Kojou stood in the plaza buried in rubble, stared up at her, and shouted:

  “…Root!”

  As if on cue, the clock tower’s bell began tolling, low and heavy. It was like the peals were greeting Kojou and Avrora for a funeral.

  Root coldly gazed down at Avrora.

  “So you have returned, Dodekatos. I had thought you would be pathetically trying to flee in a panic.”

  As Avrora’s hand quivered in apparent fear, Kojou strongly squeezed it and stepped forward.

  Then, he looked up at the black-haired girl and commanded, “Root Avrora…give Nagisa back!”

  “The servant of a doll dares to give me a command?” the girl in his sister’s body murmured, somehow beside herself at this. Then she smiled, beautifully and coldly.

  “’Tis fine. Servant, thy labors have made Dodekatos grow well.”

  “…Grow?”

  Kojou stole a glance at the side of Avrora’s face. It was impossible for a vampire’s unaging, undying body to grow in a mere six months. As a matter of fact, Avrora looked exactly like she did on the day Kojou had met her.

  “Memories lacking strong emotions are akin to watered-down wine. The memories provided to me by the human sacrifices are insufficient. During the time of my long sleep, compelled by that abominable seal, the Beast Vassals were granted vessels in the forms of persons and scattered around the world. But for what purpose?”

  “…So that they could get their own personal histories, huh?”

  Kojou instantly replied to Root’s question. Perhaps she found that unexpected, because the girl taking the form of Nagisa nodded in apparent delight.

  “It is so. However, the mere prolonged passage of time is meaningless. ’Tis the accumulation of powerful emotions and feelings that lends Beast Vassals strength. Feelings strong enough that they would defy even me, their host.”

  “……”

  Avrora did not avert her eyes in fear, continuing to stare straight at Root.

  Beast Vassals were sentient masses of demonic energy, beings summoned from another world. And in turn, the twelve dolls built as vessels for those Beast Vassals were granted free will. The sealed Beast Vassals resonated according to the dolls’ emotions, and those emotions became power.

  Obtaining emotions strong enough to defy the host meant that her Beast Vassal had grown in power; hence, why Root was delighted that Avrora was defying her. After all, an increase in the Beast Vassal’s power meant an increase in the master’s—Root’s—as well.

  “However, your duty is at an end, servant. Leave Dodekatos here and go.”

  The girl taking the form of Nagisa shifted her gaze toward Kojou, looking at him like he was an annoying ant. Her eyes communicated that she was only letting him go on a whim.

  Yet, Kojou locked eyes with her, murmuring with a heavy sigh, “Shut up already.”

  “…What?”

  Root’s face twitched at Kojou’s improbable reaction.

  He grabbed the crossbow hanging from his hip and spread out its folded limbs. With a Blood Servant’s physical strength, he pulled the string taut one-handed, loading the cartridge with the silver stake into the crossbow.

  “I said it once already. Give Nagisa back.”

  Kojou trained the crossbow on Root, crudely baring his canine teeth as he smiled.

  “I’m taking her back. I don’t care if you’re a god-killing weapon! This ain’t just for Avrora’s sake, or for Nagisa’s—from here on, this is my fight!”

  “So that is thy desire, filthy servant…!”

  Root howled in response to Kojou’s challenge.

  Even if Root considered him an underdeveloped Blood Servant, she hadn’t thought a lowly human would pick a fight with her since the day she was constructed. Naturally, she was indignant.

  Wings the color of an aurora sprung from Root’s back one by one, until a giant, illusory beast had formed. Her upper body was a beautiful woman; her lower body, an enormous serpent. Her flowing hair was composed of countless snakes. She was a pale, watery Undine—a naga.

  “A Beast Vassal!”

  Mere contact with the water droplets from the mermaid broke the rubble of Quartz Gate down into sand.

  Kojou was aghast at the bizarrely destructive spectacle. Bathed in the mermaid’s attack, the glass reverted to silica, water, and carbon; the concrete, into clods of earth. Then, the steel girders, wrought by the hands of men, returned to their former state—deconstructed down to the atomic level. Root’s Beast Vassal was a monster that seemed to roll back time itself, reducing civilization to nothingness.

  Even an unaging, undying vampire would surely be annihilated without a trace if it touched that naga. It wasn’t something Kojou could take on by himself. Certainly, on his own, he—

  “Kojou!”

  Avrora thrust her right hand forward; Kojou grasped it. As they reached out, they shouted in unison:

  “C’mon over—Alrescha Glacies!”

  This time, the Beast Vassal sealed within Avrora fully revealed itself.

  It was beautiful, short of ten meters in length. The upper body resembled a human female, but the lower half had the body of a fish. Transparent wings sprang from her back; the nails on her fingertips were like sharp claws.

  The enormous cold that served the monstrous avian—perhaps an icy mermaid, perhaps a Siren—collided with the torrent that surrounded the naga.

  The cold froze the ferocious maelstrom, and the ice became water again. The two Beast Vassals’ abilities were equally matched. But the aftershocks of the vast demonic energy alone made the artificial ground of Old Southeast shudder.

  “So my Beast Vassal follows a mere servant?” the girl taking Nagisa’s form murmured in ridicule. Her fiery eyes glimmered as the wings on her back glowed brighter in turn. “However, it is for naught. Your defeat is inevitable.”

  Using three of her aurora wings, she summoned three new Beast Vassals. One was a divine sheep with a body of diamonds; another was a giant, amber-colored minotaur; and the third was a scarlet bicorn that wavered like a mirage.

  The divine sheep covered in countless gemstones fired the jewels out like shrapnel. The icy, monstrous avian, continuing to battle the naga on equal terms, had no opportunity to respond. Under the deluge of gemstone bullets, it wavered heavily; Avrora exhaled in anguish.

  “Return to me, Dodekatos. The banquet draws to an end—”

  Root commanded the next Beast Vassal to attack. The amber minotaur shook the ground as it hoisted its giant battle-ax high. The battle-ax glowed from the incredible demonic energy with which it was imbued. It, too, must have been some kind of special offensive power.

  The target of the minotaur’s attack was not the avian creature, but Kojou and Avrora. Even had the battle-ax been normal-sized, they would not have escaped unscathed, but the monster’s body was over ten meters tall, with the ax it had swung high more enormous still. Even without a direct hit, the shock wave alone would surely turn them into mincemeat. With their Beast Vassal already occupied, Kojou and Avrora had no means to resist it—

  “What?!”

  It was neither Kojou nor Avrora who let out a voice of surprise, but Root.

  Boom! An incredible roar shot above Kojou’s and Avrora’s heads. It was a bullet formed from an incredible shock wave that rivaled the explosive pressure of a thermobaric bomb. The supersonic impact scored a direct hit on the minotaur’s body, sending it flying dozens of meters away.

  “Wh… Why dost thou defy me, Enatos…?!”

  The girl taking Nagisa’s form furrowed her eyebrows in anger as she shouted. She was glaring at the deep scarlet Beast Vassal she herself had summoned, the bicorn with its entire body shrouded in incredible vibrations. It had unleashed a shock wave, attacking the minotaur, and saving Kojou and Avrora in the process.

  Avrora’s breath caught as she gazed up at the huge, majestic bicorn.

  “Al-Nasl Minium…”

  “That’s…Enatos?”

  As if to shield the two, the deep crimson Beast Vassal landed and glared at the minotaur. Kojou gazed at the sight, shaking his head in amazement.

  “Don’t tell me…you’re paying me back for the ice cream?! For that tiny little thing?!”

  The bicorn looked back at the surprised Kojou… He felt like it was giving him a smug smile.

  Seeing that, Kojou remembered. The Kaleid Bloods, built to be vessels for the Beast Vassals, had free will. Furthermore, the Beast Vassals resonated according to the girls’ emotions.

  With those feelings, Enatos had chosen Kojou. She had chosen to protect Kojou, not Root, her proper master.

  It was powerful emotions piled atop one another that increased a Beast Vassal’s power; feelings powerful enough to turn one against its master—Root had said so herself.

  “Very well, Beast Vassals. Then show me how well you protect your precious servant!”

  Root Avrora, standing on top of the block tower, stretched a hand high toward the sky above. Kojou, sensing something strange far above his head, instinctively looked up.

  “What the—?!”

  There, he saw a falling star: a huge meteor enveloped by incandescent flames. Even though it was still above a cloud, he could clearly make out its form with the naked eye.

  The “meteor” was actually a giant weapon: an ancient armament known as a Vajra sword, a sharp, demon-slaying blade said to be used by the gods. The enormous blade easily surpassed a hundred meters in length, but it was falling from the sky, pulled by gravity thousands of meters from the ground.

  Kojou was afraid to even imagine the destruction of its impact.

  Avrora’s expression froze over as she intoned its name.

  “…Kiffa Ater!”

  Even during that time, the Vajra sword’s speed increased, and the distance between it and the ground shrank.

  “You’re…kidding. That’s a Beast Vassal, too…?!”

  Kojou’s face contorted in despair. He was aware of Beast Vassals known as Intelligent Weapons. However, that black sword was far beyond that scale; a far more suitable name would be The Judgment of God.

  The fall of a Sword of Judgment would surely inflict lethal damage in a radius of tens of kilometers—a simple ability, one specialized for destruction. That made it all the harder to defend against. Even with the aid of the icy avian and the bicorn’s strength, could they really intercept it?

  Those two Beast Vassals had their hands full holding Root’s other Beast Vassals at bay, anyway. Kojou and Avrora were out of options.

  The Sword of Judgment accelerated, as if aware of Kojou’s unease. The air eerily vibrated. The glowing sword hurtled toward them from above, making the sky as bright as the sun at high noon.

  That light was falling. It was as if the very sky was crashing down upon their heads—

  Having come that far, it was only a moment before it reached the ground. And yet, the feared moment of destruction for Itogami Island never arrived.

  “Wha…?!”

  Kojou felt as if he clearly made out Root’s voice, shouting in astonishment.

  At first, there was only a golden glow.

  A huge lion of lightning emerged from a spray of gold-colored thunderbolts, and the Beast Vassal of the same color faced the falling black sword and roared. The incredible thunder shot out from the surface changed shape into an enormous electromagnetic field covering the sky above Old Southeast.

  As the sword plunged into the field, its velocity created a powerful magnetic field of its own.

  The lightning lion unleashed another thunderbolt. The sudden change to the field launched the Sword of Judgment away.

  Kojou realized that the sword, falling due to the pull of gravity, had been smacked away by the physics of electromagnetic induction.

  Having been given a new vector, the sword shifted its angle. It was no longer falling, but rather slicing through the air toward the horizon, and it vanished.

  It would fall to earth no more, but that did not mean the shock wave it created had been completely eradicated. The delayed shock wave reached the ground, landing a direct hit on Old Southeast.

  The force was not as great as the falling sword itself, but it possessed more than enough destructive potential to pulverize the Gigafloat’s foundation.

  The surface of the ground, covered by resin and metal, caved in. Even its deepest depths underground were laid bare in one blow. The Gigafloat’s mainframe was severed, and the entire island began splitting apart left and right. Every glass window on every building shattered, and buildings collapsed one after another. It all happened in an instant.

  Old Southeast did not immediately sink, for the design of the Gigafloat was fundamentally sound. Even so, every internal block of the island had begun to flood. The island would sink; it was just a matter of time.

  Despite all this, Kojou and Avrora, who were at ground zero, were unharmed.

  They had been saved by a silver mist. The dense fog, springing up beneath the Sword of Judgment’s fall, had enveloped their bodies and protected them from the explosive impact.

  Root, standing on the tilting clock tower, spoke bitterly as she gazed at the ground.

  “You two are…!”

  The lion shrouded by lightning, and the silver, carapaced beast enveloped in deep mist—

  The two Beast Vassals that had protected Kojou and Avrora from the Sword of Judgment glared at Root with naked enmity.

  Avrora shouted the Beast Vassals’ names with surprise. “Regulus Aurum…! Natra Cinereus…!”

  “What’s goin’ on here?” Kojou was thrown for a loop. Why were Beast Vassals they didn’t know helping them out—?

  Kojou gasped and looked up at Root. At the girl taking Nagisa’s form.

  “Nagisa…?! They’re trying to save Nagisa, too?!”

  There was only one reason that Beast Vassals unknown to either Kojou or Avrora would be facing off against Root. They had to be on Nagisa’s side.

  Kojou didn’t know why—and possibly, even Nagisa herself didn’t know—but they might have been fond of her. And so, they were lending Kojou and Avrora their strength to save her. At the very least, that’s what Kojou believed. In that moment, it was enough.

  “Ugh…!”

  Root’s lips twisted at the unforeseen situation. Having just awakened, she had not yet achieved complete lordship over the Beast Vassals. This had invited rebellion from Enatos and others, putting her at a disadvantage. It had also set the stage for Kojou and Avrora to turn things around.

  Pressed as she was, Root’s footing crumbled beneath her. The hexagonal crystal clock tower’s foundation was erased, as if the very space it occupied had been carved away.

  A pair of intertwined dragons had destroyed it.

  The two-headed creature, covered in scales of mercury, ate the clock tower, dragging Root down to earth.

  “Al-Meissa Mercury!”

  “—Tritos?!”

  Avrora and Root shouted respectively. Root, continuing to fall, plucked out her last remaining wing and summoned a sixth Beast Vassal.

  This was a monster enveloped by incandescent flames, with a shark’s teeth, a lion’s body, a bee-like tail, and bat wings—a mythological beast known as a manticore.

  Even so, the Beast Vassals obeying Root did not exceed those that had allied with Kojou and Avrora. The mercury-colored two-headed dragon wrapped around the manticore and pulled it away from Root.

  “—It’s over, Root Avrora!”

  With the dark-haired girl fallen to the ground, Kojou sprinted at her. Now that she’d released all of her Beast Vassals, Root was defenseless. When she turned around, Kojou restrained her movements by force.

  “Lowly servant! Know thy place!”

  The girl in Nagisa’s body thrust a hand toward Kojou’s flank. No doubt she intended to rip his rib away as she’d done when wiping out Zaharias. However, Kojou had intended for that to happen.

  “Won’t work!”

  Kojou firmly held down Root’s arm. Setting demonic energy aside, even Kojou could restrain her purely based on their difference in physical strength. With the two so close, Root couldn’t use her black wings, either. They were too powerful; attacking with them would hurt Nagisa’s body, too.

  “Nngh?!”

  Root became nervous when she realized she’d been immobilized. On top of that, standing behind her was a blond vampire girl—Avrora.

  “Dodekatos?! Why you—!” Root screamed.

  Avrora nestled against her from behind, touching her lips against Nagisa’s pale neck. Her sharp fangs pierced the soft skin.

  Root’s eyes opened wide in shock.

  “I see…this was your scheme all along! You cannibal!!”

  Fresh blood trickled down her neck.

  The strength drained from Nagisa’s body. Kojou gently let go of her outstretched arms.

  The black-haired girl’s body went limp in the blond girl’s embrace. And then—

  Then, the two became one.

  6

  The bell continued to sound.

  The tolling of the ruined clock tower.

  The two girls were unmoving, almost like statues, as Kojou stood affixed to the spot, watching.

  Cannibalism—

  Or perhaps, overwriting.

  This was what the masses called a vampire drinking another vampire’s blood, taking the other’s “bloodline” and “abilities” into oneself. However, bringing another being inside of oneself posed the risk of being taken over in turn, and having one’s own essence overwritten.

  Tooyama had spoken of such overwriting as one way to save Nagisa. Namely, if she were to take over Root Avrora’s essence, Nagisa would become the Fourth Primogenitor while keeping her own personality intact.

  Although, the chances of that actually happening in reality were basically zero. There was no way that Nagisa, a mere human, could hijack the Fourth Primogenitor.

  Then what if the one doing the overwriting was not a human, but a vampire?

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25