Strike the Blood - Volume 20 - Chapter Pr

INTRO

Moonlight trickled in from the window, illuminating her face.

The girl was ephemerally beautiful, almost a crystallization of the moon’s glow itself.

She had pale, nearly transparent skin that gave off no sense of warmth.

Her long blond hair was done in a triple braid; it changed color as it swayed depending on the level of light, like a billowing flame.

And hovering in her gleaming blue eyes was an air of pure bewilderment.

Why was she here? Even that was beyond her comprehension.

It was as if she had awoken from a very long dream.

Or perhaps as though she had just been brought back to life—

“Good morning, Sleeping Princess. A splendid evening, isn’t it?”

The girl slowly shifted her gaze upon hearing someone else’s voice.

Standing beside her bed was a woman wearing a wrinkled white gown.

The woman’s eyes were bloodshot, and her hair was a mess. She gave off a slovenly image, completely bereft of nervousness.

“Do you remember who I am?”

The lady in white posed the question amicably, a smile across her youthful face.

“Mimo…”

As the girl reflexively attempted to answer the question, she trailed off in apparent confusion. Her memories had been mixed with someone else’s; it was difficult to tell where her own experiences began and ended.

“Thou art my… Nay, the mother of that kind-hearted priestess, are you not…?”

“Spot on. So you and Nagisa really did share a consciousness.”

Gazing at the bewildered girl with great interest, the woman in the white gown smiled pleasantly.

Her name was Mimori Akatsuki, chief of research of the medical branch of MAR—Magna Ataraxia Research. She was also the mother of Kojou Akatsuki. Amid her vague, dreamlike memories, the girl somehow grasped that about her. And also that she was Nagisa’s mother and a researcher of the artificial vampire known as the Twelfth, Avrora—

“Where is this place?” inquired the girl as she surveyed the area in apparent fright.

She was in a cramped room surrounded by four transparent glass walls. It wasn’t in her memories.

Her bedside was crowded with numerous medical devices—from which a variety of tubes and cables extended to connect with the girl’s slender arms.

It seemed like both a hospital and a lab, but the spartan walls covered with thick concrete felt somehow oppressive. It was like a cage for showing off a ferocious beast.

“It’s very quiet, isn’t it? This is Blue Elysium’s Demon Beast Park.”

“A blue…paradise?”

The girl’s eyebrows quivered slightly in apparent surprise.

The area was part of Itogami Island’s Demon Sanctuary, a sub-float constructed on the Pacific Ocean. She had a memory of days spent visiting its facilities as a tourist… She remembered attending as the human who called herself Nagisa Akatsuki.

“I brought you here while you were asleep. Itogami Island proper is a bit of a mess right now, you see. That’s the reason you awoke.”

“Ohhh…the advent of the kings?”

“Precisely,” replied Mimori Akatsuki, grinning as she nodded.

The girl bit her lip slightly. Like a bird sensing a nearby storm, her keen senses had picked up the enormous demonic energies that had appeared on Itogami Island.

So overwhelming that they were on par with any natural disaster.

The primogenitors, the three pillars of vampirekind, had appeared on Itogami Island.

And so, their demonic energy had awakened her body. The will of the beast slumbering within her had compelled the girl who hosted it to awaken, so that she might prepare for the crisis to come—

“How is your body?”

Mimori’s hands were still thrust into her pockets as she posed the question, her tone light, as if she was making small talk.

“I am unhindered—”

No problem, the girl seemed to say, drawing in her breath slightly.

The scene of her own death came to mind.

To destroy Root, the wicked soul that could justly be called the mind of a god-killing weapon, she had died—impaled herself with a purging stake to annihilate her body.

With Nagisa Akatsuki serving as her icon, her soul had remained tethered to the real world, but these were no more than vestiges of her existence. Indeed, with the passage of time, she would have surely faded away one day like nothing more than a fleeting illusion.

And yet, in her current state, she had been granted a physical body.

A living receptacle different in no respect from that of her previous life. A vampire body.

“Was the vessel for mine soul not lost…?”

She uttered the words as she stared at her own two hands.

Mimori Akatsuki kindly narrowed her eyes as she observed the shocked girl.

“Hektos left her body behind for you. Her blood memory has been overwritten, allowing you to inherit it. They were all the same model to begin with, though, so nothing should feel out of place.”

“Hektos’s sacred remains serve as mine avatar…”

The girl murmured this in a daze. She bit her tiny lip, as if to suppress the emotions flooding out of her.

“Now Hektos is inside Kojou. She has become a Beast Vassal, part of the Fourth Primogenitor.”

“Kojou…!”

The girl’s face jerked up. Violently tearing away from the intravenous drip tubes impaling her arms, she closed the distance with Mimori.

“I entreat thee, take me to his side…!”

“I suppose you would like that. I want to bring you and Kojou together, too, but it’s a little difficult right now.”

Mimori shook her head slightly, pressing gauze over the wounds on the girl’s arms. By the time she wiped away the trickling blood, the injuries had already vanished. Such was the regenerative ability vampires possessed.

“Why is this so…?”

The girl glared at her with a look of reproach.

Just then, quiet noises breached the tension, and one of the walls opened.

A man in a white gown entered alongside a group of armed soldiers.

He glanced down at the girl, his eyes glinting with the coldness of someone examining an inanimate object.

The girl’s body went rigid, apparently frightened of the light in his eyes.

It wasn’t that she sensed hostility from his gaze. If anything, it was the opposite. He regarded her as nothing more than a guinea pig. That callousness scared her.

“Chief Akatsuki, thank you for all your hard work. From this point onward, the Ninth Lab will be taking over administration of the Twelfth.”

The man in the white gown presented a tablet to Mimori displaying a document for the handover.

“My, my, you arrived so quickly.”

Mimori took the tablet as she sarcastically added, “Such professionalism.”

He ignored her as he turned toward the girl.

“Test Subject Number Twelve—we will now proceed to examine you. First, we must inspect your body, then your mind, and then the state of the Beast Vassal’s seal.”

Without a word, the soldiers trained their gun barrels toward the girl, her body still rigid with fright.

They were equipped with needle guns for capturing vampires, which fired thin silver iridium–alloy quills that neutralized their targets when delivered in sufficient quantities. The Holy Ground Treaty had banned these weapons for their inhumanity.

The man in the white gown called out to the girl, his politeness nothing but a thin veneer.

“But do rest at ease. MAR guarantees your safety. After all, you are currently the last of the Kaleid Bloods—a legacy of the Devas.”

“Uh…ah…”

Rejecting his assertion, the girl weakly shook her head.

However, he showed no sign of caring about her demeanor. The volition of a guinea pig meant absolutely nothing to him.

As this understanding dawned on the girl, despair overtook her.

She wasn’t afraid of this man in the white gown or of the soldiers he’d brought with him. No, what she feared was herself—and the Beast Vassal slumbering within her.

Surely, that proud, monstrous bird of ice would refuse to permit its host to be used as a guinea pig. But if the Beast Vassal awoke in anger, everything would end. It would undoubtedly annihilate these men and take the tiny artificial island with it.

The girl was powerless to stop this.

After all, she was not the ruler of the Beast Vassal but rather a simple seal—

“If you politely do as you’re told, I’ll treat you to something really tasty, ’kay?”

Mimori spoke cheerfully to the trembling girl, attempting to console her.

“Yes, of course.”

The man in the white gown nodded without any display of emotion.

The corners of Mimori’s lips rose to form a charming, mischievous smile.

“But that’s not really the issue, is it?”

“…Chief Akatsuki? What do you think you’re…?”

He narrowed his eyes. This was because Mimori had nonchalantly approached the bed and touched something to the girl’s lips.

The instant the man in the white gown and the others realized that the device resembling scuba gear was actually a military gas mask, violet mist blew in from the ceiling with incredible force. The miasma blanketed the enclosed room in an instant, robbing the soldiers of their vision.

“Anesthetic gas…?!”

Coughing, the man went down on his knees. The room was equipped with anesthetic gas dispensers to keep its vampire occupant from going on a rampage. Mimori Akatsuki had deployed the devices against them.

“You hijacked the lab security system?! Why on earth would you…?!”

The man yelped in shock before he tumbled to the floor.

The soldiers wielding needle guns were also taken out of commission before they could open fire. It was only because they’d been so vigilant about the girl that they hadn’t responded in time to the mist gushing in from the ceiling.

Although anesthetic gas for anti-vampire purposes had relatively little effect on human beings, its potent muscle-relaxant effect made it a powerful tool for temporarily rendering someone immobile.

That Mimori Akatsuki had hijacked the lab system was not some great shock in itself. She was both a psychometer and the chief of MAR’s medical branch. She of all people could slip past the strictest of passwords and could probably forge her own cellular construction to defeat any bio-scan.

The question was this: Why had she betrayed MAR?

Refusing to answer the man’s question, Mimori extended a hand to the blond girl.

“Let us be off, Sleeping Princess—we’re ditching this lab.”

The girl stepped down from the bed barefoot, led by the same hand that had placed the gas mask on her.

Mimori guided her along as they escaped from the glass cage enveloped in violet miasma.

“Wh-where art…thou taking me, Healer Who Sees the Past?”

The girl asked that question as the pair ran through a long, labyrinth-like corridor.

“To the Altar of The Cleansing—Itogami Island.”

Removing her own gas mask, Mimori looked back at the girl and gave this reply.

A siren echoed throughout the building. Armed security pods patrolling around the corridors had detected their escape and gathered together to bar their path.

About the size of a trash can, the cylindrical robots’ pastel exteriors clashed with the rugged machine guns they were equipped with.

But before they could train their barrels on the girls, jolts of electricity penetrated one of the machines’ chassis.

The girl heard slightly delayed gunshots as fragments of a shattered glass window danced like snowflakes.

Sparks scattered from the security pod as a bullet sent it flying; it collided with the corridor wall, and its movements came to a halt.

A bullet hole had been punched through the very center of the pod.

Outside the window, on the rooftop of an unrelated building some four to five hundred meters away, she saw a figure holding a massive anti-materiel rifle: a middle-aged man wearing a loose-fitting shirt who had a languid air about him.

This man had sniped the pod, saving both the girl and Mimori.

With a series of shots from his rifle, he continued to pummel through one pod after another.

Mimori was undoubtedly convinced that the sniper would protect them. Calmly slipping past the wrecked pods, she headed toward the building’s exit.

This was a giant research facility known as Demon Beast Park. The canal coursing between the various buildings made the latter seem like the eyes of a net.

A single motorboat was floating upon the canal’s watery surface.

Mimori entered the vehicle without the slightest hesitation. Come, come went her beckoning hand to the girl.

“For Kojou’s sake, we need you. Avrora Florestina, would you lend us your strength?”

As she started up the boat’s engine, Mimori looked at the hesitant girl and posed that question to her.

With a gasp, the girl lifted her face, nodding firmly.

“V…very well…!”

After responding with a quivering voice that contrasted with her grandiose language, she timidly jumped into the boat.

Gazing upon the frightened girl, Mimori hummed, “Mmm-hmmm,” smiling.

“…Oh, right. I’ll give you this. You must be hungry after just waking up, yes?”

With a rustle, Mimori rummaged around the driver’s seat of the boat and brought out a small cooler. Mixed in with a large quantity of dry ice, it was packed full of ice cream bars in a variety of colors.

Taking one among them, the girl—Avrora—pleasantly smiled for the first time.

“Delicious.”

Their boat kicked up white sea spray as it accelerated along the canal at night.

This was a minor, quiet incident that occurred in the background of the Electoral War—

So, too, was it the beginning of the end of the tale of the Fourth Primogenitor, Kojou Akatsuki.