From the Warlord's Empire (25 page)

Apparently the chakram was really like a missile with a warhead packed with explosives.

Its power was probably equal to or greater than guided missiles for attacking built-up urban areas. It wasn’t enough power to defeat a primogenitor’s Beast Vassal in a single blow, but it certainly was capable of halting the bicorn’s charge.

The annoyed incandescent Beast Vassal shook off the flames that lingered over its entire body.

The bicorn glared toward the aft deck of the
Oceanus Grave
. Something massive ripped apart the beautiful megayacht’s hull and emerged.

It was covered in the same type of armor as the Nalakuvera, but much, much larger. It had eight legs and three heads. Its torso was swollen like that of a queen ant. Chakrams poked out of gaps in the armor covering the torso, resembling a multiple launch rocket system…

It launched a massive volley of chakrams toward the menacingly roaring bicorn.

“Kojou Akatsuki, get down!”

“Wha…?!”

Sayaka swung her sword, creating a defensive barrier. The air above the barrier protecting Kojou and Sayaka was filled with exploding flames. The bicorn had released its own oscillation wave to counter the volley of chakrams. The two mighty forces violently clashed overhead, spreading incredible destruction around the entire area.

As the blast winds buffeted him, Kojou looked up, dumbfounded.

The damage wasn’t limited to Sub-float No. 13. Having lost their target in the flames of the explosion, several of the chakrams fell on Itogami Island proper.

One great explosion erupted after another. Black smoke spewed from inside the city.

“Why…is this happening…?”

Kojou, weakly falling to one knee, gave into anger and punched the ground hard.

Nearby residents should have been evacuated by the Island Guard. But that didn’t change the fact damage had occurred. Like a true terrorist group, the Black Death Emperor Front was indiscriminately destroying the lives of completely unrelated people.

The Queen Nalakuvera, already on the move, gently landed onto the sub-float.

The remaining five Nalakuvera moved as well.

Operating in perfect sync, they surrounded Kojou and Sayaka. No doubt they were being commanded by the Queen Nalakuvera.

So this was the weapons’ true form. Weapons meant to fight as a unit in pursuit of operational objectives.

“Hmmm…so this is the Nalakuvera’s true might?”

As Kojou ground his teeth without thinking, his ears detected a man’s voice floating up from somewhere. It was Vattler, casually walking over amid the charcoal-scented smoke.

“You really pulled a fast one on me, Gardos, keeping a trump card like this under your sleeve. What will you do, Kojou? Perhaps I should take him on in your place?”

Vattler spoke to Kojou with his white fangs bared as if making a challenge. Even under these circumstances, the snobbish man behaved with a peculiar courtesy.

Kojou made an unpleasant click of his tongue and glared at him with a hostile look.

“I told you to butt out of this, Vattler…! I’ve just about had it with everyone just doing whatever they want!”

As if exceeding its boiling point, Kojou’s body was enveloped in true anger. The flame had been lit, awakening the fighting spirit that lurked within Kojou, making his primogenitor “blood” seethe.

“I don’t care if it’s against your terrorists or ancient weapons or whatever. From here on, this is
my
fight!”

Vattler looked upon the ominous aura that shrouded Kojou with a smile of admiration.

And, immediately to Kojou’s right, a small silhouette walked forward, as if naturally taking its proper place.

“…No, senpai. This is
our
fight.”

It was a young girl in a school uniform, poising a silver spear. For some
reason, there was a pouty look in Yukina Himeragi’s eyes as she looked up at Kojou.

“H……Himeragi?”

Kojou called out her name in surprise. Yukina’s eyes remained cold and expressionless as she tilted her head slightly.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Er, ah…why are you here?” Kojou inquired, a baseless uneasiness mixed with pangs of guilt.

She had to have been on the
Oceanus Grave
with Asagi and Nagisa until just now. Meaning, both of those girls had been evacuated to a safe place, and furthermore, she’d been able to obtain Snowdrift Wolf once more. Good work in such a short time frame.

“I’m a watcher, after all.
Your
watcher.”

For some reason, Yukina placed emphasis on that last part while turning the tip of her spear toward Kojou. Her face remained expressionless as she looked over Kojou, Sayaka, and the incandescent bicorn emerging from the flames of the explosion.

“So you tamed a new Beast Vassal, senpai.”

Yukina stated it in a frigid, inflectionless voice. Kojou gulped and nodded, meeting Sayaka’s eyes.

“Y-yeah. Somehow stuff just happened and it turned out like this.”

“R-right. It was an unforeseen emergency that arose, a veritable act of God.”

As Sayaka awkwardly lowered her eyes, her fingertips tugged at the collar of the parka she was wearing.

Yukina watched her behavior with a somewhat surprised look on her face.

“I see.”

They’re both hopeless,
she might have said, making a long sigh. She repositioned her silver spear, pointing it toward the Nalakuvera.

“We will postpone this discussion until later, then. First, we must get closer to them.”

“R-right.”
Let’s do that, let’s do that,
nodded Kojou.

Yukina made another brief sigh, glaring at the giant ancient weapon crawling over the ground as she spoke.

“Senpai, Kristof Gardos is inside that Queen Nalakuvera.”

“Queen…so that’s their command unit?”

Before Kojou even finished his sentence, the queen of the ancient weapons let loose another volley of chakrams. The bicorn’s roar shot them down, filling the air around them with flaming explosions once more.

The five smaller Nalakuvera followed by scattering crimson beams about.

Sayaka desperately cut down each incandescent ray as they assailed the area around Kojou and the girls one after another.

The attacks set the hull of the
Oceanus Grave
ablaze as an aftereffect; the sub-float Kojou and the others were on made an ominous creak. Little surprise that even the stoutly built outer wall was finally at its limits.

“Aw, crap, they’re all goin’ nuts…!”

Kojou groaned as he covered his ears at the incessant sounds of explosions.

Sayaka was breathing heavily as she yelled out, “Kojou Akatsuki. This is getting worse and worse!”

“I know that!… Get over here, Regulus Aurum!”

Kojou raised his right arm up high, summoning his other Beast Vassal.

The thunderbolts flung about by the lightning lion danced toward the enemy formation, blowing away all five ancient weapons in an instant.

Then, like a flash, it charged toward the command unit. The Queen Nalakuvera’s giant body plunged into the sea.

The lion moved to pursue the submerged command unit.

“Senpai, don’t! If a mass of lightning like that hits the water…!”

Yukina rushed to restrain Kojou. However, by then, the lightning lion had already completed its dive toward the surface of the sea. Its massive electrical current scattered across the surface of the ocean, with the heat causing a massive explosion of steam.

“Gwa…!”

A giant waterspout rose hundreds of meters into the air as the explosion’s tremors shook the sub-float. Kojou faltered from the unexpected impact. Apparently, the nature of Regulus Aurum made it a Beast Vassal impossible to use underwater.

“Then, I’ll do
this
…!”

The chakram attacks having just ceased, the freed-up bicorn howled. Its twin horns resonated, amplifying the oscillation. The spreading impact made the ground shake and caused giant waves to form. And like something out of the Old Testament, the sea parted, with the incandescent Beast Vassal at the center.

Watching Kojou and the others fighting, Vattler clapped his hands as he made an admiring “ha-ha!’

“So you parted the sea, Kojou! As expected of a Fourth Primogenitor Beast Vassal. It’s quite a lovely spectacle.”

“This ain’t some pony show!”

Tossing an angry shout back at the young nobleman’s innocent act, Kojou continued with more ferocious attacks. The bicorn pounded shock wave bullets toward the giant body of the now-exposed Queen Nalakuvera. They collided with the dry bottom of the sea, burying over half of the large ancient weapon and holding it in place.

The parted sea returned to its former self, with the violent waves covering up the Queen Nalakuvera.

“Did we get it…?” Kojou muttered in a languid tone. Controlling two Beast Vassals at once was of course mentally draining. If he let up for one second with these two, they could go berserk at any time.

But Sayaka sharply scolded the half-relieved Kojou.

“Not yet, Kojou Akatsuki!”

Her sword flashed, protecting Kojou from a crimson beam from below.

The five Nalakuvera that he thought Regulus Aurum had destroyed were on the move again. And on the opposite side, the first unit, destroyed by the bicorn, was getting up, its body still scorched all over.

“Self-repairing…?! They can come back even from that?!”

“That’s not all. They altered their damaged armor’s composition to better resist vibrations and impacts. They analyzed your attacks and took countermeasures against them.”

Sayaka assessed the situation with a calm expression. It was the same as when it had blocked her sword dance. Once sustaining an enemy attack, it learned and altered itself to resist that attack.

Furthermore, it seemed they were able to instantly trade information to other Nalakuvera units over a joint network. Even if one Nalakuvera was put out of the fight, the other units had already girded themselves
against the same attack. And through self-repair of destroyed units, even they returned to the front lines.

“So the reason they resisted Regulus Aurum’s attack is because they learned it already. Getting stronger from taking hits…how the hell do you beat a thing like that?”

Kojou realized he felt overwhelmed. No matter how many he destroyed, they regenerated; furthermore, the more one attacked them, the stronger the weapons became. Perhaps they truly did have the power to defeat the primogenitors.

But as unease assaulted Kojou, Yukina looked up at him and made a gentle smile.

“No, senpai. It’s all right—we will win this.”

As she spoke, she brought out a small light purple smartphone.

She called out to the artificial intelligence that looked like a teddy bear floating on the LCD screen.

“…Isn’t that so, Mogwai?”

“Oh yeah. The counterattack’s going all according to Li’l Miss Asagi’s plans.”

“Asagi’s…?”

Kojou was beside himself at the mention of the unexpected name. What could Asagi, supposedly a helpless high school girl, do against an invincible ancient weapon?

“While Aiba was analyzing the Nalakuvera’s command codes, she was secretly putting together a
new
command code.”

“It’s a type of computer virus…corrupting the Nalakuvera self-repair function so that they destroy themselves. She calls it, ‘The Final Words.’”

“A virus… Was it something easy to make?”

Of course, Kojou was well aware that Asagi was a brilliant programmer.

However, the opponent wasn’t a personal computer or a game machine. It was a weapon of the gods, not something created by man. For her to have analyzed stone tablets that had resisted the efforts of scholars all over the world and used their weaknesses to plant a virus on the side…

The word
genius
seemed inadequate to describe such jury-rigging. This was complete insanity.

“I’d say that young lady’s the only one who could have done it… The terrorists’ luck ran out when they angered the Cyber Empress. Make sure
you
don’t get too far on the young lady’s bad side.
Ku-ku-ku
…”

Mogwai spoke in what seemed like a teasing tone. Kojou silently shrugged his shoulders.

“So, what are we supposed to do, Himeragi?”

“The Nalakuvera are audio controlled. If we get inside the Queen Nalakuvera and use the audio file Aiba made, it should put a stop to all of them.”

As she spoke, Yukina shifted her gaze to the sea. The large ancient weapon, which should have been at the bottom of the sea, was just surfacing after finishing its own self-repairing.

“So get inside the big one… Uh, how? They’ll cut us to pieces. If we could just stop ’em from moving for a bit…”

Kojou groaned as his despairing premonition ate at him. Kojou’s two Beast Vassals had already moved to protect them. They had their paws and hooves full defending against a storm of descending chakrams and ceaseless large-caliber laser fire.

The Beast Vassals’ attacks would have little effect now that the Nalakuvera had learned them.

For the moment, they were still pushing the enemy back with overwhelming brute force, but that superiority surely wouldn’t last for long.

Kojou thought that he and the girls approaching the Queen Nalakuvera in the flesh under these circumstances was nothing less than suicide.

If they could destroy them even one more time, making an opening while they regenerated, they could manage, but…

Just as Kojou ground his teeth over his own powerlessness…

“I’ll pin down the Nalakuvera, Yukina.”

Sayaka walked forward, her long, beautiful hair swaying behind her.

“Kirasaka?”

“You understand, Kojou Akatsuki? If they evolve according to our attacks, we have only one chance at this. If Yukina and I are holding you back, we’ll all burn to a crisp.”

Gripping her sword with her left hand, Sayaka thrust it forward.

The silver sword blade suddenly split to the front and back. Using the part joined to the hilt as a fulcrum, half of the split blades turned 180 degrees. Pulling a silver bowstring taut, it changed form into an entirely new weapon.