Nighttime in Shibuya saw no end to people. That, however, did not apply to the city of Shibuya at large.

As midnight approached, for a short time, there were places without any people, like bugs eating away at the town. For example, the tight, narrow blind alleyways between buildings, or the tiny little parks just there to fill space between main roads and back roads. Like this particular tree park, no bigger than a parking space, with but a single bench in it.

Of course, just because people weren’t passing by, that didn’t mean there were no figures to be seen. Two of them, in fact, were in this park. One wore a long coat, a scarf, and a round, wide-brimmed hat pulled over its eyes. It was the sort of shadowy person you couldn’t tell the gender of, much less the features. The other wore a stylish half coat with a knit sweater underneath, plus mini wrapped culottes and thick leggings—a young woman.

Right after the hatted figure rose from its position covering the woman’s corpse lying on the bench, a new figure spoke to them from behind.

Incompatible again?

A long coat, a scarf, and a hat. The figure wore the exact same thing as the first and spoke in a voice that didn’t vibrate the air.

No good. This time, I tried completely blocking the connection after sending a copy in, but as with previous attempts, it simply absorbed the psions in the sample’s blood, then returned without anchoring.

The first answered the second in the same silent voice. The two figures were conversing through thought waves.

Does this mean the copies won’t work after all?

That isn’t possible. We ourselves are the original duplicates, after all.

Hmm… Perhaps they must have desire in addition to the capacity in order to become like us.

Does anyone have no desire?

You suggest there are other conditions?

We need more samples to be sure.

…That hasn’t changed.

I am me. Just like how you are you. Nothing has changed.

Yes, you’re right… Hm?

The two figures ended their thought conversation and looked in the same direction.

Someone has broken the psychic barrier. Two…no, three?

I had strengthened the barrier because we were currently conducting trials. They must possess quite high capacity.

We are two. Should we withdraw?

No, this is a rare opportunity. If they are strong enough to cross over the psychic barrier, they may be compatible. Fortunately, the one behind them is trailing the other two by a distance. We could likely disable the first two before the third catches up.

Very well. Everyone else, understand?

Indications of affirmation came back. Leaving the corpse on the bench, the two figures disappeared toward the streetlights.

Leo was walking around the streets of Shibuya again tonight. However, it wasn’t his usual aimless wandering—he was going around to acquaintances of his, asking after any rumors of shady people, following eyewitness reports. In other words, traveling with purpose.

Even Leo didn’t understand why he was so fervent about playing detective.

For justice? Other unfair crimes occurred.

A sense of territory? It wasn’t as though Shibuya were his hometown.

Curiosity? He wasn’t actually that interested in who the criminal was.

The closest thing he could come up with was simply that he felt like he couldn’t leave this alone.

After searching his own feelings, that was the conclusion he arrived at.

He walked through the night. He plunged through the darkness. For a while now, he’d been hearing an intermittent noise, like the sounds of bug wings flapping. Not in his ears—but crossing the very pit of his consciousness.

He didn’t know what it meant. Leo could only recognize it as mere noise. But his gut told him it was voices talking.

Voices trading words at the bottom of his consciousness, close to the region that used magic. He drew ever nearer the transmission source, as though being sucked in.

The Stars were the core magical force of the USNA. But even so, not all American magicians in the army belonged to the Stars. Of the three strategic-class magicians currently recognized by the state, Angie Sirius was the only one assigned to the Stars. The other two were stationed at the Alaska base and the Gibraltar base abroad.

Nevertheless, there was no denying that the Stars magicians were the central axis of magical combat for the USNA Army. In particular, the magicians granted first-magnitude code names made up the strongest magical force in the world. Therefore, the desertion of one of the first-magnitude magicians, Alfred Fomalhaut, was a major shock to the USNA leadership. They couldn’t bring the incident to an end with the execution of Fomalhaut alone. They needed to deal with every last one of the other fugitives and make an example of them.

Two people were walking quickly through the streets of Shibuya that night—USNA Army hunters dispatched to deal with the fugitives. They belonged to Stardust, a unit of magicians directly under the USNA Army Joint Chiefs of Staff, the dust that couldn’t become stars. Still, they had combat power as magic soldiers, and by abandoning versatility in favor of specific strengths, they strengthened their abilities to levels rivaling those of most Stars personnel. The members selected for hunting down the fugitives were a team that excelled in search and pursuit. They could identify psionic wave patterns and detect their traces, a technology Japan hadn’t yet put into practical use—in other words, they were strengthened magicians with a specific ability.

And on this night, the women had already caught the psions of one of the fugitives, a Stars satellite-class soldier, Deimos Second—also known as Charles Sullivan—and had chased him to within walking distance.

“He’s in the empty lot up here.”

Nodding to her hunter partner’s words as she stopped, the woman took a device out of her coat pocket. On it, she called up a map and saw that this alley led straight to the park they’d detected Sullivan at. There was an entrance to the right of their current location, as well as one around a right turn.

“One signal. Let’s use a pincer. I’ll go right.”

A fashionable coat, a short skirt, colorful tights, and short boots. The female American magician, blending in as a young woman out for a night on the town, gave her partner an instruction, her tone of voice the only thing inconspicuous.

“Got it… He’s moving. Hurry. But we attack at once.”

“Roger that.”

The two hunters split—one left, one right.

Between the hat pulled low and the scarf was a gray mask emblazoned with the design of a bat with wings unfurled. Walking, the figure in the long coat, which exposed practically no skin at all, directed its gaze toward the exit of the alley. Hidden behind the mask were lips slightly curled in scorn.

Pursuers from the army. Sending only two Stardust after me—they’ve gravely underestimated me.

I’m sure it’s because they only knew you from before.

As the thought waves reached him from his compatriot, who was no longer visible, that which was Charles Sullivan’s ridicule changed to a pained grin. Ever since becoming his current self, he couldn’t hide anything from his compatriot. He had virtually no privacy. But for the current Charles Sullivan, it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was only natural for them, and any reason he might have had to be uncomfortable was gone anyway.

When he focused his mind on a spot behind his forehead, he could see the thoughts of all his companions. They shared his consciousness through a new antenna, which had grown between his right and left lobes. He was both the individual known as Charles Sullivan and part of “them.”

I see. If they only know me as a satellite-class, then I can predict what measures they’ll take. I won’t need backup.

After Sullivan sent that thought out, a rustling noise returned to him, like the sounds of wings flapping inside a beehive.

I will make preparations anyway, just to be sure.

The sounds took form as an answer given by his compatriot, hidden nearby.

The encounter happened a moment later.

“Deimos Second, deserter. Put your hands in the air and open them.”

A young woman’s voice called out to him from in front. At the same time, a silent noise, like nails on a chalkboard, washed over him from behind.

The noise was psionic waves emitted by a Cast Jammer—a form of magical interference using portable anti-magic weapons developed by the USNA Army Magic Research Division. The interfering waves from a Cast Jammer weren’t a noise that indiscriminately blocked all magic like Cast Jamming, which used antinite. A Cast Jammer was a device that obstructed a CAD’s functions. By duplicating the psi-wave interference caused by using multiple CADs at once, it blocked the reading in of activation sequences. Normally, this interference would only occur because of psi-waves from the same person, but owing to the development of technology to analyze an opponent’s psionic patterns, the USNA Army had, though on a limited basis, succeeded in disabling CADs.

Not everyone could use the equipment. Using a Cast Jammer required a high level of skill in typeless, psionic wave–emitting magic. Additionally, its effective firing range was a mere five meters. However, as a means of jamming magic without antinite, Cast Jammers were a revolutionary secret weapon for the USNA Army.

With the muzzle pointed at him, Sullivan raised his hands over his head, opening his fingers, as instructed. The instruction, though it would have been incomprehensible to a normal person, was meant to prevent the use of CADs. According to the data the two women, both pursuers and executioners, had been given, Deimos Second couldn’t use magic without a CAD. His physical abilities were at most at the level of a regular soldier. If they simply blocked his magic, then he would be no match for the women, both magicians and biologically enhanced—or rather, that’s how it should have been.

“The decision has been made to eliminate you on sight. However, if you’ll provide information about the other deserters, our orders are to lower your punishment by one degree,” warned the hunter, her finger on the trigger.

Sullivan, hands still up, shrugged.

“Deimos Second, we will give you ten seconds to consider.”

“I don’t need it.”

As though confused by Sullivan’s response, which showed no nervousness, much less tension, she didn’t fire her bullet.

“Stardust Chasers, Number 17, Number 18—Hunter Q and Hunter R, right?”

With her code name guessed right, Q’s relaxed finger tightened again.

“Neither of you can defeat me.”

At the same time as Sullivan’s light remark came a gunshot. A suppressor silenced the report so much it sounded like a toy air gun. However, the bullet fired was more than capable of taking a person’s life.

A muffled scream went up behind Sullivan. The fired bullet, instead of striking Sullivan’s chest, which was directly where the muzzle aimed, had instead bored into Hunter R’s chest.

“Didn’t you hear? You shouldn’t have used a gun against me,” explained Sullivan in a tone like he was looking down on an inferior.

“A trajectory distortion spell?!” came the astonished voice of Q. They knew he specialized in magic that influenced the trajectory of moving bodies. But they’d also heard he couldn’t activate it unless he used a CAD.

“The Cast Jammer didn’t work…?” gasped R, clutching at her chest.

“No, no,” said Sullivan, not turning around. “Your Cast Jammer is working fine. But…”

Both Q and R sensed him smirk underneath his bat-patterned mask.

“I no longer require a CAD.”

Q shoved her gun into the holster hidden under her skirt. Both the hunters drew knives from their coat sleeves, then charged at Sullivan at once, from in front and behind.

Their thrusts were a product of their enhanced physical abilities, too fast for a normal human to avoid. But Sullivan, who they were sure hadn’t undergone enhancement, fluttered this way and that, evading their strikes. His dodges weren’t solely due to athletic ability. R’s blade came at his neck; it curved unnaturally, missing him to the side. As R pulled her knife back, her stance compromised, Q slid in close and made a feint before Sullivan could attack R.

“Changing our knives’ trajectories?! How can you use such powerful magic?!”

“Do you not understand? I am not the same person I used to be!”

“Enough nonsense!”

Switching from a thrust to a slash, Q’s knife veered from its course for a diagonal swipe. It cut through Sullivan’s coat and slid against the surface of the carbon armor he wore underneath. From behind, R charged in, aiming for a gap in the armor, plunging her blade’s tip up from underneath.

“Urgh!”

But R’s knife only grazed Sullivan’s open chest. In fact, as the blade’s trajectory twisted, she lost her balance with a grunt.

With the deft motions of a street magician, a knife identical to the ones the hunters held appeared in his hand.

Sullivan’s knife then swung down at R’s back.

Its tip, however, bounced off a transparent wall built in midair.

“A vector reflection spell?! This strength, it’s—”

“Major!” Q shouted over Sullivan’s words.

Instantly understanding what she meant, he pounced toward R, who was still regaining her balance.

A blade fell from the sky.

Midjump toward his adversary, he slid to the right, avoiding the short sword falling from above. Barely hitting the ground, he rotated, and the short sword that had been coming at Sullivan knocked away the knife aimed at Q and R.

Using the opening, Sullivan jumped at the wall of a building. Jumping off opposite walls three times, he reached the roof of one of the buildings that formed the alleyway.

Looking up at him was a red-haired, golden-eyed masked magician attempting to chase him by the same route.

But as new psionic waves energized from the other side of the alley, she was forced to abandon her pursuit.

No—she knew she had to prevent any more victims, so she began to dash deeper into the alley.

The sudden swelling of Leo’s fighting sense didn’t hasten him onward but rather stopped him in his tracks. What he’d said to Toshikazu about not doing anything dangerous hadn’t been an empty promise. He instinctively knew that what lay ahead was not a place he should tread out of simple curiosity.

He took a transmission unit out of his pocket and sent a short text to the address Toshikazu had given him.

The vampire is here.

Leo sent it with public location information turned on, so if the police chief noticed it right away, he could apprehend the suspect. Deciding to withdraw before getting any more wrapped up in things, Leo turned on his heel—and noticed a figure lying on a park bench.

His goodwill and caution struggled against each other. In the end, his defensive instinct was the one to yield. It was less that he liked people and more that he had little sense of fear. Had he inherited the weakness of his ancestors, being born powerful? Still, without letting go of his caution, he carefully stepped closer to the young woman lying limp on the bench.

“Hey, are you all right?”

He gingerly reached out with a hand and gently shook her shoulder. The woman gave no response, so he put a hand to her throat.

Leo flinched backward. Her skin was cold, and she had no heartbeat—though, no. Actually, his fingers could feel a faint pulse.

Rattled, he took the transmission unit out. He made an emergency call—not to the police, but for an ambulance. As he was saying there was one person, and that she was about to die from bleeding out…

…reflexively, he turned around and brought the device up in front of his face.

The transmission unit shattered.

After he leaped back, his brain realized that the weapon had been an extendable police baton.

And before his eyes, he found an odd opponent.

Underneath a round-brimmed hat was an eerie white mask with only the eyes cut out. A long coat reached down to the person’s ankles, perfectly concealing body lines to the point that it blurred even their gender. However, their gender wasn’t the half of it—he couldn’t even tell if they were human.

In the back of his mind, the noise like buzzing bug wings began again. Just like before, he couldn’t understand it. But for some reason, this time, he felt as though the “voice” was giving a warning for its comrades to withdraw.

While Leo was preoccupied with the noise, the masked stranger closed the distance in an instant. It was a self-acceleration spell, Leo realized, but he couldn’t see any signs of an activation sequence expanding. They came so fast it was like they’d built a magic program directly. Caught off guard and with no time to use a hardening spell, Leo took the sideways baton hit on his left arm.

A dull sound of something being crushed.

At the sight of the twisted police baton, a confused grunt made it out from behind the mask.

“Why, you! That hurt!”

Leo’s uppercut to the body caught the stranger in the chest. A hard sound rang out.

His opponent staggered heavily backward, and Leo shook his arms out as though they stung. But none of his bones seemed broken. Even his left arm, which had received the duralumin baton directly, was moving without difficulty.

“Carbon armor under your coat? What do you need all that for?”

Should’ve brought a weapon, he thought with bitter resentment, keeping his eyes fixed on the masked stranger and taking up a stance. No doubt about it, this had to be one of the vampires.

The stranger tossed their baton aside and stuck both hands forward. They took up a low-profile position with the left side jutting forward, with their left fist at jaw height and right fist in front of their solar plexus. Leo thought it looked like a Chinese kenpo stance. And he noticed one other thing, too: The fists were small, almost like a woman’s—

With a gust of wind, the stranger attacked—self-acceleration plus assistance from a tailwind, generated out of a fluid-motion spell.

A thin, razor-like blade came flying at him with the wind; it bounced off Leo’s already magically hardened jacket.

He intercepted the stranger’s downward hand chop with his left arm.

The stranger grabbed it.

In the same instant, a sudden sense of exhaustion washed over Leo. Because of that, his right fist stopped.

The stranger’s right hand reached for a spot on his chest above his heart.

Leo gave a burst of spirit and forced his right punch to follow through.

The moment the stranger’s right hand reached Leo’s chest, Leo’s fist plunged into the stranger’s danchu—a vital spot at the top of the sternum.

The stranger let it carry them into a backward somersault as Leo finally lost to his exhaustion and fell to his knees.

He felt his hit connect. But he also knew it wasn’t a decisive blow.

Letting go of his consciousness now meant accepting defeat. With no proof whatsoever that it wouldn’t mean an end to his life, too, he drove himself to look up.

The stranger was already standing erect. They were clutching their chest, but as Leo had thought, the injury didn’t seem to have taken any of his opponent’s combat power away. Still, for some reason, the stranger didn’t move to follow up their attack. They weren’t even looking at Leo.

He followed the stranger’s gaze, hidden by the mask, and saw that there was an oni standing there.

Red hair, golden eyes. It looked small, either because of the distance or because his mind was hazy.

Through his murky awareness, he thought he saw the stranger beginning to flee through the now-sideways night streets, and the oni chasing after them.

Lina, who had become the masked magician Sirius, locked eyes with Leo, who lay sprawled on the road, for a moment, herself seemingly at a loss. But her hesitation only lasted an instant; Angie Sirius decided to pursue the stranger. Because she’d prioritized saving the hunters earlier, the stranger wearing the bat mask—Deimos Second, aka Charles Sullivan—had already gotten away. She couldn’t let this white-masked stranger flee as well.

“Silvie, have you identified their psionic wave pattern?” asked Lina. Silvia was in their mobile base.

But the answer she gave wasn’t a favorable one. “I’m terribly sorry. There’s too much noise for me to pinpoint it.”

“What about the cameras?” Hearing their psion radar wouldn’t do her any good; maybe she could chase them using low-altitude satellite cameras…?

“I have them for the moment. But this is a city, with plenty of obstacles, so I don’t know how long I’ll be able to trace them.”

“Understood. I’ll continue my pursuit.”

Realizing she couldn’t rely on any technical support, she quickened her pace. Despite how late it was, the roads were filled with young people. The stranger blended in with them, quickly thinning their trail of psions. Lina turned up the gear on her self-acceleration spell so she wouldn’t lose sight of the stranger’s back as they ran at an inhuman speed.

As though noticing she’d closed the distance, White Mask suddenly changed course.

Out of the busy streets and up a hill toward a residential area. The greenery increased, while human presence decreased.

For Lina, that was advantageous. With fewer people, it would be easier to tell the stranger’s psions apart. She chased after White Mask as they veered left and right on their path, using the person’s residual psions as a guide. Angie lost sight of their back more frequently now, but her extrasensory perception of psionic patterns was now far stronger. Her experience told her she was almost there. And when she finally caught up, in a park—

She was covered by psionic noise.

Cast Jamming?!

Lina erased the thought from her mind. Her self-acceleration spell effects were still all there. Although it was hard for Cast Jamming to affect a spell a person applied to themselves, it was only relatively hard—not completely impossible. And even given Lina’s—or rather, Sirius’s—magic abilities, Cast Jamming’s effects couldn’t completely block her spell. That meant this noise had to be something else.

Shoot!

She immediately knew what it was. Or rather, she was told.

She’d lost track of the residual psions from White Mask, whom she’d been chasing. But they hadn’t disappeared—she could no longer tell them apart.

Now she finally understood why this person had led her somewhere with fewer people. If it got easier for her to tell her enemy’s psionic wave patterns apart from others’, her enemy would also have an easier time telling her patterns apart. This noise was a type of long-distance magic; in order to pinpoint Lina and create this noise, this White Mask person had brought her to an empty park in the middle of a residential area where everyone was asleep.

…It pains me to admit it, but I can’t do this alone.

“Major, what’s happening?!”

Worried about Lina’s sudden halt, Silvia, her voice slightly panicked, came over the radio.

“I lost them. I’m returning to our mobile base,” she said, frustrated but succinct about her failure.

Erika Chiba’s morning started early. Her daily routine was to work up a good sweat from training before the sun rose.

Until the age of ten, she’d done it because her father had told her to.

Until she was fourteen and learned who she really was, she’d done it because she wanted to be a greater swordswoman than the rest of the Chiba.

Until last March, she’d done it out of pure force of habit.

But ever since last April, ever since she’d met him, she’d done it because she wanted to, of her own volition. Because she wanted to grow stronger.

She didn’t hold a sword for morning training. Her father, who had his eye on Erika’s aptitude, had raised her so that she could use the secret sword technique Mountain Tsunami—or rather, he’d raised her solely for that purpose. Her skill was a speed technique, fast as lightning, which changed into a gale that slashed and a thunderbolt that severed. And as part of training for that, she was assigned to strengthen her leg muscles. Because of that, long training runs were treated as especially important.

She’d lost sight of her goal during those days of momentum and had been on the verge of neglecting her footwork on the road. But ever since she’d decided for herself to grow stronger, as long as she was at home, she never missed a single day of it.

This morning was no different as Erika rose from her bed when her alarm clock went off. Constitutionally, Erika wasn’t very strong in the morning. Her body would react, but her mind wouldn’t wake up. Still, this bodily habit had been engraved into her by thousands of repetitions, and it slowly brought her feet out of bed.

Stifling a yawn, with only her gait unsteady, she headed for the bathroom attached to her room. It was no more than a room with a shower and a vanity unit, but still she had the whole room and its fixtures to herself. Such was the luxury of being the daughter of a wealthy family.

The current Chiba head was, at the very least, not a miser who would discriminate among his children in terms of who got what physical accommodation.

Despite it being the middle of winter, she didn’t turn on the hot water; she only fully woke up after washing her face with the freezing cold. Erika had just gone over to her closet to change into her workout clothes when she saw the “incoming text message” light on her phone blinking out of the corner of her eye.

The sun still hadn’t risen; in precise time, it was 5:30 AM. She’d gone to sleep at 11:00 PM last night, and she didn’t have any unread messages left, so this one must have come in the middle of the night. Then, a growing premonition caused her to go over and look at it rather than leave it for later.

Due to its simplicity, the text message was still used in this day and age. And when Erika saw this one, she scowled. After reading it over, she began to mutter, a creaking, gnashing sound coming from her teeth as she did.

“My brother is such an idiot… What is he making that idiot do…?”

She tore off her pajamas and changed her underwear.

Then, from her closet, rather than her workout gear, she took out a sweater and a skirt.

The bad news reached Tatsuya just before he left the house to go to school.

It was a plaintext message sent to his portable device, not a call on his house phone. Normally, the text format was only used for disaster forecast delivery, giving this particular one an ominously urgent impression. Of course, such a vaguely urgent message would, once read, be overwritten and then disappear like all the others.

The sender was Erika.

“Brother, is it poor news?”

Miyuki, keenly picking up on the shift in her brother’s emotions, looked up at him with worried eyes.

At the moment, the idea of distancing his sister from any sources of unease didn’t exist for Tatsuya. “Erika tells me Leo was attacked by the vampire and brought to the hospital.”

“…She’s…not joking, is she?”

The media had a way of making everything more dramatic than it was. Even something happening in an adjacent town would be extensively reported—you could also call it exaggeration—which made you think it an event from a fictional world with no relation to you. To say nothing of this crazy vampire crime incident. It was, perhaps, no wonder they didn’t feel a sense of reality from it. However…

“It’s true.”

However crazy it might have seemed, averting his eyes from the truth would have brought naught but a disadvantage. Only by confronting a threat head-on could they come up with plans to counteract it.

“He’s receiving treatment at the police hospital in Nakano. Thankfully, his life isn’t in danger, so we can wait to visit him until after school.”

“…Yes, Brother.”

For Miyuki, Leonhard Saijou was no more than a friend through her brother. If Tatsuya said it was okay to do it after school, then she had no reason to argue—no matter what she thought deep down.

Erika didn’t go to school that day.

She’d contacted Tatsuya, Mizuki, Mikihiko, and the school office about it, so everyone would have known.

However, what nobody would have known was that Leo’s hospital room—which Erika was monitoring under the pretense of looking after him (from the perch of a hallway bench)—also had upperclassmen inside, visiting.

Attendance was no longer mandatory for seniors, so the time wasn’t an issue. But she couldn’t have predicted that students who weren’t related to the club committee or the student council would come to visit him. Even the current chairperson of the former or the president of the latter would have been within the realm of possibility.

Giving a glance to Erika where she sat next to the entrance, Katsuto faced the door, his interest in her immediately gone.

Mayumi greeted Erika with a model businesslike smile, then also turned to face the door.

Erika didn’t stop her as she knocked on the private room’s door. After all, Erika wasn’t nursing him; she was just keeping an eye on him—more precisely, she was keeping watch for any uninvited guests who might come to visit. So she had no reason to stop them.

She stood up, and without a word to the two seniors, passed them by and walked away.

Erika was headed for one of the hospital offices. Her brother and his right-hand man were there.

Erika entered without knocking, and Toshikazu awkwardly dropped his gaze.

His cheeks were a little swollen and red, though it was mostly gone at this point. It only made Erika regret not punching him harder. She found herself thinking that she should have gone for the full-frontal, hip-action slap, not just a regular, if vigorous, backhand.

After all, she almost never got the chance to whack this “idiot brother” of hers without resistance.

She should never have let even the tiniest chance of unhindered honesty escape her, if it could lighten the resentment toward him that had been piling up since she was little.

“…Umm, young lady? You wouldn’t happen to be thinking anything dangerous, would you?”

Erika, her darkly unhappy thoughts interrupted, turned a stinging glare on Inagaki.

He winced, eyes wandering under her gaze.

Erika’s father treated her coldly, but she had many sympathizers among their students. She had a bright personality and a coquettish prettiness, and above all, was the only one who could use the secret sword technique Mountain Tsunami. She had mastered it in real combat; she held what was basically an idol position in the Chiba school, and it wasn’t for her bloodline—as she was the daughter of the family head—but instead, for her sword skills and personal charm.

Under her glare, many a student of their dojo would probably have to deal with several uncomfortable feelings.

And besides, Inagaki couldn’t oppose Erika with his level of skill. If he was ever assigned to be her practice partner, she would readily push him around. In addition to her original talent, her skills had skyrocketed in the last half year. It was said the only swordsmen in the Chiba dojo who could rival her anymore were the family head and her two older brothers. For all intents and purposes, she had reached full mastery of her art; and the students whispered openly that the only reason she hadn’t been certified was out of consideration for her older sister, who only had average skill and talent when it came to swords.

“Toshikazu.”

The man reluctantly looked at her. She spoke the word with a masculine brusqueness, which perfectly matched her attitude, not bothering to conceal her irritation.

“The Saegusa’s and Juumonji’s direct descendants just went to visit him.” You know what they’re here for, don’t you? she asked with only her threatening gaze.

Inagaki stiffened further at Erika’s relentless stare, but Toshikazu, as expected, didn’t seem to want to be apologetic with his sister anymore.

“The girl rescued along with Saijou last night was apparently a member of the Saegusa.”

“That’s all?”

“And a warning from our superiors not to probe any further.”

Toshikazu shrugged, lifting his hands toward the ceiling with an exaggerated gesture.

Erika had half expected that answer. She clicked her tongue. “Kasumigaseki is one thing, but isn’t Sakuradamon our turf?”

“Well, we’re assigned to Kasumigaseki.”

“Useless,” muttered Erika bitterly. But she had enough reason left not to vent her frustration any more. “The bugs?”

“All broke when they entered the room. I hadn’t expected the Fairy Princess’s Multiscope to be so efficient.”

Fairy Princess was a derivative of Mayumi’s nickname Elfin Sniper, a pseudonym used mainly by magical athletes in ranged sports. Fairy implied small, which fit Mayumi to a tee, but that meant nobody used it to her face.

“Still useless… What about the one we planted outside the room?”

“That one was disabled by sound-blocking. Juumonji’s barrier magic,” answered Inagaki in a businesslike tone.

Erika couldn’t even muster a useless this time. “Then just a guess. I’m sure you have a guess, right?”

Toshikazu shrugged again under Erika’s glare. “Really just a guess, though. It seems like the Saegusa are hiding victims.”

“…You mean they’re hiding corpses?” His “guess” was shadier than she’d expected, and she couldn’t conceal her surprise.

Concealment of corpses was a method of destroying evidence. Though it meant something different from directly disposing of a corpse you’d killed yourself, it nonetheless couldn’t be called wholly legal. Even though the Ten Master Clans had supralegal rights, they would never get in the police’s way with grave criminal acts of mass murder…

That was when Erika realized the underlying meaning. “Which means this vampire incident is related to magicians, right?”

“Probably. We don’t know whether they’re victims or perpetrators, though.”

“Victims? I can understand dealing with things in secret on their own without relying on the police if the crime was done by magicians, but if magicians are the victims, then why would they need to hide it from the police?”

Toshikazu smirked at his sister’s truculent remark. “And that’s what makes me think this incident isn’t going to blow over so easily.”

After school.

With the usual members in tow, Tatsuya visited Leo in the Nakano police hospital. After asking for his room at the reception desk, they headed for the elevator. But shortly before they arrived there, his name was called out from the side.

“You all came!”

“You’re still here, Erika?”

He knew the basic situation from her text message this morning: Erika’s eldest brother was in charge of the vampire incident, and Leo had been cooperating with him when he’d been embroiled in it. Erika, to make him take responsibility, had taken the day off school and gone to the hospital they’d brought Leo to.

But that message had come before they’d gone to school, and now it was evening and the sun was about to set. The expression still in regard to her presence was more than appropriate.

“It’s not like I was here the whole time. I went back home and got back about an hour ago, since I figured you’d all come,” Erika explained as the group filed into the elevator.

He sensed nothing of a lie in her tone or face.

It was just so natural that it came off as suspicious, and Erika was probably the only one who didn’t notice that.

“Erika, is Leo okay…?” Mizuki whispered as she stood next to Erika in the elevator. She’d see for herself soon enough, but she was still uneasy. Depending on the person, such emotions easily outstripped logic.

“He’s fine, Mizuki. I told you in the text message, remember? His life isn’t in danger.”

The steadfast attitude was something that didn’t suit everyone. As Mizuki breathed a sigh of relief, Erika looked down at her with warm eyes, but if an untidy man had done the same, he doubtless would have been treated coldly.

Mizuki appeared to not be the only one with such concerns, but the rest didn’t say it. With the air around them stiffened quite a bit, Erika knocked on the hospital room door.

“Please come in.” A young woman’s voice came from inside.

“Thanks, Kaya.”

Paying no mind to the obvious confusion on her friends’ faces, Erika opened the door and shuffled them into the room.

The fastest to collect himself in situations like this was, as always, Tatsuya. Before Erika disappeared behind the curtain hung at the entrance, he proceeded into the hospital room. Miyuki followed him not a hair behind, and Honoka, seeing that, trotted to catch up with them; Mizuki and Mikihiko traded glances before stepping inside and closing the door behind them.

Waiting for them in the rather wide—in other words, quite high-grade—private room was Leo, sitting up in bed with boredom plastered on his face, and a young woman with ash-blonde hair sitting on a folding chair spread out next to him.

She was probably four or five years older than them. Her hair, which resembled the Einebrise proprietor’s, gave the same ethnic impression. And her features, if deepened a little and gender-swapped, would be just like Leo’s—it made their blood relation easy to imagine.

“This is Kaya Saijou, Leo’s older sister.”

Before anyone could put the question into words, Erika introduced the woman. Her identity was as Tatsuya and the others had expected.

Kaya rose and bowed politely in their direction. Her bow couldn’t be called elegant or polished, but it was still a clear departure in terms of politeness from students.

“She seems like a nice sister,” Mizuki murmured to herself after Kaya disappeared behind them out the door, watching her go. It was an honest statement.

Tatsuya felt the same, and no objections rose to the others’ faces, either.

Leo, though, winced slightly at this assessment.

“You sure got hit hard.” Tatsuya, noticing this, didn’t delve any further. Leo’s family matters were no business of his to begin with.

“Yeah, this sure doesn’t look good for me,” said Leo with an embarrassed grin. The pained look from before was gone without a trace.

“You don’t appear to be wounded, though.”

“As if they’d get me that easy! It wasn’t like I was helpless.”

“Then where did you get hurt?” Tatsuya asked the natural question of Leo as he grinned fearlessly.

Leo’s smile disappeared in an instant. “Not really sure…”

But that didn’t mean he was down in the dumps. He was tilting his head, his expression not frustrated at his defeat, but truly baffled by it.

“During the brawl, my body suddenly lost its energy. I used the last of what I had to get in one good hit so I could run away, but then I couldn’t stand up anymore, either. While I was lying on the road, Erika’s brother, the police chief, found me.”

“And it wasn’t poison, right?”

“Yeah. They checked everywhere, but there were no cuts or stab wounds, and even a blood test came up clean.”

It was indeed a strange story. As Tatsuya mimicked Leo’s gesture to tilt his head in wonder, Mikihiko got a word in.

“Did you see who they were?”

“Well, I mean, I saw them. Hat pulled low over the eyes, a totally white mask, a long coat with hardened body armor underneath. I couldn’t make out any looks or features. But…”

“But?”

“I can’t shake the feeling it was a woman.”

“…A woman was fighting evenly with you with physical strength?” said Mikihiko, eyes widening.

“It’s not like that’s impossible or anything,” argued Erika. “Give a grade schooler a drug and even she could strangle an adult man to death.”

“You’re right, but…”

“But?”

“It’s possible she was never a normal person to begin with,” muttered Mikihiko in a low voice.

Erika’s eyes went wide. “Huh?! Miki… You can’t possibly believe there’s actually a vampire around, can you?”

“My name is Mikihiko,” he complained sullenly. But nobody could blame her for reacting like that—even among magicians, very few actually believed in the existence of mythical monsters like vampires, even if they did enjoy the gossip.

“Do you have some idea?”

But the response Tatsuya showed didn’t belong to either the majority or that rare group. He didn’t believe in youkai, but he also didn’t reject the idea that their spawning point could be something other than a normal human.

At his attempt to draw Mikihiko out, the latter answered hesitantly, though with a hint of confidence. “I think what Leo encountered was a parasite.”

“A parasite? You don’t mean in the traditional sense, right?” asked Erika, tilting her head, this time asking seriously—and with visible curiosity on her face.

That apparently brought his mood back around, because Mikihiko began with a professorial air, “A paranormal parasite technically, but just a parasite for short. Once the existence and power of magic became clear, international cooperation didn’t only happen over modern magic. Old magic wasn’t allowed to stay sequestered in its shell; internationalization was unavoidable. International conferences held by those speaking about old magic were held several times, mainly in the United Kingdom, and during those, they designed a common and precise terminology and set of ideas.”

“We know that international cooperation served to make old magic flourish. What about it?” Tatsuya interjected, throwing a damper on the geek parade.

Mikihiko cleared his throat and regrouped. “Parasite is one of the terms they defined. People from different countries had different names and connotations for them, like specters, evil spirits, jinn, demons, but parasite is now what they call anything with magical properties that can feed off a human and remake them into something else. Internationalism might have come, but old magic’s focus on secrecy didn’t change, so I’d think it would be only natural for most modern magicians not to know about it.”

“So specters and evil spirits really do exist…” whispered Honoka under her breath.

Tatsuya placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Nobody thought magic existed, either. But now we know it does. Just because we don’t know what something is doesn’t mean we need to be afraid of it.”

Tatsuya hadn’t acted like this spontaneously—he was aware that his presence held major sway with her. So when he saw her body twitch at the sensation of his hand and her blind unease wiped away, he withdrew—even though he had to pretend he didn’t see how reluctant she was for them to part.

“Is that the identity of our vampire?” he asked, turning to Mikihiko. Being scared was a disadvantage, but ignorance was a worse threat.

Without answering his question directly, Mikihiko, seeming to have resolved himself to action, turned back to face Leo. “Leo?”

“Y-yeah?”

Action enough that his glowing enthusiasm overwhelmed his classmate.

“Would you mind it if I took a look at your ethereal body?”

“My ethereal body?”

The term didn’t seem to make sense to Leo, and he parroted the syllables right back. To an extent, nobody could blame him. Spirit form was one thing, but ethereal body wasn’t a term very often used in modern magic.

“Your ethereal body is an information body shaped the same as your physical body, created from spirit matter. It connects your mind and body,” Mikihiko explained simply. “Your ethereal body is a bundle of spirit energy—in other words, life force. It’s thought that monsters that feed on human flesh and blood take in a person’s spirit energy through their blood or flesh to fuel themselves.”

“In other words, vampires drink blood, but what they’re really sucking is the spirit energy they get from it?” asked Erika.

Mikihiko nodded, expression tense. “Vampires suck blood, and man-eaters eat flesh. But since neither of them are physical creatures to begin with, they should only need to absorb spirit energy. If the teachings passed down by us old casters are true.”

“Going by that idea, it wouldn’t be strange for there to be a vampire who only sucks out spirit energy,” said Tatsuya quietly.

Mikihiko nodded again. “If I take a look at Leo’s ethereal form, I think I’ll know for sure… To tell the truth, from the start, I never thought this vampire incident was done by just a strange person, or that they were simple bizarre crimes. Not only because there was no sign of blood being drawn—my intuition as an old caster was telling me so, but I didn’t have any proof until now. It was just my gut talking, so I didn’t tell anyone about parasites. But that means it’s my fault Leo was attacked, and—”

“Don’t worry about it, Mikihiko.”

As Mikihiko started to blame himself, Leo cut him off. It took a moment for the words to sink in. “…Really?”

“Yeah. Actually, I want you to do this. No way to cure me if we don’t know the cause, right?”

Leo’s words held two layers of forgiveness. Mikihiko, meaning to respond to his trust, drew his face back farther, then reached for the bag he’d placed at his feet.

Using an amulet, ink and paper, and other traditional spell tools that even Tatsuya was seeing for the first time, Mikihiko completed his check of Leo’s status. And Mikihiko didn’t bother trying to hide his surprise. The idea probably didn’t even occur to him.

“What to say… I thought Tatsuya was pretty amazing, but Leo, are you really human…?”

“Hey, now. That’s not very nice to say.”

A joke would have been one thing, but Mikihiko’s murmur was serious, and even Leo couldn’t seem to laugh it off. He was clearly offended. But Mikihiko was so surprised he didn’t care—or, rather, he didn’t even notice. “Well, I mean…I can’t believe you’re up. With this much of your spirit energy eaten, a normal caster would have fallen unconscious and stayed that way.”

“Leaving aside what exactly spirit energy is, you can even tell how much he’s missing?” asked Tatsuya, evidently impressed.

Mikihiko nodded, not entirely subdued. “Your ethereal body takes the same shape as your physical body. The container can only be so large, so I can make a rough guess as to how much spirit energy there was to begin with, and how much is gone.”

He narrowed his eyes and gave Leo another suspicious stare. “Right now, Leo has so little spirit energy left that a normal person wouldn’t be able to sit up—in fact, they wouldn’t even be conscious. The fact that he’s sitting up and talking to us means his body has some high stats on it.”

For Mikihiko, those words came casually.

The expression high stats, however, bored a hole in Leo’s heart; he’d inherited genes that had undergone modification to raise his capabilities. “Well, my body’s special order.”

Nevertheless, Leo gave a grin. He knew his classmate didn’t mean anything by it, and anyway, ugly displays of venting went against his code.

“Anyway, the reason my strength drained was because the masked woman ate my spirit energy or whatever, right?” he asked, quashing his mental tumult.

“I think so. But…”

“But?”

“…If she could absorb your spirit energy just by touching you in the middle of a fight, she shouldn’t need to take your blood. I don’t know how she takes people’s blood without leaving a trace, but…why would this parasite be going through the needless trouble of taking it in the first place?”

Tatsuya didn’t possess that answer. The truth was that the blood hadn’t been stolen, it had only been lost, so at the present time, he had no way of arriving at the correct explanation.

Visiting hours ended, and the visiting five—Tatsuya, Miyuki, Mikihiko, Honoka, and Mizuki—left the hospital room behind them.

Erika had said she had something to talk to her brother Toshikazu about, so she had stayed behind. Nobody took those words at face value, but nobody felt like pointing that out, either.

“Oh, right—Mikihiko.”

“Yes?”

His name suddenly called, Mikihiko, who had been chatting with Mizuki, turned to look at Tatsuya dubiously.

Miyuki and Honoka were to either side of Tatsuya.

They didn’t have their arms linked, but they weren’t much farther away than that.

It wasn’t clear whether or not Mikihiko thought, at that moment, that popular guys could all go jump off a cliff.

Whatever he thought, though, Tatsuya probably wouldn’t care, either. “There’s something I forgot to ask before,” said popular young man remarked.

More accurately, he’d purposely not asked it since there could have been listening devices in the room, but it would have been hard for anyone, not just Mikihiko, to glean that dangerous ulterior motive from his tone of voice.

“What is it?”

“All this talk about specters and evil spirits and parasites—do they appear that frequently?”

Though he wasn’t eating or drinking anything, Mikihiko almost choked. Tatsuya’s tone was a casual one, so he’d listened just as casually, but it ended up being an outrageously profound question.

“…Well, it’s not that rare for them to show up. Old stories always write about them hiding somewhere and doing bad things, but most of them are the work of human mages pretending to be devils. We have an accepted opinion that the famous Shuten-douji from Mount Ooe, for example, was actually a shaman who drifted in from the western regions.”

It might not have been a conscious act, but Mikihiko put a hand to his chin, striking up an obvious “thinking” pose.

“As for the odds that a mage would meet a real demon… In a single school, we’re talking about one person every ten generations. And even then, in most cases, they only find one that wandered into this world by coincidence. A real demon causing harm to people and needing a mage to exterminate it is an emergency that only happens maybe once in a hundred years, through the entire world. The last recorded extermination of a real demon in Japan was nine hundred years ago when Abe-no-Yasunari exterminated a fox spirit.”

“But this vampire incident is the work of a real demon?”

“That’s what I think.”

“Do you think it’s a coincidence?”

“I can’t say the chances of it being a coincidence are zero, but…” Mikihiko’s answer was extremely careful. “There is no doubt that recorded observations of demons decrease the closer you get to modern times. I don’t think this incident happened without any cause.”

Tatsuya’s reply was a simply murmured “I see.”

After Tatsuya and the others went home and he saw Kaya return in their place, Leo collapsed onto the bed as though his strength had run out. Erika was still in the room, but he couldn’t be stubborn about it anymore.

“…Well, I know the truth,” said Erika. “Why try to act tough? You did really well.”

“…I’ll take…that…as a compliment?”

“That’s what it was.” Erika gave a gentle smile as Leo closed his eyes painfully.

“Umm, Erika… Will my brother really be all right?”

But Kaya, who was watching their exchange, certainly didn’t seem in the mood for smiling. It was natural, since she was a family member.

Erika, though, replied in a truly curt voice. “He’ll be fine. We have the finest doctor the Chiba family knows treating him. This may be rather difficult to understand for someone who isn’t a magician, but when your energy dries up, it takes more time to recover that than your physical strength. All the treatment he needed is done with. He’ll get better given time and a specific medicine.”

Erika noticed Kaya shiver a little when she said “someone who isn’t a magician,” but no comforting words came from her mouth.

“I have to be getting back to my brother. If you need more for something, please don’t hesitate to ask anyone—a nurse, my brother’s subordinate, or me.”

With an insincere bow, Erika left the hospital room.

Leo didn’t bother trying to complain about her attitude.

“Maybe you should let up a little, young lady,” said Inagaki to Erika as soon as she entered the room they were using to listen in on Leo’s. He left out the part about what she was supposed to be letting up, but Erika knew what he meant.

And, knowing what he meant, she snorted, brushing off his sentiments. “I’m not about to tell anyone to start liking magicians. Parent or brother, whatever—what’s scary is scary. Which means I’ll just keep that in mind when talking to her. Anyway… You’ve heard this all before, right?”

The last sentence was directed at Toshikazu. Her eldest brother, leaning back heavily on a chair, arms folded behind his neck to hold his head up, tore the headphones from his ears in one rough movement and sat up.

“That was a pretty interesting talk,” he said. “If the Yoshida’s second son’s reasoning is correct, what will you do, Erika?”

“In this case, it doesn’t matter if he’s right or not,” she replied, her eyes scornful, as though he’d asked something stupid. She looked down at her brother, still sitting in the chair. “Even if it was only temporary, he passed through our gates as a Chiba student. I was even the one personally initiating him, so you could call him my first pupil. How could I sit back and watch after something like this happened to my pupil?”

“Such a cold reason.”

“It doesn’t need to be anything else. That’s more than enough for me to grind whoever did this to dust. I don’t care if this vampire is a man or a woman—they’re the one who came looking for a fight. All I need to do is accept it.”

Even Toshikazu, her older brother, couldn’t tell whether that was her real reason or if she was hiding embarrassment.

But he did know one thing for sure: She was entirely serious about this.

While Tatsuya and the others were visiting Leo, Lina was visiting Maximillian Devices’ Tokyo branch offices. This was where her neighbor Mikaela Hongou, aka Mia Hongou, was working, and one of the secret bases for their fugitive pursuit team.

A magic high school student coming to tour a CAD manufacturer wasn’t an unusual thing, though not as common as a university-level student. Passing through reception with a letter of introduction prepared by the embassy and on the strength of her First High uniform, Lina came face-to-face in one of their conference rooms with the Stardust member she’d barely saved last night, as well as a woman in a tight skirt suit.

“Major, thank you for your timely assistance last night.”

“Please, be at ease.”

Gesturing for the two women who met her with a salute to take a seat, Lina sat down on the sofa herself. When she closed her eyes and let out a big breath, the now redheaded girl opened her golden eyes.

Different colors, a different face from Angelina Kudou Shields.

But there was no look of surprise on the two Stardust faces. This girl, with the golden eyes and cold features, was Major Sirius to them.

“What did the damage look like from last night?”

“We underwent maintenance, ma’am. It won’t affect the mission.”

Lina—no, Angie Sirius—frowned at how the hunter spoke of herself like a tool, but doing that in this form only served to increase her cold impression; it didn’t look like she was displeased.

“I see. I’ll hear your report, then.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Lina felt that her order lacked enough words to mean anything, but the hunter seemed to understand it. “After finding Deimos Second, we used a Cast Jammer in accordance with the data we were given beforehand,” the hunter said. “However, the Cast Jammer was ineffectual against him.”

“Did he interfere with the Cast Jammer’s operation?”

“No, ma’am. The Cast Jammer was functioning properly. According to what Deimos Second said personally, he no longer needs a CAD to cast.”

“No need for a CAD… Are you saying Sergeant Sullivan became psychic?”

“Affirmative, ma’am.”

Lina’s dubious question met with a clear yes.

“Deimos Second did not, in fact, use a CAD, and only used vector reflection magic.”

“You mean he didn’t use any other spells?”

“Affirmative, ma’am.”

“In addition, Deimos Second’s physical abilities outstripped our enhanced ones.”

The increase in the fugitive’s physical abilities was new information. After thinking for a moment, Lina asked the two hunters again, just to make sure.

“Sergeant Sullivan’s psionic wave properties hadn’t changed, correct?”

“At the very least, we were able to identify it as his, yes, ma’am.”

“While pursuing Sergeant Sullivan, I made contact with someone who appeared to be his comrade. Were you able to observe their psi-wave properties?”

“…I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. Apart from the major’s and Deimos’s psi-waves, we couldn’t perceive anything.”

“I see…” Lina closed her eyes again and stayed silent for a short time. “…It looks like we can’t rely on past data. The next time you find the deserter, hold off on your pursuit and don’t engage him directly. I’ll deal with him personally.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As the two Stardust members stood and saluted, Lina returned it, then left the conference room behind her.

Silvia was waiting for Lina in a hallway in the Maximillian Devices Tokyo branch office.

“This way, Commander.”

Lina, with her red hair and golden eyes, nodded and followed after Silvia. She was brought to a women’s changing room for employees.

“Please enter, Major. I’ve confirmed that nobody else is inside.”

As Silvia unlocked the door and entered, Lina followed, giving a quick glance around before slipping into the changing room. At the sound of the lock from inside, Lina breathed a sigh of relief.

Her hair and eye color had changed.

Her red hair became golden, and her golden eyes turned a clear sky blue.

“This form is so much easier. It’s tough to hide the fact that I’m using magic to change my appearance.”

“Major, we don’t have much time. Please change clothes before any employees come.”

Lina seemed to be too relaxed, so her subordinate immediately scolded her.

Lina winced. As she removed her garments, she said, “It looks like the chasers couldn’t identify White Mask’s psi-waves, either.”

“I see… It looks like the abilities the fugitives gained vary pretty widely.”

As though she had been expecting Lina to say something, there was no surprise in Silvia’s voice. Only a disappointed air drifted from her shoulders.

“I wonder why they were attacking Japanese people,” said Lina, now in her underwear, reaching for her First High uniform.

“Why, ma’am?” repeated Silvia dubiously, not understanding the point of her remark.

“They’re on the run. Shouldn’t they want to hide what they are from us?”

“Ah, I see.”

With that, Silvia figured out what Lina found strange. She was asking why the deserter would brave the risk of being caught in order to attack Japanese people.

“I don’t know that, but…”

“But what?” prompted Lina, changing her stockings for leggings and buttoning up the front of her one-piece.

“But I get the feeling the strange ability he gained has something to do with it.”

“The strange ability… You mean the vampire one, taking blood without leaving a wound?” Lina asked, putting on her blazer and inner gown and tying her hair back.

“Well, I don’t know if we should be calling him a vampire, but… Lina, what are you doing?”

Silvia, who had been looking elsewhere to get her thoughts in order, returned her gaze to her commander and saw the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty holding the hem of her fluttering school gown up in front of a full-length mirror, twisting and turning.

“I, uh, this is…”

As her commander shot up straight and looked down red faced, Silvia heaved a deep sigh.