From the Warlord's Empire

by Gakuto Mikumo

  That moment, a delicate cry of “Hya!” came out from Sayaka’s mouth.

  When she pressed on her uniform’s shoulder, it had somehow become thoroughly drenched. Water was falling like rain from all over the sub-float’s framework.

  “What’s this? Seawater?!”

  “Shit…this float’s goin’ all to hell!”

  No matter how stoutly constructed a sub-float, Vattler’s Beast Vassal recklessly severing it, the Nalakuvera’s rampant laser fire, and the finishing blow with Regulus Aurum, had apparently exceeded its limits. Kojou and Sayaka simply hadn’t noticed how water was already leaking in from all quarters.

  “This isn’t the time for complaints! We have to find a way back to shore and fast!”

  Sayaka coolly pointed out the situation. The water wasn’t leaking in especially strongly, but if the seals of the anti-flooding bulkhead were to rupture, escape would become far more difficult. It didn’t feel very good being dripping wet and holed up in a place like this.

  “So how ’bout we walk along one of the walls like when you’re lost in a maze?”

  “Anything’s good as long as it’s fast!”

  As they traded silly banter, Kojou and Sayaka began to walk forward.

  That moment, the thin darkness beneath the sub-float was bathed in a dazzling, crimson light.

  The beam slashed apart the darkness in every direction, indiscriminately slicing its way through the sub-float’s framework. It was the large-caliber laser of the Nalakuvera.

  A mountain of debris came crashing down with a roar.

  Within, the ancient weapon emerged, surrounded by a pale white light. The shapes had been slightly altered, but the armor and legs that were surely destroyed had been repaired.

  “No way?! Why’s it moving after we damaged it that much…?!”

  “It can’t be transmutation?! It merged with the sub-float’s building materials to regenerate! It doesn’t seem to have regained its flight, but…”

  The ancient weapon had fused with the debris all around it to repair the damage it had sustained.

  Its two feelers pointed above its head, it had no doubt concluded it could not escape by going up.

  The Nalakuvera inclined the barrel of its large-caliber laser toward its own feet.

  The outer wall of a sub-float extended thirty meters underwater. The incandescent beam blasted through the steel-alloyed wall, dozens of centimeters thick, in an instant, opening a huge hole.

  Seawater accelerated by water pressure gushed high like a geyser. It suddenly became a muddy stream advancing on Kojou and Sayaka’s feet.

  “Shit…seriously?!”

  The Nalakuvera escaped through the hole of its own making. However, neither Kojou nor Sayaka had any time to worry about that. Thanks to that laser attack, fierce flooding had begun all over the sub-float.

  Hand in hand, the two made a run for it. They were entirely drenched in seawater from head to toe.

  3

  Asagi continued deciphering the command codes in the room with a refrigerator-like chill. The smooth way she tapped the keyboard looked less like a programmer and more like a well-trained pianist.

  Blowing white breaths, Asagi used the chat mike to call her “partner” across the network.

  “Mogwai, no need for more morphological analysis. Apply ER algorithms, reassess all preliminary parameters, execute speculative process based on zeta distribution, and after that, begin step-by-step data comparison.”

  “You’re as hard a taskmaster as always, young lady. The system bus is at its upper limits. Any more than this and it will interfere with Itogami Island environmental maintenance.”

  It was a mechanical composite voice that responded to Asagi’s call. It was the voice of the five supercomputers that held all of Itogami Island’s urban functions in its grasp. Asagi had dubbed the AI “Mogwai.”

  Judging that using the single Souverän Nine inside the ship would take too much time, she’d used the network to call Mogwai and enlist the brain of Itogami Island itself to decipher the command codes.

  “Keep it up even if the buffers all go to hell. We’re settling this in under fifteen minutes.”

  “Ku-ku-ku…feels good to have you back to your old self.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Asagi said, a fierce smile coming over her face. “I finally get the rules of this puzzle. They keep calling it a weapon of the gods, right? This is why the linguists all threw in the towel. They never imagined a language that doesn’t need logic or thought processes.”

  Logic was unnecessary. In other words, the Nalakuvera did not assess the situation. After all, it was a weapon that existed solely to destroy. The ancient weapons did not think for themselves any more than a gun or a bomb.

  When something for it to destroy was found, the Nalakuvera destroyed it, and that was that. It was the same fundamental logic of a god—“Let there be light,” and light appeared—the words of gods that fundamentally differed from men.

  “But if you understand how it’s put together, it’s just obsolete architecture like any other.”

  Having finished debugging the analysis program, Asagi let out a “hmph” through her nose.

  There were fifty-two stone tablets containing the Nalakuvera’s command codes in total. The analysis would be complete in fifteen minutes. That meant the fearsome ancient weapon would come under the complete control of terrorists. But now that the Nalakuvera was active, this was the only way it could be stopped.

  Since the Black Death Emperor Front wasn’t a pack of fools, they were surely monitoring Asagi’s work from somewhere.

  In the current situation, with Nagisa, Yukina, and Itogami Island itself taken hostage, there was no point slowing her work down or trying to pull a fast one.

  But it wasn’t Asagi Aiba’s style to just let herself be bossed around like this…

  “What should I do now, I wonder…?” Asagi murmured while subconsciously stroking her earring.

  How would she get back at a bunch that had deigned to make her work for free?

  As a bloodcurdling look came over Asagi’s face, Yukina quietly slipped out of the room, leaving her behind.

  Yukina didn’t really know what Asagi was doing. However, her unsurpassed genius was obvious, even to Yukina’s untrained eyes. Asagi’s sense and insight about programming was not really a product of a logical thought process; it was closer to Yukina and Sayaka’s Spirit Sight or even divine possession.

  To her surprise, had Asagi been raised by the Lion King Agency, she might already be a Sword Shaman surpassing even Yukina. She, too, was very much a resident of the Demon Sanctuary.

  “…Why?”

  Against her expectations, there were no guards keeping watch outside the girls’ room.

  Yukina had slipped out of the room because she’d had suspicions about that.

  Even on a ship with nowhere to run, it felt a little too careless, not something one would expect from the highly trained Black Death Emperor Front. As she pondered such doubts, Yukina headed down a corridor along the ship’s side. But she just couldn’t make out guards anywhere.

  The Oceanus Grave was so quiet that it almost seemed like a ghost ship.

  She realized that one of the Oceanus Grave’s lifeboats was being lowered onto the surface of the sea. The ship’s crew and Black Death Emperor Front noncombat personnel were boarding the lifeboat one after another. No doubt that was the reason why there were no soldiers standing guard.

  “…Why evacuate noncombatants at a time like this?”

  Yukina was perplexed, but of course no answer came to mind. Right now the Oceanus Grave was in no special danger. She saw no reason why they should abandon ship on the verge of seizing the Nalakuvera, creating a decisively favorable situation for them.

  If there was any kind of danger, it wasn’t from outside the ship…

  “It can’t be…?!”

  Following her Sword Shaman instincts, Yukina sprinted. Her destination was not up to the bridge, but down,
toward the cargo bay at the bottom of the ship. Though the Oceanus Grave was a cruise ship, it also had a stern gate like a freighter. In other words, it was capable of transporting a huge amount of cargo.

  As if to confirm Yukina’s expectations, the corridor that continued to the cargo bay had armed Black Death Emperor Front troops standing guard: two beast men armed with automatic pistols.

  She had no time to hesitate. Yukina leaped down the corridor, sprinting with all her strength to close the distance with the soldiers. As she expected, the soldiers were unprepared for this, their reactions dulled.

  Yukina soared in midair before they could aim their guns.

  “…Crouching Thunder!”

  She delivered a ferocious roundhouse kick to the temple of one of the soldiers as he turned.

  Though beast men had exceptional endurance, their anatomy was identical to that of human beings. If you rattled the brain around, you could inflict a slight concussion, especially if you did it before they bestialized.

  “Raw Lightning!”

  Crouching to use the unconscious soldier as a shield, she continued with a thrust to the solar plexus of the other soldier, releasing the ritual energy inside her body in the process. The stout beast-man soldier fainted in pain from the single blow.

  Yukina turned toward the cargo bay, not even glancing at the fallen soldiers. She pushed open the heavy metallic door, her eyes widening in shock at the sight.

  “This is…”

  The vast cargo bay contained densely packed, thickly armored weapons. Each had six legs, two feelers, and a crimson, glowing laser-gun eye.

  “It can’t be… These are all Nalakuvera?!”

  There were five inactive ancient weapons in total. There was something even larger positioned farther within, but Yukina couldn’t make it out from her location.

  Yukina heard a voice from behind her that was ferocious yet calm.

  “…Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency, is it? Even better than rumored. In Europe, not many people can take down a beast man unarmed, even by surprise. Splendid work.”

  “Kristof Gardos…!”

  Yukina called out the man’s name. The aged officer of the Black Death Emperor Front smiled as he watched Yukina, utterly composed.

  “Not even Vattler knows about these. He might not have cooperated with us if he knew.”

  “So this is your true objective? Getting your hands on a Nalakuvera army?!”

  Gardos nodded solemnly.

  “War is not decided by the abilities of each individual weapon, but by combined military strength. The First Primogenitor’s combat ability is fearsome, but a single man cannot defend all of the Warlord’s Empire. A flock of combat machines that consume debris to repair themselves, able to fight in perpetuity…a sight to make the heart flutter, don’t you think?”

  Taking enjoyment in watching the horrified Yukina, Gardos continued his voluminous explanation. Apparently, in spite of being the leader of a terrorist group, he was blessed with a gift for oratory.

  “Even if we do not destroy the First Primogenitor, the collapse of his Dominion will make the Holy Ground Treaty unsustainable. In so doing, we will achieve our objective. That combat maniac Vattler surely cannot understand our reasons.”

  “So you’re saying, you’ll sacrifice not only Itogami Island, but the people of your own homeland, the Warlord’s Empire?”

  Yukina glared at Gardos with a look of rage. Gardos nodded, his expression unchanged.

  “Of course. That is why they call us terrorists.”

  Without a word, Yukina lowered her center of gravity.

  Even a single Nalakuvera threatened to destroy the entirety of Itogami City. And the Black Death Emperor Front had five more of them. She could not allow such power to fall into their hands.

  If she could take down Gardos here, even it meant sacrificing herself…

  “Hu-hu-hu, quite ambitious, aren’t you? What a pity. If I’d had people like you in my unit, I wouldn’t have had to watch my old friend, the Black Death Emperor, killed right before my eyes…”

  Watching Yukina enter a combat stance, Gardos seemed pleased as he stroked the old scar on his cheek. He drew a knife from his back. His physique let out a creak as his muscles swelled all over his body. He was bestializing.

  However much intellect he displayed, his instincts were those of a terrorist who craved battle and destruction. Raising his voice in joy at the expected slaughter, he thrust his knife forward with incredible force.

  Yukina evaded the gale-like attack by a paper-thin margin.

  “Ha-ha! Splendid. Dodging my knife!”

  Gardos immediately altered the arc of his knife. But the powerful movement created an opening to his side. Yukina slipped past Gardos’s attack and placed a palm on his flank.

  “…Distort!”

  She unleashed a palm strike at point-blank range.

  In close combat, this was Yukina’s trump card—sending the force of an impact past a beast man’s thick flesh straight into its innards. She had once used the same technique to destroy the Lotharingian Armed Apostle’s armored augmentation suit.

  But the feedback of Yukina’s palm was odd. Her face grimaced as she put distance between them.

  There was no damage to Gardos’s body. Yukina’s palm strike had not worked upon him.

  “…Bio-barrier?!”

  “That is the skill you call qigong, is it not? You thought I was unversed in the martial arts because I am a beast man, didn’t you?”

  Gardos made an amused smile as he repositioned his knife.

  To Yukina, the knife wasn’t the real threat. Gardos’s grip could easily shatter Yukina’s bones; a tackle using that massive frame would no doubt smash Yukina’s body to pieces.

  Even knowing that, retreat was not an option for Yukina.

  “…Roaring Thunder!”

  Kicking off the wall and ceiling for acceleration, Yukina launched a tricky flying kick, using it to strike the side of Gardos’s head.

  There was no evading the attack, but Gardos stopped it cold with his forehead. His reaction speed and quick decision-making were products of a vast amount of combat experience.

  “Hnng!!”

  Gardos altered his direction with a shake of his head, sending Yukina’s light body flying back.

  Yukina somersaulted in midair like a cat and landed on the floor. Gardos chose that exact moment to barrel forward with his shoulder. Yukina barely managed to pull back and avoid him.

  Gardos’s action looked suicidal, but the aged officer broke through the outer wall of the Oceanus Grave, heading straight out with barely a scratch.

  It was ridiculous destructive power even by the standards of hardy beast men.

  Yukina pursued Gardos out onto the deck. She thought combat there would be more advantageous than in the narrow confines of the ship. However, at this rate, even if she continued to fight, she had no sense she could win.

  Their combat skill was roughly equal. Gardos held the absolute advantage in speed; Yukina had the advantage in explosiveness. But the power difference was just too great.

  Even though one blow from Gardos would put Yukina out of the fight, none of her attacks had worked on him at all.

  Furthermore, Gardos was not holding back or underestimating Yukina whatsoever.

  At this rate, defeat was inevitable. The moment such a feeling of despair began holding Yukina in its grip…

  …A gust of incredible force assaulted both of them.

  “What’s this wind?!” Gardos exclaimed in response to the sudden shift. It was a fierce wind one could only call a windstorm. The wind speed was surely the rival of that of a Category 5 typhoon. The lightweight Yukina was in danger of being easily blown away at the slightest loss of concentration. She couldn’t breathe with the mass of air directly slamming into her.

  But what was truly surprising was the tranquillity of the sea all around the Oceanus Grave. The gust was raging in the vicinity of Yukina and Gardos alone.
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  Something was flying, riding on the wind. It had a beautiful silver blade. Its tip was split into a triple fork. The silhouette resembled a swept-wing fighter plane. It was a completely metallic, silver-colored spear—

  “Snowdrift Wolf?!”

  In midair, Yukina snatched the flying spear that had ridden the wind.

  That moment, the raging windstorm abated, as if now that Yukina had received the spear, its duty was done…

  “Who did this…?!”

  She gazed with a shocked look on her face at the spear that had returned to her own hand.

  The all-metal Snowdrift Wolf was by no means a lightweight weapon. Even though it had approached much closer to land, the Oceanus Grave was still some four to five hundred meters from Itogami Island.

  To hurl the spear from that distance to deliver it to Yukina…she didn’t know who it was, but it had to be someone extremely capable.

  She personally knew of no one capable of such a feat. Furthermore, for that person to know Yukina was the wielder of the spear meant he or she knew exactly who and what Yukina was. But she’d worry about the person’s identity later. The man she had to strike down was right before her eyes.

  “Hmm. A Wind Master, is it?”

  Gardos muttered while unhappily brushing down his wind-battered forelocks.

  “As expected of the Far East’s Demon Sanctuary; so many people making use of irregular talents. However…”

  As Yukina glared at him, spear poised, his lips curled upward in delight.

  “So this means I finally get to see your true power. Interesting. A strategic battle of probing, thrusting, steel and blood; this is what war should be like.”

  The joy of combat burned brightly in the beast man’s eyes. But what flowed from Yukina’s lips was a serene chant the polar opposite of the aged officer’s ferocious roar.

  “—I, Maiden of the Lion, Sword Shaman of the High God, beseech thee.”

  Ritual energy surged within Yukina’s body, amplifying Snowdrift Wolf. The glow made Gardos narrow his eyes. He realized that the silver spear in Yukina’s hands was extremely dangerous to demonkind.

  Gardos raised his knife and charged the defenselessly dancing Yukina. Yukina moved to intercept the blow, her movements rather sluggish…