Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 9

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  Julius sternly thrust reality into the nervous Subaru’s face. Ferris glanced at Subaru as he prudently abandoned a reflexive retort, turning his eyes toward Otto as he spoke.

  “It was Otto who noticed the discrepancy between the list and the freight…but he had another reason, too.”

  “Yes. All the other freight matches except for the magic crystals, after all…and actually, I have seen the crystals myself.”

  “You saw that there were magic crystals loaded aboard?! When?!”

  When Otto named himself as a witness, Subaru pointed a finger at him in disbelief.

  “It was…back when dragon carriages were being recruited for the evacuation. I was with Sir Kety when I heard the offer. Then everyone was in a great hurry to be the first out of the gate, and as they made predeparture plans for the journey……I sneaked a peek at what he was carrying.”

  “Man, can’t take my eyes off you for a second… You really had it coming, didn’t you?”

  “Isn’t that a little too mean?! Anyway, I saw them with my very own eyes. As for the quality…because they are absent, I am the only one who can attest to the menace they pose, but…”

  As the explanation came to a conclusion, Subaru grimaced as he looked at Julius and Ferris. However, even their expressions were grave; in particular, Julius’s anger toward himself was evident.

  Subaru, too, understood well the anger he bore.

  “Shit, I missed it! This is what I get for being a cheapskate and using whatever I can lay my hands on!”

  “I checked to make sure they had no trigger via enchantment…but I overlooked that a physical trigger might have been left in the dragon carriage itself. I am sorry, this is my mistake.”

  “It’s not your fault…it’s mine for not realizing.”

  Julius’s caution regarding magical traps was no doubt impeccable. If he was taking care of that end, Subaru had to be the one to realize there was a physical trigger.

  But what hurt more than anything was that Subaru had personally experienced that dragon carriage’s explosion the last time around. Back then, Kety’s true identity came out when Petelgeuse used Possession on him, and Subaru and Ferris were caught in the explosion. After, when he learned that the fingers had an explosion enchantment embedded in them for killing themselves, he’d assumed that the explosion had been that enchantment at work—

  “That explosion wasn’t an enchantment, it was the dragon carriage’s trigger…and this time, it’s a dragon carriage used in the evacuation.”

  Rigging his dragon carriage with magic crystals was a highly effective emergency measure in case Kety was exposed as a Witch Cultist. He’d be able to inflict great damage on the expeditionary force, turning the tide of battle in his allies’ favor.

  Considering the monomaniacal malice of the Witch Cult, it was a scenario that was easy to accept.

  “Ferris! If we rush over by land dragon, can we catch up to the evacuation group heading for the capital?!”

  “That might be difficult. It’s been an hour and a half since Lady Emilia and the others left… To ensure the Witch Cult wouldn’t spot them, they didn’t kick up a storm, but they’re not moving at a leisurely pace, either.”

  Of the two evacuation groups, the one making a run for the Liphas Highway was relying on speed. Once that group left the Mathers domain and reached the highway, it would be even harder to catch up to it.

  But if they didn’t do anything about the booby trap, Emilia and the children would pay the price—

  “It’s still not enough? After all this, and I still can’t…”

  Would the fates of people precious to him be decided in a place beyond his reach?

  No matter how much effort Subaru exhausted against Fate, snares were laid by this hand or that hand. It was as if all the paths for Subaru to walk had been meticulously paved with thorns.

  But just as Subaru felt himself entwined by the irrationalities of Fate—

  “May I speak to you for a moment, Mr. Natsuki?”

  With a serious look on his face, Otto raised a hand and interrupted Subaru’s unease.

  Determination rested in his eyes; the frail words of before seemed to have come from a completely different person. But Subaru remembered that look on his face. On a previous go-around, when in a true sense he had met Otto for the first time, and Subaru had brought the thoroughly plastered Otto a business offer, he’d put on his merchant face just as he was doing now. In other words—

  “This means you want to make some kind of deal with me, Otto?”

  “What a perceptive man, something I do not mind at all. Mr. Natsuki, right now I am on the edge of a considerable precipice. The cargo on my dragon carriage is now worth less than dirt! And tragically, the opportunity to turn it all around has slipped through my fingers! To be blunt, I cannot laugh off a deal upon which I wager my life.”

  From what Subaru had heard, the disastrous circumstances afflicting Otto were more comedy than tragedy, but he had no time to poke fun at them. Subaru nodded, prodding Otto to continue.

  Subaru’s demeanor made Otto close his eyes for a single moment; then he made his proposal.

  “Let us make a deal. If you accede to my conditions, I promise to exhaust all my spirit to get you to your destination—and catch up to the dragon carriage at issue.”

  “You can catch up to them if we leave right now?! How?!”

  “Before we speak of that, I want your firm pledge that you will accept my conditions. What I am offering is my trump card, so I cannot easily speak of it…even under duress.”

  “Just say what your conditions are! If they’re in my power I’ll do whatever you want!”

  After Otto carefully selected his words, Subaru grasped his shoulders, demanding to hear further.

  He’d already repeated that world four times over. He’d struck down the White Whale, dispatched the Witch Cult, cleared most of the conditions for getting what he was after; having come this far, he refused to let it all go to waste.

  If it was only one more step, he’d overcome it with a pinch of guts and grit.

  “You decide quickly. I do not mind this, either.”

  Cold sweat broke out on Otto’s brow as he formed a smile at Subaru’s immediate decision. The negotiations taking place that instant were a seminal event that would determine the course of his life. Subaru’s snap decision after the briefest of pauses surprised Otto, but he immediately tossed his conflicted feelings aside. And then—

  “As my reward, I want you to arrange an audience between me and Marquis Mathers. Also, you will purchase all the oil I am carrying…and I shall name my price. How about it?”

  Narrowing his eyes, Otto put on his merchant’s face as he spoke, seemingly testing Subaru.

  Coming out with your maximum demand at the outset and haggling down from there was Negotiation 101. Taking advantage of exigent circumstances was playing the merchant by the book.

  From there, Subaru and Otto began their fierce battle of negotiation—

  “You’re still hung up on that?! All right, I’ll buy all your oil or whatever, and if you wanna meet that perverted clown, I’ll do whatever it takes! It’s a deal!”

  “Eh?! What the—? You’re scaring me!”

  The negotiations began on the same note as the previous time around, and ended the same way as well—once more, Subaru fully accepted the terms of the deal upon which Otto had wagered their fates.

  Whether he would think of an unearned win through the opponent’s resignation as something to be proud of was another matter entirely.

  4

  “I shall have Ia accompany you. She should be able to locate the magic crystals the dragon carriage is rigged with.”

  With those words, Julius once again handed his red quasi-spirit companion to Subaru.

  Just like before, the faintly glowing quasi-spirit synchronized with Subaru’s Gate and vanished from sight.

  “That’s a big help, but won’t she get angry at your lending her out
that easily?”

  “It appears that Ia is quite fond of you. Besides, I wish to avoid any regrets from sending only one as ill-versed as you. I really would like to go myself, but…”

  There, Julius’s words cut off as his refined face bore an air of regret. But Ferris, right beside him, puffed up his cheeks in exasperation as he continued casting healing magic.

  “Sit tight and stop saying stupid things. You’re completely out of mana, so you’re useless anyway!”

  “This is what I get for borrowing the buds’ power. I can only rue the limits of my abilities.”

  “Coming from you, that’s just sarcasm. Anyway, I’m grateful you lent me the spirit. Beyond that…”

  Having accepted the spirit on loan, Subaru thrust a finger at Julius, fully immersed in the last of his treatment.

  “After all this is done, we’re having a banquet to celebrate busting the White Whale and the Witch Cult. You’re invited, so don’t go dying on me.”

  “So if I am murdered here, you and Ferris are the culprits. It is an easy-to-understand situation, then.”

  “Well aren’t you two getting along, meow. Hey, get going and catch up to Lady Emilia already!”

  Glaring at the lighthearted exchange, Ferris pointed toward the entrance to the village. Taking the hint from the pair, Subaru gave a thumbs-up and set off running.

  “I expect your utmost efforts.”

  “Just watch out, okay? I can heal you if you don’t die, but if you bite the dust there’s nothing I can do.”

  Subaru waved a hand toward the voices of support and met up with Otto at the village entrance.

  Otto was preparing for the pursuit by hitching Patlash and his favorite dragon to his own dragon carriage. It’d be a midsize dragon carriage with a canopied wagon with two heads drawing it—that was how they’d catch up to Emilia and the others who’d left first.

  “You have not forgotten anything? Time is precious, so let us set off.”

  “Yeah. I’m counting on you for route navigation and all the other little stuff, Otto!”

  The two nodded to each other and climbed into the driver’s seat together. In front, there was a fair bit of a size difference between the two land dragons drawing the carriage. Subaru was concerned about the slender Patlash’s inferior size, but…

  “Land dragons have the wind repel blessing, so a certain difference in size is not a hindrance. They are also both females, and I have not heard any particular friction between them.”

  Seeing the doubts on the side of Subaru’s face, Otto explained thus as he took the reins. The way he used the word heard made Subaru let out a little “Hmmm.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ah, nothing, I just thought that blessings are amazing things. I was thinking of them kinda like talents, but I was surprised there was a Dr. Doolittle one, too.”

  “A veterinarian? I see what you are saying, but blessing bearers go through considerable difficulties of their own. In particular, I could not control my language blessing very well when I was at a young age.”

  When Subaru voiced his admiration, Otto made something of a pained smile as he spoke of his own blessing.

  The language blessing essentially allowed a person capable of conversing with any living thing. He would employ the power of his blessing to catch up with Emilia and the others—that was his end of the deal.

  “At first, I was wondering how the heck you’d use this blessing to catch up with them, but…”

  “I will speak to the birds and insects along the way to determine the shortest route. It will be hard on Fulfew, my land dragon, but we will charge through, be it game trails, poor roads, cliffs, or swamps.”

  Otto had reached the Mathers domain ahead of other merchants by plowing through paths that were not paths. As he was extremely short on luck, this had resulted in his becoming a prisoner of the Witch Cult.

  Regardless, borrowing the power of his blessing—

  “We’ll catch up to Emilia and the rest up on ahead. Easy win.”

  “No, I would not deem it an easy victory…… It is quite possible we will catch up. In the first place, there is actually nothing in the terms agreed to earlier that guarantees we will catch up to…”

  “We’ll catch up to Emilia and the rest up on ahead. Easy win—!”

  “It really puts me a bind if you say it with a smiling face like that, you know?!”

  Though Otto shouted under the weight of that trust, nothing was served by weak musings at that point.

  Subaru’s smile vanished as he bowed his head to Otto with a serious expression.

  “I’m counting on you, Otto. You’re the only one I can rely on.”

  “…Those truly sound like last words, damn it.”

  Faced with Subaru’s meek demeanor, Otto spoke with chagrin and sighed with an air of resignation. Then he gripped the reins and strongly issued a command toward the two land dragons. They picked up speed.

  “Oh, fine, I’ll do it, I’ll do it! I’m making money from this, so if I work myself to the bone, I owe you that much—!”

  In accordance with the desperate Otto, the dragon carriage ran at extraordinary speed, onward and onward.

  Subaru, strongly sensing that speed, began to hallucinate, seeing Emilia and the others on the road ahead. It was their backs he was racing to catch up to.

  But then—

  “Er—?!”

  With a sudden start, the dragon carriage left the road, plunging into the forest down a game trail.

  The ride was so bumpy that even the wind repel blessing could not wholly protect him. Subaru stared at the trail as the dragon carriage barreled down it, beginning to take a series of literal shortcuts.

  Afterward, Subaru resigned himself to death numerous times as they ran along bad road after bad road.

  Having already died ten-odd times since being summoned to another world, Subaru knew, without a single speck of exaggeration, his rocky ride with Otto was reckless, grazing past death at every turn.

  They engaged in the thoroughly suicidal behavior of running down a nearly vertical cliff, charged across an old rope bridge that seemed on the verge of falling at any moment (which, in fact, fell just after they had crossed), and when barreling through a demon beast habitat zone were pursued by a particularly fierce pack of ferocious beasts; Subaru had no time to count the number of times they’d wagered their lives.

  “I’m a goner… This is finally gonna kill me for sure… End of the road…!”

  “What is it? We are moving at an incredible pace. To be honest, even I did not think I could come this far… So this is the latent power of a human being with no tomorrow…!”

  Beside Subaru, who was clinging to the driver’s seat with a blue face, Otto was completely in a trance. His statement sounded rather precarious, but Subaru said nothing, fearful of an unnecessary question breaking his concentration.

  “Besides, setting the process aside, we’re making awesome time.”

  Punching out of the forest, they at long last leaped back onto something that resembled an actual road. There was a sign right at the edge of Subaru’s vision marking the border between the Mathers domain and the highway. It had taken them half the normal time to arrive—their repeated travails had brought tangible results. Not that he ever wanted to do it again…

  “The highway… Rather, cutting through the grove to the left is faster, isn’t it?! That is the shortest route!”

  “By grove, don’t you mean forest?! Is that way really all right?! It doesn’t look like there’s even a game trail…!”

  “—”

  “Hey, answer me!!”

  Otto did not respond to Subaru’s shout as he sent the dragon carriage charging headfirst through the entrance to the forest.

  With the die cast, all Subaru could do was hold on with both hands and pray no accident would befall them as they headed into the forest. The dragon carriage leaped as it rolled over tree roots; Subaru clenched his molars as they headed down an atr
ocious path once more.

  The whole of his vision was buried in thick trees; one false move and they would be crashing headfirst. But the way Otto was delighted in contrast to the pallid Subaru made the latter reassess his view of peddlers.

  “Is being a traveling merchant this dangerous?! Making a name for yourself in the capital’s market is a lot saf—”

  “Mr. Natsuki!”

  Subaru was trying to distract himself with small talk when Otto suddenly interjected with a shout. The voice, infused with a sense of urgency, made Subaru look over, wondering what was up. As he did so, Otto put a hand to his ear, surveying the area around them as his cheeks stiffened.

  “The forest is astir… No. The birds and insects have left in a great panic! Even Fulfew is tense… Something…something is coming!”

  Otto’s wary voice made Subaru gasp and look around the area. But atop a rocking dragon carriage traveling through the forest at such speed, he’d never make out anything even halfway bizarre.

  Yes, if it had been halfway bizarre—

  “Ugh, time is precious, but we should take measures for safety. Mr. Natsuki, please watch over the rea—”

  “Nah, ain’t no need for that.”

  As Otto tried to switch policies, Subaru spoke in a ridiculously calm voice.

  Subaru’s gaze was trained behind the dragon carriage, glaring at the forest scene they were leaving behind. As it grew more distant, the forest seemed to vanish from his vision, as if “it” was swallowing the forest whole.

  “—”

  Trees were snapped and sent dancing in the sky, brutally devastating the forest’s foliage.

  Just after the destruction arose, the dragon carriage raced up an incline, but it was ferociously heading straight toward them, heedless of the damage to the surrounding area.

  “Let her fly, Otto—do not let him catch us!!”

  “Mr. Natsuki?!”

  When Otto started to look over, Subaru checked him with a hand as he transferred from the driver’s seat to the wagon. Then he stood as the guardian of the wagon, baring his teeth as it pursued, right behind them.

  “Why you— Just how stubborn are ya gonna be, you shitty bastard!!”