The Roses of Tartarus

by Gakuto Mikumo

  If I die, Yuiri will probably be sad.

  That she would deeply regret.

  On the other hand, Shio felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

  She had faced death like this but a few days before. At the time, a middle-aged man calling himself Gajou Akatsuki had saved her. And now—

  “Al-Nasl Minium—!”

  With the sound of an incredible boom, the enemy Beast Vassal before her eyes vanished. It had taken a roar from an enormous bicorn that mowed it down, blowing it away.

  “Huh…?!”

  A beautiful Beast Vassal with a scarlet mane had appeared to protect Shio and Sayaka. This was not like the crudely summoned, incomplete Beast Vassals from the Roses of Tartarus. This was a vampiric primogenitor’s Beast Vassal, and the powerful demonic energy dwelling within was in a different league altogether.

  “You all right?! You’re…uh, Shio, right?”

  “Kojou…A-Akatsuki…”

  Shio was on the verge of collapse when the boy in the tattered parka held her up by her back.

  For a moment, she saw traces of his father on the side of his face. Shio hastily shook her head to clear the image.

  It was Kojou—previously assumed to be resting—who had rescued Shio a hairsbreadth from disaster.

  She did not know what had happened in the brief span of time since Yukina led him away, but she did know that his purportedly depleted flesh was brimming with vast demonic energy.

  “Th-thank you, Kojou Akatsuki. You saved me.”

  “Sorry for putting it all on your back. I’ve got this!”

  Kojou shot Shio a worry-free smile before he trained a hostile gaze over their heads.

  Responding to Kojou’s will, the scarlet bicorn unleashed a howling shock wave at the Roses’ Beast Vassals, trampling them flat. Its might was overwhelming. The Roses’ Beast Vassals blotting out the sky above were whittled down before Shio’s eyes.

  “Sayaka—!”

  “Sorry we’re late, Sayaka!”

  Yukina and Yuiri raced after Kojou, returning with Glenda in tow.

  Looking back at the girls, Sayaka had the faint sense that something was off. She furled her brows. Somehow, Yukina and Yuiri both gave off a different air than before they’d vanished from sight. Sayaka thought they seemed lost in space…and their clothes were disheveled.

  “Yuiri Haba, your face is red. Are you all right? Your eyes seem wet…and Yukina’s, too?”

  “W-we’re all right, really. It’s nothing.”

  Yuiri became peevish, refuting her as she subconsciously touched a hand to her neck. Seeing this, Sayaka gasped. She had a pretty good idea just why the air given off by Yuiri and Yukina was different.

  “Kojou Akatsuki, don’t tell me you… Again—!”

  Sayaka was already marching toward Kojou when Shio grabbed her attention.

  “Kirasaka, I’ve located the caster! Three o’clock, range 6,200!” Shio called out.

  Sayaka bit her lip, shifting her thoughts in the direction Shio had indicated. It just wasn’t the time to chew out Kojou and the others.

  “—Range 6,200? On top of the sea?”

  Sayaka deployed one of her shikigami, using it as a medium through which to pinpoint the enemy’s location with spiritual sight.

  Over there, a strange island floated. Its ground was as artificial as that of Itogami Island, but the greater half of its surface had already sunk into the sea, exposing the rest of it like a twisted, crescent moon.

  The small amount of ground left above the water’s surface contained rows of destroyed buildings. The place, abandoned by even the Gigafloat Management Corporation, seemed like an uninhabited ruin. To think a creepy city like that existed on the water’s surface but a few short kilometers from Itogami Island…

  “Island Old Southeast…the abandoned district…!”

  “Abandoned district?” Sayaka echoed, astonished.

  Kojou nodded with a complex, hard-to-read expression. It was a strange expression mixing both fondness…and regret.

  “The abandoned Itogami Island District Twenty-Seven. The world’s first artificial isle ruin. Sank into the sea just nine months ago.”

  “Why would they be all the way out there…?” Sayaka asked, skeptical.

  However, Kojou gave a faint laugh that seemed to be at his own expense. Indeed, he seemed to be reproaching himself, as if saying Why didn’t I realize it sooner? If December would appear in one last place, it couldn’t have been anywhere else—

  “Let’s go, senpai.”

  Yukina stood beside Kojou as she addressed him. Kojou tossed her a quick “yeah” and a nod, but his movements came to a halt as a perplexed expression came over him.

  “How do we even get there…?”

  Kojou turned his eyes toward the abandoned district, murmuring as if completely at a loss.

  The connecting bridge between the abandoned district and Itogami Island proper was long gone. The only way to cross to the abandoned district was by boat.

  That said, he didn’t think they’d be lucky enough to find a boat for hire or a captain willing to head out to a place like that—even if Itogami Island was not in its current state of extreme chaos.

  Perhaps Yuiri saw that Kojou was in distress, for she posed a question to the dragon girl.

  “Can you still fly, Glenda?”

  Glenda exclaimed “Dah!!” and adopted a dramatic pose of unknown origin as she made a fervent nod.

  “Th-then you’re taking me with—”

  Sayaka, slow on the uptake, hurriedly tried to assert her own existence. It was Shio who interrupted her.

  “Wait, Kirasaka!”

  “What?! You have a problem with th—”

  On reflex, Sayaka tried to speak her obligatory complaint, but the look on the side of Shio’s face made her swallow her words.

  Shio was shaking with visible fright as she gazed above their heads.

  A bizarre shift was occurring in the magic circle covering Itogami Island’s sky.

  All the rose petals scattered, changing form into four individual spheres.

  They looked like gigantic seeds. This was the final form of the Roses of Tartarus. Its proudly blooming crimson rose petals fell away, from which new seeds had been born.

  The innumerable enemy Beast Vassals had their demonic energy stolen by the seeds, seemingly shriveling away as they vanished one after the next. The demonic energy being absorbed by the seeds was already on a scale beyond that which Sayaka and Shio could comprehend.

  Enveloped within the abnormal amount of demonic energy, the seeds cracked.

  From the magic circle’s broken shell emerged four beasts.

  One was a bird of prey; one resembled a crocodile. Yet another looked like a dragon, and the last one appeared as a tiger. They were enormous monsters all, surpassing twenty meters in total length. Just like vampiric Beast Vassals, these were masses of dense demonic energy.

  “The Four Holy Beasts…!” Yukina exclaimed as she gazed up at the beasts’ forms. Kojou knit his brows at the unfamiliar term.

  “The heck are they?”

  “They are the four mythological beasts governing the four corners of the sky—the very symbols of feng shui’s power.”

  “As I recall, the city was built to correspond to the Four Beasts to begin with, wasn’t it…?” Sayaka murmured, unable to contain her fright.

  East, West, South, North—the four gigafloats comprising Itogami Island were supposedly designed adhering to feng shui to stabilize the artificial island. Takehito Senga, a preeminent feng shui practitioner, could not possibly have been ignorant of that fact. And the Roses of Tartarus ritual had been created with Senga’s cooperation.

  “If they manifested using the artificial isle’s construction, those Four Holy Beasts are bigger monsters than a primogenitor’s Beast Vassals. They should be able to annihilate even Itogami Island itself!”

  “So this is Tartarus Lapse’s main event…!”

  Kojou sighed deeply, vis
ibly annoyed. Even among his experiences to date, the situation was extremely bleak.

  “Are you prepared, Shio Hikawa?”

  “Are you? You know what we have to do, right?”

  Sayaka and Shio glared at each other as they raised their respective recurve bows.

  Then Shio turned to Yuiri. “We’ll buy you time. Yuiri, take Kojou Akatsuki and the others with you, okay?”

  “Yeah, got it. Glenda, please!”

  “Dah!!”

  Commanded by Yuiri, Glenda stripped off her clothes with great delight.

  Then a silver dragon emerged, carrying Kojou and the others as it soared into the sky.

  8

  The bullet gouged a hole in the asphalt road.

  It was precise shooting with an anti-materiel rifle, punching right through a faint gap in the guardrail. Bathed in fragments of the shattered bullet, Yaze tumbled spectacularly.

  “Owwww!”

  “M-Motoki?! Are you all right…?”

  Head down in the shadow of a building, Asagi moved back in Yaze’s direction. Stay back, said the shooing movement his palm made toward her as Yaze gave an impetuous smile.

  “Don’t worry. Fragments came flying my way; that’s all.”

  Yaze’s ankle oozed with fresh blood as he pressed a hand to it and shifted his gaze toward the other side of the street.

  An incredible number of Beast Vassals were rampaging in the sky above the island, but in contrast, the surface had quieted down a great deal. That was due to most of the berserking demons losing consciousness.

  Somehow or other, Kojou and the Lion King Agency bunch were holding off the horde of Beast Vassals summoned by the magic circle. But that state of equilibrium probably wouldn’t hold for long. If they didn’t break up the demon registration bracelet hacking, Tartarus Lapse’s attack would be endless.

  “More importantly, Asagi. What was your time in the hundred-meter sprint?”

  “Hundred-meter?” Asagi looked taken aback by Yaze’s sudden question. “When I was timed back in spring, I was right around thirteen seconds, I think.”

  “And that’s without spikes…? You really are a chunk of wasted high specs…” He exhaled, exasperated. “That’s a track-and-field club time.”

  Naturally, Asagi looked peeved. “What was that for? Is this really the time to pick a fight with me?”

  “Sorry, sorry. More to the point, you see that white building straight across the next intersection?”

  “The stupidly big one on the right side?”

  Asagi lifted her head up and saw the entrance to the building for herself. It was a branch office of the Gigafloat Management Corporation.

  “Underground, it has a passage connected straight to Keystone Gate. It’s a secret passage built for emergency situations like this. Even most people in the Corporation don’t know about it.”

  “So if we get there, no more danger of being sniped?”

  “Yeah. And since they don’t know we’re heading for the passage, they can’t have planted a bomb there beforehand. Right, Mogwai?”

  “Well, I suppose not,” Mogwai replied bluntly in response to the proud rise in Yaze’s brows. “But the problem is you’ll be a sitting duck for the sniper while crossing the intersection. Even with li’l miss’s legs, it’ll be about seven secs’ worth. I don’t think that sniper’ll let that go to waste.”

  “Seven seconds…”

  Yaze sensed Asagi swallowing hard.

  It was a wide intersection with two car lanes each way and not a single shred of cover anywhere. A female high schooler at a full sprint would make a fine target for a sniper.

  There were a number of abandoned cars parked nearby, but that anti-materiel rifle probably had enough might to punch through civilian cars like paper.

  “So there’s no other path?”

  “I won’t say no, but if we take the scenic route, we’re playing into their hands. No time for it, either.”

  Yaze looked up at the magic circle in the sky as he frailly shook his head.

  At some point, the horde of over a hundred Beast Vassals had vanished from sight. In their place had appeared four enormous individual spheres. It wasn’t clear to Yaze exactly what was happening, but he was sure it was nothing good.

  “So on my signal, run. If you get underground, Mogwai should know all the routes from there. I’ll leave getting to C to you.”

  “All right, but…what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll play decoy and draw the sniper’s attention to me. My leg’s like this either way, see?”

  Yaze spoke in a lighthearted tone as he pointed to his own ankle.

  Asagi made a startled gasp as she looked at the bloody wound, her breath catching. It sure didn’t look like he’d been hit by a mere flying fragment. The wound reached close to the bone.

  “Motoki… Don’t tell me—you were shot…?!”

  “Just a graze. Don’t worry. More to the point, get ready. Mogwai, I’m counting on ya to support Asagi.”

  Yaze didn’t give her any time to argue.

  She sighed dramatically, wordlessly lowering her posture. She wasn’t wearing running shoes, but she paid it no heed. She concentrated her mind on only one thing: getting across the intersection with all her strength.

  “Keh-keh. Leave it to me. Startin’ the countdown. Let’s do this—”

  Mogwai began counting the seconds. Yaze took a capsule pill out of his pocket, stuffed it into his mouth, and bit down hard. Asagi closed her eyes and quietly steadied her breaths.

  Then the fateful moment arrived.

  9

  Carly—the Tartarus Lapse sniper—was a beast person but an exceptionally weak one at that.

  She had neither a perfect human form, nor was she able to transform into a beast. No matter how long she grew her hair, it was impossible to hide her large, puppylike beast ears.

  Her upper-body strength and agility were around three to five times that of a normal person. As beast people went, it was the very bottom of the scale. It wasn’t particularly rare for an ordinary human male who’d done bodybuilding to a certain degree to bench press in Carly’s league.

  On top of having such a frail physique, Carly had been subjected to harsh abuse from a very young age. She was criticized as incapable and showered with physical violence. Always, in human and demon society both, she was exceptionally alone.

  Even when she arrived at a Demon Sanctuary, nothing about her environment changed. Abandoned by both of her birth parents, suffering from hunger, Carly was simply waiting for the cold to grant her a frigid death—and then, December came for her.

  So she became a member of Tartarus Lapse, and she learned how to snipe from Senga.

  Ironically, her physique meant she had heaven-sent talent as a sniper.

  The arm strength to withstand a powerful anti-materiel rifle’s recoil, the delicate fingers to manipulate a human weapon—Carly, this so-called weak and frail beast girl, had a perfect individual balance of these two elements. Also, her senses of hearing, smell, and night vision were excellent, even by beast-person standards. As a sniper, she was a potent weapon.

  At some point, Carly surpassed even Senga to become Tartarus Lapse’s mightiest sniper.

  She felt no guilt about killing people whatsoever.

  For the first time since birth, her existence had meaning—in assassinating for this group.

  Carly had no interest in Tartarus Lapse’s aims. Nor did she bear any grudge against Demon Sanctuaries.

  Carly killed people, for no reason save to make December happy.

  She kept on sniping, to prove she belonged at December’s side. And yet—

  “Why…?!”

  Asagi Aiba dodged the bullet Carly had fired.

  It was a precision shot using a faint gap in the guardrail. The angle and timing were both precisely according to her calculations, a blow that should have been absolutely unavoidable. And yet, Asagi Aiba had not been struck.

  It was because the boy
at Asagi Aiba’s side had managed to shield her. He’d moved as if he knew what Carly was doing the whole time.

  He probably wasn’t a normal human. He had to be using some kind of ability. Maybe it was ritual spells or sorcery—or even Spirit Sight or super senses. Whatever the case, it apparently wasn’t a strong enough power to actually stop her shot.

  Carly switched rifle magazines. The magazine had a capacity of five shots—and the one she’d just loaded was her last. Despite this, she wasn’t nervous. Even if she had one shot remaining, that would be enough. If she put the last bullet into her target, that was victory.

  Even if she had to use every last round, she would strike down Asagi Aiba—such were Carly’s composed thoughts.

  “Intercepting…,” she murmured to herself, her only audience, as she adopted a firing posture once more.

  Asagi Aiba was cutting across the road, trying to enter the building ahead of her. The width of the road, sidewalk included, was about thirty meters. She’d have five to six seconds of available sniping time, plenty to spare as far as Carly was concerned. If she wanted to, she could pump every last round into her target.

  It was not logic but instinct that told Carly her prey was on the move.

  The first to leap out was the boy accompanying her. It was plainly a diversion—he was a decoy. Carly didn’t even place her finger on the trigger. Her breathing did not go astray as she waited for Asagi Aiba to appear. And then—

  “Urk—?!”

  The instant Asagi Aiba leaped out into the intersection, Carly was ever so slightly shaken. A dazzling beam had entered Carly’s field of vision through her scope.

  Headlights—coming from a number of cars abandoned in the intersection—began pulsating all at once. The completely unexpected glimmering threw off her concentration.

  “Hacking…!”

  Cars equipped with a remote control–key feature could have their headlights operated even from outside the car. Someone had used that function to impede her attacks.

  It was no more than a simple flash in the eyes, but it was decently effective for distracting a sniper.

  It took Carly about two seconds to assess the situation. Asagi had already arrived near the center of the intersection. But even so, Carly’s overwhelming advantage had not shifted.