mist from the blond boy’s own vassal.

“Why do you look so much like Avrora?!”

Kojou summoned yet another Beast Vassal. However, it was in a place impossible for the boy to intercept—beneath the broken ground upon which he stood.

“C’mon over, Cor-Tauri Succinum!”

A torrent of incandescent magma enveloped the entire body of the small-statured boy.

The artificial isle fragment melted, vaporizing the seawater with incredible force. White steam rushed forth, filling the surrounding area.

“You already have the answers to your questions.”

He heard the boy’s voice from the other side of the wall of steam. The voice did not sound pained in any way. The Blood had endured the surprise magma attack.

But how?!

The boy appeared before him.

“I, too, am the Fourth Primogenitor.”

“What?!” Kojou exclaimed.

It was not only The Blood who stood upon the melted artificial isle unit. There was also a man wearing a reptilian bone mask. One of the acolytes of the Order of the End had used his own body as a shield to fend off the torrent of magma.

The robe enveloping him had burned away, and his mask was half-melted as well. However, his body was without a scratch. His skin was like red-bronze scales—dazzling flames gushing from it repelled magma reaching several thousand degrees Celsius.

“Come forth, Primus Succinum.”

“Khh—Mesarthim Adamas!”

Kojou tried to block the pitch-black magma shot back at him with diamond crystals. Fresh blood spurted from Kojou’s shoulder. An attack from an unexpected direction had sliced Kojou’s body and the countless diamond crystals alike.

When the aghast Kojou looked back, he saw another of The Blood’s subordinates. This Order of the End acolyte wore the mask of a bull-like demon beast and wielded a blue, curved blade.

“The other Hauras…!”

Kojou wobbled and went down on one knee.

The power of the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals and those of The Blood were equal. However, The Blood had two powerful acolytes. The difference in their strength was clear. Kojou despaired. He saw no hope of victory.

Now that Kojou was backed into a corner before him, The Blood ceased the surprise attacks.

Then, in a gentle tenor, he posed a question.

“Beast Vassals—they are the source of a vampire’s power and his combat abilities in and of themselves. Do you know what they truly are, Kojou Akatsuki?”

“What Beast Vassals…really are…?”

The boy’s abrupt question drew a blank from Kojou. He’d summoned Beast Vassals any number of times up to that point, but he did not know their true nature.

How they were born? Where did they come from? Why could only vampires use them? In all his time living in a Demon Sanctuary, the answers had not reached his ears even once.

To start with, Kojou didn’t know anything about his own Beast Vassals.

“Beasts that serve vampires from within their own blood, summoned beasts from another world—this explanation is not mistaken. However, nor is it the whole truth,” The Blood explained. “Beast Vassals are malice, hatred, curses. They are the souls of the very gods corrupted and transformed into the forms of demons through Cain the Sinful God’s cleansing—cursed beasts born from their wrath and despair. These are a vampire’s Beast Vassals.”

“They’re curses from…the gods…” A chill ran up Kojou’s spine.

Why were only vampire primogenitors able to summon such creatures with extraordinary power? Why did the strength of vampire’s Beast Vassals diminish with each generation?

If Beast Vassals were really curses, that would explain it. The primogenitors were the vampires that had been cursed the strongest; their children were merely inheriting those curses.

“The Lost Warlord, Fallgazer, the Chaos Bride—they, the three primogenitors, were the first, and became the last, of the bloodlines of the gods so cursed. It was they who were granted the most powerful curse, the most powerful Beast Vassals by the dying Deva race.”

“The Devas… The ancient gods…,” Kojou murmured.

The ancient gods who once upon a time ruled the world were transformed into demons through the power of Cain’s forbidden spell, The Cleansing. Then they were hunted by the humans they should have been ruling.

But if The Blood’s words were true, it was the curses of the Devas, exiled from the seat of divinity via The Cleansing, that made the primogenitors from their three demon kings.

“However, even with these curses from the gods, they were unable to defeat the Sinful God.” A thin smile came over the boy as he shook his head, seemingly pitying the gods. “That is why the few surviving Devas created an artificial vampire, the fourth of the primogenitors—the World’s Mightiest.”

“You can’t mean…”

“I do. New Beast Vassals were required to create the new primogenitor. A vast quantity of new curses sufficient to call it the World’s Mightiest—”

“They used themselves?! As living sacrifices?!”

The blond boy nodded without a word. Kojou was horrified.

The ancient gods—the Devas—had perished. They had sacrificed their own lives to create a new primogenitor.

That was how the Fourth Primogenitor, the World’s Mightiest Vampire, had come to be. They had created this god-killing weapon to slay Cain.

“The Fourth Primogenitor must be the World’s Mightiest Vampire. You have a responsibility to prove that it is so! For the sake of those who became part of the curse themselves in order to create the World’s Mightiest!”

“So that’s your whole reason for this bloodshed…?!”

Kojou was stricken by anger so ferocious that he felt his mind drifting away.

Proving that the Fourth Primogenitor was the World’s Mightiest Vampire—that was The Blood’s objective. That was the sole reason for his actions.

The same went for locking Kojou inside Onrai Island and making him experience the deaths of his comrades over and over.

The same went for instigating the Electoral War and demanding that Kojou announce himself.

He was asserting that all of this was to implement the curse of the gods who had perished in ancient times.

“We are not your enemy. The Fourth Primogenitor will become the ruler of this world. We, the Order of the End, exist for this very purpose.”

“Ruler of the whole world… Huh? There’s no way a ruckus on Itogami Island is big enough to cause somethin’ like that, dammit!” Kojou spat. “Don’t mess with me.”

“No. There is a way.” The boy narrowed his eyes in delight. “Have you forgotten? Itogami Island is the altar for The Cleansing, the greatest legacy of the Sinful God. Should there be a legal way to obtain it, it is unthinkable that the other primogenitors will fail to mobilize.”

“A…legal way to take Itogami Island? That’s the point of all this?!”

Kojou couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed by this.

According to logic, the ruler candidate with a monopoly on all the domains would become the owner of Itogami Island, sorcerous device for The Cleansing. But merely obtaining Itogami Island didn’t mean you could use it. In the first place, virtually none of the current ruler candidates would have any idea what The Cleansing actually was.

Kojou could not make his worries disappear, though. He had the indelible, terrible sense that he’d overlooked something, some kind of crucial factor.

“My true name is Kenon. Number Zero of the Kaleid Bloods.”

The boy slowly opened his lidded eyes.

He beheld Kojou with eyes that blazed like azure flames.

These were, without a shred of doubt, the same eyes as Avrora, the Twelfth. They were the eyes of the artificial vampires created by the Devas.

“I am the prototype of the Fourth Primogenitor, and I am your shadow. Furthermore, I am the proxy for the curse of the gods. With all of the power granted unto me, I shall deliver you the world.”

“Before you do that, I’ll send you flying and end the Electoral War!” Kojou howled, concealing his fierce internal unrest.

If The Blood was related to Avrora, that was all the more reason to put a stop to his vile deeds. That was Kojou’s duty as the one who’d inherited her power.

“It is futile.”

Pitch-black mist gushed out from all over the boy’s—Kenon’s—body. This mist, infused with immense demonic energy, changed into the form of an enormous, phantasmal beast. It was a mermaid of ice, or perhaps a siren, spreading forth transparent wings.

“I am stronger than you, for you are incomplete. Come forth, Primus Glacies.”

“That Beast Vassal—?!!”

Vast cold gushing out from the pitch-black monstrous bird assaulted Kojou. The surface of the sea surrounding the sub-float, and the air above it, froze in a split second, coming to a halt.

Kojou had no way to offset this cold, for the monstrous raptor of ice was the prototype for the Fourth Primogenitor’s eleventh Beast Vassal—employing the attacks of the final Beast Vassal that Kojou had yet to obtain.

“Shit…!”

Kojou felt his own mind turning into white mist.

A vampire primogenitor was immortal, but completely freezing him would still render him immobile. The Blood intended to freeze Kojou and advance the Electoral War further during that time.

But even though he understood this, Kojou couldn’t stop it. He’d already lost his vision and all feeling in his limbs. Even his mind felt distant.

With what little cognition he still had, he got the feeling he heard a soothing voice.

He thought he saw the dazzling radiance of spiritual energy…

“I, Maiden of the Lion, Sword Shaman of the High God, beseech thee—”

“?!”

Kenon’s elegant expression twitched.

Leaping into Kojou’s vision was a small girl wielding a silver spear.

“O purifying light, O divine wolf of the snowdrift, by your steel divine will, strike down the devils before me!”

A pale beam of light emitted by the girl’s spear sliced through the monstrous raptor.

As his whole body regained its freedom, Kojou let out a ferocious cough.

“Himeragi!”

“Are you all right, senpai?”

Yukina kept her silver spear thrust forward as she turned a small smile of relief toward him.

When she saw his bloodied shoulder, her eyes quietly scrutinized him.

“Truly, every single time I take my eyes off you for but a few brief moments, you always, always get hurt like this… Just what in the world were you thinking?!”

“What?! Uh, this isn’t really the time to say that stuff…”

“Please save your quarrel for after our predicament!” Shizuri Kasugaya’s painful words came alongside the high-pitched sound of metal clashing with metal.

Shizuri’s crimson long sword was batted downward by the same blue, curved blade that had previously pierced Kojou’s shoulder from behind.

“Cas?! What are you even doing here…?!”

“Obviously, I have come to save you! Goodness, you are such a handful!”

With the brute force of an ogre, Shizuri sent the blade-wielding acolyte flying.

However, the acolyte regained its balance in midair and landed with perfect calm.

“Watch out, The Blood uses the same Beast Vassals as the Fourth Primogenitor. Also, that macho bastard can shrug off bein’ in the middle of lava,” Kojou warned, shooting a glance at the acolyte beside The Blood.

“I understand… From his aura, I can tell this is no normal person.”

“That blue blade…”

Shizuri trained her own sword toward the other acolyte.

That instant, Kojou heard a low, muffled voice, filled with resentment that seemed to echo from the deepest recesses of the Earth.

The voice hailed from the blade-wielding acolyte. A woman’s voice filled with anger echoed from under the bull skull mask.

“I have found you…Hauras!”

“Huh?!”

Shizuri was a little unnerved by the anger suddenly directed toward her.

The blade-wielding acolyte roared and came in slicing. The slicing attack had incredible force. If it were Kojou, there was no doubt he could have done nothing to prevent being split in two.

“Wh-what is with you?!”

Shizuri just barely managed to block the acolyte’s attack. The captivating serrations of the crimson blade gave off sparks as the blue, curved blade clashed with it.

“Silence, descendant of the betrayer!”

“Who betrayed what exactly?!”

The acolyte’s slashing attacks assaulted Shizuri without pause, which Shizuri continued to defend.

Then, the moment it seemed an attack had been completely blocked, the curved, blue blade emitted a flash of light.

Shizuri’s expression contorted in surprise; this sword was able to shoot out its accumulated demonic energy in one lethal attack, just like her own Hauras.

“Cas?!” Kojou yelled, but a huge explosion muffled his voice.

That same attack was so brutal, it hollowed out the sub-float remnants to the tune of tens of meters across.

However, Shizuri endured it. She’d instantly expelled demonic energy from Hauras to fend off the blue blade’s attack. Her clothes were in tatters, but Shizuri herself was largely unscathed. Her tenacity as an ogre was on full display.

“Senpai!”

Just when Kojou let out a sigh of relief, Yukina violently thrust him aside.

Incandescent flames raced through the place where Kojou had stood only a moment before. The other acolyte escorting Kenon had spewed explosive flames through his mask.

“What’s with this flame…?!”

“Please be careful. This attack is not magic!”

Yukina shouted to the bewildered Kojou.

If the flames were not magic, that meant Yukina could not nullify them with Snowdrift Wolf. That was probably why Kojou hadn’t sensed the flames before they’d been shot out.

The mask the acolyte wore melted and fell, burned by the flames he himself had spewed. Taking this as his cue, the acolyte altered form.

The flesh that had been human-shaped transformed into that of a reptile crawling on all fours. His already massive frame swelled to a full ten times its previous size, and his head transformed into something more contorted.

Red-bronze scales covered the whole of his body. Enormous wings spread from his back. He had a long, serpentine tail and razor-sharp fangs. He had a mane, and long horns jutted from his forehead.

“I cannot believe it. That is a…!”

Yukina exclaimed as she looked at the transformed acolyte.

Kojou and the others knew of a species capable of such transformations.

These were beings boasting great intellect and demonic energy, at the pinnacle of Demonkind in a different sense from vampires—

“A dragon?!”

Now completely transformed into a dragon, the acolyte spewed flames once more.

Kojou picked Yukina up and leaped. It was impossible for normal human speed to evade the wide sweep of a dragon’s breath.

Shizuri and her opponent continued fighting in a place just beyond the flames’ reach. Then a sudden change befell the pair of closely matched opponents.

Shizuri, forced onto the defensive by her opponent’s overwhelming anger, abruptly went on the attack, seemingly fed up with it all.

“Why you, cut it out already—!”

Thud! went the dull sound that echoed between Shizuri and the acolyte. Judging that sword fighting wasn’t getting the job done, Shizuri smashed her own forehead into her opponent’s.

“Ghh…”

The acolyte pressed upon her own forehead as she retreated.

Shizuri looked nothing but graceful to the eyes, so the acolyte naturally had never expected Shizuri to choose a method of attack as crude and barbaric as a headbutt. Taking the hit squarely had apparently resulted in more damage than she’d counted on.

“Ow, ow…!” Shizuri also pressed her forehead as tears welled at the corners of her eyes.

After a moment, Shizuri abruptly opened her eyes wide in surprise. She’d noticed the bare face poking out from under the broken mask.

“Y-you’re…!”

Shizuri tried to continue to say something, but her words never made it into her voice. Her mask lost, the blade-wielding acolyte retreated all the way to The Blood’s side.

When Shizuri moved to make a follow-up attack, the dragon assaulted her with fire to drive her back.

Shizuri used a demonic energy release from Hauras to intercept the flames and retreated. She somehow managed to regain her balance and landed at Kojou’s side.

The freshly gathered trio of Kojou and the others ended up facing off against The Blood’s side. However, in contrast to the aggressive posture from Kojou, Kenon’s face revealed no hostile intent.

He looked up at the sky of Itogami Island with mild surprise. It was a night sky without even a single cloud.

Yukina blinked, surprised. “The warping of space…has vanished?”

The rainbow-colored swaying that had covered Itogami Island’s upper sky had dissipated. Of course, this meant that the Order of the End’s attacks had ceased.

This event was wholly unexpected as far as The Blood was concerned. What came over his lips was a pained smile that resembled a resigned expression.

“So Merriloé was unable to restrain her. I should have expected as much of the Witch of the Void.” Kenon sighed. “However, it would seem that we are not too late. We shall retreat.”

“Understood.”

The dragon let the boy aboard one of its front claws. The blade-wielding acolyte climbed upon the dragon’s back, glaring at Shizuri.

“Daughter of the Castiellas… Next time, I shall kill you and take back our sword.”

“Wh-what self-serving nonsense are you—?!”

Shizuri’s shout was impeded by the beating of the dragon’s wings. Spewing flames from its mouth for propulsion, the dragon soared high into the sky in the span of a blink.

“Like hell I’ll let you go!”

Kojou turned his right hand toward the receding dragon. He was trying to shoot the dragon down with a Beast Vassal.

“No, senpai, you mustn’t!”

Yukina stopped Kojou a moment short. It was not that she feared that The Blood would counterattack. It was because she’d noticed the aura of a new Beast Vassal, seemingly appearing to exploit the opening in Kojou’s defenses.

The stars dotting the sky had at some point vanished. In their place, the sky was covered with an enormous black storm cloud with dazzling thunderbolts. This was the new Beast Vassal.

Countless bolts of lightning released by the thundercloud punched through various sub-float fragments floating on the surface of the sea.

This was a warning shot.

Without a word, the host of the lightning Beast Vassal was ordering Kojou and the others to depart. The proof of this was that only the unit Kojou and the girls were standing on had been left to float unscathed.

“That Beast Vassal…?!”

Kojou looked up at the sky, shaking his head in a daze.

He knew the true nature of the giant thundercloud Beast Vassal covering the night sky.

The overwhelming might rivaling a natural disaster came from a Beast Vassal belonging to a vampire primogenitor.

“What are you doing…? …Giada!”

Standing on the arch of the wrecked connecting bridge linked to Island South was a beautiful woman with jade-colored eyes.

The Third Primogenitor, the Chaos Bride, looked down upon the befuddled Kojou with a wild smile.