Fer-de's Fang (3)
The road to the Rift Labyrinth itself wasn't particularly complicated.
But walking it with Maeve at my side, the journey to the labyrinth felt like a grueling forced march.
“Tired? Want to rest?”
As if she were actually concerned about my condition, Maeve kept my arm locked in hers and offered her worry.
…Did she really not understand how absurd it was to worry about someone she'd made this way in the first place?
She'd severed the tendons in my wrist, clung to my side so I couldn't run, and stripped me of my free will.
“No… I'm fine.”
In no position to lose my temper, I declined in a low voice and trudged silently onward, desperate to reach the Rift Labyrinth as quickly as possible.
…I just had to hold out until we got there.
“Maeve. Can I ask you something?”
Worried that my plan might be found out, I struck up a forced bit of small talk.
“Sure. Ask away.”
“What did you do before you regressed?”
“…Hm.”
It should have been an easy question to answer, but Maeve deliberated far longer than expected, reluctant to reply.
“Sorry if that's an uncomfortable question.”
“No. I was just wondering whether I should tell you. I'll tell you what I did back then.”
Fortunately, it wasn't the memory of her own murder that had made her hesitate, and she opened up about her past.
“Before I regressed, I hunted for a living. Took contracts, hunted prey. I killed monsters, and I killed people. As long as the price was paid, I killed whoever the target was—no exceptions.”
Her true trade had been neither hunter nor poet, but a contract killer.
“Even after the Ruin came, clients kept seeking me out. Grudges tend to matter more to people than surviving another day.”
How many lives had ended by her hand?
I couldn't even begin to guess.
“But… one day, someone came asking me to kill a man named Dean.”
“Me…?”
“Yeah. I make a habit of not memorizing clients' faces, so I don't remember who it was.”
As the story went on and the subject turned to me, I found myself puzzled.
Who on earth had hired her to kill me?
It had to be one of the NPCs connected to the ones I'd murdered, but no one came to mind as a definite suspect.
I'd killed every killable NPC in the game—it was stranger that I remembered any of them at all.
“So I went looking for Dean… and I died. Horribly—limbs carved off, one by one.”
Even while describing her own death, Maeve let out a strangely heated sigh, a flush of excitement creeping into her voice.
“I still remember how Dean looked back then. Looking down at me, indifferent, without a trace of expression on his face…”
For someone who had lived as an immortal through the long ages, death was a miracle she had waited for and waited for.
“You were the one who showed me I could die. You made me realize that I wasn't some existence beyond the natural order of all things—that I was just an ordinary human…!”
At some point, life had begun stirring in Maeve's dead eyes, and a vivid red flush had bloomed across her cheeks.
“Dean, I love you so much…! You're the only one who can kill me! So look at me and no one else!”
“Khh…!”
She wrapped her arms around my waist and forced a hug on me, and my breath caught in my throat.
She didn't even stop to consider what her monstrous strength might do to my fragile body—utterly self-absorbed thinking.
“Sorry… did that hurt?”
Just short of the point where my bones would have snapped, Maeve released the hug and asked after me with more feeling in her voice than usual.
“Cough… I'm fine.”
“Mm…”
Saying I was fine, I instinctively moved to pat her head—then remembered too late that my hand wouldn't obey me, and lowered it awkwardly.
“…”
Watching that small gesture in silence, Maeve's eyes trembled faintly.
Apparently, it had taken her a full day to grasp just how terrible the things she'd done to me were.
“I'm sorry…”
The woman whose emotions could no longer be called dead offered me an apology far too late.
Naturally, her heartfelt remorse didn't reach me at all.
Just like with Eileen—we had drifted too far apart for any communion deep enough to share our feelings.
Would things have been different if she had never tormented me?
If we could have looked at each other as comrades who trusted each other with our backs…
…That future had been nothing but a mirage.
“We're almost there. Let's go.”
“…All right.”
When I urged along Maeve, who refused to move despite the urgency of our situation, she quietly fell in at my side.
The distance between our bodies was close.
The distance between our hearts was miles away.
When we arrived at the long-awaited Rift Labyrinth, the familiar entrance came into view.
The checkpoint where I'd die and come back to life again, and the colossal wall towering into the sky.
The oppressive atmosphere sent a phantom pain shooting through my legs, and I nearly lost my footing.
“Careful, Dean.”
Unlike the time I'd fallen alone in the Rift Labyrinth, Maeve at my side caught me with practiced ease, and I didn't end up sprawled on the ground.
She'd set a model example of what a comrade was supposed to do, but I offered no thanks and kept my silence.
I'd be dead soon enough—there was nothing to gain from exchanging more words with Maeve.
I didn't want my heart wavering like it had with Carmen, not for nothing.
So we entered the Rift Labyrinth, and for the sake of my plan I began casually steering us toward dead ends.
“I don't think it's this way, Dean. Let's head back around.”
But strangely enough, every time we came within a step of a dead end, she moved in the opposite direction.
As if to prove that surviving until the Ruin was no idle boast, she could instinctively sense when a path was wrong.
“…Keep your head down, Dean. A spider's passing overhead.”
Midway through threading the labyrinth, dodging the dead ends, we ran into an Arachne—but Maeve felt no fear at all toward a spider that was nothing if not enormous.
“I'll deal with it. Wait here.”
She drew the musket from her waist and took aim at the giant spider crawling along the wall.
BANG—!!
The trigger pulled, a savage gunshot cracked through the air as the round tore loose.
“Kyiiiik!!?”
A moment later, the bullet bored precisely into the Arachne's face, and with one final shriek it plummeted from the wall.
…A single shot.
Maeve, who had one-shot a spider five times the size of a human, calmly loaded her next round as if nothing had happened.
Just what level was Maeve, anyway?
If she was this strong even in her second playthrough, she had to be at least level 200, conservatively.
“Let's go.”
Having finished reloading with practiced hands, Maeve strode on through the labyrinth without a care.
The Arachnes that came swarming out at the commotion were dispatched one after another with effortless sweeps of her musket.
…I was supposed to die and escape at any moment now.
Thanks to Maeve's one-sided slaughter of the Arachnes, an opening to execute my plan just wouldn't come.
I considered biting through my tongue to wound myself—but even while walking the labyrinth and fighting the Arachnes, Maeve never once took her eyes off me.
In the end, Plan A went unexecuted, and we arrived before the boss room, guarded by two sentry Arachnes.
“Shiii…!?”
BANG—!
Maeve's musket spat flame, and in an instant one of the sentry Arachnes breathed its last.
The remaining one belatedly registered the ambush and came charging at us.
Not bothering to reload, Maeve used the bayonet mounted on her musket to slice off the charging sentry's foreleg, throwing it off balance.
The creature, toppled to the floor, scrambled to spray its venom—but Maeve gave it no opening, leaping onto its head in a flash and driving her blade into its eyes.
“Kiiiiiik—!!!”
The sensation of its eyes bursting made the Arachne shriek a cry that would have split ears.
“Too loud.”
Then, drawing a knife from her coat, Maeve swept her coat-tails aside and cleaved through every one of its eyes.
Movements too fast for my eyes to follow carried on for a few moments more.
She drove her knife into the joint of the Arachne's head and twisted, then reached her hand into the gap she'd carved.
Before long, with a wet crunch—the innards within came sliding out, all of them.
Spilling its guts out of its body, the Arachne flailed its long legs before promptly expiring.
A completely one-sided massacre.
The strength Maeve had displayed was nothing short of overwhelming.
…The plan is falling apart.
At this rate, she would smoothly hunt down the Giant Snake Fer-de all on her own.
Sweat ran cold down my back at the hopeless situation. Covered head to toe in the blood the Arachnes had spilled, Maeve came toward me—and I brushed past her and stood before the boss room.
Would you like to challenge the boss, Giant Snake Fer-de?
[YES] / [NO]
A window flashed open, asking whether I wished to challenge the boss.
My first boss fight since I'd transmigrated into this world.
But killing the boss wasn't my goal at all—not even slightly.
“Wait, Dean…! Wait!!”
I pressed the glowing [YES] button beneath the window without a moment's hesitation.
At once, a mist bloomed up around me and my body was drawn inside.
Maeve, hurrying in after me, rushed into the boss room right on my heels.
Flustered by the bewildering situation, she hastily began reloading her musket.
“Dean, are you insane?! What are you doing coming in here unprepared!”
“…Maeve.”
“Wh-what?”
“You once asked me, didn't you—why I was still alive.”
I drew a deep breath.
The plan had gone completely sideways, but it hadn't gone completely wrong.
“I never intended to stay alive in the first place.”
“Wait…! What are you talking about?!”
Maeve's emotions flared at my incomprehensible murmur, and she shouted in a desperate voice.
But it was already too late.
Kuooh———!
From somewhere deep within the labyrinth's vast cavern, a colossal serpent burst forth and came charging straight at me.
“Look out!!”
Maeve thrust out her hand to shield me in a desperate scramble—
“Be well, Maeve. It was fun, for the short time we had.”
—but the jaws of the Giant Snake Fer-de, gaping wide, closed the distance a split second faster.
“No!! Dean!!!”
—Crunch.
By the time she finally caught my hand, all that was left of me in Fer-de's mouth was a severed forearm, dangling ownerless.
“Ah… Aaaah…!!!”
The shock of failing to save me before her very eyes swept Maeve's emotions away in a violent torrent—like a new life blooming all at once.
『Defeat Addiction』 has triggered!
— The level of target Giant Snake Fer-de rises by 10.
Reviving at Checkpoint. LOADING…
FER-DE SOUL ELIMINATED