Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 3

by Ichirou Sakaki

  There was a long pause before Yukinari said, “Thanks.”

  Then he mussed her hair. The silver-haired girl squinted like a cat cozying up to its owner and pressed her cheek to Yukinari’s chest again.

  ●

  That night, Berta remained in Friedland proper rather than going back to the sanctuary. As the shrine maiden who had been offered to Yukinari, normally it was her duty to stay by his side, but Fiona had specially requested her to stay and Yukinari had agreed, so she was spending tonight in the Schillings mansion.

  Fiona wanted Berta to look after the mercenary, Veronika.

  Ultimately, Veronika was allowed to stay in the guestroom of the mansion for the time being. She was obviously strong and seemed to be trying to put on a calm front to avoid any show of weakness. But she had fled from Aldreil to Friedland without proper rest, and she was wounded as well; her fatigue would be extreme. Somebody would need to see to her health for a while.

  Currently, Friedland was working on several development projects at Yukinari’s suggestion, chiefly ways to improve farming. Much of the populace was busy working on those projects and unable to help accommodate an unexpected visitor. Hence, responsibility for Veronika had fallen to Berta.

  But once she had changed the bandages on Veronika’s wounds, brought her food, and cleaned the room, she found she was out of things to do.

  Berta had never really been properly educated. At most, she knew how to keep things clean so as not to cause trouble for other people. She knew that the mercenary’s wounds had to be kept clean and provided with fresh dressings regularly, but she didn’t know much beyond that.

  “Um...”

  She looked at Veronika, hesitant. Throughout most of her life, she had been surrounded by girls younger than herself—so when faced with a grown woman, she wasn’t quite sure what to do. She thought it might be good to talk about something, but she didn’t know what.

  Veronika was a mercenary. Berta knew the word, but she had no idea what the job actually entailed—other than that mercenaries seemed like scary people. And although Veronika was in fact quite lovely, the perpetually hard expression on her face made Berta reluctant to engage her in conversation.

  So a supremely uncomfortable silence reigned in the guestroom.

  Despite this, Veronika showed no sign of going to sleep, so Berta didn’t even know whether it was appropriate for her to withdraw to another room. For better or for worse, Berta was a very serious person, so when she was told to be with Veronika at all times, she would not shirk her responsibility. But still...

  “You.”

  Perhaps even Veronika could no longer stand the silence, because she suddenly spoke. Berta responded with a touch of panic, but inside, she was also deeply relieved.

  “Oh, Y-Yes? What can I do for you?”

  “Would you tell me your name?”

  “Oh...” It was only then that Berta realized she had never so much as introduced herself. “P-Pardon me. I’m called Berta!”

  “Berta. Hmm...” Veronika muttered the name as if testing the weight of it; then she turned her clear gaze back on her caretaker, sizing her up. Finally, she said, “Sorry.”

  “Wha...?” For a moment, Berta didn’t know why the woman was apologizing.

  “You’re an attendant or something to that boy Yukinari, aren’t you? And here you’re stuck taking care of me.”

  “I’m... I’m not his attendant. I’m a shrine maiden who’s been offered to Lord Yukinari.”

  “A shrine maiden?” Veronika asked with a frown.

  Someone who lived in the area probably would have surmised from that term that she was a human sacrifice who had been offered to an erdgod, and they’d know that erdgods were animals who had achieved intelligence through one means or another and become bound to the land.

  “This... Yukinari. He’s a priest of some sort?”

  “No, he’s the honored erdgod.”

  “The erdgod? Him? A human?”

  “Yes. Lord Yukinari often refers to himself as the ‘acting erdgod’... But for this town, and for me, he’s a very important person, and he is a god.”

  Veronika seemed less than convinced, so Berta told her the story: how she had been offered as a sacrifice to the erdgod; how Yukinari had come and taken on the role of Friedland’s deity. Happy to have something she was able to talk about, Berta went into perhaps unnecessary detail as she related the tale.

  “...And so, well, I’m the shrine maiden who’s been offered to Lord Yukinari. Although I admit I haven’t really been able to do my job properly yet...”

  “Your job? I thought he wasn’t a man-eating monster?”

  “That’s true. So offering myself to him can only mean, uh...” Her face was red.

  Yukinari refused to treat Berta as property that had been given to him; instead, he was kind enough to treat her as a human being. She wasn’t suited to be food for him, obviously, and she had no special talents, so she thought perhaps she could at least give herself to him sexually. But Yukinari never came close to laying a hand on her. Thus, to this day Berta harbored a lingering anxiety that she was completely failing in her role as a shrine maiden.

  Before she knew it, Berta had divulged even this to Veronika.

  She had only wanted to help dispel the unpleasant atmosphere in the room, but it had led her to babble on about things Veronika probably didn’t care to hear about. By the time she realized that, however, it was too late to take it back.

  Veronika, for her part, didn’t seem to feel she had been subjected to too much chatter.

  “...True,” Veronika said at length. Her tone was a touch more gentle than before. “Once you’re used to living a certain way, it’s hard to change. Very hard.”

  “Um, Miss... Veronika?” Berta blinked. But Veronika didn’t seem inclined to say anything more; she lay back down on her bed and turned over, silently ending the conversation. She seemed to be saying that she was ready to go to sleep. Berta watched her for a moment.

  “Sleep... Sleep well.”

  With that, she bowed once and then, as quietly as she could, walked out of the room.

  Chapter Two: The Gathering Storm

  Justin Chambers walked down the stairs to the basement, silent and alone.

  He was the Dominus Doctrinae, the highest official in the True Church of Harris. Normally he wouldn’t go anywhere unattended. But now, in the middle of the night, he headed for the basement by himself. Down to a facility that, officially, didn’t exist. Those in the Church who might have seen him this way were very few. This place was something the Church—and the Dominus Doctrinae—had deliberately kept hidden throughout the generations.

  “Hrgh...”

  He pushed open the heavy metal door to the underground facility.

  Where he was going had a very different atmosphere than where he was coming from. It was completely unadorned; instead, the walls were covered with shelves—so many of them that the walls literally couldn’t be seen. The shelves were lined with a variety of items and tools. Some were made of metal, some of glass, others of resin, while still others were made of materials he couldn’t identify. All of them were mysteries to Justin; he didn’t even know what they were called, let alone how to use them.

  Whatever they were, they didn’t make one think of a religious building—certainly not the basement of the Great Cathedral. On the ceiling, along with the lamp that hung there for illumination, countless pipes were visible. Narrow ones and large ones, pipes that forked in different directions and others that joined together. Some were connected to spherical vessels, or square ones—other things Justin didn’t understand.

  Deep in the room stood the master of this place.

  “Welcome to my laboratory,” said the tall, thin woman, bowing.

  She was perhaps just past twenty years old. Her fiery-red hair was tied back and tossed over her left shoulder. She wore a long black outfit, the chest open as if to invite attention. She didn’t much look like someone who wo
uld be associated with a church. In fact, one could mistake her for a prostitute. At first glance, one certainly wouldn’t guess that she was an alchemist—unless one saw her hands.

  Her arms were covered in white gloves that reached to her elbows, with a complicated sigil on the back of the hand. It was a combination of a variety of symbols and letters—a “transmogrification circle” such as alchemists favored. The circle on her gloves was not actually practical; it was more of a blueprint, a measuring stick. But this was yet another thing Justin didn’t know.

  Yaroslava Vernak was the woman’s name.

  “You said you had something I would like to see,” Justin said.

  “And so I do. This way, please.” Yaroslava gestured with an alluring smile. She indicated another door, this one made of wood. “Are you quite ready, Your Holiness?” she asked. She was smiling as if she was about to pull a prank on him.

  “Should I be?”

  “Yes. I think you may find this a bit shocking.”

  Yaroslava had always been given to theatrics, but he sensed a gravity from her today that was unusual. “You’ve never done anything but shock me,” Justin said with a wry smile. “What more do you threaten me with now?”

  “Very well, Your Holiness,” she said. “Look here, then.”

  She opened the door and ushered Justin inside.

  A massive tank sat in the center of the room. It was filled with an opaque liquid the crimson color of blood—presumably some form of holy oil. It wasn’t very wide; it had the dimensions and appearance of a coffin that had been propped up on its end.

  “My most sincere apologies that I’ve kept you waiting,” Yaroslava said. “Allow me to introduce you to the prototype of Vernak’s ‘angel.’”

  She pulled on a chain that hung from the ceiling. There was a ploop, and a single bubble rose in the tube of holy oil. A moment later, a slow whirlpool formed and the water level began to drop. Apparently, she was draining the holy oil. As the liquid got lower and lower, the object hidden in the tube became visible.

  “What’s this...?” There was indeed a note of astonishment in Justin’s voice. He had ordered Yaroslava to create a new, fourteenth angel, but he had expected it to take time. The angels had originally been the work of one particular family of alchemists kept by the previous Dominus, but when Jirina Urban, one of the descendants of that family, had been executed as an apostate, much of the art of creating the angels had been lost.

  He had assumed that careful study of the records left by Jirina’s family would eventually yield the ability to create angels just as good as theirs, but he had never imagined it would be a simple enough matter to complete in such a brief time. Or perhaps this was a testament to just how skilled Yaroslava was.

  “This is an angel...?”

  It had a pale body, a few flecks of crimson still clinging to it. It was sitting at the bottom of the tube of holy oil, facing away from them. Its form was willowy, the whole shape of its body described by flowing curves. It was immensely alluring. Even before one noticed the bulge of the chest, it was obvious this was a woman.

  There were no female homunculi, no female angels. Or there hadn’t been. But now...

  It was the teaching of the True Church of Harris that the most fundamental form of the human body was male. Immediately after the creation of the world, the whole human race had consisted of just one man. This meant there was no fighting or anger amongst people, only one perfect entity, un-aging, undying: God’s beloved child.

  If the man had continued this way, the world might have been tedious, perhaps, but it would have been safe. But the man, it was said, succumbed to loneliness and boredom: imitating what God had done, he took a piece of his own flesh and made himself a companion—a woman. As a result, jealousy and rage entered the world, and people began to fight with each other. Encountering one who was like him and yet was not him, the man learned to compare himself to others. Humans could never again be pure.

  This was why the Church saw women as lower than men: they were the source of original sin. Of course the all-important angels would be made only in the likeness of men.

  “I suppose there’s some reason you made this angel in the form of a woman.”

  “Of course,” Yaroslava said with a knowing smile. “Two reasons, in fact. One is as a ploy against the Blue Angel. He obviously knows the True Church of Harris is after him, so he’ll be on the lookout for male enemies. A female might just get past his guard.”

  This new Angel had been created specifically with the goal of destroying the thirteenth angel, called the Blue Angel or the Bluesteel Blasphemer. He would no doubt expect any angel sent after him to look like a man, so a female angel would have better luck getting close to him.

  “And the other reason?”

  “I believe we discussed that in order to fight the Blue Angel, the human soul at the core of this creation would not be removed.”

  The Church used its homunculi to perform miracles to help convert people; they were almost like walking advertisements. And an advertisement had no need of self-awareness or the ability to act autonomously. The angels were generally accompanied by someone whose job was to control them, to judge onlookers’ reactions and dispense miracles accordingly.

  The Bluesteel Blasphemer, however, retained his sense of self. This was the most threatening thing about him and the reason Jirina Urban had been executed for creating him.

  The Blasphemer himself was not so superior to the other angels as such; in fact, their abilities were more or less the same. But with his sense of self, the Blasphemer didn’t need to be given orders. When fighting another angel, he was immeasurably faster than a puppet that couldn’t think or act on its own. The ability to assess the situation, choose a strategy, and carry it out was a matter of life and death on the battlefield.

  If they sent enough units of the Missionary Order against him, they could almost certainly overwhelm him regardless of what his powers were. But that would be too public. The scandal of what was happening inside the Church might well get out.

  For the sake of its reputation, the Church was desperate to deal with the Bluesteel Blasphemer secretly. That necessitated an assassin with abilities equal to his. And that meant creating an angel that hadn’t been divested of its core—of the human soul, with all its imperfections and memories, that rested at the center of its being.

  To that end...

  “I used a soul that was a woman in its previous world. If I had tried to force such a soul into a male body, it might have caused unnecessary complications. It would have been a gamble, and not a wise one. The confusion the soul felt might have prevented it from using its powers to the fullest, might even have caused it to go berserk. Then the Church would have another angel for an enemy, and matters would be much worse instead of much better.”

  “I see your logic,” Justin said. He narrowed his eyes at the naked girl in the tube of holy oil. “And? Does it move yet?”

  “It does. No problems at all.” Yaroslava gave a provocative smile and tapped on the glass of the tube. “Wake up. Wake up and greet your honored father.”

  “Father...?” Justin seemed disturbed by this. Before him, the fourteenth angel opened its eyes. Its back, which had been resting against the glass, straightened up, and then it pushed against the bottom of the tube and rose without any hesitation in its movements. It approached the glass, beads of holy oil dripping from its long golden hair, and placed its palms against the inside of the tube.

  “Fa...th...er...?” It looked at Justin in puzzlement. Its crimson eyes took in the bemused Dominus.

  “Father?” Justin asked again. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Does Your Holiness know the ingredients for a homunculus?” Yaroslava said, clearly enjoying herself.

  “Ingredients...? No, I’m afraid I don’t know what this work entails.”

  Of course, he wouldn’t. No outsider would know exactly what was involved in creating a homunculus, the quintessence of alchemy.
Given that the angel was in a tube that had been full of holy oil just a moment ago, he might guess that holy oil had something to do with it. But little more.

  “Of course you don’t. That’s only natural. Let me elucidate for you. One of the ingredients in a homunculus is human semen.”

  “.........Erm.”

  “You isolate the semen in a still and allow it to ferment. A transparent, human-shaped thing emerges. You provide it with some human blood each day, and a body begins to grow. That’s not all there is to it, but those are the basics.” Yaroslava licked her lips with her bright-red tongue. “Shall I tell you where I collected the semen from?”

  “...Father.”

  The newborn homunculus, showing no sign of understanding the conversation going on in front of it, continued to stare at Justin with its blood-red eyes.

  ●

  In the end, Berta was still at the Schillings mansion four days later.

  They were still shorthanded, and Veronika hadn’t yet gained the full trust of the people of Friedland, nor did she seem very willing to talk to anyone but Berta. Some argued that on the off chance Veronika were to turn violent, Berta would be completely useless, but given that three knights of the Missionary Order, including Arlen, hadn’t been able to subdue the mercenary, it seemed impractical to station enough guards at her room to control her. And so Berta continued to look after Veronika.

  Berta herself wasn’t unhappy about this. With no special skills or vocation, she was pleased to be given work, to have something she could do. Only the fact that this meant spending days apart from Yukinari nagged at her.

  “Um...”

  Berta arrived at the guestroom with fresh bandages and a bucket of warm water. Veronika was just sitting up on her bed. It seemed the mercenary had known Berta was coming. Perhaps she had heard the girl’s quiet footfalls, or had simply been able to sense her presence. Whatever the case, Berta had never seen Veronika sleeping defenselessly. Lying down with her eyes closed, yes, but Berta always knew somehow that at those moments, Veronika was still awake. Her impression was that Veronika was simply remaining calm to recover her strength.