Record of the Blood Battle Page 5

  “What’d you come back for?” the Nobleman blustered, still lying on the road. “I was just about to turn that bitch inside out. You’ve got your nerve, interfering like that.”

  “You never learn, do you?” the hoarse voice spat. “I think we should put some fear into you.”

  The baron didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but as he felt a cold hand stroke his back, he turned around in horror against his will. When he’d turned his head partway, his hair was seized and given a ferocious jerk. With no time to flee, he arched backward. His hair pulled right out.

  A heartbeat later, a needle whistled through the air, sinking into the base of the fiendish woman’s neck as she exerted all her remaining strength. This time, the monster fell and she didn’t move again.

  “Buddy, you’ve got more lives than a cat,” the hoarse voice remarked with disbelief, adding, “Anything at all that hag latched onto, she’d rip to pieces. But you—”

  The voice suddenly broke off, and D’s eyes reflected an image that resembled a jellyfish hovering dimly in the night air.

  “What are you looking at?” the sprawled-out baron asked indignantly. “Never seen a bald head before?”

  D’s eyes weren’t the only things that held a reflection. The baron’s pate held a blurry image of the Hunter’s unearthly beauty. He’d been saved from the hag’s deadly grip by his hairpiece.

  “Good luck,” the hoarse voice told him as the cyborg horse began to walk away.

  “Wait! Wait just a minute!” the baron cried, still lying on his belly, arms and legs flailing. “You intend to leave me out here in a dangerous spot like this? Take me with you. Come on! I’m not saying there’s nothing in it for you. Let me give you the good news!”

  Still, the Hunter continued to leisurely ride away.

  “Hey, wait! I can lay my hands on a fortune. The gold and jewels of the Nobility! You’ll be the richest man in the world.”

  The horse halted.

  “What else?” asked a voice like the evening itself.

  “What else?” His manner changed, and he shot D a hawkish glance. “Know about that, do you? You’re no ordinary Hunter. Oh, okay, wait! You’re right. I’ve amassed a collection of the Nobility’s inventions. Is that what you’re after?”

  “Where?”

  “Will you take me with you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yes! Success!” the baron said, flailing his limbs once more. Only this time, he threw up two fingers in a sign of V for victory. “Well, first I need you to take care of my leg.”

  “Are you really a Noble?”

  “With a face like yours, you shouldn’t be using that old-fart voice. It’s a weird hobby you have there. Okay, I’m a Noble who can walk in the light of the sun. To be able to do so, I’ve sacrificed a lot. My regenerative and healing abilities were especially hard hit.”

  “You can walk in the light of the sun, but if you twist your ankle, you can’t even stand? Your priorities are all screwed up,” the hoarse voice remarked.

  “Shut up. Are you going to fix me up or not?”

  Dismounting, D placed his left hand on the baron’s ankle. “Stand up.”

  “Hey, not so fast. I’m kind of scared. Easy does it. Easy!”

  The Nobleman was so tentative in his actions as he tried to rise that it seemed dawn would arrive before he finished, so D gave him a kick. Squealing, the pudgy, bald figure fell over again.

  “Go ahead and get up. You’re already fixed.”

  “What?” On moving the limb, the baron found that indeed, his pain had been reduced to a dull throbbing. Getting up, the baron cracked his neck to either side like a hoodlum limbering up for a fight, walked over to the leather satchel and picked it up, then went over to the rock wall that towered to the right of the road.

  Focusing his Noble eyesight in the darkness, he said, “It’s around here, but I can’t tell where. There should be a reddish stone set in this wall. Look for it.”

  “Why don’t you find it yourself?” the hoarse voice asked.

  “Hmph! Because I can’t see.”

  “What?”

  “Like I said, I sacrificed a lot.”

  “You’re worthless.”

  Saying nothing, D walked over to the same rock wall the baron had just backed away from. After checking the entire area, he stared at the baron.

  “Nothing? That can’t be. I’m certain it’s here—aha!” he exclaimed, turning his fat face to the sky.

  The hoarse voice needled him, saying, “Now, you’re not gonna tell us it’s the rockface on the opposite side of the road, are you?”

  The baron twisted his lips, and then looked at D and smiled as if trying to curry his favor. His finger was pointed at the opposite rockface. “Right you are,” he said bashfully.

  —

  II

  —

  The red stone was quickly located. It had a skull mark about the size of a little fingertip carved into it.

  “Are you seven years old?” the hoarse voice said with scorn.

  The baron didn’t seem to mind at all as he skipped over, then turned to look at D while chuckling knowingly. When D failed to react, the Nobleman pressed the ring he wore on his right pinkie finger against the skull mark, a sour look on his face. A second later a heavy fog billowed at the two of them. Through it resounded the haughty laughter of the baron.

  “Muwahaha! Surprised?”

  D held his left hand out in front of himself. “Well?” he asked it.

  “It’s an amazing setup. The rockface has split open for a good hundred yards. The fog’s billowing out of it—oh, what have we here?”

  “What is it?”

  “This is odd. That bastard’s just milling around. Ha, ha! He let all that fog out, but now he can’t see the entrance, either. Oh, he just smacked into the rockface. Ah, he’s reeling like a drunk!”

  The Hunter said nothing.

  It was a few seconds later that D’s hand latched onto the baron’s collar as the Nobleman woozily staggered about clutching a lump on his forehead.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Show me what you promised.”

  “Oh, okay. Damn it.”

  “You planned on running off while we were lost in the fog, didn’t you?”

  “Whatever are you talking about? Do I, Baron Macula, look like that manner of scoundrel?”

  “Do you think you look like anything else?”

  “Goddamned Hunter. Just follow right behind me, already!”

  “Can you lead the way?”

  “You insensitive lout. Of course you have to go first. But be careful. There’s no telling what kind of traps there’ll be! What in the—”

  The baron had risen into the air without warning. Clinging to the Nobleman’s collar with his left hand and holding him out in front of him, D stepped in where the rockface had split open.

  “Well, you sure are an odd little Noble.”

  Rather than grow irate at the hoarse voice’s remark, the baron wore a puzzled expression as he reached behind him, felt D’s fist, then tilted his head to one side. “You’re one to talk about odd, making a voice come out of such a strange place. And your tastes are bizarre, using such a crude voice.”

  “Shut up! I don’t have to take that from someone so stupid they set it up so even they couldn’t see in here.”

  “Hmph! That was an accident.”

  “An accident?”

  “This impermeable fog was meant to foil anyone else who might find my warehouse, but when I went to sleep, that was the one device I forgot to switch off, apparently.”

  The hoarse voice was at a loss for words.

  “To wit, it’s been manufacturing fog nonstop for five millennia. It won’t disperse so easily, I suspect.”

  Indeed, D could normally see through the densest fog as if it were midday, but he’d stated at the entrance that he couldn’t see through this. Yet from the way he steadily progressed without any instructions from his left han
d, he must’ve known what the hand could see.

  Advancing through the fog, D turned corners, went up and down slopes, and finally halted. The fog there was a fainter hue, allowing the things around them to come into view like a scene through a snowstorm. A different hue tinged the two figures—for the vast chamber was filled with dazzling gold and jewels, as well as mountains of weird devices.

  “See? This is my hidden warehouse,” Baron Macula declared, puffing his chest even as he hung in midair. “The inventions you want are off to the left, way in the back. Now, set me down already. I’m going to find some valuables.”

  Tossing the protesting baron to the floor, D walked off toward the inventions.

  On returning several minutes later, D was greeted by a moving mound of gold and gemstones. Wearing armor that gleamed more exquisitely than solid gold, the baron had also adorned himself with bejeweled necklaces and other ornaments. D quietly gazed down at him.

  “You plan on walking around like that? You won’t get ten paces before you’ll be threatened by a thousand stakes,” he said in a voice of steel.

  “You—you think it’s a bad idea, do you?”

  “Do what you like once we get out of the valley. Let’s go.”

  D started walking back the way they’d come. Behind him, the baron followed with a cacophony of metallic clattering. The leather satchel alone he clutched close. Though the fog remained thick, they’d been this way before.

  D exited into the valley without stopping once. A few minutes later, the resplendent Nobleman appeared, huffing for breath, and as he slumped to the ground he said, “Why are you in such an all-fired hurry?”

  “This valley will be wiped out in thirty minutes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Mankind doesn’t yet possess the wisdom to use the weapons and inventions of the Nobility. All they would bring is untold death and destruction.”

  “Ohhhhh,” the baron groaned, and then he realized something. “This is my warehouse! How’d you activate the self-destruct mechanism?”

  “Twenty-nine minutes to go.”

  Bounding to his feet, the baron clanked over to the cyborg horse, reached up for the saddle, and mounted the steed with an ease that made the hoarse voice gasp aloud.

  “I’m off! See you later!”

  Digging his heels into the cyborg horse, the baron began to gallop off down the road to the right. “Oh, so I’ve lost him, have I? I bet that bastard’s beside himself right now!” the Nobleman said, chortling in the saddle, and then his collar was caught from behind, he was raised into the air and set down in front of the saddle, and the figure in black running alongside him rose like a wraith.

  —

  A spot of prismatic light formed in one part of the valley and swiftly spread out like ripples on the water, filling the entire valley floor, melting stone, metal, and all other matter down to an atomic level after the horse and its strange riders had reached a safe distance. From a bluff to the west of the valley, the pair watched the multicolored dome of light tingeing the darkness. Already fading, the light was swallowed by the darkness before any thought could be given to its ephemeral nature.

  “How long do you think it took me to collect the treasures I had stored there?” the baron grumbled. Both of them had gotten down from the horse. “Three centuries, I tell you. Three hundred years! With our technology, synthesizing gemstones was child’s play, but everything in there was the genuine article. Oh, what a waste!”

  “What you’ve got there should be plenty. Better hope they deflect all the stakes and arrows headed your way,” the hoarse voice told him, and then the Hunter headed back over to the cyborg steed.

  “Wait! Not so fast!” the baron called to him.

  D knew what he wanted. The reason he halted was because compared to last time, the Nobleman sounded much more confident—even brimming with arrogance. The Hunter’s keen eyes made out the bald baron grinning in the darkness.

  “I’ve been curious about something from the first time I saw you. You have those good looks, and they call you D. So I’m wondering, did anyone ever tell you about me?”

  D’s silence was his reply.

  The baron’s smile grew broader. It also took on an evil shape, as if it’d extracted darkness from the night. “Is that so? It would seem he didn’t tell you anything about me.” Chuckling, he added, “He’s a cautious man—for someone called the Sacred Ancestor.”

  The next instant, there was a cry that was difficult to describe—a cry of despair, or a death rattle, or perhaps both—and the rotund figure leapt back. No, he didn’t leap; he was sent flying. Knocked back by a blow from a killing lust with all the substance of a solid object. Thrown all the way to the edge of the bluff, he fortunately halted just as he was about to fall off.

  “Wh—what in the—” he sputtered, every inch of him quivering as badly as his voice. For some reason, there was steam rising from his bald pate.

  “I don’t know what you might’ve heard, but since you’ve mentioned the Sacred Ancestor, I take it you’re ready to meet your maker,” D said, his voice the same wintry night as always. No, it was different. He was like someone else entirely.

  “No, I’m not! Not at all!”

  Perhaps sensing something from D as he merely stood there, the baron desperately struggled to get back to his feet and walk away—but it was clear he was so cowed that every attempt ended with him falling over again and crying out in pain. Still, he managed to tell D, “I see what the situation is. But if you do anything to me, you’ll regret it later. D, I’m the only Noble who knows even more about you than the Sacred Ancestor.”

  Those words were even more daunting than D’s murderous intent. Who would’ve thought he’d hear such a thing from this Nobleman, of all people, in this, of all places? It was completely unexpected, as if a mole had just explained the mysteries of the cosmos.

  D took a determined step forward. The chubby baron bounded back. It was rather a nice leap, considering the golden armor he wore, although he couldn’t help raining diamond necklaces and gold bracelets on the ground as he landed.

  “W-will you take me with you? If so, I’ll tell you everything I know—ahhhh?”

  His cry echoed from the opposite side of the hill. He’d landed, apparently surprised to find himself hitting a sloping path instead of the level ground he’d expected.

  “He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” the hoarse voice said. It sounded thoroughly disgusted as it continued, “For the life of me, I can’t see how he might have any connection to you. I’m sure every word out of that little con man’s mouth is a lie.”

  “What’s that you say?” a voice protested further down the sloping road.

  “Put a cork in it,” the hoarse voice blurted back. “Okay, go ahead and tell me where he is right now, then.”

  The reply came quickly. “Someplace far away, but close at hand.”

  “Oh, that’s just total crap. Right?”

  “No,” D replied.

  “What?” the hoarse voice exclaimed in a tone tinged with astonishment.

  Just then, a voice concealed by the darkness and the slope of the land had said something no one could’ve expected. They were frozen. Not just D, but his left hand as well.

  “But that’s just . . .” the hoarse voice began to say, sounding like a dead man.

  “You of all people must understand,” said the voice of the unseen figure, but it had become that of someone else. Though it came from ground level, it seemed to rain down on them from the heavens. “The key to making nocturnal Nobility walk in the light of the sun!” said the baron’s voice. “The Sacred Ancestor managed to come up with an equation, but he couldn’t reach the solution. I alone was able to do so. I, the one and only Baron Alpulup Macula! Of course, even if I gave them the solution, no one save the Sacred Ancestor could work it through. Once I realized the true power of those who feared the Nobility, D, I wanted to flee to the far reaches of the galaxy. However, by that point the regularly
scheduled flight service had been abolished, and it was too much trouble to arrange it through shadier channels. And so I buried myself underground.”

  As his voice streamed through the night air, it played a mournful melody. The song of extinction touched the heartstrings of all.

  “It seems you’re not lying,” D said softly.

  —

  III

  —

  “Of course I’m not,” said the rotund figure wobbling back up the pass. Perhaps he’d bumped into a rock or something, because he had a lump on his forehead and his eyes were teary. Sniffling, he wiped his eyes and said, “That’s as far as the story goes. Take me with you if you want more, and I’ll give you bits and pieces along the way. Don’t you want to know all the mysteries about your birth, D?”

  “I have no interest in myself,” D said, wheeling his steed around.

  “Wait. I’ll give you a little taste,” Baron Macula shouted, quickly changing his tack. “The fact of the matter is, the ol’ Sacred Ancestor objected to my solution to the equation. Indeed, several solutions exist, and he and I arrived at ours through different methods. Either one of them can be used to make Nobles capable of walking in the light of the sun. However, they don’t live long. Six months at best. Both of us made improvements to our solutions, but that only added a few years to their lives.”

  The hoarse voice went on the attack. “It’s a waste of time. The Nobility are beasts that prowl the darkness, of course. How many lives do you have to toy with in the pursuit of stupid hopes and ideas before you’re satisfied?”

  “That’s the crux of it,” the baron said, his expression charged with all the excitement of a fledgling actor approaching his first big line. “To be sure, our solutions to the equation were incomplete. So, before burying myself underground, I once again went over the equation from its very core principles. And those efforts ultimately bore fruit. You see, I came up with a perfect equation and solution for making Nobles who could walk in the light of day.”