A War of Primogenitors

by Gakuto Mikumo

The princess proceeded to turn on her heels, heading out of the room with her knight in tow. Sayaka seemed at the end of her wits as she followed the pair. The three were headed to the airport. There awaited the armored airship Böðvildr, pride of the kingdom of Aldegia.

  “—Kojou Akatsuki. You two, come here.”

  Kojou and Yukina were left behind and feeling out of place when Aradahl called out to them from back in the reception room. The black-haired vampire was staring at a military tablet device placed atop the table within.

  Displayed on its large screen was a map of an unfamiliar island spiraling out like a galaxy.

  “What is this?”

  “The entirety of the Legacy of Cain that envelops Itogami Island. The information comes from the Gigafloat Management Corporation. I had heard orbital satellites cannot be used due to the Priestess of Cain’s hacking, but it seems they also have someone skilled on their side.”

  “Hmmm…”

  Hearing Aradahl’s words of praise, Kojou found them a little surprising. Ever since Asagi had hijacked their press conference broadcast midway, not much had been heard from the Corporation, but they seemed to be getting the job done.

  Reflecting upon it calmly, given Itogami Island’s present situation, the fact that there wasn’t a large-scale panic arising was pretty incredible. Even considering that Itogami Island’s residents were accustomed to disasters, there was no doubt the Corporation was engaged in various countermeasures to cope.

  “Is this the Oceanus Grave II’s current position?” Yukina inquired as she noticed a red dot displayed on the map. Dimitrie Vattler’s cruise ship was moving clockwise in a gap located in the artificial isle.

  It was about forty kilometers removed from Kojou and Yukina’s location on Itogami Island proper. Numerous gun emplacements and a horde of Nalakuvera protected the Oceanus Grave II. As befitting the headquarters of the Anti-HGTO Military, its defenses were stiff. But compared to evading Leviathan from the outside, the route from the inside was shorter and no doubt easier.

  “As we will leave support to the Aldegian armored airship, we will take our seaplane—the Strix—and charge in. We’re faster, after all.”

  “…You’re helping with this, too?”

  Kojou looked at Aradahl in surprise. In terms of common sense, he had no reason to cooperate with Kojou. To Aradahl, Vattler was comrade and kin, whereas Kojou was his opponent in a duel. Either way, it was crystal clear which one of them held a standpoint close to an enemy.

  However, Aradahl turned to Kojou with a sober, serious expression.

  “Vattler’s current actions are treason against the Warlord’s Empire. Is it not natural for the people of his Dominion to shoulder the burden of bringing him to justice?”

  “…Well, whatever your reasons, to be honest, it’s a big help having you lend a hand.”

  Kojou spoke his honest thoughts. Thanks to the emergence of an unexpected savior, a strategy for going after Vattler had been set. All that remained was to actually board the Legacy of Cain and drive Vattler out.

  Aradahl rang a bell to call for the butler. The lodging was so high-class that the rooms were served by a full-time butler and a staff of maids.

  After delivering rapid-fire instructions to them, Aradahl spoke to Kojou and Yukina in a very direct tone.

  “A room is being prepared for you. As soon as the flying boat is ready to launch, we will move to the airport by teleportation. You should finish your replenishment by then—”

  “…Replenishment?”

  Kojou and Yukina looked at each other’s perplexed faces.

  5

  “Perhaps he meant a meal is to be provided?”

  What’s this replenishment business? thought Kojou, tilting his head when Yukina made that little whisper into his ear.

  “Ah, gotcha,” went Kojou, nodding as he accepted her view. The maxim that one cannot fight on an empty stomach was a truth recognized in every nation on Earth. It wouldn’t be strange if Aradahl had been considerate enough to order a meal for them.

  “If so, I’m pretty grateful. Last thing I ate was ramen for lunch with Iblisveil at noon yesterday.”

  “I suppose so,” agreed Yukina, seeming happy.

  And in a hotel like this, the meals have to be something else, thought Kojou, secretly raising his hopes. However, when he entered the room, Kojou understood that those hopes had been so easily betrayed.

  “This way,” said the maid in an old-fashioned apron dress, indicating a most extravagant room to the pair. It had a vast, king-sized bed and countless pillows. The interior lighting gave the room a phantasmal feel, and the scent of large aromatic candles wafted in the air. There was a vast shower room with a glass wall over it. This was no atmosphere for eating. Any way he looked at it, this was a bedroom for a couple on a honeymoon.

  “A…Aradahl…!”

  Kojou thrust his hands onto the bed, groaning in a low voice.

  “However serious he might seem, he is a vampire nonetheless, I see…”

  For her part, Yukina’s shoulders sank in visible disappointment. Faced with a bedroom unsuited to meals, it sunk in that replenishment held a very different meaning to vampires.

  After all, it was not hunger that triggered vampiric impulses, but lust. Aradahl had meant Go and drink Yukina’s blood.

  That was what he’d provided the room for. The show of consideration was just like the sober, serious Aradahl, but the direction it took was completely awry.

  “Come to think of it, what did Justina give you anyway?”

  Kojou asked as he sat a corner of the bed. He realized that the silence within the room was making the atmosphere really strange.

  “I wonder? She said it was really for Kano, but…”

  Upon saying this, Yukina opened the case Justina had handed her. Within the case, which was around ten centimeters thick, was a Saikai Academy schoolgirl uniform and a fresh pair of underwear, all neatly folded.

  The bra-and-shorts pair mixed white lace and pastel stripes. They came off as pure, and at the same time, a very classy kind of cute.

  “This is…Kanase’s…”

  “Goodness! Just what are you thinking?!”

  Yukina shot Kojou a reproachful glare as she violently slammed the case lid shut. What’s she blaming me for? he thought, feeling like he’d been wronged somehow.

  “What is La Folia giving you a uniform for?”

  “I believe she is being considerate. My uniform is as it was when I fell into the sea, after all…as are my, um, underwear…”

  “Ah…come to think of it, you do smell like the sea a bit. Your skin’s a little sticky, too…”

  “I s-smell like the sea…and I’m sticky…”

  Yukina hung her head as if she’d been smacked, a crestfallen look coming over her.

  “Well, don’t worry about it, I went into the sea same as you did. Besides, it’s not like the scent bothers me or anything.”

  “Please stop sniffing me already!”

  Yukina sent a pillow flying straight at his face. He wasn’t even particularly close to Yukina. This is totally unfair, thought Kojou, his lips twisting. Either way, given the circumstances, the shower room Aradahl had provided would not go to waste.

  “Er, you’re not gonna change clothes?”

  “I will, but…it is somewhat difficult to change clothes after senpai has already seen my underwear, isn’t it…?”

  Yukina shot him a resentful glare, carry case still in hand. Oh, so that’s what this is about. Kojou was half beside himself.

  “It’s fine, Himeragi. I mean, the design suits you and all.”

  “Please, stop imagining me in them!”

  Yukina’s cheeks reddened as she slammed him with a pillow once more. Unable to resist the impact, Kojou tumbled onto the bed. Staying there, he sighed as he stopped moving.

  “Senpai?”

  “Ah, I’m all right. Just a bit of an empty stomach.”

  Kojou spoke in a frail voice. Due to expecti
ng too much out of Aradahl, his sense of hunger was at a level that was no joke. Come to think of it, he’d gone close to an entire day with barely anything to eat.

  Even if he was an unaging, undying vampire, of course physical activity caused hunger. If anything, his having used excessive amounts of strength in the duel with Aradahl made him far more depleted than a normal human would be by then.

  “I do have emergency rations… Would you like some?”

  Yukina gingerly posed the question, as if unable to watch Kojou immobile due to hunger. Kojou opened his eyes wide, sitting up with considerable force. The echo of the words “emergency rations” felt like a glimmer of hope.

  “Can they be eaten, like, right now?”

  “Well, yes…”

  For some reason, a hesitant expression came over Yukina as she stretched a hand to her usual guitar case. From a compartment meant for music sheets and shielded cables, she took out a paper box wrapped with a ribbon.

  When she opened the box’s lid, a scent of baked butter and chocolate spread forth.

  There were cookies inside the box. The box’s interior was stuffed chock-full of chocolate cookies shaped like Kojou’s Beast Vassals.

  “Himeragi, these are…”

  “Emergency rations.” Yukina obstinately made the assertion in a flat voice. “Th-there was a little time at Ms. Minamiya’s residence while you were asleep, senpai, so…I told Miss Astarte that I wanted to make something, and it ended up like this… It has absolutely nothing to do with Valentine’s Day whatsoever…”

  “Ah…well, anything’s good. Thanks a bunch.”

  Kojou put his hands together and offered a quick “Thanks for the meal” before picking up one of Yukina’s cookies. The sugar content seemed to swirl and sink deeply into Kojou’s bloodstream. He was so moved that his entire body shook.

  For some reason, Kojou’s reaction made Yukina stop breathing, staring at him with a serious look.

  “H…how does it taste?”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “R-really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  Yukina patted her chest in a show of relief. Then she abruptly broke into a sunny smile.

  “Then, senpai. I am sorry, but could you leave the room for a little while? I wish to shower before changing into new clothes.”

  “Ah, okay. I suppose you would.”

  Shifting his eyes toward the glass-covered shower room, Kojou gave a strained smile as he nodded. If Yukina showered in a place like that with him around, awkward wouldn’t even remotely do it justice. For mutual peace of mind, it was clearly best for Kojou to leave the room for a little while.

  “Is it all right if I take the cookies with me?”

  “Yes. I prepared them for your sake, after all. Please have as many as you like. And I will enjoy getting a little payback.”

  “Payback, er, for the emergency rations…?”

  “Tee-hee… I am joking.”

  “Um, joking, about which part…? Himeragi?”

  Were these really emergency rations, or was this actually a Valentine’s Day present? Kojou was fiercely consternated about just how to take Yukina’s words.

  However, Yukina said nothing more in reply, forcefully driving Kojou out of the room.

  6

  About an hour passed after that until preparations to launch the flying boat were complete.

  The kingdom of Aldegia’s Böðvildr had already gone ahead to begin approaching the Legacy of Cain. It was only a matter of time until the fighting began in earnest.

  The flying boat Kojou and Yukina were aboard departed from the airport on Itogami Island proper. Flying at low altitude, not even sixty meters off the ground, it headed toward the Oceanus Grave II. At that rate, it would not even be ten minutes until they came into contact with Vattler and company… provided they encountered no obstacles.

  “Have you recovered your energy, Kojou Akatsuki?”

  As Kojou sat in the flying boat’s cabin, Aradahl posed the question. The Strix was a large craft with a wingspan of over forty meters. The interior was more spacious than one would expect from an aircraft.

  “Well, I filled my stomach, at least.”

  Speaking this without any deep thought, Kojou realized his own verbal slip. Aradahl surely thought that Kojou had been drinking Yukina’s blood back in that room.

  “W-wait, wrong idea. Aradahl, you’re misunderstanding. My stomach’s full because of the cooki—”

  “The Sword Shaman is your Blood Concubine. There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “If you put it like that, it sounds even more like something we should be ashamed of!”

  Kojou desperately clung to any handhold in the face of Aradahl’s indifferent statement. During that time, Yukina’s face was blue as she checked her seatbelt over and over. She wasn’t good with airplanes.

  Suddenly, that same Yukina shifted her gaze outside the cabin window.

  “Senpai, there, Leviathan!”

  “Wha…?!”

  Kojou and Aradahl simultaneously rose to their feet. The Strix had only barely finished takeoff. It wasn’t more than ten kilometers from the airport. Asagi and company had placed Leviathan so close that it was right on the tip of Itogami Island’s nose.

  A gargantuan sea serpent was floating in the cramped confines of a gap in the spiraling gigafloats. A volley of several hundred black objects resembling seagulls launched from its back.

  Spurting white smoke, these turned about and bore down on the Strix all at once. Kojou paled when he recognized their true nature.

  “Living missiles, huh—!”

  “Tch… Dance, Ghoula—!”

  Aradahl summoned his own Beast Vassal to the flying boat’s fore—a horde of hundreds of darkness-colored short swords. These scattered all at once, intercepting Leviathan’s living missiles in midflight. It was a robust technique made possible only through Aradahl’s vast demonic energy and the special characteristics of his Intelligent Weapon Beast Vassal.

  “Damn that Yume; no questions asked, huh!”

  “One should not complain about that after issuing a declaration of war.”

  Aradahl calmly played the straight man to Kojou’s unintentionally voiced complaint. “I suppose you’re right,” said Kojou, sighing deeply. The war had already begun.

  “—C’mon over, Dabih Crystallus!”

  Kojou summoned a beautiful piscine dragon with silver crystal wings. Its horns, curved like that of a ram’s, released a glow, and this light seemed to captivate Leviathan as its motions froze in place.

  “I see… A Beast Vassal of Charm,” Aradahl murmured in apparent praise.

  As heir to Lilith, the Witch of the Night, Yume was controlling Leviathan using her succubus mind-control powers. However, it was not only succubi that possessed the Ability of mind control. The tenth Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor, Dabih Crystallus, possessed the very same mind-control capability.

  With that Beast Vassal’s power, Kojou overrode Yume’s mental control and sent Leviathan back to the bottom of the sea—the deep, distant sea, beyond where Yume’s control could reach. And then—

  “Himeragi, can you pick out Yume’s location?”

  Sensing Yume’s mental waves, Yukina pointed out the flying boat’s course and shouted, “Directly ahead, on a plateau in front of the Oceanus Gra—”

  But before she could even finish, they heard the captain shouting in anger from the cockpit.

  “Bogey straight ahead!”

  “Nn—?”

  When Aradahl entered the cockpit, his eyes grew graver still. A huge monster resembling a beetle was flying up from the ground to intercept the Strix. Spurting fire from nozzles within its armor, it flew with frightening speed.

  “Nalakuvera! Wait, they can fly?!”

  “Pests,” muttered Aradahl as he commanded his Beast Vassal to attack. Dark blades bore down on a Nalakuvera, ripping apart the thick armor covering its large frame until
not even a trace remained.

  With its duty finished, Aradahl called the Beast Vassal back, firing it out against a second Nalakuvera. But—

  “Aradahl, don’t!”

  “What?!”

  Kojou could not stop him in time before short swords collided with the Nalakuvera.

  It was Aradahl’s Beast Vassal swords that bounced off. The Nalakuvera used chakram-style missiles, intercepting the dark short swords and altering their course.

  “They learned to counter my attack…?”

  Aradahl let out a low groan. The Nakakuvera, known as the Weapons of the Gods, were feared because of their knowledge of computer networks, self-repair, self-improvement, and self-evolution capabilities. Where a horde of Nalakuvera was concerned, the same attack never worked twice.

  Having slipped past Aradahl’s attack, the Nalakuvera fired a large-caliber laser. The scarlet beam sliced and rent the wing of the now lightly defended Strix. One of its four engines exploded, causing the fuselage of the flying boat to heavily tilt.

  The Nalakuvera circled around the Strix, unleashing its large-caliber laser anew. Flying toward it was a twin-headed dragon covered in quicksilver scales.

  “Al-Meissa Mercury!!”

  Kojou’s summoned Beast Vassal opened its enormous maws wide, swallowing up the Nalakuvera along with the space surrounding it. Because the damage was not to the unit itself, the Nalakuvera’s learning network did not activate, nor was there any longer a unit to repair.

  “Sorry there. I’m used to taking on guys like you—”

  Kojou let out a murmur, feeling a bit guilty as he watched the horde of Nalakuvera being eaten one after another. The third Beast Vassal of the Fourth Primogenitor consumed space itself, with bad effects on the surrounding area. It was one he avoided summoning if he could help it.

  However, the menace of the Nalakuvera might have receded, but that didn’t repair the flying boat’s damage. Having lost half of its wings, the Strix approached the ground at a speed of a “fall” rather than a “descent.” Since it was flying at low altitude to begin with, there was virtually zero altitude to give before they crashed.

  “Your Excellency, we cannot maintain altitude! We are crash-landing!”