Labyrinth of the Blue Witch (24 page)
“I did not!”
He knew full well he sounded like a liar in proportion to his desperation, but he couldn’t help it in a situation like this. The displeased look Yukina was shooting him from the side had him completely unnerved.
That moment, Kojou heard a familiar voice behind him.
“…Goodness, you certainly are taking it easy after kicking up this much of a ruckus.”
The ever-so-slight lisp to it mysteriously gave the sound of her voice an odd charisma.
Looking back, Kojou saw Natsuki Manamiya, whom he thought still asleep, standing there.
He was certain that this moment, this was no clone created by a magic spell, but rather her real body, sealed away in the prison barrier. But Kojou had the impudent and rather silly thought that she was exactly the same as usual. In the end, Natsuki was Natsuki, be she clone or original.
Yukina spoke in apparent relief. “So you have awakened, Ms. Minamiya?”
If she, the key to the prison barrier, had awakened, they could reestablish its seal or create a new defense system altogether, picking from numerous available options.
Kojou gazed up at Natsuki with a look rich in dissatisfaction. “Wait… don’t tell me you were pretending to be asleep. That’s dirty pool.”
She pouted at him a little.
“It’s true that I had to preserve my strength. Even I wouldn’t have gotten away lightly if I’d taken a square hit from one of your Beast Vassals… You have some nerve raising a hand against your honored teacher. I must grant you a suitable reward.”
As she spoke, she suddenly smacked Kojou’s forehead right between the eyes.
“Owwwwww! What kind of reward is that?! And it wasn’t me who did it anyway!”
“Mm? What, here? Is here good?”
“
Guoa?!
Shit… Well you sure seem well rested!!”
Kojou tearfully moaned as he clutched his forehead. He felt like the ceaseless, nigh-unbearable pain all over his body had eased a little. Perhaps Natsuki had used a spell to heal Kojou somehow.
If she did, couldn’t she find a nicer way to do it
, Kojou sulked in his own head.
Finally, Natsuki looked down at Kojou in exasperation and sighed.
“Goodness…to have the day come when I’m saved by my own student. It’s not easy getting old.”
Kojou was beside himself at the words spoken by Natsuki, who bore the appearance of a little girl.
“I don’t really think you’re one to talk about that…” For her part, Natsuki’s expression suddenly turned serious as she turned to face Yuuma.
“…What will you do, daughter of Aya Tokoyogi? Wanna go another round?”
Yuuma calmly sat up and shook her head.
“I’ll pass. That knocked all the stuffing out of me. Looks like I don’t have any reason to mess with the prison barrier anymore… Le Bleu is a total mess, too.”
“Is that so?”
Natsuki looked at the Guardian Yuuma had materialized and nodded.
Thanks to the backlash of excess demonic energy and its battle with Yukina, the faceless blue knight was in a pitiable state with wounds over its entire body. Even if it could recover, Yuuma would require long months and years before completely regaining her powers as a witch. Kojou didn’t think Yuuma really wanted that anyway.
She was finally free of the curse her own mother had set upon her.
As it truly hit him, Kojou couldn’t stop a satisfied smile from coming over his face.
And that was when it happened.
Yuuma’s voice quivered with unease as she tried to release her Guardian from materialization.
“…Le Bleu…?”
The armor covering the faceless knight’s entire body rattled and shuddered. The clash of metal on metal produced a strange sound.
It’s laughing
, Kojou suddenly realized.
The knight, wounded all over, made a laugh under its mask that seemed hollow, like a skeleton—
“Le Bleu, stop!” Yuuma commanded it almost in a shrieking voice. But the blue knight’s movements did not cease.
The blue knight reached to the sword on its hip, drawing it for the first time. The blade that emerged from within the scabbard was sharp and extremely polished, as if never before used.
Kojou and Yukina leaped, each moving in front of Natsuki to shield her.
However, the blue knight’s next action went against all of their expectations.
After one wave of its giant sword, the blue knight plunged it into Yuuma’s chest. Into Yuuma, the very person he was supposed to protect.
Kojou beheld the scene in horror.
“…Yuu—ma?!”
With a gurgle, fresh blood spilled out of Yuuma’s mouth.
Yuuma reached out toward her own Guardian as she let out a despairing voice.
“…Mother… This is how…badly you want it…?”
The blade had thrust deeply into her chest. But the tip of the sword, which should have passed right through her, did not appear on the other side. It had used Yuuma’s body as a teleportation gate to transfer the sword somewhere else.
A broken, rusted voice came from the faceless blue knight.
“Long have I awaited this moment…the moment when even one as sly and capricious as you let down your guard.”
It was the voice of a woman, with the tone of an adult wicked witch.
Natsuki suddenly let out a scorn-filled murmur.
“A booby trap… To think you would use your own daughter as a decoy… Inhuman.”
When he scented blood wafting up with her breath, Kojou’s face froze over as he looked back.
A malevolent, raw mass of steel was protruding from the beautiful lace adorning Natsuki’s chest.
It was the tip of the blue knight’s giant sword—
“Ms. Minamiya!”
“Natsuki?!”
Yukina and Kojou could do nothing but gape at the all-too-twisted sight.
As Kojou lost himself to shock, Natsuki glared at him in mild anger and made a weak laugh.
“Fool… Don’t…call your homeroom teacher by her…given name…”
The small, doll-like body of his homeroom teacher slowly collapsed onto the floor.
He continued to hear the never-ending, ghoulish laughter of the faceless blue knight.
He picked up the all-too-light body of his homeroom teacher… Kojou could only shout until his voice grew hoarse.
“Uooooooooooooo—!”
The roar of the Fourth Primogenitor echoed within the crumbling, dimly lit cathedral—
And so,
Strike the Blood
, Volume 4 goes off to the presses.
With the fourth volume, this series has hit its second year. As the author, I feel like I’ve been sluggish every day like usual with no sense of growth whatsoever, but the product (and only the product) seems to be coming along fine, so please hang in there with me. It actually feels like the publication pace has increased. A little. Somehow.
Now, I feel like I have to come out right away and say I’m sorry, mainly for the treatment of Natsuki here. Actually, I intended to give Natsuki a crucial role back in the planning stage, but when it came to her actually getting her turn to lead… I mean, what in the world happened there?
Of course, I think everyone who has read until the final page can tell that it was really a simple matter of page count. Often, parts of the current episode are used to set up developments in future ones, so she’ll be playing a much larger role in the next volume and beyond. I’m still very sorry for all the people who saw our plans in the mail magazine, etc., and who had their hopes built up for Natsuki to do more here. Incidentally, it was the editor who flatly turned down my suggestion that “It’s okay to make Natsuki the cover girl for the fourth volume” so please direct any complaints to the editorial department.
This time, I received more criticism that Kojou was getting too many lucky scenes, so next time I’ll put him through the wringer (by company standards)—it’ll feel like it’s physically impossible for him to even flirt.
Maybe this is a reason why people don’t feel like enough happened, so just think of the next volume and after as being everyone’s revenge.
Now, just as touched on even in the text of this book, Itogami Island’s Hollow Eve Festival uses Halloween motifs. Maybe it’s not quite the same of late, but until I moved to a certain city a few years back, Halloween had a very fictional air to it; it didn’t really feel like an event you actually experienced in real life. It’s hard for single men to imagine any event existing in the entertainment world on the same level as Valentine’s Day.
Now in spite of all that, this city really made a big deal about Halloween, with Halloween season bringing an army of cosplayers parading through and occupying the center of the city, with little boys and girls in costumes (for children’s events) wandering around the shopping districts trick-or-treating every year like it was a normal thing, and it hit me: Whoa, this thing is
real
.
So, I’ve revived quite a bit of the impact of that moment with this, the Hollow Eve Festival arc, and that will continue. More to the point, next volume is the main event, so stay tuned.
So this ended up being last, but to Manyako, who decorated yet another volume with alluring illustrations, you truly have my thanks. Even though I hit you with overly clichéd requests like “How ’bout everyone in costume” and “Make it feel cute,” you really outdid yourself and I’m truly grateful. Let me also thank Yuzawa the editor once more and everyone who was involved in getting this work into circulation.
Finally, my deepest thanks to all of you who have read this book.
I very much hope to see you for the next volume.
Gakuto Mikumo
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STRIKE THE BLOOD, Volume 4
GAKUTO MIKUMO
Translation by Jeremiah Bourque
Cover art by Manyako
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
SUTORAIKU ZA BURADDO
©GAKUTO MIKUMO 2012
All rights reserved.
Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS
First published in Japan in 2012 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.
English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation © 2016 by Yen Press, LLC
Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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ISBNs: 978-0-316-34553-8 (paperback)
978-0-316-34554-5 (ebook)
E3-20160902-JV-PC
