White Devil Mountain (28 page)

The soldier charged forward with a shrill cry. Its stance and movements made it clear that here was someone who’d fought better than most in training. A blast from the gun in the foe’s right hand was easily deflected, and then the enemy’s longsword flashed out.

Something heavy thudded at D’s feet: the severed head of the soldier. It gazed sadly at D. This person hadn’t wanted to die. Not after returning to life for the first time in ten millennia. The soldier was a woman.

D raised his eyes. The four-armed foe was just about to pass him. It saw the Hunter. Striking the pose of a vengeful guardian deity, it stepped from the moving sidewalk. There it halted. Nor did D move. The gun came up. The barrel of the weapon got the faintest green glow—and then it faded. Blue light swayed against D’s chest. Returning the gun to its hip, his foe drew its longsword.

At that point, someone said, “Don’t get in my way.”

D turned his eyes alone toward the speaker.

The voice came from the same direction as his foe. A new figure glided over. Sword raised by the side of her head like a baseball bat, it was the Huntress Lilia who glared at the enemy.

“I’ll deal with this thing!”

The enemy also heard her. As it turned toward Lilia, it also leveled its firearm. The flash of green light passed beneath Lilia’s boots, vanishing into the depths of the darkness. As she came back down to earth, Lilia swung her blade down at the top of the enemy’s head. Her right hand, lost to Vera’s ultra-high-speed vibrations, was now as good as new. Her opponent parried the blow with its firearm. The blade of the sword cut the gun in two, halting there. The creature’s other right hand had grabbed Lilia’s wrist to stop her.

“Let go of me!”

Her body writhed in midair, and the enemy thrust the sword in its left hand at her. It then twisted in a physically impossible position to split the flash of a stark wooden needle. Still gripping Lilia, the foe turned toward D. That face devoid of eyes, nose, and mouth blew an egregious air of malice at the Hunter.

With the right hand that’d hurled the needle now going for the hilt of his longsword, D took his first step forward.

III

“Using a woman as a shield? Looks like that move holds true across the universe, eh?” the hoarse voice declared in a tone of utter contempt.

“Damn it all! Let go! Let go of me!” Lilia cursed.

“Don’t move.”

At D’s icy words, she settled down.

“Use her as a shield if you like, but that’s one less arm you’ll have free!”

D didn’t wait for his statement to rattle his opponent. It wasn’t even clear if it had any effect on the creature.

His foe came at him, thrusting. As D circled around it, dodging, the creature’s elbow turned in an impossible direction to send the blade toward the Hunter’s neck. Continuing to circle, D parried the strike with his own blade straight from the scabbard. Would it be better to call that a miracle or ungodly skill? A stark gleam of light shot diagonally from his still-circling form. With the sound of the alien’s flesh being hewn, the strange arm that gripped the sword was taken off at the elbow.

Shuddering from head to foot, the enemy backed away. Perhaps the reason D didn’t pursue it was because he envisioned the scene that followed. Lilia’s body became a spring as she shot up, delivering a vicious kick to the enemy’s chin. The enemy reeled backward and Lilia did a somersault, landing on the ground.

D sprinted. When his foe reflexively raised its remaining three arms to shield itself, it probably had the same plan in mind that it’d used against Lilia: grab D by the wrist or elbow. But all of its arms had been lopped off. The enemy stiffened, radiating the fear of death no living creature could hide at such a time, and D gazed at it for a moment. His opponent had used a woman as a shield. A heartbeat later, D’s sword slashed straight through the alien. The faceless one was split in two from head to crotch.

Not even looking at the body, which split open like a folding fan as it fell, D turned to Lilia. There was neither sympathy nor relief in him. It was just as if he’d turned that way, and she simply happened to be there—until now. D’s gaze focused on the scarf wrapped around Lilia’s neck.

“I was chasing that thing!” Lilia said, glaring at D, but she soon realized her error. Her expression was swiftly melting into rapture. You don’t try to stare down D.

“I d-d-didn’t n-n-need your h-h-help!” she continued, her voice reduced to a stutter.

D said in a chilling tone, “Your blood’s been sucked, hasn’t it?”

A fearful moment flowed by.

“. . . Well, what if it has? You’ll cut me down?” Lilia said, her tone challenging. She was willing to take up the gauntlet.

“No one’s hired me to cut you down. That’s all that matters, so long as you’re not in my way.”

His black back spread before Lilia, then dwindled. He’d boarded the moving sidewalk going back the way he’d come.

“Hold up. Where do you think you’re going?” Lilia asked, picking her sword up before she too boarded the sidewalk.

The killing lust that billowed from D at that instant made her jump back in fright.

“To find Duke Gilzen? You could spend a year looking for him. You know, I happen to know where he is.”

“Really?” said the hoarse voice.

“No, I’m probably lying—so, what’s it going to be?”

“Lead the way.”

Lilia snapped the fingers of her free hand.

“That’s what I like about you. Keep heading this way to southwest gate number 2001. From there we go underground.”

Lilia’s voice trembled violently. No, it wasn’t her voice that trembled; it was the whole world. Cracks raced through the floor and ceiling. The moving sidewalk stopped. A klaxon had begun to wail intensely. A tremendous energy had been released, grinding through the floor like a wave, but the two of them looked around impassively. That act in itself was incredible.

“Below us, right?” Lilia said, closing her eyes. She seemed to be scanning for the origin point of the energy wave.

It went without saying this was the result of the explosives set by Gilzen’s mother—the shadow woman.

“Let’s hurry. Something might’ve happened to the UFO.”

“UFO?” the hoarse voice inquired. “So, they had their mother ship after all, eh? I’m surprised—”

—you knew about that
, the hoarse voice was about to continue, but it fell silent, as if it understood. Those bitten by the Nobility received the Noble’s memories, and could see what the Noble was seeing at times. Now Lilia shared Gilzen’s memories.

“What happened?” D asked in a cold tone.

Lilia closed her eyes and shook her head. “That much I don’t know. But it was something pretty serious.”

Lilia stood to the front as they zipped along.

“Why would you tell me where Gilzen is?”

“Why? To get the reward for bagging him!”

“Ah,” the hoarse voice exclaimed with admiration.

“At first I was stuck on him, but at some point I went back to being the same old me. The Nobility’s victims all refer to the one who bit them as ‘the great one,’ or something, but I just said, ‘that guy.’ ”

“Haven’t seen one like you in a dog’s age. So, you’re a half-awake?”

Without exception, all victims of the Nobility took a subordinate role to their Noble at first. They’d fall under the Noble’s mental control. But even if that happened in ninety-nine point nine into infinity percent of cases, it would never remain true one hundred percent of the time. For every rule was subject to the same phenomenon—it always had its exceptions. In this case, it was victims who, though serving the Nobility, perfectly retained their former characters. While they were fully pseudo-Nobility, they also had a very real animosity toward Nobles that kept the victims from being completely at rest—which is why they were called the half-awake. D was now looking at one of those rare exceptions.

“So, you’re the fly in Gilzen’s ointment? Odd, but he doesn’t seem the type to be so careless.”

“He’s not about to sweat the likes of me,” Lilia said in a self- deprecating fashion. “The only thing that concerns him is you, D. And in my current state, I can understand why.”

“Oh, and why is that?” asked the hoarse voice.

“I’d better not say. Even I couldn’t live with my head lopped off. D, you’re probably something far more important than you ever imagined.”

“Hmph. Well, I’ll be,” the hoarse voice trumpeted boastfully.

As they hurried through the vast castle, Lilia shared everything she knew about Gilzen and his plans. D’s pale, beautiful visage remained unchanged, like that of a corpse drifting underwater, but the hoarse voice groaned, “I thought as much. He’s got some crazy ideas, that one. This is not good at all. If Gilzen succeeds in his attempts, even if only for a while or on a small scale, he’ll have made some awful monsters, without a doubt. He’s experimenting with this stuff on himself?”

“That’s not quite clear. I couldn’t catch that.”

“Which means that damned Gilzen probably is using himself as a guinea pig. Trouble, yessiree.” And then, in a low tone so Lilia wouldn’t hear, the hoarse voice continued, “Since the girl’s been bitten by Gilzen, she should have a share of his power. She could transform at any time. Stay on your toes.”

D didn’t reply. However, if the time came, the young man’s icy psyche would doubtless see his blade cut down Lilia.

Before long, the savage scars of destruction spread before the eyes of the pair.

“Where are we?” the hoarse voice asked Lilia.

“His lab. It’s an odd mix of biological and chemical stuff.”

“But why did they wreck it? I don’t think any biological or chemical research could cause such an intense explosion.”

“The place was rigged with high explosives. Only one person could manage that without Gilzen noticing,” said Lilia.

“Who?”

Lilia shuddered. The question had come from D.

“Gilzen’s mother. I don’t really know her story, but now she’s just a shadow.”

“A shadow?”

“Would you just pick
one
voice and
stick with it
?”

“Okay,” the hoarse voice said gravely, and Lilia turned a despairing look up to the heavens. “What do you mean by ‘a shadow’ ?”

“Gilzen’s mother did something really out of line, and as a result her son turned her into a two-dimensional life form.”

“Hmph. Some family life they must have! But what’d she do that was so bad?”

“It was her connection to the Sacred Ancestor.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

Stunning both the Huntress and his left hand with that remark, D turned his head to the right without another word. “Isn’t that right, Lady Carr?”

From somewhere in the rubble, a gloomy but refined female voice that even made the Hunter’s left hand groan replied, “That is correct.”

Stunned, Lilia strained her eyes to see but could find nothing.

“So you came after all, D. I suppose you heard about me from the Sacred Ancestor, did you not?”

“Yes.”

The voice fell silent. Humanity suddenly returned to Lilia’s stern expression. It was just such a silence. Then, eyes bulging, she stared at D. It was fine that D might’ve been acquainted with Gilzen. After all, the passage of time meant nothing for those descended from the blood of the Nobility. However, to know of a connection between Gilzen’s mother and the Sacred Ancestor was an entirely different matter. Could it be that this young man was actually the Sacred Ancestor’s . . .