The smile disappeared from Yozo’s face.
“You’re so young. Of the two of you, Hiroshi had the better idea. You can’t have a peaceful world unless someone is willing to do the dirty work.”
“There’s a way to solve the fundamental problem... At least, that’s how it feels to me. If you call that fate, then that’s what’s driving me. I’m going.”
“Adults don’t seek fundamental solutions. Even if the god is wrong here, we can deal with that after it’s been determined for sure.”
“Would you say the same thing if your own child were being sacrificed?”
“You don’t understand, do you young one? That’s how families, how societies, survive. Even if civilization advances, no, especially after civilization advances, we need to base our society on values like blood and family, or it won’t survive.”
“If your values come from religion, it can cause war.”
“Leaving religion created far more incomplete systems of value, and caused far more deaths, than religion ever did. No, enough talk. I’ve sent the rest of the clan home. It’s just us.” Yozo grinned.
“You live in a society where you don’t care if you kill me, don’t you?” Akuto asked.
“Unfortunately, you’re right. But you’re the one who dealt with this the wrong way. You could’ve been a member of our family.”
“I’m going to do things my way. And you’re going to get out of my way.”
Akuto readied himself for combat.
3 - A Seriously Amazing Birthday
Constant Magical Academy was a fortress at one time in the past. But now the only sign of that history was the basement — the building had been rebuilt after the war. For this reason, there was a massive labyrinthine bunker underground, but the building itself wasn’t built to stand up to any attack.
Thus, Keizo Teruya expected this to be an easy job. He’d already received a full map of the grounds and information on their security system. He hadn’t had to go through secret means to get it, either. The public information was plenty.
“Synchronize our watches. Three, two, one...”
Keizo and his three men were lurking in the courtyard behind the school. All four of them were wearing ninja-style clothing. The clothes were made of a fabric that was difficult for mana to detect, and could fool any run of the mill sensor. Their dark brown color was also hard to spot at night, too.
All of them synchronized their watches and checked the blades they had hidden in their clothes. It was old-fashioned equipment and an old-fashioned plan, but when it came to assassination those were the best.
One of the men was tall and thin, one had bug-eyes that showed beneath his mask, and one was extremely short and round. He gave them each brief orders.
“Eyes, check the route.”
The one called “Eyes,” of course, was the one with the bug eyes. He nodded and jammed a finger into his right eye socket. It was a sight that would make anyone who saw it want to look away: he ripped out his own eyeball.
But Eyes didn’t seem to feel any pain. Shockingly, he held the eyeball up and flicked it with a finger. It fell to the ground, rolled for a while, and then stood up. There were tiny legs growing from it, and a thin thread stretching back. It was a nerve that was connected with the empty eye socket.
Eyes moved his hand, like he was giving orders to a small animal. The eyeball started to move forward, dragging the nerve along.
This was a way of scouting without using mana. Using mana would make it easier for someone to detect you, but since a walking eyeball didn’t disturb the surrounding mana any more than necessary, you could avoid that problem.
The eyeball started to trot forward, and then skillfully clambered up the school building’s gutter. When it reached an open window on the second floor, it leapt inside.
Before long, Eyes gave Keizo his report.
“The security’s been changed, it looks like. The patrol machines are going by at different times than they should be. Should I give you their expected routes based on standard patrol patterns?”
Eyes used his watch to display a map and the security patterns and showed it to Keizo. A single glance was enough to tell Keizo everything he needed to know about the school’s security.
“They aren’t using the standard patrol patterns. It’s a feint. There’s a good chance they’ve increased the number of patrol units following random patterns. They’ve thought this through carefully.”
Then Keizo gave an order to the short, rotund man.
“Bag, give me four dummy patrol units.”
The man called “Bag” removed his mask and stuck a hand in his mouth. When he took it out, he was holding four patrol units the same size and shape as small birds. Normally, you wouldn’t imagine something like that could fit in a person’s mouth, but Bag had somehow pulled four of them out from his body. This was a method of moving things he’d developed that couldn’t be detected by mana, as opposed to systems like Korone’s purse, which emitted huge amounts of mana when used.
“Snake, place the dummy patrol units on Route B. Once they’re placed, we’ll wait five minutes and then begin the operation.”
The tall thin man called “Snake” took the patrol units and got down on the ground. Then he began to wriggle forward, just like his reptilian namesake.
Snake moved as fast as a sprinter. He reached the building in no time at all, and wriggled up the side of the vertical wall. Since none of the others used mana, it was safe to assume that he’d probably permanently transformed his body to be able to do this.
Snake pressed his face up against a window that was too small for a human to enter. He then grabbed his head with his arm, and squished his skull until it could fit through. His body was flexible and elastic, and when he was through the window, it returned to its original shape.
The patrol units were too big to fit through, so he stretched out his body and used his mouth to unlock the window. An unlocked window would be enough to trigger a patrol unit, but Snake quickly sent the dummy patrol units through. They flew through the air, and when a real unit came to investigate the open window, they attacked.
A single strike from a dummy’s beak was enough to get inside and steal its data. The real patrol unit lost power and fell to the ground, and the dummy began to brazenly — though it had no emotions — send false data. From the perspective of the security commander, it would only appear to be a common false flag.
Snake crawled alone down the corridors of the school. Behind him followed Eyes’ eyeball.
“Proceeding down Route B as planned,” Eyes reported.
Eyes was next to Keizo, so this allowed him to keep in communication with Snake. They were an unstoppable assassin team.
“The target is in the lounge on the top floor of the school building. She’s not moving,” Bag said, looking into the mana detection monitor he’d taken out of his mouth.
They were tracking Keena, and she was the only person it showed on the top floor. There was no sign of Snake on the monitor.
Snake had swapped out the patrol units on the way for dummies. Eyes saw this and reported to Keizo.
“The patrol units have been replaced. The signal’s come in from Snake. He’s beginning the countdown.”
“Begin in five minutes,” Keizo ordered.
Eyes brought his eyeball back, and Bag and Keizo began to move towards the target.
Meanwhile, Snake hid himself beneath the fire extinguisher box next to the lounge. He stared into the room, which was a spot for students to relax. There were many chairs and tables there. There was a soda fountain on the side of the wall, but it was shut off now.
The target — Keena — had placed a bottle of tea and a lunchbox on the table at the end, and was looking up at the night sky through the glass ceiling. Snake assumed she would be bored just sitting there with no one around, but there were candles stuck in the pile of white rice in the lunchbox.
Tomorrow was the birthday Keena had chosen for herse
lf. She kept glancing at the clock — apparently, she’d decided that she would celebrate at midnight.
It was nothing more than a coincidence, but Snake had placed the dummy patrol units at 11:55. The operation would take place at exactly midnight.
Snake waited until there were 30 seconds left, then began to move from his hiding spot. He would do the killing today. Keizo and Bag, with the help of Eyes, would have prepared an escape route from the roof, and would be ready for any unseen events. Everything was going fine so far. Nobody would notice until they found Keena’s corpse tomorrow.
Snake checked to make sure the emergency sign hadn’t been given, then began to crawl through the space between the tables and chairs. He got closer and closer to her legs.
Snake checked the time once more.
It read 11:59:50.
He began to count.
○
Akuto had undergone a change as he faced Yozo. He was a different person than he’d been a few minutes ago.
“I know kids change quickly at your age, but this is a little extreme,” Yozo said.
The change in Akuto was manifesting itself in the mana around him. It had gone from calm to raging, and now it was calming down again.
But the amount of energy hadn’t faded at all. A quiet anger was building within him, and the slightest change in his emotions caused the air around him to tense up. The atmosphere would change from one of tension to fear that it could explode at any minute. What both of these had in common was that a terrible energy was hidden within them.
“I suppose one could say you’ve awakened.” Yozo’s tone was calm, and there was a smile on his face, but there was a clear sense of tension emanating from his body.
Akuto didn’t answer. There was a different type of calmness on his face than there had been before.
“I may have helped give birth to a monster. But even so, once a grown-up has started something, he can’t back down.”
Yozo drew his katana and his eyes opened wide. But Akuto ignored him and advanced.
Yozo moved.
“Hattori-Style Technique: Distorted Moonshadow!”
With a shout, Yozo split into two. It was the same technique that Junko used — no, this was the original. His clone technique was vastly superior, in that the two clones didn’t move in the same way at all.
Junko’s would still have the same basic patterns; the clone and the original would move in the same way. But Yozo’s clone moved like a completely different person.
“Die!”
The two Yozos attacked with perfect timing. It wasn’t a simultaneous attack — one attacked a moment later than the other, which was even more difficult to deal with. It was like a strike from above suddenly turning into a strike from below.
In fact, the first Yozo came down with a swing from above, while the second sliced at his feet. And to make things even worse, the strike from above twisted and turned as it fell. It was a movement designed to transform the swing into a stab, or knock the enemy’s katana out of his hands, and even on its own, it had the effect of a feint.
The sweep from below wasn’t a simple sweep either. It seemed to sweep upwards, then sweep downwards again. Even with two clones, a simple attack could’ve been blocked by going forward, but this combination was unstoppable.
Akuto chose to go forward and block it anyway. He ignored the feint and succeeded in avoiding the strike from above by using his mana-enhanced biceps to knock the blade’s hilt. But because of that, he couldn’t dodge the strike from below. He stretched out an arm to stop it, but it changed direction once more and dug sharply into his leg. Blood spurted out of his heel.
But Akuto didn’t scream, and Yozo knew he hadn’t won.
“I’ve seen how you reacted to that.”
Yozo stood with his sword still drawn. Akuto was still standing in front of him.
The clone attack was a hallucination Yozo had shown him.
“You can’t use any subtle skills. Your specialty is using mana to enhance your body. But you can only enhance the parts you focus on. If I keep attacking, I can slowly keep cutting you, and eventually you’ll die from blood loss.”
Yozo’s words were intended as a warning. Akuto said nothing.
“There’s no guarantee I’ll attack the same way. I have several different patterns I can use. You were fooled by my hallucination, which means that you cannot stop me. I don’t want to kill you. Can you reconsider this?” Yozo said, and finally Akuto replied.
“I’ve made my decision. I’ve finally seen what it is I have to do. I’m not backing down.” There was a strong resolve in his words.
“A shame,” Yozo said, and readied his sword. “This time, it won’t be a hallucination.”
Before he’d even finished speaking, Yozo had created a clone of himself. The next strike came immediately, as if he wanted to give Akuto no time to think.
Just like he said, he attacked in a different way. First, with a swing from above. This was the same as the hallucination. Akuto moved forward and knocked the blade upwards.
But the second moved differently. It aimed for the torso, but the clone’s right hand let go of the blade, causing it to fall lower and slip beneath Akuto’s arm. Then the clone grabbed the blade again with the left hand, and brought it sharply upwards.
Akuto couldn’t stop both attacks.
There was a single flash of light.
A huge spurt of blood burst forth from the wound.
Akuto’s head flew high into the air.
The body stood upright for a moment, but when a fountain of blood poured out of the perfectly level cut, it staggered and fell to the ground.
“I didn’t want to kill you,” Yozo whispered.
The clone disappeared, and Akuto’s head fell to the ground. It looked up at him with an expression of pain.
“If you hadn’t been so stubborn, you could’ve survived...” Yozo picked up the head.
“I’m being stubborn because there’s something I have to do.”
Yozo froze. He was a man who was almost never surprised, but his eyes went wide with shock just the same. Akuto’s severed head was talking.
“What?!”
It was possible to change one’s body a great deal using mana, but there was no way you could survive as just a head. His will to live was terrifying.
Yozo tossed the head in the air and tried to slice it apart with his sword, but the blade stopped in mid-air before it reached him.
“!”
Now he was even more shocked — something had grabbed him from behind. Akuto’s headless body had gotten around behind him.
Yozo’s expression twisted in fear. He heard a metallic sound that sent a chill down his spine. He looked and saw that Akuto’s head had grabbed the blade with its teeth.
Clack... clack...
The head was crawling up the blade, using its teeth to move. Yozo could only stand there and watch. When it reached the hilt, it looked up at Yozo with empty eyes, and then leapt for Yozo’s exposed throat.
“Aaaaah!” Yozo screamed.
Akuto’s teeth were biting into his throat. Blood was spurting out of his carotid artery, and he could feel the blood leaving his head at an incredible rate.
He sensed that his own death was upon him.
“That was pretty unpleasant for me, too,” Akuto’s head was saying.
Those words brought Yozo back to reality.
Akuto was standing in front of him, with his head still attached to his body.
“Don’t tell me...!” Yozo shivered.
“I told you that if I saw it again, the outcome might change,” Akuto said quietly.
“You weren’t talking about my movements, you were talking about the illusion itself...?!” Yozo stammered.
These illusions, unlike other secret techniques, were something shown to the enemy before combat began to frighten and confuse the enemy. They weren’t made so that they could be easily copied.
But Akuto had used the technique
after only seeing it twice, and he had done it so well that even Yozo didn’t notice.
“Talent... isn’t a good enough word to describe it, I suppose. You were born that way, weren’t you?” Yozo said.
“I don’t know. Either way, I don’t want to kill you. Just let me through,” Akuto said calmly.
Yozo shook his head.
“I can’t do that. That would be betraying my role. But I’ve realized I cannot defeat you. I can’t abandon my duty, but I can’t afford to die here, either. Now, what to do with this contradiction?”
Yozo laughed, and didn’t move an inch. He’d realized why Akuto had shown him such an awful illusion.
Yozo was a man who was ready to die at any time. The one thing he feared was that the people he’d killed would curse him. Akuto had realized that, and had used that knowledge to render him unable to act. At his core, Yozo didn’t like cruel battles. Even that awful illusion was a way of saying he didn’t want to fight.
“The source of that contradiction comes from your faith. Right? Your biggest mistake was putting your faith in something that’s nothing but a system. And it’s easy to resolve that contradiction. I just have to run away.”
Akuto put his hand on a nearby tree, and suddenly it began to change. What was just a normal tree was filled with an incredible amount of mana. It turned black and then split down the middle, sending fragments covered in some kind of sticky liquid scattering everywhere. The huge mouth of a demon beast appeared from the side of the shattered tree.
“What changed? I didn’t think I could do this until a second ago,” Akuto muttered.
Akuto put his foot into the demon beast’s mouth, and it seemed to melt away in the darkness inside the tree. It was some kind of magical teleporter.
Yozo and Hiroshi (who was still holding Yuko) realized what he was doing.
Hiroshi yelled at him as he left.
“Wait! Are you going to betray everyone? Even the class rep?” Akuto didn’t turn around as he answered.
“I’m not betraying anyone. I’m just playing my role in the story everyone made. If I don’t, the story called ‘faith’ won’t end.”
Akuto disappeared within the tree, and its eerie mouth vanished.
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 4 Page 8
