Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (LN) - Volume 21 - Chapter 3.3

3

“Just when I was thinking we had cleared the sand time, this happens.”

“It definitely feels like a full dose of the Sage’s nastiness. There’s no opening and no letting our guard down.”

Julius and Subaru both sighed after moving away from the flowers to a place where they could be confident in not provoking the oiran bears.

Inside the carriage, Emilia and everyone else were in agreement. Emilia was patting Meili’s head.

“If you weren’t there, Meili, it would have been terrible. Thank you sooo much.”

“I-it would have been dangerous for me surrounded by that many of them. That’s all.”

Meili looked away and responded curtly. But there was a faint redness to her cheeks. It was adorable that she couldn’t quite hide how she was really feeling.

Either way, though, Emilia was right. Meili had made a huge contribution. And in that sense, so had Ram when it came to actually breaking through the sand time.

“How is your body doing, Ram?”

“…Is this the time to be worrying about me? We don’t have the leeway for that.”

Ram fired back in a slightly hoarse voice. The night was dark in the desert, so he couldn’t see her face clearly. But Ram’s already pale skin looked even paler than usual, indicating just how exhausted she had to be.

But she didn’t pay any heed to Subaru’s gaze and looked over at Meili.

“What about that flower field, Meili? Can you get all of those demon beasts to get out of our way with your ability?”

“Like I said before, it’s difficult. If there were only a hundred, I could do something, but when it gets to be more than that, it’s hard, even for me.”

“A hundred, huh? That is already quite remarkable. Unfortunately…”

Julius looked over toward the flower field. Even at a glance, it was clear that there had to be more than a thousand of them there. There might even be more than ten thousand. It wasn’t a number that Meili could handle.

As a heavy mood settled around them, Julius held up two fingers.

“Our options right now are to continue forward or to go back.”

“Is going back even an option? It won’t solve anything.”

“Can you be sure? It’s entirely possible that when we passed through the sand time that it just happened to connect here. If we pass through a different crack in space, it is possible we might end up at another place even closer to the tower.”

Subaru was skeptical of that possibility, but he had no hard evidence to deny it, either. The fact was that there were three different sand times.

They had passed through the sand time during the night, but there was a chance that the morning and midday ones were different—

“…Spare me such naive optimism.”

As Subaru was considering that, Ram’s quiet voice rang in his ear.

It was none other than the person who had worked the hardest to get through the sand time who glared at Subaru and Julius.

“Would the Sage who has gone so far out of their way to reject outsiders really leave an easy path someplace? There’s no way. Retreating into dreams in the face of a punishing reality is the last resort of cowards who want an easier way.”

“You… We’re just talking about the possibility of even a slightly safer path.”

“We embarked on this journey well aware that it would be dangerous. The resolution to lose something is necessary to ever be able to gain anything. Or were you planning to win without ever risking anything? How arrogant can you be?”

Faced with Ram’s fierce tongue-lashing, Subaru paused for a moment and then let out a deep breath.

Ram was intentionally phrasing it provocatively to urge them forward. And there was of course a logic to what she was saying, too. But there was also a logic to what Julius had said.

All that was left was to decide which one—

“Meili, what about just making the ones on the path we take move out of our way?”

“Try to narrow it down instead of moving all of them? In that case…”

Meili focused on the field, examining it closely.

“If it’s just that much, then I think I can do it. Move them out of the path, and then make them go back to sleep once they’re far enough away… Yeah, it’s okay. I can do it.”

At the very least, she was in agreement with Ram on moving forward. Hearing that, Subaru turned to everyone else.

“It might sound like a flip-flop, but I agree with Ram. There’s certainly a possibility of something different if we go through a different sand time, but if it is demon beasts blocking our way, then at least we have Meili with us.”

“There’s also the possibility that this is better than what we would find anywhere else.”

Beatrice nodded as well while fixing the hair that Subaru had messed up.

“In the end, we have no choice but to rely on Meili. In the worst case, if the demon beasts do wake up, then it will be up to Emilia-tan and Julius—and me and Beatrice. Sorry.”

“ ”

“Whoops, and Patlash. Thanks. I love you, too.”

His trusty steed made her presence known, and Subaru reached behind to tickle her neck affectionately.

And then Subaru looked at everyone. The demon beasts’ flower garden was right in front of them. They couldn’t afford to take too long to decide, so he started to put it up to a vote…

“—Mm-hmm. I agree with Subaru and Ram. I don’t want to turn back, even for a second.”

Emilia smiled reassuringly, backing Subaru’s conviction. There was a powerful determination in her purple eyes, and she was looking at the tower that lay beyond the field of flowers.

“The path is straight, and the tower is right ahead— If anything happens, I’ll be there to help everyone, no matter what.”

“—You are surprisingly muscle-brained when it comes to situations like this, Emilia-tan.”

“Muscle-br…eh? What do you mean all of a sudden? Ahh, don’t embarrass me like that.”

Emilia kept a cool look while saying it, but she started blushing at Subaru’s wry comment. She didn’t really get the meaning of muscle-brained, but there was something cute about the way she blushed.

“Surprisingly for me, muscle-brained wasn’t exactly an unalloyed compliment for Emilia-tan… Yeah, nope, I probably meant it as compliment. I’m head over heels all over again. E M T all the way.”

He realized again just how important the girl who was looking so resolutely ahead was to him, of how much he loved her.

With Emilia, Ram, and Meili in the keep-moving camp—

“So then all that’s left is what Anastasia and Julius think, but…”

“Not much I can say there. We already have a majority, and I’m not exactly keen on trying to go against it. But I do want to think a little bit more about whether this place is really what it seems.”

Anastasia put her hand to her cheek. Hearing her response, Julius turned to her.

“Do you have some sort of concern about this garden of demon beasts, Lady Anastasia?”

“Nothing that big. But there was a cranny for slipping through the sand time, right? So I just wondered whether there was something like that for this field, too, is all. What do you think, Beatrice?”

“—Why would you ask Betty?”

Beatrice’s cheek tensed when Anastasia, or rather Foxidna, turned to her. Anastasia’s lips softened at Beatrice’s hostile response.

“From what I’ve heard, you’re a specialist in dark magic, right? And when you’re talkin’ ’bout dark magic, then twists in space are sort of dark magic’s bread and butter…so I was just wondering if you might notice something is all.”

“…The sand time was a natural disruption, but the way it twisted was similar in structure to Betty’s Passage. That is what Betty felt passing through it.”

Answering the question calmly, Beatrice looked up at Subaru.

“A long while back, Betty cast a similar spell on Subaru.”

“On me? When?”

“…The first time we met.”

“The first… Ah! When I cleared that infinite-loop-looking hallway on the first try! Sorry for that after all the work you put into setting it up.”

“It’s annoying that it feels like you are genuinely apologizing. Just forget about it!”

“You’re the one who brought it up…”

Beatrice’s cheeks puffed out in a pout as Subaru shrugged passively. But he couldn’t ignore what Beatrice and Anastasia were saying.

If they actually had some idea other than just passing through the field, then that would be the best.

But also, there was one more problem they couldn’t afford to ignore still hanging in the air.

“—One question I had, though. Did anyone notice a light shining from the tower?”

“A light from the tower?”

Emilia and everyone else looked confused at his question.

—The white light emanating from the watchtower. He didn’t understand the details, but it was what caused his death twice now.

The first time he had not even been able to react to it, and the second time he had avoided an instant death only thanks to Patlash. Were it not for her, Subaru would have been killed on sight again, and he would have had to face this loop still ignorant about the light.

But even if he had brought back some information from his last death, it wasn’t a simple thing to come up with a way to deal with that light.

“I didn’t notice anything. Did you see a light shining from the watchtower, Subaru?”

“Hmm, ah, yeah. I don’t think I was just seeing things. There was definitely a gleam from the tower, and…”

“Does that mean the Sage in the tower noticed us?”

“They don’t have to notice us to turn on a light at night. Maybe that’s all it was?”

“I see. Assuming for the moment the Sage has noticed us, then perhaps if we indicate we mean no harm, there will be some contact.”

The fact that his explanation had been vague due to not being able to explain his death resets had come back to bite him.

Once he started talking about lights, it was only natural that they would start imagining something like a room light or a lamp. It would be stupid to assume a lethal hostility right from the start. He had to find some way to get the dangerousness of that light across without flirting with the taboo of his ability, though—

“—How did the light look to you, Barusu?”

While he was struggling to find a way to change the conversation’s flow, Ram threw him a line. She was crossing her arms as she turned the topic back to Subaru, who took his time phrasing it.

“I…I think it was something dangerous. At the very least, it didn’t seem friendly.”

“Any evidence other than gut instinct?”

“…Well, not really.”

That was the part that made the least sense in Subaru’s explanation. With no evidence he could point to, though, he had no choice but to call it instinct and try to make it stick. Because of that, he expected Ram of all people to be exasperated, but:

“I see—that’s a problem.”

Ram took his answer seriously— No, it’s not just her.

Emilia and Julius and even Anastasia had serious looks on their faces.

“Huh? What? I just said it was gut instinct. No one’s going to get suspicious about that?”

“Maybe if it was just instinct, but it’s your instinct, right? In that case, it’s better to take it seriously than suspect it, if you ask me.”

“You should not be so self-deprecating. You have made it through quite a number of trials and tribulations. There is an instinct that only people who have survived those sorts of situations can develop. Call it a wealth of experience.”

“A field rat knows to change its den before the heavy rains come. Barusu’s instinct isn’t to be made light of.”

“That’s already making pretty light of it…but I get it.”

They all gave their own reasons for trusting what he claimed to be simply intuition. They were all telling him that even if it was just his instinct, they trusted him.

He felt a wave of relief at their stance. Even from Julius.

Rubbing his nose for a moment at the feeling, Subaru looked away from his comrades.

Because of that, he didn’t notice it. The first to notice was Ram.

“Barusu, that’s—”

“Eh?”

Ram’s voice was dead serious. Following her gaze, he saw her looking at his chest. Looking down, he saw it, too.

There was an unusual red point of light shining on the chest of his cloak.

“ ”

That instant, a phrase popped into his head. It was one that didn’t fit this world at all, though.

—A laser pointer.

“—Ngh!”

The next instant, all his comrades moved in a miraculous way.

—A beam of light unleashed from the watchtower flew straight at Subaru with terrifying speed and accuracy.

It was death incarnate, moving faster than the wind, piercing its prey without a noise. That one attack would vaporize Subaru Natsuki, killing him without giving any time to react—

“—I won’t let that happen!”

—if he had been alone when it took aim at him.

A shield of ice the size of a hand appeared on Subaru’s chest where the red point of light was shining. It was a magic defense Emilia had immediately created to protect him.

The beam of light’s aim was on target, and the ice intercepted it just like she intended—

“No way?!”

It was only a split second. The white light was slowed by the shield of ice for just an instant before vaporizing the barrier and passing through. Not only did the ice not stop the light, it didn’t even delay for a whole second.

But that split second was enough.

“Shiii—!”

Julius swung his knight’s sword, unleashing a full-strength thrust with his full body weight behind it, hitting the light that was about to skewer Subaru.

His face was dead serious as he perfectly tracked the ray of light whose force had weakened ever so slightly from Emilia’s ice wall. The light spun and deflected away, landing in the sand beside them. A white smoke rose from it.

For the first time, Subaru had avoided a direct hit from it and could see that it was—

“…A needle?”

The unknown object was glowing as it stuck out of the sand. In the dark of night, it was an oppressively brilliant intense white—and it looked like a long, thin needle.

The needle started to crumble from the back and disappeared in the wind.

“Barusu! The next one’s coming!”

Subaru had been reaching out to grab the light that was disappearing when Ram’s warning hit. The red point on his chest was still there. Another round was coming.

Until he died, the light would—

“Beako, are you ready?!”

“A stupid question!”

Beatrice was never going to say she couldn’t do it to Subaru’s question. Changing gears, Subaru gritted his teeth hearing his reliable partner’s response and made up his mind.

“Emilia-tan!”

“ ”

The next round was going to be coming. Just before it arrived, Subaru called out to Emilia.

They shared a moment’s glance, and Emilia nodded. They couldn’t hash things out in detail, but Subaru had faith in her.

He saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. Death was coming on rails at him.

“Stoppppp!”

A multilayered wall of ice unfolded between Subaru and inescapable death. If a single layer wasn’t enough, then she would make six.

The light slammed into the ice. It tore through the first easily, and the second and third might as well have not been there, either. But there was some resistance from the fourth, and the fifth even lasted for a tenth of a second.

And by the sixth, the speed of the light needle was noticeably slower—and at that point, the knight’s sword pierced it.

“Again, I will not allow it!”

If the first time had been a miracle, the second was a combination of training and technique. Emilia and Julius used their abilities to the limit to protect Subaru from the death that had him in its sights.

In that moment, Subaru and Beatrice unleashed their mystic art.

“—E! M! T!”

“I suppose!”

Flipping up the hood of his cloak, Subaru shouted his praise for Emilia—or rather, a cast.

In time with that, Beatrice collected every last bit of mana inside Subaru and formed a complex and mysterious spell, something completely new and unknown.

—What they were weaving was one of three original spells that they had created.

When the magic was complete, a faint light expanded with the two of them at its center. It spread as if creating a ball of light enveloping all of them, and then the field was complete.

“This is…”

Julius was stunned trying to decipher what it was when at the edge of his vision he saw another beam of light coming for Subaru. Julius immediately tensed, but that was stolen away a moment later by the change that he saw.

The force of the light coming toward Subaru dissipated the moment it entered the light field.

“It lost power?”

The light had been reduced to the speed of a simple arrow. Swinging his blade, he easily knocked it aside.

Of course, even if it had lost speed, it wasn’t something that could be deflected easily. But that was just a testament to Julius’s masterful swordsmanship. He was able to easily defend against the attacks that followed as well.

“E M T. Absolute nullification magic. Inside this field, all magic loses its strength.”

Since he was still holding hands with Beatrice, Subaru used his free side to point at the tower.

That field was one of three trump cards that Subaru and Beatrice had developed. The third was still incomplete, but it was created with the goal of being able to fight with powerful enemies, the pinnacle of dark magic.

“But it won’t last long. Effectively, this all ends once my mana runs out. And right now I’m like a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom of it.”

“That is an effect that is beyond the pale. I can see the cost of it is also quite heavy. Do you have a plan?!”

“No clue! They noticed us, so we should pull back for now—”

Subaru looked around for a way to retreat as Julius ran over toward him. In such a tense situation, Ram’s quiet voice had almost a translucence to it.

“—They’re looking at Barusu?”

Ram was covering her face with her palm. Subaru wondered for a moment what it was, but then he realized she had activated her clairvoyance—realized that Ram had managed to sync with someone in the tower.

Not just anyone, either. There’s only one person she could aim for there.

“The Sage?!”

“—Ngh.”

There was no response from Ram. Instead, there was a trickle of blood from her right eye socket. It looked like tears of blood flowing from her pink eye.

It’s…not an attack. I don’t know, but it looks like recoil from the clairvoyance.

“Stop it already, dumbass! Right now—”

Subaru tried to stop Ram’s risky spying. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her slender body into his arms.

“Wait, Barusu!”

“Hell no! You’re going in the carriage! Right now, we—”

He turned around while holding Ram.

—In that moment, the world around them shattered.

“Ah—?”

“—Ngh! We messed up!”

An impossible change occurred in the desert night as Beatrice’s voice rang out.

“The E M T frayed the warped space!”

“What does that—?”

Subaru couldn’t finish his question as he felt a floating sensation and his feet left the ground.

The world twisted chaotically, fraying and breaking apart like a sheet of paper being torn to pieces. Cracks formed in the ground and sky, swallowing up the carriage, Subaru, and everyone else.

“Crap…Emilia?!”

“Subaru—”

Falling into sudden darkness, Subaru shouted as a feeling of weightlessness came over him.

He couldn’t tell up from down or right from left or where the carriage was. But he could hear Emilia’s distant, oh so distant response to his shout.

“This is—”

Before he could finish saying it was bad, Subaru was spat out on the other side of the shattered sky.