Smilre, Smilre (2)
Royal Cemetery.
In the resting place of the silent, countless screams were being born.
Lights came on one by one in the houses, but no one dared step outside.
"Charge! Charge!"
Jenia kept urging them forward.
'It's not far.'
An intense wave pulsed, making every hair on the Silverborn stand on end and tugging at instinct.
"Argh! You bastards!"
Each time Pauer swept the mega-gun around, the smoke coalesced and there was the wet, ripping sound of flesh.
"Die, humans!"
Even the lowest of the purebloods—the Vesica—were on a completely different level of power from the half-breeds.
"Power pack!"
When the drug began to wear off, Katein mixed a fresh dose on the spot and injected it into the hunters' necks.
Their heads spun, and after a moment the world felt slower.
"Move!"
With their pain halved, the hunters fitted with metal arms swung their weapons and forced a path.
After a bloody fight they reached the tombs of the greats and found the sentries' corpses, their blood drained.
'Suction.'
Simply draining blood didn't make something a vampire.
"We need more blood."
An old man with an umbrella stood on a gravestone.
"You lot should do."
"Do you really think you can get away with this? You killed the caretakers of the Royal Cemetery."
No matter how strong vampires might be, humans borrowed the sun's power and still dominated the world. Nothing this brazen had happened before, and Jenia felt uneasy.
"Do you know the misery of a people who've lost their king?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Hidden in the dark, you weak ones had the world stolen from you. Today that humiliation ends."
Every hair on Jenia's body bristled.
'W-what—'
From one of the gravestones behind the Umbrella Man, an enormous martial aura radiated.
"Lo-o-ord?????"
The drained corpses, the blood bank—everything suddenly fit together.
The Umbrella Man curled a corner of his mouth.
"Today our king will be resurrected."
"Run!"
Jenia shouted when the graves began to quake, but it was already too late.
"Arrgh!" Pauer fired the mega-gun and the Umbrella Man shot upward.
"W-what is that?"
Black smoke burst tens of meters high from fissures in the graves like a gas eruption.
"That makes two."
Two of the three Lords were being resurrected.
"Kakahaha! Kakahahaha!"
A woman's laugh, sharp enough to shred eardrums, rang out as the smoke condensed.
When she fell like a meteor to the ground the earth rippled like waves, and finally a beautiful woman's naked form settled there. The Umbrella Man landed beside her and knelt.
"I greet you, Blood Ruler Lady Agnes."
Only a Lord could hibernate by shedding all bodily moisture and stopping physical functions. To awaken from that hibernation required the blood of three hundred humans.
"A Lord…"
It was a force so potent that even Nike and Rian couldn't sense it from nearby. It was simply the Law.
The identity of a Lord, inherited from the True Fiend, had occupied the top of the biological pyramid since birth.
"Damn…"
Veins popped in Pauer's eyes; tendons stood out at Katein's temple.
They were like rabbits facing a lion—except these rabbits had lost fear to fury.
"I'll kill youuuuu!"
Their despair finally found a way out.
Agnes glared at the hunters charging head-on and extended her alabaster fingers.
"Blood Control."
The blood left over from hibernation rose and gathered into a massive sphere above her head.
Cooled by pressure, it solidified into a single sword that she gripped.
"It's been two thousand years."
She leapt toward the hunters and, in an instant, landed far beyond them.
"Guh!"
The blood blade moved with terrifying speed, vaporizing but carving wounds into the hunters' bodies.
"Blood Control."
She crossed her hands to activate the skill and their blood spurted from their bodies like fountains.
"Hurry! Faster!"
In the city center, a chain of explosions drew Benof as he spurred the carriage forward, leading the vampire special response team.
"Damn…"
When they arrived, buildings lay collapsed as if a storm had passed.
Kraaaang!
A distant blast made Benof turn his head.
"T-that…"
Two long streaks of shadow stretched, clashing as they moved freely between air and ground.
"Kruuuuh!"
Rian's body, pushing through Nike's whip, was torn to tatters.
In a lightning-fast duel that left no time for cover, Rian swung his spirit sword.
'I will cut you down!'
As he drove the blade down with all the conviction he had, Nike's shoulder was cleanly severed.
'Manifestation won't work.'
So long as the remained unbroken, the half-divine, half-spectral body was still mere matter.
'But it doesn't die.'
Nike's powerful regeneration instantly restored him and he charged Rian head-on.
"Kiaaaaah!"
Cut, torn, flesh flying into the air, blood pouring like rain.
'How far can this go?'
Rian suddenly wondered how far a living being could be destroyed.
In that instant his body was shredded apart.
"Yaaaaah!"
Divine Transcendence.
Even then the moved, and Nike's body was split into dozens of pieces.
That was an instant.
Benof heard a popping echo.
From hundreds of meters away, the afterimages of the two strikes collided and blossomed like fireworks.
"Le-leader. That—"
"Can a person really explode like that?"
"What are you all doing! Move out, now!"
Even Benof was stunned, but he needed someone to direct his outrage at.
"Rian…"
It had to be Rian.
"Huuuuuh."
Rian and Nike's shredded bodies lay tangled in a heap of fragments.
Rian, his nose sliced away, turned his gaze and glared at Nike.
In the sky the , its anchor gone, still danced its blade dance.
Only Nike's head remained; his eyes rolled upward in the direction he faced.
"You won." Nike, God's creature and a heresy hunter, had long ago questioned the essence of life.
"You went further."
Nike's body gathered into black smoke, and a single bat struggled along.
"You—"
Rian's severed hand grabbed Nike's face.
Despite the pressure that seemed to gouge out eyes, Nike gave a bitter smile and spoke.
"From the moment we abandoned God, there is no mercy for us."
There was only endless pain.
"Only the one who reaches the end can kill a god." —Smilre, Smilre.
As the nauseating auditory hallucination rang again, the bat sank its fangs into Rian's neck.
"Kruuuuh!"
Prions seeped in through the injection and Rian's half-restored body writhed like a man possessed.
"…Go on."
As the bat vanished, Nike's body turned to black ash and spread across the ground.
"Rian! Rian!"
Benof, arriving at the scene, stopped ten meters away.
"R-Rian?"
Rian hauled himself into a stooped stance, regenerating his last remaining right hand, and turned his face.
He ground his teeth, his expression that of nothing but a patient—teeth bared like a beast.
"Snap out of it!"
"Kruuuuh!"
An inexplicable pain racked his body as Nike's memories flooded in like a tide.
"Damn it! Everyone, stand by!"
Fearing Rian might turn into a vampire, Benof drew his greatsword and watched.
—I. Beyond the body.
Smilre's auditory hallucination whispered.
—How far can you go?
"Huuuuuh…"
Steam hissed between Rian's teeth as cells burned away.
—To the end. Only when the smallest pieces that make me are destroyed… only then… burn, regenerate, burn again.
In driving Nike's prion out, Rian had pushed his living structure past the limit where it could collapse.
—That is the true me. Ozent.
"Arghhhh!"
Rian spread his chest wide and roared; the shockwave blew the soldiers aside.
"Damn it! What is this!?" Divine Transcendence—.
—Smilreeeeeee!
His cells contorted into a yokai form and a dizzying flood of ancient memories crashed into Rian's mind.
"Smilre."
As those memories mixed with Nike's remaining recollections, Rian's head snapped around.
"I have to save Smilre."
The moment he pushed off the ground and charged, countless buildings ahead collapsed with thunderous crashes.
"What in the world is happening?"
Benof, flung by the blast, rubbed his head and looked around where Rian had vanished.
The mansion of magnate Miguel.
Miguel, one of Rodenin's most successful nobles, was a Vesica-ranked vampire.
"Have you come, Lord?" Agnes arrived at the mansion with the Umbrella Man and let the pale hunters collapse to the floor.
"The resurrection of Canoa?"
"About two-thirds of the blood is filled, but it's still insufficient. He should awaken around midnight tomorrow."
"You, you bastard…"
Jenia, the only one conscious, lifted her head, but blood loss nearly felled her.
Agnes, staring coldly, turned toward the basement and issued an order.
"Bring them. He will need the Silverborn."
Vesica-class vampires slung hunters over their shoulders and boarded the elevator.
Three kilometers down lay a vast refuge built for vampires.
"You're awake, Agnes."
Another Lord, Benedict, greeted her.
"The Fiend?"
Being disturbed in hibernation was an annoyance—unless the one ordering it around was the True Fiend.
"He's waiting for you."
In the deepest chamber, the prime fiend Faust waited among eight enormous glass spheres.
If one had returned from heaven, they'd sense an omen; Jenia felt only horror.
"Kill them! Kill them all!"
She would rather die than become a test subject.
"Calm down. You're not the main subject of this experiment."
While the Vesica placed each hunter into a glass sphere, some among them woke.
"Damn it! What is this!"
Faust ignored them and asked the Umbrella Man, "What happened?"
"Nike is gone. We couldn't kill him, but the injection will certainly take."
Jenia asked, "What do you intend to do with us?"
"Not much. You're just fertilizer. Residue on the way to life's end."
"End of life?"
Faust's gaze toward the ceiling pierced ten thousand years into the past.
"There was a man called Ozent."
"Smilre… Smilre…"
Rian smashed through everything in his path and sprinted for Miguel's mansion.
His eyes saw the landscape, but his mind couldn't parse the countless scenes flashing by.
As if bursting out of a tunnel, all the images were shoved from his sight and a heaven-like vista opened.
Drawn by memory, he crossed seas and forests and arrived at an ancient village.
A man with long black hair turned with a beautiful smile.
"Smilre."