“I can’t eat any more Koshihikari...”
“Why Koshihikari?”
“But I can eat more Milky Queen...”
“Stop talking nonsense and wake up!”
It was only when Junko started to shake her violently that Keena woke up and rubbed her eyes.
“Is it morning? Night?”
“It’s early morning. I’m sorry, but this is an emergency. Where did Akuto Sai go?”
“Hmm? Ackie left.”
“Where?”
“He went treasure-hunting.”
“He’s doing WHAT? Is he five years old?” Junko said. She hadn’t seen the whole fuss from before.
“No. It’s real. There’s a pirate treasure here in the school. Only a truly courageous adventurer can gain it...”
“Enough of this nonsense! Tell me the truth!”
“It’s true, though... It must be Captain Kid’s treasure. His great voyage ended here at this school 50 years ago, but the treasure was never found...”
“We’re miles inland!” Junko yelled. Asking Keena was a mistake. She decided to go find someone she could trust more. But it took until breakfast to find out anything useful.
“That idiot decided to take responsibility by going to find the treasure himself.”
“He was with some weird girl. Not Keena, but a girl with long hair. One I’d never seen before. I don’t know if there’s any student like that at this school. Was she a graduate?”
“Who cares? She was on top of him the whole time.”
“I mean, during that homeroom speech they were... hehehe! Aww, it’s too embarrassing to say...”
“Tell her! Tell her exactly what they were doing!”
“And this was during homeroom! I mean, can you believe it?”
Since there were only girls around, none of them bothered to hold back. And what they told her was almost enough to make Junko pass out for a moment.
—What? What are you thinking, Akuto Sai? And don’t tell me that girl you were with was Eiko...
By the time Junko got her own copy of the map and gathered her things, it was well into the afternoon. Then she secretly set out in direct defiance of the disciplinary committee head’s order.
3 - The Three Keys
The reason all the students had gone to the same place was that only one spot on the map was immediately identifiable: the underground crypt.
“So the other two places are marked, but the mark covers such a wide area that you’re not sure where they are?” Akuto asked.
“That’s right,” Hiroshi said. “This one’s a forest, and this is an old town.”
Akuto looked down at the map he was holding while comparing it with the aerial photo of the academy in his student handbook.
“But this crypt is big, so you were able to ID it. If we’re gonna have to look for the other two locations, we might have a mess on our hands.”
Akuto pointed at the crypt with a finger. There was a tiny park above it. In the park was an entrance to the underground; which was probably used for memorial ceremonies for the people who died during the Great War.
“And then there’s this text.”
《For Boichiro Yamato》
That’s what it said in tiny letters under the mark on the map. There was nothing written beneath the other two marks, so the only choice was to head here.
“Do you suppose this Boichiro Yamato guy is one of the people who died in the war?”
“There’s graves that hold people’s ashes there. If there are names there, it’ll probably give us some kind of hint,” Hiroshi said with a nod, only to be interrupted by a high laugh from his side. It was Eiko.
“You’re so stupid. If you thought about it for a second, you could figure it out.”
“We won’t know until we look!” Hiroshi yelled.
They’d been like this the whole time. Akuto’s head was starting to hurt.
“Hey, but what if Boichiro isn’t dead, huh?”
“Don’t be stupid. If his bones aren’t there, we just have to assume that the hint means something else.”
Eiko and Hiroshi were probably going to keep at it all day if he didn’t interrupt, so Akuto pointed and said,
“Look, there it is. The park.”
They’d been able to reach their first destination before noon.
They went through the gate. The place didn’t look like it had been maintained very well. There were weeds breaking through the bricks on the path, and the tree branches had been left to grow wild, giving the whole area a dark ambiance. Akuto saw what looked like a rest area, with benches under a roof, but it looked so dilapidated that he didn’t feel like going in.
“I guess they only clean it when it’s time for a ceremony,” said Hiroshi.
“It’s been over a century since the war, so I guess that makes sense,” Akuto said.
Now it was Hiroshi’s turn to point forward. He was pointing at a building which still looked neglected, but was slightly cleaner than the rest. “Great War Memorial Building,” read the sign, and through the windows he could see a display of paintings and uniforms from the period. This place seemed like it was cleaned once a year.
“There’s an entrance in there to the underground crypt.”
Hiroshi must have participated in a ceremony before, because he took the lead and opened the door. The display room was on the right side past the entrance, and straight ahead was a large door.
“The stairs are past the door,” Hiroshi said.
“Then we might get jumped any second now, huh? Let’s be careful.”
Akuto told Hiroshi to put down their bags, and looked towards Eiko to tell her to stay here. But before he could, she wrapped herself around his arm.
“Of course I’m going with you!” she said.
With her clinging to him like this, he couldn’t exactly tell her to stay here.
“...Fine. Just get off me. There’s a good chance this is going to get dangerous.”
—But I can’t let a girl get hurt...
Akuto gripped the handle of his Incantation Gun. With his other hand, he opened the door.
The stairs were big enough for five or six people to stand on at once, and there were lights at regular intervals. It felt less like going underground than the labyrinth beneath the school. But the stairs stretched on for a long way, and they probably went a good distance underground.
Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, it opened up into a fairly wide area, large enough to fit an entire soccer stadium. The ceiling was quite high, too, enough to fit a five story building. There were lights there as well, but they weren’t bright enough to clearly illuminate the whole place. The opposite side of the room was dimly lit and hard to make out. The floor looked like it was made of blue artificial turf. There were rows of square boxes lined up upon the ground, and the room was devoid of anything else.
When they stepped onto the artificial turf, they realized that the boxes were plastic graves. Each one was about 30 square centimeters, which would mean that the remains of many people were resting here. Each box had a name on it, and it seemed like they were in alphabetical order.
“There’s a lot of them, but if it’s alphabetical we should be able to find what we’re looking for fast,” Akuto said as he started to look for the name “Yamato.” The “A’s” were near the entrance, so the “Y’s” were probably on the other side.
“If someone’s waiting to ambush us, they’re probably hiding further inside,” Akuto said, motioning for Eiko and Hiroshi to get behind him.
After a bit of walking, they saw stains and scratches on the floor. That was proof that a battle had occurred here. There were tiny scraps on the ground, little pieces of cloth with blood on them.
“Oh jeez, they made a mess. Don’t they know how to behave around the dead?” Akuto whispered. Eiko let out a low gasp, sounding genuinely confused.
“Why do you care? You’re the Demon King, aren’t you?”
“I’m not the Demon King, and I’m
never going to be,” Akuto said immediately, but Eiko shook her head.
“But what fun is that? You know what your problem is? You don’t try to have fun. Why do you always try to make things so boring?”
“I don’t like the school of thought that says you need to live in the moment,” Akuto said. He felt like he was being blamed for something he didn’t entirely understand, and he didn’t like it.
“That’s no good, though. If you don’t change, I’m not going to be able to stay in love with you, okay? If you don’t make things more fun, I’m going to betray you!”
Eiko leapt forward and spun around in a circle, stretching her lips out in a pout. She looked so serious, like a little girl throwing a tantrum, that Akuto wasn’t sure what to do.
—Betray me? You were never on my side to begin with... But even if she’s playing me all along, what am I supposed to do about it?
“Why are you hanging around me all the time, anyway?” Akuto asked, and suddenly Eiko became angry.
“I told you, because I fell in love with you!”
Even Akuto was stunned by this.
“Hold on. We’ve never even really met each other, have we?”
“That’s true! The first time we met was during that homeroom speech! But what’s wrong with that? You know, sometimes you can tell a lot about somebody from just a single glance!”
“Yes, I know that you can do that sometimes, but this still doesn’t seem right.”
“You know what your problem is? You keep talking about what’s wrong and what’s right, when it doesn’t even matter! Why are you like that?”
“Because it’s important to put daily effort into making sure everybody can live peacefully, of course. If something’s causing problems for other people, it’s wrong,” Akuto said, his tone making it clear that he was serious. But that only made Eiko’s tantrum bigger.
“That’s wrong! That’s totally wrong! I’m here because you’re supposed to be the Demon King! Why are you so boring?”
Eiko continued to yell, but Akuto didn’t say anything. He’d seen a shadow moving behind Eiko.
“Behind her! It’s behind her, boss!” Hiroshi pointed behind Eiko, but she was still throwing a tantrum.
“Don’t you need me on your side? I’ve spent my whole life thinking of nothing but offering my life to a strong man! And I’m telling you that I’m willing to fall in love with you!”
“Tell me about it later,” Akuto said as he pulled out his Incantation Gun.
There was a shadow in the shape of a human getting closer and close to her. It was thin, and moving slowly. That’s all he could tell.
“Move, and I’ll shoot,” Akuto said, and when he saw that it only accelerated, he fired.
There was a loud bang. The shadow tried to dodge, but he maneuvered the bullet to follow after it. When it made contact, he caused an explosion big enough to blow them away.
There was a flash of light the size of a basketball. The impact should’ve been hard enough to knock the target down.
But the shadow just dispersed around the ball. When the light disappeared, the shadow still had a hole in it, like you’d thrown a ball clean through something soft. But the hole quickly filled. The shadow seemed to be made of countless tiny beads, which would change their shape when you threw something at it.
—So it’s just like everybody said, huh? I’d hoped an explosion could take it out.
Akuto loaded the next round as he tried to come up with a plan, but Eiko jumped between them.
“You’re annoying me!” she yelled as she quickly pulled a dagger out of her jacket. She held it an underhand grip, making a shallow swipe at her target.
The blade cut through the shadow just like Akuto’s bullet, but it just flew backwards and reformed a few feet away.
Akuto gasped, more surprised by Eiko’s movements than the shadow’s regeneration.
—I guess she really is something special after all.
But that didn’t mean he could let Eiko do the fighting. He wasn’t sure whether to tell her to fall back or not. In the end he decided that she wouldn’t listen, and ran forward himself.
He could see now what the shadow was. It was a thin person, clad in black. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman — their face was covered with a white mask. They looked like a human, probably. And when he got close to them, they spoke.
“Leave this place, and forget about this. If you don’t, I can’t guarantee your life.”
“I’m glad we can talk about this. Honestly, I’d love to go home,” Akuto said, entirely serious. The shadow’s shoulders slumped in confusion.
“Then leave. And never come back...” The shadow tried to continue, but it was cut off by a yell.
“Die!”
Eiko jumped up and brought her dagger down hard on he shadow’s head.
Akuto thought the mask might break, but he saw it turn into fog. Was that part of its body too? Or was it capable of turning everything in its immediate vicinity into fog? Or maybe was he just seeing an illusion?
—There’s no sense in thinking about it. I need to stop her, now...
“Stop! Get back!”
“No way!”
Eiko ignored him as she launched another flurry of attacks. It didn’t seem to hurt the shadow, but maybe its foggy body could feel exhaustion, because it fell back, seemingly irritated.
—Does that mean it’s not an illusion, and it’s turning itself and the things around it into fog? That means it must be burning mana...
That was Akuto’s guess.
—Then when the shadow gets tired, it will switch to attack instead of defense!
“Watch out! Get back!” he yelled, but of course, Eiko ignored him.
“What makes you think you can tell me what to do?! Nobody who isn’t in love with me gets to give me orders!”
—What’s this girl’s problem?
And then Akuto’s fears were realized.
The shadow’s arm turned into fog, and instantly reformed as a sharp silver blade. Eiko must have been caught off-guard by this, because she failed to completely dodge the weapon.
“Gyaaah!”
She was blown backwards and landed on the ground. She’d held out her dagger to dodge the worst of it, but there was a red cut along her arm.
“I’m telling you to leave,” the shadow said in a low voice, then it rushed towards her. Again and again it attacked with the silver blade.
Eiko rolled and blocked with her dagger, just barely managing to protect herself.
—If it can’t turn into fog when it attacks...!
Akuto tried firing at the shadow when it attacked Eiko, but the shadow either quickly blocked with its blade, or turned a portion of itself into fog.
“If that’s how you want to play this, then fine,” Akuto said to himself as he quickly chambered another round. This bullet carried a spell that would cause a small tornado. He fired it at the shadow just as it struck at Eiko again.
The shadow thought it was the same type of bullet as before, and tried to turn into fog to avoid being hit. But when the bullet burst, it created a whirlwind that dragged the fog inside it. And then Akuto used his power to make the whirlwind stronger. Instantly, the whirlwind grew to two times the shadow’s height, blasting it away.
—It’s not that powerful on its own, but with proper control, it really worked out, huh?
Akuto ran over to Eiko.
“You okay?”
He reached down to help her up, but immediately regretted it. Eiko was looking up at him with reddened cheeks. He’d seen that look on girls in middle school many times before. And each time, it meant something bad was going to happen.
—Now what do I do? I don’t know why, but whenever I’m dealing with this type of girl, and I try to explain things so they don’t get the wrong idea, they always get really mad and start to cry...
“You saved me! You saved me, didn’t you!”
Eiko’s voice was full of excitement.
<
br /> “Anybody would’ve saved you. It doesn’t mean what you think it does.”
Akuto tried to pull back his hand, but Eiko grabbed it before he could.
“Don’t be so embarrassed! I know what it means!”
Eiko was now extremely happy. Akuto turned away and called out to Korone, who was watching from a far distance away.
“Hey, can you patch her up?”
Korone wordlessly pointed behind him.
“Huh?”
Akuto looked back and saw that the shadow had reformed itself. It looked like it was pissed. He wasn’t sure if the thing was human, or if he’d just unconsciously decided to treat it as human.
—Either way, I don’t want it coming after us hard.
Akuto loaded another whirlwind bullet, but instead of running away, or running towards them, the shadow simply spread out its hands.
He had a bad feeling. His hunch was right.
Akuto heard the sound of wings from above. He looked up and saw what looked like black clouds.
The clouds were rumbling and roaring. He couldn’t tell if the wings belonged to birds or insects, but there were countless numbers of them, overlapping into a low bass sound.
“You’re kidding me...” Akuto said.
He had once seen a bird migration. There’d been hundreds of birds, all traveling together in a giant flock. He didn’t know if was birds or insects above him, but there were just as many now as there had been in that flock.
Akuto finally realized what it was that had taken out the other students. There was no question that the flock was being controlled by the shadow.
“We’re getting out of here!” Akuto yelled to Eiko.
But Eiko’s response was stubborn.
“No! My Akuto Sai would never run away!”
Eiko held her dagger in an underground grip. It looked like she was insisting on fighting the shadow.
—Why is this so important to her?
He felt something strong in her, something that definitely wasn’t madness. Akuto had already realized that there was more going on with this treasure map than meets the eye, and this probably meant Eiko knew what it was. But he didn’t have time to think about it.
The black clouds fell down from the air. It was a horde of bats. Sinister black shapes were flitting across his vision, one after the other. The sound of their wings filled the air.
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 2 Page 7
