In the core of a Necropolis—
Yukina, standing in the chamber atop a cylindrical pillar, was beside herself as she gazed up at the sight shown on-screen.
At Celebes Sea and above Tokyo Bay, black smoke rose from the Necropolis’s broken castle walls. The Völundr System of the Royal Family of Aldegia had sliced through the Necropolis’s outer walls protected by otherworldly bulwarks, inflicting critical damage to each.
On the other hand, the Beast Vassal Warheads fired by the Necropolises had not produced the expected results. The girls had been recovered as girls, their Beast Vassals unsummoned. The two Beast Vassal Warheads had failed to detonate.
Shizuri, gripping Yukina’s arm, sighed with relief and patted her chest. Noticing Yukina’s glaring gaze, she averted her eyes with a decidedly guilty look.
Looking closer, she spotted similar expressions hovering over Kojou and Yaze. Yukina stopped breathing for a while, followed by her shoulders quaking as ferocious anger rippled up through her.
She didn’t think the twin Beast Vassal Warhead misfires had been the product of chance. Kojou and the others knew from the start that they would fail. That was why they’d taunted Ladli into using them.
Drawing out the Necropolises in the process—
“This is your doing, Priestess of Cain…?”
Ladli asked Asagi this in a low voice. Asagi shrugged her shoulders in a somewhat casual manner.
“Unfortunately, no. This was set up by Cain himself from the moment he took the Fourth Primogenitor, the ‘god-killing weapon’ made to destroy him, under his wing—”
“Huh? Wait a second, what are you saying—?!”
“You’re breaking character, Ladli Ren.”
Asagi smiled sardonically at Ladli, whose voice was ragged from getting so worked up. Ghh…, growled Ladli in vexation.
Ignoring Ladli, Asagi provocatively shifted her gaze to Shahryar Ren.
“Cain the Sinful God expected someone would eventually reopen the gate to Nod and bring the Beast Vassal Warheads sealed within to the surface. Shahryar Ren—he expected someone just like you.”
“………”
Ren looked down at Asagi without a word, but his calm disposition was undermined by him biting his lip so hard, it turned pale. Asagi sighed with visible tedium.
“To stop that, he had no choice but to completely neutralize the Beast Vassal Warheads. That’s why he came up with a plan to scrap the warheads entirely.”
“…Neutralize the Beast Vassal Warheads? That is…not something achievable.”
Ren spoke as if wringing his voice out of his throat. Asagi instantly shot down his words.
“No. Neutralizing Beast Vassal Warheads can be done. You already know of the precedent.”
“…The vampire…primogenitors…?”
Clench, echoed the back of Ren’s teeth.
“Vampire primogenitors are the first vampires to have Beast Vassals summoned via the warheads dwelling in their own bodies. They neutralize the Beast Vassal Warheads by taming the Beast Vassals within their own blood. The price they pay for that is accepting an eternal curse of immortality, though.”
Asagi touched her right hand to her chest to indicate her respect for the primogenitors.
Fallgazer, Chaos Bride, and the Lost Warlord—
They were the ones who’d consumed countless Beast Vassal Warheads used in The Great Cleansing of Old to become the vampire primogenitors. The vampire primogenitors were the ones shouldering the sacrifice of the calamity known as Beast Vassal Warheads for humanity’s sake.
“Neutralizing the Beast Vassal Warheads simply involves repeating the same process, making the artificial vampire girls the Beast Vassals are stuffed in their rightful hosts. That way, the Beast Vassals won’t go on a rampage even if you break the girls’ seals.”
Asagi continued explaining with delight. She stomped the floor as if unable to contain herself.
“I said already, that is not possible! Those dolls lack the ‘blood memories’ to make those Beast Vassals obey them…!”
“What if they did have memories, then? Even false, artificially created memories?”
“Wh…at…?!”
Asagi’s calm rebuttal struck Ren out of nowhere, silencing him.
Beast Vassals were information-based life-forms existing without physical form. To them, information was the feed necessary so that they could continue to exist. Accordingly, Beast Vassals instinctively acknowledged the one who fed them information as their host and obeyed that person. Joy, sadness, anger, sadness—the host’s powerful emotions, and the memories binding them together, were the finest of delicacies to Beast Vassals, and any host not sating this hunger would cease to be, his or her life force consumed to the last wisp. That was why the Primogenitors hated boredom. They needed pleasures to farm out to their own Beast Vassals.
All the same, there was no rule that said the information fed to the Beast Vassals couldn’t be fabricated.
“If you take the five hundred and sixty thousand people living on Itogami—no, if the networks are up, you have past memories from people around the entire world. We did samplings of these, created new personalities to farm out…enough for six thousand four hundred and fifty-two people…and built an illusionary school in virtual space for the girls to experience further.”
Asagi said this calmly as if it were nothing major at all. Yukina abruptly remembered something while gazing at the side of Asagi’s face.
Asagi hadn’t used her partner AI Mogwai at all in the past several days. She’d heard that Itogami Island’s main computer had been short on resources, too.
This was because Asagi was working behind the scenes to disarm the Beast Vassal Warheads. She’d given new memories and personalities to six thousand four hundred and fifty-two girls. She’d created an illusionary school for this purpose so that they could experience school life for themselves, all so that the girls gained the power of will with which to rule and tame the Beast Vassals—
“Do you mean to…save the Beast Vassal Warheads with these false memories?”
Ren spoke with a tone of bitter hatred.
“At first, fake memories are fine. If they live on, they’ll get plenty of memories on their own. I mean, these girls have an unlimited future in front of them.”
The corners of Asagi’s lips rose in a powerful smile. Besides, the girls’ experiences weren’t complete fabrications anyway. After all, the artificial vampires’ virtual personalities had been based on Nagisa Akatsuki’s own experiences.
Nagisa had used the ritual called Teokratia to implant her own memories of daily life on Itogami Island into the girls serving as the Beast Vassal Warhead icons. To these girls, the memories of Nagisa fused with Avrora’s soul had to feel nostalgic and easy to absorb. As they gained understanding of Nagisa’s feelings, the icon girls would seize their own future, a future where they lived together with the Beast Vassals they had themselves tamed—
“This was Cain’s plan? He expected Deva descendants would build an artificial island to open the gate to Nod, a plan to use this island to neutralize the Beast Vassal Warheads? A vague plan like that couldn’t possibly go this well?”
Ladli shook her head with incredulity.
Even if it was possible in theory, Cain’s plan had far too many uncertain elements. It didn’t seem even remotely realistic that he could anticipate the construction of Itogami Island thousands of years down the line and use it to realize the disarming of the Beast Vassal Warheads.
Asagi, though, proudly pushed out her chest.
“That’s what we’re here for, all the Priestesses of Cain throughout history.”
“…You’re saying, even MAR was dancing on the palms of your hands all along…?”
Ladli made a limp, pained smile. Her voice had a ring of exasperation to it.
Even Asagi’s plan to make all this a reality hadn’t been anywhere near as sure a thing as Asagi implied. She was constantly walking along a cliff’s edge, in many cases getting by only by the skin of her teeth.
Even so, the Beast Vassal Warheads really had been neutralized, two Necropolises had fallen, and the Priestesses of Cain had fulfilled their objective.
“Well…guess this means the negotiations are shot. You guys can’t use Beast Vassal Warheads anymore, so the HGTO and the Japanese government don’t have any reason to do as you tell ’em.”
An invigorated expression came over Kojou from nowhere in particular as he stripped off the stuffy mantle. In the blink of an eye, he was back to wearing his parka, rotating his shoulders as the load on them eased.
“You entered negotiations with us with this objective? You made us fire the Beast Vassal Warheads on purpose to broadcast to the entire world that they’d been neutralized…?!”
Ladli warily put distance between her and Kojou’s group and went on guard. Appearing within her hands were little sticks with spheres looking like lollipop candies on the end. These were sorcerous devices for summoning Spartoi.
“We figured you’d stick one Necropolis with protecting MAR HQ. Knowing the other would appear over Tokyo made it easy to ambush. If the three primogenitors know where the Necropolises will appear, they don’t need to be stuck protecting their own turf, now do they?”
A profound smile came over Kojou as he spoke.
Ladli gasped, her expression freezing over. The Third Primogenitor in the Celebes Sea and the Second Primogenitor at Tokyo Bay had subdued a Necropolis each. That left only Castle Kalenaren in the airspace above Itogami Island.
“—Castle Kalenaren, emergency submerge!”
Wary of a surprise assault by the First Primogenitor, Ladli forcefully lobbed a command to her subordinates in an angry voice. Kojou and the others were struck by an unpleasant, dizzying sway as the Necropolis tried to submerge into space separate from that of the real world.
“You think you can run?”
Kojou glared at Ladli and asked this. Ladli smiled back at Kojou, not the slightest bit perturbed.
“It is futile, Kojou Akatsuki. No one can summon a Beast Vassal inside a Necropolis hovering between the real world and another, even for you and your black Beast Vassals. If not, I would never have invited you.”
“You sure sealing only my Beast Vassals is enough?”
“Eh…?”
Ladli blinked hard. She was unable to immediately comprehend just what Kojou was saying. Ladli’s expression abruptly hardened.
Suddenly, ridiculously powerful demonic energy surged behind Kojou. The source of this demonic energy was Shizuri Kasugaya Castiella—or rather, the crimson long sword she held in her hands.
“Counting on you, Cas!”
“Leave it to me! Hauras—!”
Shizuri swung down her long sword with all her might. The flame-like undulating blade was imbued with dazzling, pitch-black demonic energy, which she unleashed as an explosive shockwave. Pouring demonic energy supplied by Kojou into it without any restraint, she unleashed an attack of pure, unadulterated destruction.
“Wha…?”
Ladli stood still, forgetting all about trying to stop Shizuri. The cylindrical pillars filling the Necropolis’s core shattered one after the other, crumbling down with a thunderous roar.
Kojou probably couldn’t summon his Beast Vassals inside the Necropolis. It was with this expectation that Ladli had so easily invited Kojou and the others into the Necropolis.
This was why Kojou had brought Shizuri to the negotiating table. As Kojou’s Blood Servant, she could release Kojou’s demonic energy through Hauras effectively without limit.
“Cas, you missed a few. A little to the right, one o’clock, range is four hundred meters, diagonal slash up, please.”
“Who is this ‘Cas’ person—?!”
Following Yaze’s directions, Shizuri swung her sword once more. The now pitch-black blade’s shockwave tore through the darkness, sending intense tremors throughout the entire Necropolis. Shizuri’s slices had inflicted fatal damage to the Necropolis’s power plant.