4
—The flying stinger shattered the passage, filling it with billowing smoke and absolute destruction.
Experiencing it all in slow motion, Subaru saw the little girl in her elaborate dress leap into the middle of the terrible destruction.
“—Incomplete EMT!”
One hand holding Subaru’s, she held the other out in front of her.
The next instant, he felt something invisible flowing out of his body and into Beatrice. His head clouded from the loss of that massive amount of something. In exchange, Beatrice’s palm exerted a tremendous force against the streak of white closing in on them.
“ ”
It looked like some sort of wall of light had been created. It stopped the white streak destroying the stone construction of the tower while diverting it to fly past them.
A thunderclap roared in his ears, his consciousness wavered, and he shouted while wondering what sort of hell he had stumbled into.
Protected behind the little girl’s back, clinging to the life he had tried to give up. Why am I alive?
“—Ugh, aahh!”
As he cursed his luck, he was brought back to his senses by a faint groan. It came from Echidna who had lost her balance from the enemy’s unexpected and furious attack.
But there was no floor to support her in the direction she was falling. The passage had been shattered by the attack and there was a massive hole in the ground. And Echidna’s body was being sucked into it.
She immediately stretched out her hand, but there was nothing to grab. She could do nothing but fall through the floor to her death—if Subaru hadn’t grabbed her hand.
“Natsuki?!”
“Guooooooooh!”
His left arm holding Echidna’s weight was the same one that Reid had put back into its socket after it had been dislocated. He gritted his teeth against the jolt of pain. Echidna was petite, but if he lost focus, they would both end up falling.
Why did I take that risk?
“…Could you not do such unpredictable things?”
“Who asked…you…! It was reflex…!”
“That answer…sounds a lot like you!”
Echidna pointed her other arm at the ceiling.
Looking up, he understood what she was doing. There was a black shadow crawling along the ceiling, approaching them from above.
Seeing the giant scorpion swing its pincer, Subaru’s thoughts gradually accelerated.
Ordinarily, the deadly stinger was the standard image associated with scorpions, but out of the hundreds of species of scorpions, only a few dozen possessed powerful venom. In which case, what did all those other scorpions use to hunt? The answer was their brutal pincers.
If that got them, it would easily cut through Subaru or Beatrice’s body—
“El Jiwaldo!”
All five of Echidna’s fingers gleamed and five rays of light erupted from them, searing the scorpion’s pincers, face, shell. Unable to withstand the force, the scorpion withdrew immediately.
As if fleeing in a panic, there was an audible thud from one of its pincers being left behind.
“Jiwaldo! Jiwaldo Jiwaldo, Jiwaldoooo!”
“Wait! Calm down Echidna! It’s gone! It ran away! It’s already gone!”
Still dangling over the abyss, Echidna unleashed a barrage of attacks. Subaru desperately called out to her as he raised her body. She had gotten agitated and confused, but finally she slumped, resting her body weight on Subaru.
“Hah, hah, hah, d-did that get it…?”
“…Unlikely. It probably got away.”
He felt bad given how Echidna seemed so pleased with herself, but the scorpion had almost certainly escaped to the other side of the billowing smoke. He was on edge, almost waiting for the moment the smoke split to herald the imminent counterattack.
“But…looks like there won’t be one…? What was that…”
“—A demon beast. A boorish sort that suddenly appeared on the fourth floor. The problem is not that, it’s that there has seemingly been a change both upstairs and down.”
“Up, down, and in the middle. So there are problems on all the floors then?”
Subaru bit his lip at Beatrice’s grave report.
Julius was fighting the demon beasts on the fifth floor; there was a giant scorpion encounter on the fourth floor. And Reid coming down from his floor probably had something to do with the disturbance upstairs, too.
“…One of those problems is you, though you don’t seem to realize it.”
Echidna stood up, pulling away from Subaru’s chest with that merciless aside. She wiped the sweat on her brow, still regarding him with the same suspicion as before.
“What…are you? What do you want and whose side are you on?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. Since I…”
“—lost your memories.”
Beatrice finished his sentence. He hadn’t mentioned that to them, so it must have been something they heard from Emilia and Ram.
Knowing that, Beatrice protected Subaru, and Echidna didn’t try to push him on it.
As if to back that up, Echidna seemed to be thinking something, and hesitantly…
“…Why did you save me just now? If you hadn’t grabbed my hand, I would have fallen to my death. It would have been a pathetic death for me and Ana’s body.”
“…It was reflex. I don’t know.”
Julius’s plea had crossed his mind. But that’d been a factor earlier, when she was about to go off on her own, not when she was about to fall. The reason he’d reached out to grab her hand was simply instinct.
“It’s not like there’s a reason for everything. It was sudden and I just…”
“…Maybe that’s your nature.”
“Eh…?”
Echidna’s shoulders untensed.
Subaru was confused by the way that sounded, but Echidna shrugged and sighed.
“There’s no point getting into an argument here. And staying here longer to give the demon beast another chance to attack would be stupid. Let’s move. I want to get to Julius.”
“Agreed. For now, we should get away from here. Quickly,” Beatrice confirmed.
“Ah, huh…?”
Echidna and Beatrice quickly settled on a plan of action that Subaru’s mind failed to follow. And Beatrice’s little hand grabbed Subaru’s as if checking something.
He gulped at the feeling as she looked at him with her blue eyes.
“You don’t remember bringing Betty out?”
“…S-sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“—It’s okay.”
He could hear something terribly fragile and lonely in her voice, feeling like he had committed the worst possible sin in this world. But even as he was racked by that mysterious guilt, Beatrice smiled boldly.
“Even if you forget, it is still inside Betty. The things that you built will never fade. So it’s fine for now.”
“Beatrice…”
“Even if you forget, Betty won’t. Betty will always remember. And Betty will make you remember. Betty will do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
It was too dazzling for Subaru Natsuki to answer.
How much adversity had she overcome to forge such a steely spirit? How had a little girl developed such a noble, sublime will?
“Ah…”
Overwhelmed by it all, he struggled to hold back the heat welling up in the back of his eyes. Beatrice didn’t say anything about his fierce struggle. She simply supported him with the feeling of her hand in his.
By simply holding his hand, she became a rock-solid pillar of support.
“Let’s move. We can’t come back the way we came, so the only choice is the direction the demon beast fled.”
“Echidna, you…”
“Save the talk of suspicions and forgiveness for later. My suspicion isn’t gone. But the current situation takes priority. Knowing when and where is a crucial ability for a merchant. I’ve seen the truth of that with my own eyes.”
So no more pushing for answers for now. That was her conclusion.
Subaru respected Echidna’s rejection and willingness to yield on that, so he didn’t bring it up again, either.
“The floor has gotten weak, so be careful. And watch out for the pincer that scorpion dropped, too.”
Watching the ground, Echidna got her revenge for earlier. Following her finger, Subaru saw the giant scorpion pincer that had been cut off by her heat ray lying on the ground. With how massive and dangerous it appeared, it almost seemed fake.
Lifting Beatrice, Subaru stepped carefully over the pincer.
Beatrice’s body was light. She looked only eleven or twelve, but she was too light for a girl that age. And it wasn’t just because of the strength he’d apparently gotten in the year he couldn’t remember—
“Bea—”
Noticing something off, he started to say something when it happened.
Beneath him, the scorpion’s giant pincer started shuddering—and then a light erupted.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login