Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 6 Page 10

  “What are you talking about? No one’s been on the opposite side of you.”

  “—Huh?”

  Subaru’s mouth hung open, and the meaning of the reply failed to sink in.

  “What are you sayin’? He was all curious and staring at my cell phone just earlier, same as you.”

  “Ahh, so it’s called a cell phone? Wait, ah, can you guarantee my safety for having heard that? I don’t want to disappear…”

  “Don’t play games with me!”

  Subaru roared at Otto, who was casually ignoring Subaru’s question as if he thought it was all some big joke. Subaru looked to the right again, but the gap was as wide as before, and the carriage that should have been there nowhere to be found.

  “—?”

  Then, as Subaru stared at the gap, his field of vision suddenly became indistinct. He sensed a blur, as if there was a haze right before his eyes. Subaru blinked several times, but that did not wipe away his unease.

  The dark empty space continued to run parallel to Subaru and Rem’s dragon carriage. The darkness was terribly ominous, and he couldn’t help the nervousness welling up inside him.

  That was why Subaru opened his folded cell phone, shining light upon the gap to drive away the darkness.

  He meant to look for a trace of the person who should have been there, and to ascertain the source of the uncanny feeling that just wouldn’t go away.

  And within the shining light—

  “…Ah?”

  There, floating in space, Subaru met a truly gigantic eye.

  The next moment, something roared, and mist covered the Liphas plains.

  —Mist.

  6

  Bathed in a powerful gust of wind, Subaru felt like he’d been smacked in the face.

  “—!”

  Pounded by the gale, Subaru’s body floated up, in danger of being tossed from the driver’s seat altogether. He instantly reached out, but his fingers found nothing to grasp; Subaru’s body flew straight forward, hurtling toward the darkness—or it would have, if she had been a moment later.

  “Subaru!!”

  His collar was grabbed from behind, forcefully pulling him back down. The hard impact of his butt upon the seat made him see stars; amid them, he saw Rem, holding him down while handling the reins.

  Rem’s mouth was open as she abandoned her usual neutral expression, howling desperately. Her shouts became a chant. Mana gathered according to Rem’s will, transforming the world around them with magic to create spears of ice as long as Subaru was tall.

  In the blink of an eye, three frozen missiles formed in midair, shooting out like arrows with incredible force. The ice spears raced through the sky, landing with a sound like steel smashing stone—and the darkness before them was shattered.

  “Oh, wahhh?!”

  The next moment, Subaru was grabbed by his neck once again and instantly hoisted straight up.

  As he floated upward and away from the driver’s seat, he saw the dragon carriage beneath him. The land dragon, not realizing its passengers had vanished, continued kicking up dust as it sprinted along the highway with all its might.

  In the next instant, a hit from the side with enormous mass behind it reduced the dragon carriage to splinters, sending the land dragon hurtling along with it. The unadorned vehicle for hauling commercial freight was torn apart like paper; the huge animal, slammed into the ground, burst apart from the impact, turning into a smear of blood, innards, and fragments of flesh on the highway.

  Subaru’s mind went blank from the overwhelmingly unreal spectacle.

  “Left—!!”

  He thought he heard a shout from right beside him. A second later, his body landed on a hard floor. The dull pain coursing through his shoulder and hip dragged his mind back to reality.

  However, the blows assailing him one after another gave him no opportunity to lift up his head. The dragon carriage he was now riding made a sudden turn, and the centrifugal force flung Subaru to the side. When the vehicle tilted, the rope wrapped around his fingers was the only thing keeping him from being hurled right out.

  Turning his head, he came to realize that he’d leaped onto Otto’s dragon carriage.

  Wrapping the rope for securing freight around his wrist, Subaru tried to get up amid the shaking.

  “No, Subaru, you mustn’t! The dragon carriage’s blessing has given out. It’s dangerous for you and Rem to get up!”

  When he looked, Rem had impaled the floor with her own right arm to support herself. It was difficult for her to keep steady during the rocking, even with her physical abilities.

  Without the effects of the wind repel blessing enveloping the land dragon, Subaru’s body was mercilessly subjected to the ferocious wind and shaking. He grew ill; he couldn’t even try to stand.

  Rem had clutched Subaru and leaped from their dragon carriage to Otto’s. If she’d made that decision even a second later, she and Subaru would have shared the same fate as the pulverized cart.

  “Wh-what happened?! What the hell’s going on here?!”

  The overwhelmingly destructive change had happened in mere tens of seconds. Subaru couldn’t even begin to wrap his mind around the sequence of events.

  “Don’t you get it?!”

  Otto responded to Subaru’s confused question in a near scream. When Otto looked back, his face was white as a ghost, his teeth chattering as he pointed to the sky.

  “The fog appeared! That giant thing swimming in the sky can only be one thing!”

  It was as if Otto was convincing himself because he refused to accept it; he grudgingly shook his head, convulsing with fear as he desperately drew air into his lungs and shouted with all his might: “—The White Whale!!”

  As if responding to Otto’s shout, the White Whale’s roar shook the air, echoing across the plains.

  —The White Whale.

  Subaru knew he’d heard the name during the first time around. The name of the monster shrouded in mist that had shut off the highway.

  With the highway blocked due to this creature, he’d had to take a huge detour to get back to the mansion. One might say it was the reason he didn’t get back before the Witch Cult’s onslaught.

  But until that moment, Subaru had never laid eyes upon the monster itself. Furthermore, Subaru had forgotten its existence; he couldn’t deny that he’d been too naive. Namely, that…

  “How could it come out like this, right now?!”

  Subaru knew that the highway was closed whenever the White Whale appeared. The first time around, the blockade had occurred on the third day of Subaru and Rem’s journey back due to the appearance of the White Whale’s mist along the road. And that moment was the night of the second day—no doubt the royal capital would be informed of the appearance of the mist in the morning, with the highway sealed during that day.

  That night was the only one when they were unaware of the White Whale’s presence, and they had blundered into the menace.

  “To think…running into the Wh-White Whale… O Dragon, O Dragon, please deliver us…!”

  With hollow eyes, Otto murmured a prayer to the Dragon in search of salvation. As Otto lost the will to fight and even his very spirit, Subaru saw with his own eyes how, among traveling merchants, the existence of the White Whale was synonymous with absolute terror.

  The previous time around, Otto had indicated how the White Whale was an evil omen among all merchants.

  Otto’s lips trembled, his mind somewhere else as he managed the reins. His land dragon, sensing the presence of the White Whale, had fallen into a state of terror, exhausting its remaining strength to kick the ground and propel them forward at an unsustainable speed.

  The White Whale had sunk into the night, its giant body nowhere to be seen.

  “Shit… Just when it starts coming after us, the fog comes out…!”

  Subaru scowled as he felt cold droplets of sweat on his brow, wiping them off with the palm of his hand. With few sources of light to begin with, the e
mergence of mist made maintaining visibility all but impossible.

  Subaru looked behind, to the side, and above, searching for any trace of something that resembled a fish.

  “Rem! Do you see the White Whale?!”

  “I cannot; it is too dark! But…!”

  Rem replied bitterly to Subaru’s question, but for some reason, she trailed off. The catching of Rem’s breath tugged at Subaru, but when he tried to look at her, all he could see in the deep mist was a silhouette; he couldn’t tell what was on her face. The mist grew even thicker, to the point that he wasn’t sure where his own hands were.

  “—”

  When Subaru had first met the White Whale’s gaze, it was bigger in circumference than Subaru’s arms could reach. If the giant eye was anything to go by, the White Whale had to be truly as large as the name implied.

  It struck him that such a monster was hiding without any sound or sign of its presence, and it was able to swim freely through the night sky. They’d lost sight of the White Whale in the deep fog, a fact that aroused even greater terror.

  “But I believe my preemptive attack struck… It is possible the creature has retreated.”

  That was surely too optimistic.

  The might of the ice spears Rem had rammed into it with her incantation was on par with the most powerful magic Subaru had yet seen. If he were ever the target, it’d be enough to kill him three times over.

  Perhaps even a gigantic creature like that might hesitate to pursue them too far.

  “What happened to the other dragon carriages?!”

  “They seem to have scattered and run for it. If you split up and flee the instant the mist arrives, you might be able to escape without the White Whale pursuing—if you’re lucky.”

  No doubt it was standard operating procedure when encountering the White Whale.

  It made sense. Certainly, the dragon carriage that had been running parallel to theirs was nowhere to be found. The other vehicles that had followed behind them until that point seemed to have obeyed the unwritten rule and scattered to the winds.

  —Subaru clenched his teeth at the fact that he’d lost the carriages he’d worked so hard to obtain.

  The timing was a disaster. His plan to evacuate everyone in the village had fallen to pieces once more.

  “No point crying over spilled milk. Anyway, right now I’ve gotta focus on a way to get out of this fog…”

  As the rocking jostled his internal organs, Subaru pushed aside all other concerns until after they escaped. They had few cards to play to deal with the immediate crisis. Now that his own dragon carriage was unavailable, he needed at least Otto’s to get back to the mansion. That was why, right then, they had to get past that dangerous fog—

  “—!!”

  A mouth cavity lined by giant teeth resembling rows of millstones suddenly opened wide before their very eyes.

  The overpowering violence of the sound and the blast winds of its thunderous roar sent the land dragon reeling. The ground split, tripping up its feet, and the dragon carriage’s wheels lifted as the wagon tilted far to the side. The canopy holding down jugs of oil broke, and the cargo went flying outside; Subaru, holding his cord, was in danger of being thrown out himself.

  Subaru desperately clung to the wagon as he saw the enormous mouth lined with filthy teeth in front of them bearing down, seeking to swallow them whole.

  It was in that moment that Subaru truly grasped just how little he’d understood.

  And now, in that instant, plunged into that encounter with the White Whale within that deep nighttime mist, was the gambling table upon which they would wager their survival.

  “—Roaaaaa!”

  The instant the maw came to swallow the dragon carriage, there was a great shout as something shot into the air from the wagon’s floor. Rem had leaped, shooting in front like a bullet, shattering the floor in the process. From the hair under her hairpiece, buffeted by the blast winds, a sharp horn protruded as she entered her Oni state. She swung her personal weapon, a spiked ball on a chain.

  “—Slip past it on the left!”

  “Left, left, left, left, left!”

  The iron ball smashed straight down into the White Whale’s upper jaw, sending a pitch-black cloud of blood spurting forth as the enormous, yawning mouth snapped shut. The lower jaw gouged out the earth, but even so, momentum continued to propel the giant head forward. Otto poured his entire being into controlling the land dragon, slipping right past the side of the head. However, the wagon behind the sprinting animal could not completely evade the gargantuan body to its right; the two met, kicking up a sound like that of rubbing against solid rock.

  With a heavy creak, the wagon lost a wheel; without that balance, it flipped right over. Naturally, Subaru, who was atop it, was powerless to avoid being tossed toward the ground in the process.

  —Am I gonna die?

  Just before his inability to respond led to his death, a silver snake wound around Subaru’s chest with a loud roar. Subaru was forcefully dragged up from his steep descent and plopped headfirst onto the driver’s seat.

  “Take thiiiis—!”

  After dragging Subaru up with the iron ball in her right hand, Rem smashed the joint connecting the luggage compartment to the driver’s seat with her empty left hand, grasping the edge of the separated section. Instantly, the land dragon pulling the dragon carriage let out a painful neigh from the strain as the parts of the large commercial freight vehicle were torn apart.

  Even if half of it was gone, it was a supersize bullet made of almost as much wood as a log cabin. It squarely struck the White Whale’s straying belly. The White Whale thrashed, its tail blasting apart the earth and the trees, kicking up clouds of dust.

  “D-d-did you get it?!”

  Even if Otto didn’t know what had just happened, he’d surely noticed the fact that most of his dragon carriage was missing. His voice was tinged with bitterness as he sought hope that would warrant the sacrifice.

  A roar made the air tremble as an even worse mist blotted out the light. From the pressure bearing down on them from behind, one known as absolute despair, he knew that hope had been shattered.

  “Wh-why is it only after us…? Aren’t there other carriages?!”

  Otto let out a lament as he cursed the misfortune that had befallen him. He blamed the sheer irrationality of the other eight carriages being ignored while his was attacked. Subaru felt the same way, but he swallowed his complaints when Otto launched a string of curses. He felt like he was getting a good, hard look at an ugly truth—against the Witch Cult, he and the others Subaru brought along would have served only as sacrificial pawns, or perhaps meat shields.

  “Besides, cursing my fate won’t change a thing…”

  The menace of the White Whale continued to press upon them from behind, swimming through the sky faster than the land dragon. Even though the land dragon was running with a lightened load now that they had abandoned the freight, it was only a matter of time before the whale caught up.

  “Think, think, think. There has to be a way, something, something…!”

  Subaru desperately put his head to work, but no plan for a counterattack came to mind. With a sense of urgency weighing on him and the night mist so thick that he couldn’t see his own feet, Subaru couldn’t find even a single hint.

  And as time idly wasted away, fate forced yet another difficult choice upon Subaru.

  The carriage was heavily rocked. As Subaru clung to the floor, Rem approached. She should have been shaken, too, but she didn’t seem bothered by it as she nestled close.

  “Subaru. Please take this.”

  “What?! Did you think of something?! Now we can do something ab—”

  Believing that Rem might have come up with an off-the-wall plan to escape the crisis, Subaru lifted his head as she pushed a small sack onto him. From the heavy weight, he immediately realized it was the traveling money.

  What use would money have at a time like this…?
>
  Feeling a deep chill at Rem’s offer, Subaru’s cheeks stretched into a stiff smile.

  “R-Rem…? I know there’s a coin-toss skill to at least knock someone off balance, but that’s just in games…”

  “I will get off the dragon carriage and counterattack. During that time, please cut through the mist, Subaru.”

  Though Subaru tried to deny reality with a joke, the firmness of Rem’s voice shattered the effort.

  Rem turned, facing Otto instead of Subaru.

  “Master Otto. Please take care of Subaru. He is able to pay the promised reward— Cut through the mist and report the appearance of the White Whale to the Mathers domain.”

  Otto, not having heard the previous exchange, replied, “R-reward…? There’s no time for that! Right now, our v-very lives hang in the balance!”

  Despite his protest, Rem was relieved to see that he was earnestly making his land dragon run so that he might live. Her lips softened as she looked back at Subaru.

  “Subaru, please forgive me. I am not very bright, so this is the only plan I can think of…”

  “W-wait, Rem! You said to report about the White Whale showing up, didn’t you? Don’t tell me…you don’t plan on coming back alive?”

  Subaru desperately tried to make Rem reconsider the tragic decision she had made.

  Even though the darkness that had befallen them continued to blot out the rest of the world, for some reason, the only thing he could see clearly was Rem’s face before his eyes.

  “I won’t let you go! I won’t let you! If you… If you die, too, I’ll…!”

  As Rem stood before him, Subaru dropped the money sack to his feet, putting his hands on Rem’s hips and pulling her to him. He wrapped his arms around her petite figure so that she could not withdraw. If he loosened his arms, he would be releasing Rem’s life to fly away, too.

  He had to at least stop that. At least that—

  “Ahh…”

  With emotions raging within her, nearly enough to bring her to tears, Rem let out a heated breath as she accepted his embrace. As she looked up at Subaru, holding her in his arms, she lowered her gaze with a charming smile on her lips, seemingly enthralled by the sound of his voice.