From the Warlord's Empire (9 page)

That stirring told him that the noble from the Warlord’s Empire was without doubt very close.

“Above us. Duke Ardeal is likely on the external upper deck…”

As if to confirm Kojou’s premonition, Yukina spoke while looking up above her head. Similar to Kojou, Yukina likely knew where Dimitrie Vattler was thanks to her Sword Shaman’s Spirit Sight.

“Upper deck…huh? How do we get up there then?”

“This way, senpai.”

Yukina pointed to a stairway in the corner of the hall, making her way along a path where invitees were mingling.

As Kojou hurried to catch up to her, Yukina looked back and extended her hand. Without questioning at all, he moved to grasp her hand.

It was the next moment that Kojou sensed a silver flash, accompanied by bloodlust, swooping down at him.

“…Sei!!”

“Uoo?!”

As Kojou instantly leaped back, the well-sharpened tip of a fork right before his eyes grazed his arm.

The fork was gripped by a young woman. She appeared nearly 170 centimeters in height, but seemed to be a girl still in her midteens. She had long, chestnut-colored hair and white skin. Her face had a charming, eye-catching elegance about it.

The cheongsam-style outfit she wore over her slender body suited her very well.

“Pardon me. My hand slipped.”

The long-haired girl spoke, not acting like she was particularly sorry. Kojou glared at her in displeasure.

“If you know how someone can
slip
and swing a fork down at someone else’s arm, by all means, tell me… Wait, weren’t you yelling like some martial artist just now?!”

“It is because you tried to touch Yukina with your filthy, lust-stained hand, Kojou Akatsuki.”

“What…?!”

Kojou stared at her in surprise at her knowing his name. She continued to hold her fork backward while giving Kojou a frigid glare.

The aura she gave off was a little like Yukina’s right after they met, but this one was far more hostile. It seemed like, if he showed the slightest opening, she would attack him without mercy.

“Who the heck are you?”

Kojou was perplexed as he asked her. The party guests all around them were raising their voices in alarm. Yukina arrived back the next moment.

“…Sayaka?!”

Wedging herself between the glaring parties, Yukina looked dumbfounded as she called out the long-haired girl’s name.

That moment, the girl named Sayaka showed a highly dramatic change. Like a hard bud blossoming into a flower, an elegant smile broadened over her entire face, with the surge of bloodlust emanating from her entire body replaced with an aura full of gentle affection.

“Yukina!”

The long-haired girl gave Yukina an earnest hug. Kojou felt like he was watching sisters who got along well being miraculously reunited. Her hair, in a ponytail behind her, swayed like the tail of a happy dog.

“It’s been so long, Yukina. Have you been well?”

“Y-yes.”

Yukina seemed a bit at a loss at being suddenly reunited with the girl. She looked like surprise was winning against her joy at being back together. But not paying any heed to Yukina’s reaction, the girl called Sayaka pressed her own cheek against Yukina’s neck, rubbing it.

“Ahh, Yukina, Yukina, Yukina…!! You poor thing, having watcher duty on the Fourth Primogenitor pushed on you while I wasn’t there! I wonder what made the Lion King Agency Executive Committee treat my Yukina in such a cruel manner!”

“Ah, er…Sayaka…?!”

“But it’s all right now. If this pervert lays one finger on you, I will immediately eliminate him. Both in a societal and a biological sense…”

“Wa…! S-Sayaka…that’s a bit…yah!”

“Hey.”

As Sayaka fawned over Yukina, leaving herself wide open, Kojou delivered a chop to the back of her head. “Eek!” Sayaka exclaimed in a bitter voice, seemingly startled as she pulled back.

Yukina, finally released from Sayaka’s clutches, had a look of relief on her face as she circled behind Kojou’s back.

Sayaka, pressing a hand to the back of her head where she was smacked, glared sharply at Kojou.

“What are you doing?! Don’t touch me, Fourth Primogenitor! No,
Pervogenitor
!”

“Who’s the pervert?! Take that back! Primo and Perv don’t sound anything alike, so you did that on purpose!” Kojou bared his teeth as he yelled back.

With a “hmph,” Sayaka exhaled roughly “I suppose. I’m sorry, oh Great Pervert Primogenitor. First off, I don’t want Yukina breathing the same air as you, so I don’t want you entering a five-meter radius around her. After that, I’ll gouge out your eyeballs. I won’t have your impure gaze looking at Yukina.”

“Like hell you will! What the heck’s with you, popping out and mouthing off like this?”

“Don’t come any closer. It’s gross,” Sayaka shouted as she threateningly thrust the fork at Kojou.

What a rude woman,
Kojou thought indignantly as he turned back toward Yukina.

“Sayaka, that’s the ex-roommate you mentioned, isn’t it, Himeragi?”

“…Yes.”

Yukina looked up at Kojou and nodded in a way that seemed apologetic somehow. As if trying to interrupt their conversation, Sayaka wedged herself in from the side.

“Sayaka Kirasaka, War Dancer of the Lion King Agency, Kojou
Baka
tsuki.”

“It’s A-ka-tsu-ki. Don’t say it wrong on purpose!” Kojou yelled back, having had quite enough.

Mysteriously, in spite of having raised such a ruckus, the guests in the party venue didn’t seem to be taking much notice. It seemed Yukina had quietly used an aversion incantation.

“What’s a War Dancer? Is that different from a Sword Shaman?” Kojou asked Yukina another question. Yukina shook her head a little.

“Both are Counter-Demon Attack Mages, but the skills we are trained in differ.”

“Skills?”

Looking at Kojou raising his eyebrows, Sayaka announced with pride. “War Dancers specialize in curses and assassinations. In other words, it is my duty to eliminate perverts hovering around Yukina, like you.”

“I’m not hovering around her! If someone’s being hovered around, it’s me!!”

“What are you so proud of?! It’s not like I’m jealous or anything!”

“Then don’t say stuff that makes people think you’re jealous!”

Kojou and Sayaka both glared at each other indignantly. Yukina covered her eyes while weakly shaking her head.

“But why are you here, Sayaka? Weren’t you assigned to Multinational Sorcery Crimes in the Foreign Branch?”

“I still am. I came to this island because of my mission.” Sayaka answered in a gentle tone of voice that seemed to come from a different person. Yukina narrowed her eyes in surprise.

“Your mission?”

“Same as yours, Yukina. Watcher duty over a vampire. It’s my duty to watch over Duke Ardeal so that he does not bring about any harm to the residents of Itogami City. At the moment I’m here because he asked me to show you in.”

Hearing Sayaka’s careless explanation, Kojou finally grasped the circumstances.

Just like Yukina had come to Itogami Island on watcher duty, Sayaka had been ordered to observe Vattler.

Not that it accounted for her trying to stab Kojou with a fork out of the blue, but…

“Fine then. Show us in already.”

“I’ll bring you with me, but not because
you
said so. So please die already, like now.”

“Hell no!” Yelling back in annoyance, Kojou trailed behind Sayaka up the stairs. Yukina, last in line, gave both of them a worried look.

Looking over Sayaka’s graceful form from behind, Kojou let out an exasperated sigh.

She’d said Vattler requested that she bring Kojou and Yukina to him.

That being the case, she’d likely been the one who’d sent the invitation along with the
shikigami
that had attacked Kojou during the day.

It wasn’t that she had any strategic objective; she just plain hated Kojou’s guts.

Apparently, Sayaka was enveloped by deep, sister-like affection toward Yukina. So, from her point of view, Kojou was a wicked vampire putting her precious Yukina in danger.

Kojou was afraid to even think about how Sayaka would react if she found out he’d sucked Yukina’s blood. Now he understood quite well why Yukina had been worried Sayaka would come for his neck.

But to Kojou, Sayaka wasn’t the real threat here.

The stirring in Kojou’s “blood” grew even fiercer. The primogenitor’s blood that flowed within Kojou’s body told him that a vampire possessing vast power was nearby.

Kojou didn’t know the other guy’s true nature or his objective. He didn’t think that the cease-fire agreement between the primogenitors applied to the Fourth Primogenitor, who didn’t officially exist. Depending on how negotiations went, worst case, combat might break out right there.

He was a noble of the Warlord’s Empire. A pure-blooded vampire directly descended from a primogenitor. Even if not on the same level as the First Primogenitor, it was safe to think he possessed combat ability near the same scale.

To the contrary, even though Kojou was called the Fourth Primogenitor, he couldn’t use the vast majority of those abilities. He figured he had next to no chance of victory in a straight-up fight.

Feelings of unease and confusion seeping through once more, Kojou climbed onto the ship’s upper deck.

There was a lone man there, standing in the corner of the broad deck against a jet-black sea and the night sky.

He was a handsome young man wearing a coat that was pure white. He was tall, but his contours were refined, not overbearing in any way.

Stroking his blond hair back, the young man looked at Kojou with his pale blue eyes.

That moment, his entire body was enveloped on a beam of pure white light.

“…Senpai!”

Yukina was the first to respond. Drawing her spear from her instrument case, she leaped in front of Kojou. To shield Yukina, Sayaka moved as well. It was all in the blink of an eye.

However, even the girls’ prompt actions could not protect them from the pure white beam.

The true nature of the light unleashed by the man in the coat was a serpent of flame glowing with white. It was a vampire’s Beast Vassal surrounded by scorching heat. Even as the Beast Vassal shot out at the speed of a comet, Kojou made no reaction whatsoever. He didn’t even know what was happening.

“Guo…oo…!”

It was not Kojou who reacted, but the Beast Vassals that dwelled in Kojou’s
blood
. Dazzling lightning enveloped Kojou’s entire body, releasing a lightning bolt that counter-attacked the serpent of flame.

This was one of the twelve Beast Vassals that served the Fourth Primogenitor. It was the thunderbolt of “Regulus Aurum,” the only Beast Vassal Kojou could properly control. It fended off the attack in the place of its dumbfounded master.

Firing indiscriminately with such enormous power would have destroyed the ship, and perhaps the entire harbor with it…but apparently, this time, even the calamitous lion Beast Vassal had thought better of it.

The moment the pure white flaming serpent was annihilated, Kojou’s lightning was annihilated as well.

“Th…that was close! The heck was that?!”

Witnessing the scorched deck and the burning air, the aftereffects of the violent collision of two vast magical forces made Kojou, finally back to his senses, raise his voice. That moment, the sound of light clapping echoed through the air.

The clapping came from the man in the white coat. Having launched the attack at Kojou to begin with, he actually seemed pleased that Kojou had fended it off.

“My, my, quite splendid. So that level of Beast Vassal was indeed unable to even scratch you.”

The man spoke in a relaxed voice. His voice sounded innocent without a shred of tension.

Kojou kept his center of gravity low as he glared back at the man.

The man’s frivolous behavior concealed the vast power behind it. That’s what Kojou’s flesh instinctively told him, putting him on his guard. The flaming serpent was but a portion of his power. If he’d unleashed his Beast Vassal in earnest, even Regulus Aurum might not have been able to stop it…

Thinking that with a shudder, Kojou stared as the other man approached.

But the man’s subsequent behavior caught Kojou by surprise.

He lowered himself to one knee before Kojou, bowing as a reverent noble.

“I apologize from the bottom of my heart for behaving rudely in testing your strength. My name is Dimitrie Vattler, he who has been granted the title of Duke of Ardeal by our primogenitor, the Lost Warlord. I am extremely delighted that you have come to visit this evening…”

Kojou was completely thrown off by the man’s exceedingly eloquent manner of speech.

Yukina, with her silver spear poised, and even Sayaka, were dumbfounded as they stood in place.

“So you’re Dimitrie Vattler…? The guy who called me over here?” Kojou asked in a halting voice.

Vattler raised his face in a broad grin. It was an affable smile broadcasting slyness and mischief in equal measure.

“Perhaps I should say, it is a pleasure to meet you, Kojou Akatsuki. Or rather…‘Kaleid Blood,’ the Fourth Primogenitor, my beloved!”

As Vattler spoke, he gave Kojou an affectionate, longing look. He opened both arms wide as if welcoming Kojou. “So it’s like this after all,” went Sayaka with a shake of her head. Yukina was beside herself.

“…Huh?”

Unable to comprehend the meaning of the words directed at him, Kojou let out a frail murmur. In one sense, Kojou Akatsuki, the Fourth Primogenitor, meeting Dimitrie Vattler, Duke of Ardeal, was a fateful encounter indeed.

“Eh? And then you just ran away?”

She heard the exasperated voice of her childhood friend over the phone.

Asagi, who’d been lying down on her bed, was somewhat peeved as she vigorously sprung up. The time was just before midnight. She was in familiar surroundings at her residence. She was dressed in a tank top and underwear, not a look she really wanted others to be seeing. She’d wrapped her hair, still damp from getting out of the bath, with a bath towel.

“I-it’s not like I ran away. It was so stupid, it just pissed me off a little so I couldn’t stay there anymore.”

The other party to the long phone call was Motoki Yaze. Though there were no intimate feelings between them, he was a precious friend she could have pleasant, frank conversations with thanks to having known each other for so long. She’d meant to air her complaints about the sports festival incident, but at some point, it’d somehow changed to complaining about Kojou personally.

“Certainly I never expected a middle school transfer girl to go on the attack with a cheerleading outfit. You had a tennis skirt on, though, so you should’ve been equally matched. And you should’ve had even more of the element of surprise than she did.”

“Equally matched…what are you talking about?” Asagi asked in irritation at Yaze’s teasing-like tone of voice.

Yaze said, “How to put this?” thinking a little. “A no-holds-barred fight between two girls about who owns Kojou?”

“It is not!! Whoever goes out with Kojou has n-nothing to do with me.”

“Doesn’t look like it to me.”

Yaze spoke in an oddly serious voice.

“Oh, shut your trap,” Asagi said in a low voice.

“What I don’t like is how the idiot’s sneaking around hiding something. If he’s dating that Himeragi girl, he should just do it out in the open. How he’s keeping secrets even from us is really annoying me. It’s really fishy.”

Asagi sought Yaze’s agreeing as a matter of course, but Yaze replied with unexpected words.

“That’s if they’re really dating, ain’t it?”

“Eh?”

“I mean, Kojou seriously thinks of you as just a friend, so there’s no reason for him to keep dating li’l Himeragi a secret from you.”

Asagi reluctantly agreed with Yaze’s surprisingly logical statement.

“Mmm…yeah. You’d think he’d be bragging about it.”

“Having said that, I don’t think he’s got the balls to go two-timing girls.”

“Ah…no. Definitely not.”

This time Asagi immediately concurred.

“For sure,” Yaze went, proudly continuing. “So yeah, Kojou doesn’t have any reason to hide dating li’l Himeragi from us. But all the same, he’s been sneaking around with li’l Himeragi with a guilty look on his face…”

“Yeah.”

“There’s only one possibility I can think of, then.”

“…What?”

“That transfer student’s got something on Kojou, I’m sure of it.”

“H-huh? Something on him?”

Asagi was taken aback for a while at Yaze’s off-the-wall suggestion. But Yaze spoke in a very serious tone of voice.

“Well…something like an embarrassing secret she’s threatenin’ to expose… Anything come to mind like that?”

“Come to mention it…his behavior when he’s with that transfer student is definitely not natural.”

Asagi groaned as she recalled Kojou’s behavior of late. They were unpleasant memories all, but she could accept that behavior as the result of Yukina Himeragi’s intimidation. Come to think of it, Yukina had said something herself.

That she was Kojou’s watcher or something…