"Then, I'm counting on you to stall for time like we planned."
Those were the words Subaru said to Otto after safely completing the search for Ryuzu and regrouping.
Otto, who had been told the whole situation by Subaru the day before yesterday, immediately recognized them as the signal to begin what he'd spent two days preparing.
"That's fine and all, but are you certain about where
"That's hard to guarantee, to be honest. That's exactly why we're in this mess now. But hey, don't worry."
Subaru scratched his head, wearing a pathetic expression before steeling his features.
With eyes that were less sharp and more purely unpleasant, when he put on a serious face, it alone looked like he was suppressing rage toward something.
Even in their short time together, Otto had gotten to know his character well enough not to mistake it, but he couldn't help thinking the guy was cursed with an unfortunate face. Similar thoughts were probably directed at Otto by Subaru as well, and this shared lack of self-awareness was one of the common threads between these two peculiar friends.
"I have an idea where Emilia is. Honestly, hearing she'd disappeared made me panic like an idiot, but once I calmed down, this is the only place it could be."
"I see. And that is... no, I think I'd better not ask."
"Really? You could hear me out and take on the role of praising my deductive reasoning, you know."
"I'll pass on that. I'm not keen on being your cheerleader, and if Garfiel catches me after all the stalling, there's no telling what I might blab under pressure."
Otto shrugged and appealed to the risk of information leakage, and Subaru nodded with a "makes sense."
Indeed, that was a legitimate concern. Otto didn't consider himself especially tough or pain-resistant, and he had no memory of enduring pain beyond his limits.
If Garfiel, in a desperate state, inflicted harm on him, there was no guarantee Otto wouldn't spill everything he knew. The last thing he wanted was to be a hindrance in that way.
"Well, if it comes from your mouth, I guess there's nothing to be done about it."
"—"
With unforced ease, Subaru casually said something like "I'm counting on you." He clearly had no idea what it was like to be on the receiving end of that kind of trust.
Who could possibly betray such unconscious, wholehearted confidence? The fact that he wasn't even doing it deliberately made him truly outrageous as a friend.
"At any rate, I'll do my utmost to make it work. After all, whether things go well for you or not will have a huge impact on my future."
"Right. If I screw up spectacularly, your future is toast. ...If things get dangerous, just run. Today, I doubt that guy will take any jokes."
"...Yes, I'll keep that in mind."
Otto's lips softened slightly in response to Subaru's concern.
In their coordination, Otto had arranged for the refugees from
Two carriages were stuffed with villagers' clothing to fool Garfiel's nose into thinking they were carrying many passengers, and the plan was to use the obvious single road leading outside as the decoy route.
The escape routes for the refugees had been researched by Otto through the night and thoroughly explained to each earth dragon.
There should be no gaps in the plan.
Now, it was simply a matter of whether Otto's decoy operation would hold and whether the refugees could escape outside.
It would buy time away from the
Otto judged that it shouldn't come to that.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ To begin with,
As a traveling merchant, he'd learned a fair amount of self-defense to avoid dangers on the road, but compared to those who made a living from actual combat, he was not one step but ten steps behind.
When hauling valuable cargo, guards were essential, and when he'd tried to take a shortcut through a mountain path and been attacked by bandits, he'd been forced to cryingly abandon his goods and flee.
It was mutually acknowledged by himself and others that he wasn't cut out for rough work—you couldn't solve problems head-on with violence.
"Why exactly am I doing something like this against someone like that...?"
Otto lightly wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and forced his stiffening cheeks into a smile. The cardinal rule of merchants: when facing someone, always wear a smile.
As someone born into a merchant family, Otto had been drilled in that lesson from childhood. Though it really only counted for about half his life, starting from around age ten.
Still, this habit shouldn't be underestimated either.
By smiling like this and convincing his body first that "this is just a normal business scene," his body would gradually accept the tension as something comfortable.
His hands moved. His feet moved. He could still run.
It was remarkable to him that he wasn't out of breath after running this far on uneven ground. The lightness of a mind that had thrown caution to the wind was blooming strength throughout his body that he'd never known before.
"That said, even if I've awakened, there are limits. Complacency is the enemy; carelessness is the real threat."
Passing through gaps between trees in the forest, Otto reminded himself not to count on luck at the crucial moment.
In the distance, Garfiel, whom he'd left behind, hadn't spotted him yet. But of course, he couldn't just keep running. Otto's current role was to keep Garfiel's attention and prevent him from returning to the "Holy Ground."
To make sure Garfiel didn't realize he didn't actually need to deal with Otto.
Hiding in the forest, Otto unveiled trap after trap to draw Garfiel in. What filled his mind was an exceedingly desperate thought.
Yes. The truth was, Garfiel didn't need to deal with Otto at all.
To achieve his goal of not having the "Holy Ground" liberated, what mattered was pinning down the key players—Subaru and Emilia. Otto was merely a bonus.
Garfiel himself, who had paid no attention to Otto until now and had let himself get sidetracked like this, should have understood that better than anyone.
Rising fallen leaves and magic ore. And a large quantity of featherbugs loaded into the dragon carriage.
With two flashy but harmless traps, Otto had succeeded in making the blood rush to Garfiel's head.
The current Garfiel had lost his cool and narrowed his vision to seeing Otto as someone he had to defeat. Even though there was no need for that.
"That said, if I take too much time, he'll catch on right away."
So Otto could only maintain a distance—close enough to stay in sight but far enough to stay safe—and continue taunting Garfiel, even knowing that closing in was the most dangerous thing he could do.
He'd killed his scent, so as long as he wasn't spotted, it wouldn't be fatal. But if he was captured, Garfiel had an overwhelming gap in ability that could close the distance between them in an instant.
Truly, this demanded the tension and caution of walking a tightrope.
"—"
Hiding in the bushes, Otto peered ahead.
Twenty meters away, Garfiel stood surveying his surroundings. Thanks to the effect of Kiznis oil—a substance with a pungent smell that had been splashed on the dragon carriage wheels—his sense of smell seemed completely dead. His irritated expression as he relied on his vision to search for Otto carried the dangerous air of a wounded beast.
To keep his attention here, poking at that was truly like plunging your hand into a blazing fire—foolish behavior that would guarantee burns.
*'Then, I'm counting on you!'* *'Aye aye, sir!'* Otto's voice issued a thin call, and a responding cry was converted into meaning through his eardrums.
Following Otto's signal, the forest rustled faintly.
"Huh...?"
Garfiel raised his face as if sensing something off about the rustling of trees swaying in the wind.
From the trees surrounding him, what was launched simultaneously at his face were balls of mud made by rolling together dirt and dung.
It was a threat display by small forest-dwelling creatures called forest mice that inhabited tall trees.
Of course, the mud balls themselves had no lethal power, but pelted from all directions at once, Garfiel hurriedly leaped back to dodge. However, he couldn't evade them all—several hit his legs, and he clicked his tongue at the stench and mud clinging to him.
"What the—?! Damn it! Why is this... another one of that bastard's tricks...?"
Scraping the filthy stuff off against a nearby tree, Garfiel still suspected Otto's involvement even now. But mid-thought, he noticed something and wrinkled his snout.
—The forest mice's mud balls had no killing power. They only dirtied clothes and infused them with stench.
However, the smell of their dung attracted a certain insect that lived in the forest— "—!"
Something squirming beneath the soil at Garfiel's feet approached and leaped onto his leg in a grasping motion. Crawling up Garfiel's leg was a long, black, centipede-like creature.
The centipede, roughly the length of a person's arm, crawled up past the knee of Garfiel's left leg—where the forest mouse dung had adhered—and pressed its grotesque mouthparts against the traces of the mud ball, gnawing at it.
"Gah! That's disgusting!"
Garfiel flipped his claws and swept the centipede off his body. But from the ground, more and more of the same centipedes wriggled out—not just at his feet, but bouncing around over the fallen mud balls like they were fighting over them, making the area take on a kind of hellish appearance.
Those centipedes were creatures that thrived on the seeds of tree fruits found in forest mouse dung.
While running through the forest setting traps, Otto had conversed with many creatures and tossed in every "useful thing" he could find.
Despite their grotesque appearance, centipedes weren't the type that were carnivorous or venomous, apparently. But surrounded by that many, the sheer number was threat enough.
And indeed, Garfiel— "—! Goddamn it! This is infuriating!!"
Driven to exasperation by the swarm of clinging centipedes, Garfiel spat and screamed.
Then he raised his right leg high and drove it into the ground with all his might.
Immediately after, the earth around him bounced up in a perfect square, as if cut away.
"—"
Seeing that inexplicable sight, Otto couldn't help but hold his breath.
Garfiel, standing on the severed chunk of earth, raked his claws and feet through the swarm of centipedes left immobile by the shockwave, hunting them down one by one. When the floating chunk of earth slammed back into the ground with a tremendous crash, every centipede that had been crawling around him had been exterminated, and those that remained fled back underground as if terrified.
The trees that the forest mice had called home were also knocked down, caught up in the earth's upheaval, and Otto's cooperating residents had fled in a panic as well.
It seemed they'd paid quite a price in exchange for the sugar water.
"Well, that too is part of trade... Whether you can turn a business opportunity into a victory depends on the person's caliber, so I'd appreciate it if they didn't resent me for it."
Facing the glimpse of Garfiel's power, Otto took a moment for light self-reflection to calm himself. Then, once again muffling his footsteps, he retreated and guided Garfiel—who had started walking—toward the next trap location while maintaining his distance.
He hadn't run around the forest for two and a half sleepless days for nothing.
—Once this was all over, he was going to sleep so hard he wouldn't even dream.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ *'Something amazing is coming.'* —Yes, yes, I know.
*'Behind you. Amazing. Coming fast. It's here now.'* —That's why I said I know! I already factored that in.
*'You're gonna die. You're gonna die. Poor thing.'* —Could you stop being so pessimistic!?
Releasing the divine blessing of word spirits, Otto's ears were bombarded with incessant noise as he ran.
These were the voices of insects, small animals, and every sentient creature living throughout the forest, and sorting through them to pick out those relevant to himself was an extraordinarily difficult task.
It had been about twenty years since the divine blessing of word spirits manifested, and about ten years since he'd become proficient with it. Even within that span, he'd never attempted something this reckless.
When he'd used the blessing before to clear his name of a false accusation, the location had been a regional city, so the number of inhabiting creatures had been limited.
But in a vast forest, the absolute number far exceeded Otto's capacity to process.
In the air, on trees, among leaves, in the soil, on stones—bugs, small animals, there were countless places things lived. Hearing the voices of every creature hiding in all those places was close to having the words of a hundred or more people blasted into your brain at once.
It wasn't just what he could hear.
The divine blessing of word spirits forced comprehension onto Otto. In other words, his brain's activity had to expend all its processing on everything the blessing picked up.
"Bu—!"
A sharp pain lanced through his head, and Otto swayed, catching himself against a tree. When he raised his sleeve to wipe his sweat, he found it stained with dripping blood.
A nosebleed. The stream of blood trickling down his face was evidence that his brain was functioning beyond its limits. His brain intermittently creaked, and the ringing in his ears continued without letting up.
"Ah—I didn't know. Using it continuously causes this? My divine blessing... it really is hard to handle. It's not just convenient, it's actually quite troublesome."
Otto roughly wiped away the nosebleed, massaged the space between his brows, and stumbled onward at a jog.
The ringing in his ears persisted, but he had no intention of releasing the blessing. After all, Otto alone couldn't even sustain this escape.
Just as before, voices guided him—halting but providing information on Garfiel's movements. Eyes he couldn't turn around watched Garfiel in his stead.
Securing the cooperation of bugs and animals with minds different from humans'—Otto wasn't sure how others would see it, but it wasn't easy.
After all, their thought processes differed from humans'.
What brought joy, what caused aversion—their common sense was his common sense's opposite. When trying to negotiate, how could you know what weapon to wield?
Moreover, even among the same insects or animals, the more intelligent the species, the greater the individual differences. There were regional variations too; the same type of insect could inhabit different areas and have completely different likes and dislikes.
The fact that Otto could keep avoiding the threat of Garfiel like this—however briefly—came down to having gained a preparation period and to the result of Otto giving everything he had within that time.
—Was Subaru, right now, finding Emilia and having a proper conversation with her?
The time Subaru needed to talk to Emilia—to stretch it even a little longer—that was why Otto was placing himself in the midst of this ordeal.
If Subaru's guess was wrong, or if things didn't go as planned and Emilia showed no progress, everything would come to nothing.
Why was he siding with Subaru so heavily?
Lost in thoughts meant to distract from the pain, Otto suddenly wondered this.
It was true that Subaru was the person who'd saved his life, and he was cooperating to repay that debt. It was true that Subaru had acknowledged him as a friend and had asked for his help, and so he'd agreed because there was no alternative.
But was he really the kind of man who would try to go beyond what was asked of him, just because of those things alone?
"...Ah, I see."
At that moment, a feeling brushed through his mind, and it became the trigger for realizing the reason.
And Otto couldn't help but laugh.
Once he noticed, it was simple.
The reason Otto trusted Subaru and lent him his strength was embarrassingly straightforward.
*'You couldn't be understood and gave up—that's the face I knew better than anyone.'* The power of the divine blessing of word spirits—voices that others couldn't hear.
Otto, who heard and knew things through the voices of other creatures, had been shunned by many people. He'd lost friends, couldn't see his family anymore, and the divine blessing of word spirits had become nothing more than a superfluous tool with no use beyond cutting through emergencies.
But the experience born of having that blessing was different.
Being shunned because of the divine blessing of word spirits had taught Otto the pain of not being understood by others. He knew the frustration of trying to explain what he knew to others but never getting it across. He understood the bitterness of giving up, thinking they'd never understand anyway.
All of it—everything Otto carried inside—was exactly what Subaru had been carrying before he confided in Otto.
That was why Otto believed in Subaru, saw his own past self in him, and started running.
It was none other than that.
What Otto wanted to save wasn't only
"I—found—...you!!"
"—?!"
The instant he became aware of that other truth within himself, Otto heard a voice from an angle other than the divine blessing of word spirits and was struck by an impact to his shoulder that sent him rolling across the ground.
He fell sideways as if yanked down, cushioned by the soft earth as he tumbled.
"Ba—peh! Wha—guh!"
"Too bad for you!!"
Spitting out the fallen leaves in his mouth, Otto tried to get up, only to feel claws sink into his torso. The air was squeezed from his lungs, and he was violently driven back to the ground again.
Up and down mixed in disarray, his thoughts couldn't keep up. Oxygen couldn't reach his brain, and the pain of blood seeming to solidify ran through every blood vessel in his body.
"Even if your nose goes out on me, I still got ears, you know. What kinda trick was that—them bugs were all chittering and whatnot... but this is the end."
"H-how about it...? It's... not over... until it's—pfft"
"Don't give me lip. You put up a good fight, yeah... but even I can't afford to waste any more time."
Garfiel's foot pressed down on Otto's upturned stomach, applying his weight bit by bit.
His ribs creaked under the pressure from directly above—greater than Garfiel's small frame should have been capable of—and Otto flailed his limbs with a groan.
"If I stepped down hard enough, that'd turn you into splinters. That thing with the ground—y'know, where I bounced it? You were watching from somewhere, right? Same thing'd happen to your body. Wanna test it?"
"—No thanks. Don't really feel like getting stepped on."
Facing the intimidating glare looking down at him, Otto returned a smile like a bluffing retort. Garfiel's expression soured slightly at Otto's attitude.
"Well, would you look at that. You got some real guts. If I'd noticed your resolve before we started, I wouldn't have had to go through all this roundabout stuff."
"—"
There was something close to praise in Garfiel's words.
Otto heard it, craned his neck, and let out a thin breath. As Otto continued to pant weakly, Garfiel narrowed his eyes.
"If it were before, I'd have brushed it off as nothing special... but—"
"—"
"The moment you decided to fight, the whole forest turned against me. That first fallen leaf—it was because bugs hiding under leaves flew out all at once. The stuff in the carriage, the mice's dung balls, the centipedes, the snakes that poured out from the fallen tree, the birds that led me to the patch of poison flowers—there had to be a reason behind all of it."
Garfiel counted off the traps he'd encountered and the ones he'd fallen for.
Listening to his words, Otto continued to breathe in thin, ragged breaths.
Just as Garfiel had deduced, every trap was something Otto had set up by dashing through the forest. Methods to drain his stamina and buy time.
All of them hit their mark, fulfilling their role of drawing Garfiel this way.
However, the sheer number of natural phenomena—too numerous to dismiss as coincidence—had made Garfiel realize that Otto had orchestrated them all, and that the reason he could do so lay in what he possessed.
"I ain't great at thinkin', but not stopping even when you're thinkin'—that's what it means to live. So I thought about it. Thought and thought, and came to this: most of the inexplicable stuff in this world is influenced by a divine blessing. —You've got one of those blessings, don't you?"
"—Hmph."
"I don't know if it's the blessing of the forest or of the earth, but if that's the case, nothing you do is surprising. I'd have to drop all mercy and leniency and put you down for good. ...That's why—"
Garfiel spoke to the unresponsive Otto, kicked his trembling body with his foot, and turned around. Then he narrowed his merciful gaze with those sharp eyes.
"With that desperate, unforgiving look in your eyes, it's no wonder I didn't notice."
"—"
Behind Garfiel as he turned, a space had opened up where white light was now gathering.
Light filtering through the gaps between the trees—this was something entirely different in color, indicating a place where visible, dense Mana had pooled.
Seeing the Mana buildup so thick that jumping in carelessly would cause Mana intoxication, Garfiel grimaced and looked down at Otto.
"That's your trump card, huh. There had to be a reason you put up such a bold front all the way to here. That thing's gotta have something that can turn me upside down. ...If you'd been able to keep me busy all the way to the end, you might've managed to push me in there."
"...Ah, ugh."
Crouching, Garfiel grabbed Otto's collar and lifted him.
From Otto's nostrils, blood was flowing again due to his brain's overactivity, staining the lower half of his face—a grim sight. Garfiel shook his head.
"Nice try, but it's not enough for me. You should've known your place and stayed put."
"My... place, you say...?"
"That's right. There's no way you could beat me. —I don't know what kind of trap this was, but taste its power yourself."
As if offering a parting gift, Garfiel tossed Otto's body with a gentle throw.
Otto experienced a brief moment of weightlessness, then rolled across the ground without even being able to brace himself, tumbling into the zone of concentrated white Mana.
In the thick Mana that permeated the area, Otto's already hazy mind was further corrupted.
His vision spun, his tongue went numb, and the nosebleed continued to flow without stopping.
A trap. The final trap. Thrown in. And then, what, how— "I'll watch the end for you."
Arms crossed, Garfiel waited for Otto's last moments.
Lying face-down, catching sight of that at the edge of his vision, Otto gathered his scattered thoughts to understand where he was and what he needed to do.
—that the final trap had borne fruit.
"...Could I ask you something?"
"Huh?"
Otto pressed his hands to the ground and struggled to push himself upright.
Garfiel's eyes widened in surprise—he clearly hadn't expected Otto to still be moving. Otto found that amusing. Indeed, Subaru's words made sense.
Doing what people think you can't—that's what made it interesting. It was true. His personality might be bad, but this rush was something he couldn't seem to stop.
"How much of the forest had you torn down—trees felled, ground gouged out—by the time you got here, Garfiel-san?"
"I don't know what you're tryin' to say."
"The fact that there's this much Mana pooled where I am right now... means you've made the forest this angry."
As he spoke, a sense of accomplishment washed away Otto's fatigue and pain.
His wavering speech gained stability, and sitting on the ground, Otto looked at Garfiel.
He had uncrossed his arms and was just beginning to realize he'd fallen for Otto's scheme, preparing to move.
But it was too late.
"—Al Dona."
The Mana that had accumulated circulated through Otto's entire body, and at his incantation, the world transformed.
—An earthflow of tremendous speed and force surged upward, striking Garfiel's entire body and blasting him into the depths of the forest.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ "Haa... haa... haa..."
Otto held his trembling arms aloft, continuing to breathe with exhaustion so thick it was nearly bloodshot.
All the Mana that had been floating around the area had been poured into the spell and dissipated.
The Mana intoxication receded, but the fatigue that replaced it was agonizing.
—The final trap Otto had laid was simple, connected to all the preceding traps.
Namely, Otto had proposed to the forest's creatures that they help him punish an enemy who did harm to the forest surrounding the settlement.
Garfiel, during his time spending his days in the "Holy Ground," had apparently been wandering the forest and behaving in ways that, from the animals' perspective, were outrageously inconsiderate.
Sharpening his claws, mowing down trees for training, probably even gathering firewood for daily living—in the long run, to the animals, it all amounted to sabotage.
These accumulated small offenses had made Garfiel, tragically, perceived by the majority of the forest's creatures as a big, powerful bad guy.
Through negotiation, Otto had offered to help punish Garfiel on behalf of the forest's creatures. And as he laid out and activated trap after trap, should Garfiel continue his destruction of the forest—the forest's residents had promised to concentrate all their Mana into one place and lend Otto the maximum power they could.
The visible, enormous Mana had been a "thinking trap designed to be obvious."
Having fallen for so many traps already and become hyper-sensitive, Garfiel avoided it and—in a turn of events that was itself a kind of poetic justice—threw the clearly exhausted Otto into that very spot.
In borrowing the forest's power to cast magic beyond his own capacity, Garfiel had unwittingly helped him do it.
The result was an earthflow that battered Garfiel's entire body, delivering what could be a decisive blow to someone who had sustained virtually no damage until now.
Garfiel's complete relaxation—the certainty that Otto had no power to fight back—had helped make it happen.
Everything had gone exactly as Otto planned.
In other words, "This time, surely, with this—..."
"—And that means you're out of tricks."
A dejected voice, thin with exhaustion. From among the trees, Garfiel's face emerged, glaring.
His clothing was shredded, and cuts from sharp stones dotted the exposed skin here and there. However, vital areas like his head seemed to have been protected, and his footing didn't appear to have suffered any major impact.
The gap in pure physical power was even wider than Otto had imagined.
"I'm honestly impressed."
"...Is that so?"
"I didn't really think you could do all this. More than that, I assumed you'd given up and underestimated you. —Forgive me. I did something dishonorable toward a man."
Garfiel spoke with a solemn expression, and Otto shook his head, dismissing the apology.
What he'd wanted was the word "I concede." But Otto's everything—body and soul—had been spent perfectly, and yet it still wasn't enough to defeat Garfiel.
Therefore, Otto's resistance ended here.
Garfiel tested the feel of his hands and flashed his sharp beast claws—this time, he would show no mercy.
Those blade-like claw tips would, just as Garfiel had shown sincerity toward Otto, slice straight through his body and end his life.
—Had he done everything he could?
He had the sense of having given it all.
The divine blessing of word spirits, the bonds of friendship, the debts and repayments—he had given everything.
And if it still wasn't enough, then so be it.
There was nothing more Otto himself could do.
Therefore— "See you. —When you wake up, everything'll be settled."
"My solo act ends here..."
"—"
His words came out like a breath escaping, and Otto went limp, closing his eyes.
His demeanor seemed far from the dignity of acceptance— "Could it be...?"
Garfiel shuddered again, wondering if there was still more, and his body hair bristled with alarm as he scanned his surroundings.
On all sides, in every direction, there was no sign of anything. If there was something, it was— "—!"
Baring his teeth, Garfiel raised his claws and looked up.
He drew breath, inflating his lungs to roar. But there was a delay in his action. His eyes widened at the sight before him, and from his open mouth came something other than a battle cry.
It wasn't killing intent or hostility—it was a name.
"Garfi—!!"
Above—jumping from the treetops, a shadow plummeted toward him.
A short skirt flashed, and the tip of the staff she held in her grip aimed straight for Garfiel's head.
Watching the Mana converge at the staff's tip and emit light, Garfiel screamed.
"Why you of all—Raaaaaaam!!"
The next instant, blades of wind erupted, and a blast ripped through the Holy Ground's forest.