The Roses of Tartarus

by Gakuto Mikumo

  “Senpai! Please, get ahold of yourself! Senpai…!”

  Yukina took the wounded Kojou in her arms as she shouted.

  Her voice was heartlessly erased by the malevolent gust of wind, infused with demonic energy.

  Once all the Beast Vassals had dissipated, the sky was abnormally silent.

  That day, in the face of its impending destruction, the Demon Sanctuary of Itogami Island was enveloped in frightening tranquility.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE ROSES OF TARTARUS

  1

  Island North was a research and development district with corporate and university facilities built side by side.

  This area contained dense clusters of multiple unadorned buildings erected on artificial soil. In one sense, the futuristic district felt the best suited as part of an artificial isle out of everywhere in Itogami Island.

  A single girl stood in the corner of a plaza on the highest stratum.

  She was a plain-looking student, wearing glasses with her Saikai Academy uniform.

  A flock of seagulls was gathered around her.

  These were silver seagulls, polished to a brilliant luster—a flock of shikigami born from spell scrolls, over two hundred of them, perhaps even three.

  All by herself, the girl was controlling this vast number of shikigami.

  Their purpose was to observe and search for sorcerous criminals.

  When the shikigami, scattered to every corner of Itogami Island, returned to the girl who controlled them, each and every one reverted to the spell scroll from whence they came. Then they returned to the tome the girl kept spread before her.

  When she finally finished stuffing the birds back into the tome, she quietly closed the book.

  She proceeded to turn around.

  Standing in the direction of her gaze was a young man with a delicate-looking face.

  He wore a black Chinese outfit, somehow reminiscent of what a martial artist or mystic of ancient times might wear. Without fanfare, he held a black spear with opposing tips in his hand.

  He was Meiga Itogami, escapee from the Prison Barrier—

  And the oddly shaped spear the young man wielded was named Fangzahn.

  “I thought it was about time you made a move, Shizuka.”

  Meiga Itogami spoke in a whisper as the only dull-white seagull that had not vanished rested on the fingertips of his left hand. He had wrested the girl’s right to control the shikigami away from her.

  However, Meiga displayed not even a hint of pride in this feat as he inquired in a gentle tone, “Tartarus Lapse. I do not suppose the Lion King Agency can simply let them go?”

  “I suppose not…but I thought, before disposing of them, I wanted to meet with you.”

  Koyomi Shizuka—titular head of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency—spoke in a polite tone one might even consider meek.

  “Please tell me, Meiga Itogami. What are you thinking? If Tartarus Lapse’s objective was to destroy Itogami Island, surely you would drop everything and move to crush them. Yet, you observe in silence, even as they target the Priestess of Cain, the very deity you worship—”

  “You have come to ascertain my true intentions, then?” Meiga asked, amused.

  Koyomi nodded slightly. “It is MAR that gave you shelter as a fugitive from the Prison Barrier, correct?”

  “Magna Ataraxia Research Incorporated, you say?”

  “As an international conglomerate and a financial sponsor of the Gigafloat Management Corporation, even the Island Guard and Attack Mages cannot easily lay a hand upon the group—it is thus that you, despite being a fugitive at large, have gathered various information and have been able to move freely within the island. Am I mistaken?”

  “I see… An amusing supposition.” Meiga feigned innocence as a smile came over him. Then he shrugged. “However, it is best not to carelessly speak of this in a public place. I will not be responsible should you and the Lion King Agency make such accusations at the cost of your own reputations.”

  “I suppose not. Besides, I do not think a for-profit corporation such as MAR would shelter a fugitive for no benefit to itself,” Koyomi said in a sober, serious tone. “If so, it would mean you have promised something to MAR of commensurate benefit.”

  “Commensurate benefit?”

  “Yes. A commensurate benefit amounting to a vast amount of profit for them in the future. For example—yes, if you were to expose the entire plan your grandfather left behind, for instance.”

  “The revival of Cain the Sinful God…? You overestimate me, Koyomi Shizuka.” He smiled at his own expense. “I do not think the wild delusions of a single sorcerous architect hold such great value. Furthermore, his final masterpiece is being destroyed at the hand of terrorists this very moment.”

  “Certainly,” said Koyomi with a nod. “Akishige Yaze, famous friend of Senra Itogami, has been killed in an explosion, and Itogami Island itself is on the verge of being destroyed—I do not think these present circumstances are what you aspired to see.”

  “Yes. It is precisely as you say.”

  The young man dressed in black replied calmly. In contrast, Koyomi shook her head in refutation.

  “However, it is a different matter if even Tartarus Lapse’s actions are part of Senra Itogami’s plan. Perhaps Tartarus Lapse is acting for your benefit without even being aware of it.”

  “Employ a group of Demon Sanctuary destroyers, you mean? And why, exactly, would I indulge in such risky methods…?”

  “That is what I have come to determine, Meiga Itogami.” Koyomi gently touched her glasses, training a powerful gaze upon the youth. “After all, the Lion King Agency silently consents to your and Akishige Yaze’s plan because it judges the existence of Cain the Sinful God as a powerful restraint against the Dominions. However, if you are carrying it out without any meaning behind it, we cannot simply stand back and watch.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Are you not using Tartarus Lapse to move your own plans forward? The revival of the Sinful God, in other words, the recommencement of the Cleansing—”

  “You have become talkative since I’ve last seen you, Shizuka…” Abruptly, the tone of the youth in black…changed. The spear he so bluntly carried gave off an odd-sounding whoosh that seemed to slice through the wind. “Allow me to pose a single question of my own. Do you remember Touka Fujisaka?”

  “Fujisaka… Miss Touka…”

  The name, unexpectedly on Meiga’s tongue, clearly unnerved Koyomi. Her eyes opened wide and wavered, and her lips trembled like those of a frightened child.

  “Yes. The previous Koyomi Shizuka—the Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency who stood back and watched your mother die.”

  Though his expression had changed little, a hue of powerful emotion came over Meiga’s eyes.

  It was the hue of long-suppressed hatred seemingly bubbling to the surface.

  “You’re wrong… It was Miss Touka’s mission to…shield the Priestess of the Sacrifice…”

  Koyomi retreated half a step. Touka Fujisaka, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency—the girl who, by rights, would have been in Koyomi’s place as one of the Agency’s Three Saints…

  Seven years prior, she had infiltrated a village of ritualists worshipping a heretical goddess, losing her life as a result. She had fought them alone, and died, to rescue the young girl who would have been slain as a sacrifice to that goddess.

  Immediately after that, Meiga Itogami slaughtered numerous Attack Mages and was confined in the Prison Barrier as a sorcerous criminal.

  “To shield the priestess, you say… Ha.” Meiga laughed, greeting Koyomi’s excuse with visible scorn. “Yes. Come to think of it, Motoki Yaze is shielding the Priestess of Cain—it seems you are rather fond of the lad. Had I killed him back then, this might have turned out somewhat more…amusing… Ha-ha… What a pity.”

  “Meiga Itogami, you—!” Koyomi shouted, feeling that she had been backed into a corner.

  The world wa
s enveloped in sudden tranquility—broken by a boom. There was the eerie sense of an anomalous interval being jammed into the continuous flow of time. The absolute right of initiative from time that ought never have existed—this was Koyomi Shizuka’s ability, dubbed Paper Noise.

  Meiga abruptly realized that his entire body had been riddled with countless bullets.

  The impact from the shots sent Meiga’s body flying backward.

  In her hand, Koyomi Shizuka was wielding an automatic pistol designed for military use. Meiga was unable to detect when she had ever drawn the weapon.

  “As expected of…Paper Noise… I tried to nullify the spiritual energy with Fangzahn, and it hardly mattered…”

  Meiga wobbled as he rose back up, clutching the smoldering chest of his Chinese attire.

  Meiga Itogami’s black spear—Fangzahn—was a scrapped weapon of the Lion King Agency able to nullify any kind of spiritual or magical energy. So long as the black spear was active, Meiga could not be directly harmed by any kind of attack spell.

  But even with Fangzahn’s abilities, he could not stop Paper Noise. Meiga, unable to defend via sorcery, had no defense against the bullets that, rightfully, did not exist until he had already been shot.

  “Previously, I warned you… My ability cannot stop you short of killing you,” Koyomi said as she loaded the pistol with fresh ammunition.

  Unable to bind Meiga by ritual spell, the only sure means of capturing Meiga was to take his life. She had appeared before Meiga because she had planned to kill him from the start.

  “This is why you are the head of the Three Saints of the Lion King Agency, with even vampire primogenitors giving you a wary eye—”

  It was to this Koyomi that Meiga displayed a smile of apparent praise.

  “But the Fourth Primogenitor gave me a very important hint. Namely, if you enter my attack range, it is possible to take you down with me.”

  “…”

  A suspicious expression came over Koyomi as Meiga Itogami raised his right hand toward her. In that hand, he held a small remote control with only a single switch.

  It did not look like a lethal weapon, and even if it was a weapon, it was an absolute certainty that Koyomi’s attack was faster. Even though he understood this, Meiga Itogami smiled wryly, as if sure of his impending victory.

  “Then, if the time lag of the counterattack is so close that it might as well be zero, it should indeed be possible to break your absolute attack—”

  “—!!”

  Before Meiga was even finished speaking, Koyomi’s entire body was bathed in light.

  Without a sound, she was engulfed in an enormous explosion.

  It was a scalding beam of death from the heavens far above. He wondered if Koyomi truly noticed that she’d been struck by an anti-ground laser cannon fired from an orbital track around the Earth—

  “That was the Gigafloat Management Corporation’s trump card, an anti-ground laser fired from an orbital attack satellite…”

  Meiga’s body rolled over the ground, bathed in backwash from the laser-cannon attack. His skin was scorched by hot wind as an enormous hole was gouged in the soil of the artificial isle.

  And all sight of Koyomi, there at ground zero, had vanished without a trace.

  The anti-ground laser attack’s speed was virtually identical to the speed of light. Even Koyomi’s absolute-initiative attack ability could not fend off such an onslaught. The remote control Meiga held was the trigger to activate the satellite.

  “Farewell, daughter of the accursed tribe… Feel my wrath for robbing me of the only warmth I have ever known…”

  Meiga discarded the remote control, its task fulfilled, and slowly rose to his feet. Though his entire body had been peppered with dozens of bullets, he showed no sign of feeling any pain. There was virtually no bleeding from the wounds so cruelly blown open.

  Dragging his pitch-black dual spear along, the wounded Meiga walked forward.

  Beneath the dazzling, midday sun, a thick darkness fell at his feet. It resembled a shadow of death.

  2

  Motoki Yaze raggedly breathed out as he hid in the shadow of an apartment building.

  The incendiary chemicals scattered around the area had left a burnt stench hovering in the air. Nearly three minutes had already passed since the assassin’s first sniping attempt.

  During that time, she had fired four times in total. To a sniper, living by the creed of one shot, one kill, the exceptional circumstance could only be called a failure.

  Even so, there was no sign of the sniper taking her leave. Even then, frigid bloodlust refined to the point of a needle remained unceasingly trained upon Asagi.

  Yaze detected that the source of that bloodlust was on the move.

  “The hell, that sniper plans to circle around this way…?!”

  Yaze clicked his tongue a little as he predicted the sniper’s movement path. She was leaping from the top of a building under construction to the top of a different building next door.

  After that, she jumped to a mansion beside it—with incredible speed far beyond that of a normal person.

  She was not beginning to run because her sniping had failed. She was moving to a fresh sniping position, meaning to strike Asagi down, this time for sure.

  “Shit, she’s fast… A beast person, then…?!”

  Yaze’s murmur was tinged with nervousness.

  A fully equipped anti-materiel rifle weighed close to fifteen kilograms. Carrying that and hopping from building to building was not something a normal human being could pull off. However, with a beast person’s strength and agility, such off-the-wall feats were child’s play.

  Furthermore, one ought to be able to deal with the drawback of an anti-materiel rifle, immense recoil, making accurate sniping fire possible—

  “This is bad. At this rate, we won’t be safe here! Gotta run for it!”

  “M-Motoki…?”

  When Yaze suddenly and violently rose to his feet, Asagi looked back at him with worry visible on her face. Isn’t hiding here safer? she seemed to be pleading.

  “You said the other side’s on the move… How do you know something like that…?”

  “Ah… Well, it’s a little knack that I have. Was pounded into me since I was a little brat.”

  “For this sort of thing?”

  Asagi looked at Yaze, her expression half belief, half disbelief.

  Of course, Yaze was telling her a huge whopper. No “knack” existed that could track a sniper’s movements.

  Yaze was using sound to detect the sniper’s movements. He’d dubbed the hyperreactive ability Soundscape, a product of the psychic ability Yaze had possessed since birth.

  Employing that ability, Yaze could accurately grasp the sniper’s movements at over a kilometer away. The sniper’s position. The direction of the rifle barrel. The sounds of operating the firearm. And even the sniper’s breathing and the sound of her beating heart.

  The problem was, an anti-materiel rifle’s rounds traveled faster than the speed of sound transmitted through the air. The timing of when the bullet was being fired was the one thing Yaze’s ability couldn’t pinpoint. All Yaze could do was flee from the firing line before the sniper took the shot.

  “Anyway, let’s run. Staying here is bad. We’ll get Mrs. Asako and other people involved.”

  “What do you mean, run? Down the street? If it’s a sniper after us, isn’t using the underground roads better?”

  “No can do. You haven’t forgotten what happened to my dad, have you?”

  Yaze’s rational retort made Asagi sink into silence.

  Itogami Island, an artificial construct, had a netlike array of underground roads for maintenance use. Certainly, if they used those, they would probably escape from the sniper.

  But the terrorist group attacking Itogami Island included a serial bomber.

  If they had planted bombs on the underground roads, there was no defense against it, for the powerful echoes inside the un
derground roads rendered Yaze’s Soundscape useless.

  “Asagi, can you get ahold of the Island Guard?”

  “I think that should work… Yeah, it’s all right. Transmissions haven’t been cut.”

  Asagi spoke as she looked at the screen on her smartphone. In spite of someone trying to take her life, Asagi was surprisingly calm. She’d always been a calm girl with a good head on her shoulders. Perhaps the various incidents taking place of late had inured her to this level of trouble.

  “Then, call ’em straight away. Blasting that damned cannon makes the sniper’s location loud and clear. If the Island Guard comes running, it’s game over.”

  “Hear that, Mogwai?”

  “Kinda sorta.”

  The sarcastic AI spoke up.

  “But unfortunately, it’s gonna take some time till the Island Guard gets there. They’re not really in any position to run over right now.”

  “Excuse me?! Why the hell not…?! An unregistered demon is on a rampage with an anti-materiel rifle y’know?!” Yaze screeched. “That’s a top-priority target, dammit.”

  However, Mogwai’s reply was blunt. “If you go out onto the main streets, you’ll get the picture soon enough.”

  “Whaddaya mean…?!”

  As Yaze spontaneously talked back, a civilian house’s concrete wall shattered. It was an attack from the anti-materiel rifle. With the interceding cover pulverized, Yaze and Asagi’s position was exposed for all to see.

  “Asagi, run!”

  Yaze shouted as he tried to shove her forward. Is the sniper trying to herd us toward an escape route? rose a suspicion in the back of his mind, but he had no time to dwell on that.

  However, before Asagi had gone thirty meters, her legs stopped as she visibly gawked.

  A huge explosion erupted in the road, sending asphalt fragments flying through the air.

  “Motoki!”

  “A vampire’s Beast Vassal…?!”

  Realizing the cause of the explosion, Yaze exclaimed in a low, muffled voice. Emerging, seemingly to clog up the road, was an enormous beast enveloped by glimmering demonic energy.

  It had to be close to two meters long. It resembled a grizzly bear, but naturally, no such creature was possible from the natural world. It was a mass of dense demonic energy taking solid form—a vampire’s Beast Vassal.