Right Arm of the Saint (18 page)

Yukina preserved her silence, seemingly seeing through all that troubled Kojou.

“…”

Finally, without a word, she lightly spun the silver spear she held.

The spear turned one and a half times—turning the spear tip toward her.

And so, Yukina rested the blade on the part of her neck.

Without a sound, she gently pulled the spear.

A thin red line ran across Yukina’s skin. Drops of blood finally began to emerge.

“Himeragi…wh-what are you doing?”

Kojou was seized by shock as he watched Yukina’s bizarre conduct. She seemed to have lost her mind, as if that austere expression she’d worn up until now was just a lie. Yukina’s breathing was ragged as she looked back at him.

“Senpai. Please…drink my blood.”

Her voice conveyed quiet determination.

Kojou stiffened completely. He couldn’t understand why Yukina would say such a thing.

“Senpai, you said that…your Beast Vassals didn’t recognize you as their lord because you have not yet drunk human blood, yes?”

“Y-yeah. I did say that, but…”

“So please drink my blood, here and now.”

“Hold on. It’s just a hypothesis; there’s no guarantee that just by my drinking blood they’ll serve here and now…”

“If the possibility exists, that is enough.”

“Why do I have to do a thing like that?… Even if the Beast Vassals won’t serve me—”

“That is a problem, since I cannot stop Armed Apostle Eustach by my power alone.”

Yukina spoke, interrupting Kojou’s words midway.

“Huh?”

“To defeat a Beast Vassal with magic-canceling ability on par with Snowdrift Wolf’s, a stronger mass of magical energy is necessary—a Primogenitor-class Beast Vassal. Senpai, you’re the only one who can stop them.”

Yukina’s intensity, leaving no room for dissent, made Kojou recoil in spite of himself.

“Er, but…I don’t intend to fight the old man and the girl. That’s for people who aren’t us to think about, isn’t—”

“You’re lying.”

“Yeah?”

Kojou began an immediate rebuttal to Yukina’s one-sided scolding, but his argument died on his lips.

That was because Yukina’s eyes were gently watching him as blood continued to flow from her neck.

“I don’t have any doubt you really do want to stop them, for you have that power, Senpai… Deep down inside, even you want to use the power of the Fourth Primogenitor any way you like, don’t you, Senpai?”

“No way. Since when have I wanted to do something as bothersome as that…?!”

“Senpai, if you want to protect the people of the island, please do as you like. If you can’t bear the responsibility by yourself, I’ll bear it with you.”

“Huh…?”

For some reason, Yukina smiled gently as Kojou stared at her.

“Of course I will. Have you forgotten? It’s my duty to watch you, after all—”

As she made her declaration with an unruffled expression, Kojou watched her for a while, dumbfounded.

Thrusting her spear into the ground, Yukina loosened the chest ribbon of her uniform.

Then she undid the buttons, exposing her breasts.

In so doing, she exposed her white flesh, her slender collarbone, and, of course, her slender neck.

And Yukina slowly stepped forward, as if posing for Kojou to admire.

As she looked down at Kojou, his vision was compelled toward the tidy underwear she wore and the modest bulge of her breasts. He let out a light yelp.

“H-Himeragi…?”

“Senpai, you said earlier that I’m cute, didn’t you…”

“Y-yeah…I think I might have, but that and this are—”

“So please take responsibility and act accordingly.”

“Wha…? Whaaa?!”

“Or…am I just not…good enough?”

Yukina softly pressed her own breasts as she murmured in a timid voice.

Kojou realized that her slender shoulders were trembling bit by bit.

Bashfulness…or rather, fright
, he thought. Yukina was really afraid, too. Afraid of offering her own blood to a vampire and afraid of exposing her flesh before Kojou like this—

She was a Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency. A Counter-Demon Attack Mage dispatched solely for the purpose of watching Kojou—a vampire who, originally, would have been merely a target for her to destroy.

And now it was as if she was offering up her own body to Kojou.

Surely this was more for Kojou’s sake than for protecting the people of Itogami Island, so that Kojou would not someday regret his decision—his decision not to wield the power of the Fourth Primogenitor.

“S-Senpai?”
Yukina called out in a voice of surprise as Kojou suddenly embraced her.

Kojou could feel faintly warm, pleasant scents coming from her slender, quivering body. The clean scent of her hair, and other sweet scents of her body. And the smell of blood—

His canines, no, his
fangs
ached. Lust was the trigger for vampiric behavior. Vampires only drank blood from targets they recognized as desirable. Surely Yukina had seduced him with all her might in full knowledge of that. But…

She doesn’t get it
, Kojou thought.

“Ah, ow… Sen…pai…”

Yukina didn’t understand just how desirable she was. She didn’t understand at all just how hard it had been for Kojou to restrain his vampiric impulses around her.

Yukina closed her eyes intensely, enduring the pain. Yukina’s lips let out frail sighs.

Finally, embraced by Kojou’s arms, all strength drained out of Yukina’s body. It was as if both of their shadows melted together under the peaceful crimson moonlight.

This place, constructed too deep underwater for light to reach it, was easy to think of as an eternal prison.

Keystone Gate’s bottommost level was in the middle of the ocean, some two hundred and twenty meters below sea level.

The exterior wall, built in the shape of a cone to resist high water pressure, gave off an aura a bit like the biblical Tower of Babel.

The level’s role was much like how the head of a violin held the spools for the violin strings. By keeping the connecting wires from the four Gigafloats in tune, the entire island’s vibrations could be controlled and rendered harmless.

The wire cables arrived via the Gate’s walls and were wrapped around the lowest level’s supporting pillars. The cables were composed of about sixty-five thousand steel strands. The ridiculously huge winch was controlled by a motor with an output equal to a power plant’s.

It gave off the oppressive feeling of an engineering room with an overwhelming mass of steel and imbued with an explosive level of power. And the building was enveloped by fierce water pressure. All of these things seemed to change the atmosphere drifting over the level into something…denser.

The bulkhead sealing off the lowest level gave off a creak somewhat like a shrieking sound as it was wrenched open.

The rainbow-colored, glimmering, humanoid Beast Vassal had ripped open the seventeen centimeters thick armored wall like it was a tin can.

The Beast Vassal’s lord was visible, shut away in the center of its torso.

She was a girl with long, velvet hair and pale blue eyes. The homunculus, Astarte.

The form of a man with a muscular body, wrapped in the robes of a priest, appeared behind her—

Having arrived at the Gate’s lowermost level, the Lotharingian Armed Apostle, Rudolf Eustach, was deeply moved as he slowly looked all around.

“
Complete.
Objective has been confirmed.”

Astarte made her report while still enveloped by her own Beast Vassal.

The infection in her voice, meager to begin with, had now completely lost all emotion.

A Beast Vassal was a beast summoned from another realm. To give it physical form, its lord had to shave off a piece of his own life span. Though there were different varieties of Beast Vassals, it was said that a normal human would lose his entire life from summoning one for but an instant. To a Beast Vassal, its lord’s life was simple food.

Even a homunculus lord was no exception.

Astarte had been granted a life span far in excess of a normal human’s to attune her to symbiotic life with a Beast Vassal; however, little remained even of that. She had used too much of the Beast Vassal’s power to invade Keystone Gate.

“…”

However, Eustach walked toward the center of the lowermost level without even a passing glance at Astarte.

There rested the end point of the four wire cables stretching from each of the four Gigafloats.

All were secured with an anchor with a machined head. It was a metal platform built in the shape of a small reversed pyramid.

Like a post, a single pillar was thrust down into the center of the anchor to secure it.

The diameter was not even one meter wide.

However, to link Itogami Island together, it continued to support the weight of several million tons, even now.

A translucent stone pillar resembling obsidian. A
keystone
.

“Oh… Ohh…”

Eustach’s mouth let out a voice containing both grief and delight.

His entire body shaking, he fell to his knees on the spot. Tears poured ceaselessly from his eyes as he gazed up at the stone pillar. Then his sadness and happiness finally turned into loud, ragged laughter.

“The immutable body stolen from the Lotharingian Church… Long have we awaited the day when it shall be returned to us! Astarte! Nothing remains in our path any longer. Tear apart that accursed linchpin and bring justice upon this degenerate island!”

As Eustach commanded his homunculus servant, his voice rose in loud laughter.

However, Astarte did not move. In an emotionless voice, she reported, still enveloped by the materialized Beast Vassal’s armor.

“
Reject.
Error in preliminary conditions. Further, request reselection of command.”

“What?”

Clutching his giant battle-axe, Eustach rose to his feet. He realized why Astarte had refused his command. There was someone standing atop the stone pillar secured by the anchor.

A boy wearing a shredded uniform and a girl wielding a silver spear.

“Sorry, gonna have to make you cancel that order, old man.”

The Fourth Primogenitor—Kojou Akatsuki—smiled with a languid expression.

“The relic of a saint who serves the Western European Church’s ‘God’…”

Kojou seemed to be looking at the stone pillar known as the Keystone with compassion.

Someone’s “arm” was floating within the translucent pillar.

It was a slender arm, dried up like a mummy’s.

Its wrist bore a cruel scar that seemed like a vestige of crucifixion. This was the corpse of a martyr who had suffered and lost his life for his beliefs.

It was a manifestation of the holiness of God within this world and an object of worship to many.

It was a corpse said to be so holy that it would never rot and said to have brought about numerous miracles.

One part of that saint’s corpse was sealed within the stone pillar.

“They call this a ‘holy relic,’ huh. So this is what you’re after.”

Kojou spoke as if in a sigh.

The existence of this holy relic was the secret Asagi had discovered through breaching a powerful firewall. Itogami Island, a giant, artificial city, was being supported by a “miracle” brought about by this holy relic.

“The city you now call Itogami Island was designed over forty years ago.”

Eustach recited the tale in a low, solemn voice.

His tone carried dignity worthy of a Lotharingian bishop whose teachings guided a multitude of believers.

“It was a design to build a new city, an artificial floating island atop the ley lines—dragon lines in the Orient—that ran
on top of the ocean
. At the time, this was an epochal concept. As spiritual energy flowing along dragon lines is linked to the liveliness of the residents, everyone thought this would lead the city to prosperity. However, the construction went poorly, for the naked power of the dragon lines that flowed over the ocean far exceeded people’s expectations.”

Kojou nodded silently at his words.

So that was the reason Itogami Island had been constructed above water far to the south of the mainland: the existence of dragon lines—giant spiritual channels that flowed across the surface of the earth.

Places built on top of dragon lines were full of spiritual energy. That alone made possible spiritual techniques and magical experiments more powerful than the norm. These were ideal conditions for the research on demons conducted in the Demon Sanctuary. So the Gigafloat project was indispensable for constructing a city on top of dragon lines.

“The city’s designer, Senra Itogami, knew this very well. He elected to separate the Gigafloats into four—representing the four Celestial Animals of feng shui governing east, west, north, and south, using them to attempt to control the linked dragon lines in a more harmonious manner. However, even so, a single, insurmountable problem remained.”

“The strength of the keystone, huh…”

Eustach replied to Kojou’s murmur with a solemn nod.

“Precisely as you say. The designer, Senra Itogami, required a keystone in the center of the island to represent the Yellow Dragon—he who governs the four Celestial Animals. However, the technology of that time could not construct materials strong enough to withstand that. Consequently, he stained his hands with an abominable heresy.”

“Sacrificial components…”

It was Yukina who made the frail utterance.

The designer of Itogami Island had resolved a question of engineering through reliance on necromancy.

Human sacrifice.

He realized he could he could employ the heresy of sacrificing living humans to increase the strength of his structures. However, dragon lines were flows of natural energy; their untamed power placed an enormous burden on the Gigafloats’ connecting section.

The keystone needed to withstand that burden; half-baked necromancy wasn’t going to cut it. He needed power on par with a miracle from God himself. Hence…

“What he selected as the sacrifice to support his city was the relic of our patron saint, usurped from our Church. This deed—the trampling of our faith for the creation of an island where foul demons may run rampant—cannot be forgiven.”