Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 14 - Chapter 1

1. Distant [faraway]

Everywhere was suffocatingly red.

It was red, but not red red. It was a yellowy red, so vermilion.

The leaves, the trunks, and the branches of the trees in this forest, though there was some variance in strength, were all the same color. To say a bit more, the ground onto which the leaves had fallen was red, too.

No, not red, vermilion. It kind of made his eyes hurt.

Up ahead, Alice C turned back, the sinister shovel thrust into the ground. “This is the Scarlet Forest.”

It was dirty, or rather stained, but Haruhiro wondered if maybe Alice’s raincoat had been red at one point.

“Scarlet...” Haruhiro murmured to himself. The word sounded familiar. If he recalled, Alice had offhandedly mentioned they were heading to some place with a name like that once. “‘Scarlet’ is the name of a color, right?”

“What else did you think it was?”

“No, nothing really...”

He hadn’t heard Alice properly to begin with, and there would have been no point in going, “Scar... what? Sorry, what’d you say?” He’d just have been ignored. And if he argued back now, saying there hadn’t really been any reason for him to think it was that color, that would get ignored, too.

“First you write the beast radical with the character for star beside it,” Alice explained very quickly, using the tip of the shovel to write 猩 on the ground. “You have two of those next to each other. Then this character for red,” Alice continued, writing another 猩 beside the first, and then 緋.

“Ohhhh!”

Alice’s face was mostly hidden by the raincoat’s hood and the mask. Surprisingly, though, the eyes said as much as the mouth. Those upturned eyes weren’t simply exasperated; Alice was almost certainly looking down on Haruhiro.

“The Scarlet Forest, huh,” Haruhiro said. “Okay. The Scarlet Forest...”

He looked down, nodded to himself, cleared his throat, and scratched his head, but Haruhiro wasn’t feeling out of it.

Or so he thought. Probably.

“Huh?” Haruhiro looked around the area. It was weird. Where’s...?

He couldn’t see Alice anywhere. Why?

“Huh? Whoa, um, Alice?”

There was no response, so he perked his ears up. There was a rustling of grass, and a faint crunching of leaves underfoot. Or at least he thought he heard that. It might have just been his imagination.

No way. Had he been left behind?

He started to run, and nearly ran into something red.

“Wah!”

When he took another look, it was the leaves of a shrub. Everything here was red—no, scarlet—so it was hard to tell it all apart, but there was undergrowth all over the place in this forest.

The leaves of the shrubs and young trees were as hard as metal, thin, and sharp as razors. The branches all had thorns, making the place a natural death trap. With all this potential for getting cut or stabbed, it was beyond dangerous.

He brushed the whip-like branches and the razor-like leaves aside with his cloak, pushing forward as he rushed onward. He might have wondered how long he’d been going, but he had no watch, and time was unreliable here, so it didn’t mean much, anyway.

Whatever the case, he finally saw the back of a person.

“Alice!” he shouted.

“You’re so noisy.” Despite sounding irritated, Alice did stop for him, so he was able to catch up somehow. If not for that, he might have lost sight of Alice again.

“You don’t have to go so far ahead,” Haruhiro complained. “You’d be in trouble without me too, wouldn’t you?”

“So, what, you want me to be nice?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Alice snorted and walked off.

It wouldn’t have killed Alice to say, Let’s go, at least. Alice was always acting a little faster than Haruhiro anticipated.

Maybe we’re a bad match, he thought. At the very least, they didn’t feel like a good match.

He decided to keep quiet and focus on following behind Alice for a while. Even just keeping up was pretty difficult. Alice was slender and short, and though they weren’t exactly speed walking, Alice was moving forward strangely quickly.

What was with the way Alice walked? It wasn’t just a matter of being light on the feet. The steps made it seem like Alice was walking on water, or floating on air, to the point it made Haruhiro question whether Alice had any weight at all.

Naturally, Alice had weight. Alice wasn’t a ghost, so that had to be the case.

“Once we get through to the other side of this Scarlet Forest, there’s the king’s castle, right?” Haruhiro asked. “No... not the other side, right? Umm, it was in the middle of this forest, wasn’t it?”

Alice didn’t answer. Not that he minded. Whatever. He was used to it now. He never expected a proper conversation to begin with. No matter what he said, Alice responded maybe half of the time, at best.

While he was thinking that, Alice mumbled, “Assuming we can overcome this, yeah.”

There was a sudden shadow, and a chill ran down Haruhiro’s back.

When he looked up, something massive was looking down at him.

Something.

No, wait, is it... someone, maybe?

It was awfully big to be human, so a giant? Maybe?

It was taller than the trees of the Scarlet Forest, looking down on them sinisterly from above. It had really good complexion, and its puffy lips were pink. No eyebrows. No eyelashes. No hair on its head, or at all for that matter.

If you set aside the size of it, it had a puffy face like a newborn baby. From where Haruhiro stood, he could only see up to its shoulders, but it was probably buck naked.

“Eehee... Aahaa...” The world shook a little. “Uhohoho... Eheheh...”

The volume was incredible. Was it that thing’s... voice?

To be perfectly frank, it was damn scary.

“What is that?” Haruhiro gulped.

“A dream monster, duh.” Alice already had the shovel at the ready. It was no ordinary shovel. Though Alice’s shovel wasn’t specially made, it had gained special powers after certain occurrences. It was blackened and dented all over, so it looked like nothing if not bad news. That fact of the matter was that shovel was pretty nuts, but they were up against a giant baby.

“Isn’t it kinda big...?” Haruhiro protested.

“Well, this is the Scarlet Forest. There are plenty more where that one came from.”

“You’re joking... right?”

“Why would I feel the need to tell you jokes? Are you stupid?”

“Ooheee... Ohohhh... Ahyahhh... Ehahahahhh...” The baby howled once more.

No, it’s not a baby, Haruhiro corrected himself. The dream monster. Sorry.

No, this was no time for apologizing inside his head.

In the next instant, the wind blew. Bwoosh! Scarlet leaves scattered.

“Whoa!” Haruhiro huddled and dug in his heels. If he hadn’t, the wind was strong enough that he felt like he might have been blown away.

“It’s coming,” Alice said, not really shouting.

Haruhiro wanted to ask, What is? but with a dream monster that big in front of them, what else was it going to be? It had to be the giant baby dream monster. The problem was, how would it come at them?

“It jumped!” Haruhiro shouted.

Indeed. It jumped. The baby, the giant dream monster baby, jumped. Well, didn’t that just beat all. It was getting some impressive air time, too. He could see the bottoms of its giant demon monster baby feet.

It was more of a running long jump than a vertical jump, and it had leapt over the tops of the Scarlet Forest’s trees. Then it came down. Praise be to gravity. No, he didn’t want to praise it at all. At this rate, Haruhiro was almost certainly going to get stepped on. If that thing stomped him, he’d go splat like a little bug.

“Haruhiro!” Alice shouted at him.

“Coming!” Haruhiro replied as he rushed to Alice’s side.

He went just close enough that he wasn’t touching her, but, “More!” Alice shouted.

If Haruhiro hesitated, Alice might hit him with that shovel, so Haruhiro worked up his courage and hugged Alice tight.

Suddenly, Alice’s shovel burst.

No, it didn’t burst. The black outer layer, the skin-like stuff split, forming ten or more writhing, slithering strands, stretching up and downwards from its holder. It was almost like they were alive. It wasn’t often you saw a shovel like this.

Incidentally, the main body—was that what it was? Anyway, the inside revealed when the skin peeled was like a red meat stick.

Did calling it a meat stick sound indecent? Maybe it was best to stop at referring to it as a stick of meat. Maybe it didn’t make a difference.

Regardless, the way the shovel looked with its skin peeled defied the imagination. It wasn’t normal for a shovel to have a skin that could peel away to begin with.

The black strands of flesh formed a basket as he watched, wrapping around Alice and Haruhiro. There were gaps in between the black strands of skin. Those gaps were gradually filled by other strands of skin.

Obviously, the giant dream monster didn’t stop falling as it did that. The giant dream monster baby’s foot—oh crap, the bottom of its foot was getting close. Not good.

It was coming right at them.

This was bad.

Seriously bad.

Haruhiro was about ready to scream.

He tried to hold it in, but he let out a little yelp despite himself. “Eep!”

The moment when the gaps filled in completely, and the black strips formed more of a cocoon than a basket, maybe a little before that, or a little after, the foot finally came down on them.

With how big the thing was, the giant dream monster baby had to weigh more than just a few hundred kilos or a few tons. It wouldn’t surprise him if it weighed tens of tons, or hundreds.

Surprisingly, the cocoon of black straps cushioned the weight of it, and it somehow managed to protect Alice and Haruhiro inside. However, the cocoon sank into the ground, so the impact must have been incredible. Haruhiro had no idea how the two of them were all right.

If someone told him, Actually, you got smashed flat as a pancake, he’d have had an easier time believing it. However, there was nothing wrong with his body, so he clearly hadn’t been crushed.

In that case, what on Earth had happened? What was going on right now?

Haruhiro was still clinging to Alice. There was no question about that. No light shone into the confines of the cocoon, but inside the shovel—no, inside the meat stick—no, the stick of meat—there was a faint pulsing glow. Thanks to that, it wasn’t pitch black.

Alice’s face was right in front of his.

It was like Haruhiro was hugging Alice from behind. No, it wasn’t like that—he actually was hugging Alice from behind, so it couldn’t be helped that they had ended up so close. On top of that, Alice’s face was turned towards him, so if they hadn’t been wearing masks, they were so close they might have had no choice but to end up kissing.

Normally, he would have moved away, but he couldn’t do that now. The cocoon was tight, after all. With the giant dream monster baby having stepped on it, the cocoon was probably embedded in the ground, and indented as a result, which made it so tight inside that neither Haruhiro nor Alice could move.

This was unbearable.

Alice blinked. “...What?”

“Nah... I was just wondering what happened out—”

Before Haruhiro could finish, there was another impact.

What was this? What the hell was this?

He didn’t know, he couldn’t possibly have known, but if he had to take an educated guess, this would be it. They were being stepped on. Repeatedly, by the giant dream monster baby.

Bam, bam, bam! It was stomping them.

“This is tight!” Alice called, so it had to be pretty bad. Actually, he was amazed Alice could speak.

You’ll bite your tongue, he thought. Be careful.

Naturally, he couldn’t actually make the warning. If he opened his mouth now, he was sure he’d bite his own tongue. He might bite all the way through.

There was a more than remote chance the cocoon would be smashed with them inside before then, so maybe he didn’t need to worry about his tongue? Maybe he should just bite through it anyway? Bad idea?

“Oh...?”

What now? This was different from before. The situation had clearly changed.

Up, huh? Up? Yeah, up. The cocoon was moving upwards.

Were they being lifted, maybe? The giant dream monster baby had picked the cocoon up? If so, what did it plan to do with it next?

“Haruhiro,” Alice said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s probably going to spin.”

What did that mean, spin?

Before he could ask, it started spinning. What was spinning, you ask? This world? Parano the other world? No, the cocoon. The cocoon was going round and round.

Haruhiro shut his eyes tight. If he did this, it felt just a little more bearable. If he opened his eyes, it was nauseating. Scary, too.

He shut his mouth tight, gritted his teeth, and held on to Alice tight because he had no other choice.

That was right. There was nothing Haruhiro could do.

It was common in Parano, common sense so to speak, that people could use magic here.

When it came to magic, there were three types: Philia, Narci, and Doppel. Alice’s was Philia.

The source of strength for Philia was an attachment, a thing that supported one’s way of life, something a person couldn’t do without. This was called a fetish.

It went without saying that Alice’s fetish was the shovel. The shovel was the source of Alice’s magic, and magic itself.

To simplify things, with Philia a fetish, with Narci oneself, and with Doppel another person, you gave a person power and became their magic.

Incidentally, Haruhiro could use magic, too. However, Haruhiro’s magic somehow wasn’t Filia, Narci, or Doppel.

Weird, huh? Weren’t there only three types of magic? Normally, yes. But there was an exception to everything.

The exception in Parano’s magic was Resonance.

Sadly, this magic did nothing for the person who had it. Each magic, regardless of type, strengthened something, and Haruhiro felt it was a faster and more reliable way than working out and improving skills through experience. But no matter how hard he worked to improve his magic, Haruhiro would not benefit in any way.

Resonance enhanced or expanded the magic of another. That was apparently the type of magic it was.

That was incredible—or was it?

According to Alice, it was an incredibly unusual and valuable magic or something like that. But as far as Haruhiro himself was concerned, he couldn’t be happy about it without reservations. Actually, he wasn’t happy in the least. He could strengthen his magic as much as he wanted, but it wouldn’t make him any stronger at all. Wasn’t that unfair? It was pretty awful, right? Like, seriously, screw that. If flipping out over it would have solved anything, he would have, but there was nothing to be done about it, so he’d just have to shut up and accept it.

Yeah. If he was getting spun, he’d just have to spin. He could look at it as a form of training, and accept his spinning self.

But hold on. They weren’t just spinning, were they? They were flying, too, right? He could feel as it whooped round and round that they were whooshing through the air, too. Had they been thrown, maybe? The giant dream monster baby had picked them up and thrown them? That was it, huh?

So that was what it had come to. It’d gotten pissed when it couldn’t stomp them flat, so it was throwing them. For all its babyish appearance, it had some pretty strong shoulders. If they’d been thrown like Haruhiro was thinking, they were really flying. This was some serious air time.

How far was this thing going to fly...?