A War of Primogenitors

by Gakuto Mikumo

  As the tepid gazes of his classmates washed over him, Kojou went to go sit in his own seat.

  Along the way, he caught sight of Motoki Yaze standing by the windowsill. Yaze, who normally would be first in line to get Kojou to cool down, was oddly quiet that day. He was staring out the window, showing no sign of having noticed the commotion Kojou had created.

  “…Yaze? …You good?”

  Yaze, finally taking note of Kojou’s existence, went “Yeah,” a very vague reply. He was staring squarely at the roof of the middle school on the other side of the campus.

  “Er… I was just thinking: Did our school have a statue like that?”

  “Statue?”

  Shifting his gaze in the direction Yaze was pointing, Kojou dubiously narrowed his eyes. Certainly, there was an unfamiliar object standing statuesque upon the roof where entry was supposedly prohibited.

  It looked like a huge living creature, covered in steel-colored scales. Its total length was several dozen meters. Its wings were folded in, and it had a long tail, making it resemble some kind of enormous sculpture of a demon beast.

  “Geh…?!!”

  Observing this, Kojou suddenly uttered a noise as blood drained from his face, for he had witnessed the sight of this demon beast before. It was a dragon with beautiful steel-colored scales—Glenda.

  “Sorry, Yaze. I just remembered, there’s something I have to do and it definitely can’t wait! I’m leaving the rest to you!”

  “Ah? Hey, class is about to—”

  “Make up some kind of reasonable excuse, please!”

  Kojou made that desperate plea as he rushed out of the classroom. He didn’t know why Glenda was sleeping on the Saikai Academy campus roof. Nonetheless, it was obvious that some kind of problem had arisen.

  Fortunately, only a few students had noticed Glenda’s presence at that point. Even if they had noticed, they’d probably mistaken her for a simple ornament, just as Yaze had. However, he didn’t think such a precarious situation could be maintained for long. Even students in a Demon Sanctuary would inevitably fall into a panic once they realized a dragon had suddenly appeared on school grounds.

  Before that happened, he had to pick up Glenda and get her out of the school somehow—

  “Kojou.”

  “Uh?”

  As Kojou nervously broke into a run, oddly, he heard Yaze’s voice loud and clear.

  When Kojou came to a surprised halt, Yaze was staring at him, issuing his warning with a sober look. Yaze, one usually so composed, looked like he had his back to the wall.

  “Hurry. There’s no time.”

  “R-right.”

  Bewildered by Yaze’s cryptic words, Kojou broke into a run once more.

  Seeing this for himself, Yaze shifted his gaze outside the window again. Staring beyond the water’s horizon, a place that surely could not be seen with the naked eye, he bit his lip without a word.

  6

  Racing up the emergency stairs at the back of the campus, Kojou arrived on the school rooftop. It was a bleak concrete space with a metal fence around it. A familiar, immature dragon rested in the space between neatly arranged rows of solar panels.

  “Glenda!”

  Circling to the dragon’s front, Kojou called out the girl’s name.

  Perhaps his voice reached her. The dragon’s eyelids twitched.

  From what he could confirm visually, there were no wounds that stood out on her body. She seemed to be sleeping out of fatigue from prolonged flight. According to the information he heard from Sayaka the other day, Glenda was supposed to be staying at Blue Elysium’s Demon Beast Park. Kojou had absolutely no idea why, in spite of that, she had apparently flown all the way to Itogami Island.

  “Dah…”

  The steel-colored dragon made a sound in her throat. The cute voice clashed with her appearance. Her large eyes opened wide, beholding the sight of Kojou within them. Her huge head slowly rose, and suddenly a faint light emanated from her enormous, steel-colored body.

  “G…Glenda?”

  As Kojou stared in bewilderment, Glenda’s body began to shrink right in front of him. At some point, her wings had vanished from sight, and her tail vanished as he watched. Her beautiful mane transformed into long, steel-colored hair. In place of four, stout limbs emerged the delicate arms and legs of a girl.

  “Hey, you! If you…turn back to human in a place like this…!”

  Kojou hastily averted his eyes as Glenda changed into her human form. Given the enormous size difference, there was really no way to prevent this, but right after transforming, Glenda was, of course, completely naked. Furthermore, this was on school grounds in broad daylight. Together with a naked girl on a rooftop with no one else around—if anyone else witnessed this situation, Kojou’s life would be over.

  “O-okay… For starters, let’s put something on you…”

  Kojou, knowing full well it was not a real solution to the problem, stripped his own parka off and tried to put it on Glenda. But having finished her transformation, Glenda was sitting flat on the roof, not moving a muscle.

  Then, as she looked up at Kojou without a word, tears began to spill from her eyes. This time, Kojou’s mouth hung open in confusion.

  “Kojou…”

  Glenda was sobbing and sniffing as she let out a frail voice.

  “Hey… Glenda? Did something happen? Are you in pain anywhere?”

  Thrown for a loop, Kojou earnestly attempted to soothe the girl. And as he did so, Glenda clung to him, still completely naked.

  “Kojou… Kojou…!”

  “Wait a… Wait, Glenda. At least get some clothes o—”

  “Yuiri… Shio… At the pool… They told me…to run…”

  “…Run…? What happened to Yuiri and Shio? Did someone attack you?”

  Kojou quietly sobered as he looked at Glenda. Now that he thought about it, there were two Attack Mages of the Lion King Agency assigned as Glenda’s bodyguards and caretakers. In spite of this, Glenda had been forced to flee all the way to Itogami Island all by herself. It had clearly been an emergency.

  “Uu…”

  However, all that came out of Glenda were sobs and tears; she was too hysterical for words. What the hell happened? Kojou sighed, lifting his face to the sky—

  “?!”

  He caught a black silhouette over the sea in the corner of his vision. An enormous birdlike object was gliding just above the water’s surface. The midsection had a large swell to it. This was a seaplane unfamiliar to him—a flying boat.

  It was heading in Kojou and Glenda’s direction, gradually closing the distance.

  The craft was far larger than his initial impression. The roar from the chorus of four turboprop engines prickled Kojou’s and Glenda’s skin.

  When Glenda noticed its presence, her shoulders quivered. Her silver hair seemed to stand up. She growled with naked enmity.

  “What is that thing…? Don’t tell me that’s…?!”

  Kojou’s expression froze over in shock. The flying boat had already arrived in Itogami Island airspace, yet, it was maintaining full speed. However, its height above the ground was thirty meters at most. It wasn’t any higher off the ground than a ten-story building.

  The sheer size of the craft made the resulting scene even more bizarre. The flying boat’s course was taking it over their heads, but it was kicking up an incredible cloud of dust along the surface of the ground, with ornamental trees and road signs along the streets being tossed around by the wind.

  The craft was advancing in the direction of Saikai Academy—toward Kojou and Glenda. The flying boat’s speed did not drop. There was no sign of it gaining altitude. The silver-colored craft’s net weight was probably in the realm of forty metric tons. Its speed was hundreds of kilometers per hour as it headed straight for the Saikai Academy school grounds.

  “It’s just charging straight in—?!”

  Kojou instantly stood up, poising himself to summon a Beast Vassal. However, the other
party’s flight path was in the airspace above an urban area. Even if he shot the flying ship down with a Beast Vassal, damage to buildings and people would be unavoidable.

  “Glenda, get down!”

  “Dah…?!”

  Kojou clutched Glenda in his arms, rolling on the spot. By a scant several meters, the flying boat barely cleared the top of the campus as it sailed over Kojou’s and Glenda’s heads.

  Screams went up all over the campus. A shock wave caused the campus’s glass windows to shudder and sent several solar panels flying. Glenda’s hair flapped wildly as the onslaught of gale-force winds left Kojou unable to breathe properly.

  “Damn… What the hell’s with that flying boat?! This is totally against flight regulations…!”

  Spitting out sand that had gotten into his mouth, Kojou sluggishly sat up. The flying boat that had harmlessly passed over Saikai Academy was now rapidly gaining altitude as it sailed off up into the sky.

  “The hell was that all about?” Kojou vented in an annoyed, suspicious tone. Fear consumed Glenda from within Kojou’s embrace.

  “Kojou!”

  Glenda was staring fearfully at a water tank behind Kojou. Realizing that a person was standing on it, Kojou audibly drew in his breath.

  His face was unfamiliar to Kojou. He was a foreigner with long black hair. The sleeves of his old-fashioned coat were flapping in the wind as the man looked down at Kojou and Glenda.

  Kojou didn’t even have to think about where the man had come from. He’d been aboard the flying boat that had just appeared. The craft had no doubt passed through the airspace above the school so the man could drop down from it.

  “A human—you are not. So you are a vampire as well, boy?” the dark-haired man addressed Kojou.

  His calm tone was disconnected from any sense of coercion. However, Kojou felt a freezing chill nonetheless. His instincts as a living creature extolled him that the other party before his eyes was a dangerous being indeed.

  “Who are you? Did you attack Yuiri and Shio?”

  “Yuiri…?”

  Kojou’s question prompted the man to raise an eyebrow, going “Ahhh” as he seemed to remember something.

  “I see you are an acquaintance of those girls. Then, I shall return these to you—”

  Opening a magical gate out of thin air, the man drew two things out of it. Without fanfare, he tossed them at Kojou’s feet: a silver long sword and a bow—weapons that Kojou remembered seeing before.

  “These are Yuiri’s and Shio’s…!”

  Adding Glenda’s testimony to the weapons in the man’s possession, it was all too clear what had transpired. The man had launched a sudden attack on Glenda and company, robbing Yuiri and Shio of their weapons.

  “Exactly…what did you do to Yuiri and Shio?”

  “They got in the way of my objective, so I eliminated them. That is all.”

  “…Objective?”

  “To dispose of the Dragon of the Swamp.”

  “So that’s what this is…”

  Kojou grinded his teeth. The man had come to Saikai Academy in pursuit of Glenda, who Yuiri and Shio had managed to let escape, this time, to finish the job—

  “Hand the Dragon of the Swamp over to me, boy. If you do not, you shall meet the same fate as those two girls.”

  “Don’t mess with me!”

  Before the man finished speaking, Kojou unleashed his vampiric power in anger. Demonic energy exploded from every pore, so vast as to make the very air creak, taking the form of an enormous lion shrouded by lightning. This was potent demonic energy condensed into physical form—a vampiric Beast Vassal summoned from another world.

  “C’mon over, Regulus Aurum—!”

  “A Beast Vassal of the…Fourth Primogenitor?!”

  Beholding Kojou’s Beast Vassal with his own eyes, an air of faint surprise spread over the man’s face. But only for a moment. Composing himself and staring at the lightning lion barreling toward him from overhead, the man calmly raised his right hand.

  “Awaken, Archadia.”

  “Wha—?!”

  It was Kojou who let out a shocked voice. From out of thin air, the black-haired man summoned a long sword resembling a whip with a saw for a blade. Swung by some invisible, giant arm, the long sword moved at the speed of an electric flash, blocking the lightning lion’s claw from the front—and pushing it back.

  “As expected, incredible force. Enough that even Archadia cannot hold.”

  Brushing away the aftershocks of the titanic clash of demonic energy with visible annoyance, the man smiled ferociously.

  “However, that is all. Dance, Ghoula—!”

  “Oh cra—”

  The sudden appearance of a swarm of enormous short swords sent Kojou’s expression twisting in despair. The man’s Beast Vassals were targeting Glenda rather than Kojou.

  Kojou instinctively reached a hand toward Glenda, but her own body was in the way, rendering him unable to summon a new Beast Vassal. With the girl frozen in terror, the dark short swords rained down upon her.

  However, just in the nick of time, a flash from a silver blade shrouded in pale radiance struck down every single sword.

  “—Snowdrift Wolf!”

  Leaping clear over the roof’s fence was a girl dressed in a gym outfit, twirling a long silver-colored spear around as she intercepted the horde of sentient swords. The vampiric Beast Vassal, presumably immune to any and all physical attacks, offered all the resistance of paper as it split apart and vanished. These Schneewaltzers were said to be the Lion King Agency’s secret weapons—purging spears with the power to nullify all demonic energy and rend any kind of barrier.

  “Himeragi!”

  “—Are you all right, senpai?!”

  Having finished intercepting the Beast Vassals, Yukina Himeragi held her spear at the ready as she posed the question. Glancing at the sight of Glenda naked under a parka, a complex expression rose to her face.

  “…Senpai, there is a great deal I wish to say to you, but ensuring Glenda’s safety is our first priority.”

  “Let’s leave it at that… Um, why are you in your gym clothes, Himeragi?”

  “I slipped out right before gym class! But is now really the time for a question like that?! Please take this seriously!”

  “It’s not like I’m fooling around here!”

  Kojou left his lightning lion materialized as he turned to face the black-haired vampire. He didn’t want to do anything to stand out too much within Saikai Academy, but this man wasn’t an opponent he could fight without a Beast Vassal.

  Fortunately, Regulus Aurum’s lightning bolts danced around Kojou and the others, which ought to have hid them from the other students. All he could do beyond that was hope his classmates took shelter before they were caught up in the conflict.

  “I see, so this is a Schneewaltzer… You have quite a troublesome weapon, certainly worthy of one calling herself the Fourth Primogenitor’s watcher.”

  The black-haired vampire let out a sigh as he stared at the spear Yukina wielded. However, even though he had just called it troublesome, his composed demeanor remained intact. He was likely confident that he could simultaneously defeat Kojou and Yukina. That might even be true—Kojou, squared off against him, could sense no end to his opponent’s strength.

  “Boy selected by the Fourth Primogenitor, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency, this is my final warning. Hand over the Dragon of the Swamp.”

  The ghastly aura surrounding the black-haired vampire shot out forcefully. It became a physical pressure that caused the very air to tremble. Had they been human beings with weak resistance to demonic energy, this alone might have been enough to knock them unconscious. There was simply too much demonic energy.

  Perhaps overwhelmed by that incredibly ghastly aura, Glenda grasped her own shoulders, shivering slightly. Shielding Glenda, Kojou glared right at the man.

  “I told you—don’t mess with me.”

  A torrent of malevolent demonic en
ergy spewed from Kojou’s entire body like billowing flames. This slammed into the opposing vampire’s own demonic energy, making the air bend and shimmer with heat haze.

  “Very well, boy. Then, perish along with this accursed island!” he shouted, fangs bared.

  He spread both arms wide as if to summon a new Beast Vassal. Kojou clicked his tongue. Yukina bent her knees, lowering her center of gravity.

  A moment later, silver chains shot out of thin air and coiled around the black-haired vampire.

  The sudden attack twisted the man’s face for the first time.

  “That is far enough, Velesh Aradahl—”

  Natsuki Minamiya’s doll-like silhouette appeared before the eyes of Kojou and company with a rippling of the air. With a flutter of her extravagant, frilly dress, she haughtily tossed her head back at the enemy.

  “This campus happens to be my place of work. As a teacher, I cannot shut my eyes to an outsider who means to bring harm to my students. I would be most grateful if you politely removed yourself.”

  “Natsuki Minamiya…the Witch of the Void, yes?” Even with his Beast Vassal summoning sealed away, the black-haired vampire’s dignified demeanor was undaunted. “Someone merely possessed by a Demon would deign to defeat me?”

  “If I chose to take this girl under my protection, do you really think there’s anything you would be able to do about it?” Natsuki laughed scornfully.

  Aradahl grimaced.

  Natsuki Minamiya, a witch specializing in teleportation magic, was the owner of a vast realm within her own dream that was known as the Prison Barrier. If she held Glenda within that barrier, Glenda would be forever lost to him. Aradahl understood that for himself.

  “…Very well. Certainly, there is little to be gained from making an enemy of you. I deeply apologize for disturbing the sanctity of this campus, Witch of the Void.”

  Aradahl made the statement in an honest-sounding tone. The ghastly aura swirling around the area neatly dissipated, almost like it had never existed.

  “A wise decision, Velesh Aradahl. It seems that you are different from that Master of Serpents.”

  Speaking in a haughty tone, Natsuki recalled her silver chains. Aradahl twisted his lips in silence. Apparently, he did not like being compared to the Master of Serpents—Dimitrie Vattler.