Strike the Blood - Volume 21 - Chapter 5.3

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Kojou remained pretty much at the center of the wide-open area in the container base in a low, crouched stance. In line with the grotesque monster he had transformed into, his movements were close to that of a wild beast’s. The wills of the berserk Beast Vassals were probably dragging their host Kojou along for the ride.

Yukina and Shizuri were around thirty meters from Kojou. Compared to the vast battlefield as a whole, they were practically touching him, yet even that brief distancing was proving difficult to close.

That was because there were three Beast Vassals barring the way, protecting their host from the two girls.

“—Hauras!”

Swinging her undulating, flame-like long sword, Shizuri struck back against the blazing manticore. This Beast Vassal, which embodied the drinking of blood, instantly robbed the demonic energy and life force of whatever it touched. It was a poor matchup for Hauras, a blade that increased in power the more it slashed its opponents to rob them of their demonic energy. The two abilities were counteracting each other, preventing the demonic sword from unleashing its full potential.

This was not the only reason Shizuri was having a hard time, however.

“Miss Kasugaya, your wounds!”

Shizuri wobbled after evading a blow from a Beast Vassal. Her swordplay was markedly less precise than usual. This was no surprise, as she was not in any condition to be fighting. In fact, she was so hurt it was a mystery how she could stand and walk by her own power. And yet…

“It does not hurt whatsoever!”

The girl in the white bunny suit firmly declared as she blinked away tears.

“Er, but…”

“I have the blessings of a paladin so I am completely fine! More importantly, your movements are growing dull, Yukina Himeragi!”

“Ghhh,” went Yukina, her words catching in her throat from Shizuri pointing out that painful fact. The outfit was really throwing her off. Naturally, high heels were out, so she was wearing sturdy boots far easier to move in with the bunny suit, but her exposed back and shoulders weighed heavily on her mind, preventing her from freely wielding her spear.

“I really…shouldn’t have put on this outfit…”

“I am just as embarrassed as you are!”

Shizuri angrily shouted this back with reddened cheeks. The two hands with which she gripped her sword were trembling.

“Curse you, Kojou…forcing even me to wear such an indecent outfit…”

“No, I…do not think senpai did anything of the sort…”

Yukina switched mental gears even as she pitied Kojou over the unjustified accusation, for she had noticed the new Beast Vassal pressing near above. It looked like a pitch-black Valkyrie. Its long sword was gleaming in the night sky, probably symbolizing a vampire’s cruelty and ferocity. It was not an opponent she could cross blades with while captive to her own shyness.

“—Snowdrift Wolf!”

Yukina intercepted the sword the Valkyrie swung downward with her silver-colored spear. Even Snowdrift Wolf, which could nullify demonic energy, couldn’t take a square hit from this sword that could sever everything. The glimmer of the Divine Oscillation Effect further honed its thin, sharp blade as it deflected and somehow fended off the blow.

The slicing attack Yukina had just barely evaded bore deeply into the ground beside her, easily cutting down to the artificial isle’s foundation. She’d known it was strong, but the sheer might of this creature was unbelievable. The fact remained, however, that she couldn’t save Kojou unless she broke past this Beast Vassal.

“Awww, darn it! Stop running away, Kojou! Tanker, step on it!”

Asagi poked her upper body out of the tank’s hatch as she shouted, her irritation on full display. As dangerous as this seemed, the robot tank’s fiber-reinforced polymer armor would be blown away with one hit from a Beast Vassal anyway, so the result wouldn’t really change regardless.

Standing in front of Asagi and Lydianne was a pitch-black lion enveloped by bolts of electricity. This Beast Vassal governed a vampire’s ability to control lightning. Its attacks, literally flying at the speed of electricity, were much too fast for the tank to evade. This has forced them to hang back, leaving Asagi to grit her teeth as she looked in frustration at Kojou behind it.

“Lady Empress! Can thou not employeth The Cleansing…?!”

From the driver’s seat, Lydianne looked back and asked Asagi this in the back seat.

“Itogami Island’s internal network capacity is all a mess ’cause of that thing!”

Asagi growled and glared up at the gate to Nod floating overhead.

“On top of that, the amount of calculations needed to turn Kojou back is stupidly huge. I can only use The Cleansing once! So we can’t miss no matter what!”

“Muuu… But at this rate…!” Lydianne moaned nervously.

Combat was taking a lot longer than their initial projections. Everyone was holding out well against The Blood’s Beast Vassals, but it wouldn’t be strange for them to eventually hit their limits the way things were going.

“And why the hell is Kojou running, anyway?! Wasn’t he supposed to bite the moment he saw Himeragi and Kasugaya in bunny suits?! You said they were just the right thing for the job, Yaze, you dimwit—!!”

Asagi vented as she brushed her hair aside. “Ah-ha-ha,” went Yuuma’s lighthearted laugh as her blue-armored knight Guardian attended her from behind.

“Well, since you’re chasing him, of course he’s gonna run. Looks like Kojou’s operating on pure instinct at the moment.”

“I see.”

Asagi found herself readily accepting Yuuma’s carefree explanation. Whether it was true or not, the girl sounded awfully convincing.

“So what you need isn’t to chase him but to make him want to chase you. It’s the same with romance.”

“Romance…”

Asagi openly grimaced as if she was swallowing a bitter pill. Chasing after love was not her field of expertise. If she were that smooth, she wouldn’t have found herself in this mess to begin with.

Instead of getting past the Beast Vassals who were protecting him, they had to make Kojou come to them. That seemed like the only way of breaking the stalemate, but she had no idea what to do now that Operation Bunny Girl had failed.

Maybe busting through by crook or by hook is the only way, brooded Asagi, but it was then that Yukina looked in her direction. Maybe she’d overheard her conversation with Yuuma, but for some reason, the oddly calm expression on her face made something stir in Asagi’s chest.

“Aiba.”

A faint smile came over Yukina. The glint of resolve in her serene eyes made Asagi’s heart skip a beat.

“—Take care of…Akatsuki-senpai.”

“Himeragi! No!!”

Asagi reflexively reached a hand toward Yukina, but it wasn’t soon enough to stop her.

Yukina had turned the tip of the spear she held toward herself. Without any hesitation, she made a gash in her left wrist.

“Yukina Himeragi, what are you—?!”

Shizuri’s voice trembled when she realized something was very wrong.

Fresh blood gushed out of the wound with unbelievable force to dye Yukina’s fair skin vermilion. The pure white cuffs she wore turned a deep red. Raising the arm dripping fresh blood above her head, Yukina smiled at Kojou, taunting him.

The grotesque monster he had become seemed drawn to the blood-drenched girl and fixed his gaze on her. Kojou howled as his eyes glowed red. Then he gave into his cravings and attacked her.

“Le Bleu!”

Yuuma called out to her Guardian. The normally cheerful girl was in a fierce rage. This was the anger she harbored toward herself. Yukina had calmly wounded herself to save Kojou, while Yuuma had faltered. She couldn’t forgive herself for that.

“I’ll take on the three Beast Vassals. You handle the rest!”

“Wha…?!”

That’s crazy, Asagi was about to shout, but Yuuma had leaped into a spatial distortion, leaving Asagi no time to stop her. Asagi bit her lip and shook her head. Yuuma had entrusted her feelings to her. Now Asagi had to change Kojou back. She was the only one who could.

“Go, Lady Empress! I shall lend mine aid to the Witch—!”

Lydianne shouted this toward Asagi.

“Please do!”

Asagi leaped down from the robot tank. Kojou, running on all fours, was already practically right on top of Yukina.

“Sorry, but I can’t let you go any farther. Allow me to demonstrate the ability of the Witch of Notaria.”

Yuuma appeared before the Beast Vassals trying to chase after Kojou. The ground at her feet changed color as countless written characters floated onto its surface. It was strange writing like you’d find in some kind of ancient text.

Irritated, the pitch-black lightning lion tried to mow Yuuma down with a foreleg. Yuuma, however, evaded the lightning-quick attack with ease. Her reaction far surpassed human limitations. She’d used temporal manipulation to increase her own speed, an ability she’d gained from the grimoire of Kako Magatoki, Witch of the Dusk.

“Monad has no window; it is only a symbol—!”

Yuuma continued and summoned power from yet another grimoire.

Before Yuuma was the pitch-black Valkyrie wielding a sword, yet even her blade, which could rend anything apart, was unable to so much as touch Yuuma. This was thanks to the Probability Adjustment grimoire held by the Meyer Sisters, aka the Ashdown Witches.

Yuuma had inherited her mother’s ability to perfectly reproduce a magical grimoire from memory. She also possessed the ability to control space like Natsuki Minamiya. Leveraging the full potential of both abilities, Yuuma could punch far above her weight, even against Beast Vassals leagues more powerful than she was.

“Ha-ha, verily you are doing well, Lady Witch of the Blue!”

Rushing over to assist, Lydianne loudly extolled Yuuma’s combat exploits. Somewhere along the line, the new model robot tank Momiji she was driving had changed form, revealing the proper weaponry it had kept hidden. On its back was a pair of Vertical Launching System missiles with eight tubes apiece, and in the center of its torso was a giant gun barrel with a crimson lens embedded within.

“Then I shalt also use the cards I hath kept up my sleeve.”

The missiles launched in a single volley of sixteen and poured down on the pitch-black manticore like a meteorite shower. The Beast Vassal, supposedly immune to physical attacks, let out an anguished cry from the impact.

The crimson, large-caliber laser cannon then mowed down all three of the Beast Vassals.

Tactical missiles able to inflict damage upon Beast Vassals and the large-caliber laser dubbed the Flame-Spitting Spear—both were identical to a Nalakuvera’s weapons. Lydianne and Asagi had outfitted their own robot tank with these weapons after analyzing the Nalakuvera unearthed on New Itogami Island.

Witnessing the girls’ power, the three Beast Vassals recognized Yuuma and Lydianne as enemies they needed to eliminate. Consequently, they left their host isolated.

—This was their first, last, and greatest chance to save the monsterized Kojou.

Kojou, clad in a jet-black exoskeleton, attacked with his sharp fangs bared.

Yukina was not afraid of his outward appearance. She merely regretted that she had been powerless to stop him from changing into that form in the first place.

The wound on her wrist felt hot. She’d painstakingly avoided cutting tendons to not impede her fighting after the fact, but she might have lost too much blood regardless.

That had been her only option. As a powerless little girl, she couldn’t think of anything else she could offer for his sake except her own life.

Yukina had advanced too far along the path of angelification to fight like Shizuri any longer. If she used Snowdrift Wolf for much longer, the chances ran high that she would fade away. That was why Yukina had no other choice. It was her duty to bleed for his sake.

Her vision was growing darker. Strength was draining from her body. She couldn’t evade Kojou’s fangs.

I do not mind, thought Yukina. Even if she fell here, Asagi and the others would save Kojou.

“I regret to inform you—”

There was a sudden, heavy clang as fresh blood marred her cheeks.

The blood had not flowed from Yukina. Shizuri had stood in her white bunny suit to shield her fallen comrade. Kojou had sunk his fangs deep into the paladin’s arm.

“I cannot allow her to lose any more blood. You will have to make do with mine.”

Kojou tried to tear Shizuri’s arm off, but her resilient ogress body stood strong against him. Unable to remove his fangs, Kojou now found himself immobilized.

“Asagi Aiba! Now!!”

“Roger that!”

Asagi leaped at Kojou from behind, wrapping both her arms around his neck. This was more commonly known as a sleeper-hold, a finishing move straight out of mixed martial arts.

“I’ve got you, Kojou. No way you’re getting away at this range! Kikimora! The Cleansing!!”

Asagi angrily shouted toward the misshapen avatar hovering on the screen of the smartphone she gripped. The scarlet glow radiating from Asagi sank into the gaps in Kojou’s exoskeleton.

A dazzling beam of light burst forth, forcing Shizuri to shut her eyes. Kojou writhed in anguish, but Asagi didn’t care as she kept wringing his neck.

“This pain is Himeragi’s gift to you.”

A wicked, angry smile came over Asagi as she whispered into Kojou’s ear.

The Cleansing was able to freely rewrite the world, but controlling it was a frighteningly delicate and difficult affair. It took the giant sorcerous device called Itogami Island, the vast magical energy via the dragon lines, magical calculations only Asagi, the Priestess of Cain, could perform, and pushing the supercomputers to their utmost to pull it off. Doing all that made it possible to activate, but there was still one element missing: namely a true wielder of The Cleansing—a magic user able to take the image from the magical calculations and will it into being.

At its most basic, magic was the act of using magical energy to make the real world reflect the image in your own mind. Since she wasn’t a magic user, Asagi could send The Cleansing into the right direction, but she wasn’t able to control an image with the precision necessary to completely reproduce a single person. That was why Asagi needed a real magic user to actually control The Cleansing with her support.

Mind you, that didn’t mean just any magic user would do. The caster needed to be someone with a complete knowledge of Kojou Akatsuki’s proper form to accurately reproduce it. Of course, no such convenient caster existed.

None save the Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency who served as Kojou Akatsuki’s watcher—

“My power alone isn’t enough to turn you back to how you were. That’s why I asked Himeragi to control the magic so she can turn Monster Kojou back to her image of Fourth Primogenitor Kojou!”

“Hime…ragi…”

The grotesque monster let out a murmur in response to Asagi’s words.

The exoskeleton wrapped around his entire body had formed tiny cracks. These spread into splits and fissures. The thick armor-like hide crumbled and fell away.

Out from within appeared the familiar sight of a certain boy—an ordinary vampire with a vaguely languid expression on his face.

“Cas… Asagi…”

Pulling back his fangs from Shizuri’s arm, he glanced at Asagi, embracing him from behind, with a mystified look. Realizing then that Yukina had fallen at his feet, he audibly drew in his breath.

“Himeragi…”

A pained, bewildered expression came over Kojou as he saw Yukina covered in blood, but this soon changed to one of relief. Yukina might have been hurt, her face pale from blood loss, but she was smiling despite it all.

Offering his hand, Kojou gently pulled Yukina’s little body up into his embrace. Yukina gently whispered as she moved her hands around his back.

“Welcome back, senpai.”