The Towering Foe

The Towering Foe

chapter 6

I

Lilia holed up with the doctor and the boy in an empty room on that same floor. Once the iron door was shut, there was no need to fear discovery.

“We’ll wait here for D,” the Huntress told them. “No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep a grip on yourself. You can’t start screaming.”

Though the two nodded, Vera was utterly terrified, while Lourié’s eyes had a definite gleam of resistance to authority. The boy couldn’t allow himself to just be swept along by fate. However, he said nothing, merely lying down at one end of the room. He was well aware that selfish actions on his part could expose his compatriots to danger.

An hour passed, and then that stretched into two. A number of times the footfalls of what were apparently guards or signs of some unknown life forms could be heard passing beyond the door, but they seemed to take no notice of the room’s inhabitants.

“Oh, now here’s something,” Lilia remarked with interest. “It sounds like some guards and monsters just ran into each other. They were wiped out in nothing flat. The guards, that is. The castle’s really out of control, eh? The way things are going, I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to stay here. Ordinarily, the guards wouldn’t leave a stone unturned looking for us, so the freaking monsters are buying us some time, I suppose.”

“But what’ll we do, supposing Mr. D doesn’t come back?” Lourié asked.

“We’ll have no choice but to do something on our own,” she replied handily, giving him a smile.

Lourié made a face that said he didn’t trust her in the least, pressing the matter as he said, “You said we, but you ran off on your own before, didn’t you?”

“I know, I know,” Lilia replied, and all she could do was grin wryly. “But you needn’t worry. As you can see, I’m smitten with the man in black.”

“What?”

As the boy’s mouth dropped open, she gave him a real smile, adding, “At any rate, let’s just wait.”

“How long are we going to stay here?” asked a completely unexpected voice that rose from a corner of the room.

Lilia made a face that seemed to say, Here we go again, as she replied, “As I was just saying, for the time being we wait until D gets back.”

“And if he doesn’t come back?”

“Don’t ask me the same thing the kid just did. We’ll have no choice but to do something on our own, right?”

“Before, you went off by your—”

“Oh, I’ve had it with you two!” Lilia exclaimed, throwing up her hands and making a pushing gesture with them. “How long are you going to hold that against me? Look at this!” she said, suddenly grabbing hold of her white scarf and tugging it down.

Unmistakable teeth marks remained over her carotid artery.

“Four . . .” Lourié murmured like a groan. Fear blanched the brave boy’s expression.

A finger adorned with red nail polish pointed to her pale throat. “The top two were Gilzen.” The finger dropped. “This right here is a hickey from the guy you have total and complete faith in. Ordinarily, I’d be a victim under the thrall of two Nobles.”

Lilia’s lips twisted. She’d smiled. Her teeth came into view.

“Noooo,” Vera cried, plastering herself back against the wall. Lourié diverted his gaze.

“They’re just like a Noble’s fangs. But don’t worry. I’m a special kind of victim, and I didn’t end up under their control. If I weren’t, I’d have long since fought D, or else attacked the two of you.”

Neither of them said a word.

“Though, come to think of it, I am a little thirsty.” Seeing how the two of them turned to ice, the Huntress grinned again, saying, “I’m joking! But if you don’t do as I say—”

Suddenly, Vera stood up. Partly it was because the doctor was so frightened she couldn’t stand it any longer, but Lilia had also let her guard down. Slipping past the hand that reached out for her, Vera dashed over to the iron door.

“Stupid doctor!” Lilia snarled, grabbing her by the shoulder and yanking her back. She delivered a slap to the woman that knocked her against the floor.

The Huntress turned toward the door. It was open about two inches. Lilia couldn’t move her limbs.

Have to shut it. Got to move forward. Straight ahead.

Ah, her hand moved. Her feet stepped forward, too. Her fingertips brushed the door.

The door began to move. Swinging inward. Beyond the gradually widening gap a green figure came into view. Lilia knew there was no use shutting it now.

“Back up—to the far end of the room,” she said to the two behind her, backing away a good distance herself as she drew her longsword.

In the meantime, the intruder entered the room. It was a man, and his hair, his cape, his clothes—hell, even his hands and face—were green. Just to keep everything nice and tidy, his eyeballs were the same hue.

“You’re not a guard, I take it?” Lilia said, and as she glared at the man she double-checked her grip on her longsword. “What’s your name? I’m Lilia. I’m a Huntress.”

“I’m Zoltan. I work as a duelist.”

“Well—I’m surprised to find you so far from the city, then.”

What Lilia meant was that it wasn’t the sort of job you could make enough to live on out in the boondocks. He wasn’t a warrior. In a manner of speaking, duelists were stand-ins. Their job was to fight in place of an employer when that person was forced to take part in a duel. Since they made no distinction in the age or sex of their employers, they might have to take part in a duel between students, and the results of said encounters often led to their being called murderers, though they could be charged with no crime. However, since the types of weapons were chosen by their employer, it might be knives, swords, firearms—or in an extreme example, they might even have to substitute in a battle between two monsters. A duelist couldn’t afford to have definite strengths and weaknesses. Since the demand for duelists was in proportion to the population, the overwhelming majority of them could be found in the Capital or in cities in the various districts. You’d never expect to find one out on the Frontier, in a Noble’s castle.

“Are you a servant of Gilzen?”

“Who’s that?” he asked, his green eyes hazily reflecting Lilia. “Two days ago, I was in a bar in the Capital. I don’t recall ordering a particularly strong drink, yet all of a sudden I got drowsy, and the next thing I knew I was sleeping in a bed here. What is this place? Do you know the way out? No, never mind. For some reason, ever since I woke up I’ve been wanting to cut into someone so bad I can hardly stand it. Throw down with me.”

For this man, it’d seemed like two days—but had he in fact been abducted and kept asleep by the aliens’ powers for ten thousand years?

“Sure thing!”

Lilia’s limbs flew into action. Her opponent hadn’t drawn the sword from his hip, but anyone who would’ve considered what she did unsportsmanlike didn’t know Hunters. Duelists had rules, but the same couldn’t be said of Hunters who were merely in it for the money. It wasn’t people fighting for honor they faced, but bloodthirsty Nobles or monsters.

Her blade made a diagonal slash right for the base of Zoltan’s neck, but it was stopped without a sound. Zoltan gripped it in his left fist. The Huntress tried to pull it back, but it wouldn’t budge.

What the hell? she thought. Leaping back some ten feet, she believed she’d narrowly avoided the slashing blade that would’ve scythed through her torso, but the solar plexus region of her armor was rent and fresh blood seeped from her.

“You’re not bad,” Lilia said with a daring grin, her hands no longer holding a sword.

“Die!” Zoltan cried, making a crude thrust.

With a low groan of pain, Lilia slumped forward. The blade of the sword pierced the right side of her chest, with its tip protruding from her back. Lilia’s body pushed forward. Practically pulling herself along the sword, she got right up in front of Zoltan before her right hand slashed through his neck. The twelve-inch blade in the palm of her hand had obviously been secreted in the upper-arm piece of her armor.

The duelist’s head flopped backward.

“Miss . . . Lilia . . .”

Turning her face ever so slightly to the absent-mindedly murmuring Lourié, the Huntress gave him a wink. Having received the kiss of the Nobility, the woman had inherited the indestructible nature of a Noble.

When Lilia tried to extract the blade that was stuck through her, Zoltan moved. His right hand thrust the longsword back and forth as if to carve a hole in her, and Lilia convulsed. From behind the decapitated Zoltan the duelist’s head was slowly lifted. The duelist, too, had been a test subject for Gilzen’s exploration of the possibilities posed by aliens and Nobles. What seemed to be hundreds of green tendon-like organs were reconnecting the head to the torso.

“I’m not bleeding a hell of a lot, and what does come out is green,” Zoltan said, touching his fingers to the wound and staring down at his fingertips. “Seems that while I was asleep, I was transformed into some sort of plant. What the hell is going on?”

“Maybe they meant to say, ‘Be a pickle for me’?” Lilia said, her right arm coming down. The blade that pierced her was shattered, and she dropped to her knees on the spot. A bloodstained sword bit into her shoulder. Lilia’s scream of pain was enough to drown out Vera’s cries.

Changing his stance, Zoltan raised his longsword for another blow. From the angle of the blade and the way he stood, he’d be aiming for her neck. But at that instant his grinning green eyes caught a figure colliding with his right flank. The dull impact didn’t cause the duelist much pain, and it would be safe to say that may have saved Lourié’s life. Shifting his sword to his left hand, Zoltan used his right to knock the boy away. Returning the weapon to his right hand, he swung it down—but his abdomen split horizontally.

The Huntress got up in front of the reeling Zoltan. When Lourié was sent flying ten feet, the battle had become a defensive action. However, instead of launching a second attack, Lilia brought her right wrist up to her mouth.

Zoltan needed only a few seconds to recover, and when he raised his sword high, burning with renewed malice, his face became stained with red.

“My blood,” Lilia whispered, lowering the wrist she’d just bitten open. Her lips glistened with her own blood, which she’d just sprayed at Zoltan, and stark fangs peeked alluringly from between them.

The situation had worked an impossible change on the duelist. The murderous intent had vanished from his eyes, and he’d begun licking at the blood that dripped down his face.

“After sleeping for two days—or ten thousand years—you must be really thirsty, eh, veggie swordsman?” Lilia sneered, her breathing still ragged. “As soon as you saw my blood, the look in your eyes changed. Drink it slowly. Until it returns you to normal.”

It was Lilia’s blade that was swung home. It split the green duelist in two from head to crotch. His body thudded to the floor, but soon the thread-like vegetable fibers that’d begun to grow from either side of the slice were connecting to each other.

“His heart should’ve been cut in half, too! There’s nothing I can do,” Lilia told the boy and Vera. “We’ll run for it! Hurry up and get on your feet.”

“Where do you plan on going?” Vera asked, her voice rising nearly to a scream.

“I don’t know. But we can’t stay here any longer. You want me to keep fighting that goon forever?”

“Get him outside, then. I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

The doctor’s attitude had done a complete about-face, and Lilia gazed at her with extreme sternness before suddenly stepping forward.

“Stop it. You can’t kill her!” Lourié cried, trying to shield the doctor.

Pushing past the boy, the Huntress said, “Don’t worry.”

Suddenly she delivered a sharp kick to the doctor’s jaw that knocked her out, then threw the woman over her shoulder before standing up straight again. Without warning, the Huntress groaned and staggered. Even though she’d gained the regenerative powers of a Noble, the pain of the wounds she’d just received was still fresh.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll manage. Just hurts a little, that’s all.”

“I’ll help carry her, too.”

That offer caused Lilia to roar with laughter. “Funny, you didn’t look like a comedian to me. By the way, the punch you got in on that guy’s flank—that really did the trick. You self-taught?”

Though he flushed, Lourié nodded. “I got teased a lot, so a warrior who came to our house once showed me how to fight.”

“That was a pretty good punch.”

Lourié didn’t know what to say. Lilia had done something he couldn’t believe: she’d rubbed the top of the boy’s head.

Just as her hand was about to touch him, Lourié had backed away reflexively, but he immediately got an apologetic look on his face.

“Sorry.”

Lilia made a fist and pantomimed belting him. “You’re an open book, aren’t you. We’re even now.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Okay, let’s get going. Freak!” the Huntress exclaimed, kicking the right half of the duelist’s body into the corner of the room while it still attempted to reattach itself to its mate. She then headed for the door. Checking that there was no one in the corridor, she stepped outside. They had no destination. They were completely aimless.

Lilia brought up the rear, and when they’d gone about twenty yards, Lourié felt an incredible force tighten around his torso. Above me? he thought, and at that very instant he was pulled up with terrific speed, disappearing into the depths of the ceiling.

II

Lourié had been caught by a creature’s tentacle. It lurked in a dance hall some five floors above the one Lourié was on, sending hundreds of its tentacles creeping throughout the castle in search of prey. It was one of the creatures that’d escaped from containment. Most of its tentacles had been discovered by the guards and lopped off, rendering them useless, but those that remained were busy snatching up castle guards and other monsters and delivering them to its writhing body a mile and a quarter away. The tentacle covered that distance in five seconds. The speed was so great Lourié blacked out, and the next thing he knew, he could make out something down below—a squirming ocher mass fifteen to twenty feet beneath him that covered half the floor of the dance hall with its body and tentacles. Its body split open in the shape of a cross, exposing a crimson maw. He was being dragged toward it!

The boy heard the flapping of wings overhead. Two brick-colored winged creatures nose-dived right past Lourié. Just before they pulled up, they released a yellowish fluid on the monster on the floor. Judging from the scent that assailed his nose, it must’ve been urine.

The cruciform mouth swallowed it. The titanic beast twisted its body. Its tentacles flailed in unison, looking like the approach of great, crushing waves. Those waves were then disrupted, lashing madly, twisting together to form bizarre patterns. One tentacle landed a blind strike on one of the flying creatures. It vanished into the beast’s trembling maw.

Lourié suddenly felt himself being released. The problem was, he was falling headfirst. He landed on something soft. A scream filled his mouth. He was on top of the monster. All around him was a wall of squirming tentacles. There was no gap in it.

At that very moment, the wall rose en masse in one direction. The flying creature had returned. It released its deadly urine.

The boy spotted a gap in the tentacles he thought he could manage to slip through. The flying creature dove straight for him. Beneath it, white smoke rose. If it sprayed him, he’d melt right down to his bones.

Lourié ran. Beneath his feet, the beast felt like a wineskin full of liquid. He jumped. Tentacles brushed his face and hands. A chill a thousand times worse than he’d get from seeing a snake shot through his body. His feet froze.

“No!” he shouted, running. In shouting, he seemed to forget the chill.

He was through! Beyond the wriggling mire he could make out the floor of the hall and a small door. That’s where he’d go. His way out.

Hope bubbled up within him. Lourié started to run. Pounding across the hard floor, he had to reach that door.

Will I make it? Lourié thought.

wThe Nobleman bugged his eyes. A gravity field powerful enough to crush D down to atoms had suddenly disappeared. Leaning out from the observation tower, Gilzen stared down at D, who was also looking up at him.

“My, that barrier was made with the aliens’ knowledge. I’m surprised you could—”

“Old. That stuff is old hat,” D’s left hand jeered from the vicinity of the Hunter’s hip, having just come away from the barrier. “That thing was using ten-thousand-year-old technology, but we’ve had all that time to evolve. Ol’ Gilzen might be a stupider foe than we thought!”

D quickly bent down and grabbed a spear that lay by his feet. The corpses of soldiers littered the floor.

“Can you catch this, Gilzen?”

The Hunter didn’t plant his feet or even twist at the waist, he merely stood straight and hurled the weapon with the motion of his right arm alone.

Easily catching it one handed, Gilzen let out a gasp of astonishment. The palm of the hand that’d caught the spear was covered with blood. His skin had split open.

“You’ve improved since our first encounter,” Gilzen commented with delight. “So, shall we face off after our discussion? Don’t be surprised. That is what I agreed to!”

“That was more of your babbling,” D said softly. “Should I come up after you, or will you come down here?”

“Don’t be so hasty. First, have a look at this.”

Gilzen reached his left hand into the tower and grabbed something. That something turned out to be the boy Lourié, trussed up with a slender rope.

“Captured already?” the hoarse voice said with disgust.

“I caught him just a short while ago in a dance hall not currently in use in the castle. He’s possessed of remarkably good fortune, having fled from the thousand-armed one when it tried to eat him. D, would you now see him forfeit that life here?”

“I told you before. He’s nothing to me.”

“Cease your cold-blooded posturing. Your blood may be cold, but it’s not frozen solid. As evidence of that—look!”

Gilzen took the scepter in his right hand and touched it to the boy’s right shoulder. Though it only appeared to press against Lourié lightly, his arm burst right out of the socket. Letting out a scream that didn’t even seem human, the boy fainted.

“What are you doing?” the hoarse voice cried out. “Stop it. Stop it right now. You call yourself a Noble, you bastard?”

Gilzen responded with mocking laughter. It was the sort of bold laugh where it seemed you’d be able to see right down his throat, and it still echoed while he unveiled his next hellish tableau. Raising his scepter, Gilzen smashed the boy’s limbs, ripped them off, and then for the coup de grâce, made a vertical swipe that cut him in two before the Nobleman threw him to the ground. Each terrifying act had wrung a scream from the half-dead Lourié, and the instant he was dashed against the stone floor he let out a single low moan and moved no more.

“What’s wrong, D? Don’t tell me you’ve fallen into despair. There’s still something I would have you do, in order to accomplish the desires of the great Gilzen. Come. I’ll be waiting farther in.”

The duke’s golden cape whipped in the wind as he vanished, and then D walked forward. He didn’t even glance at the brutalized corpse. But as they passed by it, the hoarse voice said, “Oh, what’s this?” as if its eyes had gone wide. It’d noticed that the dismembered body and all that blood weren’t real.

“Dear me, that was so realistic it had me fooled. For an organic automaton, it was really well done. Yessiree.”

“You just don’t know when to give up.”

With that one remark, D squeezed his hand into a fist. A small scream rang out.

III

The golden cape fluttered at the far end of the pathway.

“So, you’ve come, D? You’re probably rather intent on slaying me, but you should wait here a moment. Once you’ve seen what the Sacred Ancestor saw, then you can decide what to do.”

A ghastly aura already churned from every inch of D, but now he let the power drain from him.

The two of them walked side by side. Advancing about fifty yards down a gentle incline, they came to a point where an enormous iron door blocked their progress. Fresh soldiers were lined up in front of it.

“That’s the same number of soldiers, armed with the same weapons as when you fought them. Watch and see how I fight.” Gilzen bared his teeth. “Even the Nobility, so proud of their ageless and undying nature, are destroyed when they’re run through the heart. That’s no different for the Sacred Ancestor or any other Noble—or for you.”

Nothing from the Hunter.

“However, I wouldn’t call that true immortality. That was the first thing I set out to correct. You’ll want to watch this.”

Still walking forward, Gilzen nodded.

There was the sound of iron bowstrings slicing the air in unison, the noise becoming ten arrows centered on Gilzen’s throat and heart.

His neck torn halfway through by the force and weight of the arrows, the Nobleman turned to D and bared his fangs. Using both hands to grab the arrows stuck in his throat and chest, Gilzen pulled them all out at once.

“So, true immortality has been accomplished. What’s next?”

His smile deepened. It was directed at the bowmen. His subordinates were still frozen in the pose of firing their bows as his gigantic form leapt into their midst. The duke’s scepter flashed out, and his cape danced on the air like the wings of a mystic bird. In five seconds flat the ten bowmen lay on the ground. Not one of them still had a head.

“Did he really need to kill ’em?” the hoarse voice sighed with grief.

Perhaps those words reached the duke’s ears.

“Whether it was on my orders or not, I can’t allow anyone who attempts to take my life to go unpunished,” Gilzen said, his reply tinged with laughter.

D said nothing. There were still more soldiers.

“What are you doing? Slay me. I believe I made it clear to you earlier that if you don’t, naught but death awaits you!”

The faces of the soldiers took on a hue of death. They failed to move not due to any wish to disobey Gilzen’s commands, but because of the air of malice that gushed from his massive form.

“Oh, you lousy weaklings!” Gilzen shouted, charging forward. A flashing swipe of his scepter felled several decapitated riflemen.

Finally returning to their senses, the soldiers readied swords and firearms and launched a counterattack. Gilzen’s body was pierced in countless spots by crimson beams and silvery sword blades. His heart was run through with a long spear, while the soldiers’ other spears nearly took his head off.

The conflict was finished in less than a minute. Although the soldiers were battling for their very lives, it was unclear if the same could be said of Gilzen. Glaring at the soldiers swiftly decomposing and turning to dust, their lord was stuck full of arrows and spears, and his clothing and armor still smoked and burned from a shower of laser blasts. All the fingers of his left hand save the thumb had been taken off, and an iron arrow was still embedded deep in his right eye.

“This is just like—the Standing Death of Benkei,” the hoarse voice murmured.

However, this Benkei was obviously still breathing. The slices around his neck were now just thin red lines. The places that’d been charred by lasers were swelling—and one could hear the hard rattle of arrows and spears falling against the floor as the Nobleman’s flesh pushed them back out. His hand reached for the arrow in his right eye and extracted it. The bloody cavern of a socket he’d been left with was now occupied by a perfectly formed eyeball. It reflected the young man in black.

“How about that, D? Do you think you can best me?” And then the duke grinned.

There wasn’t a single mark anywhere on his body. He was a demon of a man, surpassing even D in his indestructibility.

“You may attack me now if you like, but first I’d like you to see something else. The fruits of my labors, so to speak. Fortunately, they make their home near the reactor.”

Gilzen went over to the iron door and gave it a push. It opened slowly but without any resistance, and then the Nobleman went inside. D followed after him.

The air was hot.

“Well, reactor or not, this is beyond the norm. Don’t tell me it’s overloading or—no, hold on.”

In response to the dubious tones of the hoarse voice, Gilzen replied, “You’ll see soon enough. Never mind that, be careful.”

The interior was shrouded in darkness. It seemed an unimaginably careless state for the most important area of the castle. D had already noticed the air of malice that filled the darkness.

There were a dozen of them—one of which charged them from the right. It was a swordsman clad in rags discernible even in the gloom, but what was the cause of his killing lust?

“Gilzen!” the foe bellowed as he made a slash.

Easily avoiding it, the lord of the castle pointed to D, saying, “This is my most esteemed colleague.”

His foe glared at D. Cloudy and bloodshot, his eyes had a look of madness. His hair and beard were chaotically overgrown, and on that filth-encrusted face the lips alone were beautifully red.

“You’re his damned colleague?”

D didn’t reply to that voice, which seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth. The fangs that peeked from between his foe’s lips were proof that this was a Noble. Not that the young man was the kind of person to spare someone who bared their teeth at him just because they were human.

His foe kicked off the ground, and the instant he passed the Hunter, the attacker’s body split in two. Blood and entrails splashed across the stone floor, while D’s blade reversed course and aimed for the Noble’s heart.

“Wait!” a voice called to the Hunter from the depths of the darkness. What halted D’s sword was the ring of seriousness that voice carried.

The source of the voice was one of the enraged—and D could make out a figure who was, not surprisingly, covered in rags from head to toe. Another piece of cloth covered his head, leaving his eyes alone exposed.

“It wasn’t you we were after. It was that man, Gilzen. Though we were at fault for attacking, please don’t deal him the final blow.”

“Is that the voice of Bengus, captain of the guard? I’m surprised you’re still alive,” Gilzen laughed. It was an outright sneer.

“Gillespie, Hakolo, and Baichung are all here as well. My lord, all the victims of your cruel amusements have survived all this time on hatred and resentment alone,” said a vengeful voice that seemed to burn with shadowy fires.

“That is good to hear. It is the special privilege of the Nobility to enjoy life eternal! I take it you are comfortable in the bodies I gave you?”

The air shook. The anger, grief, and hatred of those who’d been cast away in the darkness flowed like waves through the pitch blackness.

“Sheesh, I don’t even—”

It was unclear what D made of the words his left hand let slip out.

The figures who lurked in the darkness had all once been known as Nobles, as was plain by their features and the clothes they wore. Ageless and undying—a cruel fate for those who’d been altered like this. Not one of them was entirely intact. One had viscous, waxy fluid dripping from their skin, while another had arms and legs covered with scales like a reptile. There was one who, lacking a lower half, scrambled closer on claws that scratched against the stone floor. Whistling past D was a whip—no, it was a long, long tongue belonging to a woman. Was that chattering down by his feet the sound of gnashing teeth? The source of the sound was a second mouth snaking back to a man lying down a good thirty feet away.

“So good of you to come . . . And good of you to bring him,” said an old man’s voice. “I was . . . Duke Gilzen’s steward. I served him to the very last drop of blood in my veins . . . and this was my reward. After we were sealed away in this hole, we waited. Oh, how we awaited your visit, my lord . . . Now, if you would be so good as to let us evince our hatred.”

And how did Gilzen react to that appeal of bloody malice that seemed wrung from their very entrails? He laughed. There in the blackness, he reared back and bellowed with laughter.

“You worthless fools can’t comprehend the meaning of greatness. Your bodies were sacrificed toward the shining future of the Nobility. What’s more, as compensation for the forms you’ve taken, I believe you also received powers no ordinary Noble would possess. You hate me? Hatred? Give thanks! Thank me!”

The hoarse voice groaned with surprise.

A terrible killing lust had changed the composition of the air. A killing lust? No, it was an air of anger. The feelings of those who’d lived for hate and hate alone at being told not to be spiteful but rather to be thankful put a bitter grin on Gilzen’s lips.

“Filthy ingrates. It would seem you’re hell bent on turning your fangs against me. I shall grant your wish. Let our gorgeous guest see your powers in all their glory. D, you’re not to interfere in this.”

“No, you must not!” the steward cried out. “This is the opportunity for us to demonstrate our hatred. Any interference is unnecessary.”

D only said one thing: “You can’t win.”

“We know that,” the steward replied. His tone was cheerful. “All of us have known that from the start. Though we may not be able to so much as scratch him, we can raise our hands against Duke Gilzen—that in itself is enough to put a smile on our faces as we mount the road to our destruction. Our hatred might not be served, but allow us this.”

“Understood.”

“You have my thanks. And we are ready, my lord!”

“Oh, come then. You fools. Curse the fate you yourselves have chosen.”

D watched the entire scene that played out a second later. How a mouth full of fangs biting at Gilzen’s throat was effortlessly ripped apart. How the woman’s tongue that wrapped around Gilzen’s neck was torn out at the base. How the steward sailed at the Nobleman, only to have his heart pierced by a single thrust of the duke’s scepter. The steward had said they might not be able to so much as scratch him. That was the truth. One after another the remaining compatriots were slain, and before they had time to even scratch the duke, the dwellers in darkness had been exterminated.

Thumping his chest, Gilzen laughed.

“Did you see that, D? I don’t mean how they died, but their powers. Those were given to them by the alien technology. Do you understand, D? That’s precisely the kind of potential I was aiming for in the Nobility. Do you not think it far more realistic than the Sacred Ancestor seeking the same by mixing our blood with that of the lowly humans?”

“You should’ve tried asking them.”

“Ask them? What are you saying? I make declarations! I tell them to take pride in their fates. That their bodies have been given over to the future of the Nobility.”

“Are you satisfied now?”

D’s words cut Gilzen’s monologue short. Looking at the Hunter’s face with surprise, he said, “So that’s it? You really are that sort of man, aren’t you? One look at the Sacred Ancestor would tell me that. I have but one remaining desire. D, I want your blood.”

Gilzen extended one hand. It was trembling.

“I rank myself as a perfect being. However, to be honest, I find it difficult to entirely discount the other possibility. Or the dream the Sacred Ancestor had. If the two different paths of evolution were combined, a new line might be born. In the same way, if our two potentials were mixed, it might lead to a third—to new possibilities. Toward that end, I need your blood.”

“Is that why you returned?” D asked coolly. “I’ll grant your desire. But you’ll have to draw my blood with your own hand.”

From the Hunter’s back there was the sound of steel being unsheathed.

As if in response to his opponent’s murderous intent, Gilzen braced his scepter for action.

“I’ve injected myself with alien blood,” Gilzen said, striking his chest with his free hand. “You’ve been given the blood of a human. Which of these potentials best suits the universe? D, let us decide the matter once and for all! And with the blood that drains from your body, I shall search out new possibilities.”

Gilzen’s declaration reverberated, crushing down on the darkness.