Strike the Blood - Volume 20 - Chapter 2.1

CHAPTER TWO

OMENS FORETELLING A FEAST

1

Against a pure blue ocean and sky in the tropics spread forth a steel city resembling a ruin.

It was an inorganic cityscape, like a sooty metropolis from just after the Industrial Revolution or perhaps a factory that was quiet in the dead of night. This was the horde of gigafloats surrounding Itogami Island—the ruin nicknamed New Itogami Island.

Originally constructed in the land of Nod by Cain the Sinful God, these fragments of a fortress city had come from another world.

Transported here thanks to the sealing dragon “Glenda,” research on the island had continued apace as part of the Demon Sanctuary.

Since the ruin was so vast, however, not even 5 percent of the total structure had been surveyed yet.

Apparently, most of the island was still abandoned and out of reach.

Despite that, temporary housing had been placed on part of the island, and corporate labs and factory sites had sprung up there as well. Unsurprisingly, developers placed an especially high priority on completing harbor facilities, roads, and other infrastructure.

Standing in a corner of one of these incomplete harbors was a slender figure.

A youthful Japanese girl clad in the uniform of a well-known girls’ school in the Kansai region.

Her figure was long and graceful. She exuded a flowery elegance and had a beautiful face. Across her back, she carried a large instrument case. Her name was Sayaka Kirasaka, Shamanic War Dancer of the Lion King Agency.

“—Figures that there’s water and electricity to be found even this far out.”

Wind toying with her long, ponytailed hair, she exhaled, her expression somehow bright.

Behind her was a brand-new harbor administration facility building.

“Civilization is wonderful,” Sayaka murmured, deeply moved as she cleaned off her hands with a handkerchief. Though incomplete, the new harbor facility had a women’s washroom furnished with hot water, lavatories, and toilet seats.

A few hours ago, she’d been practically hurled out of a kingdom of Aldegia airplane before parachuting down and wandering around the island. Finally locating a lavatory and toilet made the place seem like an oasis in the desert.

“Just hope I can find a way to cross over to Itogami Island proper from here on out…”

Sayaka let out another sigh as she looked around the deserted harbor once more.

Since her smartphone was out of cell tower range, she didn’t know her exact coordinates. But she’d heard that New Itogami Island and Itogami Island were separated by seven kilometers at the narrowest. Naturally, it would be hard to swim over. She’d need some other form of transportation like a boat as an alternative.

Currently, however, she couldn’t see a single soul, let alone a ferry. The Electoral War had completely severed all freight and passenger traffic between the islands; Sayaka was stranded all alone on a desolate gigafloat.

“Uu…that black-hearted scheming princess… Why do I have to go through this…?”

Face turned toward the heavens, she stood there dumbfounded.

Of course, Sayaka hadn’t dropped onto New Itogami Island because she’d wanted to. The original drop point had been the northern environs of Itogami Island proper, the place where Kojou Akatsuki was likeliest to be.

When she’d arrived, however, the airspace above Itogami Island proper was chock-full of magic users’ familiars. While trying to shake off their pursuit, she’d been thrown off course toward New Itogami Island. That was better than plummeting into the ocean, so she couldn’t call reaching land alive and well anything but good fortune. Nevertheless…

“A helicopter…?”

Noticing the boisterous sound of an engine audible overhead, Sayaka looked behind her on reflex.

A tail rotor–model vertical-takeoff-and-landing plane was hovering in the blue afternoon sky. You wouldn’t catch any airlines in mainland Japan using this model. The tail of the vehicle bore the MAR logo.

“…I see, MAR is securing people wounded in the Electoral War…so they should be able to carry things from New Itogami Island to the main island, too!”

Sayaka’s eyes glimmered as she remembered information she’d heard beforehand.

MAR had signed a contract with the Order of the End to participate in the administration of the Electoral War as a neutral party. Its chief roles were compensating for combat damages, provisioning food and other supplies, and rescuing and treating the injured.

“Securing the wounded” meant transporting them by hospital ship to an anchorage somewhere on New Itogami Island. She had no doubt that the MAR transport plane was heading toward that barge.

Fortunately for her, the transport helicopter was landing in a place not so far removed from the harbor where Sayaka was.

Sayaka “borrowed” a scooter left for getting around the harbor site and rode it toward the transport plane’s approximate landing point.

“Found you…!”

On an open piece of land about five kilometers away from the harbor, she caught sight of a tilt rotor aircraft in the immediate aftermath of landing.

Apparently, the place was some kind of MAR Inc. supply base. Three other aircrafts of the same model were parked there.

Upon seeing this with her own eyes, she immediately got off the scooter on impulse rather than logic.

As a Shamanic War Dancer of the Lion King Agency and an expert in curses and assassinations, she sensed an ominous aura from the base.

Hiding her ride in a gap between some rubble, Sayaka approached the base on foot. The base was positioned between various decaying ruins, so she had no lack of hiding places. She didn’t even need to resort to ritual spell camouflage.

“What is this…?”

Sayaka drew in her breath a little as she peeked at the base’s layout from the window of a ruin.

It was a makeshift facility pretty much as she expected, but the atmosphere was far more sinister than she’d imagined.

Countless military field tents and armored vehicles were stationed at regular intervals throughout the premises. Barbed wire lined the exterior, while guards armed with firearms patrolled the interior. The transport planes had been loaded up with anti-demon robot tanks. It was like a military encampment.

“They have MAR markings…but this isn’t a medical facility by any stretch of the imagination, huh,” Sayaka muttered to herself, confused.

The soldiers assigned to that base were clearly equipped to a level that went far beyond simple self-defense. There was no reason to pour this kind of gear and personnel into a game to select the next ruler where people competed for the greatest number of subjects.

In other words, it meant that MAR had assembled these troops for a purpose other than the Electoral War.

Maybe I should dig into their objectives, thought Sayaka, but when she began to dither, a voice suddenly echoed right beside her.

“Well, look at that… Got some wild stuff packed down there.”

“…?!!”

Sayaka turned around and tensed up as if she’d been slapped.

A tall, middle-aged man was looking outside the window above Sayaka’s shoulder as she squatted.

His loose, unkempt shirt and the stubble on his face gave the man a slovenly quality. Although he was in decent shape for his age, Sayaka found him none too intimidating.

Despite this, she was utterly aghast; she’d been trained as an assassin but hadn’t even noticed his approach.

“Troop transport helicopters and robot tanks—and the soldiers are decked out with powered suits with ritual spell camouflage and anti-demon large caliber carbines, huh? Typical special forces stuff. All geared up for land ops on Itogami Island by the looks of it.”

Tossing his voice her way, he spoke in an oddly amicable tone.

Sayaka inched back, gasping as she suddenly remembered to draw her sword. Pointing its tip toward the man’s chest, she glared with all the hostility she could muster.

“…Who…are you?!”

“Calm down, sweetie. Stay. Stay. I’m not anyone suspicious.”

“Not suspicious? What about you isn’t suspicious…?!”

Sayaka’s voice went ragged from being addressed like a domesticated dog.

“Getting this close without me noticing…! Who are you?! Depending on your answer—”

“Get down!”

Before Sayaka could finish her statement, he tackled her to the ground. Her back slammed against the ruin’s floor, knocking out her breath. The scraggly man covered her mouth with his hand as Sayaka squirmed in anguish. Her eyes were moist from humiliation and fear.

“Mghh…gggghh…!”

“Quiet. They’ll notice us if you keep…ow?!”

He yelped slightly as Sayaka bit his hand as hard as she could. She tried to use the time the man spent reeling to launch a counterattack before her eyes widened, as the man suddenly produced a rifle without the slightest warning.

“!!”

Seeing the fiendish firearm up so close made a tripwire go off inside of Sayaka’s head.

All emotion vanished. Sayaka activated a physical-enhancement ritual spell exactly as had been drilled into her latent consciousness. Like a programmed machine, her body moved on its own against the man she needed to kill standing before her. Slam a blow into his vitals, put pressure on his carotid artery, and break his cervical vertebrae while both strikes whittled away at his awareness—she’d repeated that sequence against training dummies innumerable times.

It was only thanks to the man’s total lack of hostility that Sayaka managed to avoid launching into her assassination protocol. His back was against a wall while he trained his gaze beyond the window.

In the direction he was looking hovered a small, spherical machine—a drone that survived the encampment’s vicinity.

It momentarily revolved in the sky above the ruin Sayaka and the man were in before flying off in the direction of the encampment. Seeing this, he lowered his firearm and released her.

“So it left. That’s Aldegian-made jammers for you. Damn effective stuff.”

He smiled proudly as he touched a device hanging from his neck resembling a security buzzer.

“Sorry I surprised you. That was ’cause I saw the recon drone puttering around.”

“You saved…me? I…um…”

Finally grasping the situation, Sayaka looked up at him awkwardly.

The man gazed in apparent delight at the clear bite marks she’d left in his hand.

“Ahhh, don’t worry about this. Getting bit by a cute sweetheart like you is a prize in itself.”

“R-reward…”

Goose bumps spread across her entire body. Maybe this guy really was dangerous after all, she decided. A man his age couldn’t act any creepier if he tried.

“Hold on. If I lick this wound, does that make it an indirect kiss with a babe?”

“?!”

“Heh, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s a joke—so, uh, could you lower Rosen Chevalier Plus now? Er…no, that’s the original Type Six, isn’t it?”

“…Who are you?! What’s your objective?”

Sayaka’s Der Freischötz was a Lion King Agency prototype area-suppression weapon. In her mind, anyone who knew about it couldn’t possibly be an innocent civilian.

The man, however, just gave a laid-back chuckle as he put up both of his hands.

“Me? I’m exactly what I look like, a passing archaeologist—”

“In what world are there archaeologists as shady as you running around?!”

“Um, well, I grant you that it’s only half of me in the world on this side, though.”

“Huh?”

Sayaka’s gaze grew serious at the lack of clear meaning in the man’s testimony. Despite that, he kept his expression of feigned innocence on as his gaze shifted outside.

“Let’s set stuff about me aside for the moment. The issue is the army over there, right? There’s an underside to this Electoral War thing.”

“That might very well be the case but…”

“—Dammit, that Fourth Primogenitor is so pathetic. What kind of World’s Mightiest Vampire lets uninvited guests come onto his island and trample it any way they please? Maybe I saw too much in him or maybe he was just overrated, but it seems like it’s too much for him, don’t it? He’s one puny bastard—not a lick of talent whatsoever.”

The man spat as he pushed her long sword away.

That instant, something seemed to snap inside of Sayaka as her expression tensed. For some reason, his arbitrary way of speaking really grated on her nerves.

“J…just to make this clear, the Fourth Primogenitor was not on Itogami Island when the Electoral War began, you see. So this situation isn’t his responsibility whatsoever, I’ll have you know!”

“Oh reaaally…”

The man turned back at Sayaka’s annoyed retort with deep interest.

“But it’s undeniable that he didn’t raise hand nor foot and left the chaos as is when he got back on the island, right?”

“Who decided that?! He’s gotten dragged into so much shit he didn’t ask for up until now, but he still put his body on the line to protect this place anyway. And he’ll absolutely take care of this mess, too! I mean he has Yukina at his side…and m-me, too…!”

“Hmm… I see. You’re very dependable.”

Unexpectedly, the man readily accepted Sayaka’s assertions. Feeling a little disappointment over that somehow, she thrust her chest out in satisfaction.

“W-well, of course I am.”

“He’s lucky to have a sweetheart like you caring this much about him.”

“Um, er? C-caring about… I…didn’t mean to make it sound like I…”

The man’s unforeseen assumptions made her shrill voice go soft.

“Sweetie, could it be…? Have you and that Kojou bastard done it already?”

“Done…?! Wha…? O-of course n…”

“Hey, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s only natural for two people who love each other to do that, right?”

“I have no reason to be taking lectures on that from the likes of… Wait, how did you know Kojou’s name…?!”

“Hold on. That has to wait.”

Forcing a change of subject, he glared in the direction of the base. A new tilt rotor plane had landed, and the passengers it had ferried were disembarking.

“That’s…?”

Sayaka muttered that question to herself as she watched the men coming out of the tilt rotor.

The men were dressed in white, but they gave off a shady vibe for some reason. The group seemed way too brutal for mere doctors and researchers. Perhaps she felt as much because of the armed soldiers that had come along with them.

“MAR Lab Number Nine—MAR’s infamous black ops section dealing with inhuman experiments on live demonic subjects.”

“MAR…black ops? Ah…!”

Upon hearing his observation, Sayaka suddenly blurted out in surprise. That was because the soldiers were dragging along someone she hadn’t expected to see as they disembarked from the transport plane.

“That’s Kojou Akatsuki’s mother…?! Why are they treating her like…?!”

Bewildered, she pressed the man for answers.

Mimori Akatsuki, chief researcher of MAR’s medical branch, was being led along in handcuffs. She wasn’t only Kojou’s mother but also an acquaintance of sorts to Sayaka herself.

Even though she was a fellow MAR employee, they were treating her like a prisoner.

“They’re handling her as a wee bit of a traitor. Can’t really be helped, given how she let Avrora Florestina, the twelfth Kaleid Blood, escape from MAR custody.”

“She… She helped Twelfth Kaleid Blood Avrora escape?”

His causal treatment of such a crucial piece of information left Sayaka totally shocked.

During that time, the man pulled an anti-tank rocket launcher and an RPG ammunition bag almost out of nowhere. She didn’t feel the aura of a spatial-control spell being used. He didn’t even look like a magic user to begin with. Nevertheless, he picked them up casually, as though he’d placed them right there beforehand.

“—So I’m gonna go give her a wee bit of a rescue. I’d be pretty grateful if you helped out, but what are you gonna do? This might be your future mother-in-law, you know?”

Sayaka wasn’t able to interpret his weird sleight of hand as the man asked her that question. In fact, she was so confused that she forgot all about making a comeback to his assertion that this might be her future mother-in-law.

“Saving her—that’s your objective? Why?”

“Well, I mean, she’s my wife and all.

“We’re separated, though,” the man amended before breaking into a “Wa-ha-ha” laugh.

Sayaka stiffened up as if she were frozen and fixed her stare upon the man’s face.

“W…wife? You are the spouse of Kojou Akatsuki’s mother…?!”

“Indeed I am. Gajou Akatsuki. Pleased to meet ya.”

Gazing at Sayaka’s surprise with obvious delight, the man gave her a playful wink.

“Wh-whaaaaaaat—?!!”

Shaken, her shriek echoed throughout the ruin on New Itogami Island.

Apparently taking this as his cue, Gajou fired the rocket launcher toward the MAR encampment.