Strike the Blood - Volume 20 - Chapter 1.4

4

The Chaos Zone was an enigmatic Dominion based chiefly in Central America.

The majority of the realm consisted of highlands that were more than ten thousand meters above sea level; it also included vast wastelands and tropical rain forests, plus treacherous mountain ranges that rebuffed invasion by external foes.

On the other hand, it was blessed with an abundance of subterranean resources such as precious metals and crude oil, plus sorcerous natural resources like dragon lines, both of which bolstered its military might. On top of that, the territory’s interior contained numerous ruins of the Devas, which had apparently enabled it to develop its own independent branches of magic.

Additionally, it had built up favorable relations with the various demon tribes native to the continent of South America, whose total military might was utterly unknown. They might have been inferior in breadth to the Warlord’s Empire or the Fallen Dynasty, but this was why it was widely feared as the Impregnable Dominion.

Its monarch’s name was Giada Kukulkin, the Third Primogenitor, otherwise known as the Chaos Bride—

For some reason, this same Giada had come to visit Saikai Academy at the crack of dawn and was now stuffing her cheeks with the cafeteria’s breakfast special.

“The dishes in this nation are delicious, but the quantity is slightly lacking.”

Nibbling at eggs on toast, which she’d folded in half, she gave the ketchup on her finger a little lick. For the monarch of a powerful Dominion, she was far more easygoing than you’d think.

“I think so as well, Chaos Bride—”

Sitting right in front of Giada, Asagi put on a strained smile in agreement. Saikai Academy’s campus cafeteria was proud of the cheapness and volume of its menu, but it was a little insufficient for a voracious eater like Asagi.

Fixing her gaze upon her host, the Third Primogenitor raised an eyebrow with deep interest.

“How unexpected. You look upon me yet are not surprised?”

“I have had a prior opportunity to look upon Your Ladyship.”

Asagi replied, choosing her words with great care.

Even though she was an unaging, undying primogenitor, Giada Kukulkin was quite young to the eye. On top of that, she was wearing a school uniform–style miniskirt and blazer. Thanks to her outfit, she didn’t look like anything more than a slightly flamboyant student from overseas at a distance. Surely it wasn’t strange to find that unexpected.

Still, Asagi had little idea what her actual age was.

Giada might have looked like an innocent girl, but she also came off as a mature, seductive woman.

Her long hair was as green as a polished gemstone, and her eyes shone with jade. She had a bestial beauty full of vitality. Asagi felt it was insolent to try and measure the age of a demonic queen by the same standards as human beings.

First and foremost, studying under Natsuki Minamiya had taught Asagi that people whose appearance differed from their chronological age were hardly rare on Itogami Island—that was her impression, at least.

As if reading what was on her mind, Giada made a wry, charming smile.

“I see. But I do not care for that bombastic alias. You, Priestess of Cain, may call me Giada.”

“You know about me…?”

The fact a vampire primogenitor had grasped the identity of a mere high school girl left Asagi a little shaken.

For her part, Giada seemed exasperated as she burst into a bit of laughter.

“As if I could forget the girl who picked a fight with the Holy Ground Treaty Organization head-on?”

“Ah…er, I’m kind of—sorry about things back then…”

“Why apologize? Those events were truly thrilling. You brought great merriment to me.”

“R-right…”

Asagi nodded vaguely, feeling a little awkward. That sure didn’t seem like a compliment to her.

The two women were sitting across from each other on the cafeteria’s broad, open terrace.

Civilians from the surrounding areas sheltering at Saikai Academy were peeking in on Asagi and Giada’s conversation from the cafeteria windows. Giada didn’t seem to particularly mind. Perhaps she was used to being showered with attention.

The only attendees present at the conversation were Giada’s two leopards, waiting on her right and left. She made a suggestive smile as she looked down at them.

“But to think that an institution of learning would prove to be your territory. No wonder my blood daughters were unable to fell this place. It would have been more amusing if Kojou Akatsuki had been here, though.”

“Er…um, Giada, why did you join the Electoral War now of all times…?”

Suspecting that the conversation was heading toward ominous places, Asagi hastily changed the subject.

During the war of the primogenitors roughly three months prior, it had been Giada herself who’d first recognized Itogami Island as the Fourth Primogenitor’s territory. She couldn’t help but think of the woman laying her hands on Itogami Island now as a kind of betrayal.

Giada, however, peered into Asagi’s eyes without the slightest shred of guilt.

“One of my goals is you, Priestess of Cain.”

“Eh…?!”

“Was it not you who proved that Itogami Island, the Altar of The Cleansing, is a powerful enough weapon to rival the Holy Ground Treaty Organization’s multinational armada? This is an opportunity to legally obtain it. I have no reason to watch in silence. The other primogenitors are surely thinking the same thing.”

“This is because of…me…?”

Naturally, even Asagi couldn’t retain her composure in the face of Giada’s assertion, which she never saw coming.

But from one perspective, the logic was obvious. The primogenitors, each ruling their own vast Dominions, had no reason to risk their lives over the right to rule a puny artificial isle in the Pacific. What they wanted wasn’t the ruler’s throne but Itogami Island, the sorcerous device for The Cleansing.

“Of course, I am not saying that is the only reason. This uproar has granted me, the Warlord, and Fallgazer a rare opportunity to try and kill one another—”

She smiled ferociously as she spoke. To the unaging, undying vampire primogenitors, a lethal contest with life and death as the stakes was the last great pleasure that remained.

Shudder, went her chilled spine as Asagi prompted back with a shaky voice.

“And The Blood…?”

“Mm?”

“Defeating him isn’t one of your objectives?”

“Ahhh…you are referring to Kenon, I take it?”

Giada murmured this with a tone of indifference. Asagi grimaced at the unfamiliar name.

“Kenon…?”

“Number Zero of the Kaleid Bloods—the prototype for the Fourth Primogenitor. There is no need for us to deal with that defective piece of trash. Nor is there any reason for us to care what the likes of him has planned.”

“That’s terrible…!!”

Despite herself, Asagi grew angry at Giada’s dismissive behavior.

If Giada, the Third Primogenitor, stopped The Blood, then Itogami Island’s Electoral War would come to a grinding halt. She had the power, and surely the responsibility, to carry that out.

After all, the other three primogenitors had lent their aid to the construction of the “god-killing weapon” known as the Fourth Primogenitor. If The Blood really was Kaleid Blood Number Zero, Giada wasn’t uninvolved where he was concerned.

The Third Primogenitor comfortably let Asagi’s gaze of reproach wash over her as she laughed.

“Well then, now that my belly is full, let us finally get to the point. Following the customs of this Electoral War, I entreat thee. Priestess of Cain, would you join my forces?”

“You mean for me to become your subject?”

No longer even trying to hide her rage, Asagi glared straight at her.

Giada calmly nodded.

“Indeed. Do this, and I shall guarantee the safety of the people of this domain.”

“I am grateful for your exceedingly generous words.”

Asagi smiled with a frigid expression.

“But I refuse. If you wanted to form a nonaggression pact, that I would think over.”

“Oh really…”

Giada’s lips curled in visible delight. Sniffing a provocative air toward their master, the leopards on both of her flanks slowly raised their heads.

“Do you intend to engage the other primogenitors without my protection?”

“Sorry, Giada, but you have two misconceptions.”

Asagi stood and put distance between her and Giada. Nevertheless, the two leopards didn’t take their eyes off her for a single second.

“First, I’m not a citizen of Saikai Academy Domain. The ruler of this domain is Shizuri Kasugaya. I’m only here as a guest.”

“Hmm. Come to think of it, I do recall that being mentioned.”

Keeping her legs calmly crossed, Giada glanced at a smartphone she produced from her breast pocket. She was apparently verifying Asagi’s statement with an application MAR had provided her with for the Electoral War. Watching a primogenitor operate her own smartphone was quite surreal.

Asagi took out her smartphone as well. But she wasn’t aiming to check the Electoral War app. Her smartphone was actually the weapon she wielded as the Priestess of Cain.

“My true ruler is Kojou Akatsuki. I have no reason to accept protection from you.”

“Interesting. Then are you going to make an enemy of me here and now, Priestess of Cain?”

A delighted smile came over Giada as she bared her pure-white fangs.

The two leopards on her flanks crouched low in tandem with her.

Their forelegs transformed into lithe female arms.

The metamorphosis was not limited to the arms alone. Their tails vanished, their skeletal structure changed, and their hind legs, torsos, and heads all morphed into humanoid shapes. The beasts had changed into beast people—no, vampires.

Including Giada herself, the vampires from the Third Primogenitor’s bloodline in the Chaos Zone were all endowed with the power of transformation. The girls serving as her bodyguards had used that power to transform themselves into leopards.

The two nimble, leopard-headed vampires sprinted toward Asagi from left and right. Their speed was overwhelming, beyond anything humans could replicate. Asagi couldn’t even react to that kind of swiftness.

But the girls weren’t able to lay a finger on her.

This was because a small figure in a cook’s apron leaped out from behind Asagi to bar their path.

“Branch Number Six from Tiger King Fist Number Four—Skyrend Claw!”

Sprouting bestial ears, the girl—Yuno Amase—slammed demonic energy–infused palm strikes into Giada’s underlings. She’d been lurking in the campus cafeteria kitchen so that she could protect Asagi. You could call it a surprise attack that made the most of home domain advantage.

Her armor-penetrating martial technique sent both leopard-headed vampires flying. Still reeling as they landed on their feet, the pair tried to regroup, but this time bullets making nary a sound careened straight through them.

Rui Miyazumi had sniped them from standby atop the campus roof.

He’d blasted them with glue rounds infused with chemical compounds. The flying chemicals from the shot scattered over the entirety of both vampire’s bodies, impeding their movements.

Then, as she received Rui’s supporting fire, Yuno used the momentum of her surprise attack to launch a strike toward Giada. Or attempted to, rather. But—

“Lion King Fist Number Two—”

“I see, a modern arrangement of kung fu based upon the movements of the Twelve Beasts. You have quite a bit of skill for one so young.”

“…Eh?!”

Yuno’s lethal blow against Giada, who was still seated in her chair, cut through nothing but air.

Rui’s timed snipe shot flying in was also deflected before it reached Giada. The vast demonic energy available only to vampire primogenitors had become a bulwark to protect her.

Suddenly, the chair Giada had been sitting on softened and sank down to the ground’s surface. All at once, she realized that the entirety of the café terrace site had turned into an unknown, swampy environ.

“Nn…?!”

Instantly leaping into the air and abandoning her seat, Giada was assaulted by fresh figures on all sides.

The attackers all bore the same face, that of a young woman wearing a Chinese-style kung fu gi who had donned her dumpling-style hair in a triple braid—Misaki Sasasaki, middle school teacher at Saikai Academy.

The myriad Misaki clones launched countless blunt strikes at Giada from all sides, which turned into beams of light before assaulting her.

This technique was impossible to achieve with afterimages generated from high-speed movement or illusion spells. No, these clones were the real deal, and together they formed an unavoidable attack coming from every direction.

But after a battle that didn’t even span a single blink of an eye, it was Misaki who spewed out fresh blood.

“Ms. Sasasaki?!”

Asagi let out an unmitigated shriek upon seeing Misaki sent flying like a doll and crash into a wall.

The clones vanished, and the swampy scenery returned to the café terrace of old. Misaki, supposedly fallen and coughing up blood everywhere, also vanished from sight as the real, unscathed Misaki appeared right before Giada.

“Divine Mystic Arts… You employ a rare technique, woman.”

Landing as if nothing had happened, the vampire exhaled in a show of admiration.

Misaki dramatically lowered her shoulders, then gave the grin of a child busted for a prank.

“That’s the Third Primogenitor for you; I’d expect nothing less of the ancestor of martial arts. And you even managed to evade the Twenty-Four All-Directional Fists? It’s a completely simultaneous attack from multiple dimensions, though.”

“Yes, to be quite honest, that did take me by surprise. This island has quite the cast of characters gathered on it. I’m rather entertained.”

Giada’s fangs poked out of her little smile.

That moment, a pure-white mist enveloped her body.

The mist was so explosively cold it seemed set to freeze the world itself. In a split second, it encased the café floor, the walls, and even the surrounding air in ice. This ivory miasma was the Beast Vassal of Giada Kukulkin, the Third Primogenitor.

“Very well. Take pride in the fact that you compelled me to employ a Beast Vassal—go, Ixquimilli!”

“—Mogwai, bulwark!”

Asagi angrily shouted into her smartphone. Directly after, a crimson radiance pushed back the cold rushing in like a billowing wave; Asagi had activated the forbidden spell, The Cleansing.

By all rights, The Cleansing was an incantation so great it could rewrite the very order of the world. Asagi, not even a common mage, could only use a fraction of its power, which still didn’t amount to a skimming of its surface. Furthermore, the effects of the Electoral War were greatly constraining the computational capacity of her partner, Mogwai, resulting in rather difficult conditions for sealing the power of a primogenitor’s Beast Vassal.

“This is rough…!”

Mogwai’s complaints trickled out from the speaker of the smartphone. Even with the maximum might that she could draw from the greatly reduced Cleansing, stopping the cold from the Beast Vassal that Giada had summoned would take every last shred.

“A phenomenon-altering barrier, is it? But do you think you can defend against my Beast Vassal alone in your current state?”

Seeing straight through Asagi’s limits, Giada asked this of Asagi.

But although Asagi’s expression was tense, she wasn’t nervous. Even facing off against Giada with the obstruction between them, her tone remained composed to the end as she spoke.

“Giada Kukulkin, this is your second misconception.”

“…What?”

“Not all the primogenitors are necessarily our enemies. Saikai Academy is allied with another domain. That’s the Tensou Academy Domain to which the First Primogenitor belongs—!”

“The First Primogenitor, you say…?!”

Giada’s eyebrows trembled ever so slightly.

As if waiting for that precise moment, a new Beast Vassal appeared above her head, a long sword with a serrated, wiry, whiplike blade. This was an Intelligent Weapon–type Beast Vassal, which was able to rend its foe of its own volition.

“—Awaken, Acedia!”

“Tch!!”

Clicking her tongue in annoyance, she slammed the mass of cold into the sword.

In terms of simple volume of demonic energy, Giada’s cold had an overwhelming advantage. But since The Cleansing had whittled away her Beast Vassal’s power, it could not force back the sword Beast Vassal.

The air cracked as the two Beast Vassals collided before they vanished simultaneously, apparently having offset each other. A second later, the crimson bulwark also vanished. Asagi/Mogwai had exceeded their computational power, so they could no longer maintain The Cleansing’s activation.

“An ebon-bladed Beast Vassal… Aradahl, is it?”

Giada posed the question as she slowly looked behind her.

Standing in the Saikai Academy courtyard was a tall man with long black hair wearing an old-fashioned long coat. This was Velesh Aradahl, a chairman of the Imperial Assembly of the Warlord’s Empire—and a close confidant of the First Primogenitor, the Lost Warlord.

“Pardon my impoliteness for intruding upon the field of battle. I have come to represent my primogenitor, the Lost Warlord.”

Aradahl touched his hand to his chest with reverence, but somehow, he also spoke with the demeanor of a man in despair. Surely, deep in his heart, he had no desire to recklessly make an enemy of the Third Primogenitor. In fact, Aradahl had become the Sakai Academy Domain’s ally merely on the whims of the First Primogenitor.

Soldiers dressed in extravagant military uniforms stood in attendance behind him. They comprised the Vampire Corps of the Warlord’s Empire.

“How intriguing…”

Giada licked her lips with the tip of her tongue as she slowly glanced around the area. To her front was Asagi; behind her was Aradahl and his vampire subordinates. On top of that, Misaki Sasasaki, a wielder of the Divine Mystic Arts, was also in attendance.

On the other hand, Yuno and Rui had completely overwhelmed the two subordinates Giada had brought along. At the very least, she was at a numerical disadvantage.

Despite these odds, as the Third Primogenitor, she commanded twenty-seven Beast Vassals. Summoning several of them would easily evaporate Asagi and company’s advantage.

But there was no guarantee that Aradahl’s liege, the First Primogenitor, would simply watch that in silence.

In the worst case, a full-scale conflict could break out between primogenitors right then and there.

Giada looked back at Aradahl’s stony expression with a broad, amused smile.

“I would love to hold a decisive battle here, but taking you on with a wielder of The Cleansing just seems like too much trouble. And there are others drawn to trouble here as well.”

With a strained smile, she shifted her gaze to the roof of the middle of Saikai Academy some two hundred meters away. A small figure stood on the roof—but not one of a Saikai Academy student.

He was a young foreigner with beautiful black hair, olive skin, and eyes of gold. He came off like a temperamental young lion, yet his youth also held an aura of mysterious dignity.

This was Iblisveil Aziz, prince of the Dominion the Fallen Dynasty—

He was observing the battle between Giada and Asagi’s side, looking for an opening in the victor he could exploit.

Giada noticed this, yet remained utterly composed; she really did have nerves of steel befitting the title of Third Primogenitor.

“A fine negotiation it was. We shall someday meet again, Priestess of Cain—farewell.”

Transforming into gleaming viridian mist, Giada vanished from sight, as though she’d melted right into thin air.

At some point, the leopard-headed vampires caught by the glue rounds had also vanished. Giada had probably taken them with her.

“Hah…so tired… I mean really, doing that this early in the morning…”

Left behind, Asagi flopped into the closest available chair and stared up at the sky.

That was how the fourth day of the Electoral War started for Saikai Academy Domain.