Bluesteel Blasphemer Volume 2

by Ichirou Sakaki

  “Eh. That oughta teach him a thing or two, anyway.”

  Yukinari didn’t have a special hatred for or grudge against this demigod. He had simply fought back when it attacked. If it wanted to run away, he didn’t care.

  Dasa rendered her verdict immediately:

  “You’re being foolish... Yuki.”

  Her face rarely showed her emotions or gave any hint of what was going on inside her, but at this moment she almost looked proud of herself, even if only Yukinari, who had known her much longer than anyone else there, noticed it.

  “Foolish? How’s that?”

  “That’s... a bird. They can’t remember anything... for more... than three steps. It won’t learn.”

  “...That right?” Yukinari smiled grimly, watching the retreating demigod. To him, it didn’t look like it had any interest in coming back.

  ●

  Friedland was a frontier town. It was far away from the capital, for better and for worse: it received no significant support, but also had a certain administrative freedom. So long as taxes were paid and the local trade routes were kept open, its duties were fulfilled.

  Such remote cities had not begun as part of a concerted effort by the capital to colonize untamed lands. Rather, they were the cumulative result of expeditions sent by the king, which found villages or even small kingdoms already in these areas. These settlements would become part of the royal purview, not always voluntarily. Often, the people who were already running these areas were simply dubbed mayors or provincial lords.

  Many of these localities, of course, had different cultures and customs from those of the capital. One such was the anonymous cult that revered the erdgods—and made sacrifices to them. An erdgod was a deity that had formed a spiritual link with a specific place, and ruled it in more senses than one. The erdgod’s blessing could bring abundance to the land and keep demigods and xenobeasts at bay.

  But such protection usually came at a cost. In Friedland, this had been the regular presentation of living sacrifices. Every few years, a young maiden would be offered to the erdgod. The priesthood existed to support this ritual, and they ran an orphanage to ensure the town would have a steady supply of sacrifices. This became a social institution, and had continued for hundreds of years.

  And then, one day, that “tradition” abruptly ended.

  This was due to travelers who had come to the area—just one of them, really, a young boy. Yukinari Amano. His hair was snow-white, his eyes blood-red, but otherwise he appeared to be a completely normal human boy. He had stumbled into the middle of the ceremony and killed the erdgod that had been about to eat its sacrifice.

  The result was a vacancy; Friedland was left without an erdgod. This meant two major problems were likely to occur: the villagers would once again be subject, as we said, to the threat of demigods and xenobeasts, and the harvest would be less fruitful. Yukinari solved the former problem by taking the role of erdgod himself. But as for the latter—it was not so easily fixed.

  “All right,” Yukinari said. “Let’s stop here and have some lunch.” He looked back over his shoulder. The ten Friedlanders who had accompanied him on this survey were lined up behind him. Eight men, two women. Add Yukinari and Dasa, and they made a twelve-person survey corps.

  “Lord Yukinari!” a small woman said, running up to him. Her flaxen hair was in braids, her amber eyes were gentle, and her chest gave the impression of being large. Her movements and expressions were reserved and mature, but whether this made one want to protect her or bully her depended on the person. Not that she seemed to realize this.

  “You must be tired. Here...” She held out a canteen.

  Her name was Berta Wohmann. She was a former sacrifice, and the reason Yukinari had killed the erdgod. With the deity gone, she was offered to Yukinari instead, and was now widely recognized as Yukinari’s “property.” Yukinari himself didn’t specifically want this, but Berta had nowhere else to go, and he couldn’t leave her to fend for herself. And so, she attempted to serve him whenever possible. But...

  “That’s not... necessary.”

  It was not Yukinari, but Dasa who rebuffed Berta’s attempt to be helpful. She showed no more expression than usual, but a hint of annoyance entered her tone. Even though, again, Yukinari was probably the only one who noticed.

  “But, Lady Dasa—”

  “Yuki will drink... this.” She slid the bag she always carried off her back and dug through it to bring out a small bottle.

  “What’s that...?”

  “It has special nutrients,” Dasa said with an unmistakable note of triumph. “A drink I... prepared. My older sister was an alchemist. So... of course I know how... to make things like this.”

  Berta let out a breath, her expression somewhat overwhelmed. Dasa made sure Berta could see her hand the bottle to Yukinari.

  “Yuki, drink.”

  “No, hang on a second.” He seemed gripped with a sense of foreboding. “What you know how to make is alchemical medicines, right?”

  “So?”

  “So that’s not the same as making food.” He paused. “Have you tasted this stuff?”

  “Don’t need to. I followed... the recipe exactly.”

  “That’s when you most need to taste it. I guarantee it didn’t come out like you expected.” Yukinari looked like he was about to heave a sigh.

  Dasa was indeed the younger sister of the alchemist Jirina Urban, and had served as her sister’s assistant. She was well-versed in certain kinds of knowledge, but her long period of blindness meant she had never been allowed to help with crafting or the other work of actual production, and her practical experience was almost zero. She was working from theoretical knowledge alone.

  Back when the two of them had been traveling, she had attempted to cook several times. Her tendency to simply follow the steps in the recipe without ever tasting or adjusting anything meant that her efforts lacked a certain spontaneity; they didn’t account for the ingredients she actually had on hand. The results were inevitably too sweet, or too spicy, or too bitter. In due course, Yukinari learned to handle the cooking himself.

  “...Yuki.” Dasa’s blue eyes peered up at him through her spectacles. “Do you mean you... like Berta’s water better?”

  “This is the dumbest argument I’ve ever seen... Look, it’s not about you or Berta. I just want water, period. I mean... I appreciate your making that just for me, but...”

  There was a very long pause. “Fine,” Dasa said at length. With a nod, she exchanged the bottle she was holding for a different one from her bag. “It’s distilled water. Drink.”

  “That seems like a little much to go through for drinking water, doesn’t it?”

  Yukinari understood boiling water to kill bacteria, but specifically distilling all their drinking water would have been a laborious process. Although, to the extent that it got rid of most bad things in the water, it certainly was good to drink.

  Regardless, if he continued to reject her offers, Dasa’s mood would only get worse. She wasn’t the type to shout or sulk, but her angry silence could be profound. Once she got like that, it would take a good deal of time and effort to bring her back around.

  “Give it here,” Yukinari said, accepting the bottle from Dasa.

  Then Berta, who had been watching all this unfold without a word, smiled and said, “Now, Lord Yukinari, please have something to eat.” She offered him a small bundle.

  “That’s not... necessary,” Dasa broke in again.

  “Uh, actually, Dasa, it is necessary. Definitely necessary.”

  “Yuki, eat this,” Dasa said, bringing the “nutrient-rich liquid” back from its brief stint in her bag.

  “Pretty sure that’s a drink.”

  “It’s full of nutrients.”

  “And that’s great. But I just want to eat a normal meal!” Yukinari’s voice was close to a desperate shout. Dasa seemed bent on competing with Berta in every possible way. Berta usually backed down, so it never came
to an actual fight, but Yukinari felt a little bad for the other girl constantly having to contend with his companion.

  There was also the fact that he didn’t trust Dasa when it came to food, and felt safer eating Berta’s meal... But actually saying so would send Dasa into a pout if anything would.

  The third and final girl in the survey group came over to them, sounding annoyed:

  “What are you doing?”

  Fiona Schillings. With her light golden hair and jade-green eyes, she was truly beautiful. Her facial features were well-formed, giving an impression of personal strength. She was the polar opposite of Berta in a number of ways. If Berta was the submissive type, Fiona was outgoing, seemingly always ready to take the lead and show the way.

  It was only natural—Fiona was the mayor’s daughter and had taken over the day-to-day duties of running the town when her father became bedridden with illness. It wasn’t a position in which she could simply wait for others to tell her what to do. Yukinari didn’t know whether Fiona had always been so proactive or if it was a trait she had developed as she tried to fill her father’s shoes.

  Now she had her long hair tied back behind her head, perhaps to keep it from getting in her or anyone else’s way while they were surveying. In combination with her cold demeanor, it gave her a somehow mature look—and yet cute, suited to her age.

  “Oh, we were, uh... nothing...” Yukinari said, in a poor attempt to distract her. It would have been easy enough to explain that Dasa and Berta were finding little ways to fight over him, but the thought made him feel very self-conscious, and he was too embarrassed to voice it.

  “By the way, what do you plan to do about that?” Fiona pointed ahead of them to where a boulder the size of a small house blocked their path. Cliffs closed in on either side of it, so unless they could climb over it, they were at a dead end. This was the reason Yukinari had called a halt here.

  “What do you mean, what?”

  “As long as that thing’s there, we won’t be getting any water.”

  Yukinari had no ability to directly control the land as most erdgods did. But one didn’t have to be a god in order to improve the farming situation. He felt the first order of business should be to procure plenty of water, and he drew up blueprints for an irrigation canal that would run from the lake in the north to the vicinity of the town.

  But there was quite some distance between the lake and the fields. An irrigation canal that ran all the way from one to the other would require a huge amount of work to build. They were here to investigate whether they could channel water through this valley, which lay in between the two. If possible, Yukinari hoped to complete construction on the canal before they went home. Hence, several of the people of Friedland had come with him.

  His response to Fiona was unconcerned. “Oh, that? It’s not that big. We’ll work something out.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Hmm. Maybe we ought to go ahead and do something about it. Berta!”

  “Yes, Lord Yukinari?” Berta responded, happy he had called her by her name.

  “Tell everyone to keep their lunches packed for a few minutes still,” he said. “I would hate for their food to get all dusty.”

  “Dusty, my Lord...?”

  “Yeah. Just let them know.”

  And then Yukinari started walking toward the huge rock.

  As he went, he reached into his brain for various bits of knowledge. Chemical structural formulae. Material calculations. All were things he’d learned in his “previous world,” but before his “rebirth,” he’d barely called them to mind. It was only since obtaining this body that he had become able to access the memories of his past at will.

  They say the human brain never loses information it has seen even just a single time. But many people are unable to reach those memories—to bring them into the conscious mind. Because the amount of information we can deal with at one time is limited, many memories recede into the depths of the mind over time.

  But Yukinari was able to call up any of his memories as if searching through a computer database. Perhaps this was because those memories were in “parallel” after he died, or perhaps it was a special quality of this body—he didn’t know.

  Silently, he touched the boulder with his right hand. He made some broad mental calculations, then focused his attention.

  “...Mrm.”

  A pale blue light seeped into the rock from the palm of his hand. It only took a few seconds. Then he looked back and said, “Everyone, back up a bit, please! This could get messy. Oh, and just for safety’s sake, cover your ears.”

  Several of the people with him stood there looking as if they didn’t understand what he was saying, and Fiona ordered them to block their ears and take a step back.

  “Welp, here goes.”

  He focused on the boulder, then backed up ten meters or so. He quickly drew Durandall from its holster on his back and fired at the place he had touched a moment ago.

  There was a dull, quiet explosion. The next moment, the very presence of the boulder seemed to give way, and the instant after that, it was a pile of minuscule fragments on the valley floor. Some of the rock had turned into dust that floated on the breeze, but not much of it reached where Berta and the others were waiting. The surprisingly quiet explosion was proof that, although quick and dirty, his calculations had been largely correct—the sound of a blast was just unused energy escaping into the air.

  “Yukinari...!”

  He turned around to find Fiona standing behind him, her eyes wide. Dasa and Berta joined her a moment later.

  “What in the world did you do?”

  “I guess the words ‘physical reconstitution’ wouldn’t mean anything to you...?” He gave a helpless smile. “But you know explosive powder, right?”

  “Well... More or less.” Fiona’s response was noncommittal. She seemed to know of its existence, but had never seen it in action before Yukinari came to Friedland. The method of its production was probably not widely known; to the average person, it was likely as rare as gold or silver.

  “It’s because I’m an ‘angel.’ I can change dust into gold, and I can definitely change part of a rock into black powder. That’s how I destroyed the boulder. I guess I could’ve just transformed it wholesale into something more useful, but there’s a limit to how much physical material I can alter at one time.” Hence why he hadn’t been able to simply turn the rock into pure air.

  “You really are an angel, aren’t you?” Fiona said, sounding deeply impressed.

  “What, you’re surprised? You’ve seen me use my power before.”

  “I suppose so. But only when you were fighting. And you try to avoid using it even then.”

  “’S true, I guess.” Yukinari fixed an ambiguous smile on his face. Then he asked, “Does it upset you?”

  The “angels” were artificial humans created by a religious organization called the True Church of Harris for the purpose of evangelism. Produced using the best alchemy available, they were living alchemical devices that made for an easily digestible “divine miracle.” They were almost like mascots, a way of drawing people to the faith. And what did a mascot need with a sense of self? They were merely tools for the Church.

  A human soul was apparently necessary to start these man-made dolls working, but the soul was to the angel as a pilot light is to a furnace. Just a way of starting things. Once the artificial person’s heart began to beat, the humanity the original soul bore with it was stripped away, eliminated like an impurity.

  But Jirina Urban—the one who had made Yukinari’s body—had not destroyed his selfhood, though he didn’t know why. Whatever her reasons, she did it in defiance of her orders, and was killed as a traitor to the Church.

  But regardless—

  “Upset me? Not especially,” Fiona said. “Although I think it’s pathetic that you can kill an erdgod, but not win an argument with Dasa.”

  “Okay. I didn’t mean that kind of upset.”

&n
bsp; “I told you, you don’t look any different from a normal human. You just seem to have some unusual abilities. But I guess saying that is sacrilege now, isn’t it, O god?” Fiona said with a teasing lilt. “Honestly, I was just surprised.”

  “...Huh.” Yukinari shrugged. He had been concerned that, confronted with a fresh reminder that he wasn’t human, she might feel revulsion or disgust. But he need not have worried.

  “If you don’t believe me,” Fiona said with a smirk, “shall I come to your bedroom tonight?” She had strong features, and her eyes were somewhat almond-shaped to begin with. When she squinted with her smile, she looked a bit like an amused cat.

  “How would that prove anything?” Yukinari said.

  “Yuki... you womanizer.”

  “Dasa, I told you not to take Fiona’s jokes so seriously!”

  The young girl was shooting him a resentful look from behind her glasses.

  “You think that’s a joke? I’m hurt.”

  “Do you enjoy tormenting me, Miss Deputy Mayor?”

  “Torment a god? Perish the thought!” Fiona said, clearly enjoying herself.

  “Oh, uh... of course, I also... offer myself...”

  “Berta, you need to learn when Fiona’s joking, too.”

  “Oh,” Berta said. “Is... is she joking?” It seemed that Berta, at least, had been making a perfectly serious offer.

  “Forget it. The map says our lake should be just up ahead, which means we’ll have crossed the first hurdle to getting water. If the men could help clear the debris, I’d appreciate it. Oh, after they’ve finished eating is fine.”

  “Sure, of course,” Fiona nodded. “We have no intention of making you do everything by yourself.” Then she turned to the men, who had come closer to see what exactly had happened to the boulder, and started giving instructions. They had been dumbfounded by this “miracle” of Yukinari’s, and seemed almost relieved to be given concrete orders. They all nodded at Fiona without a word of complaint.

  “Now maybe I can get my meal in,” Yukinari said, rubbing his shoulder with his right hand.

  “Yuki, my special nutrient drink.”