INTRO

The full-metal silver spear gleamed in the light as it was thrust forward.

This was the Mechanical Demon-Purging Assault Spear Type Seven, also known as Snowdrift Wolf—a secret weapon of the Lion King Agency built for one purpose: slaying demons.

The spirit spear, able to nullify magical energy and rend any barrier, inhibited demons’ regenerative abilities, causing the fatal decomposition of their flesh. When impaled, even vampires, proud of their immortality, would meet their doom. The World’s Mightiest Vampire was certainly no exception.

However, when Kojou Akatsuki faced the blade of Snowdrift Wolf, the Fourth Primogenitor…laughed.

The instant the silver spear ran him through, he displayed a ferocious smile, his fangs bared—

The ferocious shock wave shook the ground, ripping through the air with a great roar.

A section of the artificial isle’s coastline was erased, seemingly gouged right out.

The steel framework was shattered into fine fragments. The annihilating wave turned the resin back into the dust from whence it came.

For a brief moment, a giant water maid with a transparent body floated amid the onrushing waves. This was Undine, its upper half that of a beautiful woman, its lower that of a serpent—a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor.

“Urk…!”

The young woman in priestess attire bit her lip as she landed on the tip of a breakwater that had been ripped to shreds.

Her body was unharmed. Only the sleeves of her priestess attire and the hem of her hakama’s red skirt were torn—only slightly. She had escaped from ground zero an instant before the Beast Vassal’s attack could engulf her.

However, as a result, she had lost the silver spear that should have been in her hands.

She had been forced to let go of the spear to escape from the Fourth Primogenitor’s counterattack.

“Kojou…Akatsuki…!”

A thin, veil-like fabric had still covered her face when she unwittingly uttered his name.

The giant maid of water had vanished, already released from its summons. All that remained was the massive scar carved into the artificial ground, almost like something had bitten it away.

In an instant, the chaotic assault from the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassal had no doubt obliterated Itogami Island’s beach down to the atomic level. Had her escape been even a second slower, she would have doubtlessly shared the same fate.

In an instant, Kojou Akatsuki had turned that desperate, hopeless situation around, backing her into a corner in turn.

And to do it, he had used his immortal flesh, launching a counterattack by which he himself would be destroyed—

“It seems you were whipped in rather spectacular fashion, Shizuka. The Gigafloat Management Corporation people must be clutching their heads right about now.”

The woman stood still as she abruptly heard someone’s voice at her feet. The tone was laid-back, lacking any urgency whatsoever.

The voice came from a lone feline—a beautiful, black panther with a supple physique. It wore a collar with a large chrysoberyl stone embedded in it. Its golden eyes seemed to glow; they clearly held a glint of intellect.

“…You were watching, Yukari Endou?” The woman in the priestess attire spoke as she looked down at the talking panther.

She was addressing Endou, which was the name of the woman controlling the panther. The extraordinary shikigami user was controlling the familiar from the Japanese mainland, over three hundred kilometers away.

“To think Koyomi Shizuka, one of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency, would rush out in this manner. The Fourth Primogenitor lad did quite well, too…”

The talking panther replied with a tone of voice that sounded somewhat impressed. That Kojou Akatsuki had withstood Koyomi’s attack had surely surprised the shikigami user as well.

The Lion King Agency’s current mission was to ensure that Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor, was not permitted off the Demon Sanctuary of Itogami Island. By running him through with the spirit-purging spear, Kojou Akatsuki’s demonic energy would be nullified, and the Divine Oscillation Effect’s barrier would drive him into a comatose state. That was one way of using the Schneewaltzer. But—

“Did you underestimate the boy because he is a combat amateur, Paper Noise? If so, you’ve made quite the blunder.”

The black panther’s teasing question made Koyomi Shizuka shake her head slightly.

She was the only one who could employ Paper Noise, the phenomenon that forcibly inserted time that did not exist into the world.

This was neither stopping time nor moving at superhuman speeds. And yet, when Koyomi attacked during time that ought not to exist, all that remained were the effects of actions that should never have happened in the first place.

The ability to launch an attack that was 100 percent unpredictable was the reality behind Paper Noise. Even the great and powerful vampire primogenitors regarded this ability, belonging to the leader of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency, with caution.

She did not believe Kojou Akatsuki had gleaned the true nature of Paper Noise the first time he had seen it. However, when he saw Koyomi raising Snowdrift Wolf against him…he had smiled.

The Schneewaltzer’s ability to nullify magical energy affected even Koyomi, its wielder. At the very least, she could not employ the power of Paper Noise while the Schneewaltzer was active.

Kojou Akatsuki had sacrificed his own right hand to bring Koyomi’s spear to a halt. Then he commanded his own summoned Beast Vassal to attack in a way that would engulf him as well. Her ability to launch an uninhibited first strike did not mean she could nullify her opponent’s attack. Aiming for a mutual exchange of blows was the most effective way to fend her off—indeed, the only way.

Kojou Akatsuki had understood that—not through calculation, but by intuition. That was why he had smiled.

To escape from his Beast Vassal, Koyomi had no choice but to let go of Snowdrift Wolf.

Kojou Akatsuki had sunk into the sea, still wounded, but the important takeaway was that Koyomi had been unable to stop him. And so, even if Kojou was the inheritor to the power of the Fourth Primogenitor, one of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency had allowed a mere high school student to slip through her fingers. She had no room to refute that it was indeed a blunder.

“That lad is a true wild card, the ‘powerless human’ who survived the Blazing Banquet to obtain the power of the Fourth Primogenitor. That fact is far more frightening than a primogenitor’s demonic power or Beast Vassals… Not that he realizes it.”

The black panther’s shoulders sank as it sighed in humanlike fashion.

From the tip of the demolished breakwater, Koyomi Shizuka gazed at the sea at her feet.

The surface of the sea was swirling in a ferocious vortex, a side effect of the shock wave unleashed by the Beast Vassal. The sea had to have swallowed up not just the gravely injured Kojou Akatsuki, but his observer, Yukina Himeragi, as well as Kiriha Kisaki of the Bureau of Astrology.

“…Then we were correct to entrust him to Yukina Himeragi. Method notwithstanding, she has nonetheless somehow managed to bring that wild card under control.”

“I suppose she has… So what do you plan to do from here?”

“I shall recover Yukina Himeragi. We cannot afford to lose her now,” Koyomi said before removing her veil.

Setting the vampiric Kojou Akatsuki aside, she could not abandon Yukina and Kiriha. Those two girls had been exhausted from fighting a foe as fierce as Natsuki Minamiya; additional damage, enough to render them unable to move, had been inflicted by Koyomi herself. Koyomi bore a duty to rescue the pair before they drowned.

However, when Koyomi moved to unleash a shikigami toward the sea to search for them, the black panther stopped her.

“…It would seem search and rescue is unnecessary, Shizuka.”

The panther’s golden eyes were glaring at the opposite edge of the broken breakwater.

A tall, slender man was standing on the tip of an exposed steel girder.

He was an elegant, handsome, foreign young man wearing a refined white suit. The corners of his lips formed a smile as Koyomi and the panther gazed at him. Naked bloodlust oozed from every pore of his body.

The young man’s kind eyes conveyed a chilling message: Interfere with Kojou Akatsuki any further, and I will kill you both.

The impression given off was not that of a simple threat—if anything, he was thrilled at the prospect of fighting Koyomi.

“Master of Serpents…”

Koyomi let out an anguished sigh as she looked back into the young man’s eyes.

If Kojou Akatsuki left Itogami Island, he would no doubt stir up chaos on the mainland. However, to the young, battle-maniac aristocrat, that would be an auspicious turn of events.

The young man meant to lead Kojou Akatsuki away from the island for the same reason Koyomi wanted to seal him within it. Furthermore, Koyomi had no means to prevent it… For in that time and place, it was not in her interests to slay the handsome, young aristocrat where he stood.

“…Endou. Contact External Affairs. There should still be one Shamanic War Dancer able to move immediately, yes?”

Koyomi posed the question to the black panther in a quiet tone. If they couldn’t stop the young aristocrat from heading to the mainland, a certain number of countermeasures became necessary. As head of the Lion King Agency, she could not simply leave them to their own devices.

“If you mean my bumbling apprentice, she is under house arrest at High God Forest,” the black panther replied bluntly.

Koyomi nodded with visible relief. “Then please call her. Now.”

“As easily said as done. Now then, which one do you want her to monitor?”

“…Pardon?”

The panther’s sudden question made Koyomi furrow her brow. Then, when she followed the panther’s gaze, she looked up.

Her eyes widened in shock.

A solitary, armored airship was floating above Itogami Island.

The vessel dominated the ground below as it leisurely cut through the azure sky. The hard, metallic shell encasing the airship was colored a pale blue, almost like a glimmering glacier. The image of a Valkyrie carrying a great sword was engraved into its stabilizer fins—the emblem of Northern Europe’s Kingdom of Aldegia.

“No… Why are they…?!”

Koyomi voiced a small mutter when she made out a small figure standing on the airship’s deck.

She did not recognize the figure—a boy wearing a white turban. His entire body was adorned with lavish golden jewelry. The demonic energy rippling off his small body seemed inferior to that of the young aristocrat with her on the surface—monsters of a level that had no hope of being contained by the Demon Sanctuary.

Separated by hundreds of meters, the boy and the young aristocrat glared at each other, but the armored airship paid them no mind as it flew over the ocean. The airship was headed north of Itogami Island…and toward the Japanese mainland.

And when Koyomi’s gaze returned to the surface once more, the young aristocrat had vanished.

All traces of Kojou Akatsuki and the others swallowed by the depths had vanished as well. The young aristocrat had whisked them away.

“Good grief… Ugh…”

Left behind, all Koyomi could do in that place was grasp the cuffs of her priestess attire and quietly murmur.

Even if she bore the title of one of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency, she was still only eighteen. It was too much for her to remain serene in the face of great disaster that could only bring the world to its ruin.

“No more,” lamented the girl, clutching her head, but the black panther pretended not to hear.

Thus was the siege broken.

The Fourth Primogenitor departed the Demon Sanctuary, leaving vestiges of destruction behind him.

But this was no more than the prologue of a new upheaval.

For even then, the true menace slept at the bottom of a lake on the mainland, far from Itogami Island.

The menace that could vanquish even the World’s Mightiest Vampire had yet to awaken…

CHAPTER ONE

ON THE FROZEN LAKE

1

“—Achoo!”

It was a temple deep in the mountains with a commanding view of the dam-created body of water known as Kannawa Lake. The quiet temple grounds, hazy from the morning mist, seemed to shudder in response to the loud sneeze of a certain middle-aged man.

His name was Gajou Akatsuki.

His skin was sunbaked; his face, impetuous. His forelocks were disheveled, as if crudely cut with a knife, and the stubble on his chin drew the eye. Supposedly, he had a real job as an archeologist, but the air the man gave off was like a mafia man from ages past—or a private investigator behind the times.

“Ugh… So chilly. Damn, mornings on the mainland sure get cold.”

Gajou took a break from his push-ups and wiped down his glistening frame with a towel.

He was in an old storehouse built within the densely packed, sacred grove of the forest. The earthwork building was constructed as if to offer partial isolation from the main temple complex.

There was a tatami mat on the floor and decent amenities, but the windows were located high up, so he had little way to know what was going on outside. Naturally, the storehouse didn’t come with a television, personal computer, or any other information device. A heavy iron gate had been installed at the building’s entrance, secured with multiple, complex locks. In other words, it was a cell.

On top of that, his ankles were bound by fetters with chains.

The bottom line was that Gajou had been locked away.

In the one week or so since arriving there at Kamioda Temple, Gajou had not set a single foot outside his cell. But in spite of all that, he remained perfectly composed.

He sat cross-legged on the tatami mat when he called out in a warm tone to the girl standing guard outside.

“Heeey, Yuiri. You got breakfast ready yet?”

“P-please do not address me in such a presumptuous manner!”

The girl’s face flushed red as she approached the storehouse, wearing what appeared to be a high school student uniform. Her height didn’t quite reach 170 centimeters. Her medium-bob hairstyle, with locks dangling to the sides complimented by a ribbon-style hairpin, made her seem refined.

The girl was carrying a long, silver, full-metal sword on her back. It would be difficult to dispute that the boorish close-combat weapon was unsuited to the stern high school girl.

When that girl, named Yuiri, looked at Gajou through the cell’s iron gate, she went “Eep!”—her breath catching as if something had frightened her.

“Wh-why are you naked?!”

“Ahh, this? Training. Just my daily routine.”

Gajou Akatsuki, his chest bare, had white steam surrounding his entire body.

“I’m no spring chicken, y’know. If I’m not consistent, I’ll have love handles in no time. It’s hard to get enough exercise when you’re stuck in a narrow space like this.”

“Th-that doesn’t mean you should exercise while looking like that…!”

Yuiri was covering her eyes during her frantic rebuttal. To her, raised in an all-female dormitory from a young age, it was probably her first experience seeing a man’s bare chest firsthand. On top of that, in contrast to Gajou’s own words, his physique was on par with a Greek statue’s, which was more than enough to intimidate Yuiri out of her wits.

However, Gajou paid no heed to Yuiri’s emotional state, turning over on the tatami mat as he said, “Why don’t you join me, Yuiri? I’d be grateful if you helped me with my stretches.”

“S-stretches…?”

“Yes, yes. Come on, do something that feels good with the old man here.”

Yuiri’s face twitched as she recoiled from Gajou’s suspicious invitation.

Of course, Yuiri herself appreciated the great importance of stretching. It made sense to do cooldown exercises after weight training, for instance, and she knew that there were stretches that could only be done with two people.

However, helping this man with stretching meant touching his body, and depending on the circumstances, their bodies might press up against each other, resulting not only in touching his physique, but her flesh being pressed against his. Wouldn’t that be a step toward adulthood? She had never done it with a man before, but it wouldn’t hurt, would it?

This was the steamy inner conflict Yuiri grappled with before something interrupted them.

“—Er, nuoahh?!”

Gajou Akatsuki was lying down when a metallic arrow whooshed right past his ear. A few centimeters’ difference, and his left ear would have been torn off completely.

“Don’t seduce Yuiri, you filthy beast!”

“Sh-Shio…?!”

Yuiri’s face was pure shock as she turned to the person behind her.

A black-haired girl wielding a silver recurve bow now trained a hateful gaze on Gajou. Her height and build were almost identical to Yuiri’s, but her short hair, long only on the sides, gave off the impression of a strong-willed girl.

She was wearing a uniform that was identical to Yuiri’s. From beneath that uniform’s skirt, she nocked a new arrow, taking aim at Gajou once more.

However, when Gajou saw the food tray at Shio’s feet, his eyes woke up as he said:

“Ohhh, food, food!”

“I-idiot! Put on some clothes!”

Seeing Gajou, still bare from the waist up, closing the distance, Shio nervously dropped her arrow.

Gajou rested upon the iron gate, twisting his body toward Shio as he said, “Incidentally, Li’l Shio—”

“Y-You are in no position to address me that way!”

“Shio, then. How long do you plan to keep me in a place like this? You’re from a special government agency, right? It’s not good to keep an upstanding citizen in unlawful confinement.”

“It is not an issue. This is an emergency measure for the well-being of the public. And stop calling me by my given name…!”

“Emergency measure… Huh.”

Gajou slanted his lips with a “Hmm” as he accepted the food tray from Shio. Resting atop it was pickled daikon with a rice-and-veggie mixture, plus beef with additional steamed vegetables. The menu was rather extravagant, but it was obvious at a glance that it was an amalgamation of foods from storage.

“Besides, Mr. Gajou’s confinement is on Ms. Hisano’s orders.”

“I still cannot believe it, but are you truly her son?”

“Tch… That hag again.”

Gajou clicked his tongue as he listened to Yuiri and Shio’s explanation.

It was none other than Gajou’s own biological mother, Hisano, who had ambushed and knocked out Gajou upon his arrival at Kamioda Temple one week prior and tossed him into that cell. In the time since, Hisano had not shown herself even once, so Gajou did not know a single thing about the circumstances. It was surely the worst treatment possible toward the son who’d brought over her granddaughter for a homecoming.

“Still abusing her own son at a ripe old age… She won’t die in peace, that one. So what’s that old bat up to these days?”

“That is not something you need to know. For that matter, talk or eat—pick one!”

Shio’s eyes narrowed, glaring at Gajou for continuing his questions while stuffing food into his mouth.

However, once Gajou made quick work of the food, he said:

“Hmmm. So the Self-Defense Forces are on the move, huh? Finally.”

He said it in a nonchalant tone. Shio’s and Yuiri’s faces paled as they listened.

“If they’re operating with the Lion King Agency, it’d be Narashino’s Special Attack Mage Regiment or something along those lines. The commanding officer would be Three Saints class from the Lion King Agency… Then the target is Avalon, at the bottom of Kannawa Lake?”

“Gajou Akatsuki, how…do you know about…?!”

The food Shio had brought to him was not cooked at the temple, but rather, it came from a type of military ration. It was prearranged food made for simplified cooking—the sort supplied to the Self-Defense Forces.

The fact he was being assigned combat rations meant that those associated with the Lion King Agency, like Shio and Yuiri, no longer had the luxury of taking the time to cook. In other words, they had finally begun proceeding with their operation in earnest.

Gajou had correctly ascertained all this from nothing more than the change in the contents of his meal.

The Lion King Agency and the Self-Defense Forces were cooperating in a closely held secret project. Even Yuiri and Shio did not know the exact date or hour when the operation would begin. The girls were rocked by the fact that such crucial information had been unwittingly leaked to an outsider. Then:

“As shrewd as always, Gajou. I wonder just whom you take after…”

“Eeep…!”

“Ms. Hisano?!”

As Yuiri and Shio stood rooted to the spot, an old woman clad in an aikido-style martial arts outfit emerged from behind them.

Her slender frame made her appear taller than her actual height. Her long white hair was braided without fanfare down her back. The thick creases of her forehead were appropriate to her age, but her valiant poise retained many traces of the beauty of her youth.

Gajou looked up at the old woman, putting his chin in his palm with a sulky look.

“So you’ve finally come out, you decrepit old snake phantom.”

“Who are you calling a phantom? How rude.”

Hisano spoke in a manner that kept her irritation in check.

Yuiri and Shio kept their breathing quiet as they watched the thorny, bizarre exchange between mother and son.

Hisano’s public position was the chief priest of Kamioda Temple, overseeing the priestesses within. Though this was a venerable and honored position in the priesthood, it did not make her Yuiri and Shio’s direct commanding officer.

However, in the past, Hisano had cooperated in quelling numerous sorcerous disasters, and she had worked as an instructor in ritual magic for numerous organizations, the Lion King Agency included. Many of her pupils were serving as active Federal Attack Mages to that day. In other words, to Yuiri and Shio, she was pretty much the master to their masters. Normally, they’d hesitate to even directly exchange words with her. They couldn’t help but be nervous in her presence.

“And Nagisa?” Gajou asked, glaring at Hisano.

Gajou hadn’t seen Nagisa Akatsuki, his own daughter, even once since being imprisoned in the cell. The only thing he’d heard through Yuiri and Shio was that Nagisa had been in poor health.

“She is fine, of course. Her body will soon be fully healed.” Hisano’s expression did not change.

“Is that so?” was all Gajou murmured as he gazed at his now empty tray of combat rations.

“…So you did bring Nagisa here, knowing of Avalon’s existence.”

Hisano turned a reproachful gaze toward her son. Gajou looked up, smiling defiantly at his mother.

“I’ll do anything to save her. Same as you, right?”

For one, silent moment, Hisano’s breath seemed to catch. Then, she exhaled.

“How much do you remember, Gajou?”

“Remember…? About what?” Gajou knit his brows.

Hisano coolly watched his reaction before piling on an additional question.

“About those siblings… Kojou and Nagisa.”

“Ugh…!”

Hisano’s tone was gentle, but Gajou’s reaction was dramatic nonetheless. The box of combat rations fell onto the tatami mat as he collapsed with a groan.

Gajou’s cheeks had lost all color. He let out an anguished moan between his clenched inner teeth. He was assailed by a ferocious headache, almost as if his brain was churning.

“So your memory has indeed been consumed. An aftereffect of the Blazing Banquet—the revival of the Fourth Primogenitor.”

Hisano spoke to herself in a piteous tone.

Gajou Akatsuki had lost large portions of his memories of his own children. As he was now, he did not even comprehend the reason why. The fact that Kojou and Nagisa hadn’t noticed was due to Gajou’s meticulous preparations beforehand…and desperately keeping up the act.

“Why you… What do you know, hag?!” Gajou yelled at her, his emotions bared.

“Ms. Hisano…!”

“It’s dangerous! Any farther and…!”

Seeing Gajou burn with rage, Yuiri and Shio shouted at the same time. Hisano gave the pair a scolding look.

“Shio Hikawa, I entrust the continued surveillance of this man to you. Keep your eyes on him until the ceremony is complete. Yuiri Haba, come with me.”

“Y…yes.”

Cowed by Hisano’s coerciveness, Yuiri and Shio dutifully nodded. However, their eyes contained a fair bit of confusion.

Gajou’s labored breaths continued as he shouted, “What…ceremony?!”

His fingers grasped the iron gate as he desperately drew himself closer to Hisano.

“What the hell do you plan to use Nagisa for…?!”

“The same thing you tried to use her for, Gajou.”

Hisano’s voice remained gentle.

And so, in a tone as calm as a placid lake, she stated:

“We will kill Avrora Florestina. This time, for good.”

2

Nagisa Akatsuki rested her head on the edge of the bath, sighing without a care in the world.

It was a large bath in the temple dormitory where the priestesses at Kamioda Temple resided—a stonework bath fed by a natural hot spring.

It was still quite early in the morning, and there was little sign of anyone in the bath area. Nagisa let out another contented sigh as she reveled in solitude.

“Ahh… This feels so good…”

She murmured as she floated on the serene surface of the water.

The bath’s temperature was about 40 degrees Celsius, a comfortable temperature that was neither too hot nor too lukewarm. If rumor was to be believed, the bath was able to heal muscle and joint pain, both speeding convalescence and granting beautiful skin. Most importantly, it was said to be a spiritually infused spring that excelled at healing those whose spiritual energies had been depleted.

For some reason, Nagisa had lost consciousness and collapsed when she’d arrived at Kamioda Temple the week prior. She’d been asleep for nearly the entire time since. Thanks to that, her winter break homecoming, something she hadn’t experienced in four years, had spectacularly gone to waste.

It was under those circumstances that Nagisa’s grandmother, Hisano Akatsuki, had commanded she make use of the bath. Apparently, she had said something like Keep her in the bath as long as possible and heal her body. That was why Nagisa was immersed in the hot spring so early in the morning.

It could be said that the water agreed with her, but actually, Nagisa’s body was quite accustomed to Kamioda’s spirit spring. Even if Nagisa, a priestess who had lost her power, was not consciously aware of it, her endurance had surely been worn down due to being far from Itogami Island’s vast dragon lines. Borrowing the power of the spirit spring, she had finally made a proper recovery. Nagisa’s mood brightened as she felt herself grow stronger.

“Hot springs really are nice. I wish Yukina had come with me. Kojou’s probably worried sick. I hope he listens to my voicemail.”

Nagisa mumbled to no one in particular as she thought of her older brother and classmates left behind on Itogami Island. It was Nagisa’s bad habit to speak a lot, a reaction to having endured a long and lonely hospital life.

Thanks to having suddenly collapsed and the temple being outside of cell signal coverage in the first place, she’d been out of contact with Kojou for an entire week. He was the one who looked after Nagisa, so there was no doubt he was freaking out somewhere at the moment.

She had made a point of explaining the situation in the voicemail she left Kojou the night before, but there was no guarantee that he’d notice. I hope Kojou doesn’t do anything rash.

“Come to think of it, the last time I was here, Kojou and I came into the bath together…”

Nagisa’s face went beet red, submerging her face into the water as she remembered a time when she and her brother both were still in elementary school. For some reason, the unfamiliar bath scared her, so she’d twisted Kojou’s arm into going with her.

There certainly wasn’t any way they could bathe as brother and sister at their current ages, which made her a little sad. No, wait, we could wear swimsuits, thought Nagisa, beginning to seriously mull the idea over when, in the next moment—

Rattle, rattle, craaaash, came a booming sound that echoed throughout the bath.

She then heard a fickle, slightly delayed Hyah!

“Wh-who’s there?!”

Nagisa nervously poked her head out of the water and looked back.

She saw a figure fallen on her rear beside a crumbled mountain of piled-up bath buckets.

It was a young girl around Nagisa’s age. Her foot had slipped on the wet stone, causing her to fall hard on her back, completely naked.

“I-I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry!”

An “Owww” trickled out of the girl in a frail voice as she slowly rose to her feet and began righting the scattered buckets. At a glance, she seemed quite timid or shy.

She looked like she was ready to burst into tears at any moment, but that was apparently her normal expression.

The girl’s hair was white, possibly a condition she’d been born with. It was the same pure, glacial white of an artic fox’s coat.

However, what arrested Nagisa’s attention was not the girl’s hair, but her bare breasts.

“Th-they’re huge…”

Nagisa gulped as she stared intently at the girl’s naked body.

Almost unfathomable for her petite frame, the girl had a generous pair that bobbed in concert with her movements. Her breasts were immaculate in terms of shape, volume, and breadth, as if Nagisa’s idea of the perfect body had been made flesh before her very eyes.

Perhaps noticing Nagisa’s gawking, the white-haired girl lifted her head and said, “Ah… I’ve made you see me in such an unsightly state…”

“No, no, it’s no trouble at all.”

You’ve been blessed, thought Nagisa, just barely managing to keep herself from blurting the words out loud.

When the white-haired girl finished tidying up the bath area, she washed her body and sheepishly entered the hot spring itself. She seemed a little too young to be an employee of the temple. Without a doubt, it was Nagisa’s first time seeing her.

“Um, do you work here at the temple?”

Nagisa smiled, putting on the most amiable face she could muster. The white-haired girl shook her head frantically.

“N-no, no, not at all. In light of minor circumstances, I am in their care for the moment… That is all.”

“Ahh. We’re in the same boat, then.”

Nagisa grinned as she felt a kinship with the girl. Be it for prayer or ridding oneself of worldly obsessions, Kamioda Temple received numerous guests. The girl was likely visiting for a similar reason.

“I—I am…Shirona. Shirona Kuraki.”

The white-haired girl’s voice trembled as she introduced herself and bowed her head. Nagisa returned the politeness in kind.

“Very pleased to meet you. Er, I’m—”

“I…I know. Nagisa Akatsuki, yes?”

Shirona had deduced Nagisa’s identity before she could introduce herself.

“Well, yes… But why do you know that…?” Nagisa asked, blinking.

“I heard that Ms. Hisano’s granddaughter was coming.”

“Ah, so you know Granny, then.”

“Yes.”

Shirona nodded, lowering her gaze to her own chest. Her heaving breasts were now a faint shade of pink as they floated on the clear water’s surface. The sight of the deep cleavage formed between them made Nagisa think of picturesque fjords carved from a glacier.

For a moment, Nagisa lost herself, consumed by the sight when—

“Um… Would you…like to touch them?”

Her cheeks reddening, Shirona presented her chest to Nagisa in invitation.

“Huh? Is it really okay?!”

Nagisa was thrown for a loop at Shirona’s next comment:

“I—I am sorry… You just—seemed so interested…”

The fingers on both of Nagisa’s hands twitched. “Y-yeah. I am, actually… But you’re really fine with it?”

“Yes. If it pleases you…”

“Th-then I’m not holding back!”

I’d better hurry before Shirona changes her mind, thought Nagisa as she cupped the girl’s breasts. Each palm filled to excess as her hands cradled their bounty. Aah… Shirona cooed, a shallow breath escaping her parted lips.

“Ohh, th-this is…!”

Nagisa’s tension level spiked at the remarkable feeling in her hands. Her unwavering palms communicated a heavenly sensation.

“So soft… With just the right amount of firmness. I can feel my fingers getting lost in them… They’re a masterpiece…!”

“Mmm…Nnf…”

Shirona bit her lip as she endured Nagisa’s groping. Her face was awash with embarrassment, but Nagisa was only getting more and more into it. She’d unwittingly put more energy into fondling Shirona’s breasts than intended, but their firmness rebuffed her fingertips. That feeling of utter bliss left Nagisa heaving in ecstasy.

“Haaah… That was close… My mind was in a really far-off place…”

Having drank deep from the well of euphoria that was Shirona’s breasts, Nagisa pulled her hands away with visible reluctance. Shirona was now glowing red, unable to meet Nagisa’s eyes.

“A-are you satisfied now…?”

“Yeah. Wow… That was incredible. Thanks.”

“I see… However…”

CHAPTER TWO

BATTLEFIELD OF WHITE MIST

1

On the bridge of the airship elegantly dancing in the sky, La Folia Rihavein sullenly pressed a hand against her cheek. She had silver hair and azure eyes—the young princess of Aldegia of Northern Europe, said to be the second coming of Freya.

The affectionate smile that came over her lips was just like the image she projected to the wider world. However, in that instant, it was a faint, fleeting smile, one that somehow seemed frightening.

It was the very elegance of her appearance, combined with the malice oozing from her smiling face, that invited terror.

“How unfortunate. To take a leave of absence and come all the way to Itogami Island only to find Kojou absent…”

So spoke La Folia as she turned a glacial gaze toward her subordinate. The gaze seemed to shoot through the female knight with short silver hair like an arrow, prompting her to hang her head in shame.

That knight was Interceptor Knight Kataya Justina—the agent under La Folia’s command stationed at Itogami Island for the protection of Kanon Kanase and other matters.

“I am very sorry. I, Kataya Justina, shall never live down the shame of having been tardy in my report to my princess. Accordingly, I shall atone for this failure by cutting my belly and—”

“Please don’t. You’ll make a mess of the airship.”

When Justina drew a dagger and spoke with tragic resolve, La Folia coldly rejected her offer.

“B-but, my princess—”

“Your failure is inescapably tied to an unexpected success. In light of this, I shall overlook the matter. It would seem that the world has become a rather interesting place.”

Perhaps teasing Justina had improved her mood, for La Folia seemed to have regained her usual disposition.

The armored airship Böðvildr was currently high in the sky over a lake in the mountains. Their altitude was some 2,500 meters off the ground, a position from which they were able to see from the foothills of Mt. Fuji to the Tangiwa mountain range.

The measuring instruments of the Kingdom of Aldegia, which boasted high-quality sorcerous technology, had firmly grasped the existence of a vast source of demonic energy emerging from Kannawa Lake. They had also granted the provisional name of “drones” to the demon-beast swarm also present.

To the bridge crew, La Folia inquired, “Incidentally, have you caught sight of a certain lord?”

It was a young knight sitting in the executive officer’s seat who replied with a tense look.

“He disembarked to act on his own. He stated there was something he wished to investigate.”

“I see… He anticipated this turn of events from the beginning, it would seem…,” La Folia murmured with an inquisitive glint in her eyes.

Justina gasped, seeming to realize something as she lifted her face and said, “Princess, then perhaps the destination Kojou Akatsuki left Itogami Island for…”

“Yes, most likely.” La Folia’s expression was one of amusement. “Can we descend to Kannawa Lake, Captain?”

“That will…likely be rather difficult.”

The captain, with a rugged face like a pirate from older times, greeted the whimsical princess’s question with a shake of his head.

“Why not?” she asked, slightly inclining her head with a small pout.

“These drones are not enough to breach the sacred wards of the Böðvildr, but it seems something worse lurks within that mist.”

The captain pointed to a corner of the long-distance viewing monitor on the bridge. A unit of unknown origin was deployed in open ground amid the mountains some two kilometers removed from Kannawa Lake. They included one large-scale trailer and two armored cars for a total of three vehicles. The number of personnel was small-scale, but the sight of them lurking under the mist somehow felt eerie.

“Who are they? It is not a JSDF unit?”

La Folia touched a hand to her lips, her interest piqued.

The objective of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces’ unit surrounding Kannawa Lake was undoubtedly to seal the demon beasts that had emerged. With combat having already broken out, there was no reason to keep a small force deployed in ambush like this.

They were clearly separate from the JSDF, belonging to a different, unknown command structure. If anything, they were behaving like enemies.

“I am mindful of just what that trailer is carrying. Have you finished analyzing it, I wonder?” La Folia calmly smiled as she posed the question.

“There’s no beating you, princess.”

The captain shrugged his shoulders as he ordered a subordinate to switch the screen. The rainbow-colored 3-D image displayed magic-energy density from real-time data analysis.

An unfamiliar silhouette emerged from where the unit of unknown origin was hiding. It was an enormous demon beast reading, its size incomparable to that of the drones.

“Captain, what is this?”

La Folia’s eyes glimmered as she beheld the truth behind the soldiers in ambush.

The captain knit his brows as he replied, “From the silhouette, it appears to be a wyvern.”

“Wyvern? That is an especially rare, endangered species, is it not?!” Justina asked in a grave tone.

Wyverns—these were two-legged, winged dragons with a high level of flight ability. They were less a lower species of dragon than demon beasts that merely resembled dragons in appearance, but even so, their wingspans reached forty to fifty meters, and they were a fiendish species, possessing great combat ability.

Wyverns had made their savage might known in the Middle Ages, but environmental destruction leading to reduction in habitat and rapacious hunting had reduced their numbers in recent years to the verge of extinction. In Japan, their only current habitats were the Demon Beast Park of Blue Elysium and a few other similar locations. That made it all the more unfathomable that wild wyverns might have survived living so close to human habitation.

“Mere wyverns are not enough to take on Böðvildr. However, their biological wall spells and their demonic-energy makeup is completely different from normal demon beasts. This goes well beyond being ‘just’ a new genus,” said the captain, wary.

“Tee-hee.” La Folia giggled. The look on her face was like a kitten excitedly staring at a ball rolling around on the ground.

“So it is an artificially created new genus…or something other than a wyvern. Either way, it is intended for combat…in accordance with a certain lord’s expectations, it would seem.”

Justina looked up at her liege with a fearful expression. “P-princess?”

The knightly order to which she belonged, serving as La Folia’s escorts, endured being flung this way and that by her whims. If something happened to La Folia, the crown princess, Justina slitting her belly would be nowhere near sufficient atonement.

Whether she knew of the female knight’s mental anguish or not, the princess began putting her beloved spell gun in order.

“The Duke of Ardeal’s cruise ship would appear moored in Tokyo Harbor, but the Nation of Neustria’s tilt-rotor aircraft has been sighted over Kannawa Lake airspace, has it not? Naturally, the eyes of various persons from Lotharingia and the Chaos Zone are sparkling as well. Tee-hee… This has become most amusing, Justina.”

“Princess, please… Please exercise prudence…!”

The knight was practically prostrate as she made a fervent plea that echoed throughout the armored airship’s bridge.

The pale-blue fuselage slowly began its descent.

2

Hisano Akatsuki ran across the frozen white embankment of the dam.

Over her shoulder, she was carrying an unconscious, white-haired girl. Shirona Kuraki was completely defenseless during spectral projection, leaving Hisano to defend Shirona’s real body all by herself.

With a roar, one of the houdas attacking them tumbled onto the ground. A string of naginata attacks unleashed by Hisano had brought down the silver creature. Even if the person she carried was a petite girl, it was a remarkable feat.

However, Hisano’s expression was grave as she looked down at the houda she had slashed to ribbons. She’d realized that the blade of her naginata, its hardness supposedly reinforced with ritual energy, was slightly chipped.

“Too hard… So this is why mere bullets are useless against them…”

With agility unthinkable for an old woman pushing seventy, Hisano climbed over the dam’s frozen gate.

In various places around the mist-enveloped dam, Self-Defense Forces continued to battle the houda swarms. Ordinary rifle rounds were unable to penetrate a houda’s scales; hence, why every unit was waging a difficult battle against the demon beasts. The Special Attack Mages were equipped with high-agility vehicles intended for reconnaissance as their main striking power—woefully insufficient firepower for taking on the swarms of demon beasts. In terms of fighting strength, they were just barely holding their own, but it was only a matter of time until the encirclement was breached.

Even the scenic parking lot where the field headquarters had been placed was under fierce attack by the houdas. Nearly ten of the steel-colored creatures, each four to five meters in length, were on a rampage.

Without the slightest hesitation, Hisano flung herself in the middle of that demon-beast swarm. Still shouldering the unconscious Shirona, she swung her naginata, handling it with incredible ease.

“So it will not hold until the end. Getting old is a terrible thing—”

Right around when Hisano was cutting down the sixth demon beast, the blade of her naginata shattered. She could not maintain the supply of ritual energy required for the enchantment, resulting in the blade losing its reinforcement.

“However, it would appear that striking the internal organs is rather effective. If I think of this as fighting monster crabs, I believe I can manage.”

Hisano sent the seventh attacking creature flying with her bare hands. The eyes of the members of the Special Attack Mages went wide as they marveled at Hisano’s overwhelming combat ability.

With the broader number of houda now reduced by half, the Self-Defense Forces had combat capacity to spare. The demon beasts were bathed in concentrated fire from heavy weapons, falling one after another. Seeing for herself that the houda swarm was beginning to disperse, Hisano finally lowered her weapon and headed into the command tent.

When she entered the nearly smashed tent, it was a female SDF officer in camouflaged fatigues who addressed her. “So you made it out safely, High Priest Akatsuki?”

The individual was doubtlessly working as Azama’s aide-de-camp. She had sharp eyes, a neutral expression, and gave off a fairly unapproachable air.

As Hisano set the unconscious Shirona down in a chair, she gave Hisano a perfunctory salute and said:

“I am Special Captain Mikage Okiyama of the First Battalion. As the whereabouts of Major Azama are currently unknown, I have taken acting command of the regiment.”

“…Major Azama has disappeared?”

“Yes. Considering the situation, it is even possible he was killed in action…”

“I see,” said Hisano with a sigh.

The damage from the houdas’ surprise attack in the vicinity of the headquarters was enormous. It would be a failure unlike the capable Azama but, in a situation where the commanding officer might be a casualty, Mikage Okiyama had apparently responded according to standard operating procedure.

“What is the situation?”

“It is not good,” replied Okiyama in a businesslike tone. “The chain of command has fragmented due to the dense mist. Nor can we hope for air support with this level of visibility.”

“Even I did not expect the houda to have such numbers…”

Hisano murmured, her expression grave. Even Kamioda Temple lacked any record of the houda actually appearing. Even to Hisano, the living calamity freed from Avalon was an unknown quantity.

“Our estimates were off, same as yours,” Okiyama replied, calm and rational to the end. “At present, we have a crippling lack of firepower for dispatching such large demon beasts. If we could at least restore cohesion between the various units, we might be able to cope even with the gear on hand, but—”

“Cohesion, you say. If that is the case, I believe we can manage.”

“Eh?”

For the first time, the fully confident demeanor with which Hisano made the statement brought a perplexed look over Okiyama’s face. Thanks to the mist, infused with powerful demonic energy, communication via radio and spellcraft was being obstructed. She did not believe there was any remaining way to communicate with the units scattered across the area around the lake.

Right beside Okiyama, the white-haired girl, finally returning to consciousness, meekly raised her hand.

“Um… I…I can do it.”

“Lord Kuraki?”

Okiyama looked at Shirona in surprise.

“But how will you relay commands?”

“I will take direct…control…of them…”

Shirona closed her eyes. Her hair, independent of gravity, danced upward without a sound.

From there, invisible spirit threads stretched forth, and it felt like the entirety of Kannawa Lake had been covered in netting. The threads of spiritual energy wove a giant network together through which she was able to take hold of each individual.

The next moment, the movements of the Self-Defense Forces members…changed.

The auto-cannons of the surviving armored units spewed flames. Precise shots penetrated the houda hiding in the thick mist. She’d used the visual information of other soldiers in the vicinity of the houda to calculate their exact positions. Similar scenes occurred to and fro within the encirclement.

It was perfect coordination without a single hint of time lag.

Units that had annihilated the enemies before their eyes shifted to protecting units short on fighting strength. The medical unit went in motion to rescue the wounded that had gone missing. Even if radio communication was available, maintaining such tight unit cohesion was no simple task. The will of a single individual, Shirona Kuraki, dominated the entire field of battle. She was like an elite chess player manipulating every pawn on the board.

“So this is…the power of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency…”

Okiyama murmured, looking completely taken aback. This was an ability that could simultaneously command hundreds, even thousands of soldiers at a time. In a sense, given the realities of modern society, the ability was far more frightening than direct combat potential.

Assassination, organized crime, information gathering, controlling politics and commerce—depending on how one used this ability, one could control entire nations. Perhaps she ought to say as expected of one of the Lion King Agency’s Three Saints. She absolutely could not pass off talk of the so-called mightiest Attack Mages of Japan as a mere empty boast.

“I am sorry, Hisano. I…misread the true nature of Avalon…”

Perhaps the stabilizing of the battlefield had given her room to work with, for Shirona switched to her inner personality.

Shirona Kuraki was a descendant of a clan with great power, heiress to over a millennium’s worth of memories and spiritual energy. These women, cursed from the moment of their birth, could be said to be much like the immortal vampires in that regard.

It was the old personality inside Shirona that made a weak laugh at her own expense.

“It was just as that girl…as Yuiri Haba said. Avalon was not a seal at all. It was using us, draining knowledge from the priestesses we sacrificed to it to judge when the time was nigh…like a plant using insects to carry its pollen.”

“So it was not the sacrifices’ spiritual energy it craved, but their knowledge?”

Hisano’s eyebrows faintly trembled.

If Shirona’s assessment was fact, the Lion King Agency’s operation had been flawed from its very conception. And the thing inside Avalon had obtained the knowledge of the Twelfth sacrificed to it. That is what had caused the calamity to awaken.

“Captain Okiyama, I will leave this place to you.”

“High Priest Akatsuki, where are you going?”

Okiyama inquired unemotionally as Hisano picked up a spare naginata.

Hisano quietly gazed at Kannawa Lake, enveloped by cold air, as she said, “If the legends are true—that the houda are merely the prelude of the calamity—the next thought is obvious, is it not? Namely, the houda have a master still lurking at the bottom of the lake.”

“You are saying that…these demon beasts are merely parasites lurking in the true calamity’s shadow…?”

Okiyama shook her head as if to say Unbelievable.

“That is absurd…the only beings that would be served by such numbers of demon beasts would be on the level of a vampire primogenitor…”

“…Which means we are fighting a foe that rivals a vampire primogenitor.”

Hisano casually made the declaration with a pleasant smile. A moment later…

“Aaah…!”

…Shirona fiercely recoiled as she let out a cry. Hisano could sense a backlash of demonic energy. The countless spirit threads Shirona had deployed were beaten away, with the reaction causing her to faint once more.

For one instant alone, an enormous figure was visible amid the cold, white mist.

It was a black, malevolent figure that looked like calamity given form.

Shirona was able to freely control thousands of troops, but put another way, she could be neutralized by an enemy that even thousands of troops could not defeat. The black silhouette crawling within the mist seemed to be just that kind of foe.

“What…is that?”

There was no answer to Okiyama’s question. There was only the calamity’s enormous roar, making even the frigid air shudder…

3

Shio Hikawa was surrounded by pure-white mist as she walked onto the vast, icy plain.

Kannawa Lake was a large body of water, a reservoir of over sixty million cubic tons, but it was completely frozen from shore to shore.

Thanks to the increase in volume from freezing over, the surface of the lake had swelled into a treacherous mountain of ice, which, along with a cold wind mixed with icy snow, hindered Shio’s advance.

Using her little remaining ritual energy to protect herself from the cold, Shio desperately climbed over a swell in the ice, whereupon Shio’s ears caught the voice of a middle-aged man that held little sense of tension.

“Hey, Shio—”

“D-do not address me in such a familiar manner!”

Shio shouted, glaring at Gajou as he tagged along like it was the obvious thing to do. What really got under her skin was how the frozen surface of the lake, causing Shio all kinds of grief, seemed to bother Gajou very little.

“Li’l Shio, then. Whatever works, but you really shouldn’t push yourself. You don’t have much ritual energy left, do you? If another big swarm of those monsters attacks, we’ll die. I’m serious.”

“That doesn’t mean I can just leave Yuiri out there. And why did you come this far with me anyway?!”

“I’d like you to stop lumping us together like we’re partners united by fate or something,” Shio grumbled, seriously annoyed.

However, Gajou paid Shio no heed as he said, “Well, I’ve gotta take care of my daughter. Besides, well, I’d be able to handle most things if it was just me by myself.”

“What the…? Are you trying to say I’m holding you back?”

Shio stopped in her tracks, surprisingly annoyed.

Gajou smiled and shook his head as he put a hand into his coat and said, “I’m not sayin’ that exactly. I’m saying to pick your time and place for being reckless. You can’t save anyone if you die first, you know.”

“That doesn’t mean I can just let Yuiri be. And why are you coming along with me in the first place?!”

I really would rather you didn’t say things along the lines of It’s like our fates are intertwined or something, thought Shio, earnestly annoyed.

Nevertheless, Gajou was heedless of Shio’s sentiments.

“Well, I have to look after my daughter. Besides, well, I should be able to manage on my own for the most part.”

“What do you mean by that? It’s like saying I’m in the way.”

Shio unwittingly halted her feet as something snapped inside her.

Gajou smiled and shook his head, putting a hand inside his coat as he said, “I’m not sayin’ anything like that. It’s just, you need to pick your time and place to be reckless. You can’t save anyone if you run off and die first, right?”

Then, with the single-shot grenade launcher he’d just drawn, he pointed behind Shio’s back and fired. He blew off the head of the steel-colored demon beast lurking under the ice with Shio in its sights. Its head rolled onto its side.

“Sheesh.” A thin trickle of sweat came over Gajou’s brow as he sighed. As he did so, Shio gazed up at him with a teasing look.

“Well, you’re pretty worn out, too, aren’t you? I don’t think that your Death Returnee power is convenient enough that you can use it without a cost.”

“Oh, you really are a sharp one. You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”

“Wh-who’s worried about you?!”

“Well, I figure that hag was keeping me isolated in that cell to have firepower on hand because she had some idea what was coming…”

Gajou shamelessly laughed, making that bold declaration as he discarded the grenade launcher.

“So the fact that I’m being allowed to run across the battlefield means that hag is backed against a wall. Risky or not, I have to at least get Nagisa outta here.”

For a moment, the sight of Gajou valiantly smiling captured Shio’s attention. Perhaps that was why her caution eased up for a moment, for Shio’s foot slipped, grandly throwing her off-balance.

“Aaaah!”

“Whoa there.”

Shio was on the verge of slipping down an icy slope into a deep crevice when Gajou easily picked her up with his right arm alone.

“Whew… You all right, Li’l Shio?”

“I’m all right… I’m all right, so put—me—down…!”

“You’re so light. Have you been eating properly?”

“Sh-shut up! Let me go, you middle-aged lecher!”

“Sheesh… This lake’s frozen down to the lake bed, by the looks of it.”

Gajou languidly exhaled as he gazed down the crevice spread before his eyes. It was an amazingly deep crevice, like the damage left behind after some kind of giant monster crawling out from the depths.

The crevice ran forty or fifty meters straight down, but even so, he couldn’t see the bottom. There was no doubt: Every last drop of water bottled up by Kamioda Dam had been completely frozen. Someone’s magical energy had frozen the entire dam.

“But how…? Nothing short of a primogenitor’s Beast Vassal should be able to do this…”

Shio shuddered and shook her head as it sunk in that she was on-site at an unprecedented sorcerous disaster.

Gajou smiled as if it was someone else’s problem. “A primogenitor’s Beast Vassal, huh. If so, it means that’s precisely how.”

“…Gajou Akatsuki?”

Unable to discern the meaning of Gajou’s assertion, Shio peered at the side of his face. However, Gajou remained silent, glaring into the pure-white mist.

“Nagisa…huh?”

Gajou murmured, speaking in a low, guarded voice. When she heard him, Shio noticed, too: A petite figure was calmly crossing the ice, approaching the pair across where the crevice had opened.

“No, not her…”

Gajou, still holding Shio, set her down as he continued to glare at the figure.

The girl approaching them was wearing a white priestess outfit.

Her face was indeed Nagisa Akatsuki’s. However, the color of her hair was different. It was pale, blonde hair, changing color with the angle of the light, almost like looking through a prism. The rainbow-colored hair resembled a billowing flame.

“Who are you…?!”

Shio unwittingly let her voice trickle out. The girl in the white priestess attire gazed at Shio with eyes like pale-blue flames. Shio shuddered, her spine freezing from the malevolent demonic energy she sensed from the girl.

That instant, Shio, as an Attack Mage, instinctively realized: It was this girl who had brought about the bizarre freezing phenomenon—

“Looks like you’re finally awake, princess.”

Gajou spread both arms wide as he addressed her, seemingly to display a lack of hostility. He spoke with the fondness of one greeting an old friend.

“You are…”

The girl in white attire trained her blazing eyes upon Gajou.

“So you remember me, Sleeping Beauty?”

Gajou sent a gentle smile her way.

The girl’s rainbow-colored hair swayed as she weakly shook her head.

“Why do you smile?” she asked in a broken voice. “I…have no words with which to atone… Whatever scorn, resentment, or curses you bear toward me, I resign myself to them.”

“Don’t get me wrong, princess. None of us have a grudge against you. Not me and certainly not Kojou.”

Gajou Akatsuki made this statement with strength in his voice. Shio listened with bated breath to the precarious balance of the conversation between the pair, as if walking a tightrope across a pit of spikes.

“Is Nagisa safe?”

When Gajou asked that, a smile trickled onto the girl’s lips for the first time. It was a lovely, fleeting, beautiful smile; the sort meant for someone precious.

“The soul of the gentle priestess is…right here—”

The girl closed her eyes, pressing both hands to her chest.

Then, as if drained of strength, she immediately collapsed.

Shio finally let go of the breath she’d been holding. As the girl’s mind dissipated, the powerful, oppressive feeling making Shio cringe thinned in equal measure. The cold hovering in the air around them seemed to soften as well.

“Gajou Akatsuki… Who…was that, just now?”

Shio asked in a hard, tense voice.

Gajou did not reply to Shio’s question as he picked up the sleeping Nagisa Akatsuki.

“Sorry, Li’l Shio. Can I trust you to take care of her?”

“I don’t mind that at all, but…what do you intend to do?”

Shio knit her brows as she rebutted. Just what did Gajou Akatsuki plan to do that involved leaving behind the daughter he’d finally gotten back? For no discernible reason, her heart was terribly astir.

“I’d like to say I’ll look for Yuiri baby for you in your place, but…can’t you feel what’s in the air?”

“…In the air?”

When he said it, Shio finally noticed. The air was faintly shuddering. The hard, frozen surface of the lake was swaying in an irregular manner. It was a strange tremor, as if some collection of enormous mass was raging in the distance.

“Is…something there…?!”

For a single moment, Shio saw the shadow of something resembling a pitch-black fortress through a break in the mist.

It had enormously broad wings resembling warped blades. It had four limbs so stout that they made armored vehicles seem delicate. It had a head like a ferocious carnivorous lizard. It had sharp fangs and crimson eyes.

Though it was her first time seeing one with her own eyes, even children knew the name of the greatest of demon beasts.

“No way…”

Shio’s lips twitched and trembled.

With heavy white mist swirling around it, a pitch-black dragon loosed a terrible roar.

4

The pain on her cheeks woke her up. Someone was rudely slapping Asagi’s face. The high-pitched voice of a younger girl continued ringing in her ears.

“Empress! Empress…!”

“Can you stop calling me that already…?!”

With Lydianne’s palm slapping her over and over, Asagi sluggishly lifted her head, glaring at her with tearful eyes.

She was in the copilot seat added to the micro-robot tank. The redheaded girl had opened the scuffed-up armored hatch and was peering at Asagi’s face with a worried expression.

“Empress, are you all right?!”

“No, I am most certainly not all right. I hurt all over. It sucks. So much for the air balloon. It almost got both of us killed.”

Asagi let her complaints pour out as she crawled out of the tight copilot seat.

Launching at a thousand meters aboveground, the robot tank had fired its stabilizing boosters as it deployed its four emergency parachutes, lowering their speed of descent as they set down in the Tangiwa Mountains. However, that was all that had gone well.

The initial trouble came from the air currents raging in the mountainous area they were attempting to land in. Incredible crosswinds ripped the parachutes away, sending the tank crashing onto its side, which rendered the air cushion for landing and leg shock absorbers utterly useless.

The fact they were landing on a forested mountain with densely packed trees didn’t exactly help. The elasticity of the trees had bounced the robot tank around like a pinball several times, finally ending in a fall to the bottom of a deep gully. That was as far as Asagi remembered.

“No, no, ’twas most unexpected to have landed in a ravine. I shall make a note of revising the watertight construction upward. However, ’twas fortunate we had the high-spec pilot suits, no?”

“Wait, is this designed like a school swimsuit because the tank was expected to sink?!” Asagi exclaimed as she looked down at her thoroughly drenched pilot suit, exasperated to the core of her being.

Since they’d fallen into the mountain stream coursing through the bottom of the ravine, the non-waterproof pilot seats were flooded with water. They were saved by the fact the water happened to be shallow; otherwise, they might well have drowned.

But just as Lydianne had boasted, Asagi didn’t feel very cold in spite of the water flooding. The fact she’d sustained an impact like that and walked away with only minor scrapes was no doubt thanks to the pilot suit’s high levels of water and wind resistance.

That said, they couldn’t know how long they would remain safe stuck at the bottom of a ravine like that. The water of the mountain stream was cold—it was the middle of winter, after all—and perhaps it was just her imagination, but she felt like the water level had increased since she had awoken.

“So what now? Is this tank still usable?” Asagi put her disheveled hair in order as she returned to the pilot seat.

They were deep in the mountains in a ravine without even a name, far removed from the main thoroughfare. There were cliffs standing to both the right and left, terrain impossible for human beings to climb without specialized gear. Even if they tried to call for aid, Asagi doubted the signal would reach. If Lydianne’s tank wasn’t mobile, she and Asagi would immediately join the ranks of the victims.

Though busted in various places from the impact of the fall, the tank’s electrical systems seemed to have remained intact. Lydianne switched circuits and brought up the maintenance console.

“Self-diagnostic in progress. The electrical system is all green. If we cut off the damaged modules, I believe restarting is indeed possible. Rechecking various sensors is required, but that is within the realm of what can be compensated for with software.”

“Okay, I’ll handle that part.”

“My deepest thanks. Then, I shall begin the reboot process forthwith.”

Asagi spread out her own terminal and connected to the robot tank’s sensor systems. As an experimental prototype, it was possible to adjust the software of Lydianne’s Hizamaru in the field without any great difficulty. With Lydianne and Asagi, top programmers in and out of the corporate world, teaming up together, even wholesale rewriting of the operating system wouldn’t take that much time.

“Ohh… Here we go. That’s Tanker for you… She writes such pretty code. Since it’s like this, I can just do the minimum necessary corrections…… If I handle this part with a parallel process, I can use the resources freed up to stuff an auto-adjustment package in here like…so.”

In the blink of an eye, Asagi had isolated the damaged sections of the robot tank; she then proceeded to put together correction programs for each individual section. It was time-consuming, but it was not difficult work for her. Humming, she typed away at the keyboard, and once 80 percent or so of the work was completed…

“Ugh…”

Asagi squirmed, rubbing both legs together as she felt her back shiver. That feeling persisted when Lydianne turned back to her with a look of concern.

“If you must pee, Lady Empress, I believe it is healthier to pee rather than hold it.”

“It’s not that!!” Asagi shouted, her face beet red. “It isn’t that. I’m like, what’s going on—isn’t it getting weirdly cold around here?”

“Now that thou dost mention it, it is odd. The heater is fully operational, and yet…”

“The water temperature’s dropping below freezing… Geh?!”

When Asagi checked the number on the temperature sensor, she gawked, eyes widening.

Lydianne’s red robot tank had come to a stop in a narrow mountain stream. The surface of the water was beginning to freeze. A powerful cold coursing upstream from Kannawa Lake had finally reached as far as the ravine. White mist was mixing in with the air, causing visibility to progressively worsen.

“Tanker! This is bad. The river’s started to freeze!”

“Understoodeth!”

Lydianne tossed the maintenance console aside and restarted the robot tank.

Thanks to the water flooding, the engine stalled several times along the way, but somehow, she managed to get the main generator restarted. The water’s surface had turned to sherbet by the time the robot tank hoisted itself up, making a crunchy sound as it walked toward the riverbank. The river was freezing faster than Asagi had expected. If she’d noticed any later, she and the tank would have both frozen over.

“Seems like we’d better get the hell out of this ravine, whatever it takes.”

“At thy command. I will use the wires. Empress, please fasten thy seatbelt.”

“It’s going to be all right this time, isn’t it…?”

Asagi slid into the copilot seat and securely fastened her seatbelt. she closed the armored hatch as well. Thanks to the impact of the crash, the hatch was terribly bent, but it was enough to lend her some small comfort.

“Rest thy heart at ease. Hizamaru was originally developed for urban combat. It was designed to climb perpendicularly up tall buildings. It can climb diminutive cliffs like these before breakfast.”

“Not that I can trust a single word you say at this point…”

“…Nnngh?!”

“What now?! What, speak of the devil and…?!”

“Unknown threat identified! ’Tis the demon beasts!”

“Huh…?!”

With haste, Asagi switched to the external camera feed. Silhouettes of the steel-colored demon beasts emerged from within the cloud of pure-white mist—the same demon beasts that had taken out Asagi and Lydianne’s tilt-rotor aircraft. The distance between them was some two hundred meters. The enemy hadn’t noticed Asagi and Lydianne—yet.

“The ones from earlier were still around?!”

“She who striketh first wins! I shall launch a surprise attack!”

Lydianne used the Hizamaru’s remaining rocket booster to force it up from the ground. The hull of the robot tank creaked from the impact of its violent, high-speed landing.

“Start-up confirmed. All weapon locks released, auto-fire control… Ah?!”

“Wait, Tanker! Hold on a sec! Cease fire!”

“…Empress?!”

Lydianne raised a voice of displeasure at Asagi forcing her way into the system, ordering her to cease fire. Asagi understood how Lydianne felt, pouting at her golden opportunity for a surprise attack having gone to waste.

“L-look there! There’s a civilian! If we fire now, we might hit him!”

“Ah…?! Mnnn… Certainly, he seems like a child most out of place.”

You’re a child out of place, too, Asagi retorted in her mind as she enlarged the monitor image. It was a boy of about twelve or thirteen, standing on a worn-down mountain road that wasn’t even paved.

He had beautiful black hair and brown skin. Furthermore, his eyes were gold. She felt a strange majesty from the boy’s appearance that belied his face, which still bore traces of childhood. He looked like a young, highly temperamental lion.

The boy was only several meters from the demon beasts. If they carelessly opened fire with the robot tank’s weapons, he’d be caught in the blast, for sure.

“What’s he doing there all by himself…? Doesn’t look like he’s a mountain climber, either…”

The boy was unarmed. However, he showed no signs of fear. Even as he glared at the demon beasts, his face was composed. Somehow, that felt eerie.

But that didn’t mean they could just abandon him to his fate. Even if it meant them running a fair amount of risk, Asagi felt they ought to get out in front of the boy, challenging the demon beasts to close combat—

Just as Asagi was about to tell Lydianne that, the robot tank’s warning siren sounded. The radar was responding to objects blanketing the sky above.

“Empress, reinforcements cometh!”

“Reinforcements?! There’s other demon beasts, too?!”

“’Twould seem they are allies from the same swarm.”

“Wh…what’s with all these guys…?!”

Asagi felt blood draining from her entire body as she gazed at the enemy swarm displayed by the monitor. Put together, the numbers of flying steel-colored demon beasts numbered nearly twenty. Such numbers were beyond what a single, damaged robot tank could deal with.

However, it was not Asagi and Lydianne at their estimated landing point, but the boy standing there defenseless.

“Don’t tell me…they’re all after that kid…?!”

Asagi gritted her teeth as she was struck by both conflict and righteous indignation. Both Asagi’s desire to save the boy and her fear of death jostled inside her. Suddenly, she heard Lydianne’s voice.

“Empress, forgive me.”

“Huh?!”

“Boy, we cometh to thine aid! Retreat while we acteth as thine shield!”

Dumbfounded, Asagi was thrust against her seat by sudden acceleration. With a sudden dash, the robot tank hurtled forward to shield the boy from the demon beasts.

“Wha… What are you doing?! Do you even have a plan?! It’s common sense to secure a line of retreat in situations like these! At this rate, we all are going to die for nothing!!”

Gunfire and explosions drowned out Asagi’s rapid-fire, rambling shouts. Lydianne had fired every one of the robot tank’s weapons in an all-out volley.

However, even a barrage of such force did not put a stop to the demon beasts’ momentum. Crushed by the onslaught of demon beasts, the robot tank’s entire hull screamed out. Joints unable to take the strain emitted sparks, and the armor let out disagreeable echoes as it was torn.

“To fall in the line of duty is to die a warrior’s death. ’Tis not a bad way to go.”

“How do you figure that?! From where I sit, it’s definitely the worst!! And in the first place, you’re not a warrior, and neither am I!!”

As the robot tank anguished, its main gun blasted one demon beast out of the sky. However, that was as far as their counterattack went. The pilot seat monitor was buried in alarms from the accumulating damage, and the trusty Fire Control System stopped responding as well.

“Nooooooooo—!”

Asagi’s scream mixed in with the sounds of ringing alarms.

It was then that, with a boom, Asagi’s vision shuddered, as if they’d been sent flying. A second later, blast winds assaulted the robot tank, slamming into it from the side.

A dazzling, golden radiance filled the monitor displaying the front. The beam of light baring its ferocious fangs was actually a giant golden jackal, woven from dense demonic energy.

Its glimmering forelegs transformed into tornadoes, mowing down the steel-colored demon beasts.

“Wh-what the…?”

Asagi gazed at the surreal scene, her eyes widening in amazement.

The swarm of monsters that the state-of-the-art robot tank had been at such pains to fight was dispatched by the golden beast with ease. The radiant, glimmering beast was, in fact, a vampire’s Beast Vassal—a summoned beast from another world using demonic energy to take physical form.

“My, my… You embarrass yourselves, waving around a contraption like that before me. It is far too insolent, you humans.”

The boy served by the golden jackal glared at the robot tank as he spoke. The faint, pained smile coming over his lips was somehow eerie to behold.

“But no matter. Impudent though it was, I praise the spirit with which you attempted to offer yourselves for my benefit.”

With a light wave of his hand, the boy commanded the golden jackal to attack.

By the time Asagi realized what was happening, it was all over. The golden beam raced across the sky, blotting out the swarm of demon beasts, leaving not even fragments of flesh behind.

“A vampire’s…Beast Vassal?! And what’s that ridiculous power…?!”

Asagi murmured inside the immobile robot tank, dumbfounded.

To Asagi, raised in a Demon Sanctuary from a young age, vampires were not rare beings by themselves. She’d seen numerous Beast Vassals in the flesh with her own eyes. That was why Asagi understood that the Beast Vassal the boy controlled was extraordinary. That golden jackal was clearly a cut above a normal vampire’s Beast Vassal.

So far as Asagi knew, the only vampires served by Beast Vassals of this caliber were Dimitrie Vattler, Giada Kukulkan, and Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor.

In other words, the boy possessed power on par with a primogenitor.

“My Lord, you… Your appearance—could it be…the Caucasus’s…?”

Crawling out from the tank’s hatch, Lydianne’s eyes went wide as she stared at the boy. The boy’s face grimaced ever so slightly as he looked back at Lydianne and said, “To think there would be someone who knows my face in such a backwater place in the Far East?”

I miscalculated, his exhale seemed to say.

“Caucasus…the Fallen Dynasty…?! Don’t tell me you’re…”

Asagi gasped, lifting her face up. The Caucasus region was ruled by the Fallen Dynasty, the Dominion governing the Middle East. Even in that place, the vampires with power rivaling a primogenitor numbered very few—let alone with the appearance of such a young boy. To Asagi, only a single individual came to mind—

“Indeed, my name is Iblisveil Aziz—a direct descendant of Fallgazer, the Second Primogenitor, ruler of the Eight Northern Provinces. Know this name well.”

In what seemed like a practiced manner, the boy shook his head in exasperation as he introduced himself.

5

“—Achoo!”

Yuiri Haba woke herself with a sneeze. Cold cut through her entire body like a knife. Lying faceup, she had a thin layer of snow on top of her body.

“I’m…still alive…”

Sneezing once more, Yuiri sat up and gingerly surveyed the state of the area around her.

Yuiri was at the center of Kannawa Lake—specifically, on the floating altar for the ceremony to seal Avalon.

However, the raft supporting the altar had been splintered apart, and the sacred ropes and offerings spread around the altar had been blown away without a trace. They’d taken a direct hit from the vast demonic energy gushing from inside the lake.

“What was that power…? If it wasn’t for Rosen Chevalier Plus, I would’ve died, for sure.”

Now that she had returned to the world of the living, fear of death made Yuiri’s shoulders tremble.

Rosen Chevalier Plus, granted to Yuiri by the Lion King Agency, was an armament that could create an emulated cut in space itself. For but a single second, the cut in space served as an impenetrable bulwark against any kind of attack. It was because that bulwark protected her that Yuiri was unscathed in spite of taking a direct hit from that scale of demonic energy.

The end result demonstrated that Hisano Akatsuki was correct in ordering Yuiri to serve as Nagisa Akatsuki’s escort.

“Er… Nagisa?!”

Yuiri, suddenly snapping back to her senses, was beside herself as she gazed about the altar’s remnants.

The physical body of Nagisa Akatsuki lay on the altar as the pivotal key to the ceremony. Naturally, if Yuiri was alive, Nagisa Akatsuki, who Yuiri had shielded, had to be alive as well.

In point of fact, the bed upon which she had lain was still in one piece. In spite of this, Nagisa Akatsuki was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished somewhere during the time Yuiri had been unconscious.

“She’s not here?! How?! Where could she have gone…?!”

Unwittingly, Yuiri had tears in her eyes as she searched for any trace of Nagisa.

The area around the altar was a wide, icy plain. The vast demonic energy that had explosively discharged from the bottom of the lake had frozen the man-made lake completely. Thanks to the dense mist, visibility was terrible; even Yuiri’s Spirit Sight as a Sword Shaman could not find Nagisa Akatsuki through it.

“R-right, the radio!”

Yuiri pulled a sturdy radio out from her coat pocket. She’d borrowed it from the Self-Defense Forces before reporting for escort duty at the altar. Though somewhat bewildered by the unfamiliar device, she pressed the switch just as she’d been taught. However, the only thing coursing through the speaker was annoying white noise.

“Why… Why can’t I get in touch…?!”

Yuiri was still standing there helplessly as she murmured in a voice that made it seem as though she was about to fade away.

Mist infused with demonic energy, which covered the surface of the lake, possibly the work of the earlier surge of energy, made her unable to use reconnaissance shikigami. Even if that was not the case, Yuiri was no specialist in long-range control spells. If only Shio was here at a time like this, she could not help thinking strongly to herself.

“So cold…”

Yuiri, exposed to the frigid wind, unwittingly blurted out that frail murmur.

One way or another, in that situation, it wasn’t possible for Yuiri to search for Nagisa Akatsuki by herself. She was chagrined at having been unable to fulfill her duty to protect the girl, but finding Nagisa Akatsuki came before Yuiri’s pride and reputation. It was no doubt best to return to the SDF operational headquarters for the moment and request reinforcements.

Visibility was still awful, but Yuiri was able to rely on her intuition to discern the direction back to HQ. The fact that the surface of the lake was frozen made the trip much easier. Though it was work to walk over such cold footing, Yuiri headed to the shore on foot. If she advanced three hundred meters or so forward, land would finally come into view.

To the best of her knowledge, the SDF had a ground unit deployed in reserve on the dam’s gently sloped concrete rampart in case of emergency. It was a Special Attack Mage platoon with combat strength of nearly forty people.

However, through the dense mist, Yuiri was greeted by the sight of wreckage of light-armored vehicles as well as numerous wounded soldiers lying on the ground.

“No way…”

Yuiri clenched the cuffs of her coat as she let out a whimper. She didn’t know the extent of the damage to the unit. However, she could see that it was virtually destroyed. Having desperately walked there in search of reinforcements, Yuiri took the blow hard. The situation was apparently far worse than she had imagined.

And then—

“Demon beasts?!”

Sensing an odd buzz of wings within the mist, Yuiri hurried into a combat stance.

These were the never-before-seen monsters that had attacked the Self-Defense Forces. The demon beasts were a mix of hornet and serpent encased in steel scales. Perhaps this was the type Shirona and others had called houda. One among their number bared its fangs and headed Yuiri’s way.

The aura given off by the snake-hornets somehow felt artificial, different from the demon beasts Yuiri knew of. Thanks to that, Yuiri was slow to react; she had no time to draw Rosen Chevalier Plus from her back.

“—Crouching Thunder!”

Yuiri let her right leg loose to kick at the head of the demon beast flying at her with a bizarre sound. It was a mighty blow infused with ritual energy.

But the attack did not penetrate the snake-hornet’s armored shell. Recoil from the blow sent Yuiri flying instead.

“So hard…! Then, the sure way to defeat it is from the inside…!”

Somehow regaining her footing, Yuiri slipped into the snake-hornet’s flank.

Yuiri had a particular junior student float into the back of her mind. Destroying the internal organs was that girl’s combat specialty. Yuiri had seen her fleeting, delicate form strike down stout beast men several times before.

Admiring the sight, Yuiri redoubled her own special training. This was her first time using it in a real battle, but—

“—Distort!”

Yuiri slammed lethal ritual energy into the demon beast, rupturing its interior. The metallic snake-hornet’s huge frame seemed to tremble as its movements came to a stop.

“It worked! I can do this—!”

Yuiri used the momentary opening from the demon beast’s halt to draw Rosen Chevalier Plus.

That instant, the battle was as good as over. No demon beast existed that could withstand the Rosen Chevalier Plus’s space-rending attacks. All she had to do was swing the blade down, and there was no doubt the snake-hornet would be cleaved in two.

“…!”

But Yuiri, still on the icy plain, stopped in her tracks.

A new swarm of snake-hornets appeared, almost as if to support their wounded comrade. They bore down on Yuiri, one after another. They probably numbered seven—no, they numbered more than eight. It was as if the entire sky was buried in steel.

“No way… I can’t deal with this… I just can’t…!”

Naturally, even Yuiri’s body froze, fear rendering her unable to move. Any way she looked at it, the numbers were simply too great. There was no mistake: It was this great swarm of demon beasts that had nearly shattered the Special Attack Mage unit on top of the rampart.

“I can’t… But…!”

She knew from the earlier skirmish exactly what combat capabilities these demon beasts possessed. Their strength was not off the charts, but they were dangerous enough opponents to give a Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency a run for her money. Furthermore, they were attacking in a pack. Even armed with Rosen Chevalier Plus, Yuiri could not cope with such numbers by herself.

That didn’t mean Yuiri had the option to cut and run. She couldn’t even conceive of the damage the snake-hornets could inflict on ordinary citizens if they broke through the SDF encirclement and reached urban areas.

Before that could happen, she had to whittle down the number of houda then and there to the greatest extent possible.

Yuiri steadied her breathing, glaring at the swarm of demon beasts with heroic resolve.

However, it was not Yuiri who assaulted the snake-hornets.

Suddenly, their swarm was sent in disarray. Then, they moved behind Yuiri, seemingly out of fear. They looked like a flock of sheep frightened of a wolf’s approach. The demon beasts seemed to be fleeing as they took to the skies.

“Th…they ran away? Why?”

Freed from an excess of tension, Yuiri’s strength left her as she wilted on the spot. The cold of the ice was invading her thighs through her tights, but she had no time to worry about that.

Yuiri was still in that position when she sensed something unexpected moving in the corner of her vision. Looking back was largely subconscious on her part. The instant she did, however, Yuiri was stunned.

“Huh?!”

A lone girl was standing in the cold, pure-white mist.

The girl was even smaller statured than Yuiri. She seemed to be skipping as she came Yuiri’s way. An amiable smile came over her face. She was a lovely girl, with long, steel-colored hair that reached as far as her ankles.

And what rocked Yuiri more than any of that was the fact that the girl wasn’t wearing a single stitch of clothing. Furthermore, the girl didn’t seem to mind.

“Wh…why are you…naked…?!”

Yuiri pointed at the girl as she posed the question. She did this not out of wariness, but out of an outpouring of concern for the girl.

The long-haired girl stared at Yuiri’s face in surprise, blinking her eyes as she adorably tilted her little head.

“Mii?”

“……Mi?”

Yuiri, beside herself, unwittingly posed that “question” back to her. Seeing Yuiri’s reaction, the girl’s eyes widened in visible delight. Her eyes, too, were like metal, a beautiful hematite color.

“Right, first of all, put on this coat!!”

Yuiri stripped off her own coat and put it over the girl’s shoulders. It was a short, sturdy dress coat, but it was a little big for the girl, neatly covering her all the way down to her knees.

“Ohh—”

Apparently, the girl was very fond of the coat warmed by Yuiri’s body heat. She excitedly clenched the cuffs as she happily waved both arms up and down.

“You don’t have any shoes, so I’ll carry you on my back. Get on.”

Yuiri then turned her back toward the girl. It hurt her to see the girl walking barefoot on top of an icy plain.

“Back…?”

For a while, the girl stared at Yuiri with a questioning look, as if she didn’t understand the meaning of the word. But she finally figured out what Yuiri intended, swinging both hands high and leaping onto the middle of Yuiri’s back with considerable vigor.

“Back!”

“Whoa?!”

“Back! Back!!”

Wobbling, Yuiri stood up with the girl on her back. And atop Yuiri’s back, the girl was merrily making a fuss. She was waving her body all around as Yuiri wobbled, putting one foot forward after another.

“What’s with this girl…? Shio, save meee…!”

Yuiri was half in tears as the girl was in an ecstatic mood on her back. Yuiri dragged her silver-colored long sword along as she headed for the rampart, her initial destination.

On top of the rampart, it was even worse than she’d expected.

The armored vehicles destroyed by the houda were cruelly exposed on their sides. Numerous casualties were lying on the frozen ground, and the air was filled with the scent of gunpowder and blood.

But Yuiri rested just a little easier, for the medical unit had already arrived. Medics were applying first aid to the troops and were loading the wounded onto field ambulances.

As Yuiri returned, a woman in a dougi approached her. It was an old woman with white hair carrying a naginata.

“So you were safe, Yuiri Haba.”

“Miss Hisano!”

When Hisano addressed her in a composed voice, Yuiri bowed with the mystery girl still on her back. “Yuiri, Yuiri,” went the girl, making a fuss on her back; Yuiri’s face immediately reddened.

“Um… Miss Hisano, I’m sorry. I lost sight of Nagisa…!”

“I know. You have performed your duty well.”

Hisano gently spoke the words to Yuiri, who felt pangs of guilt. Then Hisano shifted a suspicious gaze to the girl on Yuiri’s back.

“And she is?”

“Er, um… I don’t know. I spotted her just now and brought her here for her protection, but…”

Yuiri explained in an awkward tone. It was true that she couldn’t just leave the girl out there, but if Hisano told her This isn’t the time or place, there wouldn’t be anything she could say in reply.

However, Hisano did not reproach Yuiri in any way. She looked like she was mulling something over as she stared at the girl’s steely eyes. The girl hid behind Yuiri’s back, almost like she was afraid.

“It seems she is rather fond of you, Yuiri Haba.”

“Y-yes. It would seem so. I wonder why…?”

Yuiri replied thus, feeling like she was at least half-asking herself.

“Hmm.” Hisano sighed. “Yuiri Haba, I entrust defending the wounded Self-Defense Forces to you. Take that girl with you and retreat as far as Gotemba. This comes from Shirona as well.”

“Retreat?”

Yuiri echoed the word in bewilderment. Though she was a Sword Shaman belonging to the Lion King Agency, Yuiri was currently on loan to Kamioda Temple. If Hisano ordered her to retreat, she had no option but to obey, but…

“But the search for Nagisa…”

“I will handle that,” Hisano sharply rebuked. Then, she stared at Yuiri with a sober look in her eyes as she said, “More importantly, under no circumstances are you to take your eyes off that girl. I am counting on you.”

“O-of course.”

Yuiri was still in the dark, but she nodded, overwhelmed by Hisano’s intensity. Even as she did so, the steel-haired girl sitting on Yuiri’s back cheerfully raised her voice.

“Yuiri… Yuiri…”

Intermission ii

“Asagi’s close by…?”

Kojou Akatsuki’s confused voice echoed throughout the steamy bath.

He was in a large hot-spring bath at the high-class hotel in the middle of Mount Hakone. Thanks to Vattler having reserved the entire hotel, Kojou was the only one in the bath. He looked like he was talking to himself, but he was actually speaking to the raggedy mascot character on the screen of a modified, waterproof smartphone—Mogwai.

“Wait, did she come to look for Nagisa…? She didn’t say one word about anything like that, you know?”

“The li’l miss probably wanted to help out on the sly to look good. Heh-heh.” Mogwai laughed in a very humanlike fashion. “The rest is, well, an issue of pride. Her hacker personality means that if she sees someone hiding something, she wants to uncover it, whatever it takes.”

“Ah… So that’s it,” Kojou promptly agreed, sensing that the words of Asagi’s AI partner were oddly convincing.

Thanks to the Lion King Agency running on analog and the SDF sealing the place off, even Asagi’s hacking abilities had ended up unable to determine the reason for Nagisa’s disappearance. That had no doubt hurt Asagi’s image of herself. Thus, she had crossed all the way to the mainland to exact her revenge.

“…So where is Asagi now, and what is she doing?” Kojou inquired while soaking in the very broad bath.

Thanks to his own cell phone having been broken during the fight with Paper Noise, the modified smartphone Asagi had loaned to him was Kojou’s only remaining means of long-distance communication. That said, thanks to the majority of its processing power being devoted to Mogwai, he couldn’t really expect it to have much of a normal cell phone’s functionality.

In the middle of the modified smartphone’s little screen, the AI avatar grandly shook his head and said, “I’m not really sure. Since a little while ago, contact with my copy over where the li’l miss is has been cut. I can’t merge data with it.”

“Contact’s been cut…? Wait, is she actually all right?”

“It’s possible she’s simply in a place where a signal won’t reach, but I am a teeny bit bothered that the cargo airplane the li’l misses were on vanished from radar. They could’ve just landed, though.”

“Just when I think I’ll finally get in touch with Nagisa, now Asagi goes missing… Geez, gimme a break…”

Kojou sighed heavily as he covered his eyes with a towel.

It was Mogwai who’d told Kojou that Nagisa had left a message on Kojou’s cell phone. Kojou felt that there were ethical issues with an AI checking voicemail messages on someone else’s cell phone behind his back, but at any rate, it loaned a helping hand that time around.

As was typical of Nagisa, her message was rapid-fire and overly wordy, making it challenging to understand, but the contents themselves were rather simple.

One, she’d arrived at Kamioda Temple, where Grandma was; had fallen ill; and had been asleep.

Two, thanks to being outside cell phone range, she’d been unable to reach Kojou.

Those were the only important things. The rest was that garbage pickup was a different day due to the New Year’s holiday and other trivial messages he couldn’t care less about. Yet, in spite of hearing her say she was all right, he didn’t feel like that was the end of the matter. Besides, the reason for the Lion King Agency and the SDF to conduct an operation in such secrecy remained a mystery.

All the same, Kojou was able to take his time soaking in the hot bath, his spirit considerably more composed now that it was clear Nagisa was safe and sound.

Incidentally, there was a very practical reason why Kojou and the others couldn’t leave the hotel at that time: Namely, thanks to their uniforms being all sticky from having fallen into the sea, they had nothing to wear while their clothes were being washed. If Kojou had to wait for the clothes to come back from the cleaner’s, he might as well take it easy in a hot spring while he had the chance.

“Well, Li’l Miss Asagi is with that other li’l miss in the tank, so we don’t need to worry that much, I think. Unless the cargo plane was shot down and they were attacked by demon beasts in the mountains or something, that is.”

Heh-heh. Mogwai laughed irresponsibly as he voiced what seemed like an oddly realistic hypothetical.

“Li’l miss in the tank… You mean that Lydianne girl? Are you saying they came to the mainland with the tank and everything?”

Is it all right to drive that thing outside Itogami Island? worried Kojou, even though it wasn’t his problem, per se. All the same, Mogwai had a point. He didn’t think Asagi and Lydianne would encounter too much peril while riding in an anti-demon robot tank.

“…Well, fine. If Asagi’s looking for Nagisa, too, we can link up with her soon enough.”

“I s’pose so,” Mogwai agreed in a folksy tone. “So you should enjoy being young in a hot spring while you can, right, Bro?”

“Enjoy or not, I’ve almost been in here too long, so it’s about time I got out…”

“Heh-heh… Don’t play dumb. You’re thinking about the women’s bath, aren’t you? It’s protected against intruders with antipersonnel sensors, and the employee corridor has an electronic door lock, but I can deal with those if you’d like.”

“Nah. I don’t need that kind of help.”

Without hesitation, Kojou rebuffed Mogwai’s corrupt temptations.

“I escaped to the men’s bath ’cause I didn’t wanna run into the Oceanus Girls, so it’d be pretty sad if I went peeking over there. Besides, I’m pretty sure that’s a straight-up crime.”

That quintet was putting a lot of effort into seducing Kojou for one reason or another. He couldn’t even imagine what would happen to him if those girls saw him blundering into the women’s bath.

However, Mogwai stubbornly clung to the subject and said, “So, Kojou, my Bro, which of them do you like best anyway? Maybe the youngest, that blonde, since you have a little sister complex?”

“No, I don’t!”

When the AI’s sarcastic laughter sent Kojou sinking into the hot bath, he heard the door to the large bath open with a rattle. He saw a slender figure surrounded by white mist entering the bath.

“It seems you are having a rather intriguing conversation.”

As he looked back, Kojou heard a voice with a hint of laughter thrown in. With his guard completely down, Kojou’s heart was in danger of stopping altogether.

“K-Kisaki?! Wh-why are…? Where did you come from…?!”

“Wouldn’t any normal person simply use the entrance?”

It was Kiriha Kisaki, wearing nothing but a bath towel, walking his way; a seductive smile was playing on her lips.

“Don’t worry. I’ve already set up an aversion ward. No one will be able to interrupt us.”

“That’s not what I’m concerned about! What did you come for?!”

“Why, I thought I’d enter the bath with you. A naked date, as they say?”

“No, that’s—that’s not right!”

Even though, in his mind, he knew she was just teasing him, Kojou was seriously flustered. He didn’t know what Kiriha’s motives were, but it was really bizarre. For as long as he could remember, she was never the type to flaunt her own body like this, but…

“Not to worry, I shall only remove my towel once I am submerged in the bath, as proper hot spring manners require.”

“If you’re gonna talk manners, don’t barge into the men’s bath in the first place!!”

“Peekaboo!”

As Kojou glared at her, Kiriha looked back at him with visible delight as she pulled up the hem of her bath towel. Kojou choked on air as he stared at her thighs, exposed up to the hips.

“I must admit, however, this is quite embarrassing.”

Kiriha’s cheeks reddened as she made a pained smile, at least somewhat aware that she’d gone too far.

With a tired expression, Kojou leaned against the edge of the bath as he said:

“Then get out already. You don’t need to force yourself.”

“I suppose you’re right. I’ll do just that, then… Or will I? Ta-daa!”

Chiming the sound effect from her own lips, Kiriha stripped off the bath towel all at once.

“I-idiot, what are you thinking…?!”

Kojou stiffened as his eyes were glued to Kiriha striking a dramatic, model-like pose. But—

“S…swimsuit?”

Kiriha was wearing a strapless black bikini. Her outfit was even more revealing than regular underwear, but strangely, it didn’t seem indecent in the slightest.

“I borrowed it from the girls from before. Disappointed? You’re disappointed, aren’t you?”

“No… And that might be all right for you, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m naked…… Hey, don’t look!”

Kiriha boldly strode into the bath and sat down beside Kojou. When her gaze wandered toward Kojou’s lower body, he hastily obstructed her view.

Kiriha made a sigh of apparent pity as she observed Kojou’s movements. “It would seem you have not regained feeling in your right hand yet.”

“…Mm.”

Kojou clicked his tongue, his shoulders sinking at Kiriha’s casual observation.

At a glance, Kojou’s right hand seemed healed, but he still didn’t have any feeling past the wrist. There was an odd scar left from the inside of his palm to the back of his hand that resembled some kind of magic symbol.

“A ritual to generate a ward…likely Paper Noise’s doing. She meant to use the Schneewaltzer’s Divine Oscillation Effect to place you under a seal…rather than destroy you then and there, that is to say.”

“Sealing me…? Now I get it.”

Kojou touched the scar carved into his right hand as he listened to Kiriha’s explanation. He’d managed to limit the damage to his right hand this time around, but in the worst case, Kojou’s entire body might have been sealed like that. After all, that was the surest way for Koyomi Shizuka to succeed in her objective: not allowing Kojou to leave Itogami Island.

“So what should I do to break this seal?”

“Who knows? For now, how about you drink my blood and see what happens? I won’t tell Yukina.” With another pained smile and a blunt reply, Kiriha turned the nape of her slender neck toward Kojou.

Kiriha’s facial expression was modest, but Kojou shot her a suspicious glare.

“No, you’re lying. You’re sooo gonna tell her.”

“Oh my… I’m so surprised. How ever did you know?”

“Why you thought I’d trust you is the bigger mystery to me…”

Kojou, eyes wide, gave his exasperated response. Kiriha lowered her eyes, seemingly out of consideration for Kojou.

“But with your right hand like that, it’s difficult to have fun on your own at night, isn’t it? You are a boy, after all…”

“Oh, shut up!!”

“…Well then, now that we’ve become closer through light humor, I would like to get to the point…”

“Er, no, we haven’t gotten closer, really…”

If anything, I’m recoiling, thought Kojou with a twitch of his cheek. He just couldn’t get into a rhythm when talking with Kiriha. But…

“I came to say farewell, Kojou Akatsuki.”

“What?”

“I have been called by the Bureau of Astrology to perform my proper duties as a Priestess of the Six Blades.”

Kiriha was suddenly speaking in a very sociable voice. Kojou was a little thrown off at the sudden change in her demeanor.

“Duty of a Priestess of the Six Blades, meaning…?”

“Quelling demon beasts.”

Kiriha stuck her chest out with pride.

Whereas the Sword Shamans of the Lion King Agency were chiefly assigned to battle against demons, Priestesses of the Six Blades—like Kiriha—specialized in the capture and culling of fiendish demon beasts. From Kiriha’s perspective, fighting at Kojou’s side was highly unusual work.

“We will be backing up the Self-Defense Forces in mopping up the swarm of demon beasts that has emerged in the vicinity of Kannawa Lake. I thought I should tell you this before I go.”

“Demon beasts…emerging from Kannawa Lake?”

All warmth vanished from Kojou’s voice. On top of Nagisa, they’d lost contact even with Asagi just after she’d arrived near Kannawa Lake.

“Heh-heh,” went the synthesized voice coursing over the smartphone’s speaker.

“Unfortunately, that is all I can tell you. It would seem that things did not go as the Lion King Agency planned. Or might this be the result they desired, I wonder…?”

Kiriha murmured, seemingly posing that last question to herself.

Then, just as she got up, adorned with droplets of clear, warm water, she said:

“If we both live, let us meet again, Kojou Akatsuki. When that time comes, it would be nice if we could have an actual date, naked.”

“Wait, Kisaki! What do you mean?! What the heck’s happening at Kannawa L—?”

Just as Kiriha began to depart, Kojou instantly stretched his arms toward her back.

In the very next moment, a new intruder burst through the doorway to the bath.

“Kisaki! What are you doing in the men’s bath?! What is the meaning of this aversion ward?!”

The expression on the face of Yukina Himeragi, dressed in a yukata, changed as she rushed into the men’s bath.

She brandished Snowdrift Wolf, which she had likely used to destroy Kiriha’s barrier by force. With a patter, the Oceanus Girls, dressed in pseudo-Japanese maid attire, followed Yukina into the bath.

“H-Himeragi…?!”

Kojou murmured with a raspy voice, frozen with his arms locked around Kiriha.

CHAPTER THREE

THE KNIGHT OF THE SINFUL GOD

1

Iblisveil Aziz, a second-generation, blood descendant of the royal family ruling the Fallen Dynasty of the Middle East, glared at the instant ramen in a white disposable cup.

It seemed he found it difficult to believe that a dish existed that was complete as soon as you poured hot water into it.

“I am supposed to eat this within the container?”

The prince tried to follow Asagi and Lydianne’s example as he separated his chopsticks before gingerly bringing the noodles to his lips. The peculiar scent of the soup had roused suspicion within him, but…

“This is…quite good…”

…his eyes widened in surprise as he slurped a mouthful of noodles.

Though he was a prince, the cheaply seasoned emergency rations packed into the robot tank had agreed with his palate surprisingly well.

“Told you. At high altitudes, the boiling point drops, so the trick to enjoying it is to let it sit until the temperature is just right.”

It was Asagi who spoke those words with a proud look as she dwelled on the finer points of adjusting the water temperature and cooking time.

In contrast, Lydianne said, “Even though I told the chief mechanic over and over that I most prefer miso broth…”

She was mumbling complaints in a small voice as she sipped noodle broth made from a soy base with seafood added in. Asagi quietly made a pained smile at Lydianne acting her age for once when she said, “Come to think of it, are you all right with garlic, Your Highness? Many people take issue with its pungent aroma, no?”

“Only the weaklings of the Warlord’s Empire. There are few of us in the dynasty who mind. Also, you may address me as Iblis. I mind not.”

“All right, Iblis, how about giving this chocolate a try? And after that, try this juice, too. It’s powdered, though.”

“You may have my bean jelly if thou prefer. The coffee-flavored one comes highly recommended by yours truly.”

Asagi and Lydianne continued butting heads over the emergency rations spread out on the vinyl seat. For a time, Iblisveil gazed at the spectacle as if finding it quite mysterious.

“You said Lydianne and Asagi, did you not…? …You both appear to be rather…eccentric.”

“Ah? You think?”

Asagi could not conceal her dismay as she looked back at Iblisveil. Unsurprisingly, she couldn’t quite wrap her head around being treated as an eccentric by a vampire prince.

“Just to get this out of the way, I’m not wearing this weird outfit because I want to. This girl just twisted my arm into wearing it…”

“It makes no difference to me what clothing a pair of brats without a shred of sex appeal like you put on.”

“Hngh…?!”

Asagi’s face twitched in response to Iblisveil’s cold words.

Though Iblisveil had the appearance of a child himself, his chronological age surely ran into the centuries. When thinking of it like that, his treating Asagi and Lydianne as anything but little children seemed too great a stretch.

“However, there are few who address me without fear or favor.” The prince continued, somehow seeming at a loss. “That said, I do not believe you have learned such sorcery that you might be able to oppose me. I am mildly interested in just what your intentions might be.”

“I’m not really…sure what you’re trying to say, but…” Asagi inclined her head a little as she spoke. “If you have no intention of hurting us, there’s no reason to be afraid of you, is there?”

“Even though I am a vampire, and a direct descendant of a primogenitor, at that?”

Something about that seemed to disagree with Iblisveil as he turned his golden eyes toward Asagi.

“Ahh, that’s what you mean,” said Asagi, shrugging her shoulders as she continued. “Well, I was raised on Itogami Island, so…”

“I see… So you are a human from a demon sanctuary.”

This time it was the prince’s turn to understand.

“Ohh,” went Asagi, displaying her interest in Iblisveil’s reaction. “You know about Itogami Island?”

“I had visited it once previously. This time, I merely passed through the airport.”

“Oh, okay,” said Asagi, seeming a little pleased as she nodded. Itogami Island’s central airport was the only place inside Japan from which you could fly nonstop to a demonic Dominion. Naturally, he’d arrived from the Fallen Dynasty by air, entering Japan via Itogami Island.

“I guess I could say, I’ve had normal contact with vampires since I was a little girl, so why should I be afraid now? After all, there’s a lot of good and bad people out there, humans and demons alike.”

“I grant thee, ’tis the first time I am meeting a prince, but I have lived near royals, primogenitors, and the like for some time,” Lydianne agreed, having apparently lived on Itogami Island for a long time herself.

“Goodness,” said Asagi, clicking her tongue. “Ah, right. Iblis, if you came through Itogami Island, are you heading home the same way?”

“I may well be… But what of it?”

Asagi’s sudden question put a curious look on Iblisveil’s face. Seeing it, Asagi glared at Iblisveil with renewed vigor as she said:

“Then, coming to Fighting Ramen at the international border terminal might be worth your while. Itogami Ramen’s thick back fat ramen has its fans, though. Lately, instant stuff is pretty nice, but still, with real ramen, you’re getting the good stuff.” As Asagi began earnestly mulling the issue, she added, “No, wait, Pacific Ramen’s another option.”

Iblisveil continued gazing at her in amazement, his brows still knit as he said, “You are indeed an eccentric.”

Finally, able to restrain himself no longer, the prince of the Fallen Dynasty broke into laughter. He had a cheerful, smiling face, which, if seen by his usual subordinates, would have induced abject panic.

Of course, Asagi had no way of knowing such a thing.

“Er, did I lose you somewhere…?”

Asagi twisted her lips in visible dismay, annoyed as Iblisveil continued laughing and laughing.

2

“Hey, what was with those demon beasts from before anyway?”

Shio Hikawa was standing still in the middle of an icy plain when she posed her question to Gajou Akatsuki.

A Shamanic War Dancer in the field asking Gajou, nothing more than a civilian, for aid was a failure in its own right, but she felt it wasn’t the time to worry about how it looked.

“Demon beasts…huh? If they really are demon beasts, great, but…”

However, Gajou had an abnormally pensive look as he replied. That he, with such an air of composure and mystery about him, had such a hesitant reaction only served to worry Shio all the more.

Shio felt annoyance tinged with resentment at that fact as she asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, this area might’ve been some kind of ruin. The old hag’s words about calamity being buried down here might have been right, after all.”

“Calamity… Could you mean the dragon from earlier…?”

Shio lowered her voice as she recalled the pitch-black shadow in the mist that she’d only see for a second.

Though Shio was an Attack Mage, a genuine dragon was uncharted territory for her. It was said that they were already on the verge of extinction, with only a tiny handful remaining in the Chaos Zone and Africa, but she didn’t know if it was true. It was said that the species, said to achieve greater intellect than human beings over the course of their long lives, occupied a place at the upper extremity of demons and demon beasts. They were known to possess incredible combat capabilities rivaling that of Old Guard vampires.

If a dragon truly had appeared in Kamioda District, she didn’t think the Lion King Organization and the Self-Defense Forces’ encirclement were enough to fend it off. Certainly, calamity was a fitting moniker.

However, in response to Shio’s murmur, Gajou bluntly shook his head.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dragons are guardians, y’see.”

“Guardians…?”

Gajou’s vague, evasive words made Shio turn a perplexed gaze toward him. As she did, he turned straight toward her, giving her the same fishy smile he always did.

“Anyway, we’d best pull back for now. Either way, quelling demon beasts ain’t a specialty of either of us.”

“I suppose you’re… Yeah…”

Shio accepted Gajou’s suggestion with good grace—not because she bought his ambiguous explanation, but because the unconscious Nagisa Akatsuki’s physical endurance tugged at her mind.

The temperature of the cold air shrouding the surface of the lake was clearly below the freezing point. If she continued her defenseless sleep, she was in danger of hypothermia; worst case, she’d freeze to death.

“The mist is…lifting…?”

Just as Shio and Gajou set out, walking toward the nearest riverbank, Gajou murmured thusly with visible displeasure. Still carrying his sleeping, beloved daughter in his arms, his feet came to a halt as he slowly surveyed the surrounding area.

Certainly, Shio sensed that the mist covering the environs of the lake had thinned out, just as Gajou had said. The landscape was still nothing but white mist in the distance, but they were just barely able to make things out on the opposite shore of the lake. I don’t like this, Gajou’s little snort seemed to say, and he added:

“It’s quiet all of a sudden… This ambiance ain’t good.”

The self-described archeologist stared at the ice stretching up above them.

The top of the icy hill he stared at was scarred in an irregular manner. The slope was covered with countless diagonal cracks, marred by bits and pieces with metallic coloring. When Shio realized that this was no mere marring, but the remains of demon beasts ripped to shreds, she made a tiny gasp.

“Who…did this…?!”

It wasn’t simply one or two demon beast corpses. There were forty or fifty, or perhaps even more—the swarm of steel-colored monsters had been slaughtered in one-sided fashion.

Thanks to being concealed by the mist, she hadn’t realized it previously, but in her mind, the surviving demon beasts had likely all been gathered in that place. Then, they had fought someone, perishing to the last.

There was a diminutive figure standing still halfway up the icy slope.

It was a white-haired woman dressed in a dougi uniform. Her hands held a drawn naginata.

“Lady Hisano?!”

Perhaps she heard Shio’s surprised voice, for Hisano slowly turned toward them. Seeing Gajou at Shio’s back, she did not seem especially surprised, merely heaving a tired sigh.

“Shio Hikawa… I see you have rescued Nagisa. You have my thanks.”

“Ah, no, I didn’t really do anything…”

When Hisano voiced her thanks to Shio, the latter hastily shook her head. As a matter of fact, Shio had done nothing save take the unconscious Nagisa into her care.

“Heya, old hag. Is this all your doing?”

Gajou posed the question to Hisano in a coarse tone of voice. Hisano coldly looked back at her own son, thrusting her naginata before Gajou, apparently to show him the lack of blood spatter upon it.

“Surely you jest. I only discovered what you see here a short time ago.”

“…Doesn’t seem to be the SDF’s work, either.”

So spoke Gajou as he turned over a demon beast corpse with the tip of his shoe.

The wounds left on the steel-colored demon beasts were all from bladed weapons, or perhaps sharp talons or the like. The attacks were unthinkable from the firearm-reliant Self-Defense Forces.

“It kind of looks like they were fighting to protect something…”

Shio seemed to be stating her subconscious thoughts out loud. She felt some kind of firm, unified will behind the annihilated demon beasts’ actions. Like a swarm of bees protecting their queen, they hadn’t once attempted to stop the fight until there were none left standing.

Hisano, silent as she listened to Shio’s words, lifted her face as if she had realized something.

“Gajou…”

He nodded back to her with an anguished expression, not turning his head as he posed a rapid-fire question.

“Shio, you use physical enchant magic, right?”

“…I can, but what of it?”

Shio rebutted in mild annoyance at the instructor-like air with which Gajou had spoken. However, when Gajou looked back at her, his face had lost all of its previous composure and reserve. He pushed the body of the still-unconscious Nagisa Akatsuki into Shio’s arms, practically hurling the girl.

“Take Nagisa and go. Get as far from here as you can.”

“Ah?”

Shio felt bewildered as the sun above their heads seemed to darken. A giant, pitch-black shadow was circling above their heads as it descended.

Shio was speechless when she realized what it was.

There was a demon beast above them. A beast far more dangerous and terrifying than mere snake-hornets—

It had a wingspan of forty to fifty meters. It had armor-like scales, and its hind legs were armed with talons like thick blades. It had a long, whiplike tail and a ferocious maw like a carnivorous lizard—

“A w-wyvern…?!”

Dumbfounded, Shio murmured as she looked up at the enormous demon beast descending from the sky.

Once employed as tools of war, a wyvern’s combat capabilities were unquestionably the top class of all flying demon beasts. Though not on par with a true dragon, they were in a different league than other demon beasts. Even a Priestess of the Six Blades from the Bureau of Astrology probably could not destroy it alone.

What rocked Shio even further was the knight’s saddle resting over the wyvern’s back.

Atop the saddle sat a cavalryman with a poised lance—a knight in an iron suit of armor wearing a pitch-black mantle.

“So that’s the guy who slaughtered all the demon beasts, huh?”

Gajou spoke as he raised the machine gun he’d pulled out from the Land of the Dead. Boasting high firepower, it was a brutal-looking heavy machine gun for military use, but it felt terribly inadequate against the enormity of the malevolent wyvern before them.

“…Not one of the good guys, I take it?” he asked, glaring at the iron knight.

The grave expression on Hisano’s face remained as she nodded, glancing toward Shio, with Nagisa Akatsuki in the girl’s arms, and said, “No. Having revealed himself here and now, his objective is most likely—”

“The calamity of Kannawa Lake, huh…? Shit, my worst prediction just had to come true!”

The knight of iron went into motion at the same time that Gajou cursed. All at once, he charged at Shio and the others from above, controlling the wyvern as nimbly as his own hands and feet.

“Gajou, I leave the wyvern to you. I shall deal with the rider—”

“Hey, don’t push it, you’re no spring chicken!”

Hisano and Gajou readied and unleashed their respective weapons.

Gajou’s heavy machine gun roared and spewed flames to intercept the approaching wyvern. The machine gun was loaded with anti-demon, electrum-tipped bullets. However, the rounds that had penetrated the houda scales with ease did nothing against the gunmetal wyvern.

For her part, Hisano unleashed offensive shikigami toward the iron knight.

Silver birds of prey resembling peregrine falcons attacked the knight with the velocity of speeding bullets. It was such an impressive offensive shikigami that it made Shio, a specialist in ritual magic, get chills just from watching.

But Hisano’s shikigami, numbering over a dozen, shattered and dissipated the instant they struck the knight of iron.

He had neither blocked them nor struck them down. The shikigami had been completely nullified and had simply ceased to be.

“What the…?! What’s going on?!”

Bewildered, Shio stared at the sight of Gajou and Hisano’s difficult battle.

However resilient it might be, Shio didn’t think electrum-tipped bullets would just bounce off a wyvern, a mere living creature, leaving it unscathed. A mere human nullifying Hisano’s shikigami without the use of sorcery was even less likely.

Somehow, the resilience of knight and steed alike was uncanny…and unnatural. Furthermore, neither Gajou nor Hisano had any way of overcoming that unnatural nature—

Gajou and Hisano both had likely realized that from the beginning. That was why Gajou had told Shio to go. Run, while we buy as much time as we can…

“Li’l Shio, run!”

Gajou discarded the machine gun and its melted barrel, raising a new weapon: an anti-materiel rifle. Normally, you’d only fire such a huge firearm from a prone position, but Gajou hip-fired it out of sheer stubbornness.

The round, accurately striking right between the wyvern’s eyes, scattered and exploded with incredible magical energy. He had fired a spell gun round: special, precious, and densely packed with magical energy.

The wyvern recoiled greatly, its movements coming to a halt, but this, too, lasted for a mere second. Seeing that it was largely unharmed, Gajou gloomily shook his head, howling with laughter at his own expense.

“A spell gun round…didn’t work…?!”

The unbelievable sight before Shio caused her to unwittingly stop in her tracks.

A moment later, the naginata swung down by Hisano made a metallic, high-pitched creak as it shattered. Hisano, so skilled that the Special Attack Mages employed her as an instructor, was being utterly dominated in combat. It was not that she was weak. Hisano’s attacks were being completely thwarted by the iron knight’s armaments.

“Lady Hisano?!”

Shio could not help but let out a cry at the sight of blood spurting from Hisano. Shio laid Nagisa Akatsuki upon the surface of the frozen lake and lifted up her silver recurve bow.

“—Certify request! Freikugel Plus Proto Three—unlock!”

“Shio, don’t!”

Gajou, covered in blood, shouted at Shio. However, Shio ignored his warning. Under the circumstances present, only Freikugel Plus had any hope of saving Gajou and Hisano. This cutting-edge area suppression weapon, the pride of the Lion King Agency, ought to have been able to annihilate even a wyvern with a single blow—

“I, Dancer of the Lion, Archer of the High God, beseech thee! Let there be light—!”

Shio poured in the last of her ritual energy and unleashed a maximum power attack.

The spell arrow she had nocked let out a whistle, tracing a high-density magic circle beyond human limits. This generated an enormous, magical cannonball with vast magical energy rivaling vampiric Beast Vassals.

The iron knight took the blazing beam on his own mantle.

The knight’s mantle ate away at thin air like ink on the surface of water, changing into a pitch-black aura lacking any thickness that enveloped Shio’s attack.

Then Shio’s ritual spell cannon attack was swallowed up by the darkness and vanished.

Without a sound, vast magical energy that could burn even a wyvern to a crisp in a single blow…disappeared.

It was almost as if the attack had never existed in the first place—

“N…no way…”

Shio was still in her shooting follow-through as her entire body cringed.

The knight of iron calmly looked back in Shio’s direction. Without a sound, the flying wyvern swooped toward her.

The knight aimed the tip of the lance toward Shio’s heart. Even so, Shio did not move. She’d unleashed ritual energy beyond her limits. Her entire body was completely drained of spiritual strength.

Shio’s eyes watched the glimmering lance approach her heart in slow motion.

Thud! went the dull impact.

Shio’s face twisted in sharp pain as she was knocked onto the icy plain from behind.

Warm, fresh blood fell onto her cheek.

It was not Shio’s blood that had been shed. Shio was not wounded……for someone had shielded her—and was impaled by the lance in her place.

With an impudent smile, the stubble-faced middle-aged man fell on top of Shio, drenched in fresh blood.

“Uugh… Aagh…”

Shio’s voice trickled out from her throat. Gajou remained motionless, eyes closed. An incredible amount of blood was flowing out of his back. He had shielded Shio, taking the iron knight’s attack in her place.

“No… No, this wasn’t what I… This can’t be happening…”

Shio weakly shook her head. But she, too, already knew the truth: This was her fault. Ignoring Gajou’s warning, she’d attacked the knight of iron—and thanks to that, Gajou had been grievously wounded.

It was Shio’s reckless act that had put Gajou and Hisano in this position.

As a result, even Nagisa Akatsuki had been exposed to danger—the very girl Gajou was trying to protect, even at the risk of his own life.

In a raspy voice, Gajou said to Shio…

“R…un…Shio… Even if it’s just you…!”

Shio made a wordless scream. She truly desired to save him, even if that meant sacrificing her own life. And yet, as she was in that moment, there was nothing Shio could do.

The wyvern’s cold eyes gazed down at them from above.

The wyvern’s talons, resembling thick scythes, swung downward toward Gajou and Shio as they lay motionless.

It was an instant later that she felt vast demonic energy coursing nearby.

“—Shakala!”

She heard a beautiful voice full of composure and majesty.

Simultaneously, the enormous frame of the gunmetal wyvern was blown away as it sustained a blow backed by incredible demonic energy.

In actuality, this explosive power reminiscent of a natural disaster was a sentient mass of demonic energy taking physical form. It was a vampire’s Beast Vassal with the form of a giant snake.

The blond, blue-eyed vampire who had dragged the summoned beast in from another world stood at Shio’s and Gajou’s side.

“Who…are…?”

Shio looked up at the young man as she asked. However, the vampire noble did not reply.

“Kira, Tobias—you take care of that. At long last, I have found a lead. I must offer suitable hospitality.”

The young aristocrat glared at the iron knight he himself had sent flying as he addressed his subordinates. Then, ignoring him and Shio alike, he approached Nagisa Akatsuki, lying atop the ice.

Intermission iii

Around the same time as when Yuiri Haba and the others were under attack by the monsters…

The vehicle Kojou and Yukina were aboard was kicking up a dust cloud as it raced across a winding mountain road.

The vehicle was a North American Union–manufactured Armored Personnel Carrier. It was not a vehicle from the Self-Defense Forces. The vehicle had a diplomatic license plate attached to it.

The driver was the Oceanus Girls’ platinum-blonde beauty, wearing fatigues with a bandanna wrapped around her head. Navigation from the assistant driver’s seat was handled by a rich-looking girl with a blue kerchief.

Kojou, Yukina, and the rest of the Oceanus Girls were riding in the APC’s passenger compartment.

The cargo compartment was cramped—chock full of a large quantity of firearms and munitions. Kojou and Yukina were sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder. Now that the uniform cleaning was finally complete, they were on their way to rescue Nagisa.

However, they did not speak to each other. All that passed between them was a heavy, strained silence.

Yukina’s mood had been thoroughly soured ever since the bath incident.

“Now, Himeragi, about that stuff earlier—”

Unable to bear the unpleasant atmosphere, Kojou reluctantly broached the subject. However, Yukina did not meet his eyes as she bluntly shook her head.

“It is quite all right. There is no problem.”

“Huh…? How do you figure that?”

“I saw nothing. Therefore, I have no knowledge of senpai’s indecent exposure.”

“I wasn’t indecent! I was just naked in the bath!” Kojou replied irritably, trying to avoid what Yukina was insisting.

She gave him a cold, half-lidded glare as she said, “Kisaki was wearing a swimsuit just fine.”

“She decided to come in all on her own! And having a swimsuit or not ain’t the problem—it’s that Kisaki barged into the men’s bath!”

“Haah.” Yukina sighed. “I suppose that’s true,” she said half-heartedly.

“Just to make this clear, having you peek on me in the bath isn’t enough to bother me so you don’t need to worry about it, Himeragi. Nagisa’s walked in on me when I’m changing clothes, so this is nothing new.”

All the same, when Kojou blithely walked in when his little sister was getting dressed, she didn’t speak a word to him for three days, something he still felt was unreasonable to the extreme.

“It…it was not that I was peeking…but if that is what you say, I shall not mind it.”

For some reason, Yukina’s demeanor suddenly softened when she heard Kojou’s words. She made a tiny cough to clear her throat as he saw a soft, pleasant smile come over her. She’d been so taken aback by the explanation Kojou had given that her mood underwent a dramatic change.

Overhearing Kojou and Yukina’s conversation from the driver’s seat, the beautiful girl with the red bandanna asked the girl with the blue kerchief, “Hey, Martha…normally, being treated the same as someone’s little sister makes a girl angry I think, so why is Yukina in such a good mood?”

Martha giggled, revealing a knowing smile as she said, “You see, Vika, the Fourth Primogenitor is particularly known as a man…who has a thing for little sister types.”

“Ahh! So being in the same category as his little sister means that’s how much he cares about her. Wow!”

“We can hear you, y’know!”

Wow, my ass, thought Kojou, pressing a palm to his cheek in a visible sulk.

“N-no, I’m not in that great of a mood because of that!”

Yukina’s face was beet red as she spoke. However, as she did so, the Oceanus Girls turned warm, smiling faces toward her that seemed to say, It’s okay, we get it.

“…And for that matter, why are you girls coming with us? I mean, I’m grateful you’re driving us all the way to Kannawa Lake and all…,” Kojou said with a sigh, though his question was somewhat late at this point.

Martha, the girl in the blue kerchief, glanced back at Kojou, tossing a suggestive smile his way as she said,

“The Duke of Ardeal commanded us to give the Fourth Primogenitor our utmost hospitality, you see.”

“Besides, we can’t let such an interesting…er, amazing situation slip by…er, escape our attention, so!” Gripping the wheel, the voice of the girl in the red bandanna suddenly spiked at the end.

“Well, thanks.” Kojou’s shoulders sank in dejection as a listless, dry laugh trickled out of him.

Though they were aiding Kojou as he risked his life to rescue his little sister, it was apparently no more than an amusement to pass the time for them. Somehow, even thanking them for it felt wrong. It seemed less Vattler’s mischievous nature spreading to them than a bunch of celebrities with way too much time on their hands.

But since their passing the time was helping him out, he couldn’t exactly object.

Up ahead were SDF soldiers standing at the fork for the narrow road heading to Kannawa Lake. A checkpoint.

“Civilian vehicles are not permitted past this point. Please turn around.”

A guardsman spoke those words to them as he stared suspiciously at the APC’s diplomatic license plate.

From the driver’s seat, Vika shot Kojou a delighted expression. OK if I bust through the checkpoint? was her unspoken question to Kojou.

Certainly, given the APC’s specs, busting through the checkpoint barricade was not a difficult task, but he mentally cringed at pointlessly making enemies of the SDF. That said, he didn’t think politely explaining the situation would result in being allowed to pass.

What should we do? Kojou pondered. That moment, Yukina suddenly rose to her feet. She leaned over toward the driver’s seat and stated to the soldier at the checkpoint with a businesslike tone:

“Bureau of Astrology. I am heading to Kannawa Lake on a demon beast subjugation assignment.”

“Bureau of Astrology?”

“You have heard it is an emergency, I take it?”

“Ah…yes, but…”

“I have an Attack Mage license and ID. Please confirm for yourself.”

“Priestess of the Six Blades…t-twenty-nine years old?!”

The soldier’s eyes went wide with surprise when he checked the ID that Yukina had passed to him. Then he glanced at the ID photo one more time, comparing it to Yukina’s face.

“Is there something amiss?”

The corner of Yukina’s lips twitched as she raised a particularly frigid voice.

“No. Pardon my rudeness.”

The SDF soldier swiftly saluted, lifting the barricade to let Kojou’s car through.

“Thanks,” said Vika, the girl in the red bandana, politely waving as she put the vehicle into motion.

Then, when the SDF soldiers were no longer in sight, the interior of the vehicle was engulfed in bursts of laughter, both at how Yukina had presented herself as twenty-nine with a straight face, and how funny it was that the soldier had completely fallen for it.

“Why do you find that so funny—?!”

Yukina was glaring at Kojou with annoyance. Kojou wiped tears from the corners of his eyes as he said,

“No, I’m, like… The fake IDs Kisaki gave us were actually helpful.”

“Urgh…”

Why did I have to go through this? thought Yukina, resentfully biting her lip. Kiriha Kisaki had given them fake Bureau of Astrology IDs before parting their separate ways. They had proven their worth moments earlier, but setting Yukina’s age so that she was “pushing thirty” felt like malice on Kiriha’s part.

“Fourth Primogenitor…” In the assistant driver’s seat, Martha addressed Kojou in a gentle voice.

The smiles on the faces of the remaining Oceanus Girls vanished.

Multiple SDF vehicles were approaching their APC from the other direction. The vehicles bore numerous scars, perhaps traces of combat with demon beasts, causing a painful air to hover over them. The driving was sloppy for vehicles going downhill on a narrow mountain road. They were like a routed army with no time to worry about such petty concerns. The faces of the troops riding the vehicles bore a bizarre amount of tension—and unconcealed fear.

“It appears they are transporting casualties.”

“Yeah…but something’s weird.”

Kojou both agreed with Yukina’s murmur as he felt separate doubts.

If they were retreating with casualties in tow, he could understand the anxiety he sensed from them. But the raw fear emanating from them was plainly separate from the exhaustion and fatigue engendered by their injuries.

It was as if they were desperately fleeing from a foe drawing near—

“Stop the car!!”

Kojou shouted as soon as he felt the presence of enormous demonic energy.

By that time, Vika had already hit the brakes. The APC slid against the shoulder against the road, riding up it at an incline, whereupon Kojou immediately leaped out.

He could see giant figures standing on the other side of densely packed trees—gleaming, metallic, humanoid monsters.

“Himeragi, that’s—”

“Yes, golems. The ritual is not one I have seen before, but there is little doubt…!”

Yukina replied as she deployed her folded silver spear.

Kojou audibly clenched his teeth. It was still some distance between them and Kannawa Lake, where Nagisa awaited. He’d never imagined their path would be obstructed by monsters in a place like that.

“Please, all of you, stay here! If it looks bad, don’t think—run!” Kojou shouted to the Oceanus Girls as they began preparing weapons.

“We understand.”

“We have no intention of hindering you.”

“Fight well.”

The girls replied with tones of voice that somehow felt rather refined.

Thanks, said Kojou’s silent nod as he raced toward the monsters. It was a moment later that his vision caught sight of a new demon beast.

“What the…?! A dragon?!”

Kojou grimaced when he saw it. It had the body of a serpent and malevolent wings, four stout limbs and an enormous frame.

Dragons were so rare that they were rumored to be extinct; even in Itogami Island, a Demon Sanctuary, none had ever set sight on the species. The sudden appearance of such an endangered species took him by surprise. Even so, Kojou’s feet did not stop. He’d seen Nalakuveras and Leviathan; he was a bit shocked that a “mere” dragon was not enough to stop him in his tracks.

There was a girl in a school uniform wielding a long, silver sword, trying to protect that dragon.

“Yuiri?!”

Noticing the girl, Yukina called out her name in surprise.

“Himeragi, you know her?”

“She is a Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency. We were at High God Forest together—”

I see, thought Kojou, exhaling in relief. Steel-colored monsters that looked like products of sorcery, or a girl protecting a wounded dragon—the faint, remaining conflict over which side to help vanished from his mind.

“Guess we don’t need to worry about which side to lend a hand to!”

“Right!”

Clenching her silver spear, Yukina leaped toward the monsters. For his part, Kojou summoned one of his Beast Vassals to support her.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE PRIMOGENITOR AND THE DRAGON

1

“Yukina…”

Yuiri, the girl in the school uniform, murmured as she gazed dumbfounded at Yukina.

Kojou gave a little smile and thought, I get it. Yukina’s words were true—this girl really was a Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency. Siding with her was the right call after all.

“Is that the golems’ boss…? She sure looks like it, but…”

Kojou slightly knit his brows, glaring at the woman who wore her silver charcoal robe like a true magician. It didn’t look as if she was cosplaying, and he didn’t think someone would go out in that getup without an actual reason.

“Fourth Primogenitor…”

The magic user gazed at Kojou in annoyance as she spoke. Her gaze was cold, as if looking at garbage by the roadside.

“You know about me…?” Kojou inquired back in surprise.

However, the silver charcoal magic user said nothing in return.

A moment after the woman wordlessly hoisted her rod, an enormous roar made Kojou’s skin tremble.

“What the—?!”

“Senpai, behind you!”

Yukina shouted at the confused Kojou. When Kojou looked back, his eyes beheld the sight of an enormous demon beast beating the trees down as it advanced. It was a two-legged, pterosaur-like creature with a wingspan reaching tens of meters.

“Wha?! The heck is that?!”

“A wyvern—!”

Yukina thrust Kojou aside as the wyvern’s talons raced past, barely missing the top of Kojou’s head. He’d nearly had his head taken off.

“Shit…! C’mon over, Regulus Aurum!”

Kojou commanded his own Beast Vassal to strike back. As the lion materialized via vast demonic energy, it moved to swipe a foreleg down right before the wyvern’s eyes.

But the gunmetal magic user went on the move before it connected. A black aura filtering out from the inside of the woman’s robe spread like ink covering the water’s surface, obstructing Kojou’s Demon Beast’s path.

Heedless, the lightning lion tried to rip it asunder, but—

“What?!”

The instant it touched the pitch-black aura, the lion’s foreleg bounced off without a sound. The thunder and lightning surrounding the Beast Vassal dissipated and vanished; not even a spark remained.

The wyvern enveloped by the aura was unharmed. It had merely been knocked off-balance from the shock of the collision.

Yukina’s eyes went wide, like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “It…withstood an attack from the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassal?!”

A Beast Vassal was a condensed amalgamation of demonic energy; no living being could withstand a blow from such a thing. It was said that nothing could defeat a Beast Vassal save smashing it with even greater magical energy—but there was a single exception.

“Himeragi, just now…!”

“Yes. It is the same as during the Black Bible Incident…!”

Yukina clenched her silver spear as a grave expression came over her.

There was one other way to oppose a Beast Vassal: complete nullification of its demonic energy. That was why Yukina, the observer of the Fourth Primogenitor, had been granted a Schneewaltzer, which possessed that very ability.

So far as Kojou and Yukina knew, there was but a single way to nullify demonic energy other than with a Schneewaltzer—the Black Bible once employed by Aya Tokoyogi. With it, she had rendered Kojou’s Beast Vassals powerless by turning Itogami Island into a world where supernatural power did not exist.

The black energy employed by the silver charcoal magic user greatly resembled the ability of the Black Bible.

“Glenda…”

When the wyvern swooped down, the silver charcoal magic user murmured bitterly, gazing at the fallen dragon as she leaped on the wyvern’s back.

“Wait………!”

When Kojou attempted to summon a new Beast Vassal to strike down the retreating wyvern, his face grimaced with pain. His right hand was pleading for mercy, feeling a pain as if it had been burned. It was his wound from where Paper Noise had stabbed him with Snowdrift Wolf back on Itogami Island.

“Senpai…your hand…”

Noticing something was wrong with Kojou, Yukina’s face went pale as she rushed over. He’d instantly meant to hide it, but she’d noticed too soon.

“Yeah, it’s a bit messed up.” He smiled as he broke into a sweat from the fierce pain. “It’s no biggie.” There was Yuiri and a fallen dragon right beside them. He didn’t think giving Yukina extra worries was a good idea.

“Backlash from summoning the Beast Vassal?”

“Could be.”

Crack-like scars had spread over the back of his right hand. The exact cause was unclear, but the combat a moment ago seemed to have made his symptoms worse.

“More importantly, Himeragi, these girls are—”

Seeing for himself that the immediate danger had passed, Kojou looked behind him. Yuiri, with her long sword, should have been right there with the wounded, fallen dragon, but…

“D-don’t look—!”

Nervousness came over the girl’s face as she stared at Kojou and shrieked.

The dragon was changing shape within the school-uniformed Sword Shaman’s very arms—from an enormous dragon to a small, silver-haired girl. She looked about thirteen or fourteen, and she had an adorable face.

And of course, the girl was not wearing anything. The clothes she’d originally been wearing had most likely been ripped into shreds when she’d transformed into a dragon.

“Ah?” Yukina exclaimed, less surprised by the dragon changing form than by the fact she was naked.

“Huh…?!”

Kojou was just as surprised as she was. He was frozen with shock as he stared at the dragon girl’s naked human body. Yuiri was desperately trying to shield her, but her efforts were largely futile; perhaps she was in a panic herself.

“Senpai, how long are you going to stare?”

Yukina, the first to regain her composure, obstructed Kojou’s vision with a hand as she glared at him.

“S-sorry! My bad!”

Kojou gasped and snapped back to his senses, turning his face aside as he spoke.

It was then that the malicious whispers of multiple people rode a cold wind to reach Kojou’s ears.

“H-hey.”

“Yeah, it’s a vampire… What’s a demon doing here…?”

“And that girl—is she…a beast person?”

Wounded SDF troops were staring at Kojou as they surrounded him from a distance. The troops were meeting one another’s eyes as they continued to whisper in low voices. Kojou was unused to their hostile, inquisitive gazes. It was an emotion largely unexperienced by him to date.

Hostility and fear toward demons—

“Senpai…”

Yukina gently moved her body close to Kojou’s, almost as if lending him support.

Kojou felt her warmth as he slowly looked up at the sky. It was covered with low, thin, gray clouds in the dead of winter, a season never to intrude on Itogami Island’s endless summer—

“Ah…yeah.”

That’s right, thought Kojou as it finally hit him.

“This isn’t a Demon Sanctuary, I guess.”

2

Still held aloft by the robot tank’s manipulator arm, Shio Hikawa returned to the rampart of Kamioda Dam. The wounded Hisano Akatsuki, Gajou, and the still-sleeping Nagisa were with them as well.

“Japan’s defense forces were brutalized, I see.”

Iblisveil made the icy declaration as he gazed upon the wreckage of demolished armored vehicles.

With the arrival of medical platoon troops on the rampart, aid was being rendered to those wounded in action. When the robot tank stopped a short distance away, Shio began administering first aid to Gajou and Hisano. The disappearance of Yuiri Haba weighed upon her, but treating the wounded came first.

Raised to be assassins, the Shamanic War Dancers of the Lion King Agency were exceedingly well versed in the layout of the human body. They also received considerable training in life-saving treatments due to frequently being assigned VIP escort missions. Borrowing a first-aid kit stuffed into a tank, Shio somehow managed to finish treating their injuries.

Hisano’s and Gajou’s wounds ran deep, but fortunately, they did not appear to be life-threatening. Even in such a perilous situation, they had been able to protect their vital spots. That said, it was, of course, impossible for them to fight any further.

“It would seem you are the only one present capable of proper conversation, girl.”

It was the prince of the Fallen Dynasty who addressed the meek-of-spirit, half-beside-herself Shio.

“First, allow me to ask your name. You would appear to be a human Attack Mage, but why is a child such as yourself here?”

Shio slowly turned to him. You’re the child here, she was in danger of saying out loud, but she swallowed the words.

She’d recovered a little of her depleted willpower, likely from adrenaline secretions from her anger.

“Your Highness Iblisveil Aziz, I am Shio Hikawa, a Shamanic War Dancer of the Lion King Agency.”

Shio rose to her feet and looked straight toward the vampire prince. Oh, went Iblisveil, raising an eyebrow in amusement at Shio’s spirited demeanor.

A girl with an extravagant hairstyle poked her head out of the tank’s hatch and asked Shio from above, “The Lion King Agency… You’re with Himeragi?”

She had the spectacular face of a magazine model, and her name was written on a name space over her breasts. Her outfit seemed rather provocative, and Shio had no idea why she was wearing it. Shio was thinking this was a person who lived in a different world than she did, leaving her somewhat surprised at the name coming from the girl’s lips.

“You know Yukina Himeragi, er… Asagi…Aiba?”

“Huh? How do you know my name…?”

For an instant, the beautiful girl with model-grade beauty tilted her head with a questioning look, then gasped and looked down at her breasts. Her cheeks went scarlet as she quickly covered up the space upon which her name had been written.

“I-it’s not what you think! I was forced to wear this stupid thing to get in the tank, so—”

“R-right.”

First impressions aside, she’s kinda cute, thought Shio, all tension draining away.

Contrary to her appearance, she was quick with her wits. If she was in plainer clothes, she’d probably have boys falling all over her, she thought with a twinge of pity, not that it was really her problem. Either way, the fact that she knew Yukina Himeragi made it likely she, too, was connected to the Fourth Primogenitor. If that was the case, Shio could understand the girl being here.

“Well then, Shio and company, I would ask of you the circumstances. What is your objective, and why have the Cleansers appeared in this land?” Iblisveil resumed his cross-examination of Shio.

Shio bit her lip a little, unsure just what to say.

The boy before her eyes was a prince of another country—furthermore, a vampire of the Fallen Dynasty. Unable to determine whether he was the Lion King Agency’s ally, Shio couldn’t divulge details of the operation to him on her own authority—even if the result was to court Iblisveil’s anger.

“I am…not authorized to speak about—” Shio’s lips trembled as she replied.

“Oh, so you refuse to answer my question, Shio Hikawa. There is value in a faithful hound.”

Iblisveil smiled ferociously. The raw bloodlust emanating from him chilled Shio’s entire body.

“However, if you have no intention of informing he who saved your lives, you are already beneath any beast. Therefore, I must administer appropriate discipline. Perhaps you will be more forthcoming with information after I have torn off one of your limbs—”

Shio could not avert her eyes from the gleaming-white fangs bared by Iblisveil’s smile.

She had a premonition: If she let her guard down for a split second, she would be killed. Cold sweat rose from her every pore. Asagi Aiba is no normal person if she’s fine working with a monster like this, thought Shio.

The fact that Shio still did not bend to Iblisveil’s coercion was due to competitiveness toward her junior, Yukina Himeragi. It was said that Yukina monitored the Fourth Primogenitor, even more of a monster than Iblisveil, twenty-four hours a day. Shio, wanting with all her heart not to lose to her own junior, endured his intimidation.

Seeing Shio like that, Iblisveil grinned with even greater amusement, his ghastly, oppressive might increasing in turn, when…

“Hold up, Your Highness. That’s a little too much teasing for an earnest girl like this. I’m a civilian, so I don’t mind bringing you up to speed on the circumstances.”

Gajou, lying on an army cot, sat up and addressed Iblisveil. In no time at all, the oppressive energy binding Shio in place vanished like it had never existed.

“Gajou?! Are you fit enough to be talking?!”

Asagi stared at the gravely wounded Gajou as she posed her question.

“Ohh, Asagi, huh? The outfits you high schoolers are wearing these days sure are daring. You’re wasted on that fool Kojou.”

“Gyaaa!” went Asagi, letting out a cry as she sank back into the tank.

If only I was only ten years younger, thought Gajou with genuine regret. However, even as he casually shot the breeze, his blood loss caught up with him and his face went pale.

“It’s a tough haul, but I’m managing somehow, thanks to the first aid you gave me, Shio. And to be blunt, I’m gonna pass out if I keep talkin’ like this.”

“…Gajou Akatsuki, the Death Returnee, is it? I heard you were at Dodekatos’s excavation site, but just as rumor would have it, you are a most frivolous man.” Iblisveil cast his eyes on Gajou in minimal admiration. “However, I do not mind if it is you instead. Answer me, then, Gajou Akatsuki. What is the Cleansers’ objective? And what are you doing at this lake?”

“To be blunt, I don’t know for sure what the terrorists want. But what I can say for certain is that the Lion King Agency’s goal is to seal Avalon. So before I knew it, the lake was all frozen like this, and the demon beasts appeared out of the blue—”

“Avalon? What is that?” Iblisveil furrowed his brows as he redirected the witness.

“A relic of The Cleansing. That’s the cover story, at least. Supposedly, a god-killing weapon sealed by the Devas, just like the Fourth Primogenitor.”

“Hmph, I see… You used Dodekatos’s demonic energy to try to seal a relic of The Cleansing, did you not? Only short-lived humans would think of coming up with names for god-killing weapons.”

Iblisveil slowly surveyed the frozen Kannawa Lake. Vast demonic energy that could freeze over sixty million cubic tons of artificial lake water was surely a threat to Iblisveil as well. A look of awe mixed with exasperation came over him.

“So this glacier is the work of Alrescha Glacies, then. Even removed from the blood and flesh of the host, what incredible strength! …Though it irritates me to speak the words, it is not called a primogenitor’s Beast Vassal for nothing. Were Avalon a simple god-killing weapon, this might well be able to seal it away.”

“Then, why…?” Shio murmured, unwittingly speaking aloud.

Truthfully, the resealing of Avalon had failed, and a great number of demon beasts had spawned. This had invited the pernicious terrorists known as the Cleansers to intervene. The Lion King Agency’s operation had failed.

“That is self-evident. This Avalon you attempted to seal was not a god-killing weapon at all. I am skeptical that it was even sealed away to begin with.”

Iblisveil made the assertion in a scornful tone. His words left Shio reeling.

“B-but…if what we tried to seal wasn’t a god-killing weapon, then what exactly is Avalon…?”

“Why, when you heard it was a relic of The Cleansing, did you assume it was a weapon?”

“Huh?”

Iblisveil’s question struck Shio like a sucker punch.

She’d accepted the explanations from Shirona Kuraki and the others without a single doubt, so she’d never realized it, but now that someone had brought it up, the link between relic and weapon was a dubious one. Why did I trust that it was a dangerous weapon hidden inside Avalon without question? regretfully thought Shio.

There hadn’t been a single shred of evidence to prove such a thing; none, save the vague folklore that calamity slept within.

“The first thing people think of when they hear the word relic is some kind of treasure. If it was, say, a divine treasure granted to the one qualified to succeed the Sinful God—well, that would be under some serious protection.”

“So it was being protected rather than sealed away… Then, don’t tell me, the dragon we saw earlier was…”

“A dragon…you say?”

When Shio spoke, it was Iblisveil’s turn to be taken aback.

“Shio Hikawa. You saw a dragon?”

“Y-yes. But it was for only a second, and because the mist is in the way, I don’t know where it is now…”

Shio’s voice went shrill under the scrutiny of Iblisveil’s glare.

The enormous crevice left in the frozen surface of the lake came to the back of her mind. It was an unnatural fissure—as if some enormous creature had crawled out of it. Perhaps that was a trace left behind by a dragon sleeping at the bottom of the lake.

Poking her head out from the tank’s hatch, Asagi Aiba skeptically murmured, “A dragon… A real, live dragon?”

“If it was flying around, we’d catch sight of it pretty fast, I’d think… I mean, there’s still a ton of SDF troops around.”

Hearing this, Gajou, still on top of the army cot, leaped to his feet as he suddenly realized something. “The SDF…! I see… So that’s how it is… Ow!!”

“Ah, Gajou Akatsuki?”

“My, my,” said Iblisveil, shaking his head in exasperation, when his gaze suddenly sharpened. “Asagi, Lydianne…take shelter inside the tank for the time being.”

“What?”

Iblisveil’s sudden warning confused Asagi.

The vampire prince was glaring at a group of soldiers walking across the embankment. The armed men were heading straight toward Shio and company.

“Keep your heads down. You do not wish for trouble with the local authorities, I trust?”

“Ah, yeah. Sorry, we’ll let you handle this.”

“I am in your debt, Lord Iblis.”

“Hmph.”

The pair in the robot tank closed the pilot-seat hatch. Civilians like Lydianne Didier and Asagi Aiba riding a tank in an area closed by the Self-Defense Forces was an issue, but if they looked like retainers of Iblisveil, the SDF couldn’t lay a finger on them—that was most likely the basis of Iblisveil’s thinking. Shio found it surprising that Iblisveil would show such consideration toward the two girls.

“Who are they, Shio Hikawa?” Iblisveil asked the girl.

His attention was on the man with the soldiers who looked like a commanding officer. The man’s entire body was wrapped in fresh bandages; perhaps he’d been involved in combat with the demon beasts.

“Major Azama of the SDF, the officer in command of this operation…”

“Hmm… I see.” Iblisveil smirked suggestively.

When Shio saw that smile, another light went on in her mind. Asagi’s words, Gajou’s reaction, and now the doubts inside Shio herself—her doubts only piled higher.

Special Major Azama’s feet came to a halt in front of Shio and the others as he inquired, “Attack Mage Hikawa, who are these people? And is High Priest Akatsuki injured?”

Gajou Akatsuki replied to the question in a joking tone, “She ain’t hurt all that bad. That hag’s in stupidly good shape.”

“Are you a civilian…? It seems you are gravely wounded,” Azama said as he examined the blood-covered Gajou. Then he glanced at Iblisveil and said, “And that is a demon? I want to hear about this in detail afterward… But treating the wounded takes priority. First, please hand over the girl…Nagisa Akatsuki.”

Azama’s gaze shifted to the still sleeping girl in a priestess outfit.

The next moment, Shio went to Nagisa Akatsuki’s side, seemingly shielding her as she glared at Azama, who slightly knit his brows at Shio’s inexplicable behavior.

“Attack Mage Hikawa?”

“Unfortunately, I cannot obey that order.”

Shio stretched a hand to her hip holster, gripping the silver recurve bow mounted therein. “Freikugel Plus Proto Three—unlock.”

She nocked a fresh arrow to her bow, silently pulling the drawstring.

“Please stay where you are, Major Azama.”

With that statement, Shio angled the tip of her arrow, pointing it at Azama’s heart.

3

“The prince…of the Fallen Dynasty?”

Sitting on the shoulder of a winding mountain road, Kojou peered at the screen of a modified smartphone. He was speaking to an avatar resembling a badly sewn teddy bear.

“The heck? Why is a guy like that with Asagi?”

“It seems that Li’l Miss Asagi and company managed to reel him in with a cup of ramen.”

“Wait—reel him in?”

Reeling a vampire prince in with a cup of ramen—Kojou had no idea what that meant. But it seemed Asagi was not in any imminent peril.

“I don’t really get it, but anyway, seems like Nagisa and the others are safe. For now, I’ll let your side take care of it. Tell Asagi it’s gonna take a little more time to meet up with her.”

“Roger that.”

Leaving those words behind, Mogwai vanished from the screen. Kojou let out a sigh as he returned the smartphone to his parka’s pocket. The modified smartphone’s battery charge was finally reaching a worrisome state.

“Nagisa is safe and sound, I take it?”

Yukina, sitting opposite Kojou, seemed to have posed the question to remind him of the fact. Seeing her look of relief, Kojou mixed a pained smile with a nod.

“Yeah, everyone seems more or less all right.”

Seems Dad almost bought it, though, he added in his mind.

It was then that the girl called Yuiri rushed to Kojou’s and Yukina’s side, bowing her head. She was practically prostrating herself before them.

“I’m very sorry!”

“Eh?”

Kojou was taken aback as he looked at the girl.

Yuiri was a bit taller than Yukina. Her hair reached her shoulders, and she gave off the impression of an honors student, perhaps because of the forelocks framing the sides of her face. Quite unlike his initial perception of her, she was overly serious and prone to fiercely set her mind on something. He couldn’t help but be reminded of Yukina.

In self-reproach, Yuiri said, “Really, I was the one who was supposed to be protecting your little sister, but I lost sight of her…and Nagisa faced danger because of that—”

“Y-yeah… But she ended up safe and sound, so…,” Kojou replied, a little perplexed.

“No, I was woefully insufficient. I am very sorry.”

Yuiri bowed her head deeply. Conflicted, Kojou shook his own head as he turned to Yukina.

“Hey, Himeragi… Is she really in the Lion King Agency?”

“Yes. She is in the year above me, a particularly exceptional Sword Shaman candidate.”

“Oh. That’s kinda surprising.”

“In what way?” Yukina inclined her head a little, blinking curiously as she stared.

“Hmmm,” went Kojou, seriously mulling the issue over when he said, “Nah, I was just thinking, she has her head screwed on pretty straight for someone involved with the Lion King Agency.”

“I’m sorry?”

He felt like there was an audible krik as Yukina’s cheek twitched.

“Are you somehow implying…I have some kind of personality issue?”

When Yukina replied with half-lidded eyes, Kojou stuttered a “Well, you know” as he twisted his lips and gave an assenting nod.

“The people in the Lion King Agency who I know pretty much all tried to kill me the first time they met me, you know? First you, then Kirasaka, then that Paper Noise chick just the other day—”

“A-at the time, it was because you looked at me with indecent eyes, senpai—!”

“I did not! That was an accident—a total accident!”

Yuiri watched the raggedly voiced argument between Kojou and Yukina, her face full of surprise. Her mental image of the watcher of the Fourth Primogenitor crumbled away—so said her face, at least.

As Yuiri, at a loss, stood rooted to the spot, a tiny figure rushed toward her. It was the dragon girl, her long silver hair fluttering behind her.

“Yuiriii!”

“Glenda? What happened? Where did you get those clothes…?”

Yuiri’s eyes widened as Glenda leaped and embraced her, nearly bowling her over.

Glenda was wearing a large military jacket and combat boots, accentuated by earmuffs.

“We went ahead and had her pick from the stuff we had left over.”

Along with Glenda, the Oceanus Girls had returned. Yuiri had an almost frightened look, bowing her head to the troupe of beautiful girls of uncertain nationality.

“Th-thank you very much,” Yuiri said. “They look good on you, Glenda.”

“Eh-heh-heh.”

Praised by Yuiri, Glenda narrowed her eyes and smiled happily. It was an unbelievably adorable smiling face for a girl who’d been an enormous dragon not long ago.

“Um, incidentally, who are all of you…?”

With the dragon girl still coiled all about her, Yuiri regarded the Oceanus Girls. It was an obvious question to ask.

“I have been most rude,” said the beautiful blonde in the red bandanna, elegantly curtseying in her military fatigues. “Forgive my late introduction. I am the Fourth Primogenitor’s wife.”

“What?!”

Yuiri blinked hard and her jaw dropped open, the unexpected answer rendering her speechless.

With calm, collected faces, the four remaining foreign-born girls smiled and revealed their relationships with Kojou one after the other:

“Similarly, I am his concubine.”

“Lover.”

“Sex buddy.”

“Harem member, you could say…”

“Huh?! Wha…?!”

Yuiri was so surprised that her head was like a swivel as she looked between the girls’ faces and Kojou’s.

Kojou, unexpectedly finding himself the victim of slander, hastily wedged himself into Yuiri’s exchange with the Oceanus Girls and insisted, “Don’t believe them! It’s not like that, not one little bit!!”

“B-but the Fourth Primogenitor could have five or six wives or lovers, and no one would—”

“I said it’s not like that! Himeragi, say something, please!”

Kojou sought aid from Yukina, believing she should establish his innocence. However, Yukina simply shook her head in an emotionless sulk.

“I am merely your observer. I have an abnormal personality after all.”

“You’re still mad about that?!”

His last hope cut away, Kojou clutched his head and made an exaggerated wail.

For a while, Yuiri stared at the panicked Kojou in amazement until finally, unable to bear it any longer, she let out laughter in a giggly voice.

“Yuiri?” Yukina meekly addressed Yuiri out of apparent concern.

Yuiri laughed as she shook her head and said, “Nothing, I was just thinking, Kojou really is like him. He really is Gajou’s son.”

In an instant, the corners of Kojou’s lips twisted in deep annoyance.

“Ah?!”

“Wahh, I’m sorry. B-but if I call you by your family names, I’ll mix you up with Gajou so, ah… Sorry.”

Yuiri hastily apologized. She apparently misunderstood, thinking Kojou was angry she had addressed him by his first name in an overly familiar manner.

“No, no,” said Kojou, waving a hand in front of his face. “Nah, I just mean, I’m nothing like that guy. I’m not worried about how you say my name at all.”

“Is—is that so? Ah, er, I see. Sorry. You can address me by my given name as well, so…”

When Yuiri immediately gave a proper apology, Kojou muttered “Ahhh,” making a lukewarm nod. “She really is super normal…in spite of being in the Lion King Agency.”

Yukina simply stared. “Just what, exactly, do I seem like to you?”

I’d better change the subject before her mood gets even worse, thought Kojou, instantly averting his eyes and looking toward Glenda as she clung onto Yuiri.

“So we have some questions, too, like…who is that girl?”

“I do not know the details myself. I only learned just earlier that she calls herself Glenda…”

Yuiri furrowed her brows as she spoke. She herself seemed perplexed as to why the mystery girl had become so fond of her, seemingly for no reason.

However, Glenda had approached and granted Yuiri her unconditional trust. Perhaps it was because she detected no hostility, and when their eyes met, she returned Kojou and the others’ looks with smiles, too. Kojou felt like he was watching a friendly little critter.

It was this Glenda who twitched her ears and began making a low growl. She was glaring in the direction of the mountain road that continued to Kannawa Lake.

“Yuiri, they’re coming. Again.”

“Eh?”

Glenda’s words were followed by a short pause; then Kojou heard a deep sound of engines. Three SDF armored vehicles were heading toward Kojou and the others. When the armored vehicles stopped, an armed group in camouflage fatigues disembarked. Yuiri moved to shield Glenda as the apparent squad leader approached.

“Attack Mage Haba of the Lion King Agency, I presume?”

The squad leader posed the question to Yuiri in a nominal show of politeness.

“I am First Lieutenant Ueyanagi, Second Company, SDF Special Attack Mage Regiment. Major Azama ordered us to escort you due to receiving a report that a unit retreating while carrying wounded came under attack by a dragon.”

“Attack by a dragon…?”

Yuiri’s eyes widened in visible surprise.

“No, that’s wrong. It wasn’t the dragon who attacked us. If anything, I’d say it was she who saved us—”

“Yuiri…”

Glenda called out to Yuiri in a frightened voice.

Without a word, the troops behind First Lieutenant Ueyanagi raised their firearms. These were Personal Defense Weapons used exclusively by Special Attack Mages. As this made Yuiri’s face stiffen, Ueyanagi stated to her with a highly coercive tone:

“We are in command here, Attack Mage Haba. Please hand Glenda over to us.”

His voice was filled with hostility.

4

“What do you think you are doing, Attack Mage Hikawa?”

Azama calmly posed the question right back at Shio, still aiming at him with her recurve bow. It was valor worthy of the field commander of the Special Attack Mages.

But even so, Shio’s aim did not waver.

“I had a bad feeling from the start. Everything about this operation was strange.”

Shio made the statement with calmness in her voice that surprised even her.

Iblisveil gazed at the exchange between Shio and the officer with an expression of delight.

“The Lion King Agency seals sorcerous disasters away every day before breakfast. Even a single Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency possesses the power to destroy the World’s Mightiest Vampire—yet, I find it strange why, this time only, we needed to borrow the strength of the Self-Defense Forces out of fear of demon beasts that have never appeared before. I don’t understand the reason you were involved in such a dangerous operation.”

“…We are merely cooperating with the Lion King Agency. In point of fact, even the Lion King Agency’s Attack Mages cannot cope with the large numbers of houda that have appeared, yes?”

Azama was composed as he rebutted. Shio could accept that the explanation made sense. That was why Shio had not harbored any doubts about the presence of the SDF up to that point.

“I suppose not. At first, I thought that myself, so I accepted it. But, Major Azama, your unit was fragile against the demon beasts. No, rather, it was too fragile.”

Shio kept an eye on the wounded soldiers as she spoke.

The houda were powerful demon beasts, but not beyond the capabilities of Shio and the others to deal with. She certainly didn’t think they were powerful enough to overwhelm SDF Special Attack Mages to such an extent. But that would only remain true if the Special Attack Mages in question were in tip-top shape.

“The reason is simple. Your unit was not equipped with enough gear to deal with a swarm of houda. Thanks to that, you were simply overwhelmed by superior firepower. Is that not unnatural? Even though you were encircling Kannawa Lake, on guard for the appearance of demon beasts, you had a visible lack of equipment to deal with them.”

“Unfortunately…our activities are constantly under budgetary constraints, and the plan came with uncertain elements. It was never anticipated that there would be such a large outbreak of houda.”

“If that is the case, what, exactly, did you expect to come out, Major Azama?” Shio rebutted in a gentle voice.

That instant, Shio detected that Azama’s expression had gone faintly awry.

The houda were demon beasts that had appeared with the dragon. The swarm of houda nested around Avalon like birds gathering on the backs of elephants and water buffalo, seeking the protection of the mighty beast.

That was what had thrown Azama’s plan into chaos. The large outbreak of houda was a wild card to Azama and the Lion King Agency alike.

“Or rather, did you know from the very beginning that there was a dragon sleeping inside Avalon? That is why you had your subordinates on standby around Kannawa Lake—to determine the position where the dragon would emerge faster than the Lion King Agency could.”

Azama did not reply to Shio’s assertion, merely shifting a dark gaze toward her instead.

Had there not been the large houda outbreak, Azama would likely have determined the dragon’s whereabouts with ease. Furthermore, his comrades were no doubt attempting to capture the dragon. After all, the Special Attack Mages had not been granted weapons with which to take down a dragon. It was none other than Azama who had equipped them as such.

“I get it now. You didn’t equip your troops with powerful anti-demon beast weapons…and that’s why the SDF was in such a hard fight with small-fry demon beasts. It wouldn’t do for your men to steal your prey before you captured the dragon yourself.”

“Heh-heh.” A laugh rose from the back of Gajou Akatsuki’s throat. “Pursuing the dragon from the start explains why you dragged Nagisa along to be the sacrifice this time around. It just happened that Nagisa was the only one who fit the bill for the sacrifice that’d wake the dragon up. Mind finally telling us who was pulling the strings and feeding you that info?”

Gajou spoke in a defiant tone, perhaps having a very good idea who the mastermind was.

Shio nodded a little, in agreement. Even within the government, there were few people with the clout to put the Lion King Agency into motion against a blood relation of Kojou Akatsuki, the “Fourth Primogenitor.” Through Azama, this individual had used not only the Self-Defense Forces, but the Lion King Agency as well. If they put Azama in irons, finding that individual ought to not be such a difficult task.

“I genuinely do not understand what you two are trying to say, but…”

However, Azama gave Shio a look of visible scorn. Shio’s words were speculation without any tangible proof behind them. Knowing this, his expression seemed one of mocking laughter.

“I, too, have heard the eyewitness reports of a dragon. However, even if I was to capture it, just what would I do with it?”

“That is obvious.”

It was not Shio who replied to Azama’s question, but Iblisveil.

“A dragon is the guardian of a treasure. It has always been the job of a knight to slay the dragon and take its treasure—is that not so, Knight of Cain?”

“I’ve had quite enough of this—”

Azama spoke, interrupting Iblisveil’s words. “If you wish to make a complaint, file it in accordance with proper procedure, but I am the operational commander here. Here and now, Attack Mage Hikawa, you will obey my commands—if you resist, I will simply have you all arrested.”

Even if she distrusted Azama’s true motives, the orders of a commanding officer were absolute. The troops surrounding Shio and the others followed Azama’s instructions, training their personal defense weapons on them all at once.

Shio clenched her teeth as she lowered her bow. She feared that engaging in foolish defiance would drag the wounded Gajou into it.

“A mere human—arrest me, you say? A poor attempt at humor. You are more suitable for the role of jester than knight.” Iblisveil’s shoulders shook as he laughed.

Azama drew his pistol and trained its barrel upon the vampire prince.

The ammunition of a pistol wielded by a Special Attack Mage was likely to be a silver and gold alloy of electrum anti-demon bullets. Even a vampire would not escape a direct hit unscathed. Even so, Iblisveil’s raucous laughter did not cease.

“You will stay where you are. Or would a vampire of the Warlord’s Empire launch an attack on Japan’s Self-Defense Forces?”

“Oh-ho,” went Iblisveil, raising his eyebrows with interest when he heard Azama’s warning. “Your mask has slipped, jester. Why do you believe I hail from the Warlord’s Empire?”

“…That’s because…”

Azama’s words trailed off as if he realized his own mistake. The hand gripping his pistol trembled.

Shio was half beside herself as she stared at the bandage wrapped around Azama’s arm.

“Is it because you saw me with Dimitrie Vattler, perhaps? Unlike that damnable Master of Serpents, I am no showboat, and few know the face of Iblisveil Aziz beyond the borders of my nation. The mistake is understandable—but why did you know I was together with Vattler in the first place?” Iblisveil’s smile widened. “Beyond the two of us, there was but a single eyewitness present—the Cleansers’ Knight of Cain. Perhaps you should reminisce upon who, exactly, carved those wounds into your flesh?”

“Ugh…” Azama’s expression contorted. His hand subconsciously touched the bandage on his arm.

This was the scar he had received from Iblisveil’s Beast Vassal—incontrovertible proof that Azama and the Knight of the Sinful God were one and the same.

“This is my last warning, Attack Mage Hikawa. Drop your weapon and surrender,” Azama commanded, his cheek twitching.

It was an unexpected individual’s voice that belayed the order:

“That will not be necessary, Shio Hikawa.”

The frail voice of a certain girl came from an SDF soldier behind Azama. Simultaneously, the other troops all trained their PDWs on Azama.

“—?!”

“That is because the order is invalid. Former Major Azama—I hereby relieve you of duty, along with the other Cleansers under you.”

“Controlling entire human bodies through spirit threads…Shirona Kuraki?!”

Whatever composure Azama still had vanished in an instant.

This was the teokratia of Shirona Kuraki, one of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency—by pouring down countless invisible spirit threads from the heavens, she cruelly controlled the dozens of SDF troops like marionettes on her strings.

“How did it feel to use the Lion King Agency, Tatsumi Azama?”

In unison, the girl’s voice coursed from the mouths of the SDF troops whose flesh she had hijacked.

“Then, it is only fitting that I return the favor. Beyond removing the threat from Kannawa Lake, I had one additional objective: smoking out the Cleansers who infiltrated the Self-Defense Forces.”

“Meaning—you used the dragon as bait with the intention of hunting us. So you, too, knew just what was lying inside of Avalon…”

Azama tossed his raised pistol down to his feet, and Shio thought this was what elicited laughter from Shirona.

“Any information obtainable by mere Cleansers could never escape the priests serving Kamioda Temple since ancient times. Indeed, it is why Hisano approved of a ceremony bringing such risk to Nagisa Akatsuki.”

“I see… But none of that matters anymore. Whatever your objective, using a genuine dragon as a decoy was your undoing, Lion King Agency…,” Azama murmured, back to acting composed.

Shio shuddered. That instant, she felt an instinctive fear and looked behind her back. The pilot of the red robot tank was shouting into the external speakers at maximum volume.

“Enemy approaching! All hands, protect thyselves!”

“—What?!”

In unison, expressions of shock came over the troops under Shirona’s control.

Along with an ear-splitting roar, two wyverns glided through the air at an extremely low altitude. Sitting on the back of one was Special Captain Mikage Okiyama, supposedly back at the operational HQ. Though she was wearing camouflaged fatigues, she had a strange-looking piece of clothing over it: a gunmetal-colored magic user’s robe—

“Captain Okiyama?! Don’t tell me you’re involved in this, too—?!”

Shio shouted as she moved to defend Gajou as he lay on top of the army cot. Apparently, it was not just Azama, the operational commander, with the Cleansers, but Okiyama, his aide-de-camp, as well.

Before Shio’s panicked eyes, Azama leaped onto a wyvern and receded into the distance.

“So there are two wyverns… Quite an amusing turn of events.”

Iblisveil muttered to himself, making a ferocious smile as he watched Azama and Okiyama fly off. From his point of view, Azama’s betrayal and the Lion King Agency’s position were someone else’s problems.

Asagi Aiba poked her head out of the robot tank’s hatch, stating to the vampire prince, “Iblis, we know where the dragon is. Kojou’s with it, too.”

She was holding what was apparently her personal pink smartphone in her hand.

“Understood… After them, then. Lead the way, Asagi.”

Speaking those words, Iblisveil climbed up one of the tank’s legs. The robot tank turned on a dime, setting off with ferocious speed as it left Shio and Gajou behind. They apparently meant to chase after Azama and Okiyama.

“Yuiri…”

Shio, left in the dust, murmured the name of her close friend in a subdued voice.

Considering the circumstances, the odds of Yuiri being at the dragon’s side was high. As things were, the odds were very high that she would most likely come into contact with Azama.

However, as she was, Shio had no remaining means by which to help Yuiri.

“It’s all right. We can leave the rest to them.”

“Gajou Akatsuki…”

Gajou stroked Shio’s head, perhaps considerate because of the tearful look that had come over her.

He was wounded. It would be a trivial matter to brush his hand away, but for some reason, Shio did not. Perhaps it was because his all-too-friendly hand conveyed a warmth that made her feel strangely at ease.

“You did good, Shio.”

Gajou spoke with the tone of one consoling a young girl.

Shio silently nodded, her cheeks reddening in an obvious blush.

5

“…Hand Glenda over, you say?”

Kojou Akatsuki’s shoulders slumped as he looked back at the hulking soldier—First Lieutenant Ueyanagi.

Yuiri Haba was still shielding the dragon girl, her eyes opening wide in surprise as Kojou wedged himself into the conversation.

“Hey, I want to ask you one question. Why do you know that the dragon’s name is Glenda? She only finally told her name to the girl looking after her a little while ago, right?”

Kojou peered into Yuiri’s eyes as if making sure.

Yuiri bit her lip and nodded. The only ones who knew Glenda’s name were Yuiri and the SDF troops riding the truck that had attacked them. Ueyanagi shouldn’t have had any opportunity to have learned Glenda’s name.

“Even if you had intel there was a dragon in the form of a girl…there’s a bunch of girls here who look way more suspicious than any dragon. So how did you know which one was Glenda right away?”

As Kojou spoke, he eyed the various Oceanus Girls—a mysterious group of beautiful girls differing in age, nationality, and hair type. Armed with firearms, the entire bunch were a lot more out of place than Glenda. On top of that, they were wearing the same type of camouflaged military jacket as Glenda. It was a near impossibility to tell the real Glenda from them by appearance alone.

That they could do so nonetheless meant they knew minute details about Glenda’s appearance from the start. In other words, they were allies of the gunmetal magician.

“You little brat.” Ueyanagi’s face contorted in rage as he glared at Kojou. “So you are the Fourth Primogenitor that Captain Okiyama reported about. I was told to avoid engaging you if at all possible, but under the circumstances, we have little choice.”

In a natural, nonchalant manner, Ueyanagi raised his right hand, as if sending a signal to all present.

That instant, Yuiri drew her sword from her back. Yuiri could plainly see someone sniping at Kojou’s face, blowing his head away. However, before that premonition could become fact, Yuiri’s sword swatted down the flying bullet.

This was Yuiri’s Future Sight, the ability to peer a moment into the future that the Sword Shamans of the Lion King Agency possessed—

“Whoa?!” Kojou exclaimed in surprise as he saw sparks scatter right before his eyes.

By that time, Yukina had tossed a metallic spell scroll aloft; this changed into a silver wolf that assaulted the sniper. Yukina, seeing into the future that the sniping attack would be blocked, moved ahead of even that. Yuiri curled her tongue at the astounding talent typical of Yukina.

“Yukii!”

“Yes, Yuiri!”

All at once, Ueyanagi’s subordinates put their fingers on their triggers. However, their attacks never reached Kojou or the others, for Yuiri and Yukina had already leaped above Ueyanagi’s men’s heads, launching a simultaneous surprise attack.

The fact the men had surrounded them made them brittle against attack from within. They could not fire freely out of fear of hitting allies, allowing Yuiri and Yukina to strike them down with the ease of slicing bundles of straw.

The pair moved in concert, almost as if they knew exactly what the other would do in advance; the troops could not keep up. With the two Sword Shamans’ ferocious attacks showering down on them, the number of Ueyanagi’s men was whittled down in the blink of an eye.

“S-so strong…,” Kojou muttered in a daze.

The individual combat capability of an SDF Special Attack Mage unit’s members was far from low. But in addition to the element of surprise, underestimating Yuiri and Yukina as little girls was surely a factor. Unable to resist to the extent they desired, they were neutralized one after another.

Perhaps Kojou should have seen Ueyanagi being the last to remain unscathed as small surprise.

“…O God, God of mine, grant unto me the Power of Retribution—”

Ueyanagi rushed to his wheeled armored vehicle as he pulled an odd-looking device out from his hip pouch. This was a gunmetal gauntlet—the kind of gauntlet a knight from the Middle Ages would be wearing.

The instant Ueyanagi touched the gauntlet, the contours of the wheeled armored vehicle changed.

The metallic armor flowed as if melting, transforming into the form of a beetle. It looked just like the humanoid golems the gunmetal magic user had employed.

Intermission iv

Dimitrie Vattler was standing in a camp that was closed due to it being off-season.

Vestiges of incredible destruction extended all around him. White smoke slowly rose from the vast wreckage of golems created from the components of armored vehicles and other modern weaponry that lay around him.

Vattler had raided the camp, adopted as a base by a Cleansers support unit, all by himself. Around that time, Kira Lebedev and Tobias Jagan ought to have been smashing other hideouts.

Superficially, this meant he was cooperating with the Lion King Agency; this was hardly his objective. Naturally, he was attacking the Cleansers for reasons of his very own.

Of course, battling enemies with special sorcerous devices was one of those reasons. In the end, just as he had expected, this had resulted in a one-sided thrashing, but…

“It would seem you amused yourself, Duke Ardeal,” a clear voice said to Vattler as he inspected the remains of a golem he had destroyed.

It was La Folia Rihavein—the beautiful princess of the Kingdom of Aldegia.

“Well, well. To think you would come in person, Princess. You are here for their sorcerous devices?”

Vattler replied in a theatrical tone as he leaned down then and there. Adopting the manner of a faithful knight toward his liege, he presented something before La Folia. It was a gunmetal-colored rod—old and half-destroyed.

“If it pleases you, I shall offer it to you. Go ahead. It is to commemorate our reunion.”

“A sorcerous device of Nod… So it is indeed a replica.”

La Folia accepted the broken wand from the hand of the vampire aristocrat and gazed at it with deep interest.

Vattler brushed off the sleeve of his coat and stood back up as if nothing had happened.

“It has already ceased to operate. Even so, it may yet prove useful if you analyze it.”

“I suppose so. You have my thanks, Dimitrie Vattler.”

La Folia called up one of the escorts standing behind her and handed the broken wand over to her.

“Oh my,” the princess then said, narrowing her eyes at something she apparently had not expected. She had located a survivor of the Cleansers in the shadow of a large, burned-out trailer.

The dark-green overalls the man wore marked him as a mechanic. However, half his body had already merged with the frame of the vehicle; he had ceased to be a human being. Black, oily fluid flowed out of the cracks along the surface of his flesh; the droplets continually turned into light that then dissipated.

If they left him like this, he would perish—no, he would simply cease to be. No trace would remain of him in the world on their side. Such was the fate of all who set their hands upon the sorcerous devices of Nod.

“Curse you, you sly fox! A princess of a nation, and you cavort with a filthy demon like this?!”

Wringing out the last of his strength, the man vented curses at La Folia.

However, the princess calmly shook her head with a look of pity for the man as she said, “It is you who seek destruction and slaughter for the sake of greed and hatred, who possess truly tainted souls.”

“Do not mock us, vixen… Our desire is to return the world to its proper form! A pure, egalitarian world where monsters like the two of you do not exist!”

The man bared his teeth as he bellowed.

As La Folia listened to the last his words, a gentle smile came over her lips.

A beautiful, cruel smile, like a frigid glacier.

“If you truly believe that sullying the earth with blood through the power of the Sinful God exiled from this world will bring about a pure, egalitarian world, it is rather precious of you.”

“What…?!”

“Rest at ease. I shall not allow you to perish. Not until you have told us every shred of intel that you know—”

“W-wait… What are…? …Stop… St…!”

The man’s face contorted with fear when his movements halted, seemingly frozen in place.

The ring La Folia wore on her right hand was giving off a transparent blue glow.

This was a high-end freezing magic from the Kingdom of Aldegia, proud of its sorcerous technology. Though the scale was small, and the power was low, it was the same type of ability that Kanon Kanase had once employed when she had been transformed into a Faux-Angel. The man’s flesh destruction phenomenon caused by the sorcerous device of Nod was now stopped in its tracks.

Having watched the affair from start to finish, a satisfied smile came over Vattler once more.

To him, known as a battle maniac of rare fervor, the worth of others was measured solely by their worthiness as opponents. The Princess of Aldegia demonstrating only a small portion of her power had been sufficient to satisfy Vattler, putting him in a pleasant mood.

Knowing that she was the recipient of his warped sense of goodwill, La Folia pretended not to notice as she gazed at the remaining trailer. They were trailers for hauling and maintaining attack helicopters. However, there was no sign of the two attack helicopters the trailers had been hauling.

“I see… So they offered up the information of the combat helicopters to create the wyverns. That is the true power of the sorcerous devices of the Sinful God?”

“So it would seem,” replied Vattler with a nod.

“However, they can freely control the power to some extent before Nod corrupts them. Thanks to His Highness Prince Aziz’s strenuous efforts, I have obtained valuable data.”

“The corruption of Nod… So it is a troublesome power even to vampires?” The princess touched her hand to her lips.

Vattler shrugged his shoulders in amusement and asked, “Worried about Kojou, perhaps?”

“Mm, but of course. After all, he shall be my companion one day.”

La Folia replied in a serene tone from which no one could tell if she was joking or being earnest.

The female knights acting as bodyguards for the princess put hands to their foreheads with anguished expressions as Vattler smiled in ever-greater delight.

“However, there is one more thing that concerns me…”

“The Priestess of Cain?” Vattler carried on where the princess left off.

She nodded, her usual smile having vanished at some point.

“Yes. Though he knows that she is in this land, the Knight of the Sinful God has demonstrated no interest in her. For that matter, he has not even taken care to avoid involving her in the fighting.”

“I can think of two possibilities.”

Vattler pretentiously raised a pair of fingers, immediately bending one.

“They may not know of the Priestess of Cain’s existence. It is a rather rude thing to say about those calling themselves the Cleansers, but I cannot absolutely rule it out.”

“And the other possibility?”

La Folia elegantly inclined her head as she posed the question.

Vattler bent his second finger, a ferocious smile coming over him for a single moment as he continued.

“There is another Priestess of Cain.”

“It can’t be—” La Folia’s voice trembled.

Vattler looked back upon the shaken princess with a satisfied smile, spreading his arms wide and looking up at the sky.

“So wonderful… Entertaining, is it not? Truly, that island is beloved by chaos…”

CHAPTER FIVE

RETURN FROM THE FARTHEST REACHES

1

There was a great beating of wings bathed in magical energy, sending the enormous dragon flying through the air.

Kojou, at the mercy of incessant shaking and violent winds, held on to the dragon’s neck for dear life.

“Glenda, calm down! Where do you think you’re going—?!”

Kojou desperately shouted, but his voice never reached the agitated Glenda’s ears. Gripped by fear, the dragon girl had no destination in mind in her blind efforts to distance herself from the iron knight.

“Whoa—!”

Glenda’s body violently swayed, buffeted by the air currents. The lurch threw Kojou heavily off-balance, sending his body sliding down. Instinctively, he reached out with his right hand to grab hold of the dragon’s back and was in shock at the lack of feeling. That hand, numb from the wound left when Paper Noise impaled it, refused to move.

This is bad. Kojou groaned inwardly as he was struck by a fickle, floating feeling. I’m gonna fall—!

Just when Kojou resigned himself to that, someone grabbed his right arm.

“Senpai!”

Yukina’s right hand gripped her silver spear, leaving only her left to support the weight of Kojou’s tumbling body. Having used ritual energy to enhance her muscle strength to a reckless extent, she proceeded to haul up Kojou.

“Himeragi! Sorry, you saved my bacon!”

In frog-like fashion, Kojou crept up the dragon on all fours, reaching its shoulder once more. With neither able to use one of their hands, Yukina somehow managed to pull him into a stable stance right next to her.

“Please, hang on tight!”

“R-right. Er, but—”

The unfamiliar sensation pressing against his cheek caused Kojou to hem and haw.

“What is it?”

“Er, it’s just that your breasts are pushing against my face, Himeragi—”

Maybe we can shift this a bit, Kojou was about to say when an elbow struck the side of his face.

“I-idiot, I’m gonna fall. I’m gonna fall—!”

“It is because you said something indecent, senpai!”

With Kojou about to fall once more, Yukina grudgingly reached out with her hand.

Kojou’s cheek was swelling as he sluggishly shook his head and said:

“Right… What about that Yuiri girl?”

I haven’t heard her family name yet, he thought as he sought out the other Sword Shaman who should have been nearby.

When he meekly poked his head out over the large shoulder of Glenda, now in dragon form, his eyes caught sight of Yuiri in the clutches of the dragon’s front claw. The upper air currents were causing her uniform’s skirt to ride way up, dramatically showing off her thighs in tights.

In spite of this, Yuiri was unable to hide the sight behind a hand as she pleaded to Kojou with tearful eyes, “D-don’t look—!”

“…Seems like we’re all right.”

Seeing for himself that she was safe, Kojou returned to his previous stance. Yuiri didn’t exactly have it easy, but her life did not seem to be in imminent peril.

However, just as Kojou expressed relief, he felt Yukina’s body stiffen right behind him.

“Not yet, senpai!”

“Huh…?”

Before Kojou could grasp the situation, the dragon shook from an enormous impact.

Glenda’s dragon body writhed, letting out an anguished roar as she endured the pain.

A pitch-black sphere raced right past her.

That’s a gunshot! Kojou realized. Someone pursuing Kojou and the others from behind had launched an attack on Glenda.

“The wyvern from before…!”

When Kojou looked back, the jet-black-colored wyvern was squarely in his sights. The man in armor was riding on its back. The female magic user was riding the other wyvern a little ways behind him.

The knight was couching his lance. Kojou realized that the shape of the weapon had changed; at that moment, it was more of an enormous rifle than a lance; it could change according to the characteristics of the machines it came into contact with.

The lance fired jet-black spheres as bullets.

Glenda couldn’t evade the attacks with Kojou and the others aboard. The dragon girl howled as she soaked up gunshots all over her body.

“Miss Glenda—?!”

Yukina addressed Glenda with genuine concern. Perhaps that had done some good, for Glenda’s panic abated, and Kojou and Yukina avoided the worst case of being flung off her back. But if the attacks persisted, Glenda’s endurance would eventually falter.

“Sorry, Himeragi—keep me steady a little, okay?”

As he spoke, Kojou stood up on the dragon’s uneven, rocking back.

Yukina’s cheeks stiffened when she realized just what it was Kojou had in mind.

“Senpai, you mustn’t. If you use a Beast Vassal, your wound will—”

“This ain’t the time to hold anything back— C’mon over, Al-Nasl Minium!”

Kojou endured the pain hitting him from the backlash as he summoned a Beast Vassal. The air distorted as the incandescent bicorn emerged, howling as it unleashed a shock wave at the flying wyvern that resembled a cannonball.

However, the man in knightly plate—Azama—anticipated Kojou’s counterattack. Undaunted, he spread out his pitch-black cloak, deploying a giant defensive membrane.

The scarlet bicorn’s attack was, in fact, a mass of demonic energy in shock-wave form. This was why it generated vast destructive might, but in this case, that energy was a fatal flaw. The defensive barrier created by the knight nullified direct demonic energy attacks.

“Figures that Beast Vassal attacks wouldn’t work… So how ’bout this?!”

A smile came over Kojou, visibly defiant as he made the scarlet bicorn raise its altitude.

Even if the Beast Vassal had managed a direct hit, it would not defeat that wyvern. On the other hand, the pitch-black aura shrouding them had been unable to fend off the anti-tank rocket launched by one of the Oceanus Girls. If the attack didn’t rely on demonic energy, it was possible to inflict damage upon them.

Kojou made the Beast Vassal dive-bomb, aiming at the two wyverns dancing in the air below. Simultaneously, he completely released the Beast Vassal from its restraints, freeing it of all shackles on its concentrated demonic energy.

Unable to retain physical form, the bicorn transformed into a colossal mass of vibration and violent winds. It became a raging storm of countless tornadoes, agitating the atmosphere around it.

The precipitous change in air pressure made Kojou’s eardrums creak.

Trees covering the surface of the ground were yanked out with their roots, dancing in the air along with a large quantity of dirt.

It was truly a natural disaster—a calamity, even.

The overwhelming destruction was akin to carpet-bombing. The line of a mountain ridge was shaved off, with a rockslide down its stony surface as the terrain around them changed as they watched.

Violent winds gouged the ground below, covering an area rivaling a single city. Were it not an uninhabited area deep in the mountains, casualties would surely have been in the tens of thousands.

“Wh-what have you…?”

Yukina’s face went pale as she stared at the Beast Vassal’s rampage. It had been a while since Kojou beheld the true might of a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor with his own eyes; he, too, was at a loss for words.

Had he unleashed such might in the skies over Itogami Island, the entire island would likely have been wiped out without a trace by that point. Good thing I’m not stupid enough to try, he thought, relieved to the bottom of his heart for that.

There was no way the wyverns ought to have been able to fly amid such violent winds and raging air currents. Even if they could nullify direct demonic energy hits, that would be no help against a stirred-up atmosphere.

Seeing for himself that Azama and the others had abandoned pursuit, Kojou released his Beast Vassal from its summons. However, once arisen, the tornadoes could not be affected by even Kojou’s will.

For a while, Kojou stared in amazement as they gouged the faces of the mountains and caused landslides, one after another. The scolding gaze from Yukina stabbing the side of his face stung bitterly. And then—

“Glenda…?”

The dragon’s body, presumably outside the range of the violent winds, suddenly lurched.

Perhaps it was the effect of her wounds. Perhaps her strength had simply been exhausted. Either way, Glenda had lost consciousness. The dragon’s flapping wings lost their strength and were no longer able to support her enormous body.

Glenda was falling toward the earth, with Kojou and the others riding her along with it.

“Kyaaaaaaaaaaa—!”

Yuiri’s death-resigned scream echoed across the gray, wintry sky for quite some time.

2

She’d first heard the rumors about the Fourth Primogenitor a little before summer.

She’d heard that the Fourth Primogenitor was immoral and immutable, without any blood kin whatsoever, with no aspirations to rule, served by twelve Beast Vassals that were calamity incarnate—a cruel, heartless vampire who drank human blood, slaughtered, and destroyed, existing beyond all doctrines of the world.

If such a monster appeared in a nation of the world, would someone from the Lion King Agency not be dispatched to slay him? Thus, at High God Forest, a Lion King Agency training facility masquerading as a famous primary and secondary level all-girls school, such information spread in the blink of an eye, plunging the students into terror.

That said, it was an irresponsible, baseless rumor. With the same force with which the rumor had suddenly spread, the topic died away, and it was not long before it was consigned to oblivion.

It was during that time when Yuiri Haba heard about the Fourth Primogenitor from a most unexpected source: the lips of Koyomi Shizuka, one of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency.

From her, Yuiri learned that the Fourth Primogenitor was actually a high school student living on Itogami Island. Furthermore, because Yuiri was the same age, she had been nominated as a candidate for the Sword Shaman to be dispatched to watch him.

Those facts both surprised and scared her.

On the one hand, she felt a faint pang of hope.

If she was sent to watch over the Fourth Primogenitor, a boy, she might develop a romantic relationship with him—such was her sugary hope. Of her peers at the dormitory, no one beyond Shio Hikawa knew this, but Yuiri was an avid reader of romance manga catering to teenage girls.

But in the end, it was not Yuiri who had been selected to be the watcher of the Fourth Primogenitor.

The reasons were extremely simple. One was that Yuiri could not skillfully employ a Schneewaltzer.

The Demon-Purging Assault Spear Type Seven, secret weapon of the Lion King Agency, could not be tuned to fit its user. Thanks to that, it was compatibility with the weapon, not the skill or abilities of the user, that determined whether someone would be able to master it. In point of fact, even Koyomi Shizuka apparently could not completely draw out a Schneewaltzer’s true abilities.

The other reason Yuiri had not been selected was because Yuiri had not been an orphan.

Rare among the girls living at High God Forest, Yuiri still had living family. Both parents were office workers at the Lion King Agency, and she had a younger brother close to her in age.

Of course, Yuiri had no intention of becoming a Sword Shaman just to be the apple of her parents’ eyes, but it was believed that Yuiri was spared being sent on highly dangerous missions, like being the watcher of the Fourth Primogenitor, out of consideration for her family.

Hence, even in the present, Yuiri felt indebted to Yukina.

If she’d only been able to use a Schneewaltzer a little better…and if only Yukina had family, like Yuiri did—

Then perhaps it would have been Yuiri who would have been assigned the dangerous mission of being the Fourth Primogenitor’s watcher.

“Oh, you came to, er… Miss Yuiri?”

The lazy flickering of a firewood stove illuminated the room as that very Fourth Primogenitor called out to her.

Though the face of the boy was a far cry from the handsome image of a vampire primogenitor she’d drawn in her own mind, he was not without his charms. He was sitting with his legs spread on the floor of an unfamiliar building that was apparently some kind of log cabin.

“Kojou? Where is this? Where’s Glenda…?!”

Yuiri slowly sat up as ambiguous memories trickled in. Immediately, she felt a dull pain running through her left arm. It was the wound from when the knight on the wyvern had attacked. Thanks to Glenda shielding her, the wound was not severe, but using her left hand to swing her sword seemed impractical for the time being.

Beyond that, she recalled being grabbed by the dragon Glenda’s claw and hurtling toward the ground. Then, Yuiri’s vision had been covered in silver mist right before hitting the ground.

To be precise, she’d been struck by the strange feeling that she herself had transformed into vapor. She also felt like she saw some kind of enormous shelled beast in the middle of the incredibly thick mist. Perhaps that had been one of the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals.

Numerous vampires possessed the special ability to transform their own flesh into mist and move in that form, but she’d never heard of any phenomenon that turned not only the self into mist, but everyone and everything around him. This time, she’d somehow managed to regain her old form, but a shudder went through her at the thought of him losing control of his Beast Vassal.

That said, Yuiri and Glenda had been saved by Kojou again.

First, I have to thank him, thought Yuiri, but when she opened her mouth, a conflicted expression came over Kojou when he realized something, turning his face away.

“Um… Sorry. It’d be a big help if you could…cover up,” Kojou mumbled, never permitting his eyes to meet hers.

“K…kyaaaaaaaaa!”

That instant, Yuiri shrieked when she realized she was not wearing her school uniform. Fortunately, she was still wearing her underwear, but that was no comfort to her whatsoever. It was her first experience exposing her flesh so blatantly in front of a boy. She’d never even let her younger brother see her like this.

“—Senpai, what did you do to Yuiri?!”

Yukina, hearing Yuiri’s shriek, raced over from the middle of the log cabin with a rapid patter of steps and glared at Kojou.

Seeing Yuiri in just her underwear, Yukina sighed deeply, grasping the gist of the situation as she said, “Truly, I cannot turn my back on you for one second…”

“Hey, don’t pin this on me!”

Kojou put a palm to his cheek as he rebutted, sulking. Actually, it’s not his fault, Yuiri thought, but all that came to her lips was a frail smile.

Yukina looked at the bandage wrapped around Yuiri’s left arm, inquiring in apparent concern, “Can you move, Yuiri? I applied first aid, but…”

Apparently, she’d been the one to strip Yuiri’s uniform off.

“Thank you, Yukii. The wound’s fine. More importantly, where is this…?”

“I believe it is a mountain cabin meant to receive mountain climbers. It appears to have been empty due to the Self-Defense Forces sealing the area.”

“That so…”

Yuiri, seeing that Glenda was sleeping next to her safe and sound, exhaled in relief.

So Kojou and Yukina just happened to have located a cabin near the point of their crash and were able to carry Yuiri and Glenda to it. Judging from the brightness outside, Yuiri had probably been unconscious for two to three hours.

“A little bit longer, and Asagi…a friend of ours, will be coming to pick us up. Glenda can’t move yet, either, so it’s probably best we hide out here for the time being. It’ll be nighttime soon, too.”

“Mm, I suppose so.”

After Yukina handed Yuiri her uniform, she turned her back to Kojou, dressing as she concurred with his opinion.

The gray-haired girl under the same blanket as Yuiri stirred, glomming on to Yuiri like a kitten doting on its mother.

“Hyuiri… Hyuiri…”

“Glenda, are your injuries all right?”

“Dah.”

When Glenda, perhaps not fully awake, addressed her with mysterious-sounding words, Yuiri stroked her hair. Becoming a dragon had sent Glenda’s clothes bursting apart once more, this time wrecking the ones that the Oceanus Girls had provided her. At the moment, the only thing she was wearing was the parka Kojou Akatsuki had been wearing until a short while before.

Dressed in the baggy clothing, Glenda had no dramatic wounds on her body; seeing this for herself, Yuiri patted her chest in relief.

“So…what is she anyway? Why’s Azama after her?” Kojou asked.

“I have no idea, either.” Yuiri weakly shook her head.

“Figures,” Kojou said, dejection visible in his eyes. After all, without knowing the reason Azama was after her, his next move couldn’t be predicted, and there were limits to how much they could protect Glenda.

In case it might help, Yuiri did explain all the circumstances before and after meeting Glenda to both of them, but the expressions on both Kojou’s and Yukina’s faces were conflicted. If Yuiri couldn’t understand what was going on, and she was actually there, the two of them had little hope of understanding it, either.

When she’d finished providing them with all the information she knew, a brief silence descended.

It was a low, bestial rrrn that broke the awkward silence.

This was the sound of Yuiri’s stomach, able to endure hunger no longer.

When Yuiri thought back, she hadn’t had a single bite to eat since that morning. Glenda had robbed her of all her emergency ration biscuits. On top of that, she noticed that a nice scent was beginning to waft inside the mountain cabin. Something was boiling in the pot on top of the woodstove.

“There was food for emergencies left in the kitchen, so I thought I would try heating it…”

Yukina spoke in a reserved tone as she served the meal.

It was vegetable soup with a plethora of ingredients and a variety of sweets, like cookies and candy bars, on the side. For someone nearly collapsing from hunger, it was truly a sight to behold. When she glanced over, Glenda, still half-awake, immediately began munching on the biscuits.

“Thanks, Yukii. It kinda feels like I’m making you do all the work.”

“Not at all, Yuiri. You’ve been taking good care of Sayaka and me for ages. I’m glad I could do something to return the favor.”

“Ah-ha-ha. That’s because Kirasaka and Shio got into a lot of arguments…”

Yuiri laughed with nostalgia as she brought soup to her lips. Shio Hikawa and Sayaka Kirasaka were both headstrong girls as well as Shamanic War Dancer candidates of the same grade, leading them to compete on every front. It was usually Yuiri, in the same class, or Yukina who ended up having to deal with the consequences.

“I see… Yuiri, you’ve known Himeragi since you were little kids, huh?” Kojou asked, mystified.

Yukina had difficulty speaking about her past. A slight blush came over her as she hung her head a little and said, “I suppose so. Although, we were not in the same grade and had few chances to speak directly with each other…”

“Come to think of it, no one talked to Yukii all that much. She was kind of unapproachable; she was levelheaded since she was really little; and she was a little scary during mock combat, you see…”

With her beautiful junior right before her eyes, Yuiri stared as she earnestly rambled. Hearing this, Yukina blinked her eyes in apparent surprise.

“U…unapproachable? Scary?”

“Yeah. You never smiled even when you won, and you were always blunt when talking to people. I really got bent out of shape when my awesome jokes just sailed over your head.”

“Th-that is because I was tense before the competition…”

Yukina weakly defended herself. But the adorable look on her face had apparently pricked Yuiri’s funny bone, for she continued smiling, even letting a giggle slip out.

“You were really serious and straitlaced, and your grades were top tier, too. So you were, well, hard to socialize with.”

“You really thought of me like that…?”

Yuiri reflected a little when she observed Yukina’s genuine shock. She couldn’t help but find it somewhat humorous that even on their reunion after a fairly long interval, her earnestness had not changed a bit.

“Ah, but I don’t mean people hated you at all. A lot of the younger girls really looked up to you. That’s why, when I heard that Yukii was the one given the Schneewaltzer and made the watcher for the Fourth Primogenitor, I was like I knew it’d be her.”

When Kojou heard Yuiri’s follow-up to a flustered Yukina, his mouth opened as if he had come to realize something.

“I see… Yuiri’s a Sword Shaman, too, so it could’ve been her living right next door instead of Himeragi?”

“Eh? Yukii, you live right next to Kojou?”

Yuiri gawked at Yukina in surprise. Her junior raised an eyebrow.

“Yes. It is part of the mission.”

“Ohh… A-all right.”

Naturally, half the reason Yuiri was knocked off-balance was from how Kojou had spoken of it like it was nothing. After all, it was an iron rule of the romance novels Yuiri dotingly read: When classmates lived next door to one another, romance followed.

Yuiri could hardly remain calm at the thought that it might have been herself living next door to Kojou.

She was indulging herself in such fantasies when Kojou posed his next question to Yukina.

“So what was Yuiri like back in the day?”

“Eh?!”

Yuiri felt distinct unease when she suddenly became the topic of discussion, all the more because it was just after Yuiri had babbled all about Yukina.

Then, thinking she should honestly reply to Kojou’s question, Yuiri’s overly serious junior opened her mouth and said, “Let’s see. The first time I remember meeting her, it was nighttime right after a field exercise—”

“Yukii, please, anything but that!”

The sight of Yuiri desperately bowing her head made Kojou and Glenda raise their voices in laughter.

A benefit of the entirely trivial conversation was that Yuiri could feel her depleted willpower gradually recover. Her sense of tension and wariness toward Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor, was vanishing as well.

However, at the same time, she felt a single doubt within her.

When she thought about it rationally, Kojou had no duty to save Yuiri or Glenda. He’d come to that land to protect his little sister; he had no reason to fight Azama.

Why, then, had he gone so far to protect Yuiri and Glenda?

The one thing she did understand was this: It was no doubt because Kojou had that kind of personality that Yukina—this very earnest girl next to him—trusted him, enough that Yuiri wondered if Yukina trusted him a little too much…

“Senpai, your manners are poor.”

She glared at him and voiced her complaint when he audibly slurped his soup. However, Kojou shrugged his shoulders, failing to concede the point.

“I can’t move my right hand, so I don’t have much of a choice.”

“Goodness. Give me that… Here you go.”

Having had enough, Yukina stole the dish from Kojou’s hand and brought the soup to his lips with a spoon. It was the sort of pose where you’d expect someone to go Say aah. Kojou merely went “Mm” as brief thanks, sipping the soup from Yukina’s spoon as if it was no big deal.

Then, when he took a bite from a cereal bar between sips, he said, “Hey, this is pretty tasty.”

“Is that so? Somehow, it looks rather odd…”

Afterword

Since the previous volume, the publication pace has gone up ever so slightly (smug face).

It’s been a while. So Strike the Blood, Vol. 12 has finally arrived.

With the exception of one flashback story, Strike the Blood has been a tale taking place almost completely on Itogami Island; this time, the Japanese mainland became the stage. Furthermore, the season was winter. The lake was frozen, and there was even snow falling. Yes, it did occur to me that the rate of skin exposure was higher than normal for the girls (and one guy), but that’s, you know, a luxury—like eating ice cream in a warm room in the middle of winter. Either way, the Strike the Blood world being chillier was fresh on a personal level.

Speaking of freshness, this volume had many new characters. In particular, I had a lot of fun writing Yuiri and Shio, a new pair closer to normal people than the Lion King Agency characters to date. Though the two do not realize it themselves (causing considerable trouble to those around them), Yukina and Sayaka really do possess talent head and shoulders above others of their generation, so I thought I should finally write about those circumstances. I believe the Yuiri and Shio combo will have opportunities to shine in the story to come, so by all means, please give them your best regards.

Now then, the stage for the next volume is expected to return to Itogami Island. It’s about time for movers and shakers to gather together for big moves toward the story’s climax, right? In particular, I think it’d be great to finally make the production schedule speed up a wee bit. I’ve been energetically thinking of a few new developments besides the ones in this volume, so if you’re looking forward to them, great.

The comic version of Strike the Blood is still being serialized in Monthly Dengeki Daioh. To TATE-sensei, in charge of the comic adaptation, thank you very much, as always. With each serialization, the combat scenes become more dynamic, and the characters get even more charming. I’m moved by every issue. I think faithful readers of the original work will definitely enjoy it, so by all means, get your hands on the comic version of Strike the Blood!

To Manyako, the illustrator, thank you very much once again. Amid a busy schedule, with me changing the clothes worn by the cast left and right with no thought as to the consequences, and under the terrible working condition known as “multiple new characters,” I thank you profusely for putting the finishing touches on a charming work. This time, Yukina’s legs—er, I mean, the front cover—was absolutely fantastic!

Also, allow me to thank from the bottom of my heart everyone involved in the creation and distribution of this book.

Of course, all of you who have read this book have my sincere thanks.

I hope very much to see you next volume.

Gakuto Mikumo