CHAPTER 6

MENACE IN THE MIST

“You seem to be spending a lot of time with Kirin Toudou.”

The voice came abruptly from behind Ayato as he stood in front of the meal ticket vending machine at the Hokuto dining hall, trying to decide what to have for lunch. He turned to see a girl with splendid rose-colored hair, standing there with a sullen look on her face.

“Oh, it’s you, Julis. Are you about to get lunch, too?” He was alone today, since Eishirou was low on funds and Saya was getting a lecture from Kyouko for oversleeping and being late to class. But Ayato believed food tasted better with company, so he went ahead and invited her. “Since we’re both here, you want to eat together?”

“Oh—well, hmm, if you insist, I suppose I could…” Julis looked away shyly but nodded to accept, and it was plain from her expression that she wasn’t altogether displeased.

“I think I’ll have the chicken curry today.” From the air-window displaying the available meals, Ayato selected the picture of curry prominently featuring chicken on the bone. Ordering via a ticket vending machine was a rarity these days, but he liked that about this dining hall. “What about you, Julis?”

“Hmm… I can’t decide between the pasta set or the one that comes with dessert…” She studiously pondered the air-window with her hand to her chin, but then she suddenly looked up at Ayato to shout at him. “Wait—that’s not the problem here! I want to know what you and Kirin Toudou are—”

Making a wild gesture, she accidentally touched an item on the air-window.

“Oh…”

“Huh…?”

With a gatunk, the vending machine dispensed a ticket printed with the words “Special Spicy Curry.”

“Oh, that’s the Hokuto dining hall’s famous dish,” Ayato said. “It’s supposed to be super hot—”

“It—it’s fine! That’s what I wanted anyway! I’m going to find us a table, so you go pick up our food!”

“Uh, okay…”

Spurred to urgency by her tone, Ayato gingerly went to pick up the two plates of curry and immediately noticed that one of them was devastatingly potent. It looked just like the other, but he could tell from the aroma that it was far spicier.

That aroma alone was enough to sting his eyes, so strong that it made him think twice about picking up the plate.

“Ayato, over here.”

Julis waved at him from a table by the wall.

“Here we are, Julis. But are you sure? This smells really intense.” He placed the tray in front of her and watched as a bit of uncertainty crept into her face.

“I said this is what I wanted! Now tell me what you’re doing with Kirin Toudou!”

“Um, well, we just started training together in the morning, that’s all.” He answered honestly, since he and Kirin were hardly doing anything unusual.

Julis seemed to relax a little.

“Oh, were you worried that I was giving away my fighting skills? Nah, it’s totally fine. We’re only doing really basic stuff, and I’m not breaking my seal. Besides, Toudou already knows a lot about my skills from our duel, so—”

“No, that’s not what I…,” Julis started, not quite satisfied with something, but then she sighed and weakly shook her head. “Never mind. If you can talk about it like that, I clearly had nothing to worry about.”

Ayato wasn’t sure what she meant, but she seemed okay with him spending time with Kirin. That was a relief. “Anyway, Julis, you haven’t taken a bite yet… Is it okay?”

“Er…”

Her plate of special spicy curry was as full as when he’d brought it. She was stirring it around with her spoon without taking a single bite.

“If it’s too hot for you, you don’t have to finish it. You could order something else—”

“Idiot! I’m not going to waste food!”

He wondered if it was the influence of her friends back home that made her so reluctant to let food go to waste despite her upbringing as a princess.

With a fierce resolve, Julis brought her spoon to her mouth. She didn’t make a sound, but her face turned crimson, then white as a sheet.

“Hey, Julis! You really shouldn’t force yourself if you—”

“Ngh. I—I’m fine…! This is nothing!” she blurted, her voice shaking and her eyes full of tears.

Then she chugged her cup of water. She did not seem at all fine.

“Um, well, what if we switch?”

“What?!” Her eyes went wide in surprise.

“Mine is pretty spicy, but I bet it’s easier to eat than yours. I mean, if you want to…”

Julis sat there frozen, stiff as a statue.

“Oh, I guess you wouldn’t want it after I touched it with my spoon…”

“N-no! That’s not it!” She ferociously shook her head. “I don’t care about that! Actually—” Then she gasped at her own words and stopped herself mid-sentence. “A-anyway, I mean, I ordered it, so the responsibility to finish it is mine. I can’t pass it off on you.”

“That’s just like you, I guess.” Ayato was almost impressed at how stubborn she could be. But then he thought of a way he might convince her. “So, this might not be a big deal…but if we’re going to be effective partners in battle, don’t we have to be able to speak to each other honestly and not hold anything back?”

“Oh… Um, well…”

It might be something of a dirty trick to hold the Festa over her as a persuasion tactic, he thought, but maybe this would get her to think more flexibly.

For a few moments Julis anxiously looked back and forth between Ayato and her special spicy curry. Finally, she held her plate toward him with both hands, shy and faltering.

“Then…um…can I…switch plates…with you?” she asked timidly, looking up at him with watery eyes.

There was something cute about that, different from the usual Julis, and he felt his heart begin to pound.

“Ayato?” She tilted her head at him.

He nodded hurriedly. “Oh, sure! Of course!” Then he traded his chicken curry for the special spicy curry.

“Th-thank you,” Julis said, and brought her spoon to her mouth again. Was it because of the spicy bite from earlier that her face seemed a little red?

Julis is really cute when she says how she feels…

Of course, Julis was beautiful as her usual stubborn self, too. Maybe it was simply the departure from the norm that made it feel all the more striking.

As Ayato was lost in those thoughts, he absentmindedly threw a spoonful of the special spicy curry in his mouth—and was stunned by the sheer force of its spiciness. He barely managed to finish it himself before the lunch recess ended.

A bronze-skinned woman walked in a hurry, the hard clacks of her footsteps echoing down the long corridor.

The corridor was in Allekant Académie, in the underground block of the research building—in fact, the most high-security area of the block. This area was off-limits not only to anyone from outside the school, but also to students in the practical class, and even for those in the research class, excellent academic performance was not enough for admittance. Only researchers with a proven history of results were allowed in here.

It was much closer to a facility than a school building. It had a highly functional construction, with clinical white walls and floors stretching wherever one looked. There were no flowers or paintings, no decorations of any kind. This was a cold space devoid of anything that might be defined as unnecessary.

She went through a security checkpoint that scanned her school crest and biometrics, then impatiently opened a door activated by her personal access code, which had been assigned to her by the keeper of the room.

The woman, Camilla, entered with a forceful announcement: “Tenorio made their move.”

No reply came from the room, which was filled with countless air-windows large and small.

With their glow and the lights from laboratory equipment as the only illumination, it was so dim that she could barely see. But she could make out the candy wrappers littering the floor, along with animal plushies and remnants of now unrecognizable toys.

“Ernesta?” she called out dubiously, but went unanswered again.

Camilla strode to the far end of the room, carefully picking her way to avoid the debris on the floor. In a chair in front of a particularly sizable air-window, she found a girl wrapped up in a blanket, fast asleep.

With a sigh, she yanked the blanket off the girl. “Wake up, Ernesta. It’s what you’ve been waiting for all this time.”

“Mrrow?!” Ernesta jolted awake, still wearing her eye mask with cartoon eyes drawn on. She was drooling from the corner of her mouth.

“Rise and shine, Ernesta.”

“I wasn’t asleep. I was just thinking with my eyes closed, see?” Ernesta pushed up her eye mask and waved her hands to prove her wakefulness.

“…Right. Then can you tell me why I’m here?”

“Hmm? Tenorio made their move, right?” she said nonchalantly, stretching at length like a cat.

“So you really were awake?”

Ernesta laughed. “My senses are as sharp as a knife even when I’m sleeping!”

That’s quite something…but then you were asleep, after all. Camilla did not point this out aloud. They didn’t have time to waste on banter. “The situation is already developing. We’ll miss our chance if we dawdle.”

There were preparations involved if they wanted to get a good seat to the show. They had legwork to do.

“Yup, yup! I know, I know!” Ernesta stifled a yawn as she pulled up a projection keyboard. She deftly entered a few commands, and the air-windows in the room flew into alignment, then disappeared, all except one.

Ernesta moved the remaining window in front of her and Camilla, then tilted her head curiously. “Hunh? Who’s that beside Mr. Sword Fighter?”

“Prepare to be shocked. That’s Seidoukan’s number one ranked student.”

“Oooooh. Now, that is something.” Ernesta’s eyes went round, then lit up like sparklers. “So they’re going to attack knowing of it. They really must be pumped up.”

“It shows how seriously they’re taking this.” Camilla pulled up a nearby chair and sat down.

“That, or they have a lot of confidence in their new project. It’d be a shame if Mr. Sword Fighter and his friend got their butts kicked. Tee-hee-hee!”

Camilla scowled at Ernesta, who spoke as if this matter had very little bearing on them.

“I wonder how much we were able to bait them. Did we manage to lure in the Great Scholar, Magnum Opus?”

“There’s no way she would get involved directly. The ones working on this case are below her—up to the vice-chair of Tenorio.”

Ernesta nodded knowingly at Camilla’s reply. “Well, I thought they’d be careful. Oh, well. Now we can keep Tenorio under our heel for way longer than we expected.”

“Yes, this is good. We don’t want to drive them into too tight of a corner.”

Besides, Camilla thought, if that one made the excursion herself, Ayato might really lose. Then all their scheming would have been for nothing.

“I must say…you do enjoy a good gamble,” Camilla said with a wry smile.

“Whaa—?” Ernesta turned back to her with a clueless look.

“I mean that you take too many large risks.”

Ernesta grinned mischievously. “It’s more fun that way! I just can’t help it.”

The expression on her face seemed innocent enough, but Camilla also saw in it a hint of inscrutable cruelty.

For a brief spell in the early morning, the city of Asterisk would transform into a world of hazy white.

The difference in temperature between the lake water and the atmosphere made fog a common occurrence. It was an ephemeral sight, fated to vanish shortly after the sun rose, but its dreamlike beauty mesmerized all who were fortunate enough to witness it.

Today, however, the fog was even heavier than usual.

“Good morning, Mr. Amagiri!” Kirin emerged from the white mist in her workout clothes and bashfully bowed to him.

“Hey Miss Toudou,” Ayato replied, and looked around in mild amazement. “Wow, the fog is pretty heavy today.”

As always, they met in front of the Seidoukan Academy high school building.

He and Kirin had been training together in the mornings for several days now. But this was the most fog he had ever seen—and that included the mornings when he had trained alone.

“Yes, it is… Oh, but I’ve heard that in the winter it can be even heavier.”

“Really? This is plenty heavy for me.” If he moved even a little bit farther away from her, he could no longer discern her expression. “Anyway, with the fog like this, we could lose each other during our run. Maybe we should hold hands or something.”

“Oh yes, I suppose…”

“Huh?”

Ayato had made the suggestion as a joke, but Kirin was taking it seriously. With her cheeks flushing, she gingerly grabbed onto Ayato’s fingertips.

“S-sorry. I, um, I was just kidding…”

With a gasp, she hurriedly let go of his hand. “Wha—? Oh—um—I’m so sorry—!”

Although they had touched only briefly, Ayato could feel the faint warmth that remained on his fingers. “No, it’s my fault, I shouldn’t have…”

For a few moments, neither of them knew what to say.

“Um… Should we get going, then?” Ayato said at last.

“Y-yes! Let’s!” Nodding her head vigorously, Kirin started to run.

The main route of their morning runs was the road that went all the way around the outer rim of Asterisk.

At this hour, the road was mostly deserted. They would occasionally pass other students out running as well, but other than that they were surrounded by stillness, the entire city still asleep.

Looking at the cityscape shrouded in the morning mist gave Ayato the feeling that he had wandered into another land. If he turned toward the lake, he could not see more than a few yards into the distance. It was like a different world lay just beyond his sight.

But Kirin’s light footsteps from ahead rang in his ears, a reassuring certainty completely removed from the mystical moodiness of the fog.

As they ran easily along the lakeside path, Ayato suddenly noticed a strange presence. Someone, or something, was following them from a ways back.

Their pursuers were staying at a fixed distance, apparently adjusting their pace to match that of Ayato and Kirin.

“…Mr. Amagiri?” she whispered. She had also noticed, and slowed down slightly so they were side by side.

“I know. We’re not alone.” Ayato signaled to Kirin with his eyes, and they both slowed their pace dramatically.

They could sense the slight bewilderment in the presence behind them.

“Are there four of them? No, five.”

“Yes…but there’s something off.” Kirin frowned suspiciously. “This presence—it doesn’t feel like people, but…”

Just as she murmured those words, they both stopped running. This time, it was not by design. The road in front of them was closed.

“Construction? But this wasn’t here yesterday…”

They hadn’t noticed until the last second because of the heavy fog, but signs forbidding entry blocked off the road and the pedestrian path.

“We could just ignore the signs and run through. What do you think?” Ayato said.

“I don’t think it’s safe with such low visibility. And it might be a trap,” Kirin replied.

The presence behind them had also stopped, still keeping their fixed distance. Their pursuers seemed to be waiting to see what they would do.

“There is a way around…but that feels like it’d be a trap, too.”

Directly in front of the blocked road, there was one path still available to them: On their right was a large park surrounded by a tall fence, its single entrance invitingly open.

“I wonder which one of us is the target. Do you know of anybody who’d want to come after you, Kirin?”

“Um, well, maybe a few…” She was ranked first, after all.

“What about you, Mr. Amagiri?”

“Yeah, I can think of someone, too.”

As he said that, he was thinking (naturally) of Ernesta’s face, but there was something not quite right about the idea of her being involved in this. At the moment, though, he did not have the luxury of mentally picking that apart.

“We could split up,” he suggested.

“Then we would at least know which one of us they’re after,” Kirin added.

If both of them were being targeted, however, that would be the worst move, as it would result in unnecessarily splitting up their strength.

“Well, why don’t we stick together for now.”

“Okay!” Kirin sounded glad about this for some reason.

“Then the question is, which way do we…?” Ayato trailed off as he sensed a change in the presence behind them.

Perhaps running out of patience, they had begun to edge closer.

When their pursuers were less than ten yards away, Ayato understood what Kirin had said. They were not human. This presence was something else. He considered the possibility that they were dolls, like the ones he had fought before, but he could sense a small amount of prana from them.

Then are they Genestella…? No, but—

What emerged from the mist were creatures he had never seen before.

At first glance, their shapes were reminiscent of large felines, like tigers—but instead of fur they were covered with something more like hard scales. Their necks were long, and their vicious faces looked reptilian, with sharp fangs protruding from their mouths. The best description he could have made was that they resembled wingless dragons.

There were five of them, and they were clearly hostile toward Ayato and Kirin.

“What kind of animals are they?” Kirin wondered.

“Well, they’re nothing we have where I grew up,” Ayato said.

Kirin cocked her head. She had clearly never seen anything like them before, either. “But they’re kind of cute, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, sure—wait, what?”

Ayato couldn’t help but do a double take at her, and at that moment, the dragon-like things seized the chance to leap upon them.

“Whoa—!” He wasted no time in drawing his sword and activating it. The blade of light emerged to stop the sharp claws of the not-dragon just in time.

He shoved the massive beast away from him, and the not-dragon twisted in midair to land gracefully on its feet. Its movements seemed distinctly feline.

“Mr. Amagiri, are you okay?”

He turned to Kirin to see that she was handling three attacking creatures. But she had not even drawn her sword—she easily fended them off with just the scabbard.

“Huh. I guess they aren’t too tough?” Ayato ran between the front claws of the first attacker as it rushed at him again. He figured he could manage the onslaught even in his current state; it didn’t seem necessary to release his seal.

But when he lightly swung his sword to parry, it easily sliced through the beast’s front leg. He gaped in disbelief at what he saw. “What the—?!”

The severed leg crumbled and melted away like syrup—then, rather than disappearing, it turned into a translucent slime that quivered on the ground.

The beast did not seem at all disturbed by losing its leg, and not a drop of blood flowed from the wound. The slimy substance flew back to its stump, then immediately regenerated into a new leg before their eyes.

“How…?” As Ayato stood there, stunned, the one creature that had been staying in the rear opened its mouth wide.

The mana around them rushed to gather at its maw. Fire poured from the not-dragon’s mouth and swirled into a sphere.

“Oh, no way—!”

It was the same kind of ability to interact with mana that Stregas and Dantes had.

The beast shot the fireball with a low-pitched roar, and Ayato deflected it with the fuller of his sword.

It was nothing compared to the power of someone like Julis, but he had never imagined that living things other than humans could link with mana.

“Are these the mutants Claudia was talking about…?” he thought aloud.

But if that was the case, these monsters should have been a topic of public conversation long before now. Ayato knew that Asterisk was a city far removed from common sense, but he had never heard of creatures like these roaming about.

With low growls, two of the not-dragons crept toward Ayato.

“I don’t want to kill them if we don’t have to, but…it doesn’t look like we have much choice.”

He didn’t know enough about them. If he went easy on them, it could get much worse for himself and Kirin.

Ayato raised his sword and held it horizontally as he calmed his breathing. He ordered his prana, heightened it, then released his strength for just one instant—

The same instant that two of the “dragons” leaped up and lunged at him from either side.

“Amagiri Shinmei Style, First Technique: Line of Hornets!”

With lightning speed, Ayato circled around the creatures, then turned his wrist and extended his arm in a fierce one-handed thrust. Both skewered through the side, the creatures let out eldritch shrieks that hardly sounded as if they’d come from living things.

But their bodies melted down, just as that severed leg had. The puddles of slimy goop backed away from him with an unexpectedly nimble motion, then slowly coalesced again—and in all of ten seconds, the creatures had reformed.

Ayato was simply stupefied at this development. “Don’t tell me they’re actually immortal…”

In that case, what could they do?

If Julis were here, she could probably burn them all to ashes. He wasn’t sure how much could be done with ordinary swordplay.

Maybe if I used the Ser Veresta…

However, that would mean breaking his seal entirely, and then he would have to deal with the time limit. That was not a move to make lightly.

“It looks like cutting or piercing attacks are ineffective,” Kirin said anxiously. She was now standing with her back against his. The sword in her hand was fully drawn.

“This is just a guess, but maybe they’re really slime-like organisms, and their current form is something like mimicry?” Ayato suggested.

“I see…”

“If we can just get away, that might be the best option.”

Ayato was confident that they could not be easily caught in a game of tag, but at the same time, running at full speed in this fog would be risky.

“May I try something?” Kirin asked, as she walked up almost casually to one of the not-dragons.

“Wha—?”

The thing made a wary, threatening growl, then flew at her the moment it was barely within her striking distance.

“I’m sorry,” Kirin whispered calmly, then dodged the attack with a slight twist.

In the next instant, the not-dragon had been sliced in half. It howled in that same eerie voice, and its body melted into slime.

She slashed at the melting goo before it even fell to the ground. Her sword swung over and over, terrifically fast, slicing it smaller and smaller. One would have to describe her speed as superhuman.

Pieces of slime fell to the ground by the dozens and extended pseudopodia toward each other to remerge. But Kirin kept on slicing one chunk in the air, making smaller pieces still.

Ayato caught something different about that piece. He could see something tiny and round squirming inside it.

The sphere moved this way and that, evading her attacks, but with each stroke, there was less and less slime to move around in. Finally, when the piece of slime had been whittled down to the size of a fist, the sphere had nowhere to go.

“…It’s over.”

Kirin’s blade flashed. The sphere was sliced in half.

At that same moment, the puddles of slime writhing on the ground abruptly stopped.

Apparently, the sphere had been controlling the slime itself.

Seeing what had taken place, the other creatures backed away, as if in fear.

“It looks as if they have some sort of core. Hopefully, this will get them to retreat,” Kirin said as if nothing had happened, and sheathed her sword. Still, she seemed sad somehow.

“How could you tell that they had a core?”

“I noticed something odd about the flow of their prana. I’ve always been sensitive to that kind of thing.”

All Genestella had to be aware of how prana flowed through their own bodies. Seeing how prana flowed through others, however, was a different matter entirely. Gauging quantity and skill was one thing, but to be able to sense the slightest changes—that was a particularly special power.

“I feel like I just learned one of the things that makes you so strong.” Smiling in amazement, Ayato picked up the remains of the halved sphere.

He couldn’t tell specifically what the material was, but it was unmistakably something inorganic. Obviously man-made, then.

“So…I guess Allekant is behind this,” he remarked.

“Allekant?” Kirin looked mystified.

“Well, it’s a long story but— Whoa!”

From a good distance, the remaining not-dragons had begun to hurl fireballs at Ayato. In fact, all four of them were aiming only for him.

Apparently, they had determined that since Kirin was too strong, they should focus on Ayato instead. Well, they’re not wrong.

“Hey—wait! …Augh!”

He didn’t have the time to weigh his options anymore. There’s no way around it now. I have to break the seal and…

He leaped back a good way to distance himself from the creatures and landed near the entrance of the park. Just as he was about to focus his prana, another fireball came flying.

Only this time, it wasn’t aimed at him.

Clearly on a low trajectory, the fireball exploded at his feet with a low boom. The paving stones underneath him began to crack apart from the point of impact.

“Wha…?” Seeing that this wasn’t good, he automatically tried to leap to safety—but he was too late.

When he looked up, an area of about five yards in every direction from him had fallen away to form a giant hole. That fireball couldn’t possibly have carved away at the city’s foundation itself—which meant the ground must have been weakened in advance.

“Mr. Amagiri!”

Kirin jumped into the hole and reached out to him.

Ayato also extended his hand to grab hers. He felt her pull him up.

Kirin had managed to get ahold of the edge of the hole with her other hand, and she hung there, holding on to him.

“Are you okay, Mr. Amagiri?”

“Yeah, you saved me just in time—”

But their relief was short-lived.

They heard an ominous cracking sound, and the piece of the edge to which Kirin clung mercilessly crumbled away.

The dark abyss swallowed them both, leaving behind only their panicked screams.

“Is that the end of Act One?”

Sitting in front of an air-window and looking bored, Ernesta stifled a yawn. The display showed a scene where Ayato and Kirin had just fallen into the depths of a giant hole.

“I wonder how they’re gonna explain that huge hole in the ground. There’ll be trouble if the city guard finds out, don’t you think?”

“I hear there was construction planned there anyway. But that’s not a concern for now.” Camilla, seated next to Ernesta, was diligently checking the data being delivered by the probe at the scene.

“So that’s the Phryganella viscous attacker, huh?” Ernesta said. “Not all that impressive for Tenorio’s ace in the hole.”

“That’s a bit harsh. I found it very interesting.”

“I guess the mana circulation control and the mimicry transition technology were pretty cool. But the rest? All standard. Way standard. I mean, if they can change shape, they should do something more interesting than just that lizard thing. Y’know, like a penguin or a kitty!” Ernesta reached for a plush toy of some strange creature and held it in her arms, plopping her chin on top of it.

“You’re just talking about what you’d want to do… In any case, it appears that the protoplasm transformation–utilizing prana can take on only a prerecorded shape. And that currently, each core unit can store only one shape.”

Camilla had opened an air-window of her own and was checking information leaked to her from their mole at Tenorio. Bioenhancement was Tenorio’s technological specialty. While Ernesta’s assessment was not exactly glowing, Camilla thought that there were many praiseworthy aspects to it.

Still, it was nauseating to think of the process behind that technology.

“Only one type? Even more unimpressive. Well, I guess that’s about the best Tenorio can do without the Great Scholar.” Ernesta was losing what little interest she had. “Besides, those things are way too weak. What good are they even supposed to be?”

“They can’t do much about that. Tenorio’s not exactly developing specialized living weapons, after all. Those are just by-products.”

“Well, sure, but right now my dolls are like a million billion times stronger.”

A million billion? What are you, in kindergarten? Camilla thought.

“If we could say one thing in their defense, it’s that their opponent was too strong. Seidoukan’s top-ranked student achieved her rank for a reason.”

“Hmm, I’ll give you that. There aren’t that many people in our school right now who can face someone at her level head-on.”

“Yes. Many of the stronger students in the practical class graduated—including the winning tag team from the last Phoenix.”

“Well, that’s some of the reason why we get to take the lead.”

The air-window switched to display a different scene.

“Ooh, is this Act Two?”

“I’m told this is the part that clique was banking on, at least.”

“Oh, is it now! Then let’s see what they’ve got!”

The first thing Ayato felt was the impact—then the cold, and a sense that he couldn’t breathe.

…Am I underwater?!

It was dark and there were air bubbles all around him, making it hard to discern his surroundings. But it felt like he had fallen into some deep body of water.

He couldn’t tell up from down, so he calmed himself and let his body go limp. He should start floating back up to the surface, but for some reason, that wasn’t happening. Rather, it felt like he was sinking deeper and deeper.

Well, duh! I’ve got this weight vest on! he realized. He frantically removed the obstacle and swam toward a faint light that had to mean up.

He broke the surface with a splash and drew in a massive lungful of air, finally thinking he might be safe.

At first, he’d assumed that he must have fallen into the lake, but that didn’t seem to be the case now.

It was a frighteningly vast space. High above, he could see the hole where they had fallen in, but there were more than a few strata of ground in between. Even underground space was utilized for various purposes in Asterisk, and someone had gone to the trouble of digging through all that to make the hole.

It was clearly a man-made trap.

“This sure is a big cave…”

His best estimate of the distance from the surface of the water to the ceiling was sixty feet. He couldn’t tell how wide it was. To his left, a wall towered over him, but on the other side, there was only the water and enormous pillars for as far as he could see.

There was almost no light—only a minimal amount of scattered rays clung to the walls and ceiling.

“Oh! Where’s Toudou?!” He looked around and noticed weak splashing a short distance away. “Toudou!”

Judging from her desperate struggling, she was obviously in danger of drowning. Ayato suspected that she couldn’t get her weight vest off. He swam toward her in a rush, and she grabbed on to him, her face almost in tears.

Kirin coughed and regained her voice. “Th-thank you, Mr. Amagiri! You saved me!”

“Are you okay, Miss Toudou? Let’s get your weight off—” But then he saw that hers was already gone. “Huh…?”

She made a tiny embarrassed whine. “Sorry, I…c-can’t swim.”

“Oh…I see.” This was something of a surprise to Ayato. He hadn’t imagined that someone with her athletic prowess might never have learned.

Still, Genestella were human, too. Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses.

“No, I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. “I brought you into this.”

Kirin had fallen in only because she was trying to save him.

“Don’t worry about me. But where are we…?” she asked once she had caught her breath, still sounding a little nasal.

“I think we’re under Asterisk.”

“Then…are we in the ballast area?” Kirin turned her gaze upward.

“Ballast area?”

“Um, so Asterisk is a megafloat structure, and they use the weight of the water for stability, I think.”

“Oh, I see.” Ayato didn’t know very much about the structure of the city, but that sounded plausible.

“So, then, there must be an entrance for maintenance…” Kirin tried to look around, then turned bright red.

“What’s wrong?”

“N-nothing! Um, it…it’s just…”

As Kirin groped for words, Ayato suddenly realized the problem.

The fact that she was holding on to him naturally put her face very close to his, so that their cheeks almost touched.

But that was above the water. Under the surface, Kirin’s ample twin peaks were pressing against Ayato’s arm. In fact, it was more accurate to say that his arm was swallowed deep in the valley between them.

“I—I—I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! If only I could swim—!”

“No, no, no! I don’t care, really—”

Still, even a Genestella did not have the stamina to tread water indefinitely while supporting the weight of two people. They needed to find a way out or at least something stable to rest against.

Just then—Ayato caught sight of a giant shadow lurking deep in the water.

“Miss Toudou…?”

“Y-yes?”

“Can you hold your breath for a bit?”

As soon as he said that, Ayato dove into the water with Kirin in his arms. He kicked with all his strength to move them as fast as he could.

An enormous something grazed past them and sent them tumbling underwater.

They somehow managed to hold on to each other, then resurfaced. What they had just seen defied belief.

“What—?” squeaked Kirin.

Ayato laughed helplessly. “Now, this is something else.”

There was nothing more they could say. From the very spot where they had been floating moments ago, a giant dragon reared its head.

Compared to this, the not-dragons that had attacked them aboveground might as well have been mice. Just the part they could see above the water seemed to be almost ten yards long. Its full length had to be well over fifteen yards. From its silhouette, it looked very much like a denizen of the prehistoric world, like a plesiosaur.

The not-dragons from before resembled lizards, but this one seemed more snakelike. Still, Ayato could make out limbs protruding from its thick body, and the sharp row of teeth and giant head reminded him of nothing other than a dragon.

And just like those not-dragons, it was staring at them with a considerable level of something akin to hostility.

“Well, I guess it makes sense,” Ayato said. “They went through the trouble of dropping us down here. They’re not just going to let us go home.”

The purpose of those not-dragons must have been to chase them here—and this giant creature was the main trap all along.

“Ayato… This dragon feels the same as the ones aboveground,” Kirin whispered. She must have sensed its flow of prana.

“So you think it’s really a slime?”

“Probably…”

“That’s not particularly good news, is it?”

If it was the same, attacking it normally with a sword would have no effect.

Either way, there wasn’t much they could do unarmed. He activated his sword Lux and, at the same time, released his seal. In the situation they were in now, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.

The magic circles that shackled him flew apart, and the prana that had been trapped within rose up. The glow faintly illuminated their dark surroundings.

Apparently reading this as aggression, the monster charged with a growl.

Even with his power released, Ayato was not swift underwater. Still, he swam in front of Kirin to protect her and met the charge head-on.

It slammed into him, pushing him through the water while pinned to the tip of the dragon’s nose. He was holding his breath and fending off the huge sharp teeth when he met one of the pillars with that same momentum.

The impact made a craterlike dent in the massive pillar, opening cracks through it in every direction.

“Ouch…”

“A-are you all right?!”

“Oh, sure. This is nothing, but the situation doesn’t look too great…” He had transferred his prana to defense, so the impact did little damage to him. Still, the fact remained that they did not have much in the way of recourse.

The dragon seemed to be checking on the condition of its prey, observing them from a distance. Maybe it was unexpectedly cautious in nature.

“If—if I’m going to slow you down, please let me go!” Kirin blurted. “If you get hurt because of me, then I—I…”

She trembled in Ayato’s arms, tears rolling down her face.

“Hey—hey, Miss Toudou?”

“I really am useless. No matter how good I am with a sword, I just—I hate it! I can’t stand people getting hurt for my sake!” Kirin sobbed, shaking her head in frustration.

Ayato let out a long breath, then softly drew her close and petted her head. “It’s okay. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“But—but—!”

“That thing would be no match against you out of the water, right? And I gave you a decent fight. Couldn’t you have a little more faith in me?” Ayato admonished her gently, looking straight into her eyes.

“But that’s…”

“And one more thing. Don’t ever talk about yourself that way. You’re kind and strong… You’re a wonderful girl.”

“Huh—?” Kirin stared at Ayato for a few moments in surprise. Then her cheeks flushed pink, but she nodded resolutely. “Okay! I—I won’t.” She scrubbed at her tears and lifted her head, looking determined.

“That’s good to hear.” Ayato petted her head one more time, then switched weapons to the Ser Veresta. As he channeled his prana, black symbols rose up to darken the white blade. “Now what we need is something to stand on.”

He lightly swung the Ser Veresta, being careful not to let the blade touch the water.

He carved a section out of the thick pillar as easily as if it were made of tofu, making just enough space for the two of them to stand. Doing damage to things that were apparently significant to the city’s structure gave him some pause, but at the moment, there was no way around it.

When he lifted Kirin onto the landing first, the dragon pounced on the opportunity to rush at him from behind.

Without even turning to look, Ayato casually waved the Ser Veresta at it with one arm. Before the sharp row of teeth could find their target, they were severed from the mouth, and the head of the dragon went flying.

The head melted in midair and before long was wiggling its way through the water to retake its form.

Ayato climbed onto the landing to join Kirin. “Yup, looks like it’s the same as the ones from up there,” he muttered with a frown, watching it regenerate.

The dragon seemed even more cautious after that attack and circled the pillar while keeping a distance of some ten yards. It clearly wasn’t stupid.

After a while, it begun to gather mana at its mouth, just as the creatures aboveground had. A giant fireball formed quickly, then launched like a missile toward Ayato and Kirin.

With a light swing of the Ser Veresta, the projectile scattered like a cloud and evaporated. This was child’s play compared to Julis’s power.

“This’ll go on for a while, unless we figure out something else,” Ayato muttered.

He could go on the offensive, but that meant that he would have to leap in and he’d get one shot to finish it off. That might work against an ordinary foe, but if this one was built like the slimes above, he had to be sure to strike at its core.

“Miss Toudou, can you read the flow of its prana?”

“Oh—yes. Sort of…”

“Can you tell where its core is?”

“That’s hard… I think it’s constantly moving around inside its body.”

This really was a troublesome opponent.

“Well, then I don’t have much choice. I’ll have to try.”

“Try what…?”

As Kirin looked at him questioningly, Ayato lifted the Ser Veresta high.

“Yeah. I’m not very good with this—actually, I’ve never been able to do it. But I have to take a step forward sometime.”

With those words, Ayato poured his prana into the Ser Veresta.

Meteor Arts—they were techniques that could temporarily raise the energy output of a Lux by concentrating prana into the manadite core. Prana enhanced physical abilities, so it was relatively easy to heighten one’s defenses, as Ayato had done moments ago. But the ways in which it could be used for offense were limited, as channeling prana to conventional weapons had little effect. Channeling prana could be a powerful technique in bare-handed combat, a method for which Jie Long students were well-known. Otherwise, one needed material that would react strongly to prana as the medium—which was to say, manadite.

Ayato, however, had never successfully used Meteor Arts before. His prana was so massive that the Lux would break, being unable to withstand the strain. Ideally, he would be able to adjust for it, but he had never been very good at such delicate control of his prana.

So he had given up on it, until now.

“This one should be able to handle it,” he said.

The Ser Veresta growled as if in response.

Absorbing his seemingly inexhaustible prana, the Ser Veresta changed shape little by little. The black symbols spread and the blade itself began to grow in pace with them.

“Wow…” Kirin gasped.

The Ser Veresta grew with accelerating speed, and quickly grew to over ten yards long. The blade let out a low roar, and the black symbols danced madly around it.

The dragon seemed to feel the instinct of fear and turned, about to flee—but it was too late.

With a shout, Ayato brought the enormous sword down, and the dragon’s body evaporated the moment it made contact with the blade. He kept slicing through to the part of it that was still underwater.

The water boiled away at an astounding rate, swirling madly in an explosive gust. Steam rose furiously and toyed with Ayato and Kirin’s hair like a storm. It reminded them of the fog aboveground from earlier, but the mists faded this time, and there was not a trace of the dragon left to be found.

“Whew… Well, not bad, I guess.”

Ayato had never expended that much prana in his life. The fatigue felt satisfying.

The aftereffects of breaking his seal, however, could hardly be described that way. He grunted at the sudden pain.

“Mr. Amagiri!” Kirin cried out. “Are you okay, Mr. Amagiri?!”

Magic circles appeared around him, once again shackling his power.

He fell and Kirin hurried to catch him in her arms. The indescribable softness of her embrace made him shy, but he was powerless to pull away.

“…So you can fight at full strength for only five minutes?”

“Yes, for now. Well, I think I could go for longer if I pushed it, but even then I probably wouldn’t last ten minutes,” Ayato said with a weak smile, leaning back against the place he had carved out in the pillar.

He and Kirin decided to wait there for help. Not that there were any other realistic options, since Ayato could barely move now and Kirin could not swim.

They weren’t getting reception on their mobile devices, which was no help, but Ayato was sure that someone would notice that something was wrong if enough time passed. Even Eishirou would have to notice if Ayato didn’t make it back from morning training. Or so he hoped.

“I guess if I use a lot of prana, that shortens the time limit. I was fighting for less than five today.”

“Oh…I see…” Kirin hung her head sadly.

“Is something the matter?”

She looked up at Ayato with her face on the verge of tears. “Why do you fight if this is what it does to you, Amagiri?”

“Wha—?” The question caught him by surprise, but he had already found the answer earlier. “There’s someone I want to help.”

Yes. That was what he had to do now. The thing that he wanted to do.

“Is that Riessfeld?”

“Well…yes.”

When she saw Ayato nod in answer to the question, Kirin dropped her gaze, looking disappointed somehow.

“Th-then, is it true that you, um, you…l-like her?”

“Huh?!” Another question he hadn’t expected. This one made him fly into a panic. “N-no, that’s not why—! Um, of course I think she’s a great person, but, uh, it’s not…really…”

“Wha—? Then wh-why…?” Kirin began to press blankly, only to think better of it and suddenly stop. “No, never mind. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked such a weird question.”

She bowed, looking a little bit glad somehow.

“Maybe I still have…”

She murmured something under her breath. Ayato couldn’t quite hear it.

“N-no, it’s fine, I don’t care, but— Achoo!” As the tension dropped from their conversation, Ayato let out a splendid sneeze.

“Oh—are you all right?”

“Well, we are soaked through, so it’s pretty cold.”

“Yes. The towel also got wet— Choo!” Evidently, Kirin was also cold.

Probably because it was underground—or more precisely, underwater—this place was very cool despite it being the middle of summer. At this rate, they could get thoroughly sick before being found.

“We should probably dry our clothes…”

“Y-you’re right…”

They glanced at each other, then went quiet.

Ayato couldn’t get himself to suggest that they take their clothes off. Saying that might immediately brand him as a degenerate. On the other hand, simply removing his own clothes would have a rather aggressive connotation. And as someone who had trespassed into the girls’ dormitory, he couldn’t possibly…

“Uh, um…” Kirin interrupted his thoughts by tugging at his sleeve, with a face that could not possibly become any redder. “Well, it… It’s not good for us to be in wet clothes, so…”

“Huh?”

It seemed like steam might spout from her ears. Kirin looked down.

Then, after letting her gaze wander on the ground for a while, she spoke, her voice so faint it seemed to disappear into the air. “W-would you…turn around for a bit, please?”

They decided to dry their clothes on Kirin’s katana. She propped it up across the carved-out pillar like a laundry pole, and they hung their clothes on it.

Two feet and four inches in length. It felt like a shame to treat a masterpiece of the great swordsmith Shinkai Inoue in this way, but there was nothing else to use. (The sword was called the Senbakiri, Ayato learned. It meant “to cut like a thousand paper cranes.”)

The ballast area was not only cool but humid. It would take a while for their clothes to dry. The heat from the Ser Veresta might have sped things up, but he feared that using the Orga Lux as a makeshift dryer might offend it—and in any case, having just broken his seal, he would have to wait some time before he could activate his sword again.

Ayato and Kirin sat in silence, back to back.

They could not bring themselves to undress completely, so he still wore his shorts and she wore her underwear.

Ayato could feel the pounding of a heart so loud he thought it might burst, but he couldn’t tell if it was his own or Kirin’s.

“Um…Miss Toudou?”

“Y-y-yes?!”

Ayato tried to make some sort of conversation to lighten the mood, but Kirin was rigid with tension and even her voice was stiff.

But somehow that let him relax him a little.

“About what we were saying before… Can I ask you the same question? Why you fight here?”

“M-me?” Kirin hesitated, the question catching her off guard, but then, after a moment’s reflection, she spoke evenly. “The reason I fight… I might have mentioned it before, but I’m fighting to save my father.”

“Right. Your father is a Genestella, too?”

“…Yes.”

The children of Genestella were not always Genestella, but the probability was much higher. Parents who were both Genestella were around ten times more likely to have a Genestella child than two parents who were not.

“But now, my father is incarcerated. As a criminal. And I want to save him.”

“A criminal…?”

It was true that the integrated enterprise foundations could grant any wish to the champion of the Festa, even if that wish involved bending the law—freeing a convicted criminal, for instance. And in fact, there were more than a few instances like that, Ayato had heard.

“But he didn’t do anything wrong! He was just trying to protect me!” In her outburst, Kirin began to turn around, then caught herself and quickly faced away from him again.

“Protect you? What happened?”

“Five years ago, someone tried to rob a store, when my father and I were inside. He saved me when the man tried to take me hostage. And my father—my father ended up killing the man. But he didn’t mean to.”

Kirin’s voice was heavy with frustration and regret. Ayato could hear her grit her teeth between her words.

Five years ago, she would have been eight—still just a child.

“And the man wasn’t a Genestella, was he?”

Kirin shook her head.

Everywhere in the world, Genestella were at a social disadvantage. In some cases, this meant their human rights were curtailed. This inequity was particularly marked in cases where Genestella caused harm to ordinary people. Even if it was in self-defense, the law would always treat it as excessive force. And if the other party died as a result, harsh sentences were the norm, even if the victim was the one who had committed the crime.

Some went so far as to suggest that the IEFs had deliberately engineered this inequality. After all, the system clearly worked for their profit.

“The robber didn’t seem to realize that I was a Genestella. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have chosen me as his hostage. But I had a knife pointed at me. I was so scared, I couldn’t do anything.”

Even Genestella children had tremendous strength, but without considerable training, an adult with a weapon still posed a real threat to them. It was understandable that young Kirin would have been helpless. “And then your father acted to save you,” Ayato said.

“Yes… I was already in training at the time. Thinking back on it now, it would have been easy to apprehend that man myself. But I’m spineless, I’m such a coward…” She sniffled. “So now my father is in jail. He still has decades to serve. But the one who told me how I could save him was my uncle.”

“That’s why you came here?”

“Yes. My uncle never got along with my father, and he hates Genestella. He probably resents that he wasn’t chosen as the heir of the Toudou school, even though he’s the older brother. But still, he chose to help me—and maybe it was out of his own interests, but that doesn’t bother me. I have no choice now but to depend on him.” Kirin’s voice trembled, holding back tears, but her words were clear and firm.

Still, something about what she said bothered Ayato. What was it?

“My uncle is very capable, actually. He got the IEF to keep the press from reporting the case, and he said he even arranged a different identity for my father so that the Toudou family wouldn’t take the fall.”

“Whoa…”

That did surprise Ayato. It sank in just how wildly the power of the IEFs surpassed that of any nation or law.

And now that he thought about it, he had never heard about the head of the Toudou-style school being arrested. Under normal circumstances, that would have been big news, considering the scale of the style’s popularity.

“He’s that good at handling me, too. He got everyone talking about my skills as soon as I came to the school. He chose my opponents, gathered information on them, and advised me on my strategy. He knows the best times for me to duel and the most efficient way for me to build up my record.” Kirin’s back shuddered. “If I just do as he says, then I don’t need to—”

Her words had begun to flow like an internal monologue, repeated over and over. Ayato flatly cut her off. “You’re wrong, Miss.”

“Wrong…?”

“Even if you know where you want to go, it isn’t by the path you chose. So it’s not going to work. Sooner or later, you’ll get stuck.”

Ayato knew that she had to find out for herself what she was supposed to do. If she didn’t get to choose how to do it, someday she would burn out. And he didn’t want to see that happen to her.

“Well, I’m not really one to talk,” he said sheepishly. “I only just figured it out myself.”

Kirin was quiet for a while. When she spoke, it was in a low, shaky whisper. “But…I can’t. I can’t do this alone, I just—”

“It’s okay.” Ayato turned around to softly pet her head.

“Oh…”

“You’re not alone. At least, I’ll be here for you. If it’s the path you choose, really choose for yourself, I’ll help you.”

“A path I choose…,” Kirin whispered as if to confirm it to herself. Then she stared earnestly at Ayato.

He thought he saw something sparkle deep in her eyes, but it was barely for a moment. He could have imagined it.

“Oh—but when we fight, that’s a different story, okay? It’d be patronizing to go easy on you… Well, not like I really have that option against you, anyway.” Ayato held her gaze with a shy smile.

“You’re strange, Mr. Amagiri,” Kirin said, wiping away her tears, and her shoulders shook with laughter.

“Julis tells me that, too… All the time, actually.” Ayato scratched his head.

“But you’re really cool,” Kirin whispered faintly.

Her voice was too soft for him to hear. But… “Wait—um— Ack! Miss Toudou?!”

“Huh? Oh— Eep!” she squealed.

They finally realized then that they were facing each other.

Having caught an eyeful of Kirin’s precociously shapely body, Ayato turned away again in a panic. “S-s-sorry!”

“N-no, that’s… I—I’m sorry!”

As they stuttered through their flustered apologies, their backs to each other, they heard voices calling from above.

Help was here at last. Ayato let out a sigh of relief.

Then he heard Kirin’s hesitant voice from behind him. “Um… You did it just now, too, but you—you pet my head a lot, Mr. Amagiri.”

“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry. Does it bother you?”

It probably wasn’t something that many people would do to a teenage girl, he thought.

But Kirin shook her head. “No, my father used to do that.”

She sounded happy somehow.