Strike the Blood - Volume 4 - Chapter Ep

OUTRO 

It was Itogami Island—the coastal wall on the Gigafloat’s northern tip. A man stood there, the dazzling rays of the sun pouring down on him. 

He was a handsome, youthful, blond, blue-eyed aristocrat—Dimitrie Vattler. 

At the end of his gaze was an old, crumbling cathedral. It was the last redoubt of the true guardian of the prison barrier. 

All was laid bare to his vampiric super-sight. Namely, that Yuuma Tokoyogi, who had stolen the body of the Fourth Primogenitor, had been defeated by the combined efforts of Kojou Akatsuki and the Sword Shaman from the Lion King Agency. 

And that the prison barrier itself remained in ordinary space, completely vulnerable and defenseless— 

The corners of his lips turned up in a smile, Vattler murmured without a single shred of chagrin evident in his tone. 

“So the daughter of Aya Tokoyogi goes no further. A pity.” 

He extended his index finger in a rhythm that seemed childish somehow. 

“Nonetheless, now that the prison barrier has emerged, I could simply decide to destroy the final key with my very own hands—” 

His narrowed blue eyes became dyed with a blood-like crimson. Bloody mist swirled up around his entire body, finally taking the form of a gigantic serpent. 

This was one of the nine Beast Vassals that dwelled within the “blood” of Dimitrie Vattler. It was a sea serpent Beast Vassal with command over water pressure. It could instantaneously raise the pressure inside the cathedral to several thousand atmospheres, or alternatively, put it in a perfect vacuum state. 

If he killed Natsuki Minamiya while she slept, the sorcerous criminals held prisoner within her dream would be freed. Finally, Vattler would be able to test how his Beast Vassals would fare against those of the Fourth Primogenitor. It would be no bad thing to test if the Lion King Agency’s Sword Shaman could overcome this crisis, either. 

But before that— Vattler looked behind him. 

“Shakala!” 

Then, he mercilessly unleashed his own Beast Vassal. 

The container yard of Island North was an industrial harbor and storage area for raw materials and other supplies brought in by freighter for corporate interests in the Demon Sanctuary. The harbor’s operations were suspended for the opening of the Hollow Eve Festival, so no longshoremen remained. The only things in the yard were innumerable containers and empty space. 

An unfamiliar silhouette stood on top of one pile of containers. 

She was a small girl probably not halfway through her teens. However, Vattler was sensitive to the surge of demonic energy surrounding her. That was why he unleashed his Beast Vassal. 

Vattler’s Beast Vassal homed in on the object of his master’s ire, changing its flesh to a super high pressure rush of water as it attacked her. 

The attack from Vattler’s Beast Vassal had an atmospheric pressure of one hundred thousand—enough to change carbon into diamond. However, the girl swept out a single hand; with her hand alone, she stopped an Old Guard vampire’s Beast Vassal in its tracks. 

The impact sent a waterspout-like squall raging all around, causing several containers to tumble down. Even so, the girl continued to look down at Vattler, her expression unchanged. 

The girl spoke in a cold, crisp voice. 

“That is far enough, Master of Serpents… It is not yet time to disturb their slumber…” 

It was an awkward tone, as if one person was using another’s mouth and tongue to speak. 

The girl was wearing a black one-piece dress. It tightly squeezed her waist, distinctly showing off the lines of her young body. She wore a band on her head with animal ears poking up. She was wearing cat’s paw boots over knee-high, black socks. Apparently it was a black cat costume of some sort. When he looked closely, he could see a tail, too. 

However, behind the cute outfit, the girl’s wide-open eyes conveyed no emotion at all. Only her lips smiled. 

The corners of Vattler’s lips curled up in amusement as he asked… 

“Who are you?” 

The girl made no reply. Her hair was fairly long, but perhaps because she wore it short most of the time, it was oddly disheveled. Vattler did not know that the girl was called by the name of Nagisa Akatsuki, nor did the girl herself announce such a name now. 

“—So you have no intention of replying, I take it?” 

New Beast Vassals appeared to Vattler’s left and right. The Beast Vassals, now totaling three, spiraled together, transforming into a single Beast Vassal. It was a three-headed dragon with black scales. The dragon breathed in the surrounding air seemingly without limit, further increasing its mass. It loomed as large as a monster from myth and legend. Its appearance made one think it was a natural disaster, such as an atmospheric disturbance turned typhoon, made into physical flesh. 

“Then I shall play with you in his place—!” 

Vattler unleashed the monster upon the cat-eared girl. 

It was far too massive a Beast Vassal to target a single person with. The aftershocks of the attack alone would be enough to inflict grievous damage upon Itogami Island’s man-made surface plating. It went without saying that the girl at ground zero would be annihilated without any trace of her remaining. Vattler narrowed his eyes as he expected to see just that, when… 

The next instant, his entire body endured an unforeseen shock that sent him flying. 

“Guh…gaha…!” 

Flying about ninety meters from his starting location until being smashed against a breakwater, Vattler coughed blood all about. Vattler’s attack, released very much toward the girl, had backlashed against him. 

Every drop of blood in his body suddenly chafed and seethed under the pressure. The right side of his torso had been liquefied; not a single bone in his body had escaped damage. A normal human, demon, or a sane level of vampire would have surely died instantly. The fact he did not even lose consciousness was because he was a vampire aristocrat with the blood of a primogenitor flowing through his veins. 

Its supply of demonic energy cut off, Vattler’s Beast Vassal had already dematerialized and vanished. 

In its place appeared a new Beast Vassal, transparent like the ice of a glacier. It was a beautiful Beast Vassal not even ten meters long. The upper half of its body resembled a human woman; the lower half was in the form of a fish. Wings grew out of her back; sharp, wicked claws extended from her fingertips. 

A mermaid or perhaps a siren— 

With a frigid aura surrounding it, the Beast Vassal glared down at Vattler as if it was protecting the cat-eared girl. 

It was this icy Beast Vassal that had annihilated Vattler’s Beast Vassal and inflicted such grave wounds upon him. 

“This is insane… That’s Alessia Gracius… Avrora Florestina’s twelfth Beast Vassal. How are you employing its power?” Vattler’s body was still in tatters as he posed the question. However, the girl made no reply. 

Vattler glared with poorly focused eyes at the girl; finally, his shoulders shook as he laughed out loud. 

“No, I see… So that’s how it is… Ha-ha! That’s why you can use it—” 

As he continued to laugh, clotting blood poured out of Vattler’s throat, even as seething bodily fluids poured out of wounds over his entire body. Even so, his laughter did not cease. It was laughter that was equal parts clarity and madness. 

“So this is why Kojou Akatsuki consumed Avrora and gained the power of the Fourth Primogenitor…and you’ve been watching the whole time. Gwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…!” 

The cat-eared girl on top of the container sounded somewhat beside herself as she spoke. 

“…It seems your mood has improved somewhat, Master of Serpents.” 

“Oh yes… Thanks to this I’m in a very good mood. I mean, it’s quite obvious. There’s only one possibility as to why there is someone other than the Fourth Primogenitor who can employ the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals…” 

Having finally ceased his laughter, Vattler gently picked himself up. 

The bones broken across his entire body had largely finished mending; his lost internal organs and the right side of his body had finished regenerating as well. Even if vampires were immortal by their very nature, it was a shocking level of healing. 

The cat-eared girl spoke as she gazed at the revived vampire aristocrat. 

“I have one thing to tell you, Dimitrie Vattler.” 

“…And what would that be, twelfth ?” 

Vattler’s reply came with a defiant look. For but a single moment, the girl who looked like Nagisa Akatsuki raised an eyebrow in displeasure. She then continued in a calm tone of voice… 

“Nothing is finished yet. Nothing—” 

Kojou Akatsuki opened his eyes in the dimly lit chapel. 

He apparently hadn’t been unconscious for all that long. Kojou could still feel the pleasant coolness of the floor against his back. 

But the white fabric touching his right cheek was slightly warm. Kojou had not yet realized that the fabric was part of Yukina’s dress as she cradled Kojou’s head on her lap. 

Even so, Kojou subconsciously turned his face over to feel more of the pleasant sensation when… 

“Have you come to, senpai?” 

Surprised to hear Yukina’s voice in his ear, he sat up in a great hurry. 

“—Himeragi…?!” 

The next moment, Kojou groaned in anguish from the intense pain racking his entire body. It was as if every nerve in his body had been tossed into a blender. 

“Man, my body hurts like I just died…” 

“…Just as we expected, then?” 

Yukina petted Kojou on the head as if taking care of a high-maintenance younger brother. 

Though embarrassed at how she was obviously treating him like a child, healing magic didn’t work on Kojou because he was a vampire; there was really nothing else that Yukina could do. He didn’t think any kind of sane treatment you’d get from going to a hospital could cure the aftereffects of being body-jacked by a witch, either. Going to one would be frightening just by itself. 

Having retaken his own vampiric body, Kojou could think of only one thing that would help. 

“Hey, ah, Himeragi…maybe some of your blood would…?” 

“You may not. You absolutely may not. The other times, it couldn’t be helped because of pressing circumstances!” Yukina pressed her lips together with a “muu” and pinched Kojou’s cheek. This put Kojou at ease. It seemed she was letting Kojou know what she really thought. 

Yukina had only offered him her blood twice so far. Both occurred after Kojou had already died. That’s why, when Yukina hesitated to use Snowdrift Wolf upon him, he’d told her to let him drink his blood like usual . 

He was telling her: It’s cool, even if I die from it I’ll come back. 

He wanted to think that Yukina’s finally using Snowdrift Wolf on him without mercy was just her following his good advice. 

“I’m glad you realized. Thanks.” 

“Please do not say that where others can hear ever again.” 

Yukina pinched Kojou’s cheek again as she spoke. So if no one’s around, it’s okay then? pondered Kojou, though he had his doubts. 

“Right… Yuuma?!” 

Yukina’s gaze shifted to Yuuma, who was lying right beside Kojou on her side. 

“She’s safe. The impact from having been severed from the connecting space was less than you suffered, but…” 

Yuuma’s cheeks were still pale, and there were signs of having bled across her entire body, but she didn’t seem to be in any mortal danger. Her breasts were rising and falling as they should, after all; her face was not twisted in pain. Looking at her from the outside, Yuuma’s face was most definitely lovely. Behind that whole boyish attitude was a style that was surprisingly feminine and totally worked for her. Looking back on it now, he felt like he’d wasted an opportunity. Surely changing clothes and showering one time while in her body wouldn’t have been any great transgression? 

As Kojou lazily thought of such impure things, Yuuma suddenly opened her eyes and looked at Kojou. It seemed like she’d been conscious to start with. To Kojou, rocked by the eerie timing, Yuuma murmured in a flat tone, “…Looks like I failed…” 

There was neither anger nor sadness, only a hollow ring to her voice. She sounded like an old man who’d lost his reason to live who longed for death. 

Seeing his childhood friend like that, Kojou felt a fierce anger and, heedless of how his entire nervous system creaked, he sat up and glared at Yuuma. 

“No, that’s not it at all. You’ve been set free.” 

Yuuma blinked several times over in surprise. Then, a smile came over her like a flower in bloom. 

Kojou’s cheeks reddened as her smiling face took him by surprise. Apparently, in the last four years, that oh-so-handsome Yuuma had become able to display such a gentle expression. 

“Kojou.” 

“What?” Looking up at the obviously blushing Kojou, Yuuma teasingly asked… 

“How did it feel to be inside my body?” 

“Wha…?!” Kojou loudly cleared his throat by reflex. “Don’t say it like that, people are gonna get the completely wrong idea!” 

“Did you do anything dirty?” 

Kojou raised his voice as he felt backed into a corner. 

“I did not!” 

He knew full well he sounded like a liar in proportion to his desperation, but he couldn’t help it in a situation like this. The displeased look Yukina was shooting him from the side had him completely unnerved. 

That moment, Kojou heard a familiar voice behind him. 

“…Goodness, you certainly are taking it easy after kicking up this much of a ruckus.” 

The ever-so-slight lisp to it mysteriously gave the sound of her voice an odd charisma. 

Looking back, Kojou saw Natsuki Manamiya, whom he thought still asleep, standing there. 

He was certain that this moment, this was no clone created by a magic spell, but rather her real body, sealed away in the prison barrier. But Kojou had the impudent and rather silly thought that she was exactly the same as usual. In the end, Natsuki was Natsuki, be she clone or original. 

Yukina spoke in apparent relief. “So you have awakened, Ms. Minamiya?” 

If she, the key to the prison barrier, had awakened, they could reestablish its seal or create a new defense system altogether, picking from numerous available options. 

Kojou gazed up at Natsuki with a look rich in dissatisfaction. “Wait… don’t tell me you were pretending to be asleep. That’s dirty pool.” 

She pouted at him a little. 

“It’s true that I had to preserve my strength. Even I wouldn’t have gotten away lightly if I’d taken a square hit from one of your Beast Vassals… You have some nerve raising a hand against your honored teacher. I must grant you a suitable reward.” 

As she spoke, she suddenly smacked Kojou’s forehead right between the eyes. 

“Owwwwww! What kind of reward is that?! And it wasn’t me who did it anyway!” 

“Mm? What, here? Is here good?” 

“ Guoa?! Shit… Well you sure seem well rested!!” 

Kojou tearfully moaned as he clutched his forehead. He felt like the ceaseless, nigh-unbearable pain all over his body had eased a little. Perhaps Natsuki had used a spell to heal Kojou somehow. If she did, couldn’t she find a nicer way to do it , Kojou sulked in his own head. 

Finally, Natsuki looked down at Kojou in exasperation and sighed. 

“Goodness…to have the day come when I’m saved by my own student. It’s not easy getting old.” 

Kojou was beside himself at the words spoken by Natsuki, who bore the appearance of a little girl. 

“I don’t really think you’re one to talk about that…” For her part, Natsuki’s expression suddenly turned serious as she turned to face Yuuma. 

“…What will you do, daughter of Aya Tokoyogi? Wanna go another round?” 

Yuuma calmly sat up and shook her head. 

“I’ll pass. That knocked all the stuffing out of me. Looks like I don’t have any reason to mess with the prison barrier anymore… Le Bleu is a total mess, too.” 

“Is that so?” 

Natsuki looked at the Guardian Yuuma had materialized and nodded. 

Thanks to the backlash of excess demonic energy and its battle with Yukina, the faceless blue knight was in a pitiable state with wounds over its entire body. Even if it could recover, Yuuma would require long months and years before completely regaining her powers as a witch. Kojou didn’t think Yuuma really wanted that anyway. 

She was finally free of the curse her own mother had set upon her. 

As it truly hit him, Kojou couldn’t stop a satisfied smile from coming over his face. 

And that was when it happened. 

Yuuma’s voice quivered with unease as she tried to release her Guardian from materialization. 

“…Le Bleu…?” 

The armor covering the faceless knight’s entire body rattled and shuddered. The clash of metal on metal produced a strange sound. It’s laughing , Kojou suddenly realized. 

The knight, wounded all over, made a laugh under its mask that seemed hollow, like a skeleton— 

“Le Bleu, stop!” Yuuma commanded it almost in a shrieking voice. But the blue knight’s movements did not cease. 

The blue knight reached to the sword on its hip, drawing it for the first time. The blade that emerged from within the scabbard was sharp and extremely polished, as if never before used. 

Kojou and Yukina leaped, each moving in front of Natsuki to shield her. 

However, the blue knight’s next action went against all of their expectations. 

After one wave of its giant sword, the blue knight plunged it into Yuuma’s chest. Into Yuuma, the very person he was supposed to protect. 

Kojou beheld the scene in horror. 

“…Yuu—ma?!” 

With a gurgle, fresh blood spilled out of Yuuma’s mouth. 

Yuuma reached out toward her own Guardian as she let out a despairing voice. 

“…Mother… This is how…badly you want it…?” 

The blade had thrust deeply into her chest. But the tip of the sword, which should have passed right through her, did not appear on the other side. It had used Yuuma’s body as a teleportation gate to transfer the sword somewhere else. 

A broken, rusted voice came from the faceless blue knight. 

“Long have I awaited this moment…the moment when even one as sly and capricious as you let down your guard.” 

It was the voice of a woman, with the tone of an adult wicked witch. 

Natsuki suddenly let out a scorn-filled murmur. 

“A booby trap… To think you would use your own daughter as a decoy… Inhuman.” 

When he scented blood wafting up with her breath, Kojou’s face froze over as he looked back. 

A malevolent, raw mass of steel was protruding from the beautiful lace adorning Natsuki’s chest. 

It was the tip of the blue knight’s giant sword— 

“Ms. Minamiya!” 

“Natsuki?!” 

Yukina and Kojou could do nothing but gape at the all-too-twisted sight. 

As Kojou lost himself to shock, Natsuki glared at him in mild anger and made a weak laugh. 

“Fool… Don’t…call your homeroom teacher by her…given name…” 

The small, doll-like body of his homeroom teacher slowly collapsed onto the floor. 

He continued to hear the never-ending, ghoulish laughter of the faceless blue knight. 

He picked up the all-too-light body of his homeroom teacher… Kojou could only shout until his voice grew hoarse. 

“Uooooooooooooo—!” 

The roar of the Fourth Primogenitor echoed within the crumbling, dimly lit cathedral—