Strike the Blood, Vol. 6 (light novel): Return of the Alchemist

by Gakuto Mikumo

  “Eh…?! I texted you about it earlier!” Nagisa jabbed at him with her chopsticks.

  Kojou reached into his pocket to check his message history, but the only thing that came out was a piece of scrap plastic that used to be a cell phone. Of course, Kojou was responsible for wrecking it—it’d bitten the dust from his magical energy.

  How many phones have I gone through in the last six months? Kojou sank into depression as he counted in his head. His account balance, never high to begin with, just took another step toward zero.

  “Geez, and this time of day you can get discount milk in some places. We’re having gratin tonight… What’ll I do? Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that other stuff out earlier? But it was thirteen days past the expiration…”

  “Oh man, that’s stretching it a bit too thin. Shouldn’t even leave that stuff in the fridge.”

  Kojou rushed to stop his sister from seriously worrying about whether or not to consume expired dairy products. Nagisa still seemed a bit hung up on it when she noticed there was someone behind him.

  “Ah, Yukina’s with you? Maybe Yukina has some milk she can spare?”

  “Er, Yukina’s not the one with me…”

  Now how am I gonna explain this? he wondered hesitantly, but Asagi shoved Kojou aside and barged into the living room.

  “Good evening. Sorry to be all sudden like this.”

  “Asagi? Whoa?! What happened to your clothes?!”

  Nagisa’s eyes widened in shock as she beheld the pathetic state of Asagi’s outfit.

  Asagi forced a somewhat amused smile. “Er… I was coming back from school when…”

  “—She was trying to cook something awful, and the pot went ka-boom,” Kojou interjected from the side, trying to sound grave.

  “What in the world?!” Nagisa asked.

  Asagi grimaced. It was such a disgraceful excuse. “Kojou?! Now wait just a…”

  “Look, I can’t tell Nagisa that you got attacked by a monster and stuff, so just deal!” Kojou hissed in a whisper.

  Resentfully, she whispered back, “Well, you could’ve come up with a better excuse than— Erg, I’m gonna remember this, you know!!”

  Even though she was a resident of a Demon Sanctuary, Nagisa had an acute fear of demons; in the past, during a major incident, she’d been gravely wounded and on death’s door from an encounter with them. Asagi, well aware of the circumstances, couldn’t make any strong objection to Kojou’s case.

  Still, she had a look of annoyance on her face as Nagisa welcomed her in. “That so. You poor thing. It’s okay, come on in, take a shower!”

  Kojou left Asagi to his little sister as he headed back to the entrance. “It’s fine if I go buy some milk now, right?”

  But Nagisa hastily called Kojou back:

  “Oh, wait. I really should go. I wanna buy some sweets to take on the field trip. If I let you do it, you won’t buy anything good, just potato chips that taste like peach yogurt and that junk.”

  “What’s wrong with peach yogurt?!” Kojou objected, somewhat sullenly. But Nagisa easily blew off her brother’s rebuttal.

  “Here you go, a bath towel and a Kojou jersey, both fresh. You can use the cosmetics on the right of the bathroom any way you like. You’re gonna eat here with us tonight, right? Well, later!”

  With the towel and change of clothes still in hand, Asagi waved politely as she watched Nagisa go. Then, as if unable to contain herself any longer, she belted out laughing.

  “Nagisa’s always such a cutie. I want her to be my little sister.”

  “Eh?”

  “Ah, I don’t mean… I didn’t mean as a sister-in-law, not yet…!”

  As Asagi hastily tried to correct herself, Kojou waved his hand impatiently. “Whatever, just get in the shower already. You know where it is, right?”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Asagi headed toward the bathroom, walking down the corridor like she knew her way around.

  When she got there, she took great care to lock the changing room door and then looked at herself in the mirror.

  “Whoa, this is awful.”

  Asagi spontaneously clutched her head as she beheld the caked blood and mud on her face. When she thought of how she’d presented herself in front of Kojou and Yukina like this, she wanted to curse her own misfortune for that alone.

  Still, it was clear that the first order of business would be stripping off her makeup and tattered garments.

  Repurchasing was the only option for her bra and school uniform. However, not a single scratch remained on her body behind the spectacularly destroyed clothing. Certainly, those were miraculous odds. She couldn’t blame Kojou and Yukina for being surprised.

  Thanks to Nagisa being such a clean freak, the Akatsuki residence bathroom under her dominion was in prim and proper condition.

  Though she was a little apprehensive about using a washroom belonging to another family, washing all the grime off let her finally experience some relief. Picturing herself and Kojou meeting eye to eye after she got out of the bath, she decided to wash herself with extra care, just to be safe.

  That was when Asagi’s fingertips felt odd, as if they’d touched a foreign object. It was a cold, metallic sensation.

  “Eh…?”

  Thinking it suspicious, Asagi looked herself over in the fogged-up mirror.

  She immediately located the cause of the odd sensation. Between her breasts, a transparent red stone hung above her heart. It was a small, beautiful, multifaceted gemstone.

  She thought it was simply on top of her skin, but it wasn’t. The red gemstone was embedded in Asagi’s chest as if it was a part of her own body—

  “What…is this?”

  In surprise, Asagi touched the stone. She didn’t feel anything malevolent or frightening about it. It was simply embedded there. But the instant her thoughts turned toward it, Asagi’s vision turned dark.

  That was where her memory suddenly cut off and she sank into a deep, death-like sleep.

  3

  Meanwhile, Kojou was pouring coffee in the kitchen.

  It wasn’t the instant kind. He took the whole process fairly seriously and started with percolating some beans.

  Kojou had begun drinking coffee relatively recently—after he’d become a vampire, in fact. Suddenly becoming a nocturnal creature made going to school in the middle of the day a tough lifestyle to maintain. He’d never have been able to manage it without relying on caffeine.

  His ears picked up the sound of running water. Having a girl in your class taking a shower, separated from you only by a thin interior wall, was quite a situation by any objective measure.

  Kojou tried not to think too much about it as he brought the cup to his lips.

  “Bwah?!”

  But he did a sudden spit take, spewing coffee all over the counter—for Asagi had just entered through the kitchen doorway.

  Her hair was wet and worn down after taking a shower. Droplets flowed down her face like beads of sweat.

  But she wasn’t wearing a single thing. Not underwear, not a towel, nothing—

  She’d come out of the bathroom just like that, buck naked.

  It was Kojou, not Asagi, who was thrown into a panic.

  “A-Asagi?! Whaddaya think you’re doing?!”

  Her behavior was so far off the charts it didn’t seem real. Thanks to that, his eyes were completely glued to her.

  Asagi slowly lowered and raised her head as she gave Kojou, now frozen, a thorough once-over. “Hmm. A mere human…or not. A vampire? I see. If I may ask, is this your dwelling?”

  “Wh-wh-what is all this, now…?!”

  His secret suddenly exposed, Kojou fell into a complete panic. He had no idea how she might have figured him out.

  “Er, um, Asagi, er, are you…okay?!”

  “What is it that disturbs you so? There is no need to be frightened.”

  Asagi quietly approached him, clearly amused.

  Though she always wore showy clothing
to stand out, she naturally looked good, too. Big eater that she was, her body didn’t show it; however, it did show off her good parts. Her smooth, white skin, which she took such good care of, was somewhat reddened, probably from the hot water. It was an exceedingly stimulating sight for poor Kojou.

  Lust, bewilderment, vampiric urges, suspicion, and guilt collided together, completely saturating Kojou’s brain capacity. All his worldly cravings leaked right out as fresh blood.

  “Ugh…?!”

  Kojou coughed once more, strongly spewing his nosebleed all around. As Kojou slouched forward, Asagi rushed over to his side in her bare feet.

  “Hey, vampire?! What’s wrong? Hold it together!”

  “Cl-clothes…”

  “Mm?”

  “Clothes! Clothes!!” the blood-drenched Kojou shouted. “Just put something on already—!”

  No matter how confused he was, even he realized it by now: The girl before his eyes was not Asagi. She might have looked like her, but she was a completely different person.

  “Ohh, I see. Apologies, it would seem my head was in the clouds upon waking.”

  The girl who looked like Asagi apparently hadn’t even noticed she was naked.

  Hmm. She looked around the area, finally reaching toward a flower vase resting on the kitchen table. The instant her hand touched it, the flower, a carnation, transformed into gleaming, pure white fabric. It was a glossy, silky fabric full of luster.

  The young woman wrapped it around her body, fastening it with gold-colored studs that seemed to appear out of nowhere. The outfit was still pretty revealing, but at least it counted as being clothed.

  She then announced rather proudly, “Now no obstacles remain.”

  Dumbfounded, Kojou stared at her and asked, “What…did you do, just now…?”

  “I simply used the contents of the vase to produce silk. I must note that manipulating organic matter is not my specialty, so I cannot produce anything with a complex structure.”

  “…Transmutation?! You’re an alchemist?!”

  As Kojou muttered in shock, the girl with the same face as Asagi gazed at him in amusement. “Why, does that surprise you? I am the scion of Hermes Trismegistus and master of the Magnum Opus, Nina Adelard of Parmia. A trick like this is child’s play to me.”

  “Nina Adelard…?!” Kojou nearly shouted the name to which she’d suddenly made claim. “But you were just plain ol’ Asagi till a minute ago, weren’t you?!”

  “Ahh, now I understand. Asagi is this girl’s name?” The woman taking Asagi’s appearance put a hand on her bosom. Kojou raised his eyebrows as he beheld something there that glistened ruby red.

  “That gemstone…!”

  “This? This is the so-called Hard Core.”

  “Hard Core?”

  “Indeed. It is the control module for the self-propagating, liquid-metal life-form known as Wiseman’s Blood. It’s essentially a ritual spell device for storing memories. Think of it as the physical form of my soul.”

  Soul, huh? Kojou murmured to himself. With that word, he finally felt he understood the situation.

  “So you stuffed that into Asagi’s body and hijacked it?”

  “Hijacked? That is incorrect. This is symbiosis through fusion, nothing more.”

  “That’s exactly what hijacking is, dammit!!”

  Kojou’s nosebleed had finally abated; he quickly wiped away the last remnants. Meanwhile, the woman calling herself Nina Adelard twisted her lips, sulking.

  “Indeed. However, if not for me, this girl would have died as a result of the attack from the Wiseman’s Blood.”

  “…It was you?!” Kojou hissed, shaken. “You’re the one who brought Asagi back…?!”

  Asagi being unharmed after sustaining mortal wounds was such an incomprehensible phenomenon that explaining it away as the work of the alchemist calling herself Nina Adelard made a lot more sense.

  However, the woman countered with a simple shake of her head.

  “Even the hidden arts of the alchemists cannot bring the dead back to life. All I did was heal her wounds. It was a gamble as to whether I was in time, but fortune was with the girl, and with me.”

  “That so…” Kojou bit his lip and exhaled. So Asagi really had been one step from death; really had been saved at the last possible moment. Though, he wasn’t sure he could call her completely saved just yet—

  “So you’re the one who made the Wiseman’s Blood, right? I heard you traded in your own body for that, to gain an immortal one.”

  “…Do not compliment me so. Saying that to my face, are you trying to make me blush?”

  The woman taking Asagi’s form scratched her cheek. She really did seem to be blushing.

  Kojou raggedly bared his teeth. “That ain’t a compliment! I’m trying to ask why the Wiseman’s Blood attacked Asagi in the first place!”

  “It’s the fault of the Dummy Core.”

  “…Dummy Core?”

  And what’s that, added Kojou with a look. But he gasped when he suddenly remembered:

  “Wait, you mean the black rock in Amatsuka’s chest?”

  “Oh, you know of him?”

  “Come to think of it, he’s an alchemist, too. Who is he? Some friend of yours?” Kojou demanded like a lawyer cross-examining a witness. For some reason, she seemed at a loss as she folded her arms.

  “Kou Amatsuka is my apprentice. No, former apprentice… I broke off ties with him long ago.”

  “…Apprentice?”

  “As the name implies, the Dummy Core is an imitation Hard Core. Perhaps it’s easier if I said it’s an incomplete Hard Core?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, I suppose I get it…”

  The gist was that the master, Nina Adelard, possessed the complete Hard Core, while her apprentice, Amatsuka, used an incomplete and pale imitation.

  “The Dummy Core can control the Wiseman’s Blood, but its functions are incomplete. It doesn’t take much to fully lose control. Spirit Blood was driven into Amatsuka’s sealed Dummy Core to awaken it from its sleep, starting it before I, the proper control unit, could fully activate.”

  “So it’s like your apprentice attacked when you were asleep and uploaded a computer virus before your security software kicked in…”

  Kojou interpreted the situation with his own, more modern terms. Since Nina Adelard didn’t correct him, his version couldn’t have been that off the mark. Or perhaps she just didn’t know what a computer was.

  “Then the monster Asagi saw was—”

  The girl borrowing Asagi’s appearance readily agreed. “Indeed, ’twas the Wiseman’s Blood run amok. Kou Amatsuka employed five Dummy Cores. If the Nucleus is the core, the Spirit Blood is the body. What do you think would happen if you put several souls into one body?”

  “It’d tear itself… Or I guess, it’d ‘run amok,’ huh?”

  Kojou grimaced as he spoke. The woman sighed as she nodded.

  “Both are correct. When Amatsuka tried to attack, the liquid metal body ran amok and this ‘Asagi’ was harmed as a result. I split myself off from the contaminated Spirit Blood and fled into her. Had I not done so, she would have perished, and I would have been trapped in a body I could not control.”

  “So that’s how it is…” Finally grasping the entire situation, Kojou shook his head in annoyance.

  Nina Adelard, the Great Alchemist of Yore, had her immortal body stolen via her apprentice’s betrayal, with Asagi having almost died as a result. And so, Nina had possessed Asagi as compensation for saving Asagi’s life.

  He had no intention of heaping all the blame onto Nina. But he did think Nina bore at least some responsibility—

  “Do not be concerned. I do not intend to harm this body in any way, and the consciousness of ‘Asagi’ should awaken when I am asleep. I suppose the gaps in her memory shall be somewhat troublesome, however.”

  “You can’t come out of her?”

  A somewhat disconcerted expression came over the possessing sp
irit as she spoke. “It is difficult, for this Hard Core is not in its complete state, and I used up nearly all the Spirit Blood at my command to repair this girl’s flesh and blood.”

  Kojou held on to faint hopes as he pointed at the silk fabric wrapped around her. “Can’t you whip something up like how you made those clothes?”

  “Just what do you think Wiseman’s Blood is? The pinnacle of alchemy, this is.” Nina’s retort sounded a little wounded. “Indeed, I would require gold, silver, and certain rare metals of the same weight as this girl. In addition, nine hundred liters of mercury, and for fuel, some forty or fifty spiritualists, and I might manage, but—”

  Kojou shouted on the spot. “Hey, that’s crazy talk…!”

  It was too high a price to pay just to create an ooze monster that went berserk at the drop of a hat.

  “Now do you understand why I kept the creation of Wiseman’s Blood a secret? The technique requires far too many sins for the mere purpose of acquiring immortality. I never sought to have a body like this.”

  “…Well, I can relate to that, a little.”

  For the first time, Kojou sympathized with the great alchemist before him. When it came to having obtained unwanted power in the form of an immortal, immutable body with enormous, nigh-uncontrollable magical energy, she and Kojou were in the same boat.

  Kojou spoke while bowing his head before her.

  “Any way you slice it, you did save Asagi, so I need to thank you for that.”

  “You are surprisingly conscientious for a vampire.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with my being a vampire. And don’t call me that. It’s Kojou. Kojou Akatsuki.”

  “Very well, Kojou. You may call me Nina, then.” Nina giggled as she spoke, adding a soft, charming smile. “Moreover, even if creating new Wiseman’s Blood is out of the question, if we can capture it and stop its rampage, I promise I will leave Asagi immediately. You will help me in this?”

  Kojou spoke without hesitation.

  “If that’s the deal, count me in.”

  But his expression immediately clouded over. If he was going to seriously work with Nina Adelard, there was something he really needed to tell her first.