Subaru hung on to Patlash, clawing along the ground, as they broke past the barrage.
Their vision cleared, and when the considerate land dragon slackened the pace, Subaru reseated himself, ending what must have looked like the most disgraceful sight ever. His endurance, never great to begin with, had fallen, and at that rate, next time would be one-sided—but Crusch and the others advanced on the White Whale, launching their attack.
“Gotta rack my brain… Haaa, shit, don’t just put your life on the line—think, damn it!”
Even as he breathed raggedly, putting his life on the line to earnestly act as a decoy once more, Subaru’s thoughts wandered to the trick Crusch had brought up during their prior conversation.
Where the White Whale’s “ecology” was concerned, Subaru was the least informed person there. He had no way of appreciating the damage the being had wrought beyond the extent of the words Great Expedition.
There had to be something Subaru could notice, something that only he could notice, that others could not.
Wilhelm had been chasing the White Whale for fourteen years to avenge his wife. The notion that the Sword Devil, having nursed that grudge to arrive at that field of battle, could overlook such critical information as “There are multiple White Whales” was simply unthinkable. Naturally, that meant the phenomenon was unknown.
Then why hadn’t anyone been told? —No, why had it escaped their knowledge?
“Why did more come out all of a sudden? …The premise that there were three to start with is just weird.”
He felt like he was about to catch on. But before he could, Patlash’s earnest sprint had brought them within smelling range of the White Whale.
Crusch was chasing the White Whale, adding slashes from her treasured sword to it, but its gaze was shifting heavily toward Subaru. Simultaneously, it opened its mouth, releasing a roar that seemed to shatter the air along with the dense, vastly destructive mist that had filled its oral cavity.
Patlash stomped down, sharply changing directions. That got them out of the oncoming tyrannical mist’s immediate reach but was half a step short in getting them out of its effective range—yet…
“We’ll handle this!” “We won’t let ya!!”
…Hetaro and Mimi intervened, buying them the time to take that last half step.
The twin cat people opened their mouths, unleashing overlapping roars of “Wa!” and “Ha!” The sound waves intermingled to combine into one, entwining as they transformed into destructive power. Then, the vast oscillation wave rippled across the plain, striking the onrushing mist head-on and blowing it apart.
“Whoaa!! That’s awesome!!”
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah! Praise me more! Woo-hoo!”
“There you go again, Big Sis…”
Subaru’s honest praise made Mimi puff her chest out, her cheeks loosening in satisfaction. Running alongside her, Hetaro exhaled, the two sandwiching Subaru as they darted close to him.
“We will support you. Without you, Mr. Natsuki, I do not see any way of winning this battle,” Hetaro said.
“So can we go bam, boom, badaboom, and stuff?” Mimi asked.
“Big Sis, we’ve been going bam, boom, badaboom, but we still need Mr. Natsuki’s help.”
“Heh!”
The low-stress conversation continued with Subaru stuck in the middle.
Leaving aside Mimi acting like she didn’t grasp the situation in the slightest, Subaru turned his head toward the receptive-looking Hetaro and said, “That team-up attack, that’s the one you smacked the White Whale with midway, huh. Can you do it again?”
“Mana is tight, so one more and I will be at my limit—Big Sis and I will defend you until the captain finishes healing up.”
“That Ricardo guy, he’s alive?!”
When Subaru raised his voice at the unexpected good news, Hetaro said yes as he nodded.
That gesture spread the relief in Subaru’s heart. When the liger Ricardo had ridden was cruelly slain, he’d seen the large amount of blood and feared Ricardo might have been blown away without even a trace.
“Our gravely wounded captain had a message for you, Mr. Natsuki.”
“A message… It’s not something like, ‘You owe me big’?”
“I believe he will say this to you later from his own mouth, but…it goes as follows. Ahem. ‘Wha—? It got lighter. Fact I ain’t dead is proof o’ that.’ End of message.”
Hetaro conveyed the message, mimicking Ricardo down to his Kararagi dialect. Subaru made no comment on the quality of the portrayal as he mulled over the meaning of the words spoken to him.
It was a message Ricardo had literally put his life on the line to get to him. If he could only wrap his mind around the meaning within, and the real message behind it—
“You don’t sound anything like him.”
“Yeah, not one bit! You have no talent for this, not at all!”
“Is this the time to say something like that?!”
Mimi innocently concurred with Subaru’s insensitive remark. Hetaro refuted their thoughts with a voice on the verge of tears, but Subaru let that slide off him and looked up at the sky.
Two of the White Whales were still tangling with the expeditionary force, engaged in fierce combat. On the other hand, the White Whale floating in the sky, with a commanding view of the battle, was calmly watching from up high.
Subaru felt that its behavior was somehow…unnatural.
The expeditionary force had lost its main fighting strength, and the diminished squads were split apart, fighting on two fronts. Even with Subaru fulfilling his role as a distraction, if the White Whale floating in the sky were to join either front, it would be enough to decisively shift the course of the battle. If either force was gobbled up, they were finished.
And yet, that White Whale did nothing. Why…?
“Ricardo’s message…”
Lighter, Ricardo had said.
He was conveying the reason he hadn’t died after putting his life on the line.
So what did that mean? Lighter, but what was lighter? His life? Certainly life was lighter on the field of battle, but he didn’t think that’s how it was meant. Lighter, lighter meant…
“This is a heavy, hard situation. What the hell can be lighter…?!”
He put all his weight on Patlash and charged toward the tip of the nearest White Whale once more.
With Crusch and the others all over it, the White Whale’s oral cavity aimed their way, but an invisible slash from Crusch at the magic crystals lobbed into it inflicted explosive damage.
A cry went up among the knights. Even as their numbers diminished, one here, one there, they were currently maintaining the battlefront on inexhaustible morale alone.
Was this how strong human beings became when they resolved to defy death before their eyes?
After all, the expeditionary force had challenged the White Whale with its full roster. Having lost their main fighting force and even much of their numbers, the fact that they were still resisting by force of arms could only be said to be the power of will—
“You can’t expect even the power of will to explain all this, though.”
Having thought that far, Subaru gasped, lifting his face.
He looked back at the White Whale left in the lurch behind him, glaring at the demon beast’s distant visage.
Then, he realized what felt so off.
“If that’s the case…!”
Subaru gritted his teeth, a chill running through his entire body when the possibility rose and coursed through him.
Transmitting his intent through the reins, Patlash made a sharp turn and ferociously approached the other White Whale.
Rem, fighting furiously with her full Oni power unleashed, rode a liger as she smashed hole after hole in the White Whale’s torso. Even with her apron dress sullied by demon beast blood spatter, she smiled firmly when she sensed Subaru’s approach.
Seeing that happy expression while she was da
ubed in whale blood was disconcerting, but imprudent as it was, Subaru watched Rem with fascination. Even with the situation at such a disadvantage, Rem trusted in Subaru’s reckless resolve.
Her faith, her love, could not go unanswered.
“……”
Without any exchange of words, Subaru’s land dragon crossed Rem’s liger, with Subaru going toward the tip of the White Whale’s nose, and Rem turning her mount toward its tail.
There was no need to stop and discuss it. Both knew that Subaru had his own role to play, and Rem had hers.
When Subaru circled to the front of the White Whale, the demon beast, sensing his approach, shifted his head in his direction. Above its gigantic eye, multiple mist-spewing mouths appeared, drooling as they emitted white mist.
“Ta-daa! Ba-baam! Whoosh, scatter, scatter!”
The liger Mimi rode jumped to the left of Patlash, to the right, above, and all around. As Mimi made decisive poses and voiced sound effects atop the big dog’s back, the staff in her hand glowed, blocking the mist with a magic wall, buying Subaru and Patlash enough time to evade before the barrage reached them.
“This is gonna cost you big, mister!”
“I’m grateful enough; when this is over I’ll thank you a hundred times over!”
“Okay, then!”
At Mimi’s laconic reply, he turned his back and ran parallel in pursuit of the White Whale. Then he overtook it, and got out in front.
Subaru turned, and he and the White Whale glared at each other. The demon beast, its one eye dyed crimson, let out a high-pitched cry at the defiance of the boy, as annoying and small as a pest. But the beast’s appearance lent conviction to Subaru’s own thoughts.
Neither that White Whale, nor the one facing Crusch and the others, had a left eye.
“Just like I thought! There ain’t three of ya, damn it—you split apart!”
The one floating in the sky was surely wounded in the same places as the first, including the loss of its left eye.
—The missing left eye was the battle wound Wilhelm had inflicted on the White Whale in the early fighting.
It was crystal clear there could be only one reason the same wounds were on not a single beast but the two others as well: The one in the sky had split itself, bringing the other two into being.
“The hits are lighter because the offshoots only have a third of the fighting power! That trick explains why we can fight them even with way fewer people!”
It explained why Ricardo, struck in the surprise attack, was not killed in the process. So, too, did it explain why the expeditionary force, diminished in numbers, was able to keep fighting against multiple White Whales.
Subaru had abandoned the convenient thinking that would peg it on the miraculous power of will. And it was precisely because Subaru was such a contrarian that he had arrived at the offbeat answer.
The power of the annihilating mist was absolute. Accordingly, the White Whale had increased its manpower at the cost of its own endurance. If the tyranny of numbers broke the spirit of the expeditionary force, the battle would surely end there.
Subaru had a hard time believing that the White Whale understood the weaknesses of the human heart and had resorted to the tactic with that knowledge. But the White Whale having the power to split itself was an incontrovertible fact.
What would have happened if Subaru hadn’t rebelled against surrender when he did?
Subaru could not grasp what would have happened had he not howled. The current Subaru would not allow himself to perceive a future where he hadn’t.
He never wanted to stare at the White Whales’ ugly mugs so long ever aga—
“—What the…?!”
Before Subaru, forming that conclusion, the movements of the White Whale pursuing him changed. Where it had once floated in the sky, it now rubbed against the ground, as if some foreign object inside its body was causing it agony.
“Big Sis, now!”
“Mimi understands! It’s hard when you have an itch you can’t scratch, huh!”
Hetaro, sensing a favorable opportunity, leaped forward, and Mimi, misunderstanding the White Whale’s movements, followed suit. The twins matched their movements in a pincer attack on the White Whale from right and left, opening their mouths at the same time when—
“Wa—!” “Ha—!”
The howling waves from left and right greatly warped the White Whale’s torso, and the shock wave punched through the outer hide to the innards. They bounced off the hardened hide, cracks ran across it, blood flowed out, and the next moment—
“—Zuaaaaaa!!”
The part of the belly that rubbed against the ground’s surface swelled from the inside, only for flesh and blood to break part. Reddish-black fluid flowed out like a muddy stream and spewed out; riding that stream was…
“Wilhelm?!”
The Sword Devil, his survival uncertain after being engulfed by the White Whale, had returned.
Subaru rushed over to Wilhelm while the expeditionary force restrained the thrashing White Whale. Wilhelm, his entire body smeared with blood, fell to one knee, holding half his body up with a sword.
“I was…rash…and…careless…!” he groaned.
“You don’t need to talk! Aw, crap, I don’t know what to do here, but at least you’re alive. Let’s get back to Ferris first thing!”
When Subaru reached out with his hand, he drew in his breath; the state of Wilhelm’s wounds was far beyond his expectations. He still had the willpower to grip a sword, but he was knocking on death’s door, his mangled left arm included.
The torch of his life threatened to burn out at any moment if Subaru didn’t find a healer, pronto. And yet, when Subaru rushed over, Wilhelm politely refused his hand. Planting his weight on the sword he leaned upon, he clenched his teeth, trying to stand on his own power.
“Not…yet. I can still…fight…”
“This ain’t the time! You’ll die in front of the whale! So none of this ‘it’s not enough to kill me,’ or ‘I’m sleepy’ crap! When it comes to life-and-death, I know more than you do!”
“What…are…you saying…?”
Scolding the mangled Wilhelm, Subaru grabbed his body and dragged him up. During the time the two bickered, the cat-people siblings linked back up with them.
“The old man came out!”
“Mr. Wilhelm, are you all right?!”
When the twins came rushing and saw Wilhelm’s grave injuries, both instantly went into action. Mimi applied simplified healing magic to the aged swordsman’s wounds, and during that time, Hetaro looked up at Subaru and said, “Even Big Sis’s healing magic cannot do much to heal these wounds. Mr. Natsuki, can you get Mr. Wilhelm as far as Mr. Felix?”
“Yeah, I can see for myself Wilhelm’s in bad shape! If he isn’t treated, it’ll be too late! I really wanna bring him myself, but…”
Subaru glared at the White Whale as it began to rouse itself once more.
The belly wound ran deep, and the bleeding from the opening hadn’t ceased, but the demon beast continued to spew mist from the mouths all over its body, showing no more sign of giving up the fight than Wilhelm had.
There was no mistake: At present, Subaru’s distraction was no small part of their fighting strength against it. If Subaru carried Wilhelm off, the fighting would only take a turn for the worse.
“Even besides that, I might end up leading the White Whale straight to the wounded. Can I leave Wilhelm to the two of you?”
“We can do that with our ligers…but do you have something in mind?”
Hetaro accepted Wilhelm from Subaru, groaning a bit at the disparity in body weight as he put the man onto his liger. After that, he looked up at Subaru, taking the hand of his blissfully laughing sister as he said, “If there is a chance to win, I will listen. If not, I must take my sister by the hand and flee.”
“Ehh, why?! We haven’t beaten them yet!”
“Big Sis, be quiet.”
Her little bro
ther’s statement made Mimi pout her lips in visible dismay.
Watching the exchange between the twins, Subaru said, “I suppose so,” and accepted with a nod.
“You’re mercs. You’re just working for money, not like me, Crusch, and the knights with a grudge against the whale… No obligation to risk your lives.”
“Do not misunderstand. We are not obligated to throw away our lives.”
His face and demeanor were meek, but Hetaro gave Subaru his opinion with fortitude. Gazing down at the little beast people, not even reaching his own hips, Subaru exhaled deeply.
“Sorry, but there’s no time,” he said. “I think there’s a chance to win. For now, just get Wilhelm to the rear… I’ve gotta…talk to Rem and Crusch.”
With Patlash beside him, Subaru practically jumped onto its back, straddling it as he ran his gaze overhead.
He looked up at the sky above, glaring at the abominable, fish-shaped figure leisurely swimming therein—
4
“The White Whale split itself, then?”
“Yeah, I don’t think there’s any doubt. The locations of the wounds and the combat strength bear that out. Put bluntly, you and the other people fighting it directly must’ve felt it, right?”
“For my part, I was in a daze, but…you may well be correct.”
Subaru had regrouped with Rem and Crusch, and both made accepting faces and nodded as Subaru explained.
Having entrusted Wilhelm’s retreat to Hetaro’s liger, he’d joined the twins, now riding on the same liger, and had just finished explaining the “trick” to the battlefield’s main fighting force.
With the main force out of action, the cavalry unit and the Iron Fangs were keeping two of the White Whales busy. Their high morale and excellent teamwork oddly glossed it over, but there were mere minutes of time available for a strategy meeting—
They had to come up with a plan to defeat the White Whale during that time.
“—I accept your hypothesis that they are weaker than the original, single one. But what does comprehending this avail? Even if they are wounded and weakened, the menace to us is greater than before. Even with Ferris’s healing, we cannot hope for those who have withdrawn to return to the battle lines.”
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 7 Page 14