Strike the Blood, Vol. 6 (light novel): Return of the Alchemist

by Gakuto Mikumo

  Natsuki’s unemotional explanation gave Kojou such a sense of relief that his knees almost gave out. He wouldn’t complain no matter how much of a bucket of bolts the plane was. If it could fly him to the ferry at max speed, he didn’t care if the thing crashed and burned after the fact.

  Nina forcefully wedged herself into their conversation. “I am going with him. No complaints, Natsuki Minamiya?”

  Natsuki nodded once and exhaled. “It sounds like a plan, Fake Tits. I was a bit nervous about the prospect of sending Akatsuki alone.”

  “…Me, alone? What, you’re not coming along, Natsuki?” Kojou asked in a dubious tone.

  Natsuki looked up at him and nodded frankly. “We’ll follow you by helicopter. It is not my preference, but I can’t think of anyone else besides the two of you who could endure flying in that.”

  “What do you mean, flying in ‘that’…?”

  The ominous ring of Natsuki’s word made Kojou hesitate instinctively. However, the woman made the air twist as she opened a gate, and seamlessly brushed Kojou off as she teleported the two.

  Kojou felt an uneasy floating sensation for a moment, something like being seasick, before he appeared in an unfamiliar place. With one sweep of his head, he saw a runway built on top of a Gigafloat stretching before his eyes. A horde of helicopters and tour planes was parked there. He was apparently right in the middle of Itogami Island’s central airport.

  But upon seeing one particular aircraft stationed in one particular spot, Kojou did a sudden double take.

  “Huh…?!”

  It was a shockingly huge craft. It was a ship built like a spindled balloon with a hull over five hundred meters long. The craft, large enough to carry a good couple-thousand people, was brimming with countless machine gun turrets. The hull’s thick armored shell, built with a special alloy, made the words flying fortress seem apt.

  It was an armored military airship. The glacier-like pearl blue armor was embellished with golden edges. And the hull was emblazoned with the image of a Valkyrie wielding a great sword.

  Kojou knew that emblem. It was the emblem of a Northern Europe nation, the Kingdom of Aldegia.

  8

  “The hell? An…airship?”

  Kojou looked up at the splendid vessel, a little beside himself as he spoke.

  Gazing at the airship up close made its size seem beyond comprehension. Were it not hovering slightly off the ground, one would think of it as an ornate castle.

  As the vampire stood rooted to the spot, he heard an amused, elegant voice from a speaker close by. He knew that voice, and its aristocratic tone that effortlessly projected class—

  “This is the armored airship Böðvildr, the pride of the Kingdom of Aldegia.”

  “That voice…?! La Folia?!”

  “I am pleased that you remember me. It has been a while, Kojou.”

  A large monitor hanging down from the airship displayed a beautiful, silver-haired girl. She greatly resembled Kanon Kanase, but she bore an overwhelming majesty that Kanon simply didn’t have.

  Princess La Folia Rihavein wore a blazer with gold embroidery that resembled a ceremonial military uniform. She was the princess of the Kingdom of Aldegia—“The Second Coming of Freya.”

  Even an image sent by satellite signal did little to diminish her presence. She was graced with an overwhelming aura that none but the finest artists could do justice to.

  And just brushing against that aura made Kojou break out in a cold sweat.

  Secretly, he had a very difficult time dealing with the wise and clever princess. She was a sharp cookie, and Kojou never knew what the hell she was thinking. In a different way than Natsuki, the world seemed to revolve around her.

  And with La Folia attracting such attention, there were three people down from the ship standing in her shadow. It was a group of three women unfamiliar to him, wearing blazers like that of La Folia, but without embroidery as extravagant as the princess’s. These were ordinary, practical military uniforms, and the women’s short-cut silver hair added to the impression that they were competent soldiers.

  “And you are—”

  “I am Interceptor Knight Kataya Justina of the Aldegian Knights of the Second Coming. I protect Her Highness the Royal Sister by the command of Princess La Folia.”

  “The Royal Sister?”

  For a moment, Kojou wasn’t sure who she was talking about, but he remembered after a little thought. Kanon Kanase was an illegitimate child of the former king of Aldegia. In other words, she was the half sister of the sitting king of Aldegia. That actually made her Princess La Folia’s aunt.

  “Protecting Kanon, huh? Wait, is that why you’re here on the island…?”

  The princess’s voice lowered just a little. Apparently the airship’s speaker was directional, meaning that Kojou and the others were the only ones hearing her voice.

  “Even if she has abandoned her place in the royal line of succession, Kanon is still a part of the Aldegian royal family. There was no guarantee someone would not emerge to use her position and capabilities for ill.”

  Kojou raised an eyebrow. “Kanon hasn’t said one word about this, though?”

  Even when Kanon was at school, there were no signs of a knight protecting her. It was the polar opposite of how Yukina hovered over Kojou’s life 24-7.

  “Justina is a talented Interceptor Knight. She is there to quietly eliminate threats to Kanon from the shadows, not to interfere in her daily life. Justina’s family is Japanese and she is quite a big fan of ninjas.”

  “…Ninjas?”

  When Kojou shot Justina a dubious look, she calmly pressed both palms together before her. She lowered her head like one did when making an earnest request.

  “Nin! The Japanese Ninja, faithfully serving her master, hiding in the shadows, seeking neither fame nor fortune, is the very essence of a knight. I have employed this mission as an opportunity to study further so that I may increase my mastery of chivalry.”

  “R-right. Well, that’s great.”

  Kojou, taken aback by the woman’s fervor, gave a vague, perfunctory reply. He belatedly noticed that La Folia’s image displayed on the monitor looked like she was striving hard not to laugh.

  She set this up on purpose, didn’t she? Kojou finally realized. That scheming princess was no doubt having a blast at how seriously Justina was taking this… And who greeted people with nin in real life, anyway…?

  Dragging things back to the subject at hand, Kojou asked, “You mean just like Amatsuka this time around…”

  La Folia nodded. “I grasped the situation rather early on. I was relying on Attack Mage Minamiya to protect Kanon because, unfortunately, we cannot intervene outside of the Demon Sanctuary.”

  These words spoken, the princess lowered her eyes in dismay. “And so, Kojou, I wish to borrow your strength.”

  Kojou made a small heh and shot the princess a smile. “It’s me who’s borrowing yours here, I think?”

  Minor personality quirks aside, La Folia’s desire to rescue Kanon was absolutely genuine. Kojou was truly grateful for her aid in his hour of need. Kojou followed up, “So we can ride on this airship till we get to Kanon and the others?”

  “No. Böðvildr would take over fifteen minutes to arrive at their present coordinates. That is too slow, and we do not have a moment to spare… Therefore, you will use this.”

  “This…?” Kojou murmured with a strong feeling of dread.

  Just as he looked, the airship opened a weapon rack, from which a strange piece of equipment emerged. It was an armored box that greatly resembled a ship-borne missile launcher…

  “When you say this, you don’t mean…the thing that’s sitting on that launcher?”

  The princess stated with an aloof tone, “This is Floaty, a prototype aircraft of the Knights of the Second Coming.”

  Kojou furiously ran his hands through his hair.

  “Wait a minute. That doesn’t look like any plane to me! That’s a cruise missile!”r />
  The princess smiled firmly as she declared, “It is a prototype aircraft. Normally, it is employed as an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, but we have removed the surveillance equipment so that we can cram…ah, board a person onto it. Its cruising speed is three thousand four hundred kilometers per hour. According to our calculations, it will impact, ah, arrive at its destination in one hundred and fifty seconds.”

  “Impact?! You said impact, didn’t you?! You took it back, but you said impact on purpose!!”

  Kojou’s voice boomed in indignation. Three thousand four hundred kilometers per hour amounted to Mach 2.8. There weren’t even many jet fighters that could reach that kind of speed. It was a straight-up supersonic cruise missile.

  As Kojou wavered, Natsuki punted his back from behind, as if to spur him on. “Hurry up already, there’s no time. Are you going to let the Princess’s goodwill go to waste?”

  “I think you’re mistaking ill will for goodwill, dammit…!”

  Kojou clenched his teeth in annoyance. Ignoring him, Nina fawned over the thing, saying, Modern aircraft are simply incredible! like an old woman. No doubt an immutable liquid metal life-form would hardly be inconvenienced by being crammed into the missile. Kojou apparently had no recourse but to harden his resolve.

  At the very, very end, La Folia shot him an earnest look. “Kanon is in your hands, Kojou.”

  Kojou gave her pale blue eyes a strained smile, but answered that gaze with a strong, silent nod. He turned and gave Asagi, whom he still had in his arms, to Natsuki.

  “Okay then. Natsuki, sorry, but could you get her home?”

  The woman took Asagi into her own arms, her beautiful face twisting in dismay. “Goodness. You have a lot of guts presenting your hooky partner to your teacher like this.”

  Afterward, Kojou walked toward the prototype aircraft. Riding in a missile wasn’t his first choice, but it sure beat letting Yukina and the others die while he sat back and watched.

  Then, just as Kojou was about to put his foot on the airship’s gangplank, an unexpected voice called out to him. It was the voice of a cat—the familiar of Yukina’s master that had been at the antique shop.

  “Professor Kitty?!” Kojou shifted his gaze in the direction of the voice.

  A girl wearing the face of Sayaka Kirasaka was getting out of the shuttle that had brought her to the parking spot. She was wearing that ridiculously exposing maid outfit, with the black cat sitting on her shoulder—

  And a black guitar case slung over her back.

  “Oh, Professor Kitty, you fixed your shikigami, too? That was fast.” Kojou approached without warning and moved to touch the girl’s shoulder. But just as he did so, she shuddered and recoiled. As a result, Kojou’s hand slipped past its intended target, grabbing hold of the girl’s nearest breast instead.

  “Hya?!”

  “Eh?!”

  Kojou immediately froze. The shriek, and the bounciness of her flesh, seemed too real to be a shikigami. The girl’s face seemed to grow redder with each passing moment. Indeed, with her eyebrows raised high, raw bloodlust and rage swirled within her eyes—

  “H-how long are you going to touch me?! You molester! Pervert! Pervogenitor!”

  With a windup, cross-body uppercut, she walloped Kojou’s chin, scrambling his brains. Kojou groaned in acute pain as he staggered backward. “Kirasaka?! Wait, you’re the real one?!”

  “Something wrong with that?!”

  Sayaka had tears in her eyes as she continued to pummel Kojou. He’d thought it was the shikigami that resembled Sayaka, but this time the real Sayaka was present.

  So when Professor Kitty had declared that recreating the shikigami would take some time, what she meant by that was, instead of dispatching a shikigami from the mainland, she was sending the real thing instead. You should’ve been more specific, Kojou thought, as he glared at the cat.

  But the black cat only glanced at the horseplay. “Oh, settle down, Sayaka. It didn’t hurt anything. Why get all worked up over just having your boobs fondled? You let him suck on them before, didn’t you?”

  “I-I did not let him suck on them!”

  “Hey, don’t say stuff that’s gonna get taken the wrong way, you stray!”

  Both Sayaka and Kojou objected in an oddly similar fashion. Then, when Sayaka finally calmed down a bit and regained her senses to some degree, she slid the guitar case off her back and handed it to Kojou.

  “Here you go.”

  Kojou’s eyes shone as he felt the familiar weight of the case. “Snowdrift Wolf…!”

  The black cat with the golden eyes stared at Kojou. “Please hand that to Yukina.”

  Kojou silently nodded in reply, then shifted his attention. “Nina!”

  “Just so.”

  Kojou, taking the Great Alchemist of Yore with him, boarded the armored airship.

  The cruise missile locked into the launcher was aimed at the blue, twinkling horizon. No doubt Yukina and the others were fighting that very moment on the ferry beyond that horizon.

  Kojou crawled into the cramped warhead of the cruise missile.

  “We’re counting on you, Justina!”

  In apparent respect for Kojou, the silver-haired knight put her palms together, murmuring a single word in reply.

  “Nin!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE UNDINE

  1

  At the bow of the ferry, Kanon Kanase stood alone.

  Behind her were the pale sky and the azure ocean, stretching as far as the eye could see. Her silver hair danced under the sun’s gaze, turning nearly transparent.

  It was a beautiful scene worthy of a painting, but Kanon had no time to appreciate it, for the alchemist in the white coat was standing on the deck, cornering her.

  Amatsuka spread both arms and smiled innocently as he said, “Our game of tag is at an end.”

  He wore a checkered outfit that made him look like a stage magician. And his left hand was gripping a golden skull.

  Kanon stepped backward as if trying to get away. However, her slender waist immediately bumped against the railing. There was nothing on the other side of the barrier save the ocean’s surface. There was nowhere left to run.

  Even so, the alchemist shook his head, gazing at the girl in obvious admiration.

  “A wise decision. Here, none of the other passengers will be involved, and there is no way for me to conceal my approach. You can even leap down to the ocean and kill yourself if the mood strikes you. Well, not that it would do you any good.”

  Amatsuka’s sneer was cruel.

  “You are not the only fuel available—the Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency is here, and a few others as well. Your death will change nothing. Besides, once the Wiseman is resurrected, he’ll kill all of you anyway, so don’t hate me, okay?”

  Amatsuka’s right hand changed into a silver blade.

  A single swing would end Kanon’s life in an instant. However, Amatsuka had no intention of killing her just yet; his objective was to offer her as fuel to the Wiseman instead. She would be infused with his blood while still alive; once she became part of the liquid metal, all of her spiritual power would be extracted until she was reduced to a skeleton, just like the children at the convent long ago—

  Kanon knew this full well, and yet, her eyes never wavered as she gazed at Amatsuka. It was as if she pitied him. “You still cannot remember, can you?” she asked, out of the blue.

  Amatsuka’s expression trembled very slightly.

  “…What?”

  “I remember you. Also, I remember back when everyone at the abbey was killed.”

  Kanon stared straight at Amatsuka. Her expression exhibited both determination and pity—but nothing else.

  “You were a sad person,” she continued. “You didn’t realize that you had been deceived.”

  “What are you talking about?” Amatsuka asked, prickling.

  His voice was clearly shaken.

  Kanon calmly brushed her hair off her cheek. Her ga
ze seemed to be cowing Amatsuka into silence.

  “What did you want the Wiseman to do in exchange for his resurrection?”

  “That’s obvious. I want to be human again. I want him to revive the half of my body that he ate! I wouldn’t do a single thing he says if not for that!”

  Amatsuka ripped apart the collar of his white coat as he spoke. In so doing, he exposed to her how the quicksilver had ghoulishly subsumed the right side of his body.

  Yet, even that did not make Kanon’s expression waver. Gently, she asked, “Tell me this, then. Who are you…?”

  “Ah?”

  “If you were a human being before, surely you have memories of that time. When were you born? Where? What kind of life did you live…?”

  When Kanon finished asking her questions, a brief pause settled between them.

  Amatsuka made no reply. He couldn’t reply. The very fact that he could not was backing him into a corner of his own. Indeed, he seemed to have to force his next words out.

  “Shut up…Kanon Kanase…”

  But the girl only shook her head. “The Wiseman shall not grant your wish, for you were never a human being to begin with. You are merely something the Wiseman created for the sake of his own resurrection—”

  “SHUT UUUUUUP!!”

  Amatsuka roared with rage. His bladed right arm thrust forward, aimed at Kanon’s heart. It was a remorseless blow. Kanon made no move to evade it.

  She was fully resigned to her own death—until a light suddenly flowed out from her chest. As she watched, it grew into a silver wolf that beat away Amatsuka’s right arm.

  “A shikigami—?!”

  The tentacle branching off the alchemist’s arm beat down on the silver wolf from every direction, ripping it to shreds. The shikigami Yukina had given to Kanon under the guise of a charm soon reverted to a paper cutout.

  Amatsuka breathed raggedly as he lashed out with his whip-like arm to attack Kanon once more. But a new silhouette landed in front of Kanon and beat it away.

  The silhouette—a girl—stood poised with a knife in each hand, shielding Kanon as she glared at Amatsuka.