Record of the Blood Battle by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page A

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 hand, 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