Gakusen Toshi Asterisk - Volume 16 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

ODD EYE

“Whoa, so they’re finally making a move…?”

Eishirou Yabuki murmured under his breath. He had been nibbling on a rice ball with his left hand and peering through binoculars with his right. As he spoke, he licked the last grains from his fingers.

It was the middle of the night, past three o’clock in the morning, and he was stationed on the elevated monorail that ran across Asterisk’s perimeter. In the darkness, with no light shining from the moon or stars to illuminate his surroundings, he followed closely as a car emerged from the grounds of Le Wolfe Black Institute. From its make, model, and plate number, he could tell it was the vehicle reserved for the student council president’s exclusive use—in other words, Dirk was undoubtedly inside. From this distance, it might have made sense for him to use his far-sight techniques to keep tabs on what was happening, but at night it was easier just to rely on machines and equipment.

“All righty, then. This will probably be my last chance. I’d better get myself together.”

Eishirou leaped down from the overpass and set off in pursuit of the car, his eyes never leaving his target. As a Genestella, he should have little difficulty keeping up—so long, of course, as the vehicle didn’t take off at high speed. Fortunately, it soon entered the redevelopment area not far from the campus. Under the cover of darkness, jumping from ruin to ruin, he continued his pursuit while maintaining a solid distance.

His current mission, as issued by Claudia, was to secure proof that Dirk was in fact a member of the Golden Bough Alliance. Ideally, he would like to catch him meeting up with either Madiath Mesa (going by his alias Lamina Mortis) or the Varda-Vaos, both of whom had already gone into hiding.

Of course, as was to be expected, Dirk was an incredibly cautious individual, and until now he had offered up no leads for Eishirou to hone in on. He seldom set foot outside of Le Wolfe, and even when he did, it was difficult to tail or track him successfully without the necessary manpower. Eishirou, operating alone after having been instructed not to rely on other Shadowstar agents, was severely limited in what he could actually do. On top of that, Dirk always had members of Grimalkin attached to him as his personal security. When dealing with the best intelligence agency of Asterisk’s six schools, caution was always the wisest course of action.

As such, until this moment, he had been unable to achieve any solid results, simply biding his time as he awaited his opportunity.

He didn’t know what kind of plans the Golden Bough Alliance was pursuing, but the larger their ambitions, the more they would need to communicate through face-to-face meetings. Sinodomius’s intelligence network had eyes throughout Asterisk, so no matter how carefully you conducted a conversation through a mobile terminal or communication device, you could never completely dismiss the possibility that someone might intercept it. Short remote conversations might avoid detection, but once they stretched beyond a certain duration, they could be intercepted by the Orga Lux known as the Eye of Providence. It was dangerous to use even the student council president’s direct hotline for more than the briefest of communications.

“Ah…!”

After passing through the Rotlicht into an area filled with nothing but dilapidated ruins, the black car stopped at a street corner in the redevelopment area. Eishirou monitored the surrounding vicinity, but he couldn’t sense anyone else nearby.

What the…?

As he stared breathlessly at the vehicle from the roof of a crumbling building, the rear passenger door suddenly swung open.

The first to emerge was a man who looked to be a bodyguard, followed by Dirk Eberwein, the Tyrant himself. As Dirk climbed out from the car, the bodyguard whispered something in his ear, and he immediately swung his piercing gaze in Eishirou’s direction.

Uh-oh! No way…?!

Startled, he turned around to retreat, at least for the time being, when—

“Hey, you. The one from Shadowstar.”

In the moonless dark, a man had appeared behind him.

“…” Eishirou was speechless.

For a ninja, suppressing one’s own presence while detecting others took precedence over all other techniques. The essence of ninjutsu wasn’t in fighting or assassination nor even in your own clan’s special abilities, but rather in stealth. Even Eishirou, who had been practicing ninjutsu for as long as he could remember, still considered stealth his particular specialty.

And yet—

“Color me surprised. I never would have thought someone could get the jump on me,” Eishirou said with a forced smile. As he spoke, he leaped back to put some distance between himself and the newcomer.

“Oh no, cheer up. Even I wasn’t able to get any closer than this. You’re the real thing, you know?” the man said with a laid-back laugh, notably out of place given the circumstances.

He looked to be a little over twenty years old, with dull blond hair and a thin mustache. His face was well-defined, but he had an air of laziness about him highlighted by his sleepy eyes. At first glance, he seemed like the kind of young man you could find just about anywhere.

“And you are…? I mean, you seem to know who I am already.”

Eishirou was certainly no stranger to being tailed. That was simply what happened when you trained with a superior partner, such as his father Bujinsai.

Yet this time, he had taken care to monitor his surroundings—and there had been absolutely no sign of anyone.

In other words, the man in front of him now must be at the same level as his father—or perhaps even a step above.

“I don’t really care for names. I’m in the same line of work as you, though,” the man said, pulling a Lux activation body from the holder at his waist.

Did that make him a member of Grimalkin, then?

“Hey, hey, at least make it look like you’re putting in an effort. I hate the way you Cats are always so hotheaded,” Eishirou said, carefully measuring his timing as he readied his kunai knives. “Given the situation…I’m guessing I was set up, huh?”

“You’ve been watching my boss for a while now, haven’t you? I told you to leave us alone, but you just had to keep getting in the way.” The man activated a claw-shaped Lux on his left hand.

Is that…Arachne’s Thread?

Arachne’s Thread was an Orga Lux in the possession of Le Wolfe Black Institute, capable of creating and manipulating invisible threads from the tips of its claws. It wasn’t particularly powerful, but it could deliver nasty surprises.

“Heh. So Grimalkin’s putting on a special show just for me? I guess I should be honored. So…are you with the Gold Eyes or the Silver Eyes?”

The agents who worked for Grimalkin were organized into two broad groups—the Silver Eyes, which were mostly active on campus, and the Gold Eyes, which operated off campus. Given that this confrontation was taking place away from Le Wolfe, Eishirou’s assailant most likely belonged to the latter group. However, escort operations were apparently under the jurisdiction of the Silver Eyes, so if he had come with Dirk, that possibility couldn’t be ruled out. In general, the Gold Eyes had greater fighting abilities, but…

Eishirou didn’t expect an answer to these questions. He was simply buying time to reassess his situation, to confirm whether there were any other soldiers in the vicinity waiting to ambush him, and to plan his next moves. No foe would be foolish enough to provide their quarry with information when they intended to kill them in short order.

And yet—

“Me? I’m with both.”

“Huh?”

“I said I’m with the Gold Eyes and the Silver Eyes. Which tends to keep me pretty busy. That asshole thinks it’s okay to call me whenever he’s got a problem,” the man said with a weary sigh.

“…Seriously?”

Eishirou was taken aback by how readily his counterpart had responded to him, but it was this new information that froze him in place.

“So…you’re the current Odd Eye, then?”

Only Grimalkin’s best agent at any given time was listed as a member of both the Gold Eyes and the Silver Eyes. In other words, this was the most capable agent of Asterisk’s most capable intelligence agency—the one known by the code name Odd Eye.

And now, Eishirou was facing off against him.

“I guess that must make you Baldanders, then?”

After Orphelia Landlufen as Erenshkigal and Hyougo Arayashiki as Ruffian, Odd Eye was the third-most powerful student at Le Wolfe. His alias had been circulating through the underworld for some time now, but his face and true identity remained unknown, and so there were more than a few who questioned his very existence.

“Ah. You seem pretty clued in.”

“Not at all. If I’d never heard of you in this business, I’d deserve to be let go.” Eishirou responded casually, but he couldn’t deny that his forehead had broken out into a cold sweat. Inwardly, he was at a total loss.

The situation could hardly be any worse. To start with, his mission had ended up being a complete failure, then he had managed to get himself baited into this trap, and now the most powerful operative of an enemy faction meant to take his life.

To be perfectly honest, he was confident in his skills.

He had once taken out Gold Eye Number Seven, so even against another Cat, he should have been able to stand his ground. But Baldanders was another matter entirely. Of course, it was always possible that his adversary was bluffing, but Eishirou could see well enough that the defenses of the man in front of him were impeccable. Whether or not he actually was Baldanders, it was obvious that Eishirou was outclassed.

I guess it’s time for plan thirty-six… This could get messy…

But the moment Eishirou decided to take a step back, a sudden chill ran down his spine.

“…!”

Reflexively, he stopped in his tracks and looked around. At first glance, there was no sign of any visible change. But Eishirou had already made one mistake. Keeping his gaze fixed on Baldanders, he meticulously sharpened his five senses and finally recognized that something was indeed off.

It was the sound.

The sound of the wind blowing through the air was different than usual—a discrepancy so slight that it would have gone undetected by any ordinary person.

He quickly removed his jacket—every item of his clothing and equipment was designed to be easily removable—and threw it behind him.

The jacket danced in the night wind, but instead of being carried away or falling to the ground, it hung there in place, as though caught by something.

“…I see. I wondered why you were wasting your time chatting, but I guess you were using the opportunity to run those invisible threads around me, huh?”

As an Orga Lux, Arachne’s Thread and its ability to manipulate highly sticky and invisible strings wasn’t well-suited to hand-to-hand combat. For that reason, it was rarely seen at the Festa, and the other schools lacked detailed information on its specifications. Eishirou knew of its capabilities, but he hadn’t expected it to be able to entrap him so quickly.

Judging from the sound and the way that the wind was moving, his foe must have already deployed a spider’s web of threads around him. No doubt the reason he hadn’t ensnared him directly was to avoid tipping him off ahead of time.

It would be difficult to cut through threads produced by an Orga Lux via regular means, but even so, Eishirou doubted they would pose a problem so long as he was only caught by one or two of them. After all, he could always remove an article of clothing as necessary, or even scrape off a little skin if one got caught on his body. As such, for the Orga Lux to be put to maximum effect, it would need to deploy several layers before its quarry could be rendered immobile.

By revealing his identity now, Baldanders was trying to prompt him to choose retreat. Eishirou’s objective—to pursue Dirk and obtain evidence of his involvement—was already foiled, and there was no point in fighting an opponent like Odd Eye here. Under any other circumstances, he would indeed have chosen to fall back.

But Baldanders had anticipated all that, and he had set his trap accordingly.

“Huh? You’ve got a pretty good intuition there,” Baldanders said, his expression bored as he scratched his head. “What a pain in the ass.”

Without even pausing to catch his breath, Eishirou rushed forward, closing the distance between him and his opponent.

This should do it…!

A powerful attack attempting to catch his foe off guard, a mainstay of the Yabuki clan’s repertoire.

Even Baldanders ought to have had a tough time dealing with the Void Tide technique.

And yet…

“Oops…!”

“…!”

Before the dark kunai blade that seemed to melt into the night could reach its target, Baldanders’s right hand, which until then had been scratching his head, was suddenly gripping a musket gun, the muzzle pressed against Eishirou’s flank.

Even though Eishirou had clearly moved faster than his opponent, Baldanders had still managed to surpass him. In other words, they were simply incomparable. Eishirou prided himself on his fleetness of foot and his sharp eyes, but even he hadn’t been able to catch his foe pulling out the weapon.

Then, like a high-pitched bale of laughter, a gunshot rang out.

A jet-black bullet pierced Eishirou’s flesh—and at the same moment, his body collapsed into a heap of leaves. At least, that was how it must have looked to Baldanders.

“Heh, so that’s your hiding-in-the-leaves technique, I take it? I’ve never seen a Yabuki clan trick firsthand before.” The young man watched with one eyebrow raised, apparently impressed.

“…Not really. I don’t actually have anywhere to go from here. This is like a waking nightmare.”

With a grimace, Eishirou returned to his position of just a moment ago. He couldn’t begin to determine where his foe had deployed other threads. While Ayato could use his shiki ability to get an all but perfect grasp of any situation, Eishirou could only make predictions based on the movements and sound of the wind.

No. He did have one more move up his sleeve.

“Anyway… Can you explain that thing for me?”

In his hands, Baldanders was wielding what looked like a musket-type Lux.

No. Eishirou stopped himself. That was no ordinary Lux. It was an Orga Lux.

“This thing? I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the Gremlin Barrett,” Baldanders said with a swing of the gun.

Of course, Eishirou was familiar with the name. Instead of propelling a projectile directly into the target’s body, the Gremlin Barrett unleashed bullets designed to temporarily disrupt their sense of balance. Like Arachne’s Thread, it was another of Le Wolfe’s Orga Luxes, and because the cost it extracted from its users was relatively light, this one did appear in the Festa with some frequency.

That, however, wasn’t the problem right now.

The main principle behind the distribution of Orga Luxes was that each could have only a single user, and each user could wield only a single Orga Lux. There were occasions when certain individuals made use of multiple weapons, but even then, they were limited to using a single Orga Lux in conjunction with regular Luxes. Eishirou had never before heard of anyone being able to wield two separate Orga Luxes.

The reason that Dantes and Stregas were incompatible with Orga Luxes was that the weapons tended to be particularly sensitive to other powers. And for the same reason, they were also incompatible with other Orga Luxes.

And yet…

So he’s using Arachne’s Thread with his left hand and the Gremlin Barrett with his right…?

It was hard to believe that this foe could be compatible with two Orga Luxes, but the effects of Arachne’s Thread didn’t appear to have dissipated. In other words, Baldanders was somehow using the Gremlin Barrett at the same time. He wasn’t simply switching between the two—he was wielding them simultaneously.

That was even more difficult to accept.

This is insane… But I can hardly deny what’s happening in front of my own eyes, can I?

Eishirou immediately brought his stray thoughts under control and gave his wrist a slight flick.

All of a sudden, a gust of wind broke out, and the fallen leaves scattered by his earlier transformation technique were thrown into the air.

Then, within a split second, they froze in place, each of them hooked by invisible threads.

I can’t go up and I can’t go back… So my only way out is through him?

Thanks to those leaves, he had a rough idea of the locations of the threads. Spiderwebs typically relied on branches and leaves to serve as anchor points, but Arachne’s Thread could hang its string on empty air. The abandoned building was already enshrouded by a dome of threads, with only the back section toward Baldanders remaining open—and that too would no doubt be filled in before too long. Looking carefully, Eishirou could see his foe’s left hand moving slightly, no doubt busy extending more threads.

The longer he waited, the fewer options he would have.

“Heh. I guess it’s time for the next one.”

While Eishirou’s feet were burning with impatience, Baldanders calmly swapped the Gremlin Barrett in his left hand for another inactive Lux.

“…How about Zelus’s Bell?”

A third Orga Lux. This time, Eishirou wasn’t surprised. He didn’t know what kind of gimmick his foe was using, but there could be no doubt that he was fully capable of wielding multiple Orga Luxes at the same time.

The rust-colored bell, shaped like the face of a corpse on the cusp of breaking out into a wail, had similar characteristics to the Lyre-Poros held by Queenvale Academy.

In other words, it worked by attacking with sound.

Though not as powerful as the Lyre-Poros, the shattering sonic waves produced by Zelus’s Bell rang out in all directions, leaving no area uncovered. Like the Arachne’s Thread and the Gremlin Barret, it wasn’t a particularly powerful Orga Lux, but it would be a major nuisance.

“…Just how many Orga Luxes do you have?”

“Why don’t you take a guess?”

Without answering Eishirou’s question, Baldanders shook his right hand—and at that moment, the air around him quivered with a low, earth-rumbling moan.

“Ngh…!”

Sound waves strong enough to distort space tore through Eishirou’s skin, making his bones creak from the pressure.

Nonetheless, it was still tolerable. The power of Zelus’s Bell increased with proximity, and likewise decreased as you moved farther away. At the moment, the distance between Eishirou and his opponent was less than five meters. The crushing sound wave might have made for an impossible-to-dodge ranged attack, but it shouldn’t prove fatal at this distance.

Even so, the damage could build up with successive strikes. If he moved too far, he risked getting caught by the threads—still, he did his best to put more distance between the two of them.

The next moment—

“Huh…?”

All of a sudden, the air around him distorted, and Eishirou found himself having fallen to the ground.

He wasted no time trying to rise to his feet, but he stumbled, unable to fully stand.

He could still summon his strength, so the problem wasn’t with his limbs.

“Is this…?”

Paralysis of his sense of balance—probably the result of the Gremlin Barrett.

But he thought he had completely evaded the last attack. Then why…?

“How’s that for you? The Gremlin Barret and Zelus’s Bell work pretty good together, eh?” Baldanders explained.

Eishirou’s skin erupted in a frigid sweat.

He could hardly believe it.

It wasn’t supposed to be possible.

“…Y-you combined…the abilities…of two Orga Luxes…?”

Not only was he in possession of multiple Orga Luxes.

Not only was he capable of wielding them all at the same time.

To top it all off, he was able to combine their effects into one…

In other words, he had merged the sonic attack of Zelus’s Bell with the Gremlin Barrett’s ability to temporarily paralyze its target’s sense of balance.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…,” Eishirou gasped in disbelief.

“Well then, we might as well get this over with… Unfortunately, I don’t have an Orga Lux on hand that can attack at long range, though.”

With those words, Baldanders deactivated Zelus’s Bell and swapped it for a large-caliber gun-type Lux instead.

“It’s just a regular old Lux, but it’s modified to boost its power level. One shot at a vital organ, and down you go,” he said, pointing the muzzle at Eishirou as the manadite core began to glow.

“N-ngh…!”

Eishirou managed to pull himself up on his elbows, but his vision was blurry, his balance unsteady, and he fell flat on his face.

In his current state, he wouldn’t be able to avoid an oncoming attack… Unless—

“See ya, then.”

Just before the man across from him pulled the trigger and a high-powered bullet of light shot out, Eishirou stretched his arms, leaped up into the air with a spin, and landed firmly on his feet.

“Ugh…”

“Whoa, dangerous stuff!”

The dizziness was still somewhat present, but it disappeared as soon as he raised a hand to his head and applied a final adjustment.

“Interesting… So you used your Void Tide technique on yourself? Must be pretty convenient.” Deactivating his Lux, Baldanders rubbed his chin.

Was it that obvious…? And how the hell does he even know about my Void Tide techniques?!

But the man was exactly right.

Eishirou’s clan had passed down their Void Tide techniques for eons, since a time before mana existed in the world (or to be more precise, when it existed only in extremely limited concentrations). They could only be employed by those whose Yabuki blood ran strong. The effects were varied, but in general they interfered with the mental and physical statuses of the target.

That said, the techniques didn’t affect a target directly. Normal humans aside, Genestella were highly resistant to brainwashing and other forms of mental interference, which tended to have only weak effects on them. Moreover, given that his clan’s Void Tide techniques had been developed during an age when mana remained scarce, it was quite impossible for them to exert a direct influence on the target.

For that reason, they functioned not by directly affecting the target’s mind or body, but rather by utilizing the instincts and reflexes innate to human physiology. For example, people tended to unconsciously avoid certain colors, shapes, sounds, smells, or combinations thereof. Reflexively, they sought to dispel those things they found intrinsically unpleasant or uncanny. His clan’s Void Tide techniques worked by projecting such images onto the subject, and as a result, prompting certain thoughts or movements. The Yabuki clan’s wards used to keep people at a distance were just another application of the same principle.

But while these techniques couldn’t manipulate people directly, they were useful for deflecting attacks and slowing a target’s evasive movements. For a ninja, that was typically enough.

This time, Eishirou had forced his body to ignore its paralysis and leap up by applying the technique to himself.

“Well, I don’t think anyone else could have pulled off that trick!” he laughed as he rubbed the bottom of his nose in satisfaction.

In fact, the reason he had managed to abscond from his village without punishment was that he had such an extremely high aptitude for these kinds of Void Tide techniques. He was proud to say in that regard, he had even surpassed his father, his other ninja skills and abilities notwithstanding.

“Ah… I was wondering why you didn’t try to get closer, but it looks like you already know about my Void Tide techniques, huh? Full points to you, I guess.”

The best way to kill one’s target without fail would be to aim at their neck or heart with a melee weapon.

And yet, Baldanders had made no attempt to close the distance.

No doubt he was guarding against Eishirou’s Void Tide techniques. They were, after all, known for being able to turn the tables even on superior opponents.

“You know what they say—a wise man never courts danger. Cowardice is the key to a long life, don’t you think?”

Eishirou could agree with that sentiment. In this business, you had to be a coward to survive.

After all, fights between two special operatives were the complete opposite of public performances like the Festa. In such spectacles, the objective was to clash with all one’s strength, constantly butting against one’s foe and employing all the techniques and abilities at one’s disposal. But in his world, the best course of action was to eliminate your opponent before they were aware of your existence—and if that proved impossible, the key was to win without taking a blow.

Just as Baldanders was doing to Eishirou right now.

“But if it’s come to this, I guess I’m gonna have to double down and finish you off here. I didn’t really want to have to use this one…but I guess I’ve got no choice, eh?”

With those words, Baldanders retrieved another deactivated Orga Lux.

What on earth was it…?

“Uh-oh…”

Eishirou’s face contorted as his eyes lit up with recognition.

With his right hand, his foe activated a club with an urm-manadite tip.

“The Wolt-Moon,” Eishirou all but spat.

Among the various Orga Luxes held by Le Wolfe Black Institute, the Wolt-Moon was among the most malignant, surpassing even the Raksha-Nada. That club, created by Ladislav Bartošik himself, possessed the ability of decomposition—an astonishing power to reduce practically anything it touched to ashes.

But as notorious as it was, in actual combat, it wasn’t a particularly practical weapon.

The Wolt-Moon reduced any object it struck to dust, but it only worked if it could physically touch the target. If it made contact with someone’s clothes, it would be those pieces of fabric that would be destroyed first. And that decomposition ability could only be used a limited number of times. Unlike, for example, the Pan-Dora, its total uses couldn’t be restored once exhausted, and so under certain conditions, it would be rendered nothing more than an unwieldy, blunt instrument.

Because of the high cost it required from its user, its remarkably low compatibility rate, and most of all, its utter brutality (it decomposed human bodies, too), it had appeared in the Festa only once. Afterward, it had gained notoriety in the underworld as a weapon used by Le Wolfe’s most ruthless thugs.

“So you’ve brought another nasty toy…”

Like the Four Colored Runeswords, this was another weapon impossible to defend against. Fortunately, its reach was rather short.

Moreover, the Wolt-Moon could only be used in close quarters, which gave Eishirou a chance to come out on top.

But with that thought, he stopped himself.

No, why would someone who calls himself a coward, who’s kept his distance up till now, change tactics so easily…?

At that moment, a second possibility dawned on him:

combined abilities.

“…! No way…!”

With a light tap, Baldanders brought the Wolt-Moon in his right hand up to Arachne’s Thread in his left.

A second later, the abandoned building that Eishirou and his adversary were standing atop decomposed without leaving so much as a trace.

“Shit…!”

But before it could hit the ground, Eishirou’s falling body came to a sudden stop in midair.

His foe’s invisible threads, it seemed, had caught him.

“…I didn’t think you’d laced those threads through the inside of the building, too… You got me…,” he murmured from his position in a hammock-like net, glancing at Baldanders standing now a few meters down below.

So I can’t move either leg, my back, or my left arm at all… Looks like I can budge my head and my right arm a little, though…

He tried to calmly take in the situation, but objectively speaking, it was now practically hopeless.

“So you combined the abilities of the Wolt-Moon and Arachne’s Thread, I take it?”

Disassembling everything that was in direct contact with those unseen threads, and throwing him headfirst into the middle of a trap…

Fortunately, even ensnared like this, at no point was his skin in direct contact with the threads. Even if the Wolt-Moon’s ability was triggered yet again, it would be his clothes that decomposed first.

Still, if this same maneuver was used two, maybe three times in a row, he would be done for—though Eishirou suspected that his foe wouldn’t want to use up his limited stock so easily. After all, Baldanders had for all intents and purposes already won.

If I could get out of my clothes… No, that wouldn’t work. Even if I did manage to wriggle out, at this rate…

The dust from the decomposed building drifted through the surrounding area, faintly highlighting the invisible threads. Those threads, stretched out in a dozen or so layers in every possible direction, completely encircled him.

“I wonder?”

Despite all this, there was no change in Baldanders’s expression. Even now, he seemed neither alert nor gloating, his eyes displaying only the same lethargy that had filled them from the beginning of their encounter.

“But…I’ve learned one thing. Looks like you don’t have total freedom combining the abilities of your Orga Luxes, do you?”

“…”

Without responding, Baldanders returned the Wolt-Moon to its holder and retrieved his gun-type Lux. As Eishirou had suspected, he didn’t want to waste the Orga Lux’s limited uses.

“I’m right, aren’t I? There ought to be more effective Orga Luxes to combine with the Wolt-Moon. But seeing as you aren’t trying anything like that…I’m guessing there’s some kind of compatibility problem, right?”

“…This time, it’s over,” Baldanders declared, his voice devoid of emotion as he pointed his gun straight at Eishirou.

“Yep, it’s over,” Eishirou responded with a slight grin.

The next moment—a red line ran across Baldanders’s neck, from which a plume of blood burst forth.

“…?! What…?!”

For the first time, Baldanders’s expression was one of utmost shock as he raised his hands to the gash, yet he was unable to stem the bleeding.

“Heh-heh…! Right by the skin of my teeth, huh?”

Eishirou was making a V sign with his right hand, which he had just thrown forward with all his might.

Yes—he had just cast a shuriken to tear through Baldanders’s neck.

“Impossible… But there was no sign, no indication…!”

Baldanders swayed unsteadily. The shuriken used by the Yabuki clan were produced from a reaction of one’s own blood with a special medium, and they were designed to gouge right through the flesh of their target in such a way that it was difficult to stem the bleeding.

“Well, that’s on you. We’ve both got our own special ways of hiding our own presence. Don’t beat yourself up over it. There’s no way you could have noticed.”

“…Another…Void Tide…technique…?”

Baldanders was clearly unable to grasp what had just happened, but Eishirou responded with silence.

He wasn’t stupid enough to go out of his way to reveal his secrets, though his foe’s assumption had indeed been in the ballpark.

Baldanders, on alert against Eishirou’s Void Tide techniques, had maintained a fixed distance from his quarry. At that range, there was enough of a power differential that he would be able to resist any tricks that Eishirou might try to pull against him. Naturally, there was no way that he would have fallen victim to a mere thrown weapon.

Unless, of course, another Void Tide technique was put to use.

The Yabuki possessed a wide variety of such moves. Among them was the immobilizing technique used by Bujinsai that made its target’s body freeze with tension.

The one that Eishirou had used this time was his own original technique, one he had named the Fivefold Seal. To put it simply, its purpose was to create an opening for him to attack, much like many regular Void Tide techniques. The difference was in its level of accuracy.

The Fivefold Seal worked by shutting off all five of its target’s senses, even if only for a brief moment. Regular Void Tide techniques might be able to cut off Baldanders’s sight for a few seconds—but that wouldn’t be enough to defeat him. Though it might slow him down, so long as his other senses continued to function, it would be impossible to disrupt his sense of continuity. There was a famous story of an old master who had been able to respond to assailants even in his sleep so long as he kept one or two of his senses on high alert at all times.

So what was the solution? The answer was simple: to shut down all of the target’s senses. Then there would be a complete blank in their sense of continuity.

The problem was that Void Tide techniques were only effective against one sense at any given time. No matter how quickly you managed to deactivate the others, there would inevitably be a time lag tipping the target off.

And so, after much deliberation, Eishirou had struck upon a solution—a Void Tide technique that worked slowly. As a matter of course, Void Tide techniques relied on biological reflexes to produce immediate results. However, if those effects could be delayed, it wouldn’t be impossible to use several of them simultaneously. In effect, it would block out all five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—and leave the target in a state of utter defenselessness.

The greatest advantage of Void Tide techniques was that the target tended to remain unaware of how they had been affected. And so Eishirou had been busy applying them to Baldanders since the moment he realized escape was impossible.

However, their precise application had been remarkably difficult—a race against time to see whether his foe’s trap would close first, or whether he could buy enough time to fully cut off Baldanders’s senses.

In the end, Eishirou had won by a hairbreadth.

“Ha-ha…! You got me… I hate to say it… But you’re pretty good, huh…?”

With those final words, Baldanders swayed unsteadily before falling headfirst in a heap.

Just as the dull sound of the impact echoed out, the threads holding Eishirou in place dissipated.

Spinning through the air, he alighted in an empty lot. The building, it seemed, really had been decomposed. Once again, the thought of that horrifying Orga Lux shook him to his core.

He kept his distance from his fallen adversary just to be sure, but his foe didn’t seem to be breathing. Eishirou listened carefully to make sure that his heart had likewise stopped beating.

He was dead, all right.

“…All right! I won!” he exclaimed, making a little victory pose.

Against, of all foes, Odd Eye.

The most powerful intelligence operative in the world.

Despite everything, Eishirou had—

“…Hey, now. Are you sure about that?”

“Huh…?”

Before his very eyes, Baldanders’s lifeless body rose slowly to its feet.

“What…?! Wh-what…?!” Eishirou mouthed as he backed slowly away.

Baldanders—or rather, Melchior—scratched the back of his head. “Geez. It’s been a while since I last died. There’s just no getting used to it.”

He lifted a hand to his throat, but the wound had already vanished.

Indeed, his neck, which had broken when he had fallen to the ground, was likewise completely healed.

“A regenerative…? No, that can’t be… How is it that even possible? Not even the best regenerative can resuscitate themselves…”

Eishirou was visibly confused but still ready for further combat, revealing not even the faintest opening. He was, at the end of the day, an excellent agent, to the extent that Melchior would have liked to have recruited him for Grimalkin.

Hmm…? Hold on, didn’t the last Odd Eye say something about trying to recruit a kid from the Yabuki clan…?

It was impossible to know whether he had meant the boy presently before him, but if so, Melchior’s predecessor had certainly had a good eye.

Now that he had confronted him out in the field like this, however, there was no way he could allow him to escape.

“Well, I’ll let you have the first win. But you aren’t getting any more,” Melchior said.

Eishirou, still on guard, took another half step backward. “Um, before that… How are you still alive? You were dead, right? Like, completely.”

“I’ll let you keep guessing.”

Melchior was willing to talk so long as was necessary, but there was no point revealing his hand.

The Orga Lux embedded in his heart—No Name—was his most vital secret. Even at Le Wolfe Black Institute, the only other person who knew of its existence was Dirk himself.

Even the appellation “No Name” was a pseudonym.

An Orga Lux like his, which granted its user pseudo-immortality, wasn’t even supposed to exist. When Solnage had uncovered the characteristics of its urm-manadite, its executives had elected without hesitation to keep it top secret. That decision, no doubt, had been reached on account of the vicious cost demanded by the Orga Lux (and just personally, Melchior suspected the other foundations had at least a few Orga Luxes they kept confidential for similar reasons).

The cost that his exacted was life.

No Name maintained its stock by consuming human lives. So long as its stock was not depleted, it could revive its user—several times over, if necessary. The problem was that it needed to consume a life every two months. In other words, six people would have to be sacrificed each year for someone to keep using it. If two months passed without adding to its stock, it would take the user’s life instead.

At present, No Name had nine lives in its reserve—although as Melchior had just consumed one of them, it was technically down to eight.

As the user was forced into a comatose state whenever No Name fed, not even he knew how the Orga Lux did it. Nor did he know or even care how Solnage chose and prepared those who would be fed to it next. As far as he was concerned, the only thing that mattered was prolonging his own life.

And there was another important by-product of No Name’s abilities.

He could use as many other Orga Luxes as he had lives in No Name’s stock. If a new user was found, they would naturally take priority—but otherwise, Melchior was free to borrow any Orga Luxes in Le Wolfe’s possession that were presently without users.

“I underestimated you a little. I guess I owe you an apology,” he said to the Yabuki kid.

“Not at all. By all means, keep on underestimating me,” Eishirou responded with a twitchy smile.

“I’ll have to be a little more careful this time. A little more cowardly.”

Unfortunately, the Orga Lux corresponding to the life that had been consumed was Arachne’s Thread, and he was now unable to wield it. At least he still had the others on hand.

“Well then, let’s get on with the second round.”

Just as he was about to retrieve his next Lux—

“…!”

Every sign of Dirk’s presence was snuffed out.

A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that the vehicle he had come in was gone, vanished, leaving behind only the Grimalkin bodyguard in a clear state of confusion.

“Oh…?”

Eishirou too, after a moment’s delay, picked up on this development, following his gaze.

At first, Melchior had taken this for another of the Yabuki kid’s tricks, but he quickly reconsidered that thought.

The car hadn’t driven away—it had simply vanished. No doubt it was the work of another of Le Wolfe’s Orga Luxes, Atlas’s Perone, which allowed its user to teleport objects between set coordinates fixed in advance. One of those coordinates, Melchior knew, was set to the site of the Festa.

Its current user, if he wasn’t mistaken, was one of Dirk’s protégés.

Which means this was his plan from the very beginning…

Ostensibly, this operation was about Dirk putting himself out as bait to fish for agents from Galaxy so Melchior could eliminate them—but had his actual goal been to use this kid as an excuse to lure Melchior himself away so he could up and vanish?

Tch…! I’ve been played…

Grimalkin was Le Wolfe’s intelligence organization, and while it was officially under the command of the student council president, it was in reality strongly influenced by Solnage. For some time now, Melchior had been conducting surveillance of Dirk’s security entourage on Solnage’s orders. For reasons unknown to him, Dirk had apparently been acting in a manner that headquarters found worthy of suspicion.

“Oh dear. Your boss seems to have up and vanished all of a sudden… Is everything okay?”

Melchior hadn’t intended to let his annoyance show, but while Eishirou couldn’t have possibly known everything that was going on, he did seem particularly sensitive to these kinds of subtleties.

“Hey, don’t mind me,” he continued. “If you want to chase after him, be my guest. I don’t think I’d be able to escape with you on my tail anyway.”

“…”

“Well, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep up, but I’ll do my best to fight back. Let’s get started, then,” Eishirou said blithely, readying a kunai knife.

If he was to cross blades with this boy again, Melchior knew he wouldn’t lose a second time. He had been caught off guard earlier, and while Eishirou’s Void Tide techniques were a threat, they would hardly prevail against his full strength.

But…whether the fight could be settled quickly was another matter.

Eishirou had basically declared that he was willing to fight him in an effort to buy time. If he resisted with all his skills and abilities, it would take Melchior a good while to fell him, no matter how many Orga Luxes he used.

The effective range of Atlas’s Perone is about a hundred meters… And given its current specs, it’ll be limited to around three uses. There’s still a chance I can track him down…

“Ah… I guess I’ve got no choice,” he said. “We’ll just have to postpone this showdown until next time.”

Melchior hated the idea of letting go of someone who knew about his abilities, even if only partially, but his priority right now had to be tracking down Dirk’s whereabouts.

“Personally, I’d rather not fight with you ever again, if I can help it,” Eishirou answered.

“…You’ve got gall, kid. Fine. I’m going.”

Sparing a sidelong glance at Eishirou’s grinning face, Melchior called out to Dirk’s abandoned bodyguard and leaped out from the empty lot.

Once Baldanders was gone, Eishirou stared after him for a moment into the darkness. Finally, deciding that it was probably safe for him to leave, he let out a deep sigh.

“Ah, that was close…!”

If Baldanders had set his sights on taking Eishirou’s life, he would have been killed for sure. Neither his Void Tide techniques nor his Fivefold Seal were easily defeated, but they weren’t invulnerable, either. There was little doubt that a foe as skilled as Baldanders would have found a way to break past them.

In any case, Eishirou had to admit he had made a narrow escape.

At that moment, his mobile began to ring with an incoming call.

It was voice-only, the number withheld.

Then again, very few individuals had his number in the first place.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Who’s this?”

“Oh, so you’re still kicking? Impressive.”

Sure enough, the voice on the other end of the line belonged to the boss of the man who had just been gunning for his life.

“You used me as bait, you son of a bitch.”

“So what? It’s your fault for being such a pest in the first place,” Dirk spat back in his usual irritated tone of voice. “But that Melchior guy was just as much of a pain in the ass as you. Good job beating him.”

“If you’re talking about Baldanders, he looked pretty damn bloodthirsty when he took off after you. You sure you should be taking it so easy?”

“There’s no problem. Now that I’m away, he won’t find me.” Dirk paused there for a moment before continuing, “So I guess I owe you my gratitude. Thanks for the help.”

“Hah? Thanks?” Eishirou’s eyes bulged. He never would have expected to hear such a thing from the Tyrant of all people.

“So I’m gonna clue you in to what they’re looking for.”

“…How do I know I can believe you?”

“Believe me or don’t, that’s up to you. But it’s your job to weigh up the intel, right?”

Indeed, it certainly was Eishirou’s responsibility to consider all the evidence.

Then again…he could hardly think of a less trustworthy source.

Of course, if Dirk was being truthful here, it would be a major breakthrough. And for all his faults, he wasn’t dishonest. After all, he understood that those who lied in his business didn’t last long—not for moral reasons, but as a matter of simple profit and loss.

In this case, however, Dirk was calling him of his own accord. There was no deal being done here, and it would be Eishirou’s own fault if he let himself get taken advantage of. There was no logical reason why Dirk should give him any intel.

In that case, it was sensible to suspect a trap…

“…Well, I guess I’ll hear you out, then.”

“Hmph. Just shut up and listen. See, the people you’re looking for—you’ll find them above and below.”