Strike the Blood - Volume 22 - Chapter 4.5

5

“Yuiri…!!”

Shio’s cry, nearly a scream, echoed through Nod’s sky.

The heavily wounded Yuiri was on the ground, limp and unmoving. Kiriha tried to stand up, but managed only to violently cough up fresh blood. She’d taken a lot of damage herself.

Kreyd gazed down at Shio and the others with emotionless eyes. The scales covering his entire dragon-man body were emitting a great deal of heat. He was preparing to breathe fire once more.

Realizing this, Avrora stepped forward with an uncertain gait. She was trying to shield Shio and the others. Even as her entire body quavered in fear, she glared at the combat-ready Kreyd.

“…B-begone…Flame Dragon…!”

Avrora stretched her right arm toward the dragon-man. The gesture was as if to summon a Beast Vassal. She was trying to threaten him with all her might.

“Avrora…quit it…!”

“R…un!”

The wounded Shio and Yuiri weakly shouted. Dragons were considered among the strongest of demonkind, right up there with vampire primogenitors. Avrora couldn’t use her Beast Vassals properly. They didn’t think she stood a chance.

“It is…futile, Avrora Florestina… Come…with me…”

Suspending his attack, Kreyd spoke in a grating, difficult-to-hear voice.

Avrora made tiny shakes of her head. A distinct aura of rejection hovered in her radiant blue eyes. Kreyd made a low growl in his throat.

“…If you will not…obey…I shall…make you.”

Kreyd slowly spread out both arms. Avrora paled when she saw this.

Still in dragon-man form, Kreyd’s fingertips exposed huge talons resembling razor-sharp knives. Imbued with great heat, the talons caused shimmers in the air around them.

“You are an unaging, undying vampire… Therefore…if I rip off your limbs and burn your head, you will not perish…!”

The dragon-man kicked the ground, accelerating as if hurled by a catapult. He was sprinting straight at Avrora.

“C…come forth, Minelauva Iris!”

Avrora shouted, seemingly spurred on by her fears. A huge, rainbow-colored Valkyrie materialized behind her back in a single instant, swinging her gleaming, demonic energy blade.

Minelauva Iris, Beast Vassal Number Six of the Fourth Primogenitor, was originally sealed by Hekatos—in other words, the Beast Vassal had been in Avrora’s current body. In her current state, this was the only Beast Vassal that Avrora was capable of summoning.

Kreyd took Avrora’s attack head-on. The dragon essence surging from his entire body collided with Avrora’s demonic energy, splitting the air with a violent creak.

The clash between the two powers lasted for a brief instant. The Beast Vassal blade unleashed by Avrora shattered, vanishing in the blink in an eye, leaving a largely unscathed Kreyd remaining.

“Is this…all…Fourth Primogenitor…?”

Looking down at the light laceration carved into his own right arm, Kreyd exhaled, somehow seeming disappointed.

“Hiii…uuu…!”

Avrora’s sensitive eyes wavered.

Shio and the others bit their lips in despair. Avrora hadn’t summoned her Beast Vassal in its complete form. She really hadn’t tamed the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor yet.

Maybe Avrora wasn’t cut out to rule the Beast Vassals to begin with. She hadn’t been created to be the Fourth Primogenitor, but as one artificial vampire of many to seal away the Beast Vassals. She was too kind and gentle to make the ferocious, destructive Beast Vassals submit to her.

“Uuu…uuu…”

Avrora stretched her hand out to try and summon a Beast Vassal once more, but no Beast Vassal responded to her call. Her slender vampiric arm flailed futilely in the air, nothing more.

Scorning Avrora’s powerlessness, Kreyd slowly drew closer to her.

The dragon-man stopped moving, seemingly perplexed. A tiny figure had walked right past Shio and the others, gently approached Avrora, and nestled against her.

“Glenda…?!”

Shio blinked in a daze. The dragon-girl, supposedly inside the tower, was supporting the frightened Avrora with her shoulder.

Kreyd wore a bewildered expression as Glenda’s outward appearance slowly transformed before his eyes. She was no longer the dragon-girl, but someone else entirely.

“Thou art…!”

Avrora’s voice trembled.

The girl who had been Glenda several moments prior shot Avrora a gentle smile.

Her long, steel-colored hair had turned into a glossy black. The tiny Glenda’s back had grown ever so slightly, making her height equal to Avrora’s. Thanks to this, the two looked practically like sisters for a fleeting moment. The lips of the girl who had been Glenda formed a friendly smile.

“Nagisa…Akatsuki…”

Shio murmured the girl’s name. She was confused but, at the same time, oddly accepting.

Once, Glenda had adopted the form of Yukina Himeragi before Kojou Akatsuki. The same thing was happening now. As opposed to back then, the current Glenda was clearly moving according to Nagisa Akatsuki’s will, not her own. Nagisa had to still be on the surface. She’d possessed Glenda by projecting her own mind.

“Looks like they made it in time…”

A voice came from Shio’s feet. A syrupy smile crept onto the face of Mogwai, splayed out on the ground, when he saw how Glenda had transformed.

Shio looked at Mogwai in surprise.

The powerful spirit medium Nagisa Akatsuki had used her abilities to possess Glenda. It was likely this badly sewn teddy bear and his partner, Asagi Aiba, were responsible for piecing together this situation.

In other words, this was the will of the Priestess of Cain, no—the will of Cain the Sinful God himself.

But what for? wondered the perplexed Shio when Kreyd went into motion.

Kreyd had been briefly perplexed by the appearance of his kin Glenda, but he’d no doubt judged that the girl possessing her, Nagisa Akatsuki, posed no threat whatsoever.

His talons gave off a dull gleam as they assaulted Avrora once more.

Nagisa/Glenda calmly glared right back at the dragon-man without displaying any hint of fear. Then she strongly called out to Avrora.

“It’s all right. We can do this, if we join together as one—”

Nagisa’s left hand wrapped around and embraced Avrora’s right. With a gasp, Avrora opened her eyes, firmly pursing her lips.

The pair then turned straight toward Kreyd, hand in hand. The demonic energy surging from both of their bodies was so vast as to fill the entirety of Shio and company’s vision, pure white and incredibly cold.

“Come forth, Alrescha Glacies—!”

The girls’ voices rang out simultaneously. The demonic energy gushing from Avrora’s body transformed into a giant Beast Vassal, a beautiful icy raptor, Beast Vassal Number Twelve of the Fourth Primogenitor—

“Wh…at?!”

The onrushing, extreme cold fiercely unnerved Kreyd. He spewed out an incandescent beam in an attempt to resist the Beast Vassal’s demonic energy, but the cold unleashed by the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassal exceeded the Flame Dragon’s breath. The incandescent flames vanished in white mist, and the dragon-man’s entire body became enveloped in a block of ice.

The Beast Vassal’s attack included the Spartoi behind Kreyd, too. Their exoskeletons, strong enough to rival dragon hide, fragilely broke apart like sand once exposed to ultralow temperature. There was no sign that the fragments piled upon the ground were regenerating. The intense cold emitted by the Beast Vassal completely destroyed the ritual to create the Spartoi that had employed dragon physical composition as a catalyst.

“Ooooooooooooo…!!”

The huge, copper dragon shattered the block of ice as it emerged. Returning to dragon form, Kreyd used the flames emitted in the process to thaw his own frozen flesh, soaring up into the sky in turn. However, his right arm was missing, with only a tiny bit near the shoulder remaining. Avrora’s Beast Vassal’s attack had frozen and shattered it.

“GUROOOOOOOOOHHH!”

Kreyd the Flame Dragon made an earsplitting roar. His voice was no longer something humans could decipher, but the curses and hate in his voice were clear to all. He directed a splitting rage toward Avrora, the one who’d wounded his flesh.

The Spartoi he’d brought were already wiped out, however. He’d surely judged that taking on Avrora in her current state on his own was too risky, even for him. The Flame Dragon flew off, glaring hatefully at Avrora all the while. He was retreating to the artificial isle floating on the surface of the sea overhead.

Avrora had no capacity left with which to pursue him. She fell to her knees, her strength depleted from forcibly summoning her Beast Vassal.

“…Thank you, Avrora. Thanks to you, we made it in time… Now it’s my turn.”

Nagisa/Glenda smiled as she gently touched Avrora’s back.

As Shio raced to the injured Yuiri, an expression of surprise came over her, staring straight at the incredible rays of light emitted by Nagisa/Glenda’s body.

“Nagisa Akatsuki…you’re…!”

Shio murmured in a daze. The rays Nagisa/Glenda was releasing were actually dazzling, radiant strings of spiritual essence. She was freely controlling thousands of these strings like a veteran puppeteer.

Shio knew the true nature of this skill. It was Teokratia—the mind control ritual employed by Shirona Kuraki, one of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency.

The ability to control thousands, even tens of thousands, of targets was the secret art of the Kuraki clan. Nagisa Akatsuki had personally experienced this ritual once previously. She’d probably reproduced Shirona’s technique based on her memories of the event.

The spiritual threads woven by Nagisa/Glenda went through the steel-colored tower before spreading into the sky of Nod.

Shio was following the glows when she realized something was changing around her.

The cloud-covered sky of Nod was clearing. The cold from the Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor had frozen water in the atmosphere, rendering it unable to maintain its vapor form.

“I see…this is a…”

With the clouds clearing, Shio looked around the now-vivid sky, breathing out like she was beside herself.

Why were sky and ground inverted? Why did no demonic energy exist in this land? She felt like she finally understood the secret of the world known as Nod.

“So this is Nod’s true form…”

Assailed by fierce dizziness, Shio fell to her knees on the spot. A sea spread forth above Shio’s and the others’ heads. What spread far beneath their eyes was also the surface of the sea.

The place they’d thought a cape floating in a sea of clouds was part of a shaft cutting horizontally through open space.

They were on the inside of a metal, cylindrical world dozens of kilometers in diameter.

The world known as Nod was itself a giant, artificial structure.