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Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (LN) - Volume EX5 - Chapter 1.13




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13

Every soldier who pressed in against her was charged with the fervor of battle.

“ ”

Sword and spear were the only means they had of expressing their lust for war; they would drive them into Arakiya’s skin, tear her flesh, shatter her bones, and end her life. Battle was merely a ritual to achieve such ends. Life pitted against life to the finish.

Well, Arakiya could enact that ritual, too.

“Nom.” Almost lazily, she popped a spirit into her mouth. It was good timing; lesser fire spirits, touched off by the battle between Prisca and Vincent, had begun to gather around. Arakiya simply took one into her body and turned its strength into hers. That was the natural course of action for a spirit eater.

“Bowwow.” Arakiya crouched low, her entire body surrounded by a faint-blue glowing fire. They were too beautiful to be described with ordinary terms like the flames of hell, but regardless, it was impossible to avoid the impression that she was wreathed in fire. As a momentary shock passed through the attacking troops at the sacred vestments, Arakiya poured her strength into her legs and leaped at them.

Her body floated as easily as the wind, passing by the first line of soldiers. She simply dodged their attacks, and the men, as they turned to pursue Arakiya back into the formation, noticed something: Their own bodies were now engulfed in blue flames.

“Nggghhhaaaa!!”

The soldiers howled in agony, consumed from head to toe by scorching heat. Unlike Arakiya, who wore the flames as if they were a cloak fit for the gods, the flames that took the soldiers were not lovely or pleasant. The men threw themselves on the ground or tried to scoop dirt on themselves, but the flames wouldn’t go out. The fires burned down into their very being, taking their lives and scorching away everything until the soldiers were nothing but piles of ash.

“Hold fast!” someone shouted. These were Vincent’s personal soldiers, and having determined that they could do nothing to save their obliterated comrades, they immediately refocused on attacking Arakiya.

But how sad—even the calculated violence of numbers could not withstand an even greater violence. Numbers often decided the outcome of a battle. All other things being equal, two people were stronger than one, and a hundred were stronger than ten. That much was clear. Indeed, the measure of a strategist was his ability to come up with a plan to overcome such differences in fighting strength.

“Well, this is downright annoying…” Chisha, the one who had commanded the soldiers, placed his free hand over the hand that held the iron war fan. He indeed knew strategy was his mission; to bury the enemy was his role. That was the talent Vincent sought when he had plucked him from obscurity; that was why he was with Vincent in this situation now.

To concoct a plan, to control circumstances, to annihilate the opposition, and to do all this with strategy—that was his duty. He had performed it on many battlefields—and that was why he knew. In this world, there were some superlative beings who upset every strategic calculation, because they transcended numbers.


The boy whom Vincent had taken into his fold just a few months ago was one of them. And this Arakiya, whom Chisha watched tear through his troops like a wild animal, was another.

“Gah!”

“Gghh?!”

“Gyaaahhhh!”

A series of screams came from large, powerful men as they were flung upon the ground. Some were immolated in their entirety; others found their faces maimed or their arms or legs broken, while others still were torn open and collapsed on the ground, never to rise again.

Arakiya was down on all fours like an animal; her only weapon was a simple branch, but it was enough to break soldiers’ swords, to rob them of their pride and their lives. To rob them of everything.

“No more of this…” Chisha, making the difficult choice to end this pointless hemorrhaging of troops, stepped forward. To spend so many common soldiers against someone who was beyond numbers was simply a waste of life. As the person entrusted with those lives, Chisha couldn’t allow it to continue.

“Soldiers, fall back, please,” Chisha said. “I will deal with that…thing.”

The moment he had the unit retire, Arakiya stopped moving. She remained crouched on the ground like a dog, but she looked up at the tall young man, tilting her head and staring at him intently.

The young man sighed at the almost animalistic gesture. “I am Vincent Abelks’s strategist, Chisha Gold.”

“I am Princess Prisca’s dog, Arakiya.”

Introductions complete, the two bosom companions of the participants in the Rite of Imperial Selection launched themselves at each other. But it was only a single clash, the contest decided in a blink.

Arakiya approached Chisha, with his iron war fan, from the ground. Recognizing the low attack, Chisha brought the fan down, slamming it into the girl’s head. Her silver hair, with its single lock of red, was stained with dark blood—at least, such was what Chisha had expected to happen. But the instant before his blow connected, Arakiya opened her mouth wide and swallowed a pinprick of light. Suddenly, she was gone; he couldn’t see her.

As Chisha stood there with his eyes wide, Arakiya, still on the ground, kicked out at him. His slim frame lifted into the air with the impact, which almost seemed to pierce him. It ran through him from his back to his belly, Arakiya’s branch tearing through his torso and pinning him to the earth.

“Gah—hhh—” He wheezed. He coughed up a spectacular amount of blood, but with the branch holding him in place, Chisha couldn’t even collapse to the ground.

Arakiya backed quickly away from him, looking toward him only to say, “There,” her fingers steepled. She turned to report to her mistress that she had vanquished the powerful foe. “Prin—”

But a second later, a red light from above swallowed up Arakiya, along with the entire forest.



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