“Sheesh,” Kojou grumbled, shaking his head as he moved to release the bicorn from its summons.
“—Kojou!” Yuiri sharply warned.
She was staring above the bicorn’s head.
A gunmetal wyvern spread its wings high above, dive-bombing toward Kojou’s Beast Vassal.
The collision with the wyvern shrouded in a pitch-black aura greatly staggered the scarlet bicorn. Kojou’s Beast Vassal was not harmed. But thanks to the black veil that nullified demonic energy, it had been rendered unable to move freely. Riding upon the wyvern’s back was the gunmetal magic user who’d assaulted Yuiri and the others to start with.
“The cosplay lady from earlier!”
“Not just her, senpai! There’s another one coming!”
“Huh…?!”
Just as Yukina had indicated, there were two wyverns flying over. During the time the first wyvern held Kojou’s Beast Vassal in check, the other glided over the surface of the ground to land right at Ueyanagi’s side. The second was ridden by a tall man encased in iron-colored knight’s armor.
“Major Azama!”
Ueyanagi let out a cry of delight, seemingly in awe of the knight of iron. His words were a hard jolt to Kojou and the others, for it was the name of the SDF commanding officer who had come out during the negotiations between Yuiri and Ueyanagi.
“Thank you for the reinforcements, Major! Please, grant me information, stronger information—”
As Kojou and the others shot them bewildered gazes, Ueyanagi extended a hand toward the iron knight, clinging to him for support.
Azama, his entire body clad in knightly plate, gazed down at Ueyanagi with vacant eyes.
“You have done well to halt Glenda in her tracks, First Lieutenant Ueyanagi.”
His voice bereft of emotion, he turned the lance in his hand toward Ueyanagi. Then, without warning, he plunged the polished tip of his lance through Ueyanagi’s chest.
“Ah?”
Ueyanagi looked down at the lance impaling his own chest with a dumbfounded expression.
Then, his entire body became countless points of glowing light as the lance began to absorb him.
“Ma…jor? Why…?”
“The power of your incomplete sorcerous device can do more. I shall now end your suffering.”
Ueyanagi’s body dissipated before he could hear the last of Azama’s words. Having been transformed into the “information” that their kind referred to, he was consumed by Azama’s lance.
“Ah… Aaah…”
Behind Kojou and the others, shock rendered the steel-haired girl speechless before she let out a scream.
“Nooooooooooooo!!”
“Glenda?!”
With a fierce panic seizing the young girl, Yuiri desperately tried to calm her down. Judging that they were both in danger, Kojou and Yukina raced toward the flustered pair.
“Calm down, Glenda! What has you all—? Whoaaaa!”
Kojou was struck by a blow of incredible force the instant he put his hand on her shoulder. The military jacket she was wearing ripped apart as Glenda’s body suddenly swelled up and increased in mass dozens of times over—she was transforming into a dragon.
“S-senpai!”
“Take my hand, Himeragi!”
Kojou desperately stretched his arm toward Yukina, who was in danger of being shaken off from Glenda’s back.
The instant he somehow managed to grasp Yukina’s slender wrist, Kojou and the others were struck by ferocious acceleration that made it feel like their innards would burst out of their chests.
Enormous wings imbued with magical energy spread above Kojou and company’s heads. Ignoring all laws of physics, the dragon-ized Glenda powerfully accelerated as she soared up into the sky.
“Nooooo! Glenda, you idioooot!” Yuiri, held by the dragon’s front claw, was half in tears as she shouted.
His breath caught as he was buffeted by violent winds, Kojou stared at the receding ground below in astonishment.
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, Hi
meragi—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.
The Knight of the Sinful God Page 18
