“U-understood! Good fighting!”
“You too!”
Sending off the knights, Subaru’s pat of Rem’s shoulder was the signal for the land dragon to start running.
At present, Subaru’s body was giving off the fresh, lingering scent of the Witch—setting aside the contradiction in those words, the scent had to be wafting all around him. The problem was how much effect it would have on the White Whale.
“With the Urugarums, the effect was enough to cover the entire forest, but how ’bout this time…? To be honest, there’s no way to measure it, but…”
When he’d encountered the White Whale in the previous world, the White Whale had tenaciously pursued Otto’s dragon carriage after Subaru shifted over to it. At the time, he’d said nothing in relation to the Witch. So if Subaru gave off an even stronger scent than before, he ought to be prime bait for the White Whale—
Just after he had that thought—
“—?!”
The land dragon, charging straight ahead, sensed something and turned abruptly on its own judgment—with centrifugal force drawing an “Ugeh!!” out of Subaru as he hastily hugged Rem, right before his eyes, seemingly clinging for dear life.
“What’s…?!”
“The White Whale!!”
As Rem, pressed against him, shouted, a gargantuan maw suddenly emerged from the side, breaking through the mist.
By a hair’s breadth, Subaru and Rem diverged from their path and escaped, with the White Whale’s huge mouth seeming to slide past them a little to the left, biting into the ground, swallowing grass and topsoil whole.
Its stony outer hide seemed to be grazed as the demon beast rushed past, and from nearby, they heard the sound of its maw biting the ground apart.
Then, with a roar, it chased after the pair.
“Whoaaaaa—?!”
There was an overwhelming amount of pressure as it chased them from the rear.
With the overpowering sense chasing his back that they would be squished, the land dragon that the shouting Subaru rode earnestly kicked the earth. However, the swimming speed of the pursuing White Whale was extraordinary. With an enormous body like a mountain, it swam with such force that it surpassed the wind, closing the distance quickly.
Steadily, the maw pressed close, drinking up the world around it.
When the tip of its nose was right at their backs, close enough to bathe them in the raw stench of its breath…
“Rem!”
“Ul Hyuma!!”
…Rem responded with an incantation, sending three pillars of ice thrusting out of the ground as one.
Her aim was true, punching into the White Whale pursuing the pair from right below it, impaling its belly in an attempt to halt its movements. Yet—
“It won’t stop—!”
The icy spears, each as thick as a hundred spears bundled together, were snapped off at the base, giving off a high-pitched sound as the ice shattered. The destroyed spears of ice instantly returned to the mana from whence they came, and though the White Whale, having lost what was sealing its wounds, bled from them, there was no effect on its movement.
That it had been wounded and bled so much seemed only to bring into sharper relief the extent of its endurance. Subaru was aghast all over again at just how high a hurdle bringing down the White Whale was.
“This ain’t like with the Urugarum when it was one-on-one!”
“!!”
As Subaru moved farther from the White Whale, he raised his middle finger, taunting it. Enraged at the gesture, the White Whale’s roar thundered across the plains. But from the side of its torso…
“Ryaaaaa—!”
…Wilhelm intervened, flying in with a vertical slash.
Driving his blade in, Wilhelm ran up the White Whale’s flank. As Wilhelm cut through the bloody mist, the kitten siblings appeared alongside, straddling their ligers and looking at each other’s faces.
“Big Sis, join with me!” “Let’s do this, Hetaro!!”
As the ligers crossed, Mimi and Hetaro leaped off and joined hands. The two stood before the gaping wound Wilhelm had carved as they yelled:
“Wa—!” “Ha—!”
The pair’s voices overlapped; the sound waves broadened with incredibly destructive might.
The shock wave coursed in through the open wound, making every injury on the White Whale’s body bleed once more. The enormous body shuddered, and the White Whale’s altitude dropped precipitously against its will. The White Whale groaned in agony, raising its voice as it endured the pain, and barely managed to avoid crashing as the twins, riding their ligers, leaped off its back.
“Trump card compleeete!” “Captain, please!”
“Oh yeah, leave it to me! If the runts are tryin’ hard, then I’ve gotta, too!!”
In place of the landing twins, a large liger climbed onto the White Whale from the tail end.
Swinging his cleaver upward, Ricardo went around smacking the countless mouths that spawned mist. Wilhelm did the same, jamming slashes into the annoying mouths, silencing them one by one.
But the White Whale didn’t let them smash its means of attack without a response. From the mouths, seemingly infinite no matter how many they smashed, a literal barrage of annihilating mist spewed out.
Ricardo, relying on his liger’s mobility, and Wilhelm, pushing his body past normal human limits, continued to dodge, dodge, and dodge that mist some more.
The expeditionary force and the Iron Fangs had both reorganized, and they began firing magic crystal cannons once more to assist Wilhelm and Ricardo in their precarious position. With the White Whale’s own attacks unable to hit, and apparently losing patience from the increasing damage from the pesky attackers, it twisted its massive body, opening its mouth fully to spread mist far and wide.
“Rem—!!”
Faster than Subaru could shout, Rem had their land dragon leap up onto the White Whale’s nose. The approach of Subaru, with the scent of the Witch wafting around him, made the White Whale reflexively stare at them, throwing off its concentration; it was looking to send them flying when a slash interrupted that plan.
“!!”
“That’s very rude of you. Here I am, after nothing but your head for fourteen years, and you look away.”
With a stab, Wilhelm thrust deep into the White Whale’s brow, his movement halting when his blade sank into the skull. But the aged swordsman instantly abandoned his third sword, leaping in and kicking full force the hilt of the sword he had let go of, and withdrew his fourth and fifth swords, both blades dancing wildly across the White Whale’s back.
Also atop the White Whale’s back, Ricardo linked up with Wilhelm, opening his large mouth and laughing.
“This is gettin’ fun! It’s tougher than I thought, but it’s not all that strong, now, is it!”
“No…the response is a little too weak.”
While Ricardo exulted, Wilhelm knitted his brows and murmured. Biting his lip, Wilhelm sliced into the White Whale’s tail fin as he said, “I cannot easily believe my wife…the Sword Saint…could be defeated by this level of demon beast. Even considering that it did not take the initiative and split us apart with mist at the beginning…”
As Wilhelm swung his blades, his thought process was interrupted by the White Whale whirling its body about.
“Do—? Waaaah?!”
The demon beast’s action, differing from all those before it, sent the White Whale’s head suddenly rising up, with the force sending Ricardo and his liger flying off.
Then Wilhelm, still atop the White Whale, said, “I’ll take one more before I take my leave!”
With the demon beast wriggling its body as it swam in the air, Wilhelm ran down it with nimble movements. The White Whale’s body was climbing, with Wilhelm leaping down in the opposite direction. Finely adjusting his center of gravity and using the stabs of his blades to control his posture by force, the highly experienced old swordsman exercised his body to the fullest,
chopping off at the base one of the dorsal fins at the extreme edge of the enormous body.
“!!”
Listening to the White Whale’s scream, Wilhelm rode the fin he’d sent flying onto the ground below. Normally, you would think a fall from such a great altitude would result in instant death, but the soles of Wilhelm’s feet kicked off the fin just before impact, and his land dragon caught him, softening the blow.
“Wilhelm!”
“”
Subaru tried to make sure he was all right, but Wilhelm did not respond, for his eyes were on the White Whale, still rapidly ascending.
Drawn in, Subaru looked up, and his vision was caught by the White Whale’s tail as it swam in the sky high above.
Blood dripped from the fin that had been sliced off, pouring downward with violent force. The grassy plain was dyed scarlet, and Wilhelm was bathed in red rain, his will to fight undiminished.
Subaru didn’t think the White Whale was going to just turn tail and run, either, but the demon beast’s goal in heading up into the sky was unclear. The Iron Fangs and the expeditionary force uneasily looked up at the sky, and Subaru grew concerned for the wounded gathered at the roots of the Great Tree.
“It’s coming.”
Wilhelm made a small murmur as he turned his gaze upward.
Seeing the aged swordsman narrow his eyes and return both hands to his sword hilts put everyone on guard.
And then, as they held their breaths—they regretted it. Too late, they knew they should have deployed instantly without waiting for the White Whale, floating above their heads, to act.
“—Mist, incoming!!”
Subaru shouted as loudly as he could. Rem made the land dragon whirl about and move away from the front.
The land dragons and ligers all around them started running all at once, but there was no longer any leeway for Subaru to raise his head and see if the others were safe.
—Billowing, annihilating mist came falling to earth with such force that it seemed to blot out the sky.
The mist was like the clouds themselves were falling. There was no way to avoid it save escaping the area. Sheltering behind rocks or trees was meaningless resistance before destruction that would swallow all obstacles whole.
There was nothing they could do but start running and pray that they were in time.
Too afraid to look up, Subaru merely felt the oppression of the soundless apocalypse hurtling from above. He earnestly squatted against the land dragon’s back, lowering his posture as far as he could as they ran—
“We got through?!”
Having apparently slipped out from under the thick mist and entered a clearer area, Subaru turned his head around and looked back.
There were several figures on the ground behind them that hadn’t made it out in time, swallowed up as the mist pressed down upon them. With expressions of fear and anger chiseled on the human beings’ faces, they earnestly fled, but they were engulfed by the mist from the head down and vanished.
The land dragons were obliterated with them. With the mist falling and scattering to the ground, no trace of their destruction remained. Not even their names would remain in anyone’s memories. None save Subaru, the only one who would remember their deaths.
“U…aa…”
There were little moans in front of Subaru from distant figures scattered about the mists. It was clear that their numbers had greatly diminished since they had regrouped. That of course went for the expeditionary force’s knights, but the Iron Fangs had not escaped unscathed, either.
If we at least have our big guns, thought Subaru, shifting his gaze.
“Wil…”
He spotted Wilhelm, barely keeping one hand on his land dragon’s back as he escaped the mist’s area of effect. It was when Subaru called out to him from behind that he realized.
—That from the other side of the dense mist, the demon beast was chasing Wilhelm, opening its huge mouth.
“—Run!”
“Nn—?!”
Wilhelm noticed the impending menace at his back at about the same time Subaru shouted. But both came too late for him to react in time.
Approaching without a sound, the maw of the White Whale swallowed the ground, the land dragon, and Wilhelm whole.
Scraping the ground, everything on the surface around Wilhelm was gouged out, entering the White Whale’s mouth.
“Aaah…!”
Faced with the shock of that spectacle, it was not only Subaru who shouted but Rem as well.
Knowing the grudge the old man bore, the sense of loss was all that much greater. More importantly, losing their main fighting strength would make their situation most dire, but…
“Oh no, ya don’t!!”
This time, someone else raised his voice from right beside them.
Before they could react, a liger came in from the side, bumping their land dragon and sending Subaru and Rem flying.
“Whoaa?!”
Tumbling from the staggered land dragon, Subaru grimaced from the pain of getting smacked all over. From the voice, he knew that it was Ricardo who had committed the sudden act of violence, but before he could ask what the big idea was…
“—Gaa!”
…Subaru gasped as he saw crimson flowers bloom before his eyes.
“Huh?”
The liger was sliced apart, pieces of its flesh sent flying as its corpse cruelly rolled onto the grassland. The large-statured beast man who should have been straddling it had vanished, with a vast pool of fresh blood left behind in his place.
The White Whale swam at low altitude, swaying its enormous body and waving the tail that was covered in Ricardo’s blood.
He…shielded us?
Then what…happened to Ricardo?
There were various questions coming to mind, but Subaru set them aside when he realized something he could not ignore.
Before him was a White Whale, which had mowed down Ricardo with its tail.
And…
“No…way…”
When he looked back, he saw the White Whale that had swallowed Wilhelm and the ground around him beginning to bite down.
In front, behind and up above, he saw yet another whale-shaped figure high in the sky, scattering mist all around.
—The infinite mouths of the three White Whales laughed together, drawing out the despair of men.
Bit by bit, Subaru once again felt hope being blotted out by a nightmare.
CHAPTER 4
A GAMBLE TO RESIST DESPAIR
1
The chorus grew higher and farther, echoing as they overlapped.
In a world thick with mist, there were three fish-shaped figures, their enormous bodies swaying as they swam.
The twisted mouths stretching from one side to the other of their huge frames were bizarre, continuing to emit a sound like fingernails on glass.
It was a malevolent monster that had swallowed people of many races, extinguishing innumerable lives.
That single monster had wielded enough power on its own to inspire despair within the hearts of all people, and now there were three, mocking those who dared to defy them.
As Subaru looked up at the White Whale floating above his head, he heard the small sound of someone falling to his knees. A string of similar sounds followed, joined by a chain of high-pitched clatters—weapons falling from their wielders’ grasps.
He saw the shoulders of one of the knights participating in the expeditionary force had fallen, and the man stared at the ground as he crouched low. His shoulders trembled, and none could hold back the weep rushing up into his throat.
When Subaru gazed at the man’s fellow knights around him, not one had a single word to say.
They’d come fully equipped with all the numbers they could muster, seized the initiative and slammed their firepower into it, yet having taken the offensive to that extent—they’d come to this senseless situation.
Their numbers had already been halved by the depth of the mental conta
mination, and their remaining main fighting strength had been pulverized in a surprise attack by the newly emerged White Whales. Even if they gathered all their remaining strength together, it would still amount to less than half the fighting strength they had started with. On top of that, the demon beasts they had to fell numbered three—surely there was no chance of victory.
Everyone grasped it in a single second. They realized that their objective, and their lives, would be ruined in that place.
The terror of the demon beast was great. And the bonds that the demon beast had robbed them of weighed heavily. And yet, they were powerless, unable to make it pay for the loss of precious life it had stolen from them.
When the weight of all that crashing down, and the hearts that had supported them until that moment had broken, who could blame them for falling to their knees on the spot?
In the face of such a senseless, unchangeable reality, could anyone deny that they should give up?
“—Don’t let it swallow him!!”
Abruptly, an angry bellow reverberated far across the silence that had befallen the plain.
Hearing that voice, Subaru unwittingly lifted his face and he saw a lone figure kicking off the ground, leaping toward the White Whale—a girl, with a flutter of her maid uniform and wielding a vile, spiked iron ball with her hand.
With a gale entwined around it, the roaring iron ball came to a halt when it slammed straight into the White Whale’s nose, easily smashing the hard outer hide, continuing on to gouge out exposed flesh and bone, widening the destructive wound further.
The White Whale let out a scream and tried to lift its head up to the sky. But a blade of ice stretched up from the ground to impale its tail, and as it twisted its body around, the small-statured girl whirled her iron ball around, scoring a merciless hit that made the White Whale’s enormous frame shudder as blood was scattered all about.
“We can still save him if we get him out before he’s in its belly—!”
There was a young man shouting, holding a rent shoulder as blood flowed from his brow.
He walked out in front, giving orders to the girl swinging the iron ball. He grimaced, bitterly feeling the powerlessness that kept him from joining the battle himself, but even so, he stepped forward.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 7 Page 12
