Golden Days

by Gakuto Mikumo

  Shahryar Ren’s question brought an impetuous smile out of Akishige Yaze, as if Ren had just hit the nail on the head.

  “Is the Fourth Primogenitor insufficient as an opponent?”

  “Kaleid Blood… The World’s Mightiest Vampire, was it?” Ren raised his brows in a show of admiration.

  Akishige Yaze gravely nodded his head and said, “Indeed. The Duke of Ardeal, Dimitrie Vattler of the Warlord’s Empire, and the vile prince Iblisveil Aziz of the Fallen Dynasty have been dispatched to monitor him. If all three are exterminated here, would you be able to say our Cleansing is not all that we determine it to be?”

  “I suppose not. It is exactly as you say.” With a gentle gaze, emotions unreadable, he stared straight at Akishige. “However, what is it that you intend to gain by instigating a new Cleansing, Chairman?”

  “Hmph,” went Akishige, curling his lips up a bit. “Europe’s Warlord’s Empire, the Middle East’s Fallen Dynasty, and Central America’s Chaos Zone—surely you understand what these dominions all have in common, President Ren?”

  “Oil, natural gas, rare metals—valuable underground resources, in other words.”

  “Most astute,” said Akishige with a nod. “We shall eliminate all demons and liberate the peoples held captive in the dominions.”

  “And obtain the mineral rights to those lands, yes?”

  Ren’s teasing words brought about a nod from Akishige lacking the slightest twinge of guilt.

  “Should our zaibatsu join hands with MAR, I believe the possibility of bringing this to fruition is very high. What say you?”

  “It is a deeply interesting topic.” Ren crossed his legs. Then his gaze shifted to Akishige’s. “However, for that purpose, The Cleansing has to be under your control, correct?”

  “What do you mean by this?”

  “Pardon me. But it is my belief that The Cleansing taking place upon this island has divorced itself from your influence—”

  Ren pointed that out with a serene smile. In the next moment, the suite’s interior was filled with a strange, jumbled sound.

  It was Akishige who knit his brows and turned around. The wall-mounted monitor behind him was displaying heavy static, which finally changed into the shape of a lone girl—a beautiful girl with long black hair.

  The girl wore nothing more than a thin robe, causing her to resemble a nymph from ancient times. Her limbs poking out of the sleeves and hem were covered in cruel scars, as if she had been sewn together.

  “Heh…heh-heh…heh…ha…!”

  The beautiful but unsightly girl crudely laughed inside the monitor.

  Her hollow eyes were gazing straight at Akishige.

  “Fools… You are fools, descendants of the greedy usurper. As if such heresy would grant thy wish. The key to The Cleansing is already within my hands. Sink together with this accursed island!”

  “So this is the Priestess of Abel from the reports…,” Akishige spat. Shifting toward the terminal on the writing desk, he addressed the pale-faced researchers once more.

  “What is the Coffin’s situation?”

  “The signal has been cut. There is no response from the Priestess of Cain. As before, the Five Elements are operating just within the limits—they have been hijacked from the outside!”

  The researcher’s words, sounding like a scream, made the corner of Akishige’s eye twitch.

  “So you are the one controlling The Cleansing, you damnable death reject. You’re the one who put Meiga Itogami up to this.”

  “Heh…ha! …Know the humiliation of having your legitimate lands usurped, descendants of Cain—!”

  Leaving those words behind, a declaration of war akin to a curse, the girl vanished from sight.

  The ferociously jumbled sounds grew distant, and the monitor’s image recovered. “Damned ghost,” Akishige grumbled, glaring at the monitor with an annoyed twist of his cheeks. The Priestess of Abel had jacked Akishige’s well-protected, top-secret line.

  “Chairman, what should we—? At this rate…”

  “Keep it together. Hurry and seize the operations unit in the City Administration Office. Search for the Priestess of Abel with all the Island Guard’s resources. Also, inform the commander of the SSG.”

  After scolding the frightened researchers, Akishige resettled himself in his chair in front of the desk. Feeling the cold gaze of Shahryar Ren upon him, he suppressed his emotions as he wrung out his voice.

  “—Kill Meiga Itogami.”

  2

  Meiga Itogami’s entire body was enshrouded by a malevolent, vermillion radiance.

  On the inside of the intricate particles of light, ancient magical characters were flashing in and out. Each and every one of those vermillion particles was probably its own magic circle imbued with powerful ritual energy. It was overwhelming magic unlike any Kojou had previously encountered. Furthermore, the density and radiance of the vermillion particles was only increasing as time went on.

  And even more frightening than that, with so much magical power being emitted, the area around Meiga was teeming with serenity. He could not feel any surge of demonic energy, heat, recoil, or even an aura. The air was simply filled with overwhelming tranquility. Thanks to that, he could not see Meiga’s limits. He felt the unease of staring straight down into a deep pit, the bottom nowhere to be seen.

  “You said you’d…drag out Himeragi… No way I’m gonna let that happen…!” Kojou shouted with his dry, grating throat.

  Triggered less by anger than by fear, Kojou unleashed his demonic energy without limit. With Yukina well on her way to angelification, there was no way he could let her fight Meiga. He would stop it…for sure. He would stop it at all costs.

  That was just how dangerous, how unfathomable, Meiga was as he released that vermillion radiance. It was not reasoning or instinct that told Kojou this, but the blood of the Fourth Primogenitor.

  “Wait, Kojou Akatsuki! Right now, he is—”

  Seeing Kojou entering a combat posture, Natsuki gasped, her expression going hard. But Kojou had already finished ordering his Beast Vassal to attack. The scarlet bicorn unleashed a highly dense bullet of oscillation and raging winds.

  “Al-Nasl Minium—!!”

  “”

  Hmph, Meiga’s silent smirk seemed to say. Raising his black spear, surrounded by vermillion particles, overhead, he took Kojou’s Beast Vassal’s attack—the bullet of raging winds—head-on.

  Before Meiga’s eyes, the very air shimmered like a mirage, and then everything arising from the Beast Vassal’s attack changed somehow. The attack by a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor was unable to force even a single one of Meiga’s bangs to move.

  Kojou stared at the spectacle, mouth agape.

  It was not so much that he was shaken, more that he was unable to comprehend what had just taken place. Even if Meiga’s black staff had nullified the Beast Vassal’s demonic energy, surely it would not have erased even the physical shock wave from the attack already unleashed.

  And yet, Meiga remained enveloped by particles of light as he cruelly smiled. It was a gentle yet indifferent smiling face, one seemingly taking pity at the surprised Kojou and the others with him.

  “So that concludes your efforts? Then I shall seize the initiative—High Priestess!”

  With his right hand keeping his staff poised, Meiga raised his empty left hand aloft. The red particle he was gripping in his hand was an octahedron around the size of a bullet—and this changed into a mass imbued with the magical element of wind.

  The next moment, this gleaming mass of light flew toward Kojou without a sound.

  Literally transforming into bullets, they shot right at Kojou—dozens of them. Even with a vampire’s reaction speeds, the sheer number of them was too great to evade.

  “Shit…! C’mon over, Mesarthim Adamas!”

  Largely on reflex, Kojou summoned a new Beast Vassal. What emerged was a giant bighorn sheep with immaculate diamond skin.

  The countle
ss gemstone crystals enveloping the Beast Vassal accumulated to form a stout shield in front of Kojou.

  The true nature of Mesarthim Adamas was that of a divine diamond sheep that was impervious to any attack. Those that would inflict wounds upon it had those wounds reflected upon them. The Beast Vassal symbolized the vampiric curse of immortality. But—

  “What—?!”

  The instant Meiga’s vermillion bullets touched it, Kojou’s absolutely impenetrable defensive wall was smashed to smithereens, as fragile as a wall of chocolate. It had not been bludgeoned down by overwhelming demonic power, nor had Kojou’s own demonic power been nullified; Meiga’s vermillion bullets simply made the gemstone wall vanish, as if it had never existed to begin with.

  Then, as Kojou stood defenseless and still, the remaining bullets bore down upon him.

  What blocked those bullets was an invisible bulwark created by the arc of a slash.

  “Fall back, Kojou Akatsuki!”

  The severed space created by Sayaka’s long sword swallowed the vermillion bullets. The pseudo-spatial slashing of Lustrous Scale, which did not come into direct contact with the enemy’s attack, had not been affected by those bullets. Apparently, contact with the target was the condition for the bullets’ ability to activate.

  “Are you all right, Kojou Akatsuki?” Poised with her sword high, Sayaka shielded Kojou.

  “Yeah, somehow. You saved my ass, Kirasaka. Thanks.” Kojou sighed in relief.

  Perhaps she had not thought he would offer her gratitude so readily, for Sayaka was taken aback, cheeks red as her lips haltingly opened and closed.

  Truly, had Sayaka not protected him, Kojou was certain he’d have been nailed by Meiga’s attack. Even if he was an immortal primogenitor, he didn’t know if even he could have survived being shot by those bullets.

  “But what the heck’s with that power…? It instantly shot through my Beast Vassal’s defense, y’know?” Kojou uttered.

  Meanwhile, Meiga leisurely approached. Without understanding the true nature of his enemy’s ability, Kojou could not carelessly launch any attacks. At this rate, it would just back him further into a corner.

  It was Natsuki who replied to Kojou’s question.

  “That is The Cleansing.”

  As if they were dizzy, Kojou and Sayaka were enveloped by swaying air; the next instant, the pair had been shifted to the top of a building some forty to fifty meters away from Meiga. Natsuki had teleported them, putting distance between them and Meiga so that they might escape his next attack.

  “The Cleansing…?”

  After the sudden shift, Natsuki’s unexpected words caused both Kojou and Sayaka to look back.

  Of course, both were familiar with the word Cleansing. However, they thought that it referred to a much larger-scale historical incident, something more like a natural disaster.

  Compared to that, the vermillion radiance controlled by Meiga Itogami seemed too…calm. They couldn’t process it as anything but some kind of rare magic.

  Yet, that calm, bizarre ability had completely sealed the power of a Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor.

  “The forbidden magic created by Cain, the Sinful God, for slaying deities…,” Natsuki explained quietly in a voice that betrayed a little bit of fear, “and the Forbidden Ritual that gave rise to the worst genocide in history—that is the truth behind that which we call The Cleansing. Though, this is secondhand knowledge from Gajou Akatsuki.”

  “Kojou Akatsuki’s father…?” said Sayaka, swallowing her breath a little in surprise.

  The hell is she talking about? Kojou grimaced. Kojou’s dad, Gajou Akatsuki, was absolutely not respectable enough to deserve being called his father. “Shitty dad” was good enough. But setting that aside, he did claim archeology as his field of specialty, which would explain why he was familiar with legends about The Cleansing.

  “Kojou Akatsuki, absolutely do not approach Meiga Itogami. Even with your power, you cannot defeat him. He is not fending off your attacks. He is making them cease to exist.” Natsuki sounded unusually serious.

  “So he’s nullifying the demonic energy? Like Aya Tokoyogi’s Black Bible…?” Kojou asked, bewildered.

  “No.” Natsuki shook her head. “You are mistaken. Aya merely used the power of the Black Bible to mimic The Cleansing. Her self-satisfaction harbored that contradiction from the very beginning. After all, she used this world’s demonic energy to temporarily overwrite the world and create one where demonic energy did not exist. But even if you blot out a painting with ink, that does not make the painting underneath it vanish, does it?”

  “W-well, yeah…”

  Kojou vaguely nodded. Certainly, the world revision brought about by the Black Bible was a temporary phenomenon dependent on the lunar cycle and the position of the constellations. Kojou’s and the others’ supposedly erased demonic energy soon returned, and as a result, Aya Tokoyogi was defeated.

  “But The Cleansing alters the world itself. For instance, even if you sliced up the painting or burned it, he could simply do away with the entire museum.”

  Natsuki’s words sounded very casual, but that made them feel all the more trustworthy.

  “Don’t tell me…that ruin of Nod that Glenda and I saw was…”

  “Perhaps it was a world that perished, destroyed in Cain’s wake.”

  Kojou’s murmur brought a nod from Natsuki. It was a destroyed, uninhabited ruin paired with a world buried in nothingness. The world of Nod that Kojou had witnessed might well have been a vestige of The Cleansing. Left to rage unchecked, the power of The Cleansing could wipe an entire world away.

  “But can a human being actually use magic that can reshape the world?” It was a simple question that had just occurred to Kojou.

  If the ability of The Cleansing was to alter the world itself, the volume of information plainly exceeded that which an individual person could control. He didn’t think such attacks could be fired blindly without a complicated magical ceremony behind it.

  Natsuki mixed a nod with a sigh.

  “Of course a person cannot handle it. That is why he requires the altar known as Itogami Island, and the so-called Priestess of Cain. These constitute a source for magical energy and a device for magical calculations, respectively—”

  Meiga Itogami launched a fresh attack before she could finish those words.

  Controlling the vermillion particles, Meiga created a hexagon the size of a basketball out of thin air. Meiga fired this polygon, which bore the magical meaning of the element of earth, like a cannonball toward the building where Kojou and the others were located.

  With a ferocious collision, the cannonball of light particles scattered, and the entire building was dyed vermillion. It was the next moment when the building at Kojou and company’s feet suddenly began to crumble and collapse.

  In the blink of an eye, the building’s structure had been transformed into a mass of salt. Stark-white salt crystals scattered about as the huge building fell.

  “That said, it would appear this small amount seems to be the limit of the power he can draw…”

  Teleporting them to the ground once more, Natsuki spoke the words like this was someone else’s problem.

  “Gwoah?!”

  “Small amount…?! That’s plenty dangerous enough, if you ask me…!”

  Kojou was hurled onto the hard, concrete surface. Sayaka grabbed hold of the hem of her skirt as she fell on top of Kojou. Koff! went Kojou, his breath caught, as Natsuki coldly looked back at them and said:

  “Be careful. He’s lobbing attacks that break the rules of magic as well as the laws of physics.”

  “‘Be careful,’ she says. How the hell are you supposed to watch out for something like—?”

  Stopping his sentence partway, Kojou lifted his face, whereupon vermillion bullets sailing through the air were reflected in his eyes. Scarlet particles scattered about as they poured down upon him.

  “Urk…! Lustrous Scale—!”

 
; Leaping forth, Sayaka used a flash of her long sword to create a pseudo-spatial severing wall. It had already been proven that such an invisible bulwark could fend off even Meiga’s bullets. This time, however…

  “Eh?!”

  As if having anticipated Sayaka’s action, the bullets changed course. The vermillion bullets each traced curves that ignored the laws of physics, attacking Sayaka from behind.

  The pseudo-spatial severing of Sayaka’s long sword was powerful, but it harbored the weakness of only being deployable in a single direction. Having already deployed the bulwark in front of her, Sayaka could not defend against attacks from behind.

  “Kirasaka!”

  Kojou, standing up after a delay, called out the immobile Sayaka’s name. Charging in from the side, he shielded Sayaka by pushing her out of the way. The vermillion bullets mercilessly assaulted Kojou’s entire body. His right leg and flank, his shoulder and back—he was shot in four different places, helplessly tumbling to the ground.

  “No way! Kojou Akatsuki?!”

  Realizing that Kojou had saved her, Sayaka shrieked when she also discovered that Kojou was covered in blood. With his barely mobile left leg supporting the weight of his body, Kojou rose to his feet.

  “I’m all right. It’s just a scratch… Something like this’ll…heal soon enough…”

  “Idiot! If his attacks can nullify your Beast Vassals, they might be able to nullify vampiric healing abilities, too!”

  “Looks…like you’re right…”

  Kojou himself was aware of the large volume of blood spilling out of his body. There was no sign of the life force peculiar to demons or the activation of his healing ability. The bullets had quietly robbed him of his supernatural power.

  Salt crystals dancing upward from the collapse of the building covered Kojou and the others’ fields of vision like dust. On the other side of that hazy mist, Meiga appeared, enshrouded by vermillion radiance.

  “Now, then… Have you finally decided to summon Yukina Himeragi here?”

  Toying with a vermillion bullet in the palm of his hand, Meiga inquired in a gentle fashion.