Strike the Blood - Volume 20 - Chapter 4.1

CHAPTER FOUR

REUNION OF THE VAMPIRE PRINCESS

1

The huge demon beasts pursuing them emerged from all sides of the labyrinthine shopping mall.

Their sprinting along made the ground shake with ceaseless tremors. Their wriggling tentacles wreaked indiscriminate destruction upon the stores, their huge frames squishing and wrecking one structure after the next. It was a scene straight out of a disaster movie.

“Fooour, fiiiive, six, seven… Seven critters in all. More than I thought. I have to wonder, who cleans up all the droppings they leave behind?”

After confirming the number of demon beasts, Yuno voiced that question. She said it with a carefree tone. It was hard to tell if she was joking or actually being serious.

“Is this really the time to bring up that nonsense?”

Shizuri gripped the hilt of her long sword as she shouted.

Last time the type of monster known as IX-4 appeared on Itogami Island, it had exhibited the dangerous characteristic of absorbing surrounding magical energy to grow larger.

Shizuri’s demonic sword, which robbed anything it sliced of magical energy, was one of the few effective weapons against them. Nevertheless, there were simply too many foes for them to defeat. Rui and Yuno must have also been aware of that.

In spite of all that, the two were shockingly calm.

“IX-4…Proitogaminodon Magus Nipponix, was it? But these differ from the individuals confirmed to date. They’re clearly a closely related, artificially modified species. Fascinating.”

Rui calmly commented his observations of the demon beasts.

The Unknowns in the Keystone Gate were smaller than the one they’d encountered previously. Instead, these were agile and highly intelligent. They’d formed a pack and had attacked in a coordinated fashion. Their threat level had to be higher than IX-4’s had been.

“Well, fine. We’ll draw these kids off, so go on ahead of us, Shizurin.”

Yuno smiled boldly as she spoke. Shizuri turned back to them, aghast.

“Wh…what are you saying?! The two of you can’t possibly take on so many Unknowns at onc—”

“Rainbow Dragon Fist Number One, Talon Cry—!”

Before she even finished her sentence, Yuno slammed a palm strike into the demon beast before her. Although it was far slower than her usual blows, the instant her palm touched it, the demon beast’s huge body shuddered.

The creature roared as the shock wave pierced its hide, unable to endure the agony. Yuno was destroying the Unknown’s cells one by one from the inside out.

“Yin and yang, thy have a name, yet no form. Accordingly, thy fist is formless…and stuff. Ms. Sasasaki taught me this technique, so I’m glad it paid off so soon.”

“M-Miss Yuno…”

Shizuri’s eyes bulged at her teammate’s unexpected growth.

Over the last several days, Yuno had spent time with “Mystic” Misaki Sasasaki—a member of a group of combat masters who went by the Wizards of the Four Fists. Evidently, Yuno had put that time to good use by training under her.

An excellent hand-to-hand fighter to begin with, Yuno was probably exceptionally well suited to Misaki’s teachings, a combination of the mystic and the martial arts. In a scant few days, she’d grown to the point where she could duke it out with an Unknown on equal footing. This was the source of her composure.

“I suppose so. I never thought a chance for a rematch would come so soon.”

Behind the surprised Shizuri, Rui opened fire with his pistol-type Spell Throwers.

His spell bullets looked downright puny compared to the huge demon beast he faced. They couldn’t even hope to penetrate its hide. And yet, the instant the bullets touched it, his opponent’s outer hide collapsed and fell away as if it was being dissolved. He’d corrupted its cellular composition via a curse.

Consuming the demon beast’s demonic energy, the curse’s power grew greater and greater until it covered its target’s entire body.

This was the same type of curse that Kiriha Kisaki had employed in the Armor-Type Simplified Cursed Spear—aka “Flat”—she had used to eliminate IX-4. Apparently, Rui had independently analyzed the data of Flat, the Bureau of Astrology’s secret weapon, to complete a ritual bullet of the same kind.

Yuno and Rui had both lost to IX-4 once upon a time. Even if they never showed it, neither had forgotten the humiliation. Thus, they’d quietly polished up countermeasures against the Unknowns. Despite how happy-go-lucky they usually seemed, they couldn’t stand losing.

Thanks to that, Shizuri and the others could fight toe-to-toe against the Unknowns they had fought with such great difficulty in the past.

“Squad Leader, please go ahead of us. MAR must be out of security pods in the area if they’re sending in demon beasts.”

“Roger that… So be it!”

Rending the tentacles an Unknown had sent flying after her, Shizuri tried to head deeper into Keystone Gate.

However, the instant she broke from the demon beasts’ encirclement, Shizuri ground to a halt on pure instinct.

The next second an explosive shock wave betraying immense bloodlust raced by right before her eyes.

The blade was wreathed in a pale flame of demonic energy… The aura seemed to pulse from the sword itself.

“Shizurin?!”

“I am all right. This is nothing…!”

Her back still turned to Yuno, Shizuri adjusted her grip on her blade.

She pointed the tip of her sword to a woman with a white robe wrapped around her.

The woman clutched a curved sword that traced a gentle arc. Beautiful agate-colored horns that looked like gemstones protruded from her temples.

“So the Order of the End finally shows itself… What happened to that tacky mask of yours?”

Shizuri directed her inquiry toward the acolyte of the Order of the End, an ogre swordswoman.

The woman looked like she was in her midtwenties. Shizuri couldn’t make out much of her physique, but as the woman bluntly readied her curved sword, Shizuri sensed an odd melancholy about her. It came from the incredible amount of hatred her opponent harbored.

“Hear me, traitorous daughter of the Castiellas. I am Izea Nios.”

The ogre identified herself in a low voice.

Her statement made Shizuri knit her brows.

“You’re mentioning that again…?! Just who have I betrayed?!”

“Is not the attire you wear proof of your betrayal, daughter of the Castiellas?”

“Do you have some kind of grudge against Gisella?!”

Shizuri rudely prompted back, unable to restrain her irritation.

The ogre’s eyelids twitched slightly in anger.

“How shameless. Or are you simply ignorant that the Paladins of Gisella destroyed our people?”

“…Ogres…destroyed by Gisella?”

Shizuri murmured this, taken aback.

Seizing that momentary opening, the woman swung her curved sword. Shizuri blocked the demonic energy–infused azure blade with her deep crimson long sword. The surrounding air creaked as the two weapons collided.

“What do you know of Gisella?”

The ogre smashed her curved blade in with brute force.

“I mean seriously, what is Gisella? A group of knights protecting humankind from demons? A charitable organization preserving rare demon species that are nearly extinct?”

With Shizuri thrown off balance, the woman charged in, leading with her body. The hit from the woman’s ram attack sent Shizuri flying.

“No, that’s wrong. Gisella is a band of pillagers. They destroyed a great many demons in the name of converting them, plundering their wealth in the process. And to add insult to injury, they whisked away demon children and raised them to serve as soldiers for their own cause. That is what you Paladins of Gisella are.”

Shizuri barely managed to continue fending off Izea Nios’s follow-up strikes.

One certainly could not describe her swordsmanship as polished, yet however unpracticed it seemed, it left no openings. She’d forged this personal style of swordcraft on the field of battle. It boggled Shizuri’s mind to even contemplate how many duels she must have undergone.

Even so, Shizuri endured Izea’s ferocious assaults. The training she’d accumulated in her quest to become a paladin was helping Shizuri hold out, largely on an unconscious level.

This must have rubbed her opponent the wrong way; Izea was exuding incredible bloodlust.

“White hair is the mark of ogre royalty—how could you of all people wield the divine armament Hauras as part of the group that destroyed our people?!”

“Khh!”

Shizuri’s expression stiffened in shock. The blue curved sword Izea swung high was enveloped with a dazzling radiance—the light of demonic energy.

“—Demonstrate my rage, Radia!”

A beam enveloped Shizuri. The vast amounts of demonic energy it scattered about even made the Unknowns halt for a second.

The beam rent the floor asunder and smashed the wall behind Shizuri.

“Squad Leader…!”

“Shizurin?!”

Rui and Yuno turned back in shock.

Sword still pointed downward, Izea Nios breathed raggedly. The glow of demonic energy had already been banished, but they couldn’t make out Shizuri amid the dust dancing in the air.

But—

“…e allora…?”

They sensed her coughing amid the particles.

Izea lifted her face in surprise, hastily repositioning her curved sword.

“That’s…your reason? Why you…became a member of the Order of the End…”

Shizuri doffed her headscarf and slowly revealed herself. Although her pure-white coat was scorched and smoking, she’d somehow come out unscathed. Even for an ogre, she was unbelievably resilient.

“That’s right. I do not recognize the Holy Ground Treaty. There’s no way I can let humanity, the very species that brought us to the brink of extinction, coexist with Demonkind as if nothing ever happened.”

As though wary of Shizuri’s bizarre fortitude, Izea spoke while carefully maintaining her distance.

Shizuri looked back upon the woman with scorn.

“And so…you want to make the Fourth Primogenitor go berserk so that he can destroy the other primogenitors…? Hah… That’s a trivial, idiotic motive if I ever heard one.”

“What did you say…?!”

Izea’s expression contorted with anger. Shizuri let the ogre’s bloodthirsty gaze wash over her with annoyance before returning a smile fiercer than she’d ever given before.

“You…have this all wrong.”

“…All wrong?”

“You seem to think I’m unaware of Gisella’s past deeds!”

“What…?!”

When Shizuri pounded home her crimson long sword, Izea blocked it with her curved blade. But Shizuri ignored this and continued to brandish her sword with mighty force.

“Gisella’s efforts to propagate its own faith were obviously excessive, and it committed many sins as a result. Sometimes their actions sparked conflicts, which generated misery that could never be undone.”

“—Then why did you become their pawn?”

“Because I have faith that Gisella’s ideals were not in error!”

Shizuri yelled back, unleashing a flurry of sword strikes. With relentless attacks both vertical and horizontal, she circled around Izea’s defensive stance. For the first time, Shizuri’s will surpassed Izea’s.

Gisella was a heretical sect that splintered off of the Western European Church. According to their teachings, their members both had a duty to protect humanity from Demonkind and a duty to take demons under their care.

These ideals became the basis of numerous conflicts.

It was Gisella that had announced the existence of the ogre species to the world, thus creating the cause of their decline. Influenced by Gisella’s teachings of love, the ogre royals defenselessly welcomed human plunderers filled with malice, resulting in a genocide of a severity rarely seen in all of history.

“But even so,” shouted Shizuri.

“Long before adoption of the Holy Ground Treaty, only Gisella extolled the coexistence of humankind and Demonkind. Scorned and hated by their fellow humans as heretics, they never wavered in their creed. And they sought to atone for their sins without ever averting their eyes from the past—that’s why the queen of the ogres entrusted Hauras to them!”

Shizuri wore an expression filled with pride as she swung her crimson blade without the slightest hesitation.

The ogre tribe had a scant few members and was teetering on the brink of extinction. Shizuri had lost her family at a young age, so it would have scarcely been strange for her to lose her life as well.

But the Paladins of Gisella had saved her.

That was how she wound up living with them—and why she had chosen of her own volition to be their final paladin.

“Silence…!”

Izea forced back Shizuri’s sword. And yet, Shizuri’s blows did not cease.

“Gisella’s actions may have accelerated the destruction of the ogres. But when poachers and slavers aiming for their horns hunted our people to ruin, Gisella was the only one to fight on their behalf!”

“I told you to be silent!”

“And yet, because of your grudge against Gisella, you seek to erase the Holy Ground Treaty and make unrelated people suffer. That I cannot permit. As the last Paladin of Gisella, I shall stop you!”

“You little bitch!!”

Izea violently kicked Shizuri in her side. She took the blow in stride. It was Izea who let out an anguished moan as her bones creaked.

At that moment, Izea finally realized the nature of Shizuri’s bizarre level of toughness. The girl had called it the Blessing of a Paladin, but in reality, she was subconsciously deploying a bio-ward demonic energy.

Ogres had resilient bodies to begin with, so they had no reason to add a bio-ward—to learn the art of using one’s inner qi. But Shizuri, raised alongside human beings, had absorbed those teachings as if they were second nature.

She was both an ogre and a full and proper Paladin of Gisella. Izea appreciated this fact for the very first time.

“—This fang is the light that rends our darkness. Its breath is the flame that repels evil!”

The shaken Izea was before her as Shizuri solemnly incanted a spell.

A crimson glow enveloped the undulating blade of her long sword. She was going to release her demonic energy at point-blank range, blowback be damned. Without her own bio-ward, Izea would have no means to block it.

“Why you…!”

“Thy name is the fire-eating Serpent. Born of the soul of a saint, thou art the immutable blade—”

Shizuri slammed down the scarlet sword teeming with power.

The beam-like blade grazed Izea’s ear as it sent her azure sword flying. The fine-edged brand of energy sliced the ceiling of the shopping mall, bringing clumps of concrete falling down one after another. It also cleaved the waterfall, spraying water everywhere.

Her eardrums stung with pain as a violent gale raged across the area. Blood gushed from Izea’s shoulder.

But that was all the damage Shizuri had done. Izea stood there in bewilderment, unable to believe she’d sustained little more than a shallow cut to the shoulder. Shizuri had changed the arc of her sword an instant before ripping Izea’s body asunder.

“…Why…didn’t you finish me?”

Her weapon gone, Izea asked that like a woman adrift.

“Why am I obligated to kill you?”

Shizuri shot a disinterested glance at Izea, who had lost all will to fight and accepted defeat.

The ogre had slammed all her raw enmity and loathing into her opponent, yet Shizuri didn’t even view her as an enemy that needed to be put down. Now Izea knew.

Shizuri hadn’t been looking down on her. As the Paladin of Gisella, she saw Izea not as her foe but as a demon she was obligated to protect.

As far as Shizuri was concerned, the ideals of Gisella were more than empty words. Her actions had proven this to Izea.

“I have no time to deal with you any further. If you’re satisfied, I would ask that you politely withdraw—”

Steadying her breath, Shizuri walked past Izea on her way farther down the corridor.

The ogre gazed back wordlessly before she suddenly let out a gasp and lifted her head. Then she shoved Shizuri’s shoulder, hard.

“Wh-what are you…?!”

Buckling over, Shizuri glared back at the other woman.

Warm fluid struck Shizuri’s cheek. Crimson fluid that had scattered from Izea.

Izea collapsed forward, hands still outstretched from thrusting her opponent to safety.

The robe she wore was tattered and stained with the fresh blood gushing out of her. It was as if some giant, invisible blade had slashed her up without a sound.

“Wha—?!”

Mouth agape, Shizuri supported Izea.

There was no doubt that Shizuri would have taken the attack had the ogre not thrust her aside. Izea had saved her.

“The Order of the End…?! There’s still more?!”

Upon defeating the last of the Unknowns, Yuno shouted as she raced to her friend’s side.

Behind Izea, a new figure had emerged in the dimly lit corridor—a tall man in a suit.

Although he was Asian, his skin was bone white, and his face was plastered with a perpetual smile.

This was the man who had swung the invisible blade to rip Shizuri to shreds.

“No…he’s not from the Order of the End.”

Rui exclaimed this with his Spell Throwers raised. Despite usually being unflappable, even his voice was shaking. That was just how unexpected this man’s arrival was.

“President of Magna Ataraxia Research…Shahryar Ren…!”

Rui voiced his name.

Shizuri, however, couldn’t catch any more than that because an invisible blade swung down to assault them once more.

Though she tried to block it by emitting demonic energy, her foe’s invisible slice attack slipped right through Hauras. Whatever the invisible strike was, it didn’t run on magical energy.

His attack tore through Izea once more and sent fresh blood flying from her back.

The instant she witnessed this, something inside Shizuri snapped.

“Aah…aaaaaaaaaaaah!!”

Brandishing her crimson long sword, she charged at the man wearing a frigid smile.

A moment later, countless robot tanks emerged from behind him—Shahryar Ren. The MAR robot tank unit trained its gun barrels upon Shizuri all at once.

“Don’t, Squad Leader! Get back!”

“Shizurin!”

Rui and Yuno shouted at the top of their lungs.

The sound of the tank unit’s antipersonnel machine guns drowned out their cries.