“He is not. We’re always arguing, and just the day before yesterday, he went and ate all the ice cream on his own. It was my precious Dark Mont Blanc that I don’t buy more than once in a blue moon. I mean, that’s unbelievable. No one does that. I lectured him a ton and he went out and bought more and all…!”
Nagisa’s cheeks puffed up in a major bout of irritation.
The class rep murmured in exasperation, “See? Sweet.”
“What? Dark Mont Blanc?” Nagisa blinked and shook her head. “Not really, it’s kind of a bittersweet taste.”
Incidentally, Yukina was well aware of that incident. Since Kojou had suddenly left during the night, Yukina, his watcher, hurried off after him.
In the end, Kojou had to hit no less than four convenience stores before getting the right ice cream, making Yukina, who’d stuck with Kojou until the bitter end, the primary victim of the sibling argument.
It would soon be nine AM. The ferry, having set sail from Itogami Harbor at seven, would be stopping at Kamijo Island and Bikura Island, part of the Izu archipelago, and was expected to finally arrive at Tokyo Harbor’s Takeshiba Pier at eleven thirty.
One hundred and fifty-six middle school seniors were packed into the ship’s second-class, tatami-style quarters. They had been divvied up according to classroom and things like similar game interests and speaking styles for maximum fun during the voyage. Yet, despite all that, it was still somehow mysterious that you could look at the blue sea stretching beyond the reinforced glass of the window and never, ever get bored.
Cindy asked, “What’s on our schedule for later, anyway?”
The class rep dutifully answered, “We’ll assemble in the hall at ten thirty, and we’ll watch an educational video before mealtime.”
“I wonder what dinner will be?” Nagisa wondered aloud. “Curry, maybe? I’d love to eat curry— Ah, Kanon!”
Nagisa, still looking like she was practically drooling at the thought, noticed her friend standing there, and waved.
Kanon Kanase, standing at the edge of the window, looked back with a flutter of her long, silver hair.
“Ah, Nagisa. Good morning to everyone.” Kanon gave them a reverential greeting as a large, black pair of binoculars hung down from her neck. Apparently it was a rental from the ferry company. “I got some binoculars. I heard you can see wild dolphins in this area.”
Kanon’s blue, gemstone-like eyes twinkled as she spoke. Kanon was an animal lover through and through. Normally a rather docile girl, wild animals made her display a dynamism you wouldn’t expect.
Nagisa’s expression brightened as she stood up. “Dolphins?! Wow, that’s great, I wanna see, too!”
Yukina and the others moved to the edge of the window.
“I’ve seen them before,” Cindy remarked. “It was right near here, come to think of it. Here’s a photo.”
Cindy got her cell phone out. The image displayed on-screen showed a ship with a pod of dolphins leaping out of the sea alongside it. It raised the girls’ hopes further.
However, several minutes passed without any sign of a dolphin showing its fins.
“No dolphins, huh,” Nagisa murmured, downhearted.
Cindy patted her back in consolation. “They’re not going to appear just like that, are they?”
“It’s a big ocean,” the class rep added in a detached tone.
But that moment, Kanon and Yukina gasped as they noticed something, shifting their gazes toward the stern of the ship. There was something silver glittering in the sea, floating between the gaps of the white wake left in the ferry’s path. Afterward, they had a funny feeling someone was watching them.
There was a metallic object at sail, reminiscent of a mini sub or a torpedo… However, it wriggled its giant body like a sea serpent and immediately sank back under the water.
“Huh, what was that?” Nagisa’s eyes went wide in confusion. “Was that a dolphin?”
It can’t be, Yukina muttered under her breath.
Beside her, Kanon bit down on her lip, as if she were afraid.
2
The dust and smoke given off by wrecked buildings hovered over the harbor like ominous morning mist.
Yaze sat sluggishly on the sloped roof of a lighthouse as he took in the view.
The enormous gantry crane that Yaze had been standing on but a brief time before had been bent over and severed near its foundation, and now lay pathetically on its side over the pier below. It was well beyond repair.
Yaze should have been in the same state. But a tiny silhouette wielding a black parasol had saved him.
Natsuki Minamiya, her extremely out-of-place frilly dress rustling in the breeze, asked, “Are you alive, Yaze?”
Out of thin air, she’d teleported in to rescue Yaze just in the nick of time before he would have crashed into the ground along with the crane.
“Yeah, somehow.”
Yaze sluggishly lifted up his face, using the headphones to comb down his disheveled hair. “Dammit, I really thought I was a goner that time… Thanks, Natsuki. Really saved my butt.”
The woman glowered in displeasure as she kicked Yaze’s back with a heel. “Don’t call your homeroom teacher by her given name. What is it with you and Akatsuki…? Just what do you think a homeroom teacher is?!”
Yaze raised both bloodstained arms above his head as he desperately pleaded for mercy. “Hey, wait—ow, I’m wounded here! I’m bleeding! I’m gushing!”
He might have been saved from a crash landing, but he’d still taken hits from fragments blown by the explosion, rendering Yaze wounded all over his body.
Natsuki ignored her pupil’s pleas as she looked over the state of the pier. Over ten of the giant warehouses standing on the ocean coastline had been wrecked and set aflame. The Island Guard unit that had surrounded the Wiseman’s Blood had been completely routed. Fortunately, fatalities had been few, but the guardsmen were in a heavily confused state and their gear thoroughly depleted.
It was all thanks to the strange skull that Kou Amatsuka had plunged into the Wiseman’s Blood. The mysterious beam that the skull emitted blew the Island Guard away in a single blow.
“Quite a sight,” Natsuki murmured in what sounded like pity.
Yaze scratched his head as he looked up at her. “Sorry, we screwed up. We misread Amatsuka’s goal.”
“The resurrection of Wiseman?”
“—You knew?” Yaze asked back in surprise.
Natsuki’s doll-like face was expressionless as she nodded gravely. “Kensei Kanase regained consciousness only a short time ago. Thanks to him, I know a variety of quite interesting things. The Aldegian Knights fed me some tips, too.”
Yaze’s lips twisted in displeasure. “I really would’ve appreciated hearing about all this beforehand…”
If they’d known Amatsuka’s goal was the resurrection of Wiseman, they would’ve been able to plan accordingly.
They certainly wouldn’t have tried to riddle Amatsuka full of bullets made of precious metals and lend him a helping hand.
But Natsuki snorted coldly. “The investigative division told them loud and clear to leave it to the Attack Mages. I understand the anger over their fellow guardsmen having been killed, but—”
“Yeah… In the end, that was used against them and the casualty list just got longer, huh.”
There we go. Yaze wiped blood from the corner of his mouth and rose to his feet.
“Natsuki, do you know what state the Island Guard is in, overall?”
“The chain of command is a real mess. It’s all they can do to care for the wounded guardsmen. They requested reinforcements, but the garrison at Keystone Gate won’t leave under these circumstances. They are relegated to calling up off-duty members until reserves arrive from the mainland.”
Yaze scowled and sighed. “So losing half its strength means there’s zero to spare.”
“Well, either way, if Wiseman is anything like he’s cracked up to be, the Island Guard’s normal gear w
on’t stand a chance. You could try calling up supernatural-augmented units and demon mercenaries working for private industry?”
“That would be nice. A certain snake charmer isn’t guaranteed to play nice forever here.”
Natsuki shot an annoyed glance at a single, elaborate ship—Dimitrie Vattler’s Oceanus Grave II—still maintaining its silence.
Even if Vattler had displayed no interest in Amatsuka, there was no telling what his reaction would be if he learned that the Wiseman had emerged. They needed to find Amatsuka and bring matters to a close before that nuisance of a vampire made a bigger mess of things.
Yaze toyed with the headphones hanging from his neck as he ruefully confessed, “But it’s gonna take a while before I can re-deploy my Soundscape.”
Soundscape was a special field that Yaze could create through the use of his psychic powers as a so-called Hyper-Adaptor. There, he could keep track of all sound within the barrier with a precision rivaling the finest radars in existence. Yaze could even keep track of the movements of an amorphous metallic life-form such as the Wiseman’s Blood.
However, Soundscape was so sensitive that it had a fatal weakness to loud sounds…such as explosions. Until the aftereffects of Amatsuka’s attack completely disappeared, Yaze was unable to re-deploy the field—which meant that it would be several hours minimum before he could get back on Amatsuka’s trail.
“You really are quite useless when push comes to shove,” Natsuki declared, sounding disappointed. “You’ll never get your hands on Shizuka like this.”
“Oh, shut up! And how do you know about that, anyway?!”
“You and Akatsuki really are birds of a feather.”
Yaze sounded rather crushed. “I feel like that’s a horrible thing for a homeroom teacher to say here…”
Without warning, Natsuki snapped her fingers, causing the air before his eyes to ripple. She’d opened a teleportation gate.
“Fine. I’ll take it from here. Get to school ASAP. You should still be able to make it in time.”
“H-hey, Natsuki! Wait up! I’m begging you!”
Yaze hastily called for her to stop, but the witch didn’t even look back as she stepped through the gate. She seemed to melt into thin air as she vanished.
Yaze was completely beside himself. He shook his head, clutching it as he hunched over.
The ocean breeze caressed Yaze’s face as he remained on the sloped roof of the lighthouse, dozens of meters above the sea.
“How the hell am I supposed to get down from here…?!”
3
Around that time, Kojou Akatsuki was close to that very same pier. He’d come running when Nina had sensed the presence of the Wiseman’s Blood.
However, the beast was already long gone. The Island Guard guardsmen had withdrawn as well, leaving only the wreckage of overwhelming destruction.
“What the hell is this?” Kojou exclaimed, gazing upon the scrap heap that had once been the warehouses and a wharf crane. “Did that amorphous blob do all this?”
It was damage sufficient to alter the topography of the harbor. It looked like a bombed-out city in the middle of a war. But the scars left by the buildings were clearly different than those caused by simple weapons of destruction such as bombs. The destroyed crane was smooth where it had been severed, as if mowed down by a giant, invisible blade. And the concrete walls of various warehouses had been melted by high temperatures, collapsing when no longer able to bear the structures’ weight.
Nina Adelard, appearing as Asagi, whispered as she surveyed the destroyed buildings, “It’s a heavy-metal particle-cannon attack.”
Right now, she was wearing a reproduction of Asagi’s school uniform. Obviously walking around in a tracksuit would have drawn too much attention, so Nina had used alchemy to recreate the school uniform, not a single thread askew.
“Particle cannon?”
Kojou was in shock as he asked. Indeed, replied Nina with a nod.
“It is a type of electron beam, so to speak.”
“—A beam weapon?!”
Nina seemed mystified as she looked back at Kojou, who was still shocked, as she casually continued her explanation. “It’s nothing as grand as you imagine. It’s merely scattering a collection of particles into the atmosphere; the range is several kilometers at most. Even a direct hit can’t achieve more than disintegration at the atomic level.”
“That’s plenty bad, isn’t it?!”
Kojou took a deep breath, looking like his every hair was standing up.
It was a beam weapon capable of atomic disassembly of all matter within a half-kilometer radius. He couldn’t even picture in his mind the damage a weapon like that could inflict if unleashed upon an urban area. In the worst case, Itogami Island could be destroyed in an instant.
“It can even use attacks like that?! So this is Amatsuka’s doing?”
“No,” Nina replied in a voice colder and harder than before. “This was the Wiseman.”
It was a frail voice unsuited to her.
Kojou, perplexed, replied, “Who’s that…?”
As he did, Nina’s thin, pleasant smile seemed somehow mocking. “Have you not found it odd that the mass of liquid metal is called ‘Wiseman’s Blood’ but have not wondered just who the Spirit Blood might belong to?”
“So the rightful owner of the Spirit Blood…is named Wiseman?!”
“Indeed.”
Kojou subconsciously scowled as he watched Nina quietly nod.
“So who the hell is he?” he asked.
“Do you know the ultimate objective of alchemy?”
“Y-yeah… To get closer to God…right?” Kojou replied with what he’d learned from the homunculus girl.
Nina narrowed her eyes, looking satisfied. “Correct. However, he is nothing as extravagant as a higher-dimensional being. Rather, he is an artificial Perfect Man, created through alchemy.”
“…And that’s what they call the Wiseman, huh?”
I see, Kojou murmured to himself. Come to think of it, it wasn’t all that crazy of an idea at all.
As far as alchemists were concerned, they already had the technology to create a “human being,” in the form of a homunculus. If anything, it was natural for alchemists to aim to produce “God” next.
“So what did they actually make?”
“They succeeded…in a sense.”
Nina spoke as if it didn’t concern her. Kojou was beside himself as he stared at her.
“That sounds like they failed on a lot of levels, you know.”
“It cannot be helped, for that is the truth. Alchemists wanted to create a perfect God, and naturally ended up with something too perfect.”
Kojou tilted his head as he asked, “…I don’t get it. What’s wrong with perfection?”
If that’s what they wanted and that’s what they got, there was nothing for them to be dissatisfied with, right—?
But Nina shook her head with a sarcastic laugh. “It is rather simple. A perfect individual being has no use for anyone but himself.”
“…Huh?”
“Living beings love and protect their own kind, for the survival of the species demands it. Indeed, humans naturally protect even those not of their own race, for they understand that not to do so invites their own destruction.”
“Instinct…huh?”
Nina’s detached manner of speaking deflated Kojou. It was sad she could say something like that so bluntly.
“Well, that might be true,” he continued, “but, you know, isn’t there a better way to put it or something?”
“Do not misunderstand, I am not criticizing. After all, life has its limits. Consequently, should a person not live life to the fullest, be it instinct or not?”
Nina gave off an impetuous laugh as she continued.
“Besides, this world’s ‘ecosystem’ is the result of various species pooling their collective knowledge together in the interest of mutual survival. Put in that light, one cannot so easily declare lov
e holds the world up, rather than instinct.”
Kojou’s face grew graver as he realized what Nina was truly getting at.
“I see. Then the Wiseman…!”
Nina agreed with a nod. “The Wiseman requires neither food nor breath to live. Even if every living creature on Earth perished and this became a planet of death, he would mind not. To the contrary, ’tis all the better for him, because his sole fear is that other life-forms might evolve and a more ‘perfect’ being would emerge.”
Kojou covered his eyes with a hand.
“They sure made one messed-up thing…”
They had created a man-made “God” that desired the death of all living things other than itself so that it would have a monopoly on perfection. That made it the darkest of blights, something for which the word evil seemed inadequate.
“…So what’d they do with the Wiseman they’d created?” Kojou asked.
“The Wiseman, an immutable being, could not be destroyed, so they sealed him away. They extracted all his Spirit Blood to rob him of his power. That was two hundred and seventy years ago.”
“So the Wiseman’s Blood is the stuff pulled out of him back then…”
Kojou sighed listlessly as he finally grasped the situation. But he immediately realized that Nina’s explanation was still missing one crucial piece. “Hold on, Nina. So what’s with you? How can you control the Wiseman’s Blood?”
“I am the Wiseman’s jailer to prevent his resurrection. I was chosen because I just happened to be the alchemist with the greatest spiritual power at the time. If the immutable Wiseman was to be watched, his watcher needed to be immutable as well. Thus, my consciousness was transferred to the Hard Core and the Wiseman’s Blood placed under my care.”
“But that…that’s like you’re…”
The scapegoat, Kojou was about to say, but he swallowed down his words.
This was the truth of Nina Adelard—a lonely warden bound to the Spirit Blood for all eternity to stop the immutable Wiseman from reviving. He had little doubt the alchemists of the day dubbed her a “legendary alchemist” to reduce even slightly the burden of their sins.
Nor did he doubt Nina herself was painfully aware of her own position. Kojou remembered the lonely expression on her face when she had murmured, I never sought to have a body like this.
Strike the Blood, Vol. 6 (light novel): Return of the Alchemist Page 14