017
“All right, now gather ’round.
“Now that I’m done cutting to the chase, why don’t we do things in order. I suppose I’ll give a chronological explanation of what happened while using this tablet’s dazzling screen to provide some illustrations─yes, vampires are of course weak to the sun.
“Even an elementary schooler knows that─and not even the iron-blooded, hot-blooded, yet cold-blooded vampire Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade is an exception.
“Neither are her thralls, of course.
“But while the king of aberrations whose name spread, without exaggeration, around the world is no exception, she is beyond the pale─her weakness does not function as a weakness.
“In fact, Koyomin, didn’t you get set ablaze under the sun’s rays over spring break yourself? But you recovered after that, right?
“Yes, I know.
“The same thing happened to the body of the First.
“That’s what this is─of course, since he threw himself under the sun on purpose in order to die, and not by mistake like you, I guess you could call it a would-be, or rather, a would-never-be suicide.
“It does seem like it took a bit of time for him to return, though.
“A brief four hundred years or so.
“Or to be more precise, even now, four hundred years after his would-never-be suicide, the First has still not managed to fully return.
“You faced off against this armored warrior yourselves, so you must know, right? I bet you felt that the armored warrior was getting stronger and stronger─but if we’re being accurate, it’s not that he got stronger.
“He’s recovering.
“He’s on the road to rehabilitation.
“He’s trying to return to his full self─so yes, he used that energy drain on you and Miss Suruga Kanbaru to feed and restore himself. Just as Shinobu recovered from the scratches she suffered from that mockery of an aberration by eating another mockery of an aberration.
“Maybe I ought to call you a sterling example of a successor, Koyomin, because you ended up aiding the First in his speedy recovery─no, no.
“I’m not just talking about tonight─I’m pointing to your personality, to the entire way you’ve been acting lately.
“You don’t understand what I’m saying? Don’t worry, you will soon.
“To put it another way, I personally wanted to put an end to all this before it got to this point.
“My plan was to have Yotsugi handle it herself.
“I messed up a whole lot of my calculations─just because I know everything doesn’t mean that everything goes the way I think it will.
“Especially, Koyomin.
“Especially when I’m faced with reckless, impossible-to-predict youngsters like you who don’t operate according to logic─which is why I took responsibility for getting my calculations wrong and stepped out into the front lines myself, and it’s why I asked you for help.
“You might think that some mean old lady is getting you wrapped up in one of her annoying jobs right now─but really, this lady’s giving you an opportunity.
“The perfect opportunity to take responsibility for the very things you bungled─but I doubt you’d be quick to see it my way.
“You might never be able to see it my way.
“But Koyomin, has it really never crossed your mind? Why you’ve been encountering these troublesome aberrational phenomena over the last six months on what seems like a monthly basis?
“You don’t find that strange?
“Why the legendary vampire─
“Why, out of all the places in the world, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade visited the very town you live in over spring break.
“Was it just a coincidence?
“Why the crab girl, why the snail girl, why the monkey girl, why the snake girl were in this town.
“Why the aberration hunted by my junior who gives even me trouble, Kagenui…
“Why the phoenix lived here in this town too. Do you think that’s just another coincidence?
“The cat─the circumstances may have been a little special in that one case.
“But that must be exactly why the armored warrior stepped so carelessly on the tiger’s tail─when you look at it that way, fortune favored you.
“A tiger, huh. Heh.
“As someone who’d once gone up in flames himself, the First must have been traumatized by the fire and the blaze─no wonder he decided to make a temporary retreat.
“If you manage to survive long enough to see Tsubasa Hanekawa again, you’d better thank her─hm? You don’t know what I mean by that, either? Then don’t worry about it yet─I’m just saying that your friend is a tragic girl who defends you, intentionally or not.
“You seem to think that things that happen to you could naturally happen to others, and while I feel a sense of modesty coming from your rejection of miracles, your way of thinking has one large flaw.
“Which is that you’re judging anyone who’d see you as special as wrong─I’m really sorry for saying all these vague things.
“I start to want to lecture about life whenever I see a spunky youngster like you─I bet Mèmè, my big brother, would just give you a ‘You’re so spirited, something good happen to you?’ and leave it at that, but I regret to say I’m not as tolerant as that novice.
“Speaking of which, didn’t I promise to explain things in chronological order? Then I’ll keep my promise. In the end, keeping promises is the quickest way to get results.
“Let’s start four hundred years ago─when the current Shinobu Oshino, Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, made her first slave after not creating a single thrall until that day.
“She drank the blood of a human.
“The reason things came to this─that’s something I can skip over, right? It’s been told in another place, and it’s in the past.
“For you and for him.
“From the perspective of an expert aberration exterminator, finding himself on the side of the exterminated was something he couldn’t take─he couldn’t face the fact that he’d become a monster. And so he chose death.
“He threw himself under the sun.
“He turned to ashes and vanished, swept away by the wind─or at least, that’s what should have happened.
“To Heartunderblade he left all his rancor, as well as a replica of the enchanted, aberration-slaying sword, Kokorowatari─and they all lived happily ever after.
“Except they didn’t, for reasons I explained above.
“Even if he turned to ashes or disappeared, he didn’t die─he may have vanished, but he wasn’t gone. He may have died, but he couldn’t die out.
“He.
“Kept living.
“He turned to nothing, he turned to nothingness, and he kept living.
“Over the course of four hundred years─over the course of a dizzying, a depressing amount of time, he slowly but surely restored his body.
“Burned by the sun each time he recovered, broken each time he put himself back together, he didn’t succumb, didn’t grow discouraged─he recovered.
“I can’t say this with any first-hand knowledge because I’ve never had the experience of being immortal, but I imagine those four hundred years were like hell─a Sisyphean ordeal.
“Of course, you can’t even laugh at the idea of a vampire being tormented by demons.
“He would doggedly pile up little pebbles.
“He could pile them up and up, but one swing of a rod would ruin it all. One beam of sunlight would ruin everything.
“Sunlight on a clear day would force him to start rebuilding from zero whatever little bonds he’d formed─and so this fruitless process of trial-and-error went on for this dizzying amount of time as he tried to recover.
“Of course, it’s not as if the First had any sort of firm will of his own now that he was ash. This recovery is more like a vampire’s biological reaction, probably nothing more than a reflex…
“When you think of it that way, it wasn’t fruitless so much as hapless.
“A sad case of unlimited continues in a game you can never beat.
“He couldn’t even die, all because he’d inherited a legendary vampire’s damned immortality.
“Eternal youth and life in the truest sense─I’m sure Yotsugi would have been able to put him out of his misery if she’d been there, but we’re talking about four hundred years ago.
“In any case.
“His karma looped endlessly in this one-man transmigration─which he’d be forced to repeat forever.
“That was the first Aberration Slayer’s fate─but.
“His persistence was something special─the legendary vampire had chosen him to be her thrall for a reason. So, with a will that he shouldn’t have had.
“With what little will he had.
“He rode the wind─still as ash.
“He was scattered but reassembled.
“Persistently, one speck at a time.
“Through sheer determination─he returned to this town.
“And he did so fifteen years ago.”
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