Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 1

by Ichirou Sakaki

  In any case... the only choice here was to drive these monsters away and make an escape. Defeating them all would probably have been another option... if not for Fiona, Berta, and the priests. It would be too difficult with this many liabilities around.

  Dasa already had Red Chili out. Yukinari started to give her directions. “Dasa, you’re in charge of Berta, the girl, and the rest of them.”

  The large xenobeasts aside, there was a good possibility that Dasa could take down the smaller ones just with Red Chili. Even if that didn’t work out, she could at least wound them or threaten them or something. Anything to stop them attacking would be good enough.

  “Also, if you’ve got any breathing room, give me sniper support.”

  “...Bossy,” Dasa said, nodding anyway.

  Satisfied, Yukinari looked back from Dasa and began by firing Durandall at the xenobeast with the severed front leg. There was a loud boom, and the .44 Magnum bullet pierced its massive, horribly misshapen body.

  The monster twitched, and it shakily stood up.

  Yukinari frowned. “Like it got bit by a mosquito.”

  That might have been an exaggeration, but it was clear that it hadn’t been dealt a fatal wound. Yukinari was using soft point hunting bullets with an emphasis on destructive power, but even so, he’d had no expectation that he’d be able to kill a monster with such a huge body in a single shot.

  “I’ve really gotta think about preparing a Magnum rifle or something soon.” With a flourish, he pulled Durandall’s loading lever to chamber the next round and advanced, firing shot after shot into the monster.

  GIIIAAARRRRR!!

  The xenobeast roared in anger.

  It had taken five Magnum bullets, and though its wounds weren’t immediately fatal, it was bleeding all over its body. If those wounds didn’t heal, it could even die from them—but Yukinari couldn’t wait for that.

  He kicked off against the ground. Dashing towards the xenobeast, he fired the last shot. And then, through the spatter of blood and scatter of bristles, Yukinari thrust Durandall into the monster’s new mouth.

  Thanks to the hole created by the Magnum bullet, the tip of his blade plunged smoothly into the monster’s body without slipping. He twisted the blade a quarter turn so that Durandall’s loading gate faced upwards, grabbed a .44 Mag from his pocket and chambered it, and with the sword still lodged in his enemy, he fired.

  GYAAUGHH!

  It felt that one. The xenobeast convulsed and tried to back off. But Yukinari wasn’t about to let it get away. He stepped forward with it, keeping the blade stuck inside, and unloaded another two rounds into its body.

  GYAAAA...AUUGGHHH...!

  The xenobeast was writhing. Small xenobeasts were trying to attack Yukinari all the while, but they were being held back and taken out by Dasa on sniping support.

  “Do us both a favor and get... dead!” Yukinari wrenched Durandall around further to finish the monster off.

  Blood gushed from the wound, soaking Yukinari’s arm, shoulder, and face. And then—

  GYOOOUUUGGGHHH!!

  That might have been its dying scream. The xenobeast convulsed even more violently. Its muscles seemed to tighten and become rigid, and Yukinari could feel them solidifying around Durandall’s blade. Taken by surprise, Yukinari gave a short grunt, but it was already too late; Durandall’s sword was bent in half.

  Maybe he’d treated it too roughly. A normal sword wouldn’t have survived this long, and might easily have bent at the base right at the beginning, when he cut off the monster’s front leg.

  “Yukinari?!”

  Was that Fiona screaming out? But Yukinari knew he was still okay, and he couldn’t afford to turn around to give her reassurance. He pulled Durandall back out and slid more .44 Mags into the loading gate one by one. This was the weakness of this type of gun compared to modern guns: they were a pain to reload. Unfortunately, guns like Red Chili and Durandall—lever-action revolvers and lever-action carbines—were the only guns Yukinari knew how to build. He didn’t know the construction of big bore Magnum rifles, which meant he would have to piece together the design through trial and error—and as he had grumbled earlier, he hadn’t found time to do that because they were always on the move.

  “Yukinari!” Fiona screamed. “Look o—”

  Fangs bared, several xenobeasts jumped Yukinari from different directions. Shooting them all down at once was, of course, impossible.

  ●

  The xenobeasts launched themselves at Yukinari from all sides.

  Dasa’s reaction was quick. Two of the xenobeasts crumpled in midair, struck by her bullets, and fell pathetically to the ground. But the remaining five piled on top of Yukinari, their violently thrashing tangle of bodies pushing him to the ground. Then a second wave came. Several more of the monsters hurled themselves at the pile, which grew to look like a gigantic ball of flesh. Yukinari was buried and hidden from sight.

  “Yukinari...?!”

  “Noooo!!”

  Fiona called his name in shock, and Berta let out an anguished cry. However, one voice among them was strangely composed.

  “...It’s Yuki... He’ll be okay.”

  The others glanced over in surprise. Dasa was still continuing her attacks, an explosion of sound accompanying every shot. She said it again. “It’s Yuki... He’ll be okay.”

  “B-But he—” Fiona couldn’t continue. He couldn’t possibly be okay. Dasa was just telling herself what she wanted to hear, preferring to bury her head in the sand rather than confront the horror, the reality in front of her.

  But behind her glasses, Dasa’s eyes were fixed on the ball of flesh, and absolute confidence dwelled within them.

  Then—

  An indescribable sound.

  Fiona’s eyes were drawn back to the mass of meat.

  “Huh?”

  The scene unfolding there was hard to believe. The meaty blob was falling to pieces.

  One after another, the curiously shaped monsters were peeling off it and falling to the ground. There wasn’t even a hint of movement from them after that. They looked as though they had all expired. In the middle of those fallen beasts, Fiona saw Yukinari get to his feet.

  That wasn’t all.

  “H-How...?”

  The xenobeasts’ bodies all had huge chunks taken out of them. The location and the shape of the wounds were different, but they all had in common the simple fact that parts of their bodies were completely gone. Fiona noticed something else, too. The xenobeasts’ wounds... weren’t those the parts that had been touching Yukinari? If Fiona’s imagination was correct, the mass of bodies that had been covering Yukinari had been gouged in a very specific way. A sphere centered around Yukinari had been cut out, and this was the result. But what kind of power could make that possible? And if a sphere was cut out, then where did all the stuff inside it go?

  Fiona wasn’t the only one who was dumbfounded. Everyone present except for Dasa had been struck speechless. They should have been glad that Yukinari was alive—but that and everything else was completely lost amid this incomprehensible sight.

  “What on earth...?” Fiona whispered to herself. Then, noticing something, her eyes went to Yukinari’s feet. What was all that white stuff scattered everywhere? It was like flour, or salt... a white powder was strewn all around him. She felt sure it hadn’t been there before Yukinari was attacked. The ground around this area was covered in leaf mold. A white powder would have been impossible to miss.

  “...He’s okay.”

  For the benefit of Fiona and all the others who were still unable to accept the reality of what they were seeing, Dasa repeated it for a third time in a composed voice. “Yukinari is... okay... but...”

  Why was he fine? It was impossible that anyone could emerge unharmed from a situation like that. Plus—

  “The sword—”

  As Yukinari stood in a confident stance, Fiona’s eyes—all their eyes—settled on the sword gripped in his right hand. Far
from being bent in half, its black blade didn’t have even a single scratch.

  ●

  One remained.

  A large xenobeast rivaling the size of the first one Yukinari had beaten was slowly circling him. They were exactly the movements of a large predator with an eye on its next meal. Being forced into a stare-off with a beast over three meters in length would cause any normal person to piss themselves, but Yukinari looked relaxed, if anything.

  “You get it now, huh. I’ll bet.”

  The reason it wasn’t immediately attacking must have been because it had seen the other xenobeasts fall.

  It was wary. Of Yukinari, yes—but moreso of Durandall.

  “One of us has gotta do something,” Yukinari said, pulling a new bullet from his pocket and slipping it into the gun. “I guess that’s gonna have to be me.”

  Triple-charged. And the bullet was a frangible safety slug.

  He took a single step towards the xenobeast. The next moment—

  GROOOOOOAAAAAARRR!!

  Roaring loudly, the xenobeast charged. It may have been trying to do what Yukinari had done once before: confront the charging enemy head-on. It had its neck and back curved to point its blade-like horns and dorsal fins at him. If it hit him dead on, he would probably be skewered and torn to shreds. So—

  “You think a god can beat me? You’ve got your head up your ass!”

  He thrust Durandall towards it and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening boom, and the special bullet sunk into its mark. The xenobeast’s body—or rather, its head—burst open wide like a red flower blooming.

  Safety slugs are a special type of bullet specialized for use against flesh. They have low penetrating power, but if they hit, the birdshot inside them scatters everywhere, blasting a huge hole in their target. They are so powerful, in fact, that not a single government agency wanted to adopt them, because virtually everyone shot with them died.

  On top of this, three times the normal amount of explosive charge was being used to propel that bullet. The energy of the explosive, converted to speed, forcibly buried that special bullet deep into the head of its target and then burst it into fragments. The result—

  Ggh...grghh...

  The xenobeast tottered, a huge chunk of its head missing.

  The point of Durandall’s blade was embedded deeply into it only a moment later.

  ●

  Berta couldn’t believe her eyes. She had witnessed this sight once already here, just yesterday; but even on the second occurrence, her common sense insisted it was impossible. It was as real as could be; it had unfolded right there in front of her. Yet this knowledge only forced her to doubt her own sanity.

  The xenobeasts attacking them... had all been exterminated by Yukinari and Dasa. No—Yukinari had pretty much done it all on his own. Dasa had merely provided backup and kept the monsters attacking them at bay using that weapon that roared like thunder.

  He had felled an erdgod and a group of xenobeasts; on top of that, he didn’t look to have been injured in any particular way. He looked awful, covered all over in xenobeast blood spatter, but he himself didn’t seem like he’d gotten hurt anywhere. He was even grumbling about how he stank of blood and wanted to take a bath, as if the whole thing had been no big deal. Did he not think this was amazing? Was he not even proud of himself? How could that be when, in her eyes, this was nothing more or less than a miracle? He looked so natural. If someone had told her that this man was God, she would have believed it without a trace of doubt.

  “This... This is the power that felled an erdgod...” Fiona said quietly from next to Berta. She, too, was staring stunned at Yukinari.

  “Aaahhhhh...” A word like a breath. Berta unconsciously fell to her knees, struck with awe, like a devout believer present for the earthly advent of God. And almost without awareness, words of prayer slipped from her mouth. “O Lord my God... I give myself to thee... Please, grant this land tranquility and good harvests...”

  ●

  A single road led through Friedland’s town wall to the outside world, dodging the thick forest to link up with the mountain valley. Wide for a country road, it had been painstakingly cleared of any stones that might frustrate passage and carefully trampled so that no weeds would grow. That was because this road joined to the major roads that connected these outlying regions to the rest of the country. It was likely the only road around here that would allow the large wagons that the street sellers used to pass through without problems. For the towns and villages in this area, like Friedland, this road was an important public good enabling them to connect with others.

  A bizarre band of people were traveling down that road in single file. Leading the way were around thirty people on horses. They were knights, it seemed. A few covered wagons followed behind them. There were a dozen or so people walking alongside the wagons, perhaps to make sure that the cargo didn’t fall off. So far, unusual, but surely not bizarre.

  The thing responsible for making this procession look as odd as it did was following behind the wagons. It was another wagon—but this one was extra large. Almost double the width of the other wagons and quadruple the length, its gigantic frame was supported by twelve steel wheels, six to a side, and it was being drawn by a team of more than twenty horses. White cloth covered it, making it impossible to tell from the outside what it was hauling. However, from the fact that its load had not been split among several ordinary-sized wagons, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that it had to be something pretty big.

  A dozen people were riding on the back platform of the huge wagon and keeping an eye on its cargo. There were another thirty knights bringing up the rear to match the ones in front. And moreover, the knights, the people on foot, and the wagon drivers were all armed. They had swords and wore armor—some more than others, but regardless, they all looked as if they were headed to the battlefield.

  Whose army was this? And what exactly was it that nearly a hundred fully armed soldiers were transporting?

  With no one to question them, the bizarre armed group moved along in silence, down the long, long road to Friedland.

  Chapter Four: A God’s Army

  It had been four days since Yukinari and Dasa had brought down the horde of xenobeasts. A small hut had been built with all haste at the sanctuary—or rather, at the place where the massive rock known as the sanctuary had once been. They managed it by diverting lumber the Schillings family had intended to use to build a storehouse on a vacant lot, and the result—although everyone referred to it as a hut—was about the size of an average house.

  Because the material had been on the verge of becoming a storehouse, however, the interior was singularly unadorned; it was just a one-room space. Open, in its way, but strangely unwelcoming. Bigger than it had to be, really—even if that wasn’t the reason it seemed so cold.

  Yukinari sat in a corner, looking out at a room populated with jury-rigged chairs and beds, along with a few pieces of furniture that looked like surplus items from town. And for some reason, there was Berta, too, right next to him on the bench-like seat.

  “No offense, but, uh, Berta...”

  She blinked and looked at him when he spoke. “Yes? Do you need something, Lord Yukinari?”

  The faint tinge of despair that had hung about her several days earlier was gone, replaced by a guileless look, pure and virginal. The edges of her mouth crinkled into a smile, perhaps brought on because Yukinari had spoken to her, or even more likely, because he had said her name.

  “...why are you sitting here?”

  “I’m sorry?” She didn’t seem to understand what he was asking. But after a moment’s reflection, she smiled and said, “Because this is where you’re sitting, my lord.”

  “Yeah, well, no two ways about that...”

  He had been less concerned about her sitting there than about how she was sitting—specifically, the way she almost seemed to be cuddling up to him. In fact, there was practically no personal space left between them. And the
moment Yuki sat down anywhere, Berta would come pattering over and squeeze next to him the same way.

  “I mean, why are you sitting... next to me... like that?”

  No sooner had he spoken than Berta’s eyes went wide and she threw herself prostrate on the ground.

  “Forgive me, Lord Yukinari! I’ve forgotten my place!”

  Yukinari quickly reached down, catching her shoulder and wrenching her out of her quivering kowtow.

  “Hey, stoppit! What’s gotten into you?”

  “I have offended you, my lord!” she said, her eyes swimming. “Surely you will punish me for this affront.”

  “Affront? Punish you?”

  “Yes, sir. As much as you need in order to slake your anger.”

  Yukinari was more than a little taken aback. “Hey, how can you—I mean, when you talk about punishment with that look in your eyes, it makes me feel kinda... weird.”

  Berta’s expression suggested she would have been perfectly happy to be partnered with some sadist, but unfortunately for her, Yuki was a lot more vanilla than that.

  “Look,” he said, “I really didn’t mean to sound harsh or critical or anything. Forget it, okay? Just... sit down.” He made a helpless gesture at the spot Berta had recently vacated.

  “Yes, sir!” she said, resuming her place with her face practically sparkling. “Thank you so much.” Then she began to shuffle, bit by bit, until she was scrunched up next to him again. She was wearing normal clothes now, but the image of her in those sheer vestments hovered in the back of Yukinari’s mind, making him antsy.

  From the other side of a small desk, Dasa fixed him with a dark stare.

  “Wh—What?”

  “...Yuki.” She looked somehow sullen.

  “Huh?”

  “You womanizer.”

  “But I didn’t even do anything!”

  Truth be told, Dasa had seemed in low spirits ever since they’d moved to this house. Yukinari had decided to ask Fiona for permission to stay in the area for a while. As far as he was concerned, it had nothing to do with filling in for the local erdgod or anything. Dasa was obviously exhausted. He was doing it for her. Of course, since he couldn’t very well have Dasa being held hostage, her being allowed to stay with him at the sanctuary was one of his terms.