I kicked off the ground and leaped forward.
Thick roots writhed beneath my feet to trip me up, but I slammed my sole down on them with everything I had and crushed through without hesitation.
When trekking through forests, mountains, and unpaved roads, it's actually a mistake to be overly cautious about uncertain footing. When running along a natural beast trail, what truly carves a path is the resolve to move forward without hesitation, no matter what lies beneath your feet.
Trusting the sturdy soles of my boots, I ground down the accumulated branches and moss and launched myself into another jump.
My breathing was ragged. Sweat trickled down my forehead toward my eyes, and I blinked painfully as I carved out an escape route for the sweat.
There was no room to look back, and no reason to. The odds of having actually shaken our pursuers were practically nil. The sound of pursuit still galloped right alongside us, clinging to us as though mocking our desperate flight.
I pitched my body forward, reducing the surface area catching the wind as much as possible, and sprinted at full speed.
My lungs burned, my entire body groaned, and I gasped for oxygen like a drowning man. And as Subaru opened and closed his mouth pathetically, like a fish washed up on dry land— "What a wretched face… How telling."
"—You better remember this later, you hear me?!"
Regretting every wasted breath of oxygen, Subaru tightened the arms he had wrapped around the girl in his embrace —
It had been roughly ten minutes since the start of the operation Subaru had dubbed the "
As Subaru had predicted, the Mabeasts drawn by his scent had engaged them in fierce combat, and now the two of them had no choice but to flee headlong through the forest, utterly defeated.
"I trusted you because you said you could fight, and this is what I get!"
"I was fighting, you know. It just so happened that Ram's stamina didn't hold out as long as expected."
"You made that cool speech about crossing dangerous bridges!?"
"The bridge turned out to be more dangerous than I imagined. I nearly fell before even reaching it."
Ram's responses were maddeningly cheeky each and every time.
For someone who had burned through her mana from repeated battles and could barely move her limbs, her attitude was unbelievable.
The Witch's Scent Subaru emitted was working like a charm, steadily luring Mabeasts out of the woodwork.
The sheer number of them far exceeded even Subaru's wildest projections. Frankly speaking, the rate at which they appeared was beyond anything he could handle, and no word other than "regret" came to mind.
Using her wind magic to its fullest, Ram had dispatched a total of seventeen Mabeasts.
And after disposing of them all with seemingly effortless efficiency, Ram had suddenly collapsed, spent. Subaru, who had been right beside her, nearly had his soul leave his body. He scrambled to haul her onto his back and began their escape — and now, here they were.
"And now here we are — you couldn't ask for a more half-baked predicament."
"Don't complain when you're the one carrying me! And stop talking so much! I'm about to bite my tongue… Besides, I don't have the energy, so… ugh…"
Though a shut-in student who routinely posted extraordinary results in every physical metric, his体质 that kept him indoors meant his stamina was a serious weakness. In a long-distance foot race, he'd be dead last at school — no contest.
Even with that pathetic pool of endurance, when your life was on the line, you squeezed out what you could. The well was going dry, sure, but that was a problem for a few minutes from now.
The Mabeasts giving chase had probably noticed Subaru was about to hit his limit.
As if savoring the process of their prey weakening, every time Subaru's stride faltered, they shaved close to his feet to keep him pinned down, fanning the dying embers of his survival instinct.
"Barusu, there's one right to your left. — One swing should hit it."
In his arms, Ram turned her head and advised him on the perfect distance from within the shifting scenery. A quick glance in that direction confirmed it — there, running alongside at a distance that showed it had completely underestimated Subaru as a threat, was the muzzle of a Mabeast.
Subaru drew the single-edged sword from his waist in a flash and swung it at the creature. The blow was true, and the slash carved a clean horizontal line across the arrogant Mabeast's face — or so it should have. It didn't.
Ram, growing exasperated with Subaru for making absolutely no move to draw his sword, glared up at him from his arms with fury in her eyes. Subaru met that glare with equal intensity.
"Why won't you draw your sword?"
"I'm a guy carrying another person in both arms while running! How the hell am I supposed to swing a sword!? Even if I could, I'd miss, drop you, fall over, and we'd all be worse off, you idiot!"
He thrust rough breaths at the snickering Ram and pressed on, sweat beading on his forehead.
Ram might be petite, but the weight in his arms had to be at least forty kilograms. Carrying that much and still managing to run was already a Herculean effort. Asking him to draw a sword and fight on top of that was something only possible in manga.
An untrained ordinary student could only do so much while carrying a girl. Naturally, that left Subaru with the sole option of carrying her and running.
"Any time now, my hidden power is going to awaken and— Ow!!"
His cry of anticipation was abruptly cut short by a scream as searing pain shot through his shoulder. Twisting to look, he saw a Mabeast's fang buried deep in his right shoulder — the finishing blow from a creature that had grown bored of toying with him. A ragged chunk of shoulder meat had been gouged out, and the tips of his collarbone and the fang touched, sending a tremor through his throat.
But— "Vigilance is the greatest enemy — of the enemy."
Still cradled in his arms, Ram reached down to Subaru's waist, drew the single-edged sword from its position there, and unleashed a sharp thrust at a diagonal angle.
The blade's tip pierced perfectly through the side of the Mabeast's nose, destroyed its brain, and punched out through the back of its skull. The fang's grip went limp as Subaru's momentum flung the creature to the ground — leaving the tumbling corpse behind, Subaru caught sight of the blade as it grazed past his face and— "Don't do something that dangerous, you—!"
"I prevented the curse from stacking any further, so you can thank me. — Barusu, if you get bitten by an Ulgarm, kill it no matter what. Letting it escape only pushes your death further away."
With a deft flick, Ram cleaned the blood from the blade still resting in her grip and fixed Subaru with a hard stare as she delivered her warning. At her words, Subaru pretended to focus entirely on running and refused to respond.
Inside his clenched jaw, he was acutely aware that his teeth were trembling ever so slightly.
He couldn't tell whether it was a warrior's tremor or pure fear. A lie — he knew deep down, with something close to resignation, that it was the latter.
Mabeasts terrified him. Their fangs, their claws — the horror of them was unbearable.
Just moments ago, the feel of a fang driving into his shoulder, though shallow, had been sharp enough to stimulate Subaru's most primal fears.
He had once been torn apart, limb by limb, by those very creatures.
That pain, that sense of loss, that despair — how could anyone expect him to forget?
Despite having a sword in hand, Subaru had not once driven its edge into a Mabeast's body, even during their coordinated battle with Ram. He had only brandished it to keep them at bay, to maintain distance. Nothing more.
The result was that Ram had shouldered the burden alone, and Subaru was now forced to flee while carrying her exhausted body. He had never imagined the Mabeasts would converge in such numbers, but every bit of this was his own fault.
His shoulder throbbed. Blood pulsed steadily through the gaps in his torn clothes, and his right sleeve was soaked to the elbow. His right arm felt like it might give out at any moment, and more than once he had to readjust his grip on Ram as he pressed forward. He had to get them somewhere — anywhere — different.
"Ram!"
"I'm on it."
She answered his call with blunt efficiency, and the pupils of her eyes flooded with crimson.
Periodically activating her Clairvoyance, Ram scanned the surrounding area for any sign of
His eyes swept the surroundings, keenly alert for any Mabeast lunging at them. Fortunately, the loss of that one earlier seemed to have given the rest pause — no individual was foolish enough to rush in with an obvious provocation. They hung back at a calculated distance, waiting for his stamina to finally collapse.
An eerie quiet settled over the scene, and Subaru couldn't suppress a chill of dread as he swallowed hard.
Periodically, he veered left and right to keep the Mabeasts from pinning them down, changing course to avoid any potential ambush. With each repetition, he lost track of which direction they had been heading originally.
He had long since lost sight of the path toward the village, the route deeper into the forest. Since Ram, using her Clairvoyance, made no mention of it, he clung to the belief that at least they hadn't turned around — and ran on.
Abandoning all higher thought and simply running on pure instinct, the result was— "No—!"
The forest opened up without warning, and the ground vanished from beneath his feet.
His legs swept empty air, and a sensation of weightlessness — as though his organs had been yanked upward into his chest — engulfed him. His heel scraped against a slope, and though his posture crumbled, he transitioned into a slide.
His blood ran cold, but they weren't facing a cliff head-on.
It was simpler than that — they had stumbled into a hollow between the trees. Sliding down the slope with the girl still in his arms, nearly tumbling, he arrived at the bottom in the most undignified way possible. He thanked his luck for not having fallen flat, and surveyed his surroundings — only to realize his gratitude had been premature.
The bottom of the forest valley lay before them. The V-shaped depression split into two paths to the left and right. But from both directions, the footsteps of multiple Mabeasts echoed toward them. Simultaneously, from the top of the slope Subaru had just slid down, he could feel more Mabeasts beginning their descent.
"We've been cornered…!"
He mustn't underestimate the Mabeasts as mere beasts.
Though repeated encounters had given Subaru the distinct impression that these creatures possessed something resembling intelligence, the circumstances and their appearance had kept him from dwelling on it. That carelessness had allowed the Mabeasts to dictate which path they took — and led them straight into this dead end.
In his arms, Ram — unaware of how dire their situation was — still had her gaze cast far into the distance.
He couldn't leave the solution to her while she remained unaware of what was happening. Which meant breaking through this impasse was the burden placed on Subaru, the proof of the trust she had placed in him.
"No choice… gotta do it!"
The ability to make snap decisions was one of Subaru's few redeeming qualities.
Holding Ram with only his left arm, he snatched the single-edged sword from her grip with his right. His wounded right shoulder throbbed with a sickly, oozing pain, but it wasn't the kind of injury that compromised his grip.
Taking a deep breath against the pressure closing in from left, right, and behind, Subaru raised the sword— "Here I go, damn it!"
He drove it into the slope in front of him and mobilized every muscle in his lower body and right arm — beginning the assault on the hillside ahead.
His chosen method was, once again, escape. Breaking through one of the three paths and carving out a route to survival — the kind of heroic move — wasn't worth the consideration. Since brute-force power-ups were off the table, there was no guarantee his blade would even reach the first Mabeast.
He thrust the blade in, bit into the moss-covered slope with his boot soles, and used his entire body to ascend. If he tumbled back down, it was all over — but the end of the slope was coming regardless of where he waited. If that was the case, he'd rather struggle forward than lie here waiting for everything to go dark.
Twisting his body, he scraped his right elbow and shoulder — the arm driving the blade — against the slope, gaining whatever friction he could as he clawed his way upward. Behind him, at the bottom of the hollow, the Mabeasts that had planned to ambush them from both sides craned their necks together, spotted Subaru's retreating silhouette above, and unleashed a roar.
But noticing his plan now was far too late.
After roughly a dozen thrusts, their bodies finally reached the top of the slope. He hauled himself up, hooked his upper body over the edge, and somehow dragged himself and Ram up— "Yes! We did it! I actually did it! Way to go, me! I'm the man! This heritage single-edged sword is chipped to hell and completely wrecked but— Uoooh!"
Midway through his self-congratulatory tirade, Subaru yanked his body back down the slope. An instant later, a tremendous storm of wind and debris screamed over the spot where his head had just been — the delayed reaction meant the back of his neck caught the edge of it, and searing, excruciating pain hit him all at once.
"—You bastard!"
Grimacing through the pain, Subaru hauled himself back up — and there, in the far distance, stood a small silhouette. For Subaru, it was the fifth encounter he'd had with that puppy Mabeast.
The creature was crouched low, belly pressed to the ground, limbs extended.
Its twin eyes blazed crimson, fixed squarely on Subaru, radiating an undiminished hostility toward the prey it had failed to finish off.
In short, it was readying its second shot.
"No way in hell am I letting that hit me!"
With mana beginning to surge around him naturally, Subaru scrambled up onto the slope in a panic. Sheathing his sword, readjusting his hold on Ram — all of it could wait. He bolted out of the Mabeast's line of sight — and behind them, the forest was ravaged by a sideways torrent of earth and debris.
Trees were mowed down, the earth ripped open — he felt the extraordinary power of it all right behind him. There was no room to glance back. A lingering calf caught the edge of the onslaught, and blood sprayed from the gash.
"Like hell—!"
He screamed and leaped.
He jumped to the right, toward a different slope from before. Deciding to outrun the debris flow, he met the cliff's challenge head-on — driving the sword he was holding in reverse back into the earth— "Owwwwww, ow ow ow ow!"
He scraped the ground with his entire right side, twisting the embedded blade to bite into the earth and control his slide. Half-crying from the fresh abrasions, Subaru looked up at the cliff top he had just fallen from— "Oops."
A Mabeast's body came tumbling down the slope, unable to stop its own momentum.
It let out a wail like a housepet as several Mabeasts plunged straight down. Unlike the hollow before, the slope below was littered with jagged rock faces. The falling Mabeasts were embraced mercilessly by the unforgiving terrain, and the sound of shattering bone gave way to silence.
"Nearly got myself the same treatment there, but—"
"Barusu—! There's Rem!"
In his arms, Ram cried out in joy, and her bloodshot eyes snapped back to reality.
Then, after producing an expression of elation, she furrowed her brow at the fact that their entire view was tilted at an angle.
"In the short time I wasn't looking, what exactly happened?"
"Extenuating circumstances have put us in a cliffhanger! But speaking of, I'm curious about your results — if only to take our minds off the present reality."
Feeling the muscles in his arms trembling, Subaru shifted toward being buoyed by good news. Without commenting on his worsening condition, Ram gave a small nod.
"Not far from here, another set of eyes caught a glimpse of Rem. The timing was bad, so I couldn't catch Rem's own vision, but she was heading in our direction."
"How do you know?"
"The vision I stole belonged to an Ulgarm, and it had encountered Rem while traveling with several members of its pack somewhere. The connection was severed when I crushed it."
"I see…"
He didn't know what kind of shock Ram suffered when the being whose vision she had shared died. But he imagined it couldn't have been pleasant.
Regardless, confirming Rem's safety was a blessing. True to his expectations, she seemed to be energetically hunting in the forest, and that was more than fine.
"The real problem is the mountain of trouble over here… If Rem rushes over thinking we're in danger, it'll be more than just the rescuer becoming the victim — it'll be a full-on disaster."
"If you both fall off the cliff, even Rem would be in serious danger, Barusu. Can you climb back up?"
"Through sheer willpower, somehow. But the bigger problem is the Mabeasts still chasing us from above…"
As he posed the question, he re-gripped Ram more firmly with his right arm, the one supporting them both. Leaning his weight into the sword embedded at a diagonal, he tried to ease his posture— "—Ah."
Their voices overlapped simultaneously, and the sharp, high-pitched sound of steel snapping echoed through the air.
The blade of the single-edged sword, still embedded in the cliff face, had broken off — leaving roughly the front third embedded in the slope. He hastily drove the now-blunted tip back into the earth, but the flat end lacked the penetration of the original. To put it simply— "—there's a chance those Mabeasts we knocked down below will cushion our fall."
"And a greater chance that Ram and I will become cushions for the Mabeasts falling after us."
At Subaru's words — a prayer to whatever fate might be listening — Ram answered with weary resignation. In that instant, the blade lost its precarious hold on the slope, and the fall resumed.
He pressed the entire right side of his body against the slope, bracing for flesh to be scraped away, but there wasn't enough friction to support two people's weight. Their bodies were unceremoniously hurled over the cliff's edge.
"Whoooooa, oh no—!!"
"—This is going to cost you, Barusu!!"
The sensation of plummeting headfirst reminded Subaru of a past leap, and his entire body broke out in goosebumps. Even so, he had unconsciously pulled Ram tighter against his chest — to cushion the impact of the fall, if nothing else. He really hadn't stopped being a kid after all.
Feeling the force of that clumsy embrace, Ram shifted and extended her arm toward the ground below— "—El Fuura!"
With her shout, mana surged outward, and the ground at their estimated landing point erupted in a blast of wind.
The upward pressure from below caught Subaru's falling body on a cushion of air, reversing his headfirst plunge and slowing their descent — if only somewhat.
*Good enough,* he decided within the spinning half-rotation of his vision, and poured every last ounce of strength into both legs. He clenched his teeth so hard he thought they might crack as he absorbed the impact.
"Nguuuuoooooh, aaaaaagh — I held on!!"
—He held on.
His legs screamed with numbness, and he hopped in place to work through it, then looked up at the cliff they had fallen from and was struck speechless.
The height — over ten meters — was equivalent to roughly the fourth floor of a school building. To be hurled from that onto hard ground and somehow survive was nothing short of miraculous.
"Seriously, perfect timing on Ram-sama and Buddha-sama. If not for that wind magic, by now…"
He was about to express his gratitude for their narrow escape when he noticed that Ram, still in his arms, hadn't stirred a muscle. Looking down, a thin trail of blood ran from Ram's nostril, and her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow, her face twisted in a faint groan.
"Hey — hey, Ram!? Crap, this — hey—"
He shook her gently, but there was no response.
She had already been drained from fighting the Mabeasts. Adding the magic she had used to soften their fall had been the final blow, grinding away what little consciousness she had left.
"Damn it, my timing sucks."
Cursing his own carelessness, Subaru cradled Ram more tenderly in his arms. He tucked the broken sword back into its scabbard as best he could and looked up.
On the cliff top, the Mabeasts that had been chasing them appeared to have begun searching for an alternate route to cut them off.
He wanted to put as much distance between them as possible while he had the chance— "But I can't afford to waste time — !?"
Running meant losing time, and losing time meant losing lives. Even knowing that, running was the only option — and Subaru swallowed the urge to click his tongue in frustration. But that brooding was cut short by a thunderous sound from above.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Looking up, Subaru saw a massive debris flow cascading down the very slope he had just fallen from — and riding atop it, led by the puppy Mabeast, were more than a dozen Mabeasts.
He dove out of the way at the last second, narrowly avoiding being swept up in the torrent.
But when the Mabeasts landed on the same ground as the debris, every advantage Subaru and Ram had sacrificed their lives to create vanished instantly.
And as though to add insult to injury, Ram's consciousness had sunk to the depths from the effort of creating that opening, while Subaru's already meager armament was now even more inadequate.
"I've got a bone to pick with the Witch… Her scent is way too potent."
When things went according to plan, he was grateful. The moment he realized those plans had led to this disaster, he did a complete about-face. Knowing full well what a petty thing it was, Subaru called himself all manner of names — and entered into yet another escape, even though he knew it would only delay the inevitable.
*Time to haul ass out of here. Pray they're still underestimating us and won't attack immediately—* "Huh?"
Just before bolting, Subaru caught the discrepancy and cocked his head.
Something was off about the Mabeasts that had fallen with the debris flow. He had assumed they would land and immediately lunge at them, but— "Uh, hey, I'm over here, you know?"
Just as Subaru's dumbfounded voice indicated, the instant the Mabeasts touched down, they scattered in every direction, fleeing into the valley floor.
They scattered like spiders — a sight so pathetic it was reminiscent of Subaru's own desperate escape from earlier.
"What the hell is going on with you guys—"
The tension of being attacked loosened, and confusion flooded in to fill the void.
An instant later, the answer exploded from the cliff top and rained down upon Subaru.
"…Huh?"
Again looking upward, Subaru's eyes widened in bewilderment at what was happening above — and then, watching the dark-red chunks of flesh that flew through the air one after another, he understood.
Far above on the cliff top, a solitary figure had appeared.
A girl in a waiter's uniform, brandishing a blood-soaked iron ball, her eyes devoid of sanity as she glared down at the valley floor.
The instant those murder-filled eyes met his, Subaru felt his back go drenched in cold sweat from the worst possible premonition.
In the next heartbeat, the figure leaped — descending from the towering cliff to their ground with effortless grace. The Oni had arrived.
Surrounded by Mabeasts deep in the forest, facing an Oni, clutching a girl he had to protect, gripping a broken sword in one hand — Subaru swallowed hard, realizing he had reached the final act.
"And yet, compared to you lot, I feel I'm a bit on the scrawny side, wouldn't you say?"
His plea went unheard, swallowed by the wind howling through the forest.
So — this was the so-called moment of truth.
The reflection in the blade of his drawn single-edged sword showed his own warped profile, and to Subaru, it looked terribly, terribly weak.