“Ah…! Right, you’re that girl who was working for La Folia—!”
“Yes. Interceptor Knight Kataya Justina of the Aldegian Knights of the Second Coming. Nin!”
When Kojou indicated the intruder, she clasped her hands flat together and bowed her head in supplication. Without thinking, Kojou nodded his head as well. The “ninja girl” was a knight serving the Aldegian royal family. Her mission was to protect Kanon Kanase, a member of that family.
Supposedly, she was a fan of Japanese ninjas, remaining inconspicuous and concealed from sight as she protected Kanon.
“N-Nin?”
With Justina like that, Yukina stood stiff, staring at her. Thanks to adopting such a serious combat posture, she seemed unable to find a proper time to lower her spear.
“I see… So this is the first time you’ve met her, Himeragi.”
Kojou spoke the words with a tone of sympathy for the Sword Shaman.
Her spear still raised, Yukina awkwardly shifted her gaze toward Kojou alone.
“Senpai, do you know her?”
“Well, kinda. She’s the bodyguard La Folia assigned to Kanase. So I don’t think she’s a suspicious person. Just a ninja fangirl.”
“By thy will.”
Saying this, Justina courteously bowed. Celesta gazed upon her in visible admiration and remarked, “So ninjas really do exist…”
“Well, she’s sort of a ninja, but this is just the princess of Aldegia having her take on the role…” Kojou tried to correct her in vague language.
Naturally, Kanon, who hadn’t been informed of Justina’s existence, had a look of bewilderment come over her at the sudden appearance of her own bodyguard.
“Er, Miss Justina, would you like to eat with us?” she offered.
Justina bowed her head, looking deeply moved as she said, “I am most honored to receive the Royal Sister’s hospitality—however, I must first inform Sir Fourth Primogenitor of something with the greatest urgency.”
“Huh…? Me?” Kojou sensed an ill omen. “What is it now?”
Justina lifted her gaze—the fickle look from a moment before had vanished. Her face was that of a trained soldier.
“I am sorry. I should have alerted you sooner, but this apartment building has been surrounded.”
“What?!”
“They are well trained. Without the aid of a spy satellite, I would likely never have detected them, either.”
“Spy satellite…?”
Aldegia’s even using a thing like that to protect Kanon, Kojou thought, flabbergasted. But at that moment, even those girls being unreasonable was oddly reassuring.
“The enemy likely numbers four. However, their target is not the Royal Sister but rather—”
“—Celesta!”
Kojou instinctively realized it.
As if waiting for that as a signal, he was assailed by the oppressive sensation of powerful demonic energy.
The apartment shook from an incredible impact before he realized they were under attack.
Seeing this, Celesta opened her mouth as if to silently scream, signaling that their peace and quiet had come to an end…
CHAPTER THREE
DEITY OF DARKNESS
1
Yukina was the first to move.
A misshapen figure emerged as metal fragments of the pulverized door scattered about. Before the sight fully entered her vision, she leaped, slamming a powerful, ritual energy–infused heel kick into it.
“—Roaring Thunder!!”
The intruder’s large-framed body recoiled, accompanied by the dull sound of a jawbone breaking.
The intruder turned out to be a leopard-headed beast man over two meters in height. The palm strike Yukina subsequently unleashed sent the demon, nearly four times her body weight, flying.
“Justina, protect Kanase! Astarte, take care of Celesta!”
Kojou reacted a moment later. In spite of the urgent emergency posed by the demon’s attack, he fretted a little that he was getting entirely too used to these things.
“By thy will!”
“Accepted.”
Justina and Astarte moved, responding to Kojou’s voice. He considered their replies, both equally out of place, all the more reassuring under the circumstances.
“Please be careful, senpai. This is probably a diversion,” Yukina cautioned while glaring at the fallen beast man.
Kojou instantly looked behind him.
“Diversion?! So that’s a decoy op? Then that means—”
He saw the shadow of a second beast man silhouette behind the lace curtain of the living room window. Kojou noticed that around the same time the glass window cracked and shattered.
“—this is the main event!”
Kojou counterattacked against the second beast man leaping in with a large swing and a straight right jab. However, that mighty blow sailed fruitlessly, hitting nothing but air.
“What the—?!”
“An illusion?! A beast man using spells?!”
A look of shock came over Yukina as she watched Kojou stagger. Kojou had tried to punch an illusion created via sorcery. The real one, standing behind the illusion, laughed, his fangs crudely bared.
Cases of beast men, possessing extremely high combat capability to begin with, going out of their way to learn spell casting were few and far between. But among certain tribes, a precious few possessed such special abilities innately. Many were called a superior breed, and it was known that these retained great power in a completely different league than normal beast men. It was this that was the cause of Yukina’s surprise.
With Kojou heavily off balance before his eyes, the second beast man swung up with oversized claws. And with Kojou targeted, it was a silver-haired female knight who leaped to shield him.
“Sir Kojou, get down!”
Justina drew the sword she carried on her hip. Kojou did as told and rolled onto the floor. The silver light clashed with the demonic energy—enveloping the beast man’s arm just over his head.
It was the beast man who howled as fresh blood sprayed about.
The slice from Justine’s blade deflected the left arm the beast man was slamming downward and proceeded to dig deep into his chest. The wound was enveloped in a pale flame; the beast man raised his voice in agony.
“Whoa…”
Kojou exhaled in admiration. Even his amateur eyes could tell at a glance that Justine’s swordsmanship was top-notch. She would probably outdo Yukina in a contest of pure swordsmanship. It doubly explained why La Folia dispatched her to protect Kanon, a member of the royal family. She was far more than a simple foreign-born ninja fangirl.
“This is the treasured sword Nidaros, granted unto me by Princess La Folia. It is said to grant maidens serving at the Aldegian royal family’s side destructive might and the blessing of healing.”
Justine proudly raised the long sword. The blade, adorned with a golden hilt, glowed with an ethereal blue flame. It looked a little like the pseudo-holy sword La Folia wielded.
She’s borrowing Kanon’s spiritual energy, Kojou realized. The spiritual energy Kanon possessed, close to an angel’s, was deadly poison as far as demons were concerned.
“Both of you, please do not move.”
Yukina held her silver spear as she sharply addressed the two beast men. The tip of her poised spear was pointed at the throat of the first beast man on the floor.
“I believe further combat would be fruitless, but do you wish to continue?” she asked.
“…”
The beast man growled through the jaw Yukina had broken. He pressed on, speaking in a raspy, hard-to-hear voice.
“We want the…Ciate girl back.”
“…!”
Celesta drew in her breath, visibly afraid.
To the girl with no memory, the beast men’s attack represented the fear of being chased by a past she could not recall. Without knowing why they were after her, all she could do was tremble in anxiety-induced anguish.
&
nbsp; “She is the icon of Zazalamagiu; raised by our hands. She belongs to us.”
The beast man glared up at Celesta with bloodshot eyes. Yukina gripped her spear harder.
As if covering for the fearful Celesta, Kojou defiantly rebutted, “Well, it looks like she doesn’t remember either of you.”
His voice was thick with unbridled rage.
“And if you really were Celesta’s friends, you could’ve just come to the front door and met her there, right? That you didn’t is practically the same as shouting, ‘We’re the bad guys!’”
“…I had meant to grant foreigners mercy, but…”
The beast man chuckled quietly. The odd composure of the intruders, who should’ve been beaten with their backs to the wall, put Kojou on guard. A moment later, Justina shrieked. The beast man she had her sword trained on unleashed an explosive swell of demonic energy, its shock wave slamming her against the wall.
“…Justina?! What’s with this guy…?!” Kojou shouted as the bizarre spectacle struck his eyes.
The body of the beast man, already pretty huge to begin with, swelled to over twice its previous size and proceeded to change shape—from humanoid to complete beast. He transformed into a malevolent leopard, reaching four to five meters in length.
“No, it can’t be—divine bestialization?!”
The beast man Yukina had her spear pointed toward underwent an identical change. His enlarged frame demolished the apartment’s floor and ceiling. Even Snowdrift Wolf’s ability to nullify demonic energy was unable to stop the transformation—for the change was no illusion wrought by sorcery.
Divine bestialization was a special ability possessed by a scant few at the utmost pinnacle among the beast-men tribes. This was Yukina’s first encounter with it in person.
At the cost of incredible exertion diminishing their very life spans, top-level beast men could transform their bodies into divine beasts, beings on par with the phoenix and dragons of mythology. Their combat capabilities were said to surpass even vampires’ Beast Vassals.
“Invoking right of self-defense in protection of Celesta Ciate. Execute, Rhododactylos.”
When Astarte stood up, stripping off the white gown over her, wings of demonic energy spread from her back. These transformed into a fist from a giant Beast Vassal, swinging down at the face of the second divine beast.
The atmosphere creaked from the collision of vast demonic energies. However, it was Astarte who was staggered by the recoil. The man-made Beast Vassal implanted into her body was powerful indeed, but Astarte, the host, was herself nothing more than a homunculus girl with a frail body. There was no way she could endure the oppressive might of two divine beasts.
“Astarte?! Shit… Himeragi, take care of everyone!”
“Senpai?! What are you—?!”
Kojou slid past the feet of the divine beast at the entrance and proceeded to wrap around the foe’s back. If his timing had been off by even a second, he would have been stomped on by the divine beast’s huge body, likely resulting in a fatality. Yukina was rooted in place, dumbfounded at Kojou’s action, rash even by his standards.
However, Kojou didn’t have any attention to spare for that. He was wholly occupied controlling the vast demonic energy released by his own flesh and blood.
Seizing the angle so that the two divine beasts were in a straight line, he thrust both hands forward. He concentrated his own power in the meager space created between his hands. He was summoning but a single portion of a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor, boasting overwhelming demonic energy of its own. It was the only way to overcome this dangerous situation.
“C’mon over, Al-Nasl Minium!”
Kojou summoned the Beast Vassal of wild, raging shock waves.
The Beast Vassal was a giant bicorn reaching ten-odd meters in length, but Kojou channeled its demonic energy alone to unleash a bullet of highly concentrated shock waves. It was viable in theory, but he had no way to know if he could pull it off until he tried it. It was a dangerous gamble—failure might result in the deaths of everyone present. Even so, Kojou didn’t have the time to worry.
“Snowdrift Wolf—!”
“Defense mode. Execute, Rhododactylos.”
Yukina and Astarte moved simultaneously, realizing what Kojou was doing. The Divine Oscillation Effects released by the two girls formed defensive barriers hemming in Kojou’s attack.
With the barriers deployed by Yukina and Astarte fulfilling the role of a cannon barrel, Kojou condensed and fired his demonic energy. The two divine beasts, bearing the brunt of the shock wave cannonball, were blown away, shot straight out of the apartment.
“Shit… Still too soon to completely control it, huh?!”
Kojou breathed raggedly as he pressed his two bloodied arms against himself, the blood vessels wrecked. He groaned in agony as the back of his brain seemed to boil—the cost of wielding such potent demonic energy.
“How can you do something so reckless…?! Using one of your Beast Vassals in cramped quarters such as this!”
Falling limply to one knee, Yukina raised her eyebrows as she glared at Kojou.
If Kojou had failed to control the Beast Vassal, the apartment would surely have been annihilated, and everything in the area with it. It was natural for Yukina, aware of that danger, to fly into a rage.
“There wasn’t any other way!”
Such was Kojou’s frail retort. With their backs against the wall, facing off against two divinely bestialized foes, it was a fact that he had no room to be picky. Even if they were divine beasts with powerful demonic energy, they’d taken a direct hit from a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor. He didn’t think they’d emerge unscathed.
But as if to betray his hopes, Kojou heard the howls of the two divine beasts outside the shattered window. When Kojou leaped onto the half-destroyed veranda, he saw enormous leopards glaring back at them, standing on the apartment building next door.
“They shrugged that off—?! You gotta be kidding,” he uttered unintentionally.
The two divine beasts were intact. He would not go as far as to say unscathed, but they had not lost their combat capability. Kojou’s attack with restrained demonic energy had failed to defeat them.
“It is said that a foe with divine bestialization has power greater than a vampire’s Beast Vassals!” Even Yukina couldn’t contain her concern. “The cost is correspondingly high, and to begin with, almost no beast-man bloodlines remain powerful enough to divine bestialize… To think that two would appear simultaneously…!”
Enormous demonic energy welled up within the bodies of both divinely bestialized beast men. They intended to unleash a breath attack. The condensed demonic energy flames would likely annihilate Kojou, the apartment, and everyone else. Of course, Celesta, their objective, would not escape unscathed either, but their anger at being harmed had made the divine beasts lose their sense of reason.
“This is bad,” Kojou muttered, his expression freezing over. “Well, obviously I can’t use my Beast Vassals anymore!”
“Of course not!” Yukina shouted and glared at him.
Each and every one of the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals were simply too powerful. Fundamentally, they were not the kind of things you summoned in an urban area.
On top of that, Kojou’s strength was heavily depleted thanks to the reckless summoning from a moment ago. Certainly, summoning a new Beast Vassal would protect them from the breath attack, but there was no telling what a Beast Vassal running amok might do in the course of its rampage.
“—Both of you, stand back.”
The nervous Kojou and Yukina heard a strangely confident voice from behind.
The speaker was a little doll not even reaching thirty centimeters in height. Still carried against Kanon’s chest, she proudly touched her hands to her hips.
“…Nina? What can you do in a body like that…?!”
Kojou stared at the impetuous smile of the self-proclaimed Great Alchemist of Yore with a
dubious expression.
As a result of the previous battle with Wiseman, she’d lost the majority of her power. In the first place, an alchemist’s objective was to seek ultimate truths—combat was not her forte. Kojou didn’t think she could battle powerful divine beasts in her present state. However…
“They ruined the cooking I had poured my soul into. Naturally, they must pay a commensurate price—”
With that said, Nina turned one tiny hand toward each divine beast.
Kojou felt an instinctive fear of the dazzling glow sprouting from her fingertips. After all, Kojou had witnessed that glow before firsthand.
It was not the light of a simple spell. It was the dangerous radiance produced from transmuting matter via alchemy. The discharge of a pale thunderbolt spiraled into an enormous cannon barrel before Nina’s eyes.
“Fear not. I shall not slay them. Kanon, I shall borrow your spiritual energy!”
“Yes, director!”
With Kanon supplementing Nina’s insufficient magical energy, the alchemist unleashed beams from both hands.
It was a heavy metal particle beam bombardment, scattering incredible heat and vast electromagnetic waves in its wake. An incandescent blade of light that could slice a giant ocean ferry in two—
The bombardment, reaching close to the speed of light, punched separately through the two divine beasts’ bodies.
Their cries of anguish made the very air shudder.
“Hmm. So they escaped…”
By the time the last vestiges of the beams faded, the divine beasts had vanished, nowhere to be seen. Heavily wounded from their pummeling by the particle cannon, they’d no doubt made a run for it.
“Wh-why you…”
Kojou, grimacing from the scent of beam-created ozone, gave an exhausted sigh.
Certainly, with a precise beam attack, one could snipe at the divine beasts alone without inflicting damage on nearby residential homes. That said, he didn’t think any relatively sane person would fire off a particle cannon in an urban area. Nina Adelard was the Great Alchemist of Yore, some two hundred and seventy years young—it seemed that she, too, was a being far adrift from notions of common sense.
Bride of the Dark God Page 9
