The Saint Candidate's Celebration Banquet (5)
Behind her, Professor Remiel's face twisted as she threw up a barrier.
A barrier woven from mana cut off everything, inside and out, completely—until the caster chose to release it. Which meant that until the barrier came down, there was no way for me to leave this place either.
"Kgh—"
Thanks to my barely-functioning mana core, I was taking far less internal damage from the mana than I otherwise would have, but the strain was still tremendous. My vision flooded red, my heart pounded so fast it felt ready to burst, and with every step I forced forward, my whole body screamed.
But I pressed on.
Eyes, nose, ears, mouth—blood poured from every opening in my body that could bleed, and still I struggled desperately ahead.
Half a year of suffering through every illness and affliction imaginable had made me, in my own way, accustomed to pain. It was the only reason the agony didn't bring me crashing to my knees.
"Why? Why did this have to happen? Why, all of a sudden...?"
I murmured the lament to myself, low enough that no one could possibly hear it. I had done everything I could to make sure something like this never happened. Everything within my power.
Griiip—
I bit down on my lip until it bled, forcing my mind back into focus. This was no time for wallowing.
What I had to do right now—
was to save my beloved girl, the one teetering on the edge of falling into a future where nothing awaited her but despair.
"Camille! Daisy! Damn it...!"
Calvin darted frantically through the banquet hall, which was descending into utter chaos in the blast's aftermath.
Daisy had vanished without warning in the middle of the celebration. And then Camille, in her hurry to find her sister, had disappeared somewhere as well.
The explosion had struck less than three minutes after Camille had hurried off in some direction. An uneasy dread crept over him.
The fear that something terrible might have happened to his daughters.
Shoving through the crowd, Calvin ran toward the eastern edge of the banquet grounds, where guests were shrieking and stampeding for the exits—and the sight that met his eyes was, truly, horrific.
"Hah... hah..."
Professor Remiel, the very woman who had examined both of his daughters earlier that evening. A great mage of the seventh circle, and she stood there gasping for breath, holding back something monstrous behind a barrier.
Around her, the royal castle guards—who had arrived late, far too late—could only stand behind the barrier she had raised, staring at the scene before them with faces lost and helpless.
"Professor Remiel!"
"La—Lady Miseria?"
The instant Professor Remiel saw Calvin's face, an unmistakable flicker of guilt flashed across her expression.
"Why are you here, of all places...?"
"...Don't tell me."
Calvin was no fool.
Her stricken look when she'd seen him. Her guarded manner. And now, the traces of this mana rampage unfolding right before his eyes.
Choking down the desperate urge to simply deny reality, Calvin asked in a shaking voice:
"Don't tell me—our daughters are inside that barrier?"
"..."
Silence, at times, carries far more information than any explanation could. Professor Remiel turned her head away and clenched her teeth hard.
"...I'm sorry."
"Wha—what are you saying right now?"
A mana rampage of staggering scale. At this magnitude, something must surely have gone wrong with his younger daughter. But then why—why was Camille, his eldest, nowhere to be seen either?
"What does that face mean? What is that silence supposed to tell me... Professor Remiel?"
"..."
Leaving behind the professor, who could offer no answer to the very end, Calvin turned toward the barrier.
Boom. Boom.
He hurled his fist, numb with grief, against the barrier barring his way.
But there was no way for him to breach it—this wall that was holding back a storm of mana, that severed the inside from the outside completely.
"I'll say this just in case: the moment this barrier comes down, all the mana that's been compressed on the inside will expand and erupt in an instant. The entire castle would be reduced to pandemonium in the blink of an eye."
"You're telling me—to abandon my own daughters? How dare you!"
"That's not what I—...!"
Furious, Calvin radiated an aura that made it seem he might throw a punch at Professor Remiel at any moment. But then his gaze caught the professor's wretched state, drenched head to toe in cold sweat as she struggled to maintain the barrier.
For the first time, the perpetually expressionless face of Professor Remiel cracked.
"Miss Camille told me something. She said she would save Daisy herself."
"And you consider that an acceptable answer?! A girl who can barely take care of her own body, and you're telling me she's inside there right now—"
"But! The only thing we can do right now is trust that child and wait here until the storm dies down!"
Professor Remiel had seen it.
Had seen the girl hurl herself, without a moment's hesitation, into a colossal storm of mana where nothing awaited but certain death. The girl's final footsteps—those of someone who, unlike herself, a grand mage showered with praise who could do nothing in this moment but freeze in terror, had looked for all the world like a true hero.
Bang! Bang!
The force of Calvin's blows against the barrier grew stronger with each strike. His skin tore open and blood seeped from his knuckles, but the barrier showed not the slightest sign of yielding.
He knew, too. If he had truly meant to tear the thing down, he would have gone so far as to strike Professor Remiel herself to stop her from casting it.
But if the barrier shattered here, then he and Professor Remiel—and most of the guests who had not yet evacuated far enough—would all be caught in the blast.
"Camille..."
He had promised her.
Promised that he would never, ever give up again. Promised that he would build her a life where she could smile. So why did that child seem incapable of getting through a single day without tearing her father's heart to shreds?
Even if she sacrificed herself to save Daisy—what, in the end, would be left for her?
Listening to the faint trace of his daughter's breathing beyond the barrier, Calvin sank to the ground and could only stare blankly into the space within.
How far had I come?
The red liquid blinded me; I could barely see anything ahead. All I could do was stretch my hands out before me and stumble onward, searching blindly for the warmth of a girl I was certain I would reach someday.
Amid the hellish, endless agony, I pictured the face of the girl who had given this second life of mine its meaning.
At first I'd watched her for her adorable looks and a temperament far brattier than they suggested—but somewhere along the way, every time I glimpsed the hardened pain buried in her heart, I found myself aching in sympathy for her, until I couldn't tell where she ended and I began.
That day, when she had slipped back into the innocence of her earliest years—the days when the people who made her happy were still alive and well—I had sworn it, absolutely:
I was reincarnated into this other world for one purpose. To make you happy. No matter what.
"Daisy...!"
With a voice already half-lost, I called out desperately for my little sister, somewhere out there in the dark, hurting.
Of course, no answer came.
How many minutes had passed? Was I right to keep pushing forward? Had I actually walked straight past her already? Was I headed in completely the wrong direction from the start?
Useless thoughts swarmed through my head in a flood. Mocking voices drifted from somewhere, sounding in my ears like hallucinations—how foolish, you've only thrown your life away for nothing.
"Answer me, you dummy, answer me... hck, hck!"
Forcing my voice out made my heart feel ready to burst. My body had long since blown past its limits. Tinnitus whined in my ears, my vision had gone bloodred, and the breath leaking from my lips tasted thickly of iron.
And then, at last—
A girl, collapsed on the ground as though her mind had simply emptied, staring vacantly into the air, lay within reach of Camille's hand.
Her eyes had long since ceased to do their job, but the touch alone was enough. The girl in front of her was Daisy. Without a doubt.
Camille pulled Daisy tight into her arms and sank down where she stood.
There was almost no time left. If she lost consciousness here, the odds were overwhelming that she would never wake again.
But it wasn't fear of death that squeezed her heart. It was the knowledge that if she failed here, Daisy would be cast once more into that horrific future.
She raised a trembling hand to the area near Daisy's heart—where the mana core would be—and tried to read the flow of mana within.
Camille had never once attempted to manipulate mana in her life. The action had been pure instinct.
And thankfully, she could feel it—Daisy's mana core, rampaging like a foal with a snapped bridle.
She recalled what Yustia had done when the protagonist Kyle's mana had gone berserk. She pressed her own body against Daisy, drawing the wildly surging mana into her own flow—receiving, over and over, the torrent of mana that kept pouring into her, so that Daisy might steady her own power against Camille's rhythm.
However—
"Hck—guh, kkgh!"
The mana crashing into her like a sudden tidal wave sent her heart hammering out of control. Far more than Camille's fragile heart—her crippled mana core—could possibly contain. The enormous surge roared through every inch of her body, writhing and churning.
It was like the day her heart disease had first struck. No—far beyond anything that day could compare to. With a violent rush of blood up her throat, Camille's head began to spin.
"...Ah. Ugh."
The moment the mana rampaging inside her began to settle, Daisy's eyes fluttered open. The mana that had been raging wildly within the barrier, too, was slowly starting to calm.
And as her senses returned, Daisy's gaze landed on the figure of a girl holding her in an iron grip, refusing to let go—frozen, unmoving.
"...Eh."
Daisy's pupils shook violently.
Blood had poured from every opening in the girl cradled against her chest, staining Daisy's body—and the red of her dress—even redder.
"...Big sister?"
The lovely girl's white hair was soaked crimson from the collar down, and her brilliant golden eyes—the ones that were beautiful every single time Daisy looked at them—were bloodshot, their light guttering out.
Daisy's memory ended with the juice she'd been handed by the black-haired duke's daughter. But one thing—one single, crueler-than-anything fact—she had grasped on instinct alone:
That her sister had been reduced to this terrible state to save her.
"...Da—isy."
Camille's lips, resting against Daisy's chest, curled into the faintest smile.
"Safe. You're... safe now..."
Lips that could barely manage a single sentence fumbled slowly, one syllable at a time, to deliver her words to her little sister.
"Thank... goodness—"
"Sister? Sister...?"
And then, with one last relieved smile—
Camille's head lolled against Daisy's chest, her neck bent, and she did not move again.