Strike the Blood - Volume 19 - Chapter 4.1

CHAPTER FOUR

MY NAME IS KENON

1

Tilting the white porcelain cup, she brought the amber-colored liquid to her mouth. She narrowed her brows. With a grimace of her refined, doll-like face, she shook her head with heavy exasperation.

“Awful.”

Natsuki Minamiya violently hurled the cup away. The golden-haired youth glanced back at her with a constrained expression. He called himself The Blood.

They were in a tearoom of an ancient castle. It was unadorned and windowless. Natsuki and the boy were sitting facing each other across an antique table of beautifully grained wood.

Natsuki was tied to the chair with a long ribbon engraved with a curse. She was currently held captive.

“Does the tea not please you?” the boy asked courteously. “I procured tea leaves of the highest grade that cannot be obtained in the modern era.”

“It tastes worse than Astarte’s piss, and that is putting it kindly. It suits the likes of you very well.” Natsuki laughed haughtily.

Her conduct made the red-eyed girl attending the boy from behind fly into a rage. “You little…!”

Countless black tentacles gushed out from the girl’s white robe.

Each of them wriggled as if a snake with its own independent sentience as the tentacles bore down toward Natsuki. A single attack from the fiendish tentacles could snap Natsuki’s slender neck and mercilessly rend her limb from limb with ease.

Just before the tentacles touched her, their movements stopped.

“What’s wrong? Not going to do it?” Natsuki smiled, staring at the tentacles slick with transparent fluid.

The girl narrowed her red eyes with chagrin.

“You can’t, can you?” Natsuki continued. “It would inconvenience you were I to awaken, would it not?”

“…So you noticed,” the golden-haired boy said gently.

The tentacles writhed around in dissatisfaction as they returned to the girl’s robe.

Even this disgusting sight did not change Natsuki’s expression. If anything, it felt like Natsuki was disappointed that the girl had regained her composure in the end.

“It is an iron rule that the price of a pact is proportional to the power granted to the witch…” Natsuki stirred the tea in front of her as she murmured to herself, “The fact she possesses a Guardian equal to my Rheingold means that the same pact was imposed upon her, namely the role of the warden of a Prison Barrier—am I mistaken, Octo Girl?”

“—!!” With a brief, incoherent snarl, the red-eyed girl stepped closer to Natsuki.

“Cease, Merriloé,” The Blood said sharply. Then he spoke gently to Natsuki, as if trying to soothe her. “I cannot allow you to awaken. I have no intention of repeating the foolish actions of Aya Tokoyogi. The Prison Barrier only has value so long as it remains within your dream.”

Natsuki raised an eyebrow slightly.

The Prison Barrier was an other-space constructed within Natsuki’s own dream.

Like a princess asleep in a castle of thorns, Natsuki remained asleep within her very own dream. And in that other-space where time stood still, she continued to keep vile sorcerous criminals incarcerated. This was the price Natsuki had paid—the price for the pact the young Natsuki had made with a devil in search of the power to take her revenge.

So long as she remained asleep in that otherworldly prison, no one could hurt Natsuki.

She could not age, she could not be harmed, and she could not perish.

Accordingly, those resentful of Natsuki had exhausted all manner of methods in an attempt to awaken her. After all, so long as Natsuki did not awaken from her dream, it was impossible for the criminals in the Prison Barrier to escape.

However, The Blood had stated that he was not inclined to awaken Natsuki. She found this to be unexpected.

“Tartarus, Cocytus, Yomi, the Castle in the Sky—though called by different names, cursed prisons where even gods were shut for eternity have always existed in every corner of the globe since eras long past. And every such otherworldly prison has always had a single person as its warden—just like you.”

“Warden? Surely you mean ‘pitiful living sacrifice’?” Natsuki retorted.

The boy nodded. “I suppose I do. And these people cannot hope to escape from their prisons. After all, they support the very existence of their prisons. If they left their prisons, the prisons themselves would vanish. If there is no one to dream, the dream shall vanish.”

“And if you destroy me here, my real body will awaken, and the Prison Barrier will vanish as well. Is that why you cannot harm me?”

He nodded again. “More precisely, it would not vanish. With the dream connecting it severed, the contents would be cast out into the real world, but well, the effect is much the same.”

Natsuki curled up one corner of her lips. “If you want to dream that badly, retreat into your own. I know a very good sedative. Or would you rather I sang you a lullaby?”

“That is quite an alluring offer coming from you, but unfortunately, I cannot dream.” The Blood’s shoulders sank. “However, yes, you are correct. It is because I cannot dream that I seek yours. You know about the Collective Unconscious, do you not?”

Natsuki was unimpressed. “It is the foundation of spells, yes? A common unconsciousness exists across all beings, spanning all peoples and races.”

“Yes, precisely. One method of accessing the Collective Unconscious is through a dream. Put another way, this means that all dreams are connected to the Collective Unconscious.”

“What…?”

Natsuki’s expression stiffened. She realized the meaning behind this.

All dreams were connected via the Collective Unconscious—in other words, a prison that existed within a dream was connected to them, and they to it.

“At the bottom of the Prison Barrier is a door of which even you are unaware. A door that links this world to the many otherworldly prisons that existed in the past.”

“Tch… Rheingold!”

Natsuki called out to her Guardian. This was a devil’s vassal granted to a witch, proof of her pact with a devil. It was both the source of a witch’s power, and at the same time, a witch’s overseer.

The Guardian Natsuki had acquired was a giant statue of a knight—a golden, clockwork knight. But.

“Outis!”

A humongous black shadow engulfed the golden knight before it could completely materialize.

The shadow was, in reality, countless tentacles slithering from the girl’s robe. They held Natsuki’s Guardian fast, impeding its materialization.

With Natsuki’s Guardian sealed off, The Blood gently gazed at the contortion of her youthful, beautiful face with a look of pity.

“Merriloé, a warden of a prison just like you, can open this door. The door to liberate the acolytes of the Order of the End captured in the past.”

“The Order of the End… You’ve claimed to serve the true Fourth Primogenitor since ancient times, correct?” Natsuki grimaced. “All this time, I thought something was off. When the Fourth Primogenitor—when Root finished the duty of defeating Cain the Sinful God, the Devas that created it carved up its body, sealing them into twelve artificial vampires. In spite of this, the legend of the terror of the Fourth Primogenitor never ceased. The Fourth Primogenitor appeared at various points in history, causing chaos and destruction throughout the world.”

“Yes. The Fourth Primogenitor’s name must be a symbol of terror. It must bear overwhelming malice and hatred, existing to burn the world to ash—if not, their fate is simply too tragic.”

The boy’s words held weight. Unlike the gentle smile he had worn up to that point, a smirk came over his lips born from madness.

“In the distant past, a group claimed the name of the Fourth Primogenitor and committed acts of large-scale sorcerous terrorism again and again—this is the Order of the End’s true nature, is it?”

“Yes, we have always existed everywhere, at every juncture in history. We’ve ensured that the name of the Fourth Primogenitor, the World’s Mightiest Vampire cursed by the gods themselves, was never, ever forgotten.”

The boy tilted his face toward his own feet.

The next moment, the castle Natsuki and the others were in was savagely shaken.

The girl called Merriloé sent a vast amount of demonic energy coursing through her tentacles. The Prison Barrier was shaking.

The bottommost portion of the Prison Barrier opening, sending a tremor from its door.

The impact also flung open the gate separating Natsuki’s dream from the real world.

“Otherworldly prisons, in which the most fiendish and vile sorcerous criminals are locked away, contain an assembly of Order of the End acolytes from throughout history—I shall release them,” the boy said with complete glee. “They shall be resurrected upon the Itogami Island of this age all at once, so as to grant people true despair.”

“You are broken, The Blood,” Natsuki spat.

“It is the world that is broken. We are merely returning it to its proper state.”

He stood up and turned his back to Natsuki. We are done here, spoke his demeanor.

“What is the Order of the End’s real objective?” Natsuki asked.

“Ahh, how rude of me. I forgot to tell you.” The Blood slowly turned around, his eyes still closed.

“A new ruler shall be chosen. A new king to bring all peoples salvation from despair—a true ruler, not only for this Demon Sanctuary but for the entire world.”

The Blood seemed to melt away into swaying space, all sight of him swallowed by the void.

She felt countless prisoners slipping out of the Prison Barrier’s castle gate, following in his tracks. There were innumerable prisoners clad in white robes, wearing skull masks; nightmares in humanoid form.

Natsuki watched them go in silence.

She was utterly helpless, as before, unable to do a thing.