8
The red-flagged tents were for treatment. There were five of them in the camp.
The black-flagged tents were for equipment. There were twenty of them in the camp.
The white-flagged tents were for officers. There were three of them in the camp.
The gold-flagged tent was for command. There was just one of these in the camp.
Subaru had been given the freedom to move around the camp so he could carry out his chores, so he had seen most of the camp in his short time there.
His time in the empire was Subaru’s second time seeing a proper military encampment.
The first had been during the mission to slay the White Whale.
When they had set up camp near the Great Flugel tree while waiting for the White Whale to appear, it had not been so serious a deployment as this. It had been more of a field camp.
Afterward, he had gotten several opportunities to experience smaller camps, too. But they had all been simple. None even approached the professionalism of the imperial army camp.
Because of that, he had observed the camp fairly closely, in part out of natural curiosity.
Of course, he had not made a good impression on the soldiers there, with one exception. If he’d tried to go somewhere that was actually important, it would have been off with his head; as such, he only really knew things at surface level.
But even that much knowledge…
“That is sufficiently useful. Knowing anything at all makes a world of difference…and knowing the array of the camp tells us how many enemy soldiers there are. What remains is…”
“For us to demonstrate our courage and strength. You understand well, comrade.”
“Yes—show us, the pride and prowess of the Shudrak people, the valiant warriors who defeated all enemies while standing at the side of the famed martial emperor.”
Subaru felt incredibly drowsy, like he was sitting in warm water.
And it was through that haze that he heard the voices of a man and woman both brimming with vigor and spirit.
“ ”
He could hear the sounds of other people breathing, too.
He could feel the presence of a large group. Many people.
He could feel the hot, fiery zeal of a large group of many people.
And something that seemed to be growing within himself…
“Let us begin, Shudrak! Here we raise the signal for our counterattack!!!”
“Oooooooooooh!!!”
A tremendous shout echoed, as if the whole world was being shattered.
“Uooooh?!”
Feeling something cold and wet on his face, Subaru lurched up in surprise.
His mind snapped awake as he wondered what had happened, and as he blinked, he saw a world of white.
No, this was where the wet feeling had come from.
A damp cloth that had not been wrung out at all was lying on his face.
He had read in some book before about a type of torture where a towel was put on the victim’s face, and then water was poured over it. A type of torture that only required a towel and water to easily evoke the hellish feeling of drowning…
“I don’t know anything…!”
“Oh, Suu, you’re awake. Uu’s relieved you’re better.”
“H-huh…?”
Hearing an awfully young voice for a torturer, Subaru turned his head to the side in surprise. In doing that, the towel slipped away, and he could see normally again.
I guess I’m not being tortured.
He could see the sky through the leaves of the massive trees above. And the thing that had been covering his face, blocking that view, was…
“You’re…”
The girl who grinned at him as she answered in a high-pitched voice was the girl with the tips of her black hair dyed a pink color—
“Utakata! Uu is Suu’s guard! Nurse! Babysitter! Thank goodness you woke up!”
“…Can’t say that really makes much sense…”
“Suu finished the ritual of blood! Uu and Mii and Hoo and everyone else were surprised!”
“…It’s coming back to me. Right, I had to do that ritual of blood.”
He had embarked on the ritual of blood to have the Shudrak people recognize him as one of their own.
It was a rite of passage into adulthood for the Shudrak, carried out in order to be acknowledged as an adult. Subaru and Abel, who had also been captured, had faced it together, and…
“…No, I can’t remember the last half of it at all—I guess because I was too focused. If I’m still alive, I guess that means Abel took care of things…?”
“—? You don’t remember? Mii burst out laughing.”
“What, at how pathetic I looked? Give me a break… Argh.”
Grimacing as Utakata cocked her head, Subaru tried to sit up. But he felt something strange as he put his right hand against the ground.
It felt strange. And not because of the floor—because of something to do with his arm.
“…Um, Utakata? Did, uh, something happen to my right arm?”
“Your arm? Yeah, it was incredible! It was all messy and then it was like, whoosh.”
“Messy and then whoosh?!”
Subaru’s eyes widened at that unsettling description.
Taking a few deep breaths, he prepared his heart, bracing himself. First, he turned his head toward his left arm. Three broken fingers. It hurt, but it was a relief to see them.
And then he slowly turned his eyes to his right hand…
“…The hell is that?”
It was in such a weird state that for a moment, he thought he was looking at something else entirely.
To begin with, ever since his fight with the Archbishop of Lust in Pristella, there had been a hideous, black, mottled pattern on his right arm.
Capella had claimed her blood was mixed with dragon’s blood and splashed it on Subaru and Crusch both. As a result, Crusch had suffered an unhealable affliction, and Subaru’s right arm and leg had taken on this dark mottled pattern, as though he had absorbed the hideous blood that ran through Capella’s veins.
However, other than its appearance, it had not caused any apparent negative effects, so Subaru had hidden it with long sleeves and full-length pants and just generally tried not to dwell on it, but…
“ ”
It was so dense now, it couldn’t really be called a pattern anymore.
Subaru’s right arm, from his fingertips all the way to around his elbow, was entirely black, as if he was wearing a long black glove.
Gulping nervously, Subaru slowly, carefully touched his black right hand with his left.
The right hand felt spongy and almost elastic to the touch, and his sense of touch in it was diminished. It really was like he was wearing a rubber glove on his right hand. Even its movements were slower…
“…No, this is…”
This strange feeling he had… In order to bring it into focus, he stuck the fingernails of his left hand deep into his black right hand. He pushed down and clawed at his skin.
As he did so, the black part of his right hand peeled off and fell away like a layer of mud.
“Ugh?!”
Subaru pushed his finger into the place the chunk had fallen from and focused on peeling it away like a possessed man—until finally every black part, from his fingertips to his elbow, was gone, revealing a clean, good-as-new right arm.
“Wh-what the hell?!”
“Uwaaah?!”
Subaru screamed from the shock of what had happened to his own body, and Utakata fell backward, surprised by his shout.
But Subaru did not have the mental composure to reach out and give her a hand.
“Wh-wh-wh…what’s going on with my hand?! It…is my hand… right?”
He checked cautiously, and his right hand moved without anything feeling off.
The black marks that had been on his arm before were gone, and his arm was clean—the same right arm he had been using to tame little girls this past year of his life in another world.
“Who tames what now?!”
“I thought I heard a voice. What are you going on about?”
Someone came over as Subaru was panicking as he checked his healthy right arm.
—No, not someone; there’s only two people who sound that arrogant, and one’s a guy and the other a girl, so it’s easy to tell the difference. This is a guy’s voice, so it’s…
“Abel? So you survived.”
“Of course. And with far more composure than you.”
That response, and the accompanying snort, came from Abel, who looked exactly the same as before, in his mask of bandages.
He had undergone the ritual of blood along with Subaru and had apparently made it out of the fight with the elgina without dying, either. Or I guess I’m alive thanks to him, since he’s probably the one who defeated the elgina.
“Hm. What happened to your right arm? Did you change its hideous appearance?”
“This isn’t a game; I don’t have a slider to change skin color… I scratched at it and the black parts all peeled away. Right, Utakata?”
“Right, right! Suu’s right hand peeled away! It was disgusting!”
“I mean, yeah, you’re right, but still!”
Subaru winced at Utakata’s blunt comment while holding his right arm out toward Abel. After scrutinizing it for a few moments…
“I see,” Abel muttered. “Either way, if it is back to normal, then that is sufficient. I did not imagine you would land a punch with the sealed magic stone ring. The right hand was gone entirely, so I thought recovery would not be possible.”
“Wait, wait, wait. I don’t like the sound of that. Whose right hand was missing?”
“Yours.” “Yours, Suu!”
Abel crossed his arms and Utakata raised her hand.
Subaru shuddered.
“D-don’t tease me. If it was gone, then what is this right here?”
“It is a hideous and peculiar phenomenon. I had you cough up the key words after you lost your arm and were on the verge of death. I thought you would die after that, but then…a black turbidity welled from your arm.”
“T-turbidity…?”
“In the blink of an eye, it took the form of an arm. If you ask what happened, I can only ask you what exactly did you intend to do?”
Subaru gulped as Abel’s sharp gaze pierced him.
No matter what Abel said, Subaru did not know what had happened, either. Most likely, though, it was related to the black pattern that had been engraved in his right arm—the same pattern that was no longer visible.
Or maybe what Capella had said was true, and it was the result of the true dragon’s blood’s effects.
“Priscilla inspected the stuff on my right leg, but if my right arm was in the same condition, then…”
It had been almost three months since he had been exposed to the dragon’s blood in Pristella.
He had experienced any number of deadly situations on the road through Auguria, during the struggle in the Pleiades Watchtower, and here in the empire, but they were never the sort of moments where a slightly abnormal healing ability would have made the difference between surviving or not.
So it was possible that was why he hadn’t noticed, in all this time…
“All services deferred for anything other than the right arm and right leg is a pretty inflexible model… How many more ticking time bombs are lurking inside me?”
“So there are circumstances about which you cannot speak? You seem to have quite a few secrets.”
“I don’t want to hear that from a guy who’s hiding his own face…” Subaru answered bitterly.
And then he gasped.
He’d been sitting there thinking about the weird state of his right hand and checking on Abel, but he’d just remembered there was something more important he had to do.
He had taken part in the ritual of blood, and if he had completed it without dying, that meant time had passed while he’d been unconscious.
Which meant even more time had passed since…
“—Rem. Right, Rem! I can’t just sit here, I have to…”
His original goal had been to rescue Rem, who had been left behind. That was why he had undergone the ritual. If he’d missed his chance to save her because too much time had passed, there would’ve been no point in risking his life in the ritual in the first place.
“Ah! Don’t push yourself, Suu! You’ll die!”
“Bite your tongue! If Rem dies, it won’t matter if I— Gah.”
Trying to keep his anxiety under control, Subaru shifted to get down from the bed.
And that was when he realized he was on an odd sort of bed—he was sleeping in a box constructed from interlaced logs, almost like a palanquin—as if he had been carried somewhere.
As he quickly moved down, every part of his body ached.
“Gah, hgh…”
“Fool. Did you think your body had recovered just because you grew a new arm? I told you already. You were practically a dead man. Do you think my diagnosis was made lightly?” Abel said in a cold voice.
“That’s… I…”
Abel was looking down at Subaru, who was writhing in pain.
Subaru had noticed a feeling, like something seeping out from the depths of his body, as if to agree with Abel’s assessment.
Subaru had known all sorts of lethal pains, and he recognized this was a big, red, flashing warning signal.
A feeling like a balloon or a bucket with a hole someplace it really should not have one, and the air or water or whatever filling it was leaking out…
“But Rem…”
“…You worry for her and not yourself, even in this situation? So be it. I knew that much. Since you wished for her even after losing your right hand.”
“…Huh?”
“Here.”
Subaru was more worried about Rem’s safety than his own life. Abel sounded exasperated by Subaru’s response, but he jerked his chin to the side and started walking without looking back at Subaru, as if telling him to come.
“Suu, can you do it? You can lean on me.”
“No, I can do it… Borrowing your shoulder will be just as rough because of the height difference between us.”
He smiled awkwardly as Utakata peered into his face, concerned about his ability to walk.
And then, taking a deep breath, he forced himself to stand. Dragging his feet, he followed after Abel, who was walking ahead.
“ ”
A little further ahead, Abel waited for Subaru to catch up.
Standing on a rocky outcropping covered in green plants, he was looking out over a cliff. With tremendous effort, Subaru managed to get up the rock and stand next to him.
And…
“Look.”
Abel nodded his chin again, and, turning in the direction he’d indicated, Subaru looked up.
When he saw the view from the high ground overlooking the expanse, his jaw dropped.
He was completely dumbstruck. Because…
“—Huh?”
Black smoke was rising from a camp swathed in flame—the imperial field camp was on fire.
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