Episode 51 — Curiosity Kill the Dog
～ Part 1 ～
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“Uoo–, they’re really monsters!”
“Incredible–!”
“Ne~, is it real!? Is this tail real!?”
Children are creatures that know no fear, they started squashing the students of 2nd year class 4 in the blink of an eye. The especially popular ones were Hakuba and Nekomiya. Speaking of ‘squashed’, it was more than just metaphorical for Nekomiya whose height was lower than that of children. Being a black cat wearing leather boots, donning a vest, she was tremendously popular among the children.
“Hahaha, you guys. No matter how charming I am, this is … ah, no, please wait. Whiskers and tail are not things to pull? Ye–eow! Children these days don’t know any moderation … ahh, wait … hey! Please stop that!”
On the other hand, not a single child approached Okumura and Kensaki whose appearance was eerie. Okumura, for his part, didn’t even show any sign of caring about it, but Kensaki was frankly shocked. As she almost brought her head to the brats during her shock, she was yelled at strongly and took distance from the children again.
Other classmates had come down to the beach as well, each one was doing their own things. Sugiura immediately started a BBQ, she was grilling the fished dried on the ship. Hanazono also supplied vegetables. Kinogasa also supplied the mushrooms he had been taking care of, or tried to at least, but Hanazono resolutely ignored him.
“Um–u, what’s this…”
“It’s a music box. Music flows when you open it.”
“Fumu, what about this?”
“That’s clothes knitted with my threads.”
“This sculpture is wonderful. How much will the exchange rate be?”
“That’s Kagoi the gargoyle. He’s not for sale.”
Slipping in the merchandise Welkano — the maritime caravan — brought in, were sale items the students had lined up as well. The thing this time was similar to the unveiling of commodities to be sold in the trade fair at a later date, the continuously gathering chieftains of each tribe seemed very interested in these.
Among the things the students were selling, the chieftains paid especial attention to the rare vegetables Hanazono brought in, Arachne’s threads Kumosaki prepared, Kuremori’s music boxes, handicrafts Gofunkawahara and Kahara made, well, those and Kagoi-kun. Naturally, in terms of quality, the goods Welkano brought were overwhelmingly more outstanding, but since his fleet had mostly sunk anyway, as substitutes, the students’ goods also received considerable interest.
“Understand? You guys! The time you’re young happens only once! In other words, it’s youth! And youth is baseball! I’m going to teach baseball to you guys now! This is the bat and ball I prepared!”
“Saruwatari, the children froze.”
“Uoo, get fired up! Hot! But just baseball is not youth! I’m going to teach everyone the essence of volleyball! Speaking of the beach, it has to be volleyball! It’s decided wisdom!”
“Yukinoshita, you’re melting.”
Part of the exercise members were devoting themselves to missionary work.
“It’s a good trend.”
Gazing at those scene, Goubayashi muttered. Ryuzaki nodded too.
The participation to the trade fair was something Ryuzaki had proposed to Welkano previously. They were forced to abandon the caterpillar unit, but Ryuzaki didn’t want to give up the heavy cruiser branch school. After going around to the east side of the continent, they would need to go on land again. So he thought to request the Southern Commerce Guild to obtain the material to make the caterpillar unit again.
But gathering supplies through the guild needed money. Ryuzaki was trying to obtain money in the trade fair this time and immediately hand it over to Welkano as materials procurement fee.
Naturally, it wasn’t his only purpose.
“Because I want to get blood for Asuka from them somehow.”
The conclusion he got at the end of his thorough thinking was this: Sooner or later we will need to get blood from human even if we have to use every single trick or method available. Then it’s better to have these people who are relatively friendly toward monsters offer blood in good faith.
Only, it was a highly difficult request to make at the first meeting. He was going to dispel the tension of the chieftain of each tribe and the children gathered here, making it easier to negotiate. He might be thinking too much, but there’s nothing overcautious about this matter, probably.
While many students were deepening the cultural exchange with the islanders, one girl was looking around the surroundings restlessly at the place slightly apart.
It was the outlaw delinquent girl, Inugami Hibiki the werewolf.
Unlike other students, she didn’t turn into a monster by passing through the Transference Denaturation Gate. She was natural born werewolf.
“Inugami-san, what’s wrong?”
After unloading her luggage from the merchant ship, Remy called out to Inugami whose appearance clearly indicated her vigilance of something.
Inugami took a glance at Remy, twitched her nose and said:
“There’s an unpleasant smell.”
“Unpleasant smell?”
“Uh huh…”
Saying so, Inugami started toward Ryuzaki.
“Inugami?”
“Careful, Ryuzaki. There may be vampire on this island.”
“What…?”
In the direction Inugami was looking when she said that spread a dense forest.
The sun was setting, darkness was swallowing the forest. The look in her eyes was one of glaring at the bitter enemy of the clan itself. The smell that Inugami perceived wasn’t just a mere vampire. It’s the ‘blood clan’. As long as the enemy had the combat power of Pawn-class at least, there would be few students who could cope with them.
However, this wasn’t a wide island at all. Even if a vampire was lurking, it wasn’t a place to hide for so long.
Perhaps the vampires concealed themselves by slipping into the humans.
Ryuzaki made a grim face, then same as Inugami, glared at the dense forest.
“Please wait, Akai.”
Before moving the story along, Akira cut in.
“We only know vaguely about the ability Akai’s blood have. Just within the extent you know is just, please explain more in order.”
Sakuma repeatedly nodded at his words. It was probably something bothering her as well.
∗Fuu∗, sighed, while scratching the hair that had stuck to her forehead again, Akai said:
“Explanation … is it? There are many things I was taught by my parents since I was born so…”
With that opening, she started to explain again.
“The spiritual gene, energy body that flows in the blood, this is the ‘vampire factor’ that remake a human into a vampire. Let’s unify the way to call it as this from now on.”
Vampires like Akai aren’t the kind to increase their comrades by biting humans, but they can turn someone into a vampire by letting their own vampire factor flow in the blood of the target. Vampires born by this method had the lowest position within the blood clan. These were the Pawns.
In the former world, there existed human sympathizers who believed in Akai’s blood clan and supported the vampires’ society, among those, the ones with especially high contribution to the blood clan were chosen and turned into Pawns. Pouring the factor into a human’s blood is not something that can be done so easily. It is something similar to a ritual, necessary preparation has to be done in advance.
This isn’t limited to turning into Pawns. According to the blood clan’s plan, the action of ‘sharing blood’ that Akai was supposed to have done to the students corresponded to this: pouring one’s factor to the target’s blood.
The kind of monsters originally without any body fluids — including blood — can largely omit the ritual’s procedure. Namely, Kyousuke the skeleton, Akira the wisp, Kagoi the gargoyle, etc.
And then, the effects of giving the vampire factor is tremendous.
Such as simple rise in physical ability, high speed regeneration, etc., even the case of ordinary human turning into a Pawn brought immeasurable benefits. Furthermore, children born between fellow vampires can pile up the composition, giving birth to stronger factor. Depending on the trait of the factor, they were divided into Knight-type, Bishop-type, Rook-type, and the strongest vampire in each era became the Queen.
“Asuka-chan…. You’re really amazing, aren’t you?”
“Well yeah.”
Akai easily said so.
But all these factors originated from the ‘King’, the vampires couldn’t oppose the King who held that original factor.
“Something about that ‘King’ is bothering me.”
Kyousuke raised his hand.
“What do you mean by ‘holding the original factor’? Is it exactly the same thing as the very first individual who turned into a Pawn?”
“I also don’t know well.”
“You don’t know?”
“The first vampire of my blood clan…. The true ancestor, if he or she made a child, then does that child inherits the original factor, or is it not original at the point the blood is mixed? I don’t quite understand.”
Supposing it was the later case, then the original factor holder had to be an unthinkable aged person. And from the fact that he called himself King and a little girl of each era Queen, an unthinkable lolicon.
Since vampire had an image of living eternally, it wasn’t something to be surprised about though.
And then, another demerit existed for existences other than the King, ‘Blood Crave illness’. This ‘Blood Crave illness’ was definitely the reason vampires were vampires, precisely because of the Blood Crave illness broke out that they could be called vampires.
The vampire factor circulates in the body together with blood, its power consumed by life activities or exercising one’s ability and return to . The factor in ground state is something like waste products, it produces a bad condition when allowed to accumulate in one’s body. The symptoms it caused was similar to uremia. This is the Blood Crave illness.
To cancel the Blood Crave illness, there’s nothing to be done but returning the factors in ground state to once again.
There are two methods. One, securing fresh blood. By flowing blood unmixed with factor, one can activate the factors, increase them. Since the increased factors are in the excited state, new blood can supply factors in fresh condition.
Another method is to wait for the passage of time. But as mentioned previously, factors in ground state are waste products. Moreover, their power is also consumed by life activities. Since factors consume their power and return to ground state at a faster rate than them becoming excited state, this method is substantially unusable.
Akai had been talking fluently, but it was steadily getting harder to understand.
“Is it like dialysis?”
So said Akira.
“Yes. Then, anyone who has the vampire factor in their body fluids and medically performs life activities will have this Blood Crave illness.”
“Me too?”
“Sachi too. And the only solution to it is to suck blood of the same kind and adjust the factors.”
That was probably one of the reasons Akai didn’t want to share blood with other students.
And it was also one of the reasons Akai had reluctantly given out blood to Kyousuke. The reason why she had expressly attached ‘medically’ before ‘life activities’ had to be because Kyousuke’s life activities were neither due to internal organs nor blood circulation. Kyousuke, a skeleton as he was, didn’t got Blood Crave illness.
How he temporarily lose the power of blood by continuous usage of Phase 3 ability was the same situation as Blood Crave illness. However, Kyousuke didn’t receive the adverse effects of the factors in ground state. He could wait for the factors to return to excited state by the passage of time. It was that kind of mechanism.
For now, he understood the circumstances.
“If I can return the blood, I want to do it. But what should I do? I mean, I’m bones. There’s no blood.”
“Yup. You don’t.”
Akai nodded at Kyousuke’s words.
“……”
“……”
No way, could it be she didn’t think anything up?
“There may be methods such as putting Utsurogi in a pot and take it out together with soup stock though.”
“You’re okay with that!? I’m not a dried bonito!?”
“Then I can only think of crunching the bones.”
It was unclear whether the words Akai spoke was a joke or was it serious.
So lightly did she said ‘make you return the blood’, but it still wasn’t something that could be done so easily. Kyousuke was dejected. Even assuming bones can be crunched and got the blood back, he didn’t know how much should be eaten.
Supposing returning blood was possible, there might have been a method of entrusting the factors to Akira the wisp or Kagoi the gargoyle and collecting them when in danger. Or so he thought, but even if bones could be eaten, since fire and rock were inedible, it was an impossible story.
“If, Utsurogi-kun, and Himemizu-san … combine?”
Sakuma muttered that kind of thing.
“Won’t there be blood in Extreme Cross?”
“I want to refrain.”
Akai said in a stiff tone. Kyousuke inclined his head.
“Why?”
“Because in Extreme Cross mode, part of the factors will return to ground state, and then half is Himemizu. We don’t even know if the factors will return, do we?”
“Well, you’ve got a point.”
Akai nodded to Akira’s words. But her true feelings didn’t seem to be limited to just that at all.
Only, the person herself said she didn’t want to, so they probably shouldn’t. Let’s forget this matter.
“Well then, we don’t know if returning blood is possible. Why did you talk about this?”
“You’re more or less my kin. So I thought to let you know.”
Saying just that, Akai greatly sighed and entrusted her back to the wall.
“Talking is tiresome. Well then, I’ll return to my room…”
“A–Asuka-chan! It’s a rare chance, so let’s get off the ship!”
Just as Akai was trying to turn her back, Sakuma pulled her arm and stopped it.
“Akai, Ryuzaki said that he’s going to negotiate with the humans of the island and see if we can get blood.”
“…I’ll be waiting without any expectations. Sachi, accompany me till the room.”
“Y–yeah…”
Saying so, Akai had Sakuma lend her a shoulder and headed back to her room.
“Akai,”
Akira called out to her back.
“Do pay attention to Harui and Hebitsuka once in a while. To not be depended on by your friends can be surprisingly painful.”
“…Kaoru also told me the same thing.”
Akai whispered and returned to her room.
Was it because the ship had stopped for a while, Akira’s condition had considerably improved. Looking at that Akira, Kyousuke muttered.
“Hey, Akira, that just now, were you insinuate about me?”
He timidly tried to asked, then pfft, Akira laughed.
“I think being able to read too much into the malice of others is part of your growth, but that’s not my intention or anything.”
“I’m counting on you, Akira.”
“Stop it. I said that’s not my intention.”
After that, Kyousuke and Akira went up to the deck.
On the deck was Rin — waiting in solitude all this time, she was shedding large drops of tears and it took them lots of effort to comfort her.
To be continued…
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