Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 7.01

Chapter Sword- Hitei Clear

001 

Princess Hitei was a princess with something to hide. “But of course,” you may want to say, “why would you start with something so obvious? Say something more unusual instead!” But even if you used those strict words to scold me, that was how she gracefully and cleverly teased us—with how we couldn’t do anything even with such an obvious fact. That was the kind of person that the General Director of Internal Inspection Affairs serving under the Yanari Family of the Owari Shogunate, Princess Hitei, was. Because she was liable to deny any definition at any time for any reason, a passive person like me could even consider someone like her to be on the level of an oddity. 

“I deny that!” 

With that one phrase, she could turn over everything in a flash, so you couldn’t be careless. Compared to her, the iron-blooded, hotblooded, cold-blooded vampire, Kissshot Acerolaorion 

Heartunderblade, seemed almost like a straightforward person. 

Thinking about it, if we went back to the origin of that legendary vampire, then she had also been a princess or a noble of some land, so it wasn’t like they didn’t have anything in common—if anything, the fact that they both had dazzling gold hair was a more obvious point in common. However, unlike the idea that a vampire was clearly identifiable as a vampire, the identity of this princess would be totally unclear if you took out the fact that she was a princess. I have to cautiously add here that the title of General Director of Internal Inspection Affairs serving under the Yanari Family of the Owari Shogunate was rather fishy in itself, and that it was even doubtful whether she was really even a princess and not just her rhetoric. 

Even though she was someone so unidentifiable, it made for a provocative performance to hear that her objective was not unknown at all—her objective was the gathering of swords. 

The gathering of Japanese swords. 

Made by the swordsmith known as Shikizaki Kiki, the thousand swords known as the Deviant Blades, and among those, the twelve Perfected Deviant Blades—in pursuit of those, she came up with an ingenious strategy, even in her position as a princess. 

Zettou “Kanna”. Zantou “Namakura”. Sentou “Tsurugi”. Hakutou “Hari”. 

Zokutou “Yoroi”. Soutou “Kanazuchi”. Akutou “Bita”. Bitou “Kanzashi”. 

Outou “Nokogiri”. Seitou “Hakari”. Dokutou “Mekki”. Entou “Juu”. 

The reason she wanted to gather those various eccentric swords was something that was wholly unknown to me, whose history differed from hers, and I wanted to avoid getting too deeply involved in that subject—however, because that was her only objective, it ended up not being strange at all for her to cross over generations to come and visit our town. 

To cross over generations. 

Ah, yes, indeed. That was another representative point in common between Princess Hitei and Kissshot Acerolaorion Heartunderblade, one that we couldn’t go without touching upon. 

In the same way that that legendary vampire was a vampire that had flown in from centuries ago—Princess Hitei was a princess that had also flown in from centuries ago. 

Although, it could be a falsehood that she would readily deny if I mentioned it carelessly.