Strike the Blood - Volume 22 - Chapter 5.1

CHAPTER FIVE

DAWN TRIUMPHANT

1

They were assailed by an enormous impact unlike a normal teleport. The abrupt change in air pressure was dizzying. The Necropolis—Castle Kalenaren—had passed beyond the gate to Nod.

Kojou had a sense of glass shattering as the pitch-black great sword he had summoned vanished, its power exhausted. Taking this as its cue, the half-demolished castle walls began to completely fall to pieces.

Nonetheless, the great mass of rubble sent flying in the process did not pour down on Kojou’s and Yukina’s heads. Time seemed to come to a standstill as the remnants of the Necropolis floated into midair, and then…stopped.

“There is…no gravity…? What is this…?”

Yukina was still clamped on to Kojou’s left arm as she looked around the area. Freed from the power of gravity, her hair gently spread out as if she were underwater.

“Looks like we made it to Nod safe and sound…”

Kojou seemed drained as he exhaled. Though this was the first time he’d physically visited Nod, there was an obvious environmental difference. At the very least, there was no room to doubt they weren’t on the surface anymore.

“Nod? This is…Nod, you say?”

Yukina inquired, her tone still laden with surprise.

“Yeah, probably. Well, setting that aside…Himeragi, you’re, ah, exposed.”

Kojou awkwardly averted his eyes from the bewildered Yukina. Yukina’s skirt was also freed from the force of gravity, fluttering up with her underwear in full view.

“Eh? Wa…waaaah!!”

Shrieking, Yukina let go of Kojou’s arm and hastily pressed down her skirt. This time, the reaction sent Yukina’s body twirling about, thrusting her butt right into Kojou’s face.

“Wh-why is this happening to… aaa, wait a…d-don’t look! Please do not look!”

Yukina tried flailing her legs about, but this did not alter her positioning in any way. Apparently, thanks to using both hands to push her skirt down, she was unable to control her posture anywhere near as much as she’d like.

Though stunned by the sight of her white thighs—which he had swiftly burned into his memory—Kojou nonetheless managed to grab Yukina by her arms and put a stop to her unorthodox spinning. Though this rectified her posture, embarrassment and confusion over the weightlessness had put tears into Yukina’s eyes.

“Ahhh…you all right, Himeragi?”

Kojou timidly posed that question, seeing that Yukina was hanging her head without a word.

Yukina’s shoulders quivered with anger as she resentfully glared at Kojou. Her big eyes were a mess, tears spilling from them as if something had been torn inside her.

“Sen…pai…!”

“Hey, wait. There’s nothing to cry over, is there?! I just tried letting you know in a friendly way… I mean, I glanced over and saw for just a moment; it’s not like I was staring nonstop or anything!”

Nervously, Kojou desperately tried to excuse himself. What happened just then was a pure and simple accident owing to being in an unfamiliar, weightless environment. Kojou was offended by being made responsible for it. That said, it remained a fact he’d seen Yukina’s underwear, so Kojou did feel a decent amount of guilt nonetheless, but…

“I am not angry about you seeing my panties!”

For once, Yukina outright exploded in anger in Kojou’s face. She swung a clenched fist down against Kojou’s chest like a child having a tantrum.

“What in the world was that?! If you knew they couldn’t use the Beast Vassal Warheads, why didn’t you tell me that from the beginning…! Senpai, I thought you seriously meant to have Tokyo destroyed… Do you have any idea…how worried I was…!”

Yukina’s words trailed off, vanishing into incoherent sobs midway. She was the only one at the negotiations with Ladli Ren who hadn’t heard of Kojou and company’s plan beforehand. She’d genuinely believed Kojou had goaded them into firing a Beast Vassal Warhead into Tokyo, something that had apparently caused her deep distress.

Naturally, Kojou felt very uncomfortable, wiping sweat off his own cheeks.

“Er, there wasn’t any time to explain by that point, and thanks to you getting nervous like that, the Devas bought it hook, line, and sinker…and if you wanna get right down to it, you tried to sink Itogami Island without one word to any of us so…”

“Uu…uuu…uuuuuu…!”

“Owww! …Sorry, my bad! I won’t do anything like that ever again!”

With Yukina so worked up, Kojou stroked her head and voiced words of repentance. Yukina’s flowing tears turned into water droplets that floated around them, gleaming like glittery gemstones.

Somehow, crying made Yukina look so young that Kojou was stricken with the urge to hug her, but unfortunately, neither of them had the luxury for such a moment.

A vibration and a rumble at Kojou’s and Yukina’s feet sounded like something slamming together along with a repulsive roar. It was the earsplitting death cries of a kind of beast.

Wiping her tears with the backs of her hands, Yukina drew her silver-colored spear from the case on her back. Perhaps she’d become accustomed to weightlessness after a brief time, but there was no hesitation in her movements whatsoever.

Yukina was glaring at an ashen-colored demon beast that looked like a splice between bear and wolf. Its height was between four and five meters thereabouts. The inside of its gaping maw was lined with sharp fangs. It was likely some vile demon beast created and controlled with magic for military purposes.

It was the demon warbeast, but it was acting with the desperation of prey trying to escape a predator’s grasp.

An enormous tree resembling a mangrove had the demon beast in its grasp. The tree branches over a meter in diameter writhed like snakes as they constricted the demon beast’s torso. The tree trunk was split open like a shark’s mouth, drooling with saliva that looked like powerful acid.

“Yateveo…?! What is such a thing doing here?!”

Yukina’s voice quivered in fright.

The Yateveo was a plant-type demon beast, its range chiefly in the Chaos Zone in Central and South Americas. Its branches, moving via turgor, exerted hydrostatic pressure in excess of the brute force of the great majority of demon beasts, and secreted a cocktail of paralytic and nerve poisons to securely slay any prey that approached. On top of that, they had powerful magical resistance. Even someone as ill versed on demon beast ecology as Kojou knew about these famous carnivores.

“Probably Ladli Ren’s pets. Seems like these Devas love raising and releasing demon beasts into their Necropolis mazes as a hobby of theirs.”

Kojou spoke with an annoyed tone. He’d thought Schtola D’s story about this was an exaggeration, but apparently the information Asagi and Yaze had gleaned from him was on the money after all.

As Kojou and Yukina grimaced, the Yateveo started eating the captured demon beast right in front of them. The demon warbeast wailed death cries as its bones were bitten into while it was still alive. They wanted to avert their eyes from the gruesome spectacle.

“The demon beasts are…eating one another…!”

“Hey, Pun Girl, at least feed the damned things!”

Yukina drew in her breath a bit as Kojou spat insults at the absent Ladli Ren, but that was as far as their leisurely observations could reach, for as soon as the Yateveo had finished feeding on the demon warbeast, its branches began stretching toward Kojou and Yukina.

“Guess this is no time to file complaints! Hang on tight, Himeragi!”

Kojou picked up Yukina’s slender body. The downpour of castle wall pieces was in the way, so they had to get out of the Necropolis one way or another. It was faster to blow the rubble away than to search for another traversable route.

“…Complaints?”

Yukina looked up with a sober expression, seemingly reproaching Kojou for his casual comment, but Kojou ignored her gaze and summoned a Beast Vassal. Pitch-black, bloody mist scattered all about, transforming into a giant beast.

“C’mon over, Primus Cinereus—!”

The shelled beast Kojou called forth spewed mist the color of darkness.

The Necropolis remnants touched by this mist became insubstantial, melting into the vapor.

Kojou’s fourth black Beast Vassal inherited from The Blood emblemized a vampire’s ability to transform into mist. However, there was no guarantee anything it turned to mist would ever regain its original form.

The Necropolis remnants turned into black mist scattered with the wind, retaining nothing of their original shape as they vanished. The Yateveo with high magic resistance struggled against vaporization to the bitter end, but once the ground vanished from under its roots, there was nothing more it could do. The rubble and the demon beasts and everything else were swept away, leaving only the Necropolis’s lower half like a watermelon neatly split in two. Kojou’s black Beast Vassal had swept away half the mass of the Necropolis nearly a kilometer in diameter in a single instant.

As the mist thinned, the first thing entering his eyes was sea. A vast sea as far as their eyes could reach spread above Kojou’s and Yukina’s heads. At their feet, they saw a starless night sky covered by clouds. The remnant of the half-destroyed Necropolis was hovering uncertainly between sky and sea.

“Why is…the sea above us…?”

Yukina spoke in a daze. The undulating surface of the sea didn’t feel like it was going to come falling out of the sky it stretched through. It seemed that gravity pulled things upward the closer one got to the surface to the sea.

Yukina shifted her gaze farther, her big eyes opening wide, for she noticed the presence of the enormous wall completely covering the space behind the Necropolis.

A steel-colored sheer, vertical cliff spread from the surface of the sea above to the bottom of the sky below.

The surface of the wall was carved with odd, interlocking marks, clearly indicating it was an artificial construct. It was like a bulwark built to isolate the world.

The remains of the Necropolis the pair were in clung to that wall, halfway caved in like a crushed ping-pong ball.

“What is this wall…?!”

Yukina weakly shook her head. The series of abnormal, mind-boggling spectacles were apparently causing even her to lose her cool.

“Ahhh, this is the end of Nod. We can head outside from here.”

Kojou calmly explained in sharp contrast to Yukina’s surprise. He was acting like a tourist visiting a place with mildly rare scenery.

“Outside?! What do you mean by that? Outside of Nod…?”

“Right, Himeragi didn’t know.”

Seeing Yukina approach, Kojou grappled with internal conflict.

“Himeragi, Nod’s apparently a world inside some super-huge artificial island floating in space.”

“Huh…?”

The sudden term space made Yukina freeze, her expression vanishing.

“…An artificial island floating in space… Are you saying this is a space colony?”

“Yeah, that… I feel like I’ve heard that somewhere.”

Kojou readily nodded as he gazed upon the steel-colored “world wall.”

For a time, Yukina stopped entirely as if frozen solid, after which her tiny voice quavered.

“Then this weightlessness, the sky and sea being inverted…and not being able to use demonic energy in Nod…it’s all because this is inside a space colony?”

“It’s not so much the sky and sea are upside down as the inside of the colony walls are all one big sea. Apparently this keeps the bad effects of cosmic rays on living creatures to a minimum. All that said, the gravity here is artificially made with centrifugal force so it figures gravity’s weak near the center like we are right now.”

Kojou flicked a piece of rubble floating in midair with a fingertip as he continued.

They were floating in a void far removed from the earth inside a gargantuan space colony over two hundred kilometers in length—this was the true nature of the otherworldly land known as Nod.

As a result, Nod’s sun always floated right around the water’s horizon. Eternal twilight without any noonday sun and long, starless nights—such were the days in Nod.

“And the gate to Nod only opening at night is…”

Yukina aired that question with an expression that was still incredulous. Kojou narrowed his eyes as he recalled some kind of vague memory.

“That’s related to the Earth’s own rotation. This time of the year, Nod’s on the opposite side of the sun from Earth’s point of view, so the gate only opens when the sun sets. It can be the other way around dependin’ on the season.”

“Ghhh…just how far from the earth are we in tangible terms?”

“Asagi guesstimated it was somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but she doesn’t know that for sure. There’s not even any proof it’s inside the solar system.”

Kojou sighed casually. Maybe an expert in spatial control magic like Natsuki could accurately determine its coordinates, but Kojou was an amateur. What he did know with crystal clarity was that this place was far, far removed from the earth. The very fact that Fourth Primogenitor–class demonic energy was required to maintain a teleportation gate was proof of that.

“Just who did this…and for what purpose…?”

Yukina shook her head with visible confusion.

“This is a way station. It seems to be some kind of corridor for headin’ to planets outside this solar system. Did you know? They call themselves Devas ’cause they’re visitors from the heavens to start with.”

Kojou made a pained smile as he continued.

There was no proof the Devas really were visitors from another planet, but the fact remained that at the peak of their glory, they had built and employed the space colony known as Nod. They intended to use Nod as a way station en route to other solar systems.

“Seems like the decline of the Devas starting even before The Great Cleansing means they don’t have the technology or the passion to actually continue space development, though.”

Kojou mused aloud in a tone that somehow felt forlorn. In the end, Nod never had a chance to shine as that way station and was used as a simple storage facility for Beast Vassal Warheads. The only thing left in the Great Sea of Nod was the steel-colored artificial island, deserted and abandoned.

“…You know quite a bit about this, senpai.”

Yukina kept her voice calm as she glared at Kojou with a deeply wounded look. Her reproachful gaze shook him up a bit.

“Eh?”

“Senpai, why do you know all of this? I thought you were bad with history classes?”

“Ah…er, that’s…”

“This is Aiba’s knowledge, isn’t it? You drank Aiba’s blood and gained her Priestess of Cain memories in the process, didn’t you?”

Yukina pressed the issue with Kojou with half-lidded eyes. Kojou gently averted his eyes in silence. It was exactly right that Kojou had drunk Asagi’s blood and made her a servant during Yukina’s absence.

Scrutinizing Kojou’s deep, awkward silence, Yukina sighed deeply.

“Senpai, you really do rush to do indecent things with other girls when I take my eyes off you for even a second…”

“It wasn’t exactly indecent.”

“…Yet you would not drink my blood.”

Yukina ignored Kojou’s half-hearted rebuttal and pursed her lips, visibly peeved. She was apparently still nursing a grudge over the incident at the hotel the prior morning. She was surprisingly stubborn about such things.

Kojou shook his head in exasperation, abandoning all resistance.

“Well, it’s fine. More importantly, we’ve gotta go look for Avrora, huh…”

“I suppose we should…but how would we look for her…?”

Yukina slapped her own cheeks and got serious. At great pains, they had arrived in Nod, only to find it far vaster than she had imagined. She didn’t feel like they could find Avrora in any kind of random search, but…

“…Kojou.”

Kojou and Yukina were at a loss when someone abruptly called out to them. It was a very familiar voice.

Turning around, the pair saw a girl with long black hair who’d appeared out of the blue.

“Nagisa?!”

“Nagisa, how…?!”

Kojou and Yukina called out her name in surprise. Floating there while enveloped by a glow was Nagisa Akatsuki. She was wearing a monochrome sailor suit greatly resembling her Saikai Academy uniform.

“Nagisa…the hell are you doing in Nod…?”

“Wait, senpai. You are mistaken. This is not the real Nagisa…”

When Kojou tried to rush over, Yukina swiftly stopped him.

The girl in front of them changed shape. Her long black hair adopted a metallic glint, and her sociable face changed into one that seemed a tiny bit mature.

Kojou knew a girl who could change her shape like this. She was the one who’d appeared before Kojou when once caught up in encroachment from Nod, saving his life.

“You’re…Glenda…?”

“…Giggle, so we finally meet, Kojou Akatsuki…”

A Glenda grown to sixteen or seventeen years of age looked at Kojou with a smile. Seeing this expression, Kojou instinctively knew that this was not the Glenda whom Kojou knew, but someone else—no, a different Glenda.

“Over here…the last daughter of Mizen is waiting.”

Beckoning the bewildered pair with her hand, the girl with steel-colored hair started walking.

Kojou and Yukina nodded to one another and chased after the second Glenda.