Chapter 21 - Hunt of Sacred Beasts

"Good job, everyone." Ryuuga praised the team led by Lavinia and Akeno upon their return. Watching their fight, he felt satisfied. They had trained their powers, but they still needed more combat experience.

"Well, because Shirone was so brave, she will be given to you." Ryuuga said, patting her head affectionately. Then, he handed her the cat that was still sleeping on his shoulder.

Tao Wu opened its eyes and gazed at Shirone curiously.

"Nyaa~" Shirone purred, raising her hand like a paw.

"Meow~" Tao Wu meowed as it jumped onto Shirone's head. The ball on Ryuuga's palm also entered Shirone's chest.

It seemed Tao Wu had accepted her as its host.

"Thank you, nii-sama." Shirone said with a blush, excited to have a new friend and playmate.

As for the missing students, they had all been delivered back to their own homes, one by one, alongside their parents. Their parents had been kidnapped by the Utsusemi Agency for the experiment to succeed.

Initially, they were given money by the Utsusemi Agency to move out so they would not think about their child, but in truth, they were kidnapped by them.

All memories of the incident had been deleted and manipulated. They only remembered being stranded on an island and being rescued.

But there was one student who didn't return home: Toujou Sae. Still unconscious, she was taken to Hanging Garden. Her case was special. They didn't want her to forget about the supernatural world.

Her Utsusemi was unique. It was called one of the Three Demonic Beasts, creatures based on Dorothy's companions from Oz. Her Utsusemi, Cowardly Leo, or Lion Who Lost Its Courage, could move within shadows, manipulate them, and unleash giant flames.

In addition to her, two more students hadn't returned: Nanadaru Shigune, the wielder of Tao Tie, and Koga Hyousuke, the wielder of Hun Dun.

"Um...?" Sae groaned as she woke up after a few hours of fainting. She found herself on a sofa and immediately sat up.

She glanced around and saw she was surrounded by girls she didn't recognize, feeling a twinge of fear.

"Umm... Where am I?" Sae braved herself and asked the girls.

"Congratulations on waking up, Sae. You're in our base right now. Don't you remember what happened?" Lavinia answered, being close to Sae's age.

"Ugh..." Sae tried to recall the events. Her head started to hurt, but she pushed through.

"I remember the ship being ambushed by a man. Then I woke up in a lab, my limbs tied. And... a black lion? Yes, it was staring at me... I was scared..." Sae muttered, piecing together some memories. After that, everything went dark until she woke up surrounded by the girls.

"Toujou-san, do you remember your friends?" Natsume asked. She and Sae went to the same school but were in different classes. They only knew each other's names and appearances.

"Ah! Minagawa-san, you're here too!" Sae exclaimed when she saw Natsume. She hadn't noticed her earlier because she was confused by the many girls surrounding her.

"Umm… friends? I do remember some of them." Sae answered. But it felt like she was forgetting someone important.

"Do you know a boy named Ikuse Tobio?" Natsume asked, curious. Ryuuga had mentioned that Sae might forget about Tobio due to her intense emotions toward him. The Cowardly Leo had consumed those emotions and memories to assimilate with her.

The reason she could wield the Cowardly Leo was exactly because of her strong feelings for Tobio. Just as it lost its courage, it regained it by consuming strong emotions and memories.

Poor Tobio. Not only had his Longinus been taken away, turning him into a normal human, but his childhood sweetheart also forgot about him. Not that he would remember her, anyway.

"Who is that?" Sae was confused. The name stirred something in her, but she shook it off, not recognizing it.

"...Just a random boy from our school." Natsume said after a pause.

"Umm… Can I go home now?" Sae asked. She missed her parents and wanted to see them.

"Sae, don't you feel any grief or hatred? After all, you were kidnapped." Lavinia interjected. She didn't want to let Sae leave without recruiting her.

Then, Lavinia told Sae everything that had happened: how she was kidnapped, experimented on, her parents abducted, and how she was implanted with Utsusemi.

"Did that really happen?" Sae asked, tears welling up in her eyes. She only had fragments of those memories.

"Are my parents okay?" Sae asked, wiping the tears from her face.

"Yes, we rescued them." Lavinia said with a reassuring smile. It seemed her words had an effect on Sae.

"Thank you… really…" Sae said with a heartfelt smile.

"You have a power inside you, Sae. Don't you want to use it to help others? If this kind of thing could happen to you, how many other humans out there have experienced the same or worse?" Lavinia whispered to Sae. Her words were true. In this world, humans were often exploited or harmed by supernatural forces, their memories erased or their lives taken without anyone noticing.

"…But I don't know how to use that power…" Sae said, feeling dejected. If she could control it, she might agree to join them, not wanting other humans to suffer as she had.

"Don't worry, Toujou-san. We'll help you with that." Natsume reassured her with a smile. She didn't want to be left out and thought it would be good to recruit a fellow classmate.

"Is someone weak like me really okay?" Sae hesitated.

"Ara~ Of course you are, Sae-san. You're much stronger than you think." Akeno interjected. She had been told by Ryuuga to recruit Sae as one of her vassals and had readily agreed.

Lavinia didn't contest Akeno for Sae because she wanted her own vassals to be filled with magicians. She had already given a Caster Card to Walburga and wasn't worried about betrayal due to the Slave Contract and the Servant Card's effects.

"Okay. Please take care of me, everyone." Sae decided to join the group, standing up and bowing slightly to the girls in the room.

Akeno then gave her the Smasher Card, thinking it would be fun to see such a cute and fragile girl like Sae swinging around a large hammer with ease. The idea of Sae's gap moe was too delightful to resist.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Two days later, after the annihilation of the Utsusemi Agency, the Five Principal Clans were on high alert, unsure of who was responsible for the attack. They didn't know if it was perpetrated by an enemy or an unknown ally.

During these two days, the girls had been training diligently for their next mission, as assigned by Ryuuga.

"Adriel, Marion, Ile, Nel, your task is to ambush Kushihashi Seiryuu. Bulent, Mira, Ni, Li, and Xuelan, you'll be ambushing Shinra Byakko. Retrieve both the Azure Dragon and White Tiger from them." Ryuuga said at the meeting table, a smile playing on his lips.

His next target would be the Five Principal Clans, specifically their Sacred Beasts.

"Akeno, Shuri, and Siris, head to the Himejima Clan. Shuriya and Kuroka, bring back Doumon Genbu to his place. Rias, Mihae, and Yubelluna will ambush Nakiri Ouryuu." he continued.

All the girls nodded in agreement, eager to gain experience outside the confines of their training.

"What about me? What about me?" Walburga raised her hand excitedly, eager to join in the action.

"You, Karlamine, and Sae will sneak into the Nakiri Clan and retrieve a girl named Nakiri Momiji." Ryuuga assigned a task to his new vassals.

"O-Okay!" Sae answered nervously, nodding in agreement. Despite Ryuuga's youthful appearance, it was his wisdom and authority that made her hesitate to approach him as casually as she would a child.

"Well, let's head out after lunch." Ryuuga said, and they all nodded in agreement.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

In a prestigious academy in Kyoto, a young man strolled through the school park, his earphones in place. He was quite handsome with short gray hair and wore glasses, along with a blue blazer. He seemed like a loner, avoiding interaction with others. All the students knew him as Kushihashi Seiryuu, the president of the student council.

"Hm?" Seiryuu halted, frowning as he sensed a change in the air. He removed his earphones, observing several figures emerging not far from him, surrounded by a black misty sphere rising from the ground.

"Who are you guys? Coming here to confess?" Seiryuu eyed the group of girls with interest. It was the first time he had been ambushed. No one had dared to do so before.

"Hey~ Feeling like getting chopped?"

"Chop! Chop!" Ile and Nel brandished their Sacred Gears, Verdant Glaive (also known as Green Dragon Crescent Blade) and Storm Fury (also known as Axe of Furious Lightning), respectively.

Verdant Glaive was a rare Sacred Gear fashioned after the crescent-bladed halberd used by Guan Yu in his human life. Storm Fury, on the other hand, replicated the Axe of Perun, taking the form of a twin-bladed axe.

"Now this is interesting." Seiryuu said with a grin, adjusting his glasses. He hadn't expected to face multiple Sacred Gear users.

"Astral Light." Adriel muttered as a spear appeared in her hand. It was golden and surrounded by a light aura. She had been a holy maiden of a church in Ireland before being targeted by Diodora.

In her childhood, her parents had told her the story of Lugh. Though it was considered heretical, it was just a bedtime tale to her. Lugh wielded a spear called Brionac, and when she was told to find her own Sacred Gear, she returned to her hometown to search for it.

The God of the Bible was known as a super researcher, always trying to replicate the mythical weapons of other gods and turning them into Sacred Gears for humans to use. Eventually, she found her long-wished-for Sacred Gear inside a dying boy. The Sacred Gear wasn't named Brionac, but Stellar Light, also known as Five Roaring Stars.

Marion followed suit, summoning her Sacred Gear, Annihilation Justice, also known as Judge Hammer of Death Verdict. It was based on the hammer used by Yama in hell to judge and destroy souls.

"Now, let's enjoy this battle shall we?" Seiryuu grinned and summoned out his Sacred Beast, the Azure Dragon. Behind him, a silhouette of a green-like dragon aura appeared.

He is not afraid of them even if they all held Sacred Gears. After all, he is the heir of Kushihashi Clan and he himself is on par with Peak High-Class Devil. But, what he didn't know is the four girls were also at that stage.

Five minutes later...

"Did I just lose?" Seiryuu lay on the ground, staring at the sky in disbelief. He hadn't expected to be defeated so easily, even after using all his power.

His Sacred Beast had been taken from him, now trapped in a special cage created by Ryuuga to store Sacred Beasts. Inside it, the power of the Sacred Beasts was nullified, and their connection with their masters was severed.

"Hehe, that was fun. Now, please go to sleep." Ile said, standing beside him and looking down with a giggle. She aimed the end of her halberd handle at his head.

"W-Wait—" Seiryuu started to say, but Ile had already struck his head, making him pass out.

What an anticlimactic battle.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

"Oh? You're done too, Marion?" Bulent said, talking to Marion on the phone. These phones were special creations by Ryuuga, never needing to be charged as they absorbed any kind of supernatural energy.

Bulent, Mira, Ni, Li, and Xuelan had been ordered to go after Byakko. She had thought he would be strong since they dispatched multiple team members. It turned out his strength was only on their level, so he was easily defeated when they joined forces.

"Damn it! What the hell do you guys want?!" Shinra Byakko shouted, his body covered in bruises and blood.

He had just been walking to a bar when he was suddenly ambushed. With his pride as the heir of the Shinra Clan, he fought back, but he hadn't expected to be defeated so easily.

Even his White Tiger had been taken away. What would happen to him if his family found out?