The Amphisbaena (17 page)

La Folia continued to gaze coldly at him.

“Kensei’s hypothesis is that…if the output of the circuits is insufficient, simply add more, thereby absorbing one spiritual node after another from the seven Faux-Angel candidates, already strengthened to the limits of human endurance through sorcery. And through seizing the other candidates’ spiritual nodes and absorbing them into herself…”

“…It means that without exceeding the capacity of the human body, it becomes possible to undergo spiritual evolution into a being closer to God than man. In other words, an angel.”

Now that he’d listened to the end of Kensei and the princess’s alternating explanations, Kojou finally understood. It meant forcing a human being to rise to an angel’s level. Certainly, the magic ritual was as La Folia had said. He could accept why Kanon had consumed the bodies of her fallen comrades.

“But why the hell is your corporation helping out with a ritual like that? Doesn’t Magus Craft make cleaning robots?”

Kojou glared at Kirishima as he asked. The nature of the ritual was now clear. But the reason why an ordinary for-profit enterprise would provide the funds and human resources for such an inhumane experiment was not.

Even a Demon Sanctuary like Itogami City didn’t permit a ritual
where the Masked would fight each other and do severe damage to urban areas in the process. It was completely illegal conduct.

“Well, y’see…our company’s kinda…financially screwed.”

“Huh?”

“There’s a big price war in the cleaning robot industry, the tech leaps ahead pretty quick, profit margins are slim… So they figured, hey, let’s try developing Automata for armed conflict, we can sell those. Well, not so much if one shot from the princess’s spell gun can wreck ’em like that. Actually, we bought up this whole island to use it for live fire exercises.”

Kirishima scratched his nose and face as he spoke. His evasive, slippery excuses only made Kojou’s scowl deepen.

Then, Kirishima sarcastically laughed. “So, that’s why we decided to put all our chips into selling man-made angels as weapons.”

“Weapons… The heck…? Whaddaya mean by that?!”

Kojou felt a chill creep up his spine.

The Masked, which Natsuki’s attacks, Yukina’s spear, even Kojou’s Beast Vassals could not bring down…

What if they weren’t experimental samples for spiritual evolution, but rather, simple mass-produced weapons? Even without thinking, he understood. They’d shoot to the top of the food chain and completely wreck the existing military balance with ease. There’d be all kinds of buyers.

“Hah… I’m sick of this. Enough of the small talk already. These brats aren’t going to understand the difficulties of corporate finances or the hardships of hired demons.” Beatrice, who had kept her silence until now, spoke as if at the end of her patience. “Anyway, that’s how it is, so here’s our demands: First, princess of Aldegia, cease your futile resistance and surrender. It’s all right… We won’t kill you if you behave.”

“Do you think I take orders from a corporate stooge? Well, aren’t you full of yourself,” La Folia scoffed at Beatrice.

Beatrice’s lips curled up to bare her ferocious canines. They were unnaturally large white fangs.

“You’re fond of speaking down to others, bitch. Well, fine. I’m not inclined to kill you right away. Instead, I’ll have fun with you until you wish you were dead!”

Licking her lips in inhumane fashion, her unenthusiastic gaze shifted to Kojou and Yukina.

“I suppose I’ll give the two of you a chance.”

“The heck do you mean?” said Kojou, glaring at Beatrice.

It was not she who moved, but Kensei. As he took a small remote control out of the side pocket of his black suit, Kirishima, seeing this, opened the lid of a container lying on top of the deck.

It was an airtight container that resembled a casket.

A small girl lay within, but she slowly sat up, with a pale, frigid aura enveloping her.

She wore simple clothes like that of a hospital patient. Her slender arms and legs were completely exposed. Her silver hair tumbled down. And she had hideous, mismatched wings.

“…Kanase!”

“Kanase?!”

Kojou and Yukina both yelled toward the girl awakening from her slumber.

Beatrice’s thoroughly apathetic eyes gazed at the two of them.

“Fourth Primogenitor, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency! I don’t mind if it’s the two of you together. Fight that girl seriously, would you?”

Anger broke through Kojou’s amazement at the words woven by her lips.

“…You’ve gotta be kidding me. Why the hell would the two of us do anything like that?!”

“Surely it’s obvious? For marketing material, of course. Just imagine it, ‘Our company’s Faux-Angel beat the Fourth Primogenitor, the World’s Mightiest Vampire…to death!’”

Beatrice spoke with a look of contempt, as if she was dealing with a dim-witted child.

As if throwing down a challenge, Yukina pointed her razor-sharp blade at her.

“You intend to sell Kanase as a weapon?”

“Not quite, but hmm, you’re not far off the mark. Heh-heh,” Beatrice chuckled in a relaxed voice as she narrowed her eyes. “I don’t really mind if you have no intention of fighting. That means you’ll just roll over and die. A pity. And I thought I’d let you go if you actually survived… besides, it looks like she’s really raring to go.”

“What…?!”

Kojou took fright as he noticed the bizarre miasma Kanon’s body was emitting.

Her mismatched wings spread out, and Kanon slowly floated into the air. Her eyes were open, but her pupils were unfocused with no sign of emotion in them.

“And you’re fine with this, Kensei?” La Folia asked as she watched Kensei grip the remote control.

Kensei, turning his back as if escaping from the princess’s gaze, spoke to the receiver.

“XDA-7, activate. The final ceremony is upon us.”

Kojou couldn’t understand right away what happened in that instant.

Kanon’s wings spread and she floated into the air. The instant Kojou’s mind registered that, a silver flash of light shot past the corner of his vision.

The flash was actually Yukina’s spear. With Snowdrift Wolf poised, Yukina leaped forward with the force of a bullet, thrusting its blade up at Kanon.

It was a demon-purging spear that negated magical power and ripped through any kind of barrier.

If Kanon was an artificial angel produced via magical ritual, all she needed to do was neutralize the spell itself. Surely that’s what Yukina had thought. And that’s what she attempted to do in the momentary opening before Kanon finished activating. But…

“Urk…?!”

The instant the tip of the spear reached Kanon’s flesh, Yukina went flying instead. She flew back with the same force with which she’d leaped forward, thrusting her spear into the ground as she somehow managed to land safely.

“That’s—?!”

Her hands numb from the recoil, Yukina tried to shelter them as she murmured in abject horror.

As she did so, Kanon did not pay her the slightest heed, soaring into the sky like nothing had happened.

“Divine Oscillation Effect…a Schneewaltzer, the Lion King Agency’s secret weapon, is it not?” Kensei murmured with apparent satisfaction as he gazed at the silver light emitted by Yukina’s spear.

“But it is futile. It is not even theoretically possible that a man-made ‘divine’ oscillation can harm a Faux-Angel possessing genuine divinity.”

“That’s…not…”

Yukina bitterly bit her lip. The spear she had been granted, which could defeat even the Beast Vassals of a Primogenitor, had never before been so completely negated. Not even Yukina could hide how it shook her.

Yet even so, Yukina’s next decision was quick. She shifted in the direction of the remote control–holding Kensei and shot out once more. If she couldn’t stop the Faux-Angel herself, she had no choice but to eliminate the caster controlling it. It was a completely natural conclusion, but it was the speed of Yukina’s decision that was surely commendable.

However, the spear she wielded was deflected by a crimson flash.

“…I told you already, your opponent’s over
there
.”

It was Beatrice who stood before Yukina, speaking in an unenthused tone all the while.

A crimson spear had appeared from her hands with the force of freshly gushing blood. The long spear was greater in length than Beatrice’s considerable height.

The height difference between Beatrice and Yukina was about twenty centimeters. The sensual, beautiful woman dressed in a red bodysuit looked far more extravagant than Yukina in her schoolgirl uniform. With the similarly long spear poised in her hands, the sense of dominance she gave off made it look like the difference between an adult and a child.

But Yukina was uncowed as she opened the distance between them. Beatrice’s crimson spear was emitting a powerful, ominous surge of magic. Without doubt, that spear was a weapon produced by some sort of spell. Therefore, there was no way it could be a match for Yukina’s Snowdrift Wolf. The demon-purging spear would surely annihilate that crimson weapon with a single blow—

Beatrice laughed loudly as if to mock Yukina’s thoughts.

“Jagra! Skewer her!”

“…?!”

The moment before Yukina’s spear was about to whirl and strike Beatrice’s crimson spear down, the spear lashed out like a snake, attacking Yukina at a seemingly impossible angle.

Only Yukina’s ability to see an instant into the future with her Sword Shaman’s Spirit Sight enabled her to escape the surprise attack.

The crimson spear in Beatrice’s hands changed into something like a living creature, attacking Yukina’s blind spots over and over. It seemed to be attacking on its own, heedless of distance, stance, or the movements of the woman who wielded it.

“It can’t be… A Beast Vassal in the form of a spear?!”

“A type of intelligent weapon… Surely that’s not such a rare thing,” Beatrice informed her in an unmoved voice, devoid of any thrill of victory. Even as she spoke, the crimson spear continued to stab without pause; Yukina kept deflecting it at the edges.

Kojou could no longer follow the attacks with his naked eyes; he could only stand in shock.

“You’re saying it’s…a Beast Vassal in the form of a weapon?!”

Kojou, too, had vaguely realized that Beatrice was a vampire. She was probably from a different bloodline than Vattler. Perhaps she was a descendant of the Second or perhaps the Third Primogenitor.

Of course, this was not Kojou’s first encounter with a vampire other than himself. Compared to an Old Guard vampire like Dimitrie Vattler, her Beast Vassal’s attack power was rather meager.

And yet Beatrice, who only possessed such a weak Beast Vassal, was completely dominating Yukina. Her Beast Vassal was so menacing because of how it was part spear, part demonic familiar.

In the first place, the tremendous attack power of Beast Vassals was meaningless in one-on-one combat. It was like carpet bombing: The result was indiscriminate destruction. But Beatrice’s “spear” could pour all of its power into a single opponent. It was obvious which was more effective.

“Now, then… How about I wrap up my work over here?”

Making certain Yukina was having a hard time taking on Beatrice, Kirishima leaped down from the hovercraft.

He approached La Folia, his hands slovenly stuffed into his pockets the entire while. No doubt he meant to finish securing the princess as originally planned.

La Folia drew a gun from her hip. It was not her beloved spell gun, but rather, an ordinary machine pistol. It was comparatively small and light, with much of its frame made out of varnished wood; it rested quite comfortably in La Folia’s slender hands.

“Stay back, beast man.”

La Folia made her warning and fired at virtually the same instant. It was a full auto burst at close range. She blew through seventeen rounds in an instant, but Kirishima, standing wide open, did not go down.

“Electrum chips, huh? Nice bullets. A shame, though.”

Kirishima laughed as he scattered the bullets, grabbed with a bestialized hand, at his feet. His slender body became the size of a large tree trunk as he transformed into a beast man with jet-black fur.

“Why rely on cheap garbage like this, princess? Or is your spell gun out of bullets?”

Kirishima spoke with a sarcastic tone. La Folia said nothing as she backed off and switched to a spare clip. She finished reloading her machine pistol with skill one wouldn’t expect of a princess.

Then, she looked up at the sky behind Kirishima in apparent surprise.

His interest perhaps piqued by her reaction, Kirishima looked up as well. What floated above them was Kanon Kanase, with magical runes glowing over her entire body.

“Kyriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii—!” A high-pitched shriek gushed out of Kanon’s throat.

It was an achingly sad cry imbued with holy solemnity well outside a human’s vocal range. The light surrounding Kanon became more intense. Her grotesque body began transfiguring even further.

The fangs embedded in her mouth fell away; her cherubic facial features changed into a vision of idealized beauty. Her hideous, mismatched wings grew into three pairs of new, beautiful wings that shone with light.

Giant eyeballs emerged on the surface of those wings.

Without emotion, the “eyes” glared down upon the earth as if nothing could escape their gaze.

“That’s…Faux-Angel…?!”

Kojou ground his teeth as the pulse of hostility emitted by Kanon overwhelmed him.

His vampiric flesh registered pain, as if his very skin was burning. This
overpowering magical energy wasn’t even in the same league as that of the Masked.

No, this was no longer magic energy at all. It deserved to be called a divine aura.

“Be careful, senpai! Her target is…”

Yukina shouted even as she and Beatrice continued to glare at each other.

The ground combat had descended into a lull with the emerging of the Faux-Angel.

For his part, Kirishima was still looking above his head, leaving securing the princess for later; Beatrice didn’t seem inclined to take on Yukina any more than necessary. No doubt they, too, wanted to see what would become of the Faux-Angel.