The Asterisk War, Vol. 2: Awakening of Silver Beauty Read online

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Rise and shine, Ernesta.”

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

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

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

  “So you really were awake?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Oh yes, I suppose…”

  “Huh?”

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

  “S-sorry. I, um, I was just kidding…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Are there four of them? No, five.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What about you, Mr. Amagiri?”

  “Yeah, I can think of someone, too.”

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

  “We could split up,” he suggested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Then are they Genestella…? No, but—

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yeah, sure—wait, what?”

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

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

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

  “Mr. Amagiri, are you okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Oh, no way—!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  In that case, what could they do?

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

  Maybe if I used the Ser Veresta…

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

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

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

  “I see…”

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

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

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

  “Wha—?”

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

  “…It’s over.”

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

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

  Apparently, the sphere had been controlling the slime itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Allekant?” Kirin looked mystified.

  “Well, it’s a long story but— Whoa!”

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