Strike the Blood - Volume 22 - Chapter 4.1

CHAPTER FOUR

FORTIFIED NECROPOLIS

1

“My shadow is mist and mist not, blade and blade not—”

Kiriha Kisaki raised her spear as she danced. All sight of her vanished, melting into thin air.

Using physical enchantment to heighten her body’s capabilities paired with illusion targeting observers, this tactic enabled her to attack at speeds beyond human recognition.

“Slice as a phantasm, reverberate as the echo of catastrophe!”

Appearing right in the middle of the heavily armed troops, she swung her spear as it reverberated with the beautiful echo of a tuning fork. Fresh blood splattered as one soldier cried out after the next.

They were at the tiny cape floating in the sea of clouds. An MAR special forces unit of eight men had disembarked from a transport craft only for Kiriha to utterly crush them single-handedly.

“So that is…a Priestess of the Six Blades of the Bureau of Astrology…”

A grave look came over Yuiri as she spoke, hiding behind a rise in the ground.

Aside from directly targeting vitals, Kiriha hadn’t really held back at all. The sight of her smiling gently while showered in blood spatter made it all the more ghoulish and terrifying. The hardened special forces soldiers’ faces were twitching in fear as they began to retreat.

“How did Kirasaka win against that…I’d heard she beat up a girl until she cried and apologized, but…”

Lowering the bow with which she had meant to back up Kiriha, Shio wearily exhaled.

“I heard you, Lion King Agency. Of course no such thing happened.”

Seeing that the enemy had been sent packing, Kiriha was wiping the blood from her cheeks as she glared at Shio. Then she looked behind Shio and Yuiri—directing her gaze at the badly sewn teddy bear Avrora was hugging.

“Well, fine. Mogwai, you said? Might we continue our earlier conversation?”

“…Hmm, what conversation was that?”

Mogwai, still in Avrora’s embrace, blatantly averted his eyes. Kiriha pointed the bloody tip of her forked spear right at him.

“Don’t play games with me. I’ll kill you in a heartbeat. Don’t tell me you brought us all the way to Nod to help with small fry like that?”

“Hey, don’t call ’em small fry. They’re MAR elites with Deva blood in ’em.”

Keh-keh, Mogwai laughed sarcastically as he watched the fleeing transport craft go. Kiriha furrowed her brows in silence.

“Devas…they are with Shahryar Ren?”

“Shouldn’t ancient superhumans be tougher than that?”

Yuiri and Shio prompted back, mildly bewildered.

Until Shahryar Ren had revealed his own ancestry, the race known as Devas was thought to be a legendary existence that had died off long ago. They were said to be ancient superhumans possessing a high degree of sorcerous technology served by beast people, giants, and many other demon races. It was said that they wielded a supernatural force known as divine power, and that the spiritual energy Yuiri and company possessed was obtained through cross-breeding between Devas and human ancestors.

To be blunt, if the soldiers from earlier represented the superhuman might of the Devas, they seemed to have expected too much. Mogwai, though, made a shrug-like gesture with his little head.

“Seems like just having had Deva ancestors a bunch of generations ago doesn’t give ’em combat abilities that much different from humans.”

“So they really were small fry.”

Kirha coldly spat out the words. Keh-keh, laughed Mogwai in his throat.

“Well, there’s another reason why those guys felt weak to you.”

“I am not interested. More importantly, foul creature, speak about these Beast Vassal Warheads. What do you mean, this facility is for sealing the warheads?”

“Pretty much what it sounds like. The artificial isle Senra you can see from here was built as a Beast Vassal Warhead stockpile to begin with, a safe place where there’s zero chance of ’em going off.”

Mogwai, making a pained smile at the foul creature remark, lifted his face up toward the surface of the sea above them.

“What do you mean, a place where they cannot go off?”

Kiriha’s expression remained unchanged as she inquired further. Mogwai grinned with amusement.

“Didn’t ya hear from my Fourth Primogenitor Bro? Ya can’t use demonic energy in Nod.”

“Can’t use demonic energy?”

Shio widened her eyes in surprise. Yuiri gasped, looking back as she just remembered something.

“So that’s why the special forces team from just now felt so fragile?”

“Most of ’em should have equipment that runs on demonic energy. Without magic energy, their gear and their magic users ain’t all that powerful.”

Mogwai added an exaggerated wave of his hand as he explained.

“It’s worse for actual demons. Demons who need demonic energy just to live can’t survive in Nod to start with. Even if it ain’t that severe, most demons are gonna be weakened. You can’t bestialize, and vampires can’t use Beast Vassals. Well, with one exception.”

Speaking those words, Mogwai glanced up at Avrora, the one hugging him against her chest. Avrora’s gaze drifted as if nothing going on seemed real.

Shio and the others knew that the Fourth Primogenitor was a special vampire.

To destroy Cain the Sinful God, who could not be felled by any other means, the Devas produced a god-killing weapon expressly for that purpose. The girls didn’t know the methodology involved, but if only those particular Beast Vassals could be summoned in Nod, a place where demonic energy supposedly did not exist, they could understand what made the Fourth Primogenitor so special.

“—MAR brought seven Beast Vassal Warheads to the surface. The rest of ’em are still in the storage facility. I’m using Blondie here’s power to keep the facility sealed, y’see.”

“I see. So that’s why MAR’s after this place.”

Makes sense, thought Shio, nodding in response to Mogwai’s words.

Avrora, the Fourth Primogenitor, had enough demonic energy to open the gate connecting Nod and Itogami Island all by herself. Mogwai was employing her demonic energy to stop the Beast Vassal Warheads in the storage facility from being hauled away.

“That’s why you brought us here? To protect you?”

Kiriha glared at Glenda, standing beside Yuiri and Shio and looking a little bored.

Dah, thought Glenda, nodding immediately. Shio and Yuiri spontaneously shielded Glenda behind them.

“More like she brought us and you just got caught up in it, Kiriha Kisaki.”

“S-Shio, you can’t just say something like that!”

“…This doesn’t sit well with me.”

Kiriha spun on her heels and turned to face Avrora and Mogwai.

“Avrora Florestina inherited the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor from Kojou Akatsuki, right? Shouldn’t she be able to easily send mongrels like that packing without needing our help?”

“Keh-keh…you’d have a point—if Blondie here really could control the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals, that is.”

Mogwai replied in place of the wordless Avrora. I get it, Shio murmured aloud.

“The Beast Vassals don’t recognize Avrora as their master yet, do they?”

“’T-tis my failing.”

Avrora continued to clutch Mogwai as her delicate shoulders narrowed even further.

According to the reports from Yukina Himeragi that had reached Shio and Yuiri’s ears, the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor had particularly dangerous dispositions. Kojou Akatsuki himself hadn’t been able to summon the Beast Vassals freely until just prior to the conclusion of the War of the Primogenitors. That was after the passage of nine months since inheriting the Fourth Primogenitor’s power.

It was likely that, just like him, Avrora did not yet have a handle on her own Beast Vassals. Compared to the human Kojou Akatsuki, she should have had considerably greater compatibility with the Beast Vassals, but trying to simply force them to obey ran a high risk of making them go berserk.

“So, Bureau of Astrology miss. I forgot to mention one other important thing.”

Mogwai spoke in an atypically serious tone of voice. One of Kiriha’s eyebrows twitched higher.

“I wonder what?”

“Even if she could use the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals, it ain’t easy to protect this place. This is Nod, after all.”

“You’ve been beating around the bush since the beginning. What are you trying to say?”

Kiriha stared intently at him in annoyance. Shio gasped with a serious expression on her face.

“Oh…right, he’s here in Nod, too…”

“Got it in one, short-haired miss.”

Mogwai curled up only one side of his mouth. Kiriha dubiously prompted back.

“Him?”

“Right, you haven’t actually met him yet have you? Him—the other pinnacle of demonkind right up there with vampire primogenitors.”

Mogwai spoke in a provocative tone of voice. Kiriha drew in a breath slightly. She realized what Mogwai had been hinting at.

“Yuiri, Shio.”

Glenda abruptly addressed the pair. It was in a clear voice, not her usual lisping tone.

Yuiri and Shio were perplexed when they casually turned their eyes toward her. Standing there was not the silver-haired girl the pair knew.

Along with the young Glenda, another Glenda stood there, pale and transparent like a ghost.

They resembled each other like sisters, but the two were clearly different from one another. The physical Glenda looked ten years old, give or take. The other one, the illusion, looked as old as Yuiri and Shio at minimum. Also, just like Avrora, she was wearing a school uniform greatly resembling that of Saikai Academy.

“Glenda…?”

“Are you…Glenda, too?”

“Yes, I am. More accurately, I suppose I am who Glenda used to be.”

Gazing gently upon the bewildered pair, the Glenda illusion spoke in a teasing fashion.

That instant, Yuiri and Shio instinctively understood. The physical form of this Glenda illusion no longer existed. It had probably vanished thousands of years ago.

The Glenda that Yuiri and Shio knew had traces of artificial genetic manipulation. The dragon had probably been created as a successor to the being known as Glenda long ago.

“I ask that you, my friends beyond the bounds of time, lend me a small portion of your strength, so that the wish of my master, Cain the Sinful God, might be fulfilled—”

The Glenda illusion glanced at Mogwai as she spoke. Mogwai blatantly averted his eyes.

“Cain’s…wish?”

Seeing Shio ask that guarded question, the illusionary girl nodded warmly. This left Shio and Yuiri unable to ask any more, for her eyes contained the same undiluted trust that shone in young Glenda’s eyes.

“…Sheesh. Speak of the devil…”

Mogwai abruptly looked overhead, commenting as if it were someone else’s problem. Avrora, holding him against her chest, twitched her shoulders in visible fear.

Once more, MAR transport craft were approaching from Senra, the steel-colored artificial city floating on the sea’s surface.

The tilt-rotor transport craft was the same model as those they’d sent packing earlier, but these were weaponized types equipped with air-to-ground rockets and machine guns.

Furthermore, they could see a copper demon beast behind them, spreading its giant wings.

The enormous, hostile creature was larger than the transport craft. It had a long tail and four stout limbs. Vast heat generated by its cells made its entire body seem to shimmer like a mirage. It was a legendary monster that lorded over all demonkind.

“Dragon incoming.”

Mogwai acted pretty casually about it as he spoke.

Flying above their heads, Kreyd the Flame Dragon savagely roared as soon as it spotted Mogwai and the others.