From the Warlord's Empire by Gakuto Mikumo Page B

dress with a large gap open over the back. Seeing the weaponless girl, the bestialized Makimura ferociously bared his fangs with a laugh.
    “Homunculus?! Do you think this brat can stop me…!”
    “…Execute ‘Rhododactylos.’”
    The next instant, it was as if Astarte’s flesh was ripped open by the wing that emerged from her back, glowing with the colors of the rainbow. The shock wave from them warped the air inside the lab. It was a pulse of magical energy so dense that it gained solidity and physical mass. Bathed in it at close range, Makimura screamed.
    “Wha…?!”
    The wing that had sprouted from the girl’s back changed shape to that of a giant arm. It was the arm of a golem, covered in rainbow-colored armor. With all the force of a cannon, its fist slammed into the werewolf man head-on.
    The dull, crashing sound conveyed the sense of bone and flesh being smashed.
    It was might that surely would have killed any normal human. But the small girl called Astarte had apparently not held back whatsoever.
    “A…a Beast Vassal?! That’s crazy… Why does a homunculus have a Beast Vassal…?!”
    Coughing up a mass of blood, Makimura made a frail groan that seemed delirious.
    Astarte’s expressionless eyes, like the surface of a calm lake, looked down upon Makimura as the arm extending from her back restrained his body. The true nature of that giant arm was a sentient mass of magical energy known as a Beast Vassal.
    These were summoned beasts from another world, taking physical form in exchange for consuming the life force of their host.
    As familiars went, these were the worst of the worst, suddenly exhausting the life force of their summoners and granting them death.
    But by the same token, the combat ability of a Beast Vassal was immense. It was because vampires could use Beast Vassals that they were the most feared of all demonkind.
    And only vampires, with infinite “negative” life forces, could tame Beast Vassals…
    Astarte was the one and only exception. For Rhododactylos was an artificial Beast Vassal constructed for a certain objective by a Lotharingian Armed Apostle.
    Makimura, unable to maintain his bestialized state due to the heavy wounds he’d sustained, coughed violently as he returned to human form. Rushing over while they had the chance, the men in black suits fastened a metal ring around Makimura’s neck. It was an anti-demon restraining device that employed a weak electrical current to throw the nervous system into haywire and prevent bestialization.
    “…I’m very sorry, instructor Minamiya. Your aid was invaluable.”
    One of the men in black, pressing down on his broken arm, said words of thanks to Natsuki. She elegantly shook her head as she opened up a black-frilled fan.
    “No need to thank me. I’m not the one who did the work.”
    As she spoke, she made an annoyed-sounding snort. Though her manner of speech was overbearing, her overly childish-sounding voice and natural-born grace kept it from feeling grating.
    Indeed, the men in black looked quite pleased at how coldly she treated them. It was all part of Natsuki’s charm.
    In the meantime, she looked over several photographs spread out over Makimura’s desk.
    They were photos of stone tablets that had been excavated from some ancient ruin. Engraved on the faces of the stone tablets were the same indecipherable symbols as those displayed on the laboratory’s monitor. But merely by looking at those lines of text, she instinctively understood.
    What was written here contained frighteningly dangerous power…
    “So this is what the Black Death Emperor Front went through the trouble of smuggling in from Southeast Asia… It seems to be no mere relic after all… Where’s the original?”
    “…Cannot confirm target. Hypothesis: Target has already been removed from this facility,” Astarte casually replied to Natsuki’s musings. The homunculus girl pointed to a metal shipping case left in a corner of the room.
    Though it