From the Warlord's Empire

by Gakuto Mikumo

  It was a cold room for the preservation of fresh fish. However, the spartan room contained neither fish nor fresh meat, but rather, rack-mounted high-performance computing servers—in other words, a supercomputer. With wild abandon, Asagi stormed into the air-chilled room being used to keep the circuits from running too hot. That moment, a voice came to her from an unexpected direction.

  “…Do not be impatient, young woman.”

  A clear, cool voice flowed from the lips of Nagisa, who should have been soundly asleep.

  Asagi turned around, drawn in by the somehow odd reverberation of the voice.

  Nagisa’s tied-up hair was now loose, flowing down almost all the way to her hips. Her eyes, with her irises opened wide, projected no emotion, like the surface of a calm pool of water. Her lips formed a smile all by themselves.

  “Do not permit your mind to be troubled. With that contraption’s capabilities, it shall not take you very long to decipher a single document from a long-dead civilization.”

  “Nagisa, is that you…?”

  Bewildered, Asagi called out to Nagisa, who felt like a completely different person than her usual self.

  Yukina shook her head with a look of surprise.

  “No, it is not… This condition is…divine possession? Or a spirit…?”

  “Ho-ho, I see. So you, too, are a shrine maiden, Sword Shaman of the Lion King.”

  Nagisa made a smile of apparent pleasure as she spoke. Deeply disturbed, Yukina stared at her, as if trying to assess the situation.

  “Then, you must understand as well. Even without your concern, that boy shall buy you time—time for that young woman to move forward with her plan.”

  “Who…are you…?!” Yukina sharply narrowed her eyes as she asked in return. However, Nagisa did not respond in any way. Without another word, her eyelids gently closed, collapsing like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  “What was that? Who was that?”

  Yukina held her tongue and shook her head at Asagi’s questions.

  Even Yukina could not explain Nagisa’s abnormal behavior. She had clearly witnessed something greater than a human being taking the girl over. Perhaps it was divine possession; could also have been a latent personality buried deep within Nagisa’s psyche. Perhaps it had something to do with the injuries she’d sustained that had never been written in the Lion King Agency’s report…but at any rate, this wasn’t the time or place to look into it.

  Yukina slapped her cheeks and rose, as if forcing her emotions to switch gears.

  “Aiba. May I borrow your cell phone?”

  “Sure, but what are you planning?”

  Asagi tossed her light pink smartphone to Yukina. She’d be able to get a cell signal now that the ship was getting close to Itogami Island.

  “Sorry. I had a bad premonition, so I’m a little uneasy…”

  Slowed down because she was using an unfamiliar cell phone, Yukina dialed a phone number she’d memorized.

  The mysterious personality that’d possessed Nagisa had jogged her memory.

  Yes, Kojou Akatsuki was probably trying to halt the Nalakuvera’s onslaught.

  Even if he didn’t personally wish for it to be so, him being him, it was highly likely he’d be wrapped up in it anyhow.

  Without Kojou being aware of it, the all-too-overwhelming power of the Fourth Primogenitor had distorted fate, drawing him to the field of battle. The teenage boy was truly a trouble magnet; one couldn’t take their eyes off him for a second.

  But that was probably the very reason he’d protect that city.

  However, that certainty made Yukina all the more uneasy. The Nalakuvera was a weapon brought back to life to fight primogenitors. On his own, as his power stood now, Kojou might not be able to defeat the ancient weapon.

  He needed power. It was a situation Yukina hadn’t wanted to think about, but there was something she needed to tell Kojou Akatsuki before a truly worst-case situation presented itself.

  “You’d think Sayaka would be the last person to end up entangled with senpai, but…”

  As Yukina murmured, she put the cell phone to her ear. As the call connected, she heard Kojou’s voice.

  7

  Gazing at the crimson beams scattered about, Vattler clapped in acclamation. He looked like he was truly enjoying himself.

  “So that is the Nalakuvera’s ‘flame-spitting lance’? Well, well, quite some power to it, yes?”

  Depressed at the sight of Vattler, Kojou kicked the ground in frustration.

  “Ah, shit. The heck are you doing here? What about your precious ship?!”

  “Ahh, that. Actually, the Oceanus Grave has been hijacked.”

  Vattler said it in an aloof tone. Kojou’s mouth dropped open.

  “Hijacked?!”

  “Yes, yes. So, I came here fleeing for my life, you see.”

  Liar! Kojou shouted inside his mind. As if mere terrorists could hijack a ship from him.

  If it was true, there was only one possibility he could think of: Vattler had merrily handed his ship over to the Black Death Emperor Front of his own volition.

  “I see. So Gardos and his men were brought to Itogami Island on your ship…”

  Natsuki thrust a black folding fan toward Vattler as if wielding a knife.

  A transparently fake look of melancholy came over his face.

  “No, really. I was quite surprised. To think that terrorists were mixed in with the crew of my own ship…”

  “So you intend to play the good victim? Well, you’ve been that kind of man since way back.”

  Natsuki made a very deep exhale, abandoning pushing the matter any further.

  “It’s really quite embarrassing,” said Vattler with a laugh. “Ah, come to mention it, I picked this up on the way as I was fleeing.”

  Like old rags, he made a small toss, discarding something at his feet.

  A schoolboy wearing a high school uniform made a squishy sound as he rolled. He looked like he’d drowned in the ocean; his face couldn’t be identified due to the seaweed covering his whole body.

  But Kojou recognized the short, spiky hair and the headphones down around his neck.

  “Y-Yaze?!”

  “Ah, could this be an acquaintance of yours?”

  Vattler smiled in apparent pleasure as he watched Kojou’s shocked reaction.

  Yaze was out cold, but he didn’t seem in any mortal danger. Thanks to having lost consciousness before falling into the ocean, he didn’t seem to have swallowed any seawater.

  What the heck’s he been up to, Kojou wondered, feeling fatigued as he shook his head.

  “Now, then. Well, you can rest easy. I will take responsibility and destroy the Nalakuvera.” Vattler took the opportunity to make a declaration in a lively voice.

  “Rest easy my ass!! You wanted to rumble against that thing from the beginning, didn’t you?!” Kojou roared as he finally realized what Vattler was up to.

  It was a moment later when Kojou’s cell phone rang in response to an incoming call.

  “Aw, shit. Who is it at a time like th—”

  Complaining all the while, Kojou took out his cell phone, sucking in his breath when he saw the caller ID displayed.

  “Asagi?!”

  “…It’s me, senpai.”

  After Kojou shouted forcefully, his ear detected a dissatisfied-sounding sigh from Yukina.

  “Eh?! Himeragi?”

  A sudden, unexpected assault threw Kojou off-balance.

  “Yukina, are you all right?! Where are you now?!”

  Sayaka pressed her face against Kojou’s ear as she shouted.

  Unsurprisingly, she was quick off the starting block where Yukina was concerned. On the other hand, she apparently hadn’t noticed that she was in an extremely intimate position against Kojou. Sayaka’s breaths were tickling his cheek.

  “I’m all right,” Yukina replied in her usual, overly serious tone of voice.

  “Right now we’re inside the Oceanus Grave
. At present, neither Aiba nor Nagisa have been harmed.”

  “I see. For the time being, it’s a lot safer over there than here with us.”

  Kojou was so relieved that it drained him, and he allowed his thoughts to slip, self-derision and all.

  “So you are indeed close to the Nalakuvera.”

  “Y-yeah.”

  “Sticking your nose into another dangerous place on your own…you really should realize what a dangerous person you are, senpai. Did something happen between you and Sayaka?”

  “Er, well, never mind that, we never thought they’d bring that thing out…”

  “W-we heard that you and the others had been kidnapped, and I was worried…”

  Scolded by the clearly unhappy Yukina, Kojou and Sayaka continued making painful-sounding excuses.

  But Yukina cut them off midway.

  “But it’s good that you did. Senpai, please slow the Nalakuvera down so that it does not approach the city itself.”

  “…Slow it down?”

  “Yes. Right now, Aiba is deciphering the Nalakuvera’s command codes. When she is finished, the current indiscriminate rampage can be stopped, you see.”

  “Asagi’s…… I see, so that’s what it is…”

  Kojou made a solemn nod.

  He didn’t know the fine details, but he had a pretty good idea what situation Yukina and the others were in.

  As Kojou had expected, the Black Death Emperor Front was using Asagi to decipher the ancient weapon’s command codes. Asagi was searching for the commands to stop the rampage; in other words, the terrorists couldn’t control the Nalakuvera, either.

  “…Slowing it down is plenty. Please do not try too hard to destroy it and increase the devastation further. Now, Sayaka…”

  “What? If there’s something I can do, say it!”

  As Yukina called her name, Sayaka’s voice leaped out as she kept her ear pressed to the phone.

  But Yukina brushed her off with a chilly voice.

  “Please move back a little. I want to speak with Akatsuki-senpai alone.”

  “Eh? Ehh?!”

  Looking like she was about to break into tears, Sayaka reeled backward, squatting and hugging her knees then and there. Kojou felt some sympathy for her as he shook his head at the sight.

  “…Speak about what, Himeragi?”

  “There’s no time so I’ll be brief.”

  Yukina audibly cleared her throat. She started over, asking her question in an urgent tone.

  “Senpai, do you think a second Beast Vassal might be necessary?”

  “Second Beast Vassal?” Kojou swallowed as Yukina’s question got right to the point.

  Taming a Beast Vassal required blood, just like when Kojou had sucked on Yukina’s blood to bring Regulus Aurum under his control—blood of a quality high enough to satisfy the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor.

  Kojou’s voice went shrill as he imagined what would be required to obtain it.

  “N-no, I don’t think so. I haven’t thought about that for one moment!”

  “I see. If that is so, good and well, but actually…”

  Yukina continued, “About Sayaka,” lowering her voice to a whisper.

  “…Eh?!”

  When Kojou finished listening to Yukina, he bit his lip in silence for a while. For brief, fragmentary information to have shut Kojou up like that meant it was quite outside his expectations.

  Her back still curled, Sayaka looked up at Kojou in silence, resentment in her eyes.

  Kojou, having somehow regained his composure, shook his head as if getting the cobwebs out.

  “Got it. Leave it to me. I’ll slow it down one way or another.”

  “Understood. Be careful, senpai.”

  With that, the call ended. Kojou looked toward the destroyed watchtower as he thrust the phone into a pocket.

  The Nalakuvera, still buried in rubble, wasn’t moving. It had no doubt destroyed the Island Guard’s mechanized platoon to dispose of the most pressing threat before it.

  But that did not mean in any way that the crisis had passed.

  Something like an eyeball on the Nalakuvera’s head continued ceaselessly scanning the area. It was gathering information on what targets it should move to eliminate. At the slightest provocation, the Nalakuvera would resume combat; there was little doubt that this time, it would put Itogami Island to the torch.

  “How’s the Island Guard retreat going?”

  Vattler smoothly made an instant reply to Kojou’s question. “They just made it outside the sub-float. The number of casualties is less than I expected.”

  Why are you answering that? Kojou thought, glaring at him. If he was observing the entire area, he surely knew exactly when combat would begin anew. But…

  “Got it. I’ll take it on, then. The captured girls are in your hands, Natsuki.”

  Without asking anyone’s opinion, Kojou so declared.

  Natsuki twisted her elegant parasol, glaring at Kojou with a sour look. Perhaps she was angry at his arbitrary declaration; perhaps she simply didn’t like the way Kojou casually spoke her given name. But—for once—she voiced no complaint whatsoever. That must have meant she was tentatively on board.

  “Do you not think stealing someone else’s prey is poor manners, Kojou Akatsuki?”

  For his part, Vattler made that mild objection. However, Kojou wasn’t taking the bait.

  “If you’re gonna talk about manners, coming onto another guy’s turf and doing as you please is pretty rude. Stay out of this until I’m down for the count, Dimitrie Vattler.”

  The young noble nodded and relented surprisingly easily. Then…

  “Then, I shall give you, ruler of this land, a present to display proper respect, so that you can fight without hesitation…Manashi! Uhatsura!”

  “Wha—?!”

  Kojou was at a loss for words as Vattler released a wave of enormous magical energy.

  Two snakes surpassing ten meters in length appeared behind the youthful aristocrat’s back. The first was a black snake that looked like a raging sea; the other was a blue snake, like the surface of a pool frozen solid. These were the Beast Vassals of Vattler, the Master of Serpents. Furthermore, he was using two simultaneously. The two intertwined together in midair, changing shape to become a single giant dragon.

  “Fusing two Beast Vassals together?! So that’s Vattler’s special ability…!”

  Kojou spoke in a hard voice at the sight of the Beast Vassal, which resembled a raging waterspout.

  Yukina had said it once. For Vattler, a noble of a younger generation, to have defeated a higher-ranking Wiseman, he must possess some kind of special power.

  This was likely the key to unlocking that secret. Kojou had never before heard of the existence of a vampire who could fuse two Beast Vassals into a single, more powerful Beast Vassal.

  But the truth was, the fused Beast Vassal Vattler had called forth was giving off magical energy on par with Kojou’s Regulus Aurum. This constituted ample proof Vattler really did possess power near that of a primogenitor.

  “Well, like this, I think.”

  Vattler made a satisfied-seeming murmur as his raging ultramarine dragon descended.

  It then destroyed every single anchor connecting Sub-float No.13 to Itogami Island proper. These anchors, made out of concrete blocks and metal wires and weighing several hundred tons each, were shattered into little pieces like glass; as a consequence of those explosions, the sub-float slowly began to float freely over the ocean.

  “You cut the sub-float off from the Itogami Island mainland…?!”

  Kojou looked up as he realized what Vattler was aiming for. The young aristocrat leered back.

  “This way, you can use your power however you like without concern for damage to the city. Do ensure that you amuse me.”

  “R-right…”

  For a moment, Kojou hesitated as to whether to give token words of thanks, but he immediately put that thought aside. He realized th
at the Beast Vassal’s attack just then had done considerable damage to Itogami Island’s mainland as well. Kojou was absolutely certain that the man’s talk of damage to the city was just an excuse for him to throw his weight around.

  “The Nalakuvera’s on the move, Kojou Akatsuki!”

  Kojou hastily looked back as Sayaka’s urgent voice reached his ears.

  The Nalakuvera knocked away the debris and girders around it, its entire body finally on display.

  It was a six-legged tank some seven or eight meters tall. Taken as a whole, it looked something like a giant ant wearing the shell of a lobster. There were two small arms that resembled feelers connected to the elongated, elliptical head.

  The armor’s texture seemed like clay or bronze, indeed giving it an “ancient weapon” look.

  “Hmmm. It seems to have gone active from judging my Beast Vassal to be a threat. I see, so it is indeed running on a self-defense program alone…”

  “So, you’re the reason it started moving?!”

  Kojou glared and shouted as Vattler murmured in a detached manner.

  The Nalakuvera’s crimson eye glared at both of them, firing a beam of light.

  “Kojou Akatsuki!” Sayaka shouted while poising her sword.

  “Aw, shit! So this is how it’s gonna be!”

  As blast winds bathed Kojou’s entire body, he ran off to put a stop to the ancient weapon’s rampage.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE BICORN

  1

  The boy god Nezha worshipped by Taoists had three faces and eight arms. He was a god of combat with an artificial body constructed of lotus roots and gold, wielding a fire-spitting spear and an armband that could smash the heads of his foes…

  However, the Nalakuvera, modeled in homage of the god Nezha, bore a form far too twisted and fiendish to be called a god itself.

  Shrouded in thick armor, it had six legs it used to trample armored truck wreckage and mow down the cranes that towered over the area. The dazzling crimson beams spat out from its head rent the steel-enveloped sub-float with ease, creating tremendous explosions in the process.

  That destructiveness, far beyond what was par for conventional land weaponry, surely rivaled that of vampire Beast Vassals.

  Kojou understood very well why the Black Death Emperor Front wanted this. However, this ancient weapon continued to move of its own volition, regardless of its controller’s will.