“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.
“That’s…?!”
“Yukii, stand back!”
Yuiri shoved the bewildered Yukina aside, advancing to the front. Yukina’s Schneewaltzer could not breach the defenses of an armored vehicle. Destroying inorganic objects was Rosen Chevalier Plus’s domain.
“Eh?!”
But the instant she touched the black membrane enveloping the armored vehicle, an unpleasant sound like glass shattering rang out, and Shio’s sword bounced off. It was indeed the same as against the golems. Rosen Chevalier Plus’s pseudo-spatial severing had been nullified.
“Oh n—!”
With Yuiri thrown off-balance, the monster that had once been an armored vehicle rose before her eyes.
As Yuiri fell, it continued its ascent. Its enormous foreleg swung upward, hurtling down to trample Yuiri.
She desperately leaped back, but the monster’s movements were far faster than she had expected. The attack’s reach was simply too great.
“Al-Meissa Mercury—!”
It was the Beast Vassal summoned by Kojou that saved Yuiri in that moment of mortal peril.
The intertwined, two-headed quicksilver dragon opened its enormous maws and assailed the gunmetal beetle. However…
“What the—?!” Kojou cried out, shocked.
—the two-headed dragon’s attack, supposedly able to gouge out space itself, bounced off just short of reaching the beetle’s armor.
The impact from the collision sent the giant beetle flying, but its surface was nearly unscathed. Kojou’s Beast Vassal had not consumed it. It had a demonic energy-nullifying ability, just like the gunmetal magic user’s wyvern.
“Get down, please—!”
As Kojou and Yuiri were rebuffed, they suddenly heard a lighthearted voice from behind them. Instantly, Kojou ducked, whereupon something raced overhead with incredible force.
When Kojou turned around, he saw one of the Oceanus Girls, wearing a yellow beret and holding a metal cylinder—an anti-tank rocket launcher.
“The hell?!”
Before Yuiri’s and Kojou’s astonished eyes, the resulting explosion engulfed the beetle, sending it tumbling onto its side.
The black membrane that nullified magical energies had no effect on a pure ranged weapon. The high-explosive, squash-head rocket, intended to blast through tank armor even from the front, easily punched straight through the beetle’s outer shell and exploded within.
“Ugh… The information… My information…!”
Ueyanagi, spat out from the beetle’s innards in the process, put a hand onto his own tattered arm to staunch the bleeding. The black fluid coursing from his flesh resembled oil. Pale rays scattered from it, melting into nothingness before they fell to the ground. The gunmetal gauntlet Ueyanagi wore was transforming his flesh into some kind of inhuman thing.
“What’s with this guy…? Doesn’t he feel pain…?!”
“He’s from the Cleansers, Fourth Primogenitor.”
From behind the shaken Kojou, the Oceanus Girl with the white ribbon answered his question.
“Cleansers?”
“Please think of them as a terrorist group known to use special sorcerous devices.”
“Sorcerous devices…! You mean like that Zenforce bunch used…?!”
Kojou exclaimed in response to the explanation continued by the girl with the black ribbon.
“Yes. The sorcerous devices they employ are relics of The Cleansing.”
“Most are crude duplicates and pieces of junk, but please be careful—”
“Yeah, got it.” He nodded in response to the girls’ warnings. He murmured to himself, “This isn’t good.”
Once before, Kojou and Yukina had fought soldiers with sorcerous devices implanted within their bodies. They, known as Sorcerous Troopers, had obtained immortal bodies and combat capabilities sufficient to overwhelm any ordinary demon.
Ueyanagi’s sorcerous device, able to alter machines to create golems, was a vile thing on par with those of the Sorcerous Troopers. Even if Kojou summoned a Beast Vassal, half-hearted attacks wouldn’t bust through. That said, if he launched an attack sufficient to surpass the demonic energy-nullification ability of his sorcerous device, it’d kill Ueyanagi for sure.
The foe was a tough match for Kojou, whose Beast Vassals were difficult to control at the best of times.
“Shit… I won’t… I won’t forgive you for this…!”
“The hell…?!”
As Kojou and the others hesitated, Ueyanagi approached the armored vehicles a second time right before their eyes. He fused the two remaining armored vehicles together to create a new golem. He’d likely sacrificed offensive power in favor of a fortified defense. It was a reptile resembling the ankylosaurus of times long past.
The Oceanus Girl in yellow fired her anti-tank rocket launcher once more. The remaining four fired their respective weapons, anti-materiel rifles and recoilless rifles. All were powerful weapons able to one-shot a normal demon.
However, Ueyanagi’s ankylosaurus calmly shrugged off their attacks.
“That guy… He kept the toughness from the armored vehicles, then…”
Kojou remembered that Ueyanagi had spoken the word information.
Maybe that sorcerous device isn’t just for turning machines into golems, Kojou pondered. The golems Ueyanagi created possessed the same abilities and characteristics as the armored vehicles—in other words, the newly created creatures were imbued with those properties.
The sorcerous device transformed manufactured goods into l
iving creatures. Machine had been replaced wholesale with life. The device was well beyond the understanding of human beings. Only the possessions of the gods made such a thing possible.
That was the truth behind the gunmetal weapons employed by the Cleansers—they were sorcerous devices of the sinful god. One might call the transformation of Ueyanagi’s body into something inhuman the price he paid for using such a device.
If he continued to use the device, at some point, he would no doubt cease to be human.
“Senpai.”
Yukina adopted a familiar pose as she looked at Kojou.
Yuiri raised an eyebrow. Perhaps she was unable to immediately understand what the younger Sword Shaman meant to do.
“Himeragi? Oh, I get it.”
However, Kojou understood everything she had planned the instant their eyes met. There was no need to work out the timing or even give a signal. They used the opening created by the huge ankylosaurus turning about to launch a simultaneous attack.
“—Snowdrift Wolf!”
Yukina’s spear dissipated the pitch-black membrane covering the ankylosaurus’s surface.
It was the same as during the Black Bible Incident. Through the Divine Oscillation Effect of Snowdrift Wolf, able to rend any barrier, the field able to nullify demonic energy was nullified itself.
“What?!”
Ueyanagi, his own flesh half-fused with the ankylosaurus, exclaimed in shock as his movements came to a halt. When he did so, a new Beast Vassal emerged right before Ueyanagi’s eyes. This was a scarlet bicorn, a dense, mirage-like distortion in the air that was vibration and blast wind incarnate.
“C’mon over, Al-Nasl Minium—!”
The bicorn bellowed, echoing its master’s fighting spirit.
The super-oscillation of its hooves, able to bring a skyscraper crashing down, pulverized the ankylosaurus’s carapace. Before the might of a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor, the two armored vehicles’ defense was as brittle as a candy cane.
The golem shattered into such fine pieces that it was unrecognizable, leaving the metal-fused Ueyanagi to be thrown to the ground on his own.
“Ugh… A mere demon, doing this to me…”
Fluid resembling oil poured out of Ueyanagi as he glared at Kojou. His flesh, half-merged with machinery, seemed no longer able to move on its own power. However he burned with hatred, it was surely beyond him to fight any further.
The Knight of the Sinful God Page 17
