“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 insol
ent, 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 fly
ing 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.
The Knight of the Sinful God Page 9
