3
“—Imbecile. How long must you insist on imposing your clueless, carefree face on the world?”
“Gh, aaaaaaaah!!!”
Subaru Natsuki awoke with a scream as he experienced the feeling of his face being gripped by a crimson flame. He jolted up at the intense heat enveloping his face, and the pain of it scorched his eyes. He groaned and flailed on the ground while cradling his face. His heart was pounding, and it felt like all the blood in his body was boiling from the heat—
“Wh-what—what happened…?”
“Ohh, what a pitiful creature. Such an ill-kept head to begin with, and now that it has been bleached out by all the water, apparently nothing remains on the inside. At this rate, you won’t even be fit for your role as a jester.”
“That outrageous arrogance and lack of consideration for others…”
Subaru wiped away the tears welling up as he turned toward the source of the caustic voice verbally lashing him. His blurry vision gradually cleared, and what appeared was a beautiful girl who seemed like a walking personification of the color red—
“So it is you, Priscilla.”
Priscilla sniffed haughtily, crossing her arms, almost like she was deliberately emphasizing her well-endowed chest.
“Who else would I be? As if another as beautiful as I could exist in this world. If your eyes fail to detect something that obvious, it would be best to spoon them out and at least save yourself the trouble of carrying around such useless appendages.”
“There’s no way that would be better! And I feel obligated to point out that when it comes to beautiful women, the other royal-selection candidates are all top-tier knockouts… Not that that matters anyway!”
Subaru had gotten sucked into Priscilla’s pace and reflexively retorted before he got ahold of himself.
He had been unconscious and had woken up to discover Priscilla was with him. His first thought was that he had died and restarted another loop at the park, which would’ve placed him just before the Archbishop of Wrath, Sirius, was scheduled to start her atrocity in the plaza by the time tower.
Right as Subaru started to wonder why he had been returned to that point after dying…
“Where is this…?”
That guess went out the window as he realized he did not recognize his surroundings. There was none of the natural greenery that filled the park. He was in a narrow alley. And for some reason, it was muddy and filled with puddles.
“And it’s not just the ground, either… I’m practically dripping here.”
Grabbing the sleeve of his tracksuit, Subaru was baffled by his waterlogged condition. His whole body was wet. As if he had cannonballed into a bath with all his clothes on. Had there been some torrential rainstorm while he was out? If not, then—
“Did I fall into the canal? Or was there some terrible flood…?”
“—Yes, sirree! That’s exactly what happened! Your humblest Liliana was trembling so much in awe at it all that it’s almost like I’ve invented a new dance! See!”
Subaru’s fearful guess was affirmed by the surprise entry of a voice that came with musical accompaniment. The source of both suddenly appeared from behind Priscilla. Dark skin and an oddly aggressive manner of speech marked her as the city of water’s peerless Songstress.
“Liliana! I’m glad you’re safe… Turns out you were with Priscilla!”
“I mean, you and Lady Emilia and the little lady all left me behind with Lady Priscilla in the park! And with the whole town gone topsy-turvy like this, I was so scared, I couldn’t bear to move a single step away from the oh-so-reliable Lady Priscilla’s side.”
She didn’t hesitate at all to whine before latching on to Priscilla’s waist. It was the sort of brazen behavior that normally would’ve earned her a one-way trip to the executioner’s chop from Priscilla, but for some reason she was extraordinarily tolerant of Liliana because of her rare talent.
Liliana was trembling like a fawn as Priscilla nodded and patted her head.
“As the diva said, soon after you left the park, a boorish rabble defiled the waters of the city. Exceedingly merciful as I might be, even I cannot forgive such an outrage. I was on my way to relieve them of their heads when I noticed a certain foolish commoner floating in the water.”
“Ahh, I see. And this foolish commoner floating in the water… Did you perhaps mean me by that?” Subaru asked, pointing to himself.
Priscilla just sniffed as if to say, Who else could it be? Choosing to interpret that as an affirmative, Subaru felt his confusion grow.
“I was floating in the water…? Why? That doesn’t make any sense…”
He thought back to the last thing he could remember: Subaru had been on the top floor of the city hall building. He had been defeated by a dreadful monster, the Archbishop of Lust.
Capella had used Lust’s Authority to freely transform herself into a beastly form, and unable to withstand her fierce barrage of attacks, Subaru’s right leg had come free. After losing a lot of blood, he had been writhing in pain…
“But I’ve still got my leg. It’s still connected. The bandage is coming undone, but… Ugh?!”
The wrap around his badly wounded leg had gotten filthy from being drenched in blood and fetid water. But as he removed it to check his leg, he shouted in disgust at what lay beneath.
“Wh-what happened?! Ugh?! Wh-wh-wh-what is that?!”
“ ”
Drawn by Subaru’s response, Liliana came closer out of curiosity and immediately turned pale. Beside her, Priscilla peered down, eyes filled with revulsion.
All three of them were looking at Subaru’s right leg, which should have been torn off during the fighting with Capella. But despite his remembering differently, it was still attached—and covered by hideous black flesh.
“ ”
He felt no pain in his foot.
Caught up in the shock of seeing the condition of his limb, he rolled up the leg of his pants, revealing the full extent of the black, wriggling, vein-like protrusions extending up from his foot. A cautious touch confirmed the leg had some give to it, similar to that of normal human flesh. Ignoring its appearance, he could even call it fully healed.
“To be clear, your limbs were all attached when we found you. That hideous leg has nothing to do with us. And judging from the look on your face, it’s clear you weren’t born this way.”
“…Thanks for catching me up while I was dealing with the shock of finding this nasty stuff that someone embroidered on my leg without my permission… There’s no way this is the result of healing magic, right?”
Nodding along to Priscilla’s response, Subaru ruled out what seemed to be the most likely way it could have happened. As far as he knew, healing magic operated under the basic principle of increasing the natural recovery ability of a patient’s body. It was not regeneration, so scars would be left after healing. In fact, there were plenty of those on Subaru’s body already.
But the dark mass on his leg was nothing like those scars. He could confidently say it was not the result of healing magic. The healing magic he knew was a gentler, warmer, miraculous power that saved not only bodies but even souls. The sort of thing that Ferris was proud of, that Beatrice had mastered as if it came naturally to her, that Garfiel had studied for the sake of his wish, that Rem had so earnestly offered freely. This black mark on his leg was a blasphemous desecration of that sort of miracle.
“Just to be sure, commoner, am I correct in assuming that your leg was not originally some sort of oddity that could reattach itself even after being violently removed?”
“That sounds like you’re asking just to ask, but yeah, my body doesn’t work that way. I’ve had my leg torn off before, but I died… Almost died that time.”
“You’ve had a body part torn off before?! What a life!”
When Liliana heard such an absurd answer to an absurd question, her excitement bubbled up.
But when he thought back to what had happened before, at least during that first loop, there had been no sign of his body gluing itself back together. And there hadn’t been any situation later in which he’d ever displayed any kind of hyper-regeneration, either.
Priscilla nodded and simply said “I see” at his response.
“Don’t raise your voice,” she ordered curtly as she swung the fan in her hand with the flick of a wrist. Unable to follow the red fan’s path, Subaru and Liliana peeled their eyes in an attempt to figure out what was going on, but her target became all too clear before long.
“—Gh!”
There was a faint numbness, and then Subaru’s leg was struck by a burning heat. The edge of her fan had grazed his leg, leaving a sharp gouge in his thigh.
Subaru was hit by two different shocks: The first came from the realization of how skilled she must be to do something like that with a fan, and the second came from the realization that she was the kind of person who could slice open someone else’s leg with zero hesitation. But both thoughts were erased by the even greater shock of what happened next. The cut on his leg was deep enough to reveal bone—until the black flesh swallowed it up. Within seconds, it was as if it the wound had never been there at all.
“ ”
Subaru gingerly touched the spot with his finger, at a loss for words at the revolting miracle that had just taken place. The site of the wound was completely fine. The pain had disappeared, too.
“Ummmmmm, I could be wrong, but there might be something wrong with your leg…,” Liliana commented nervously.
“It’s weird how normal it feels. What is even going on with my body…?” Subaru was shocked by the unnatural healing.
Something is wrong with my leg. What the hell happened?
“—Wait, is it because Capella dripped blood on my leg…?”
It had happened when his consciousness was fading from the pain and the loss of so much blood after he lost his right leg. It was not a clear enough memory for him to be absolutely sure, but he was fairly confident he remembered her cutting her own wrist and dripping the blood over his wound.
Capella had said something about it while he was suffering from the unbearable pain.
“Something about becoming a hideous lump of flesh and doing the same thing to Crusch…”
“Sharing her blood, you say? That sounds rather like some sort of curse. I’ve heard that many of the rituals that northern practitioners of such arts are fond of using involve such roundabout rites. Perhaps it’s something along those lines?”
“Curses, curses… Right, a blood curse. That’s it! A dragon! She said something about dragon blood!”
Priscilla’s low voice triggered something in the foggy recesses of Subaru’s memories.
Right before he had passed out, while he was writhing in pain from coming into contact with her blood, she had claimed that dragon blood flowed in her veins. Whether that was metaphorical or just a straight-up fabrication, it might be a good clue worth following up.
“Dragon blood… That’s one of the three great treasures left to the royal family of Lugunica by the Holy Dragon.”
“I dunno any details, just that something like that exists…” Subaru furrowed his brow.
“—It grants abundance to lands withered and barren, rejuvenates all destruction that has been wrought, heals the most incurable illnesses in an instant, and becomes a light to wash away indelible despair. Those are the properties of the blood of the great and Holy Dragon.”
“ ”
A lyrical response reached Subaru’s eardrums. There was a mysterious look on Liliana’s face as she plucked her lyulyre and softly sang. Acknowledging Subaru’s gaze, she bowed solemnly.
“It’s a verse from the fellowship of the Holy Dragon Volcanica as passed down in the Kingdom of Lugunica. The great treasures bequeathed to the kingdom were the dragon’s blood, the Dragon Tablet, and the Covenant.”
“…That dragon blood sure sounds like it could do just about everything.”
Subaru was a bit taken aback by how different Liliana could be when it came to songs and folklore, but he was more concerned with what her verse had described. Rejuvenated destruction and healed illness came pretty close to describing his leg’s strange condition, but the parts about treating barren lands and light that washed away despair felt more questionable when he looked at the hideous black pattern on his body.
And when he considered that this hunch was based on something Capella had said, it became even more dubious.
“I don’t know what caused it, but considering the wounds I had before going into that fight were healed, too, I guess I should count it as a plus… Gh! Hey, that hurts! What do you think you’re doing?!”
“You really do insist on being noisy. Don’t make a fuss over something so minor,” Priscilla responded in a bored tone after grazing the nape of Subaru’s neck with her fan.
She looked at the edge of her fan and flicked it with her finger.
“Hmmm, wounds to other parts of your body don’t appear to be affected. If we were to tentatively accept that leg of yours as the blessing of the dragon’s blood, it would seem the sacred dragon is a far cry from the legends that have been passed down.”
“What?! What are you saying, Lady Priscilla?! No matter how voluptuous and beautiful and buxom you are, there are certain things that cannot be said! No matter how voluptuous you are!”
“Oh, you would dare oppose me? Disdain for the Holy Dragon must sit quite poorly with you.”
“Naturally! The Holy Dragon Volcanica is a living legend! To we who sing to preserve the legends of the past for the future, to us bards, the Holy Dragon is our greatest benefactor! If I let contempt for the Holy Dragon pass without comment, I and my honor would both cry!”
“That spirit is admirable. But now what? How will you make me retract my words?”
“Please remove Sir Natsuki’s head from his neck! Right here and now! Then watch and behold as the Holy Dragon’s blood and its miraculous power rejoin his severed head with his body where he stands! If you would please!”
“There’s no way that would work!” Subaru howled at the absurd one-act play unfolding before him.
Unfortunately, the nape of his neck was still hurting. As Priscilla had said, it looked like the healing was limited to his right leg, and it would probably be safer to assume it was really just the parts around the black flesh.
“Anyway, this isn’t the time for experiments. The authenticity of the dragon blood aside, if my leg is like this, I’m more worried about Crusch. If she suffered something along the lines of what happened to my leg…and also, before that…”
Setting aside the oddity of his leg, Subaru finally returned to his first question. The one that the weirdness with his leg had made him forget—why had he been floating in the water?
“What happened to everyone? Garfiel and Wilhelm and the others were fighting with me…”
“Ah, um, as to the reason, you see, the truth is…” Liliana raised her hand.
“Wait, you know what happened?!”
As Subaru leaned in, she pointed out into the distance. Following where she was pointing, Subaru was baffled by the sight. He could not see anything particularly special or out of the ordinary. It was just the wall surrounding the city and one of the four floodgates that held back the water around the city—
“Wha—?”
After getting that far, Subaru remembered that both he and the ground were soaking wet. Liliana had even said it at the start. The canals had overflowed.
“No matter how dull a fool you might be, even you should understand by now.”
The crimson-eyed girl nodded when she saw Subaru’s ashen face.
Priscilla opened her fan with an audible crack and covered her lips with it as she spoke.
“It is as you suspect. One of the great floodgates was opened, and a torrent of water surged into the city. You were floating because you had been caught in the flood.”
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