From the Warlord's Empire

by Gakuto Mikumo

  “Oh, purifying light, Oh, divine wolf of the snowdrift, by your divine steel will, strike down the devils before me!”

  Victory and defeat were decided in an instant. As the beautiful silver light crossed and vanished, the single attack Yukina unleashed had severed Gardos at the upper arm, taking the knife-wielding hand with it.

  “…Splendid, Sword Shaman. But I shall be the victor of the war.”

  Even as fresh blood gushed from the open wound, Gardos laughed. He picked up the severed right arm and leaped over Yukina’s head, heading toward the upper deck.

  There stood two of Gardos’s men.

  One was clutching a tablet PC to his chest; the other was holding one school uniform–wearing girl in each of his arms.

  “Asagi-senpai?! Nagisa?!”

  Yukina let out brief screams as she beheld the sight of the soundly sleeping girls.

  Giving in to anger, she raised her spear and charged toward them. But a crimson beam of light suddenly swept before her: fire from a large-caliber laser.

  “Nalakuvera?! It can’t be…?!”

  Blood drained from Yukina’s face as she beheld the ominous sight of an ancient weapon piercing the surface of the sea as it emerged.

  Even as the Nalakuvera clung to the hull of the Oceanus Grave, it did not attack anyone.

  When Yukina realized this, she truly knew fear.

  This ancient weapon was not in a berserk state. It was moving according to its controller’s will.

  “The stone tablet decryption?”

  Gardos pressed his men for information. One of them answered while setting Asagi and Nagisa down on the deck.

  “It seems to be finished. Grigore has already confirmed that the contents are correct, as you can see.”

  “I do see,” said Gardos, making a satisfied nod. The bleeding from where Yukina had severed his arm had already stopped; pressing the lower arm section to the upper, they had already begun to fuse. His vitality was on a level shocking even for beast men.

  “…So, that’s how it is. Surrender now, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency. I’ve waited a long time for Vattler. I have no time to play with the likes of you.”

  Yukina was completely backed into a corner. Even with Snowdrift Wolf, taking on Gardos and another pair of beast men at the same time would prove a difficult battle. On top of that, they had Asagi and Nagisa hostage; furthermore, they had the Nalakuvera under control. Any way one sliced it, Yukina had no chance of victory.

  The Oceanus Grave pulled alongside the free-floating Sub-float No. 13, Nalakuvera in tow.

  No doubt Gardos and his group’s objective was to transport the inactive Nalakuvera in the cargo bay ashore, activating them once there. They meant to fight Vattler with all six Nalakuvera at once.

  Even knowing this, there was nothing Yukina could do about it. With a roar echoing from its hydraulic pump, the stern gate of the Oceanus Grave opened.

  A moment later…

  Yukina’s ears were pierced by a screaming, bestial howl reverberating through the air.

  And the sub-float shuddered fiercely, countless fragments scattering about, as if it had been hit by a bomb.

  4

  “Shit…this one’s a dead end, too, huh?”

  Kojou’s tired voice echoed amid the darkness. They were inside one of the narrow maintenance shafts spread throughout the sub-float.

  Logically, the path would continue all the way to the surface, but it was not so simple in practice. On top of being like a maze, various sections were blocked off by rubble. After going back and forth several times over, Kojou and Sayaka had completely lost track of where they were.

  However, seawater continued steadily lapping at their feet. Water leaking from overhead had already drenched Kojou and Sayaka from head to toe.

  “This isn’t good. The water level’s rising faster. At this rate, it won’t last ten minutes before sinking.”

  Sayaka sent a hateful glare toward the rubble blocking their path as she murmured.

  Kojou kicked aside a girder at his feet.

  “…I can’t just blow it away with Regulus Aurum, though, can I?”

  Sayaka stared straight at Kojou.

  “If you summoned a mass of electricity into a drenched place like this, I’d be burned to a crisp along with anyone on the surface… Even you’d be hit pretty bad, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah, suppose I would.”

  Kojou sullenly slumped his shoulders. He’d had a vague sense of this before, but there were too many situations where a vampire’s Beast Vassals were of no use whatsoever. Even the backlight of his cell phone was a lot more useful as a wannabe flashlight than that fiendish lightning lion.

  “Lustrous Scale can’t do anything about a pile of debris this big, either.”

  Sayaka spoke while dragging her heavy-looking sword along with her left hand.

  Well I suppose that’s true, too, thought Kojou.

  “Even if a master swordsman can split a boulder in two, you can’t dig a tunnel with a katana, huh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Making a weak smile as she spoke, Sayaka sneezed; it was oddly charming.

  Kojou noticed that her drenched shoulders were shivering a bit.

  “Figures it’s cold down here, all wet like it is.”

  Murmuring as he made white breaths, Kojou’s eyes suddenly fell upon Sayaka’s breasts.

  Her wet, open-neck blouse was clinging to her skin, with her bra easy to see through it. The light pink floral pattern wrapped around two bountiful hills separated by an enchantingly deep valley.

  To a vampire’s night vision, it was an image far more vivid than was necessary.

  “What is it?”

  As Kojou suddenly went silent, Sayaka peered at his face, as if there was something mysterious about it.

  “R-right,” went Kojou as he averted his eyes in a hurry. Sayaka looked squarely at Kojou, a suspicious look on her face, and finally gasped before covering her own breasts.

  “Kojou Akatsuki…!”

  “I-I’m not! I thought, it’s cold, so I figured maybe I should lend you my parka…”

  “As if I’d wear a parka drenched with your hormones! I’d get pregnant!”

  “Like hell you would!! What—do you really think vampires are here?!” Kojou yelled quite loudly. But for some reason, he did not hear the expected retort from Sayaka. She hung her head on the spot and began messing with her fingernails.

  “…I-it makes me feel bad for Yukina somehow.”

  “Ah? Yukina’s got nothin’ to do with this. Here, put it on already.”

  Kojou forced his own parka onto the girl’s shoulders. She was still drenched, but the warmth from Kojou’s own body heat would surely help a tiny bit.

  As if tasting that body heat for herself, Sayaka pulled the parka’s collar closer.

  “Hey, Kojou Akatsuki?”

  “What now?”

  “Do you think it’d work out if you used a different Beast Vassal?”

  “Well…in this situation, I suppose, yeah.”

  Kojou frowned as he remembered someone having asked him a very similar question not long ago.

  Kojou had inherited the twelve Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor. Surely one of them could blow the debris to bits in this situation; the one that had been on the verge of pulverizing the school’s roof, perhaps.

  “…But when Regulus Aurum came against my will before, it burned a section of Island East to a crisp. If something like that happened here, an artificial island on its last legs like this would sink straight to the bottom of the sea.”

  This said, Kojou made a sigh. Why did the Beast Vassals of the Fourth Primogenitor have to be so difficult to use?

  But Sayaka continued to look up at Kojou.

  “If you can control it, it’s fine, right? Yukina let you suck her blood so that you could, right?”

  “Kirasaka?”

  Kojou raised his eyebrows at Sayaka’s acting like she was mulling something ov
er.

  For some reason, Sayaka’s cheeks were red, her gaze wandering all about.

  “Er, ah, y’know, I really am…big, aren’t I?”

  As she posed her abrupt question, Kojou’s reply got caught in his throat. His gaze subconsciously shifted to how her breasts poked out from the parka’s seams.

  “W-well, you’re certainly not small compared to Himeragi.”

  “I suppose not. Not cute at all.”

  Sayaka spoke with a self-deprecating smile.

  What does she mean? Kojou wondered, perplexed. Perhaps she couldn’t wear cute bra designs because her breasts were too big or something? Certainly one might argue Sayaka’s body was too curvaceous for that. But…

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about, though.”

  “Eh?”

  “A lot of guys like big, right? Feminine.”

  Kojou spoke while his head throbbed from recalling his best friend.

  But Sayaka tilted her head with a perplexed look.

  “Feminine? Smaller isn’t cuter?”

  “Well, ah, there’s certainly people who like that, too. People have different tastes about that. Well, it might be hard on a girl’s shoulders and stuff, though.”

  “…Hard on the shoulders? What do you mean?”

  Sayaka’s eyes blinked a few times. Kojou tilted his head a bit, just like she was.

  “Er? It’s not like that? I thought I saw some gravure idol talking about that once…”

  “Gravure idol?”

  Sayaka’s face turned serious, the confused look vanishing. Finally, her shoulders began slow, angry tremors as she spoke.

  “…Who’s talking about breasts here?! I’m talking height, height!!”

  “Ah? Why are you talking about height all of a sudden?”

  “I’ve been talking about that from the beginning here!”

  Sayaka growled in her throat like a ferocious dog.

  Kojou had a languid look on his face as he looked down at Sayaka.

  “Kirasaka, it’s not like you’re that tall, anyway. A hundred sixty-six or seven, about there? That’s normal good looks in my book.”

  As a former basketball player, Kojou found height of Sayaka’s level to be completely normal. He even thought that her eye level made her easier to talk to up close.

  Perhaps the last phrase came off well, for Sayaka’s mood improved slightly.

  “Even so, I was the tallest girl in my whole school! Thanks to that, I kept getting the royal princess treatment…”

  “Royal princess treatment…?”

  Kojou remembered how she’d desperately yelled, “This doesn’t count.” She seemed oddly worked up about it, but to Sayaka, who was so sensitive about her height, it was a pretty big deal.

  “Th-that’s why I was just a little happy. That’s never happened to me before.” Sayaka spoke, beet red to the tips of her ears. “S-so it’s really just that. It’s not that I fantasized about someday having a fateful encounter with a man who sweeps me off my feet and falling in love with him or anything…!”

  “R-right.”

  Kojou was a bit relieved that Sayaka wasn’t actually angry.

  Right now, she looked like an ordinary high school girl, just like Kojou’s classmates. You wouldn’t think she and the War Dancer who fought the Nalakuvera so valiantly were one and the same. This was probably the Sayaka that Yukina had always seen as her roommate. He could even agree with the thought that she was cute.

  Sayaka grabbed Kojou’s uniform over his stomach and gave it a gentle pull. In doing so, she pulled herself closer to Kojou. Before Kojou knew it, the two were close enough that their breaths were mixing together.

  “So…keep this secret from Yukina, okay?”

  Sayaka’s voice trembled as she murmured. It was no doubt because of cold and fear.

  But seeming to have made her decision, her trembling ceased the instant she leaned fully into him.

  “I thought I’d let you suck my blood to thank you, just once. Or perhaps I’m not good enough?”

  Kojou was moved by the sight of Sayaka’s teary eyes looking up at him.

  “No, nothing like that, but are you all right with this, Kirasaka…?”

  Sayaka responded to Kojou’s concerned inquiry by gently moving her hands around his back.

  Kojou and Sayaka’s bodies were still cold and dripping wet. However, their skin, pressed together like this, conveyed gentle warmth to the other.

  “I’m…not afraid of you. Strange, isn’t it…? You being the World’s Mightiest Vampire and all…”

  As Sayaka said that, she gently touched Kojou’s mouth, Kojou’s sharp, tapered fangs…

  The flow of water into the corridor increased in vigor, strongly enough that they might be swept away if they were not embracing each other so strongly. Finally, their two silhouettes merged into one, with Sayaka’s minute pants echoing across the surface of the water.

  5

  “Shit…it just ain’t gonna work.”

  Yaze made ragged breaths as he spat out the remnants of the capsules he’d stuffed down his throat.

  The chaotic vortex of air around him was an aftereffect of having used his ability.

  He’d hurled Yukina’s left-behind Snowdrift Wolf all the way to the Oceanus Grave floating atop the ocean. It was makeshift work only possible with Yaze’s control of the wind, but that much had worked out.

  Yukina had defeated Gardos as he’d hoped. According to Yaze’s calculations, Yukina and the other girls would finally be safe. He hadn’t counted on the Nalakuvera’s control codes being deciphered faster than he expected.

  “Even Himeragi can’t do anything against that ancient weapon. Damn you, Asagi, I risked an adverse reaction to help you, but you just had to work so damned hard…”

  Yaze spat out frail complaints while slumping down to the ground.

  Watching Yaze like that with an amused expression, Vattler, wearing his gaudy three-piece suit, spoke.

  “I see. So as an observer, you are forbidden from direct intervention in combat. This must be quite hard on you…”

  “Only ’cause you got in my way back there. Would’ve gone a little better if you hadn’t.”

  Yaze glanced sideways at Vattler, glaring. Yaze had realized the Black Death Emperor Front had been aboard the Oceanus Grave right after Asagi and the girls had been kidnapped. If he’d been able to leak that intel to the Island Guard, they wouldn’t have fallen for the decoy operation; things would’ve no doubt unfolded much differently.

  “But thanks to that, it’s been quite an amusing sight.”

  Vattler said that without the slightest bit of shame.

  Five Nalakuvera units were being hauled out of the Oceanus Grave just as it pulled alongside Sub-float No. 13.

  Even one of the ancient weapons wielded considerable combat ability, but they had six in total. To Vattler, that surely made it a deeply fascinating battle. This was what he’d come all the way to a small island in the Orient for.

  “Now then, Gardos’s preparations appear to be complete, so perhaps it’s my turn finally?”

  Anticipating a battle to the death as he had not known in some time, Vattler began cheerfully walking forward.

  Yaze made a sarcastic laugh behind his back.

  “Don’t be so sure. Let me say this as the Fourth Primogenitor’s best friend… I don’t think you should expect him to behave according to plan.”

  As if to back up his words, the area around Vattler and Yaze was bathed with a painful, high-frequency ringing.

  What followed was a ferocious tremor that made the entire sub-float creak and tremble.

  “…Oh my,” Vattler murmured with what seemed like admiration. An incredible mass of magical power had emerged from beneath the sub-float, releasing an ominous, indiscriminate surge in all directions.

  It was a wild, violent mass of energy surpassing even Vattler’s fused Beast Vassal. Such a thing did not exist on Itogami Island, with the sole exception of the Beast V
assals of Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor…

  “There you are, Kojou.” Yaze murmured in apparent satisfaction, closing his eyes, his strength seemingly exhausted.

  An explosive sound gushed out from underground, becoming a shock wave that blasted through the surface of the sub-float, sending a huge amount of debris swirling into the air. Even so, the roar that shook the ground did not vanish.

  The tremor warped the condensation in the atmosphere, creating a shimmer; finally, the shimmer changed into the form of a beast: a giant beast, bearing two horns, with an incandescent, glittering mane…

  Gardos’s conduct was swift and decisive.

  “One of the Fourth Primogenitor’s Beast Vassals! Grigore! I’ll head out in the queen. Hold him off until then.”

  “…Copy that, Lieutenant Colonel.”

  With that final phrase over the radio, the first Nalakuvera went on the move with a roar. It headed toward the twin-horned Beast Vassal as it scattered its crimson beam all about.

  “Wait, Kristof Gardos!”

  Yukina turned her silver spear over and chased after them. With a scornful, annoyed look at her, one of Gardos’s men threw something. It was a metallic cylinder about the size of a tin juice container.

  Yukina was terrified the moment she realized it was a grenade.

  Their hostages, Asagi and Nagisa, had been left behind on the upper deck. If they took that at point-blank range, the defenseless girls would be blown away without a trace.

  Yukina gave up on pursuing Gardos and rushed to cover the girls lying on the deck. Her intent was to use her body as a shield to protect them both from the grenade explosion.

  “…!”

  But Yukina was not struck by the impact she had resigned herself to.

  Far into the distance, a small bit of water spray flew up and scattered over the sea.

  “Eh?”

  Confused, Yukina rose to her feet. There had been no time to pick up the grenade and throw it. There certainly hadn’t been enough time to spare to hurl it that great a distance.

  But the grenade had been moved regardless, as if someone had teleported it along with the space around it…

  “…It would seem you’re all safe, relatively speaking.”