“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit—!”
Schtola D’s scream vanished within the giant explosion.
The beam fired by the curse as if from a siege weapon seared his flesh; the Deva’s descendant, enveloped by flames, fell into the sea.
5
The aftereffects of the conflagration produced by the magic circle lashed back against their caster, Sayaka, as well. However, she fended them off with Lustrous Scale. Sayaka’s desperate measure meant that she could have easily shared in the same fate as her adversary.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow…”
Her entire body beat up, Sayaka rose to her feet with little strength left. However, she immediately became dizzy and slowly fell backward. She knew it was dangerous if she didn’t break her fall, but even so, she could not will her body to move. She closed her eyes and braced for the impact.
But—
The pain Sayaka had dreaded never arrived.
Someone had grabbed her body midway to the ground.
At the last moment, a very slick Kojou held Sayaka up by her back.
“—You all right, Sayaka?”
His breath was ragged from having run over hastily. He looked concerned as he peered at Sayaka from point-blank range.
“Ah, Kojou Akatsuki…?”
For some reason, Kojou was biting his lip, looking guilty.
“Sorry, Kirasaka, leavin’ all that on your shoulders…”
Apparently, he regretted being unable to help her in the fight against Schtola D. Actually, from Sayaka’s point of view, having an amateur like Kojou butt in would have only made her job harder, so leaving it to her was very much the right call.
“Th-that’s not a big deal, but…why are you here helping me?! Where’s Yukina?”
Kojou ignored Sayaka’s weak resistance and picked her up. It was a classic “princess carry” pose.
“Hey, just behave for a bit here. You’re wounded.”
Thanks to Schtola D’s rampage, the ground surface around the harbor was a total mess. It was hard for Kojou to even walk. Left with no other good options, Sayaka wrapped her arms around his shoulders to keep herself from falling.
“B-but…I’m not suited to this kind of thing… I’m too big…”
Sayaka muttered to herself, “Why do I always end up like this?” She’d become very self-conscious of her height due to Schtola D’s stupid insults. Sayaka had a fair bit of a complex about being so tall for a girl when she herself idolized that which was small and cute—like Yukina.
But when Kojou heard her mutter, for some reason, he blushed awkwardly.
“Well, they are pretty big, but I’m not touchin’ them on purpose here… I mean, it’s unavoidable, bein’ like this…”
“Eh? What do you mean, touching…?”
Touching what? Sayaka mused, inclining her head, when suddenly it hit her: Thanks to Kojou carrying her, Sayaka’s breasts were squishing right against his body.
“Aah…! Kojou Akatsuki—!!”
“I told ya’, it ain’t like I’m doin’ it on purpose!!”
“Of all the things,” went Sayaka, sighing deeply. She then recalled that they’d had a very similar conversation once before. Yes, it was like that when she’d first met this man. He’d been a perv with no filter and no tact. But on the other hand, he’d treated Sayaka, a Shamanic War Dancer, like she was just a regular, everyday girl…
Looking up at Kojou from so close, Sayaka said, “…Sweaty.”
Kojou’s skin was slick with a thin layer of sweat from having run over to help Sayaka. As this was pointed out to him, Kojou twisted his lips in apparent minor dismay.
“Well, of course I’m gonna get sweaty from all the stuff goin’ on. If you don’t like the smell, just move away a bit.”
“…I don’t mind it.”
It was an honest reply, and she moved her face closer to Kojou’s neck. Yes—she hated barbaric, tactless, smelly men, but his scent she didn’t mind at all.
“Kirasaka?”
Kojou looked a tad bewildered at Sayaka’s indecipherable behavior. Then, from behind his back—which Sayaka couldn’t see—they heard a small “ahem,” as someone cleared her throat.
Sayaka slowly shifted her gaze onto a teenage girl standing there in a nurse outfit.
She was watching Kojou and Sayaka, pressed against him in a very intimate position, with a conflicted look on her face.
Sayaka’s face went completely pale as she asked in a rather shrill voice, “Y-Yukina? Since when have you…?”
Yukina seemed a bit at a loss as she lowered her eyes.
“Since about when you almost fell to the ground… I’m sorry, this is my fault.”
Her face beet red, Sayaka hastily replied, “I-it’s all right! I’m just a bit tired; I’m not badly hurt at all! And with his attacks, you’d never have been able to get close to him in the first place—!”
Sayaka didn’t understand why she felt so guilty right then. That was just a momentary slip, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she’d let Kojou Akatsuki into her heart; that space was reserved for Yukina alone.
“A-anyway, can you let me down already?! I can walk on my own now!”
“Ah, can you?”
Kojou gently put Sayaka down on the ground. Though Sayaka secretly regretted this, she nonetheless moved away from him, as if fleeing.
That was when Sayaka noticed the existence of a girl Yukina had along with her. It was a little girl whose face seemed vaguely familiar; her long black pigtails left a strong impression.
“So the Witch of the Void really has…shrunk down. Seeing her in person…how should I put this…?”
Yukina picked up where Sayaka left off. “Cuter than you expected, I imagine?”
She was a woman who had the air of a doll to begin with; now that she was even smaller in size, she looked like a doll through and through.
Kojou voiced his agreement.
“Well, in outward appearance, at least.”
At any rate, seeing her in the flesh like this, there was no doubting that the little girl was truly Natsuki Minamiya. Her appearance and the aura she gave off just had way too much in common.
“Well, we managed to get ahold of her. What’ll we do now?” Sayaka asked as she checked the state of her own wounds.
The incident had certainly not been resolved. Natsuki was still mini; Yuuma Tokoyogi was still gravely injured. Plus, they had several escapees left uncaptured, including the ringleader herself, Aya Tokoyogi.
Kojou looked down at the young Natsuki as he replied. “We’ll take her to MAR. Thanks to Vattler and you, Kirasaka, it looks like we’ve taken care of most of the jailbreakers after Natsuki. If we can just get her memory back, we might be able to save Yuuma.”
Sayaka had no particular problems with that. From a security point of view, heading to MAR was an entirely rational decision.
However, they heard an objection to Kojou’s decision from an entirely unexpected direction.
When Kojou and the others heard that voice, full of malignant hostility, they turned around with great vigor.
“To save that disposable…doll? Such concern is…unnecessary.”
Standing amid the darkness of the night was a fire-eyed witch wearing a white-and-black ceremonial robe.
“—Aya Tokoyogi!” Yukina exclaimed.
“You’re here for Natsuki, too?!” Kojou added, both of them shielding Sana with their bodies.
Sayaka clicked her tongue, mortified. Now that she was out of ritual scrolls and arrows, she had no effective means to attack a remaining witch.
However, Aya Tokoyogi gazed listlessly at their reactions to her.
“Do not be angered so, Fourth Primogenitor. I have not come to kill the Witch of the Void.”
Her smoldering eyes narrowed as she smiled.
“Indeed, you have my thanks. Thanks to that woman drawing the escapees away, I have finished preparing for tonight’s festival. And even if she did betray me once, she is still my friend, one m
ight say?”
A crude voice thick with hostility interrupted Aya Tokoyogi’s words.
“—Hold it right there, bitch.”
The young man, with dreadlocks thoroughly drenched with seawater, was just climbing on top of the cliff as he glared at Aya. It was Schtola D.
Normally, he’d have been gravely wounded to the point of being unable to move, but his beaten and battered body rose to its feet with the support of psychic energy.
Schtola D turned his hate-filled gaze not to Sayaka, but toward Aya Tokoyogi. He’d finally realized that they’d been deceived by Aya.
“What do you mean…drawing the escapees away? You tricked us, didn’t you?!”
Aya smiled as she looked upon the scowling, angry face of the man-child with open scorn.
“You are quite the fool to take a witch’s words at face value.”
She’d sent the jailbreakers in pursuit of Natsuki and into combat against Kojou and the others. As a result, Aya had been able to move freely without anyone interfering. Neither Vattler nor the Island Guard had gone after her whatsoever.
She’d used the prisoners. It was they, and not Natsuki, that had been the real decoys.
Howling with rage, Schtola D raised his right arm high.
“No one messes with me, bitch—!”
But the invisible blade that should have emerged from gusting wind never arrived.
Simultaneously, his wounded body seemed to lose all support as it flopped onto the ground.
His arm tried to pull him up once more, but ended up merely clawing at the ground.
“The hell…my power’s…sh-shit…,” Schtola D murmured weakly.
However, he was not the only one stricken by the anomaly. Sayaka let out a bewildered cry as the tip of the sword she was gripping fell to the ground.
“Lustrous Scale is…?!”
The long sword, manufactured using state-of-the-art sorcerous technology, suddenly lost its shine and instantly became heavier. She was sending ritual energy into it, but there was no response whatsoever. Its holy weapon properties had completely ceased.
Kojou noticed how shaken Sayaka was and met Yukina’s eyes.
“…The magic vanished? No way?!”
Kojou and Yukina were aware of the magic annihilation phenomenon assaulting Itogami Island.
They realized that its effects had now reached as far as Island East.
However, Aya Tokoyogi attacking at the exact time the anomaly was occurring was unlikely to be any sort of coincidence. It was better to assume that Aya herself was the very cause of said anomaly.
For her part, Aya materialized her own Guardian.
“—L’Ombre.”
It was a faceless knight clad in jet-black armor.
The knight she had pegged L’Ombre—the Shadow—mercilessly thrust his sword into the exhausted, unmoving Schtola D, then a second time, then a third—and then it stomped on the blood-drenched man.
Schtola D’s lips trembled, barely able to make out a throwaway line.
“You really got me, bitch… Dammit, I’ll remember this.”
As he lost consciousness, the tip of the black knight’s sword shifted toward his back.
“Stop this!” Kojou bellowed. “Aya Tokoyogi, you’ve gone too far yet again!”
Seeing Schtola D being trampled made Kojou picture Yuuma, wounded and fallen, all over again.
But suddenly seeing Kojou’s entire body enveloped by lightning, it was Yukina who gasped. “Senpai?!”
Kojou’s crimson-dyed eyes glared at the fire-eyed witch. A gold-glimmering beast appeared as Kojou thrust his right hand before him.
“C’mon over, Regulus Aurum—!”
A mass of magical energy so dense that it rivaled the heat of a raging storm cloud emerged and adopted the form of a giant beast.
This was a summoned beast from another world: one of the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor. The destructive mass, akin to a natural disaster taking physical form, charged at the speed of light toward the witch as she stood still. Watching this, Aya Tokoyogi’s expression never changed in the slightest.
Aya Tokoyogi murmured in visible admiration as she traced symbols into thin air.
“So you had that much power remaining… You live up to your reputation, I see.”
The lightning lion slashed at the glowing, radiant symbols. And then—
“But that reputation ends now.”
“—Wha—?!”
Without warning, the Beast Vassal that Kojou had summoned melted into thin air, vanishing without a trace.
They had neither heard nor felt an impact. Not even a mild disturbance of the wind remained.
The lightning lion had been erased, as if it had never existed in the first place.
No—it was not the Beast Vassal alone that had dissipated. Kojou’s own body had lost the surge of demonic power contained within.
Having lost the power of the World’s Mightiest Vampire, all that remained was a high schooler’s flesh and blood.
Sensing that enormous magical power had vanished, Yukina was beside herself as she shook her head. “No…senpai’s power is…”
Aya Tokoyogi laughed with refined grace.
“This is the Black Bible, Fourth Primogenitor. Itogami Island has already become my world. All supernatural power has been lost, save mine; even the power of a primogenitor.”
Before Aya’s words were even finished, Kojou’s body shuddered with the sound of a faint, smooth impact.
The faceless knight’s giant sword had been thrust through his chest.
“Gahah,” coughed Kojou, blood painting his lips. The pain was too fierce for him to make more of a sound than that. Now that Kojou had lost his power of immortality, the wound was most certainly mortal.
As Kojou collapsed onto his knees, Sayaka clutched him and shouted his name.
“Kojou Akatsuki—!”
It was an image of defenselessness one normally couldn’t even imagine from her. Beholding Sayaka like that from behind, the black knight raised its sword high. The scream that followed shook the night sky over the harbor.
It came from Yukina.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa—!”
With spell-reinforced might, her slender body sprinted. Her silver spear emitted a dazzling glow as it deflected the black knight’s sword.
Bewilderment rose in Sayaka’s eyes. Yukina was fighting a witch’s Guardian on even terms.
“Yukina?!”
In the witch’s world, which nullified even the power of a primogenitor, Yukina alone had retained her ritual power.
Aya Tokoyogi smiled oddly. “As I suspected. So you refuse to be governed by my world, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency?”
Teleportating, Aya moved herself and her Guardian away; having lost sight of her foe, Yukina’s spear sliced thin air.
Aya and her Guardian reappeared behind Yukina. There was only one person there, standing still: Sana.
“You are indeed a suitable guest for my experiment. I was right to come and extend a personal invitation.”
“Sana?!” Yukina cried.
Yukina couldn’t attack Aya now, with the very young Natsuki taken hostage.
Seizing the momentary opening, Aya summoned a cage. It was shaped like a birdcage but built stout enough to hold a ferocious beast. The cage, between four or five meters in diameter, materialized around the Sword Shaman and shut her within.
The steel bars were nearly ten centimeters in diameter and were not magical constructs. Even Yukina’s magic-nullifying spear could not break them. Imprisoned inside the birdcage, Yukina bit her lip, unable to do anything other than glare at Aya. A moment later, the birdcage vanished, along with Yukina.
They’d been carried away using teleportation. What’s more, no sign remained of Aya, her knight, or Sana.
Kojou, covered in blood, moaned in agony.
“You don’t mean…it was Yukina she was after…not Natsuki…? Why…?”
He finally understoo
d that Aya Tokoyogi had appeared to whisk Yukina away, not Natsuki. As he thought about it more, Aya had spoken to Yukina during their encounter at the prison barrier like Aya knew something about her.
But even if Kojou knew what, he could no longer do anything about it.
Desperately clutching her fallen friend, Sayaka was in tears as she shouted. “Kojou Akatsuki?! Hang in there, you’re an immortal vampire, aren’t you?! Hey!!”
Looking up at her tearful face, all Kojou could murmur before blacking out was, “Sorry.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FIESTA FOR THE OBSERVERS
1
The island creaked. It was the sound of steel rubbing against steel, reverberating like distant, rolling thunder without pause; irregular tremors shook the ground as if buffeted by the waves of the sea.
Itogami Island was an artificial island that floated on the Pacific Ocean. Its population was 560,000 strong. It was densely packed, with countless building complexes and high-rises, as well as underground shopping districts all over the island, all supported by metal Gigafloats.
The closest example was a sand castle on top of a floating car wheel. There was nothing remotely sane about the city’s construction whatsoever.
The plainly unstable island was supported through the use of magic. Buildings had their effective mass reduced through use of spells, and ground plates with multiple layers of magical strengthening, in turn, supported these. The steel, the cement, and even the plastics used for construction were all magical materials. It was no overstatement that not a single building on Itogami Island was unaffected by magic.
What would happen, then, if all that magic just disappeared—?
Sections reaching the limits of their strength would gradually break down, and the Demon Sanctuary of the Far East would gently begin to collapse.
Fiesta for the Observers Page 17
