Back From Death (1)
“Ugh—ghk! Nn, bwehh!!”
The moment my auxiliary spell, Water Walking, cut out, my body plunged beneath the surface of the lake like a stone dropped from a bridge.
My body—having learned to swim in neither my previous life nor this one—quietly began to sink toward the depths of the Lake of Knowledge.
‘Aaaagh! Fuck! FUUUCK!!’
I flailed my limbs desperately, grasping for any chance at survival, but my arms and legs might as well have been churning empty air for all the good they did cutting through the water.
A creeping, skin-crawling sensation ran up my spine as I felt myself sinking, little by little, into the deep.
Until just moments ago, I had already resigned myself to death once. Maybe it was because the relief of having survived was still fresh in my mind, but my will to live had never burned more fiercely.
‘S-save me….’
But despite my wishes, the shaft of light stretching from the depths toward the surface only grew narrower and narrower.
I had already burned through every last drop of mana on that single Mana Blast, leaving me with no way to return to the surface.
I was reaching out with meaningless hands into the water above me, consciousness dimming, when—
—splash!
A dark shadow fell across my eyes, and somehow, a familiar grip seized my wrist. That was the last thing I remembered from beneath the lake.
The Isle of Knowledge. Somewhere along the lakeside promenade.
—SPLASH!
“Hah—hack, khh, kullgh, kehaaack…!”
A man, having barely hauled himself up from the deep waters of the Lake of Knowledge, retched out several rounds of painful, wet coughing.
His soaked hair hung over his eyes and half his face, and his waterlogged clothes clung to his body like a drowned rat caught in the rain.
Slung across his shoulders was a black-haired woman in a red dress, draped over him like a sack.
Having carried the woman ashore before tending to himself, the man collapsed onto the ground and frantically called out the name of the woman lying unconscious beside him.
“Lilith! Wake up! Lilith!!”
“……”
He shook her shoulders, patted her cheeks, but Lilith refused to stir.
Prince Blackwood, frantically crying out her name alone, felt despair slowly consuming him from the inside out.
Not long after the pair had surfaced from the lake, a group of people began rushing toward the spot where they lay.
“Over here! They're over here!”
“There! Found them!!”
“Prince Ethan! Miss Lilith! Are you both safe?!”
The Saintess of the Aurelia Church, the Hero, and even the Empire's Third Princess.
Some of the most precious individuals the Academy had to offer came hurrying toward Ethan and Lilith's side.
The moment Ethan spotted the Saintess among them, his expression softened, if only slightly.
‘Thank goodness….’
He had no idea why the Hero and the Saintess had happened to appear right where they were, but Ethan had absolutely no interest in questioning that now.
The moment the two of them reached the fallen Lilith, Ethan turned to the Saintess Serista and begged, his voice breaking with desperation.
“Ar— are you two all right?! Your wounds from the Kraken—”
“Saintess!”
“Y-yes!”
“Lilith won't open her eyes! Please, do whatever it takes to save her!”
“O-okay! I'll treat her right away!”
Though she was a “fake saintess” created by the Church, she had been elevated to that position precisely because she was the most capable priestess of her generation.
Serista's divine power could save virtually anyone—as long as their heart hadn't already stopped.
...Conversely, even her power could not restart a heart that had ceased beating.
“Uh, uhh…?”
“What is it, Saintess?! Hurry, Lilith—”
“No….”
“What?”
“H-her heart…. Her heart has already stopped….”
At Serista's despairing answer, Ethan was suddenly swallowed by a sensation as if his own heart had stopped too.
Why did things like this only ever happen to him?
He had thought he was finally, just barely, recovering from the despair of losing his mother as a child.
So why was Lilith leaving his side now, just like she had?
For the first time in his life, Ethan Blackwood felt true despair at a tragic fate that seemed to single him out alone.
“Wait a moment! Are you saying Miss Lilith's heart has stopped?!”
“Y-yes…! No, normally, if the heart is still beating properly, treatment should work—but my divine power just won't take at all….”
“It hasn't been long. CPR should be enough—”
If only he hadn't asked Lilith out on a date today.
If only, even after the date, they hadn't wandered down to the lakeside for a walk.
If only he hadn't created that atmosphere for a confession and flustered her like that.
Then none of this would have happened—he never would have lost Lilith so senselessly.
Ethan's guilt-ridden, despairing mind burned with a horrific pain, as if someone were stirring his brain with a fork.
...And in the middle of it all, his eyes caught sight of a man's hand moving toward Lilith's body.
—shff.
“……!!!”
“Stay still! We have to act fast—”
—squeeze!
“What do you think you're doing.”
“...What?”
“With those hands of yours. Do you intend to defile Lilith's body before my very eyes, even to the very end?”
“What are you talking about?! I told you, it's CPR! We can still save her!”
“...C-CPR?”
Right. The Hero.
Come to think of it, the only person here with mysterious power wasn't just the Saintess.
The Hero had also received the divine blessing of the Goddess Aurelia's church—it wouldn't be strange for him to possess a mysterious power or two of his own.
And among those, a power to bring back the dead... wasn't entirely implausible.
“How do you intend to save her? Is that also a power of the Hero?”
“It's not a Hero power, it's CPR—ah, damn it. These people probably don't know what CPR is….”
“...So it isn't a power of the Hero?”
“You press down on the chest with your palm to force the heart to start beating again. Once you get it pumping again, even artificially, then Serista's divine power can do the rest.”
“……”
So in the end, he had been about to bring his hands to Lilith's chest to save her life.
On paper, it was an explanation anyone could understand. And yet Ethan could not entirely banish his suspicion at the thought of another man's hands touching Lilith's chest.
“Hurry! The longer you wait, the more danger she's in—”
“...I will do it.”
“What?”
“By your own explanation, that resuscitation technique can be performed by anyone—not just the Hero. Am I right?”
“...Yes.”
“If it is merely a matter of compressing Lilith's chest to make her heart beat, then I shall be the one to do it.”
Suspicion. Possessiveness. Jealousy.
Though it was only for a moment, the Hero—Gehmajoshigi-gwat—could read a great many emotions in Ethan's eyes.
Judging that it would be simpler to teach Ethan rather than waste effort arguing with him to hand Lilith over, the Hero began instructing the Prince, demonstrating by pressing his palms together and raising them vertically.
“...Place your palms over the center of Lilith's chest like this. Make sure the firm heel of your palm lands exactly on the center of her chest.”
“...Understood.”
“Now press down with your body weight. Again and again, and do it properly.”
“……”
—press. press. press.
“Harder! Broken ribs can be healed, but a stopped heart can't be restarted!”
“Hahh—hahh—hahh!!”
—Press! Press! Press!
Ethan's body rocked up and down as he drove his palm against the center of Lilith's chest.
He had nearly exhausted himself hauling Lilith up from the lake bottom, and yet he refused to stop even for a moment, continuing the chest compressions just as Gehmajoshigi-gwat instructed.
His desire to bring Lilith back burned more fiercely than anyone's.
And besides—if he collapsed from exhaustion here, that Hero might yet bring his hands to Lilith's chest.
Even in a crisis like this, Ethan refused to hand Lilith's body over to another man.
“...Miss Agnes, would you use a heat spell on the two of them? Their soaked bodies will catch a chill otherwise.”
“...Already on it.”
And so, for roughly five minutes, Ethan poured out every last ounce of strength, compressing Lilith's chest for all he was worth.
Then, from Serista—who had been watching Lilith's condition with laser focus—came news that offered a glimmer of hope.
“J-just now! For just a moment, it beat!”
“...What?”
“...Is—is that true?”
“It—it's true….”
“Ethan! Don't stop! It's not over yet!”
“S-sorry!”
Even though a commoner Hero had barked at him like he was ordering around a servant, Ethan's heart only began pounding all the more joyfully, as if it had glimpsed hope itself.
And so his chest compressions continued for several more minutes after that first flicker of hope—but Lilith's heart, still beating only in intermittent stutters, remained just short of what Serista's divine power required.
Ethan didn't miss the Hero's murmured words, spoken as if the next step were needed.
“...Looks like we'll have no choice but to do rescue breathing too.”
“Hahh—re-rescue, breathing...? A-and how exactly does one do that...?”
“Compressing the heart alone may not be enough to bring her back. In cases like this, you have to blow air directly into the lungs to get her circulatory system working again.”
“Air, directly into the lungs.... Do-does anyone here know wind magic—”
“It's not magic. You have to do it yourself, with your own mouth—and I'm only explaining this once. If you want Lilith to live, do exactly as I say.”
“...U-understood.”
Ethan had already glimpsed hope once through the chest compressions, and his trust in the Hero had risen a notch.
More than anything, short of listening to the man's words, no other path seemed visible at all.
So even in his exhaustion, Ethan listened intently and seriously to what the Hero Gehmajoshigi-gwat had to say about this “rescue breathing.”
“First, take Lilith's jaw and open her mouth wide.”
“Yes—and then?”
“Pinch her nose shut with one hand. That way air can only pass through the mouth.”
“...Yes. And then what?”
“In that position, cover Lilith's lips completely with your own.”
“Yes—cover Lilith's lips with my... what?”
For a moment, Ethan wondered if the Hero was mocking him, and stared at him with a bewildered expression—but Gehmajoshigi-gwat's face, as he explained the technique, was utterly serious.
If anything, he seemed slightly annoyed by Ethan's reaction, and explained the rescue breathing once more.
“Don't get any weird ideas. This is a method for saving a life.”
“...Truly?”
“If you can't bring yourself to do it, hand her over to me. I'd at least have a better chance of saving Lilith than you would.”
“...No. That's not happening.”
The thought of the Hero stealing Lilith's lips under the pretense of a serious voice made Ethan's blood run cold. So, offering Lilith a silent apology in his heart, he quietly lowered his mouth to hers.
Just as the Hero had instructed, he pressed his lips against hers without leaving a single gap, and waited for the next command.
‘I'm sorry, Lilith.’
“Breathe in through your nose, exhale through your mouth, and blow the air into her body. Think of it like inflating a paper bag. You don't need to suck the air back out—just keep repeating: breathe in through the nose, breathe out through the mouth.”
“Hoo—hoo. Hoo—hoo….”
“Good, keep going. Don't stop….”
Please. Live.
He could not—would not—let her die here, not like this.
He needed no answer to his confession. He needed nothing at all.
Just... please. Please, live, and stay by my side and no other's—
“Hoo—hoo. Hoo—….”
“—khh?! K—khack?!”
“...Nnghh?!”
With their lips still pressed together, Lilith's body suddenly jolted with a cough.
Startled, Ethan hastily pulled his face away from hers.
Spitting up the water she'd inadvertently swallowed, cough after cough, Lilith slowly opened her eyes and took one long look around at her surroundings.
“Khack, kh—hck.... Wha... huh...?”
The deep, dark lake bottom where she had last drawn breath was gone without a trace. In its place: a brilliant blue sky, and a ring of faces staring down at her.
Only when Serista's voice finally reached her ears did Lilith manage to grasp the truth—that she had died once, and come back.
“Sh-she's breathing! Her heart's beating properly now!”
“She lives! It's a miracle from the Hero!!”
“Lilith, how are you feeling? You're not too cold, are you—”
Amid the commotion surrounding her, Lilith couldn't easily piece together exactly what had happened while she was unconscious—but one way or another, having realized that she had died once and come back to life, she simply stared blankly into the distance and muttered a single line to herself.
“...So this is how I survive.”