It had been Ram. Those feelings had flowed into her from her sister through their shared link.
Ram was always a model of self-control on the outside, but in truth, she was built of stern stuff on the inside, too. Normally, the only things that could shake her were related to Rem or their master.
And yet, Ram had been possessed by such fury that she’d communicated it to even Rem via their shared connection.
Furthermore, the fact it had cut out immediately meant that she was controlling herself so that Rem would not pick it up.
Rem guessed that her sister assumed she was in the royal capital, not able to make it in time as her older sister fell into peril. But Rem was close enough to do something, even if that was not Ram’s wish. That was why…
“I must hurry back—!”
With a concrete reason to make haste, she gripped the reins so hard that her hand went white. In an instant, Rem’s sense of urgency and impatience cast all her misgivings about her surroundings to the winds.
On the surface, Rem was normally emotionless, always striving to maintain her inner calm, but when lives were on the line, she lost sight of everything around her. It was Rem’s defining flaw, one that Ram had pointed out to her many times and one a former colleague had pointed out to her as well.
And now that flaw was rearing its ugly head once again.
—When the land dragon’s head sailed before her eyes, Rem saw it in slow motion.
CHAPTER 5
ACEDIA
1
—The head of the running land dragon flew from the base of its neck. Without a conscious creature to pull it, the large frame of the carriage tumbled accordingly, leaping off the road and turning onto its side.
The overturned vehicle made a spectacular gash in the ground, kicking up a dust cloud with a great roar. In an instant, they formed a disastrous picture with the carriage wrecked and the fallen land dragon’s body tangled in one of the wheels.
They were in a tranquil, forested area in the mountains, surrounded by trees on all sides. The dragon carriage had already entered the Mathers dominion; it was probably about two hours of running from reaching its destination. But the dragon carriage had been cruelly destroyed along the way, with only the sound of a free-spinning wheel resounding through that hollow place. With the land dragon a corpse and the vehicle nothing more than a wreck, the scent of blood began to hover over the area.
“…Uu, uua.”
And there, a young man lay, raising a voice of lament after being thrown from the dragon carriage.
He had fallen into a cluster of bushes a short distance away from the half-destroyed dragon carriage. Mosses and vines had likely cushioned his fall.
Miraculously, the youth’s injuries were quite light. But his defenseless state didn’t mean that he didn’t feel the pain of his wounds.
He was scratched and bruised in several places. Fortunately, he had no broken bones, nor any major blood loss from his wounds. But the pain was more than enough to make him cower like a little child in shock.
“A, huu… Gu, hi…!”
The dark-haired young man cried and moaned in pain as he lay upon the grass.
The ground had scratched his forehead, and the soil was stained with red. His tears and mucus were especially unsightly. The disgraceful picture of a grown man splayed on the ground, along with the wrecked carriage, formed an unbearable scene that told of the tragedy of the crash.
“—”
And yet, the shadowy black-robed figures continued to stand in place and watch, as if they were part of the background.
Over ten such figures stood encircling the young man and the dragon carriage. Having ascertained that the headless corpse of the land dragon was indeed good and dead, their attention was focused on the young man.
The figures wore hooded black outfits from head to toe, leaving their faces and even their genders impossible to fathom. They wavered, seemingly gliding along the ground as the circle closed in on the teen.
Then, one of the figures, walking soundlessly, mumbled something.
“—la.”
As soon as one had voiced it, the next murmured something similar. The low murmurs continued like this as a ceaseless chain, a cascading chant as the shadows enveloped the young man.
The world was composed of two things alone—the sound of leaves in the wind and the black figures’ murmurs.
Eventually, the young man heard those whispers, and they sparked a change in him.
“—Agaa, aa! Aa, aaa!”
The young man’s injured, pain-filled body thrashed around, flopping on his back, wriggling like a fish suffocating out of the water. His anguish was clearly of a different nature than before. It was as if his distress came not from without but from within his own flesh. He agonized as if there were something running amok inside his body, chewing away at his heart.
From all appearances, he had noticed the muttering of the figures around him and reacted to them.
The shadows looked down at the suffering boy, making no move to halt their chant. But one of their number seemed to come to some kind of conclusion about the writhing young man and extended a hand toward his body.
“—Don’t touch Subaru!”
The next moment, an iron ball howled as it sailed through the air, shattering the head of the figure who had tried to touch Subaru, the young man on the ground.
Skull fragments flew around the area as the figure fell and the chain clinked lightly. The weapon danced toward the others like a ferocious silver snake in search of further prey.
However, the group made its decision quickly.
Instantly abandoning their dead comrade, they scattered voicelessly to evade the chain’s pursuit. As if by reflex, they drew cross-like daggers from their flanks and gripped their weapons of poor taste with both hands, together keeping watch over north, south, east, and west.
The figures numbered eleven. The way they had instantly responded to a surprise attack by taking up a formation to eliminate blind spots was nothing short of commendable.
However, that mattered against only an attacker whose options were limited to two dimensions: front, back, left, and right.
“—Shii!”
Above the group, someone sprang from among the trees, her apron dress fluttering. With enough power in her legs to leave shoe marks in the trunk of a tree, her body shot forward at an angle. The girl leaped down with incredible speed, moving just a moment before her prey could detect the sound above them.
What descended was the end of the deadly weapon’s handle, driving into an unfortunate figure’s skull. With a sharp sound, a cavity opened in its cranium; blood spilled out of the victim as they wobbled and collapsed.
The girl kicked the body toward another figure standing to the side to obstruct its vision as she leaped behind it. However, this one did not hesitate to strike its comrade’s corpse. With a swing of two blades, the figure sliced its comrade-turned-corpse apart, regaining its field of vision— The next moment, a twisting iron ball fell upon the menace in black, turning it into bloody fog.
Having hurled her weapon out in front of her, the small girl froze in position. Seeing that she had stopped, the figures took the brief opening to hurl their cross-like swords in unison. The girl, apparently defenseless as blades rushed toward her from all sides, drew a miniature version of her weapon from her side with her left hand and batted down all the daggers in one swing.
After the girl’s incredible feat, it was her attackers who were open now. They paused for less than a second, but before the opponent they now faced, that time was lethal.
“Roaaaaa!”
The girl shouted, howling as she bared her teeth.
With a great backhand swing of the flail, she mowed down every tree in its path, tracing a semicircle of utter destruction. Another enemy was caught in the iron mass’s advance, slain as blunt trauma ripped their limbs right off.
The beautiful blue-haired girl who had taken their lives had an
ivory white horn protruding from her forehead. That truth was enough to identify her as a monster in a girl’s flesh.
“You shall not lay one finger on Subaru.”
The adorable demon’s lovely face was stained with blood; her eyes were brimming with ferocity and aggression. But the position she had taken made clear that she was protecting Subaru from the figures surrounding him.
Having spoken her warning, Rem ignored her own bloody left shoulder and swung the iron ball around above her head. She had sustained the wound to her shoulder when the dragon carriage went on its side, unable to completely evade the carriage as it bounced. If she had been by herself, she would most likely have escaped uninjured, but that wasn’t possible with Subaru in her arms.
It was all she could do to use her own body to shield Subaru and throw him to a safe place.
She had seen him fall on the bush as she intended while she shared the same fate as the wrecked dragon carriage.
As a result, her forehead had been lacerated, and a branch had stabbed her left shoulder fairly deeply. She seemed to have a fracture in her left femur close to her hip; moving sent a shot of ferocious pain through her that made her white cheeks go numb.
But Rem stepped forward with a gait that betrayed none of that pain. She glared at the group in black, spewing in a voice filled with hatred, “Witch Cult—!”
Rem spat blood as she called out to them, but as before, the figures made no sign of a human response. Unchanged, they faced off against Rem, almost as if they weren’t even conscious of what they were doing.
They were at an impasse—the instant Rem made that judgment, she moved first to break the stalemate.
“—Yaa!”
She altered the course of the iron ball she was swinging above her head, lengthening the chain to its full extent. The single blow snapped the trees along the side of the road, smashing wood and soil together and sending them flying toward the figures. Her opponents variously leaped and ducked to evade, then rushed at Rem to seize the opening she had given them.
Rem, her arm extended, twisted her body so that she could draw her limb and distant weapon back to her. However, a blade would to tear into her chest before the iron ball could arrive—
“—Raa!”
A moment before the tip of the figure’s knife reached Rem, her demon foot rose from below to send its jaw flying. No, this was not a metaphor for its head being kicked aloft—the blow was so powerful that her enemy’s jaw literally sailed away.
The figure’s face was covered in fresh blood. Even so, it did not hesitate out of pain as it thrust the blade forward. The action, made in complete disregard for the attacker’s own life, was wrong for any living thing.
“—”
The head of the figure who had failed such a basic biological test was shattered from behind as Rem’s iron ball returned.
Showered in blood and pieces of flesh, Rem gripped the iron ball with her left hand. Holding it such that the iron spikes posed no danger to her, she used what was now an iron fist to flatten the face of the enemy rushing right at her flank.
Where there had once been twelve, now there were six. Rem breathed raggedly as her demon gaze pierced the assassins, now half their original number.
A rock tapered and sharpened at one end like a lance sailed into that gaze. With a tilt of her head, she dodged it just before impact. Her hair, moving a fraction slower, was ripped from the side of her head; the pain and surprise turned her vision pure red.
As the shock to her head robbed her of her decision-making ability, Rem went by the sudden slushy feeling beneath her feet and leaped. The moment after she jumped, her delayed thought process told her just what a mistake she had made.
—She had sprung into the air, rendered herself unable to move, against an enemy capable of long-range attacks.
A fireball appeared and burned its way through the great treetops, charging at Rem as she sailed through the air. She felt like the high temperature was setting her flesh alight as she instantly thrust her left hand in front of her.
“Hyuma!!”
Rem deployed a thin layer of ice in front of her. The instant the fireball slammed into it, white steam erupted, and the dying hiss of the vaporizing ice clawed in her ears. She had managed to reduce the force of the flames, but she was unable to nullify it completely.
Her decision was instant.
She plunged her left fist, still in motion, into the inferno, sacrificing it to break the flames apart.
“—Uaaa!”
Withstanding the explosion in midair, Rem’s body spun as it was blown away, and her back collided with the trunk of a tree. The thick trunk broke and crashed to the ground with Rem on top.
When she got up, she groaned in agony at the dull pain in her left arm.
When she looked at the scorched remnants of her limb, she couldn’t even feel pain past the elbow. Without the services of a healer on Ferris’s level, no doubt she’d never have use of that hand again.
Even with a grave wound like that, Rem bit her lip and dragged her mind back to reality. She grit her teeth against the pain, using her aggression and rage to light a fire in her belly and drive the anguish out of her mind. She roared, asserting her own existence, and tried to draw even a little of the figures’ attention to her.
She prayed only that Subaru had vanished from their awareness.
But.
“—”
One of the group had approached without a sound, and it drove a hand into Rem’s torso with incredible force, slamming her into the great tree behind her.
The force, enough to crack Rem’s sternum and crush her internal organs, left her spitting out a copious amount of blood.
Coughing up the sticky liquid burned her throat. Her body sank in the agony that coursed through every corner of it. When the hand lashed out again, by sheer luck, she fell to her knees and escaped having her skull crushed. The palm thrust into the great tree behind her, sending it sailing away with unbelievable ease.
The unarmed figure, able to form craters in the ground’s surface with a single stomp, was clearly different from the others.
When it leaped sideways in pursuit, Rem rolled to evade it, spat out the blood remaining in her mouth, and searched for the iron ball she had dropped.
“Ah, uh?!”
The instant she dodged a stone lance, which still grazed the side of her face, a rock slammed right into her body from behind. Her spine creaked ferociously, and her small form crashed into the ground and bounced into the air.
The unarmed figure was waiting for Rem at the end of her arc. They were holding in their hand the iron ball Rem had released, and they swung the deadly spiked weapon up to meet her mid-bounce.
“—El Hyuma!”
The chant she’d built up burst out of her lungs. Mana combined with the blood she spat out, freezing it over. A blade of crimson ice sliced off the arm of the one holding the iron ball, forcing his thick limb to drop the weapon.
“Gaurururu!”
Crashing into the ground, Rem regained control of her body and snatched up the handle of the fallen iron ball into her right hand. Simultaneously, she kicked the weapon itself at the figure from behind, using the weight of the ball to tightly wrap the chain around its thick neck.
A dull sound echoed as she snapped its spine. Seeing her foe’s head turn at a 180-degree angle back at her, Rem relaxed slightly after felling a powerful foe. That instant…
“—!!”
The figure’s body, which should have been powerless, lashed out with a ferocious kick that devastated Rem’s torso.
The blow connected with her left side, fracturing every bone in that half of her rib cage and completely snapping her fractured left thigh. After that one blow, the figure expired for good this time, but the damage Rem suffered was severe.
“Uu, aaa…!”
Moaning and coughing up blood, she cursed her now-useless left side as she stood back up. She’d likely just taken care of the best that t
he enemy group had. There were five left. The fact that they hadn’t approached her meant that close combat wasn’t their specialty. She could still do this.
—She could get close and snap their necks.
But could she really do that when only her right side could move properly?
“What a weak thing I am…!”
Rem shook her head, suppressed her frail musings, and roused her despairing self. Whether she could didn’t matter. She had to do it. She had to.
So her left side was dead to her. What of it? She could still move her right side. If her right arm became useless to her, she’d stomp them with her foot. If her right leg became unusable, she’d tear out their throats with her teeth.
If she killed the last one, and Subaru was still alive, Rem would have won.
“—”
The moment she thought of why she fought, Rem’s heart sought the sight of the young man dear to her. She looked toward where he had fallen to suppress the last of the hesitation within her. She would burn that final image in her eyes, and it would be the kindling to set her heart ablaze.
“—Subaru?!”
He was gone.
Subaru ought to have been there, gasping from pain, from agony, from fear…but he was not.
Rem hastily scanned the whole area. She wondered if he’d been caught up in the battle and knocked away somewhere. But search as she might, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
Then Rem finally realized: “They’re one short…?”
There were five figures left among the group. But Rem could make out only four.
The figures had shifted to stand side by side, blocking the road, arms lowered with crosses in both hands. It was as if they had moved to conceal their comrade from Rem’s field of vision.
To keep her away from their ally as they fled with Subaru.
“Why…you…”
Her shaking voice fell from trembling lips.
Her lips, which felt bloodless due to all she had lost, were dyed crimson from the great amount she had coughed up. Such violent war paint transformed Rem’s adorable face into that of a veritable demon.
“You weren’t content with Sister’s horn…so you had to take away my reason for living…?!”
ReZERO_Starting Life in Another World Vol. 5 Page 17