Read Online Iriya the Berserker by Hideyuki Kikuchi - Free Book Online

food. The secret of their vitality was pressurized water reserves stored beneath their skin, which allowed them to remain aboveground for nearly twelve hours. Their nest was under this area, and they would periodically surface and crawl around, feeding on spiders and birds—and travelers.
    And now the sort of delectable morsel they hadn’t tasted for decades was headed into their midst. Their olfactory senses caught the odor of their prey, sensors in their skin cells felt the vibrations of feet making contact with the ground, their hearing made out the footsteps—they could even catch the sound of the blood pumping through the prey’s veins. They lacked sight. The writhing denizens of the earth’s depths had no use for eyes. The remaining senses conveyed everything.
    Big. Soft. Tasty.
    That was how the information would’ve looked in human language, and their primitive senses transformed the hunger that pervaded them into adrenaline. Moving their long bodies just like inchworms, the invertebrates raced toward their prey.
    Two forces tormented Meeker. One was Lorelei’s command to die, the other a primal wish for self-preservation—and though the two urges clashed, he backed away only a single step before halting.
    One of the insects before him had closed to within ten feet. It had a blunt head split in a cross shape. Its crimson maw had rows of stark fangs like glassy thorns.
    A streak of light fell from the sky. Over Meeker’s head, the small gleam became dozens of arrows of light that lanced through the insects’ bodies. Surprisingly enough, the projectiles pierced the very rock. Most of them had found their mark, but the few that hadn’t were jutting from the stone of the quarry.
    Perhaps those strays had been intended for the creature that ignored its shuddering compatriots and launched itself at Meeker. However, just as its pernicious fangs were about to close on the boy’s head, a horizontal streak of silver pierced the loathsome insect.
    On landing, D hurled three more needles that impaled the remaining creatures, then coughed violently. The left hand he used to cover his mouth was stained with blood.
    “You haven’t fully recovered yet—and I ain’t so hot, either.”
    Even when Meeker heard the hoarse voice say that, his color didn’t return, and he looked impassively at D and his ghastly state.
    “He’s mesmerized, I’d say,” the hoarse voice remarked, sounding somewhat pained.
    D put his bloodstained hand to Meeker’s head.
    “Well, I’ll be—he’s been captivated by the Lorelei’s song. Not good. He’ll stay this way until the one who bound him is slain or the spell is broken!”
    “You could do it, couldn’t you?” D said. His lips and mouth were both covered with fresh blood. Even racked by deadly poison, he had a voice as cold as ice and steel.
    “Yeah. It’s pretty painful, though!”
    “For which of you?”
    “Me, actually.”
    The Hunter’s hand went flat against Meeker’s brow. A faint groan could be heard, but D paid it no mind, surveying his surroundings as he held the pose.
    A cloud rolled across the heavens. The shadow it cast on the earth casually crept from east to west, and when it reached the young man and the boy in the quarry, D had already taken his left handaway.
    Scooping up the reeling Meeker, he went over to the impaled insects. Piercing them at an angle and sticking into the rock below were silver arrows over two feet long.
    “Silver,” the hoarse voice murmured, sounding impressed.
III
    “Silver, as a protection against evil?” D said, evaluating the balance of one of the arrows as he looked up at the sky.
    “Could it be . . .” With those hoarse words, a human face began to rise from the palm of D’s left hand. Astonishingly enough, it was grinning. “Was it that girl , D?”
    D clenched his fist. With a squeal, the human face faded. Its appearance had been fleeting.
    Shaking his head a bit, Meeker asked, “Did someone scream just now?” He