CHAPTER 3
THE WATCHTOWER BAPTISM
1
—I saw a light. That’s all.
He could remember looking straight up at the tower in front of him.
Then he noticed a light out of the corner of his eye, and his eyes had reacted to it.
But that was all he could remember.
No pain, no shock, no fear.
For Subaru Natsuki, at least one of those was always present when he experienced death.
An intense pain that made him want to cry, a bloodcurdling shock, or the terror of losing everything. Instead, there was nothing. In a way, it had been a far kinder death than any other he had experienced.
Of course, in the moment, with his head vaporized, Subaru had not been able to perceive the kindness of the death, but also, he didn’t have any time to linger on the memory of it.
It was like the blink of an eye. It was no more than a single instant, barely long enough to notice that his vision had gone dark, and then he had returned to life, moving backward to be thrown back into reality.
“—Psst psst psst.”
“ ”
For a moment, there was an almost unbearable heaviness that froze his senses, and then Subaru opened his eyes.
The sound of blood flowing through his body was distractingly loud in his ears, and a lance of pain shot through him when he tried to stretch and flex his muscles. He was gripping the reins so tightly his fingernails were biting into his palm, and Beatrice’s warm body pressed against his chest.
“…Wha—?”
In the dim light, he looked down at Beatrice’s head from up close.
The aggressively sweet scent that filled his nose was different from what he usually smelled whenever he hugged her tight. There was a sickly sweetness to it, almost like toxic gas clinging to his nostrils.
Subaru had once heard that smell was the sense most strongly connected with memory.
But there was no need to resort to memory to experience that scent now. It was all around him.
The bigger problem was that his memory associated with that smell cut off only a few seconds ago.
“Psst psst psst psst.”
As Subaru’s consciousness struggled to catch up, a rhythmic sound rang in his ears.
Beatrice, who he was holding tightly to his chest, had gone stiff, and Patlash was watching with bated breath, eyeing the terrifying demon beast standing right in front of the carriage where Emilia and Rem were riding.
It was a ferocious, blood-starved demon beast with thin roots all over its body—an oiran bear.
That instant, the raw reality of his death finally hit Subaru in a way that a phrase like déjà vu couldn’t even begin to describe, and he started to shudder.
There’s no mistaking it. I definitely died and came back.
Subaru Natsuki had returned by death.
“—Ngh.”
—But why did I come back to now of all times?
Subaru gnashed his teeth more at the checkpoint he’d been saddled with than the fact that he had died.
Meili was trying to coax the demon beast to peacefully pass by the carriage. She would end up succeeding, just barely, but things would get real messy real fast.
Because Joseph, the land dragon pulling the carriage, would panic under the pressure of the demon beast’s overwhelming presence.
“ ”
Even knowing that, though, Subaru was unsure how to respond.
He couldn’t see Joseph to judge his condition from where he was sitting on Patlash. And Julius, who was holding Joseph’s reins, hadn’t noticed something was wrong with his mount. Even he didn’t have the composure to maintain perfect situational awareness under these circumstances.
Everyone in the carriage was praying for Meili to successfully connect with the oiran bear.
Unfortunately, though—
“Psst psst psst…pssst!”
There was a change in the noises Meili was making, and her finger pointed to the right side of the carriage. The oiran bear was drawn by it and started walking slowly in that direction.
Seeing that, everyone on the carriage and Beatrice started to feel a sense of relief.
But Joseph couldn’t endure any longer as the threads of tension loosened.
“Juli—”
“ Graaaaarrr!”
—It was too late. Joseph’s roar drowned out his voice.
Just like before, Joseph roared and stamped, waking up all the oiran bears at once with the noise and tremors. The field came alive with a lust for blood and violence.
The oiran bear charged with its lifeless eyes and spittle-flecked maw—until a bluish ice spear shot right through its head; the explosion of ice fragments matched perfectly, too.
“That’s enough!”
Emilia leaped gracefully up onto the carriage roof as she unleashed her magic and roared valiantly. There was a crackle as the very air froze and a tremendous number of ice blades rained down, sending up blooms of blood.
“R-run run run run run run run!”
Subaru immediately pushed Patlash to run and started shouting, and the carriage picked up speed right behind him as well.
Glancing over to the driver’s bench, he saw Ram leap out and take over for Julius, who drew his sword and slashed into the onrushing oiran bears, sending them flying.
—It was exactly the same as before.
“—Ngh.”
It was the first time Subaru had ever experienced a reset that was such a waste.
There had been plenty of times he failed to fully comprehend what he had learned the last time and ended up dying in the same way. But this was the first reset where he found himself so incapable of doing anything other than repeating the same mistake.
“Subaru! We don’t have time to get distracted!”
Subaru gritted his teeth in frustration as Beatrice slammed her back against his chest. Looking forward, he saw a ferocious demon beast approaching from the front with a big swinging fist.
At the same time, he grabbed her small, outstretched hand, and Beatrice stood up and started firing.
“Minya! Minya! And another Minya!”
The mana in Subaru’s body passed through his hand and transformed into destructive power under Beatrice’s guidance.
The purple crystals she created pierced the demon beasts and crystallized their hideous bodies, which Patlash shattered as she raced forward through them.
“My ace-in-the-hole sandworm!”
Hearing Meili’s desperate shout, Subaru saw an explosion of sand out of the corner of his eye.
The sandworm rose from the soft ground that lay beneath a field of flowers that the oiran bears had set out, swallowing several of them in its enormous maw and crushing another dozen with its massive body.
It was clash of the titans two—but this wasn’t enough to turn things around.
“—Barusu! If you don’t want to die, then ride like your life depends on it!”
Subaru was simmering in an aimless anxiety as a voice scolded him sharply. It was Ram on the driver’s bench of the carriage, reins in hand, doing an excellent job of controlling the agitated Joseph. She was controlling him with a masterful ability that matched Rem’s, but unless something changed soon, it would all be for naught.
“We can’t go toward the tower like this! Ram, change routes!”
“—Ngh. What are you saying? It’s a straight shot to the tower, and every other direction is filled with demon beasts!”
“I know, but if we keep going this way, it won’t work!”
“If you’ve noticed something, then just spit it out, Barusu!”
“If I could, I would! For now, just change routes!”
Ram shouted angrily at Subaru, but he couldn’t do anything other than yell back. It was infuriating, but he couldn’t say anything more concrete. He didn’t know how he died before.
With every other death he had experienced, there had been room to maneuver, and he relied on the information gleaned from that to get around whatever was checkmating him.
But this time there was no thread to pull to invoke a better fate. And he didn’t have time to search for it, either.
—This is a nasty way to seal my reset ability.
“Ram! Do what Subaru said!” Ram was arguing with what were obviously nonsensical instructions, but Emilia came down on Subaru’s side. Unleashing a fusillade of ice chunks at the demon beasts, she nodded forcefully. “Subaru wouldn’t say something strange like that without a good reason!”
“Barusu says strange things and shares rash ideas almost every time he opens his mouth!”
“Subaru wouldn’t ever say something strange like that in such a dangerous situation without a good reason!”
“Gee, thanks for that clarification!”
He wasn’t sure whether to bemoan being treated like the boy who cried wolf or be proud that Emilia treated him as a guy who could be relied on in a pinch.
Save it for later.
Patlash stuck her front legs into the sand and executed a hairpin turn. She kicked hard, sending a rampaging oiran bear flying before dashing off in the new direction.
“—Ngh! Hold on tight, everyone outside! Don’t get knocked off!”
Following Subaru, Ram deftly guided Joseph into the same direction. The top of the carriage was particularly more unstable in such a swerve, so Emilia and Julius were forced to hang on to the ceiling for dear life to avoid being thrown off.
There was a violent thud as the carriage sideswiped a demon beast, but it somehow managed to make the turn and hold together in—
“ Kiiiiii!”
There was an earsplitting screech, and a bitter wind filled the air.
Turning around reflexively, Subaru saw what had happened.
“The sandworm…gh.”
—Behind them was a twenty-yard-long sandworm towering over the sands.
Its torso exploded like it had taken a direct hit from an artillery round.
And unable to support its massive body anymore, it slowly—
“Get out of the wayyyyy!!!”
The sandworm’s body slumping to the ground was more than heavy enough to completely flatten the carriage.
The oiran bears caught underneath it cried out in agony as Subaru and Ram directed their land dragons, forcibly changing course to avoid the falling sandworm.
“Whoaaaaaa?!”
An explosive shock wave rippled out, and a cloud of sand swallowed him. Losing his grip on the reins, Subaru immediately leaped, clutching Beatrice tightly to his chest.
He rolled across the sand hard, rolling, rolling, until finally he stopped.
“Th-th-that was dangerous…!”
“Subaru! We messed up!”
His face was covered in sand, but he only had a moment to breathe a sigh of relief before Beatrice shouted. She brushed away the flower petals in her face and stared at the dense cloud of dust filling the sky.
“We’ve gotten separated from the carriage! We’re all alone!”
“What?!”
Frantically looking around, he saw the giant sandworm’s corpse lying on the ground in the rising sand. The oiran bears that got caught under it had all been turned into hideous corpses, and the desert had become a sea of blood.
And that sea had cut off Subaru and Beatrice from Emilia and everyone else.
In the distance, he could hear the demon beast roars and the earsplitting sounds of combat. They were still fighting hard over there. But they would have to overcome a swarm of demon beasts in order to meet back up again.
“Half the fighting strength! And it feels like twice as many enemies…!”
“I suppose that means it’s four times worse than before!”
Hearing Beatrice’s determination, Subaru bit his lip, strongly regretting his choice.
My mistake, my failure. I didn’t get enough value out of my last loop.
I thought I had learned to do more, that I could do more things now, that I was a little better than before.
But fate just laughed at Subaru Natsuki’s superficial wit and tricks, crushing them all underfoot.
“That bastard Regulus was a lot easier to deal with than a swarm of demon beasts…!”
“We don’t have time for your grumbling! We have to—”
“I know! I need to think of—”
Standing up, he looked around for Patlash so they could start moving. Without her legs, no plan he could come up with had any chance of working.
In that moment, he noticed a white light at the edge of his vision, and every hair on his body stood on end.
“Light—”
Just as the word left his stunned lips, it closed in on him from across the sands.
The white light beaming out from the middle of the watchtower. It tore through sandy ground, shredding the demon beasts in its path as it flew straight toward him.
The moment it was about to mercilessly shatter Subaru Natsuki—
“—gh.”
A black shadow leaped in front of Subaru, and then he went tumbling.
Subaru’s body flew across the sand from the impact. His head hurt, and he was woozy. Realizing he was splayed on the ground, he blinked several times.
“Wh…at…?”
Propping himself up like he was just getting out of bed, he looked around. And then he noticed it.
Patlash’s big body had collapsed beside him, completely limp. There was a terrible wound in her side, and the smell of burnt flesh and blood was wafting from it.
Recalling what had just happened, Subaru realized that Patlash had covered him.
“—Subaru!”
Just as he realized what happened, Beatrice cried out his name. Looking over, he saw her running from a short distance away. She had a pained, sorrowful expression on her face.
Following her blue eyes, Subaru saw his own body.
Just like Patlash’s wound, there was a clean hole blown through the right side of his stomach.
“Agh…”
When he saw the wound, blood welled up in his throat, and his vision tilted to the side.
He had collapsed and couldn’t move anymore. All the strength left his body, and his consciousness faded.
He sensed someone kneeling next to him.
“Subaru! Subaru! No! You can’t…don’t—don’t die…don’t leave me alone…! Nooo!”
His shoulder was being shaken. He could hear a tearful cry. He wanted to reach out his hand, but he couldn’t move.
Such a pretty face…but she’s crying… I can’t make her cry…
“Don’t leave Betty behind…”
She was sobbing as she desperately hugged Subaru.
Subaru’s limp body was too much for her little arms to support, but even so, she tried her best.
Tears streaked down her cheeks. At the very least, he wanted to wipe those tears for her.
He searched everywhere on his body for something that could move, but nothing worked. But if his body couldn’t move, then he just had to draw on something that wasn’t part of his body.
“…Subaru…?”
—An invisible hand, something that only he could see, wiped the tears from her cheek.
The black finger touched the teardrop, and she was looking at Subaru as if realizing something. He tried to smile to put her at ease, but he didn’t have the strength.
“Suba—”
She started to say something.
But the white light that came flying from somewhere far off in the distance interrupted her.
Another shock pierced Subaru’s chest.
Looking down slowly, he saw it had pierced the back of the girl clinging to him and then kept going until it had gone through his chest and out the back.
“—Ahh.”
That rasp was her last.
Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the girl’s body transformed into particles of light and disappeared.
As if she had never existed.
“Agh…”
Without her support, Subaru collapsed to the ground, unable to move. Without a reason to move.
Pierced by the unfathomable white streak, Subaru’s insides were completely destroyed. And the swarm of demon beasts drew toward him, licking their lips.
“ ”
He stopped breathing, and his eyes lost focus.
It was hard to say whether his life extinguished before the fangs and claws tore his body to shreds.
Before that, his brain failed, and he couldn’t comprehend anything.
—But at the very end, it felt like there was another white flash on the horizon.
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