The Knight of the Sinful God

by Gakuto Mikumo

  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 modifi
ed 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 han
d 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.