Strike the Blood - Volume 21 - Chapter 4.4

4

“Astarte, current time?”

Natsuki Minamiya curtly posed the question to her blue-haired homunculus assistant.

The girls were at the Itogami Harbor container base located at the tip of Island East. This was where Kojou Akatsuki was scheduled to be freed. They’d chosen this vast stockpile as the place to do it because the damage to the end would be minimal if a fight with the Beast Vassals broke out.

“It’s 11:37 PM. Roughly twenty-three minutes until the start of the operation.”

Astarte replied flatly with this. Even though her wounded body had only just finished being retuned, her demeanor was completely unchanged. Information about the incident occurring on Itogami Island had already been uploaded to her brain during the time she was sleeping in the tuning vat.

“Resident evacuation status?”

“There are no civilians within a one-point-five-kilometer radius. All roads into the operational area have been blocked by the Island Guard. Simplified magic barrier coverage of the population is at ninety-six percent.”

“So this is the best we can do, is it?”

Natsuki sighed with a neutral expression.

Even if the Itogami Harbor container base was vast, they were still up against The Blood’s Beast Vassals. If those things wanted to, they could blow away an Itogami Island–sized landmass with ease. Simplified barriers from the Island Guard were little more than comfort blankets.

If they could, Natsuki would have preferred to fight in a place far removed from the city. Unfortunately, that was not possible. Asagi Aiba could only employ The Cleansing while on the island.

“Do you think we stand a chance, Witch of the Void?”

The black cat resting atop Natsuki’s head asked this with an irresponsible air.

“Why ask me? Isn’t a large-scale sorcerous calamity on this scale under your jurisdiction?”

“I thought it was your pupils who drew up this plan?”

“Sorry, but it’s my policy not to bring my teacher work home with me.”

Natsuki spoke with cold nonchalance. The black cat made a pained smile and narrowed her eyes.

“Well, I don’t think of this as pushing the responsibility onto those girls. No one could have seen this coming, so we cannot expect any support from the mainland with problems coming from above.”

“I suppose not.”

Natsuki clicked her tongue a little as she glanced up at the silhouette of the inverted artificial isle floating in the sky. The gate to Nod had opened once more.

Self-Defense Forces helicopters were charging through that gate. In response to Itogami Island’s request, the government of Japan had decided to dispatch its SDF Special Attack Mage Regiment.

The Special Attack Mage Regiment’s assigned mission was to eliminate invading armed forces. In other words, they were taking the position that MAR Inc., with Shahryar Ren at the helm, was not a sorcerous criminal organization but rather a national enemy.

As a result, the Lion King Agency, an anti-sorcerous terrorism organization, was cooperating with the SDF, providing most of its fighting strength in the process. Considering the destructive power at MAR Inc.’s disposal, sending the SDF in was unavoidable, and the Lion King Agency had no objection to bolstering its forces.

This did, however, reduce their capacity for dealing with threats on the surface. In other words, they had to take on The Blood’s Beast Vassals with only the people available on hand.

It’ll be a tough fight, Natsuki and the cat’s grim expressions seemed to say. Just then, they heard a busy patter of steps that broke the tension.

“Sorry for being late! Are you all right, Yuiri…?”

“I-I’m okay… The Second Primogenitor just didn’t want to let us go… Uuu, my stomach hurts…”

Shio Hikawa and Yuiri Haba were short of breath as they ran over.

Despite being minutes away from a battle, Shio was out of breath, while Yuiri was pale and clutching her stomach. The stress from the earlier negotiations with the Second Primogenitor seemed to have done a real number on her tummy.

“It appears that the discussion went well…?”

“Yeah, somehow… But the curry was really, really spicy…”

“…Curry?”

Her subordinate Attack Mage’s silly-sounding remark made Yukari fall silent, a conflicted look on her face.

Natsuki sighed wearily and shifted her eyes toward the blue-haired homunculus.

“Astarte, you understand your current situation, yes?”

“Affirmative.”

Astarte nodded without any change in expression.

Though her retuning may have finished, she’d only just recovered from grave wounds that had put her at death’s door. Moreover, Kojou relinquishing the power of the Fourth Primogenitor had severed the spiritual pathway between him and Astarte. She couldn’t use his demonic energy to summon her Beast Vassal. To do that, she would have to whittle down her own life force.

Astarte understood this full well, yet she continued treating this like the natural thing to do.

“I will restrict Beast Vassal usage time to the smallest extent possible to maximize operational uptime.”

“…”

Natsuki opened her mouth to say something, but she swallowed her words midway.

Even though she was a homunculus under protective custody, Astarte was not Natsuki’s personal property. She had a right to determine how to act of her own free will. If she had resolved to fight for Kojou’s sake, Natsuki had no right to stop her.

That’s why she said just one thing.

“I’ll leave that up to you.”

Natsuki spoke in a businesslike tone.

Astarte seemed grateful, lifting the corners of her mouth so slightly it did not even amount to a single millimeter. Then she spoke.

“Accept.”

Standing on the northern tip of the container yard, Sayaka Kirasaka crossed her arms in annoyance. The source of her irritation was Kiriha, who had strode over with her head held high despite arriving way behind schedule.

“You’re late, Kiriha Kisaki!”

Why am I paired up with her? lamented Sayaka internally, her words drenched with obvious dismay.

As a matter of fact, there was a very good reason to pair the two together. The ritual spells Sayaka and Kiriha specialized in were highly compatible. Both had various ranged attack incantations. On top of that, they could use bulwarks created with pseudo-spatial severing as a powerful means of defense.

If either of them was using a ritual spell artillery attack that required a certain amount of time to charge up, the other could take the front line and fend off enemy Beast Vassal attacks. This allowed for a combination of offense and defense without any exploitable openings.

Provided, of course, that they actually worked as a team.

“I’m so sorry. We were showering very thoroughly. Right, Yume?”

Kiriha lifted her long black hair, showing it off as she sought agreement from Yume Eguchi beside her.

The scent of shampoo and soap clung to Kiriha and Yume; they definitely smelled like they had just gotten out of the bath. Yume slid a hand through her hair as she nodded, looking only slightly apologetic.

“Also it took a while to pick the right underwear… Wanna peek?”

Kiriha lifted her sailor suit to expose her belly right up to the point at which her bra would be visible. Sayaka carved a very deep crease into her forehead.

“No, I don’t particularly want to see that… And why shower at a time like this in the first place?”

If a fierce battle broke out, they’d get covered in dust and sweat for sure. So why? thought Sayaka, cocking her head.

Kiriha, however, looked at Yume like it was Sayaka’s question that was strange.

“I mean, Kojou Akatsuki might be drinking our blood after this? I don’t want to gross him out because I reek of sweat. Besides, we just might be doing things that go even beyond that.”

“Th-things even beyond that… Why you!”

You don’t say that in front of a primary schooler, Sayaka thought nervously, but Yume was quite calm about it.

Yume was actually a succubus who could manipulate the lust in other people’s hearts. She was extremely mature for her age, so this kind of lightweight talk didn’t bug her at all. If anything, she was a little put off that Sayaka was treating her like a kid.

It was then that Kiriha shifted her gaze to Sayaka’s neck out of the blue.

“Well, you’ve already done it with him, so he may not mind if you’re a little smelly.”

“I—I do not smell!”

After her reflexive retort, Sayaka quietly added in her heart, Probably.

When she calmly thought back, she had no memory of taking a bath since returning to Itogami Island. That wasn’t her fault, though. After parachuting down from a moving airplane, she’d wandered New Itogami Island, gotten into a fight at an MAR base, parachuted out of a helicopter, and after she and the First Primogenitor spent some time pummeling each other, here she was about to fight Kojou Akatsuki’s Beast Vassals—when exactly did she have time to bathe? She was on the verge of collapsing from overwork.

The current operation did not have Kojou drinking Sayaka’s blood as part of the plan anyway. Of course, it was possible the operation wouldn’t go as expected, and what girl wants to stink, plans or no?

Sayaka was stressing about all this when Yume abruptly changed the topic.

“Miss Sayaka, how was your first time with him?”

“By ‘first time,’ that’s him drinking my blood, okay?!”

Sayaka was a bit flustered as she corrected the girl.

“I guess it was kind of like going to donate blood? It was to save Itogami Island and Yukina, so there was no other way…”

“You blatantly seduced him with your huge boobs, didn’t you?”

“Keh,” went Kiriha, practically spitting out her words as Sayaka rebutted.

“I did not! When it happened, Kojou Akatsuki was giving me a bridal carry, and then…”

“Oh my, look at the time. We’d better get in position.”

“Wait a… Listen until the end, would you?! I’m still in the middle of talking!”

Sayaka unwittingly raised a shrill voice when the conversation was broken off midway without her consent. Just as Kiriha said, though, it really wasn’t time for useless banter.

When Sayaka puffed up her cheeks and took out her long sword, Yume had some kind of thought and nestled right up against her.

“Y-Yume?”

“It’s all right. You smell good.”

She pulled her face close to a tuft of Sayaka’s hair and broke into a grin.

“Yume…!”

Her angelic smiling face deeply moved Sayaka, but then Yume went up to Sayaka’s ear and whispered a warning in a cold, glacial voice.

“But I am Mister Kojou’s fiancée. Make sure you do not forget that.”

As she looked up at the steel-colored city floating overhead, “Hmmm,” went Nina’s audible voice of admiration.

“So that is the gate to Nod? A tad plainer than I expected.”

Nina’s carefree words brought a gentle grin to Kanon’s face. Even the appearance of Nod, an event taking sorcerers around the globe by storm, didn’t rattle the Great Alchemist of Yore one bit. Apparently, she’d imagined a gate hovering in midair would come with spectacular fireworks or the like.

“Father feared the being that will come from the other side of that world so greatly that he changed me into a Faux-Angel so I might escape the surface.”

Kanon spoke in a hard tone of voice. Her adoptive father Kensei Kanase had conducted the blood-drenched Faux-Angel ritual because he feared the terror that would someday assault the surface world. Even the Fourth Primogenitor, calamity incarnate, was less frightening to Kensei than that thing.

Kanon wore a clouded expression, but Nina shot her a sunny smile.

“Worry not. I am with you. When Kojou Akatsuki recovers, he shall lend his strength as well. You are not alone.”

“—It is precisely so, Your Highness the Royal Sister.”

Strongly agreeing with Nina’s words was a woman who appeared without any warning.

The young woman with short-cropped silver hair looked like she was in the military. Her modified army garb with chain mesh was somehow reminiscent of a ninja outfit.

“Oh, you. You’re back.”

“Yes, late that she is, Interceptor Knight Kataya Justina has returned.”

Responding to Nina’s fond voice, Justina went down on a knee and lowered her head.

Justina was one of the Knights of the Second Coming serving the Royal Family of Aldegia. She’d been dispatched to Itogami Island on the orders of Princess La Folia and had been serving as Kanon’s bodyguard since last year.

Justina had remained in the homeland to help with mopping up the recent rebellion occurring in the kingdom of Aldegia, but with the lifting of Itogami Island’s flight restrictions, she’d returned to protect Kanon once more.

“Welcome back.”

“I am honored to receive your kind words.”

Greeted by Kanon’s smiling face, Justina was so fiercely moved she went, “Khhh!” and wiped away a tear. She then produced a gleaming gold ornament from a chest pocket.

“Pardon me, but it would seem the Royal Sister is about to enter the field of combat. Please take this with you.”

“…Ooh, a bracelet…”

Nina displayed interest faster than Kanon could manage. Perhaps it had stirred her alchemist’s blood. She patted the bracelet tendered by Justina all over when her eyes almost bulged out of their sockets.

“How…could…this metal…? It’s from the Age of the Gods?!”

“This is the Shield of Skuld, one of the great treasures passed down in the Royal Family of Aldegia. The queen mother has asked that I hand it to the Royal Sister.”

“The queen mother…?”

Kanon gasped in surprise.

Though its name referred to a shield, the bracelet itself wasn’t very big at all. It was as large as a man’s wristwatch at best, and save for a wing design etched onto its surface, its ornamentation was subdued.

If it was enough to excite Nina, it must have been forged a very long time ago. Kanon didn’t know how it had been forged, but the surface of the bracelet was not dulled whatsoever, gleaming as beautifully as the day it had been crafted. She could understand why it was in the royal family’s treasury.

“I gratefully accept.”

Kanon put the bracelet on her wrist. Nina stared at it with such force she seemed ready to drool.

“K-Kanon, please…lend me that bracelet. Just…just for a little bit!”

“Miss Justina, there is one thing I wish to ask.”

Kanon ignored Nina getting excited all on her own as she posed that question to Justina.

“Anything.”

Justina kept her head bowed as she replied.

“—Is it only you who came back to Itogami Island?”

Kanon’s casual words, spoken as if she saw through everything, made a chill run down Justina’s spine.

That was all the confirmation she needed. Even if Kanon had the smile of a merciful angel, this silver-haired, blue-eyed girl was without a doubt a member of the Royal Family of Aldegia. This was what made her a liege worth serving, even if it meant Justina had to wager her life.

Lifting her face up to Kanon, Justina smiled without a word.

Kanon nodded slightly and turned her eyes toward the northern sky with a look of satisfaction.

Yukina wore a white, full-length hooded mantle as she gazed at the sea.

Next to her stood Shizuri, clad in an identical cloak.

Even though a strong sea breeze was blowing, it wasn’t enough to make them cold. That Yukina and Shizuri did not remove the mantles in spite of that was a consequence of what they were wearing underneath.

They’d been told any extra measure, however unorthodox, might prove to be the trump card needed to save Kojou. They’d been told the efficacy was in question, but it was worth a try. They understood the underlying logic.

They understood why, and yet—

“It is fine for you, Miss Kasugaya, but do I really need to wear this…?”

“Perhaps I could change right now,” pleaded Yukina with an air of resentment.

“Absolutely not! And is it okay for me to wear this?!”

“That’s, ah… Yaze said bringing Akatsuki back to his senses would be the key to tonight’s operation, so anything that would even slightly raise our odds of succeeding is worth a try, yes?”

“I remember accepting that proposal when he brought it up, but thinking back upon it now, I cannot help but feel we have been deceived…”

Shizuri seemed mortified as she nibbled on her fingernails. Apparently, she had also vaguely realized that something was off.

Yukina sighed as she stared at Shizuri’s appearance. The ogress girl’s limbs were faintly shaking. Yukina had little doubt this was not due to stress alone. By all rights, she should have been resting because of her serious injuries.

“Um, Miss Kasugaya, are you all right?”

“I am… Wait, why do you ask?”

“You are not forcing yourself? Um, Miss Kasugaya, you are the one who will shoulder the greatest burden in tonight’s operation after all.”

When Yukina inquired in apparent concern, Shizuri looked back with a conflicted expression. Instantly, she nearly spoke words of bravado but thought better of it and shook her head.

“…I am in the same position you are.”

“Eh?”

“I was Kojou’s watcher as well. Onrai Island may have been a false, artificially constructed world, but in my own heart, Kojou is my observation target even now. He is like a little brother I cannot turn my eyes away from. He’s my precious comrade, and my…”

“Miss Kasugaya…”

Shizuri’s abrupt confession made Yukina blink in surprise.

With a theatrical gesture, Shizuri pushed out her chest with a powerful flutter of her mantle.

“Therefore, there is no reason for you to be considerate. Saving Kojou is my natural right as well as my duty. I shall offer myself up as his Blood Servant or whatever else he requires. If anything, it is my duty as a paladin to observe this troublemaker for the rest of eternity!”

Shizuri declared that with a bright and cheerful tone of voice. Yukina stared at her awkwardly. She hadn’t thought such a weighty proclamation would fly out from Shizuri’s lips.

“No, I…um, Miss Kasugaya, what I was asking about was the state of your wounds…”

Averting her eyes with pronounced embarrassment, Yukina spoke in a tiny, subdued voice.

“Hah?!”

Realizing she’d gotten the wrong impression, Shizuri’s fists trembled.

“Wh-wh-why did you inquire in such an ambiguous fashion?! Did you do that on purpose?!”

“Y-you are mistaken! And was it really that ambiguous…?!”

Yukina hastily shook her head. She thought it was only natural to check on a teammate’s physical condition before the start of a battle.

Shizuri, however, was beet red to the tips of her ears.

“I will not forgive you for causing me to speak such an embarrassing confession! Now that it has come to this, you must lay yourself bare as well! How do you feel about Kojou?!”

“A-as his watcher, I of course feel for him in various ways—”

“I am asking you how you feel about him as a woman!”

“Er, errr—”

Shizuri closed the distance with impressive force. Yukina gingerly backed away. There was no sign of the angry ogress backing off, however.

How did it come to this? thought Yukina with anguish as she earnestly sought the words that would offer her an escape.

“Are you okay? You seem tired somehow.”

When Yukina and Shizuri arrived at the rendezvous point several minutes later, Asagi glanced at them and asked them that with a suspicious air. All the two could manage was to make a pair of listless smiles.

The vast container base was a square approximately two kilometers on each side. Yukina and the others had assembled on its eastern edge.

Waiting together for Yukina and Shizuri were Yaze, Asagi, and Lydianne aboard her red robot tank.

Yuiri and Shio were on the south side. Sayaka and Kiriha were on the north side.

The west side nearest to the city was being covered by Natsuki and Astarte. Their formation was arrayed like an encirclement to seal Kojou’s Beast Vassals from all sides.

Though they lacked direct combat capability of their own, Kanon and Yume were participating as backup personnel. Yaze was handling communications and operational command. The special ability he possessed was highly dependable despite the vastness of the battlefield.

“Um, everyone else?”

Yukina forced a change in topic to keep Asagi from pursuing the matter.

“Everyone hath already arrived at their positions.”

Lydianne politely replied while holed up in her tank cockpit.

“I really would have loved two or three more people to lend a hand.”

Asagi, riding on the back of the tank, murmured this with visible chagrin.

In a scant few minutes, the Third Primogenitor would release Kojou.

Yukina and company’s plan was simplicity itself. Asagi would approach the monsterized Kojou and pump him full of The Cleansing to change him back into a complete vampire.

The operation couldn’t reach the next stage unless and until that initial hurdle was cleared.

The problem was Kojou’s summoned Beast Vassals.

So long as they protected him, Asagi wouldn’t be able to approach Kojou. To use The Cleansing on him, someone had to serve as a decoy and pull the Beast Vassals away.

At present, however, there were too few people to distract the creatures—not even one person per Beast Vassal. Yukina and the others had to take on a fight that put them at an overwhelming advantage from the start.

“Rui and Yuno said they wanted to help, but…”

Shizuri lowered her eyes in regret. Rui Miyazumi and Yuno Amase were civilian Attack Mages of excellence that belied their youth, but their combat style wasn’t geared toward fighting Beast Vassals. Rui’s sniping attacks lacked the overwhelming firepower required, and Yuno’s physical strikes had no effect on the creatures to begin with.

“It is only normal to lack attacks that would work against primogenitor-class Beast Vassals, after all. I am most grateful they offered their cooperation to begin with.”

Lydianne followed Shizuri up with complete seriousness. Her words conveyed not consolation but hard facts. Even the Island Guard had barely any Attack Mages capable of standing against The Blood’s Beast Vassals.

“At any rate, we’ve prepared all we can. The rest depends on where Kojou shows up.”

Yaze said this casually. Asagi’s operation was so simple that there wasn’t a whole lot to set up beforehand. The rest was down to where he showed up first. At this point, the only thing Yaze felt like he could do was pray.

Asagi stared down sharply at Yaze from the back of the tank.

“Incidentally, Motoki…are these clothes reaaaally going to work? You said Kojou would bite for sure, so I dressed them up against my better judgment, but…”

Asagi raised her eyebrows as she glanced at Yukina and Shizuri and the mantles they wore.

The lower edges of the cloaks were fluttering in the strong sea breeze. Peeking out from those edges were thighs wrapped in stockings and bodysuits that hugged their curves. They had white cuffs around their wrists and were wearing bunny-ear headbands under the hoods.

In other words, they were wearing bunny girl outfits.

“You can trust me on that at least. Their job’s to seduce Kojou after all.”

For some reason, Yaze was crisp and firm about this in a tone brimming with confidence.

Yukina and Shizuri glared at Yaze with half-lidded eyes. They’d reluctantly dressed up like that because he’d made the case that it was what they needed to save Kojou, but they just couldn’t suppress the feeling that he’d pulled the wool over their eyes.

“Why bunny girls in the first place? What, were swimsuits not good enough?”

Asagi voiced a very sensible question. I might have resisted fighting Beast Vassals in a swimsuit, too, but at least that would be better than a bunny suit, thought Yukina.

Yaze shook his head, decisively refuting the notion.

“Swimsuits are sportswear. You can’t turn Kojou on with workout outfits like that!”

“…So why are bunny girl outfits better?”

“Bunny suits are outfits explicitly designed for the purpose of attracting male attention.”

Yaze asserted this, but the girls weren’t really sure it was a compelling argument.

“Um,” said Yukina, bashfully raising a hand. “I haven’t seen Akatsuki-senpai express interest in bunny girls to date…”

“Perhaps this insistence on bunny girls is merely your own personal interest?”

Shizuri turned a skeptical gaze toward Yaze. No, no—he refuted this with an exaggerated shake of his head.

“That’s not true at all. If these outfits don’t work, the problem is with you all, not the cloth— Hey, don’t point cannons at people!”

Yaze let out a shriek when he realized Asagi had trained the cannon of the tank toward him.

Yukina’s shoulders sank as she sighed deeply.

“I am sorry—may I change right now?”

“I regret to report the time hath come, Lady Sword Shaman.”

With one sentence, Lydianne cruelly dashed Yukina’s hopes.

It would soon be midnight—the Third Primogenitor’s appointed hour.

As Yukina and the others cast hesitance aside, their tension was already rising when a ripple-like sway in thin air appeared before them.

Yukina and Shizuri immediately drew their weapons. But the people who materialized a moment later were not who they’d expected to see.

“—Sorry to keep you waiting. Looks like we made it just in time.”

A boyish figure wearing a sports brand parka sunnily waved in Yukina and company’s direction. This was Yuuma Tokoyogi, Witch of the Blue.

Yuuma, in the custody of the Attack Mage Section, was unable to act of her own volition. Yaze and Natsuki must have pulled some strings to get her to aid them.

A wielder of spatial control magic similar to Natsuki, Yuuma was a dependable ally even against Beast Vassals. Yukina’s expression brightened at the appearance of reliable assistance that she didn’t think would arrive in time.

Her expression froze solid when she noticed the other girl Yuuma had brought along.

She was a petite girl wearing a Saikai Academy uniform. Her long black hair was tied up in a short ponytail, and she had a lively air about her.

“Nagisa?!”

Yukina’s voice shook with surprise. Shizuri widened her eyes in shock.

“Why is she here…?!”

Asagi glared intensely at Yaze. He shook his head, dumbfounded. This hadn’t been his idea.

“Ahhh…about that. Actually…”

Yuuma scratched her forehead with a conflicted air. Apparently, she hadn’t really wanted to bring Nagisa along, either. Since Yuuma found it difficult to explain, Nagisa stepped in front of Yukina and spoke instead.

“I went looking for Yuuma and asked her to bring me!”

“…Why?”

Yukina seemed fearful as she asked. Even if she was Kojou’s little sister by blood, she wasn’t a demon or an Attack Mage. It was far too risky to let her get close to rampaging Beast Vassals; however, anger hovered in the serious eyes Nagisa turned toward Yukina. It was an emotion Yukina had never seen from her before.

“After everything that happened, Kojou’s in another really bad situation, isn’t he?! And you and the others are trying to do something about it, right, Yukina?! Then of course I’m helping! Asagi and Yuuma and even Kanon’s lending a hand, right?!”

Yukina was overwhelmed, unable to speak one word in response to Nagisa’s tirade, the likes of which she had never seen before. She wasn’t the only one shaken by it. Asagi and Yaze were genuinely pale, and Shizuri had stiffened as if frozen solid. Lydianne hushed her breathing inside of the tank.

Such was the severity of Nagisa’s anger.

When she fell silent, large teardrops began to spill out of her eyes.

Nagisa was right to be angry. Her older brother was hovering between life and death, but she was the only one here who’d been completely left out of the loop. She was justified in blaming Yukina and the others for that.

“Nagisa pretty much knew the whole situation anyway. She saw the living room was a mess and checked things out on the spot.”

Yuuma explained this with a sigh.

“Checked out? Ah…?”

Yukina suddenly remembered something she’d heard from Kojou. Mimori Akatsuki, the Akatsuki siblings’ mother, was a medical psychometer. Kojou had also said Nagisa, her daughter, had inherited this ability.

Nagisa practically never used it. The ability itself wasn’t all that useful, and she probably had no interest in prying into the secrets of other people’s pasts to begin with. It was also highly possible she had been strictly forbidden from using this ability by her grandmother Hisano Akatsuki. The antagonism between the Akatsuki family’s bride and mother-in-law was so famous that even an outsider like Yukina knew about it. She had no doubt whatsoever Hisano was prejudiced against Mimori due to her ability.

Surely even Nagisa couldn’t keep herself from using the ability after seeing the sorry state of the living room in her own apartment. After all, the bloodstains from Kojou being pierced through the heart were plain for all to see. Nagisa learned what had happened to her older brother when she touched that blood.

Yukina opened her mouth to apologize to Nagisa, but she bit her lip, unable to say anything.

The sudden change occurred a moment later.

“Ladies and gentlemen—! Demonic energy reaction! It is enormous!”

Lydianne shouted this urgently.

The caliber of the air over the vast container base shifted. The incredible demonic energy made the earth quiver and sent electric crackles through the sky. Dazzling, golden mist gathered together, changing into the form of a beautiful girl in the center of a wide-open area.

As arranged beforehand, the Third Primogenitor—Giada—had appeared with the sealed Kojou in tow.

“Motoki!”

Asagi angrily shouted this toward Yaze.

“Yeah, I get it. I’ll look after Nagisa. You all go on ahead as planned. We’re out of time!”

Picking up Nagisa, who had gone rigid with shock, Yaze angrily shouted right back at Asagi. Like Nagisa, he was a Hyper Adapter—a psychic who could control the atmosphere, in his case. Even if fighting a Beast Vassal was a no-go, he could manage grabbing her and hauling her to safety. He was able to use wind pressure to bolster his physical strength a great deal.

“—The Blood Servants of Kojou Akatsuki, I take it?”

Vast amounts of demonic energy scattered about as Giada spoke in a solemn tone.

The energy was not her own. Her Beast Vassal’s seal had been breached. Kojou was breaking out.

“It is the appointed hour. Show me…what you are made of.”

The moment Giada finished speaking, the air creaked with a thunderous roar.

A furious gust was whipped up by the enormous mass of what emerged, unleashing a malevolent light that illuminated the night sky.

Bundles of demonic energy dense enough to possess wills of their own—the black Beast Vassals—appeared before them.

A single monster stood at their center. It was a grotesque creature clad in a pitch-black exoskeleton.

“—Himeragi, Kasugaya, let’s do this!”

Asagi climbed into the robot tank as she shouted.

“Yes.”

Gripping her silver-colored spear, Yukina stripped off her mantle. She had no right to be embarrassed by the bunny suit she wore exposing so much of her body.

“From here on, this is our fight.”

Gripping the shaft of her lance, she murmured that as much for her benefit as anyone else’s.

Drawing her undulating crimson long sword, Shizuri briefly howled in response.

“Indeed!”