The Asterisk War, Vol. 6: The Triumphal Homecoming Battle Read online

  He landed beside the chimera, atop its crushed snake’s head—and caught his breath.

  “Amagiri Shinmei Style Grappling Technique—Chest-Piercing Feather!”

  Slipping underneath the chimera, he kicked upward, aiming at its abdomen with all his strength.

  “Grrrgiiiiiiiiii!” The creature’s huge body soared through the air as it let out a piercing scream.

  Ayato leaped after it, whirling through the air again to deliver another three consecutive kicks to the chimera’s face.

  “Amagiri Shinmei Style Grappling Technique—Indestructible Thunder!”

  “—!”

  Unable to let out so much as a wail between each of those three powerful strikes, the chimera was thrown across the hall, smashing through the towering windows and onto the terrace.

  “Saya! Julis!”

  “…Understood.”

  “Leave it to me!”

  He chased after it alongside Saya, who was already wielding her Helnekraum, and Julis, who was gathering her mana. Lying sprawled on the lawn in the courtyard beyond the terrace, the chimera, staggering, tried to lift its huge body.

  Fortunately, on the other side of the courtyard was the lake.

  “Burst into bloom—Amaryllis!”

  “…Boom.”

  The next moment, the fireball and bullets of light made direct contact with it.

  “Grrraaaaaaaaaaaaar!”

  The explosion danced upward, the creature screaming in mortal agony. Then, in the midst of those flames, the chimera’s body slowly melted, the highly concentrated mana dispersing in every direction.

  “So it wasn’t even a living thing…,” Julis muttered grimly.

  Ayato nodded, silent.

  “…So it was no match for them at all? This is just insulting, losing to a bunch of unarmed kids,” the man, standing at the edge of the lake looking through a telescope, muttered to himself, before snapping his fingers.

  At that sound, deep within the lake, something gigantic began to move.

  “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want to have to get too involved in this…but it would be a waste to let this opportunity slip by.”

  The man spoke to no one in particular as he disappeared into the darkness surrounding the lake.

  CHAPTER 4

  JULIS AND THE ORPHANAGE

  The following day, Jolbert summoned the five students to the Royal Palace.

  “Gustave Malraux?”

  “Hmm. Well, it looks that way. According to the police, that’s the name of the criminal you met last night.”

  They were in the same room as the day before, and Jolbert’s casual appearance was all but unchanged. The only difference was that Maria wasn’t with him. It seemed that one of her husband’s mistresses was laid up in bed from shock after the incident, and she had gone to call on her. A truly unusual relationship, Ayato thought.

  The five had been asked a bunch of questions by the police the previous night, but perhaps because of their royal guest status, they were treated politely and released much sooner than they’d expected.

  “They’re saying that he’s wanted internationally. It appears he used to go to Asterisk. Um… Which was it again? The school he went to?” Jolbert folded his arms, seeming to have forgotten. His own Royal Palace had been attacked, but he wasn’t taking it very seriously, nor, for that matter, even showing much interest.

  “Allekant Académie. He’s rather famous over there,” Claudia filled in.

  “Famous? You mean, by winning a Festa or something?” Ayato asked.

  “No. Gustave Malraux was ranked, but he never participated in the Festa. He was one of the people involved in the Jade Twilight Incident.”

  “That’s it! I remember! He’s the Mage of Primordial Beasts, Echid Nix!” Julis rose from her seat, looking startled.

  “The Jade Twilight… You mean the hostage incident? I heard that the commander of the city guard dealt with it all by herself…,” Kirin murmured.

  “Indeed. It was the largest terrorist incident in Asterisk’s history,” Claudia nodded.

  Ayato didn’t know the details, but he had heard about it once before. It was the incident that had prompted the creation of the redevelopment area.

  “…So you’re saying that mustached man was a terrorist?”

  “No, the situation is a little more complicated than that. The Jade Twilight was carried out by seventy-seven students, some of whom were sympathetic to the group’s goals, and around a quarter of whom were only interested in financial gain. Gustave Malraux was one of those,” Claudia explained, taking out her mobile device and opening a number of air-windows.

  They were all news articles related to terrorist incidents.

  “These are all incidents he’s thought to have been involved in. A terrorist can be someone who wants to achieve some sort of political goal, but the fact that he has worked with a number of terrorist organizations, each with drastically different ideologies, suggests he doesn’t have any such motivations.”

  “So basically, it’s a kind of job for him… Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘after’ the Jade Twilight? Didn’t you say that Commander Lindwall took care of it?”

  But Claudia, wearing a regretful frown, shook her head. “The leaders of the group and its main members were caught, but seven of those involved managed to get away. Gustave Malraux was one of them, which is why he’s so famous.”

  “…I see.” Evading capture by Helga Lindwall would definitely spread one’s name around.

  “But there’s still a lot that’s unclear about the Jade Twilight,” Julis said, clearly displeased. “The commander’s report about how the incident was resolved is out in the open, but the events leading up to it, and how it was dealt with afterward, were hushed up by the IEFs. It’s a bit of a taboo topic in Asterisk.”

  “So… If he’s a Dante, what kind of abilities does he have?” Kirin asked hesitantly.

  It was, of course, Claudia who answered. “Back then, Gustave Malraux was said to be unparalleled in transubstantiation. As for his abilities…well, like you saw last night, he specializes in creating magical beasts.”

  “But that thing wasn’t actually alive, was it?” Ayato asked. There was no denying that the chimera had moved well, but it clearly wasn’t a living creature.

  “Of course not. No one has succeeded in creating life, and there are even those who argue that it’s impossible on a theoretical level. You could probably call that thing last night a biological model in which the bones, muscles, and tissue all consisted of converted mana.”

  “Our abilities rely on imaging. If we can’t image it properly, the power of what we produce weakens—while if we can establish firm images in our minds, the flow of mana, and their overall power, increases. There’s no general standard for it, but if you want to embody a physical substance rather than a phenomenon, it’s important to image it with as much detail as possible. That monster looked like it was alive. It should be impossible to image such a thing, no matter how powerful one’s abilities.” Julis, the only one among them with that kind of ability, continued to explain it all coolly: “But Gustave Malraux apparently made it possible. Both through his natural abilities and by devoting a huge amount of time to it.”

  “Time?”

  “Those aren’t his words, but a number of the arrested terrorists apparently said he would spend several months, sometimes even several years, creating a new beast. And if he has spent that much time on it, he’s no doubt imaged them down to the smallest detail.”

  Several years—that was dedication, Ayato had to admit.

  “Even so, in principle, it’s impossible to convert mana permanently, either into a phenomenon or a substance. Well, maybe not impossible, I guess, but to maintain that thing’s huge body over a long period of time, he would have to keep pouring more mana into it nonstop. Which is, of course, impossible, no matter how great one’s prana is.”

  “In that case…?”

  “It would
probably have dissipated by itself within ten or twenty minutes.”

  “That sounds pretty useful for terrorist incidents,” Ayato noted, impressed. “There would be no need to retrieve it, after all.”

  Julis broke into a frown. “I see… That’s definitely another way of looking at it— Brother!”

  “Hmm? Oh, sorry. I had a late night.”

  Jolbert had begun to doze off on the sofa.

  “You should be a little more worried! You do realize that it was the Royal Palace that was attacked, don’t you?”

  “I thought you guys were the target?”

  “Then you should be a bit more worried about your little sister!”

  Jolbert laughed. “If I were to worry about every single problem you get yourself into, it would be the death of me.” But there was a brotherly warmth in his voice.

  Ayato had thought that the two didn’t really get along, but it seemed he had been mistaken.

  “And in the first place, what on earth is the security doing, letting someone like that sneak past?”

  “Don’t blame them. This Gustave fellow seems to have had a fake identity at Galaxy’s research institute, and used a real ID to get in. So there’s nothing they could have done to stop him. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “A foundation ID?” Claudia knitted her brow.

  “What is it?”

  “IDs at the IEFs are only given to people from the head offices or people from groups under the head office’s direct control. It shouldn’t have been possible for him to get his hands on one so easily…”

  “He did say something about working for someone. Maybe he has the backing of some organization…? But then, why go to the trouble to make such a request…?”

  After all, he had said that someone would be upset if Ayato were to join Claudia’s team.

  He might have understood if the man had told them not to participate in the Gryps at all. Indeed, they were the winners from the last Phoenix, and one of the tag teams that made the top four. It was easy to see why the teams from the other schools might see them as an obstacle.

  But Gustave had told them not to enter Claudia’s team. In other words, whoever was backing him couldn’t afford to let her team become too strong but didn’t care if they joined someone else’s.

  That would mean…

  “Ah, right. The police want to assign security to you all. What do think?”

  “I don’t need anything,” Julis snapped. “But if anyone else wants them, that’s fine.”

  “…But isn’t it the princess who needs protecting the most?” Ayato remarked wryly.

  Julis snorted with contempt. “If they’ve got enough resources to follow me everywhere I go, they would be much better off using them to look for this Gustave Malraux. They still haven’t found any sign of him, have they?”

  “That’s what the report I received this morning said. And, well, it is true that our force isn’t that large,” Jolbert said, as if it were someone else’s problem.

  After some discussion, they decided that they didn’t need any added security.

  “Fine. I’ll let them know. You’re probably stronger than our police force anyway.”

  If one didn’t look at their organizational capabilities or their competency to carry out duties, and compared them only in respect to their fighting ability, the Asterisk students would certainly come out on top. That was one of the characteristics of Genestella—that they were much better suited to combat than ordinary people were.

  Or rather, Genestella who lived in places like Asterisk, where they could actively engage in combat, tended to be far stronger than people in the outside world. Moreover, the restrictions on the use of Luxes, Orga Luxes, and one’s abilities were comparatively lax in such places, so it was much easier for them to gain real battle experience. Even graduates couldn’t compare—after leaving Academic City and returning to their peaceful lives, their combat skills tended to suffer a dramatic drop, even if they trained every day.

  The world was far from being at peace, with war and terrorism still common, but even they were controlled at least to some extent by the integrated enterprise foundations, and so battlefield occupations were extremely limited. Regular police and security personnel, of course, had their own kinds of training, but powerful students, like those from the Named Cult, surpassed them.

  Yet, that wasn’t to say there weren’t people out there stronger still than the students of Asterisk. They were no match for members of the IEFs’ special operations units, or, for that matter, the large private military companies, and there were also career criminals like Gustave Malraux who chose to live their lives inhabiting the realm of violence.

  “If we had our own army, we might be able to do something, but there’s no getting around that.”

  “Lieseltania doesn’t have an army?” Ayato echoed, taken by surprise.

  Jolbert nodded. “If there’s an emergency, we’re allowed to borrow some troops from the foundations. From Solnage and Frauenlob, that is. The other research institutes undoubtedly have their own forces, but they won’t move until sparks start flying.”

  The private military companies and the military divisions that belonged to the integrated enterprise foundations were far superior to the capabilities of the existing nation-states. But even so, military forces were still indispensable to maintain a country’s national polity.

  “…It really is a puppet state,” Saya commented.

  “Don’t put it so bluntly,” Jolbert said flatly, but if anything, he seemed to be impressed. “Our guests of honor were attacked, so I do have to take appropriate measures. I’ll make sure they don’t get in your way, though.”

  “Fine. Is that all?” Julis said, standing up.

  Jolbert held out a hand to stop her. “Hold on a minute. I told you yesterday that I wanted to speak with you and Ayato, alone.”

  At this, Julis glanced toward her classmate.

  He nodded as if to say there was no way around it, and sat back down on the sofa.

  “So what was so important that you had to make the others leave?”

  “Hmm, well, there are two things… Which should I start with, I wonder…”

  “…It isn’t like it matters. Get on with it.”

  “I see. Then I’ll start with the easier one. Amagiri”—Jolbert, smiling, turned to Ayato—“will you marry my sister?”

  “…”

  Ayato stiffened, unable for a moment to comprehend what Jolbert had just asked.

  Julis, beside him, had the same reaction, sitting as rigid as stone, her face turning scarlet as she began to tremble.

  “Wh-wh-wh-what are you saying, brother?! Y-you must be joking!”

  “Hmm, yes, well, I’m not saying it has to be right away. For now you could just get engaged.” Jolbert leaned forward, paying no heed at all to his sister’s strained voice.

  Ayato, finally coming back to his senses, gave an honest, albeit flustered, response. “I—I don’t know what to say, being asked that kind of question all of a sudden… You might have misunderstood, but Julis and I don’t really have that kind of relationship…”

  “Guh—! Th-that’s right! And why are you only asking Ayato?!” Julis snapped, but her brother didn’t even glance her way.

  “Yes, I’ve heard about it from Flora. I was a little surprised, to be honest. But that’s fine. It isn’t really a problem.”

  “It’s a huge problem!”

  At that, Jolbert finally turned to Julis. “I’m just thinking about what’s best for you, sister. You understand what will happen at this rate?”

  “…Hmph. That’s none of your business.”

  But his eyes were deathly serious. Perhaps daunted by that expression, Julis fell silent.

  “What do you mean?” Ayato asked.

  “It means that in time, she’ll end up like me,” Jolbert responded, sinking back into his chair.

  Ayato still didn’t grasp the full meaning of that statement.
/>   “What he’s saying is that the IEFs will choose someone for me who suits them.”

  “—?!” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. In other words, they would force her to marry someone.

  “I’m confident I can love anyone, so I was okay with it. But you, Julis…you’re different.”

  “…”

  Julis said nothing, but her silence indicated that he was right.

  “Which is why you should choose someone you like now, before it’s too late. You chose Amagiri here as your tag partner, after all, so you mustn’t dislike him, right?”

  “O-of course, I don’t dislike him…,” she murmured, before glancing up. “Don’t tell me that was why you organized that parade yesterday?!”

  “I thought it would be a good way to introduce you both to the people.”

  That explained why Flora had told them to sit next to each other.

  “B-but why so suddenly…? It’s not like we haven’t spoken about this before. And I turned them all down!”

  “The situation has changed, Julis. You’ve won the Phoenix now.”

  “—!”

  Julis caught her breath.

  “The foundations weren’t pushing as hard before, so I was able to smooth things over, but now that you’ve won that tournament, you’re much more valuable to them. They’re all jostling to use you for their own benefit.”

  “Th-that’s…”

  “But if we do it now, I can make the first move. There’s no need to worry about social status in this day and age, and besides, there’s no higher status than victor of the Phoenix, now, is there?”

  “Argh…” Julis looked away in frustration.

  “So what do you think, Amagiri? This country might not be much compared to Japan, but you know, you would be able to live in comfort, at least. That isn’t so bad, is it?” Jolbert said, smiling.

  “…I can’t argue with that,” Ayato answered after a short pause, as if having to convince himself. “I’m sure it would be comfortable… But I wouldn’t be free to do as I wanted, either. Would I?”

  “There’s no such thing as complete freedom. Everyone is bound by obligation to one degree or another.”