Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 3

by Ichirou Sakaki

  She still missed.

  She fired a second time, then reloaded, firing shots three and four. In the end she shot ten times, but none of them hit the target.

  “And to think, I’m pretty good with a bow,” she said with a disappointed frown.

  Veronika was very confident in her martial abilities, and it bothered her not to have hit the target even once, although less so than it did Dasa. Bows and guns are completely different, though, so Yukinari didn’t find this especially strange.

  Ultimately, between the three of them, not a single shot had landed. It wasn’t encouraging.

  Still, in a total of fifty shots, there had been no misfires; the gun itself seemed to be functioning smoothly. The actual workings of the device were more than satisfactory. The spread of the bullets wasn’t even very large. That seemed to suggest that the problem was less accuracy than it was the level of proficiency and suitability of the shooter.

  “Maybe practice makes perfect, huh...?” Yukinari muttered, getting ready to pack up.

  “You want to try it?”

  It was Veronika who had spoken, and she was holding Derrringer out to a very startled Berta.

  “Wha?! M-Me?!”

  She clearly had not been expecting to be involved in this situation in any way.

  “U-Um, Lord Yukinari?” She looked to him for rescue.

  “Well, as long as we’re up here, why not?” Yukinari said with a grin.

  They had just a few bullets left. There was no sense saving them. If they ran out, Yukinari could simply make more with his powers.

  “I-If you say so, L-Lord Yukinari...” With that, Berta reluctantly took the gun from Veronika. She staggered slightly; perhaps it was heavier than she’d expected. Yukinari caught her by the shoulder.

  “You okay?”

  “Oh, yes, I... I’ll manage. Th-Thank you.” Her face was red. He seated her, like Dasa, on the chair, and gave her a simple tutorial on how to shoot. Her movements, of course, were much more hesitant than Dasa’s.

  “Okay, try it,” Yukinari said, and then he waited.

  Truth be told, Yukinari was very interested to see Berta shoot, although not for the same reasons as the others. He himself was usually out in front in battle, so it was natural that he would leave the sniping to somebody else. He had considered recruiting one of Arlen’s comrades for the role, but he wasn’t confident he could count on their help if it came to a fight against other missionaries. At some point, he might even have to confiscate their Durandalls again.

  He could turn one of the townspeople into a sniper, then. In that case, he wouldn’t be dealing with someone like Dasa, who already knew how to handle a gun, nor even with someone like Veronika, who was accomplished in battle. If he had Berta, with no experience whatsoever of weaponry, try shooting, it might give him some ideas for how to make the sniper rifle more user-friendly for “amateurs” like her.

  That was what he was expecting, anyway.

  Until the boom.

  “Good, you were able to shoot it. Now, first—”

  He was going to ask her how it felt, using a gun for the first time in her life. But Berta blinked and said, “I... I hit it.”

  “You what?” Startled, Yukinari grabbed his scope and looked toward the sanctuary.

  There was a hole in the head of the doll.

  “I don’t be...lieve it,” Dasa said. She was looking through the scope on Red Chili to see what had happened. She gave a quiet gurgle, presumably inspired by the sight of Berta’s successful shot.

  “Um, I— Um—” Berta was looking at Yukinari and Dasa anxiously. She was starting to worry that she had done something wrong.

  “Berta,” Yukinari said, doubting his own eyes, “do it again. Just try it.”

  “Wha? Um, sure. R-Right now...?” She put her eye back to Derrringer’s scope.

  Then she fired.

  This time she appeared to have missed. Maybe the first shot had been lucky, or maybe the second had been thrown off because of her surprise at Yukinari’s reaction.

  “Oh, it missed,” Berta said, actually sounding relieved. There was none of the regret that Dasa had shown. It wasn’t so much that Berta had an inherently calm demeanor, she just wasn’t as buffeted by her emotions.

  Still, Yukinari looked through his scope to check where the bullet had landed. She had missed, all right. But luck had nothing to do with it.

  The second shot had gone almost exactly where the first had. And because the human figure was swaying slightly with the impact of the first shot, the second one would have been an order of magnitude harder.

  “That’s really something,” Yukinari said. If the figure had been intact, like it was when she took the first shot, she might have hit it.

  “Th-Thank... you...”

  Berta still didn’t seem to understand the import of what she had done; she just seemed a little embarrassed. Maybe she was happy to be praised by Yukinari.

  Well, this is unexpected, Yukinari thought.

  Sniping requires patience. You have to sit and wait, still as a stone, for one precise instant to arrive. It was almost the exact opposite of a sword battle, in which you moved and sliced, trying to create an opening. Nor was it quite the same as trying to hit a moving target in close-distance combat. Your enemy was less your opponent than yourself.

  Could Berta have a talent for this?

  He looked afresh at the shrine maiden who had been offered to him. She was staring in perplexity at Derrringer, still perched on the mound of earth.

  ●

  The testing session over, Yukinari and the others returned to Friedland to let Fiona know the results. After they’d eaten, they went back to the sanctuary.

  Yukinari said thank you to Ulrike, who had been waiting there, and soon set up shop in the living area as usual, breaking down Derrringer. Unlike Durandall and Red Chili, which were used in largely the same way as the guns he had modeled them on, with this new one he was trying to adapt a derringer, a small handgun, to sniper use—an inherently ridiculous idea. There was a distinct possibility that parts of it would break under stress, or that other problems might emerge. He was just checking to see that everything was in good working order.

  He checked not only the Derrringer they had used for shooting that day, but also the various spare parts he had prepared, making sure nothing was warped or damaged. If everything looked all right, he planned to create three Derrringers, for more efficient shooting practice.

  “Doesn’t look like there are any problems,” he muttered, looking at the parts of the weapon spread out on a cloth.

  For such a large gun, there were surprisingly few pieces. The largest part was the barrel, followed by the stock, then the mechanical frame, and finally the grip. Not counting the scope, there were hardly thirty parts, of which about a third were springs or screws.

  “Maybe I should attach a rail or something, to make it easier to test-fire later...?” he said to himself as he set about producing the new guns. Beside him, Veronika was watching with interest. She had come to the sanctuary with Berta, who was worried that the cleaning and cooking and washing there might not get done without her. Hence she had suggested she return briefly, at which point Veronika volunteered that she would come, too. She was interested in the guns, yes, but above all, she seemed to want to see Yukinari “play god.”

  “......So,” Yukinari said as he began working on the second Derrringer. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

  “A sniper rifle, you called this?” Veronika shifted so she was looking at him. “This ‘Derrringer’... You said you made it as an experiment. That you didn’t know how it would handle. So your ‘Durandall’ that you normally use, does it handle better?”

  “A little bit, I guess,” he said after a moment’s thought.

  The truth was, of the three weapons he had made—Durandall, Red Chili, and Derrringer—by far the easiest to use offensively was Durandall.

  Red Chili, as a small pistol, might lo
ok simple, but pistols are harder to aim than rifles or carbines. Their smaller size makes the aim less steady. That’s why, in many of the armies of ages past, pistols were carried by officers for their own protection, while the basic weapon used in combat was a small rifle.

  Yukinari had initially designed Red Chili for Dasa’s personal protection, thinking he would make something small enough to fit in her bag. He had never imagined she would use it in as many situations as she did.

  “Give me a Durandall, then,” Veronika said. “Along with as many... ‘bullets,’ did you call them? As many bullets as possible, if you can.”

  “Still set on going back to Aldreil?” Yukinari asked, not looking up from his work.

  “Yes.”

  “To help your friends?”

  “Yes.” Her answers came without hesitation.

  Yukinari was silent for a moment, then asked, “...What will you do if they’re already dead?”

  “Avenge them.” Again Veronika’s reply was immediate. “That’s another reason why I need a weapon. My sword is smashed beyond use,” she said pointedly.

  “When you put it that way, it’s hard to refuse,” Yukinari said with a grin. It was Dasa who had broken Veronika’s sword, but her actions could, in principle, be considered the responsibility of her guardian, Yukinari.

  “Will you try to stop me, too?”

  “...I don’t know,” Yukinari said.

  It was easy to say that revenge solves nothing, but Yukinari was hardly in a position to lecture someone else on that point. When Jirina was killed, he had gone on a murderous rampage against members of the Harris Church. He hadn’t even counted the number of his victims; to this day, he didn’t know how many he had killed. If Jirina hadn’t asked him to take care of Dasa, he would probably have stayed in the capital, slaughtering everyone associated with the Church until he ran out of strength.

  “Revenge,” he mused. “Vengeance... It’s not exactly productive.” He almost could have been talking to himself.

  Revenge satisfies only oneself. If you place yourself above all else, then vengeance can be meaningful, but you have nothing concrete to gain by it. Absolutely nothing. It takes time and energy. Or at least, so Yukinari thought. He felt it all the more keenly because he was thinking it at this moment.

  “The fact that you’re prepared to die for it, it’s—how do I put this? Dangerous. To die just trying to satisfy yourself... It seems pointless.”

  “Satisfy myself?” Veronika raised an eyebrow. “I’m not crazy enough to do something like that just for my own amusement.”

  “But what other purpose does it serve? You don’t get any reward for it, and it’s not like your friends who are already dead are going to be happy about it... I guess you could say it doesn’t have any practical benefit.”

  “No practical benefit? Hmm...” Veronika seemed intrigued by this; she looked from Derrringer to Yukinari. “Yukinari, what country were you born in? How were you raised?”

  “What’s this all of a sudden?” Yukinari stopped what he was doing and looked at Veronika.

  “Don’t be upset, just listen to me. You seem to have been brought up very well. Somewhere peaceful, I assume, a country under wise rule...”

  Yukinari looked at her, puzzled.

  “It’s just common sense,” Veronika said. “If you don’t fight, your opponent will have contempt for you. All the more so if there’s no reward for fighting. That’s how humans are. Revenge very much has a benefit; it prevents the next tragedy from occurring. It says, if you hurt us, you’ll pay for it. If the other side knows you’re strong, they won’t be so eager to attack you next time.”

  “That’s...”

  “I agree with you, it’s better to live in peace without fighting. But if you refuse to shed blood to obtain that, you’ll never have peace to begin with.”

  Yukinari was silent.

  “Ahh,” Veronika said, her expression softening into a grin. “You’re wondering what right a mercenary has to go on about something like that. But I wasn’t born a mercenary, you know. What I’m saying are my personal conclusions, based on the life I’ve lived.”

  “Veronika,” Yukinari said after a moment. “You were raised pretty well yourself, weren’t you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The things you’re saying, it’s the way an educated person would think. There’s a clear logic. And the words you use, the expressions—there are some slightly more difficult ones here and there.”

  Yukinari worked the second Derrringer he’d created while it was empty, making sure all the moving parts functioned.

  “...Yes,” Veronika said. “It was a decent life. Years ago, though, my home was destroyed and my father was killed. My father was strong, but also kind. So people looked down on him.”

  Yukinari said nothing.

  “But...” For a second, Veronika looked almost melancholy about something. “You look sheltered to me, coddled by peace, but just the fact that people who think like you exist makes me happy. My mother... She left this life even before my father did, but she was that way, too.”

  Yukinari couldn’t quite find the right words. “It... It sounds like you’ve been through a lot.”

  “Well, thankfully, it’s given me the strength to survive,” Veronika said, and then she smiled.

  ●

  Berta and Veronika decided to simply stay at the sanctuary that night. By the time Yukinari had finished what he was doing with Derrringer, it was full dark outside, and returning to Friedland would have been dangerous. There were many obstacles along the mountain road, and the cloudy sky meant no light from the moon or stars. And a handheld lantern alone didn’t inspire much confidence.

  Berta went back to her own room for the first time in several days and prepared an additional sleeping place. The sanctuary wasn’t built to receive guests; there was a spare room, but Ulrike was in there now. Veronika wasn’t especially set on having her own room, so she would sleep in Berta’s.

  It was obviously too late to create a bed, so Berta set up an improvised sleeping place with sheets and a pillow. Still, she hesitated to simply lay them out on the floor, so she put a wooden board underneath the bedding.

  “Sorry about this,” Veronika said, coming into the room just as Berta finished setting up. She glanced around, then set her belongings next to the just-completed bed without a moment’s hesitation. Then she took off the armor she was wearing. And then, to Berta’s consternation, she got in the bed.

  “U-Um...”

  This “bed” was just a wooden board with sheets and a pillow, spare items she’d found around the sanctuary. It couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Berta had intended to use it herself, but now...

  “Yes, what?” Veronika cast a dour look at her.

  “Oh, uh, I just thought you could... use my bed...”

  “No, that’s all right,” Veronika said with a small smile. “I’m used to sleeping outdoors. As long as I can stretch out, that’s enough. I’ve even got a pillow here. A freeloader can’t ask for more than that.”

  “I see...”

  Berta could hardly press the point. Instead, she dutifully got into her own bed, and then, after an okay from Veronika, doused the lamp by her pillow.

  Immediately, the room was filled with darkness. It was so dark, she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The inability to see naturally sharpened her hearing. She could detect the sound of her own breath and her heartbeat, as well as the breathing of Veronika, just nearby, and the rustling of cloth each time she shifted under her sheets.

  Berta lay in silence. For once, she couldn’t sleep. Every night she would lie down in the darkness, close her eyes, and simply drift off. Back at the orphanage, it had been perfectly normal to share a room with someone else. Yet now...

  “Can’t sleep?” Veronika’s voice suddenly drifted through the darkness. Berta had thought Veronika had fallen asleep immediately, but apparently she was still awake.

  “O
h... No.”

  “...Can I ask you one thing?”

  This was rather sudden, but Berta replied, “Y-Yes, I’ll answer if I can...”

  “Do you like that boy Yukinari?”

  Her answer was immediate: “Yes.”

  Veronika, though, didn’t seem to like this answer. “No, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I’m sorry...?”

  “I’m not talking about, do you respect him as a comrade or feel some kind of solidarity with him. I simply mean do you, as a woman, have feelings for him, as a man?”

  Berta couldn’t think of what to say. She didn’t really understand what Veronika meant. “I’m the shrine maiden who’s been offered to Lord Yukinari, and—”

  “Yes, I remember you saying that. But you also said that despite that, he’s never touched you. He doesn’t strike me as being totally uninterested in women. So that means either he’s not interested in you personally, or he feels some kind of duty to that girl Dasa.”

  “Well, uh...”

  “Or is it you yourself who’s holding back because of Dasa?”

  Berta was silent. She hadn’t given it much thought, but maybe it was true.

  “Your feelings for Yukinari—are they because you’re his shrine maiden? Or because he saved your life? Either way—if that’s all—then there’s no problem. If Yukinari doesn’t seek anything from you, then you don’t need to try to get him to make love to you out of some feeling of duty or indebtedness.”

  “You... You think not...?”

  “But if you love him as a woman, then you’ll want something more.”

  Berta said nothing.

  “Are you happy with things the way they are? Or not? If you forever hold yourself back because of Dasa, you’ll never gain Yukinari’s affections—is that all right? I know it doesn’t sound nice, but if you want something, sometimes you have to fight for it, take it. I’m not saying you should get rid of Dasa, of course. It’s a question of your own feelings.”

  “I’m sorry... I don’t... really understand...”

  That was her immediate response. But Berta realized that somewhere inside, she was nodding along to Veronika’s words. If Berta wanted Yukinari’s love—not out of debt or duty, but genuinely—then she couldn’t simply wait.