Misaligned Bonds, The Truth (6)
Enut blinked again and again, praying that the strand of hair she had found would not turn out to be Adel's.
But—
"…Ugh."
No matter how desperately she wanted to deny it, reality refused to change. Bit by bit, her gaze followed the hair downward—and there, slumped against the wall, pink locks spilled limply over a body gone slack. Below it, a pool of blood.
It was Adel. There was no mistaking it.
…Secure the battlefield first.
In an instant, Enut's eyes sharpened. Adel's condition was catastrophic, but one fact remained certain: she was still breathing. As long as she was alive, that was enough. Wounds could be treated. The real problem was getting a critically injured Adel out of this deathtrap of a battlefield in one piece.
…I got too worked up.
If any enemies had still been lurking inside the warehouse, she would never have been standing here unharmed after screaming Adel's name like that. In the worst case, she might already have been lying dead with a bullet hole through the center of her forehead. She had to check the surroundings thoroughly.
—Ziiiiing!
Enut ducked behind the nearest cover and flung her mana outward in every direction, adapting a rescue spell normally used to detect a buried disaster victim's heartbeat—searching for any presence other than Adel's.
One second. Two. Three.
Past the stacked wooden barrels, past the scattered timber debris, wider and wider still. Her mana expanded at a furious pace until it reached the far corners of the warehouse ceiling and walls.
"Haa…."
Just as she was exhaling a long breath of relief at finding nothing—
—Thump, thump, thump, thump.
"?!"
A faint heartbeat rose from somewhere not far from her. No—from somewhere very, very close.
An enemy…?! Too late…!!
How had they gotten this near without her noticing? Before she could even turn her head to look, Enut swung her fist in a desperate bid to fight back.
"My, rather aggressive, aren't we."
Her fist cut through empty air.
They're far stronger than I am…!
The ability to hide a heartbeat from detection magic meant the opponent was a seasoned swordsman or assassin—someone who could control every part of their own body at will. No matter how capable a soldier Enut had been, facing that caliber of fighter on the front lines was a job for someone of equal skill. Against an enemy she hadn't even sensed, one who had already ambushed her, the odds of subduing them were nonexistent.
Then I just need to buy time.
Enut swallowed dryly and steeled herself. The enemy still stood watching her with that same impassive expression, making no move. If she couldn't win, she only needed to hold out until support arrived for Adel. The Omega Team students wouldn't be enough—she'd already decided that. Activating the communicator linked to the Saintess waiting with the rear support unit, Enut spoke as casually as she could manage.
"What's your objective? Are you with the cartel?"
She tried to keep him talking, to split his attention, while reaching into her coat for the things she'd prepared—
…Ah.
She had stripped off her gown and come through the launch pad without them. Everything she'd carefully packed had been left behind. Around her body, there was nothing—only the smooth protective suit clinging to her skin. An already dire situation, and now even her hidden cards were gone. Her mind went blank.
I have to save Adel….
It was hopeless. Why was she being this careless? Even if she had left the military, only a few years ago she had been a proper officer. If she had just judged and moved correctly—if she hadn't sent Adel out alone—none of this suffering would have happened.
…Lutera.
Perhaps her ability to sense and respond to crises had dulled because Lutera always appeared like a hero whenever trouble struck the Academy.
While she stood there dazed and flustered—
"You are Professor Enut, then."
Rather than seizing the opening to attack, the man simply addressed her in a calm, even voice.
He knows my name…? Don't tell me he tortured her—
The atmosphere didn't feel like he was about to lunge. If anything, he seemed to want something. What more could he possibly want after reducing a student to that state, that he would bother starting a conversation? Rage boiled up so fiercely that she wanted nothing more than to throw her life at him until reinforcements arrived—but what mattered now was Adel's survival. If Enut herself, the one who had to treat her, got injured or incapacitated, the worst possible outcome might follow.
So she forced the fury down and answered in a voice lower and colder than usual.
"And if I am? Planning to propose a deal?"
"No. If you truly are a professor, then there's no need for us to fight. You could even say we're on the same side."
"…You think you can persuade me looking like that? Then I'd recommend you get your intelligence checked."
"Haa. So full of suspicion."
In truth, Enut's suspicion was justified. More than half the blood staining Pierrot's body had come from Adel. Fearing the lie might slip, Pierrot let out an exaggerated sigh and started walking ahead—so Enut never caught the awkward twist of his expression.
"Follow me. Saving Adel comes first, doesn't it?"
"…Yeah. You're right about that much."
—Click, click.
—Thud, thud.
An uncomfortable air. An uncomfortable companionship. Neither Enut nor Pierrot could easily let their guard down, not knowing when the other might strike from behind. But that awkwardness lasted only a moment. Once Enut reached Adel's side and assessed her condition, she no longer had the luxury of spare attention for anything else.
—Hah, hah, hah, hah.
She was breathing—but the sound was so thin and fragile, so drained from blood loss, that it seemed ready to stop at any second.
"Adel! You must not fall asleep!! Stay with me!"
…It was even worse up close than it had looked from a distance.
—Grit.
Her condition was so horrific that Enut found herself wondering what kind of monster she had faced. Both of Adel's legs had been severed, her arms covered in wounds, blood still pouring from her body.
"Adel! If you're conscious, give me any kind of response!"
Enut urgently channeled her own mana into Adel's blood vessels, stemming the bleeding as she spread healing magic through her. The hemorrhage visibly lessened—and, mercifully, Adel had not lost consciousness. Slowly, her eyes opened.
"…Pro…fessor?"
"Adel! Keep talking if you can—say anything! I'll treat you right away!"
Even as an elite military surgeon who had specialized in medicine and could use healing magic, Enut had her limits. Out in the field, all she could do for someone this critically wounded was stop the bleeding, temporarily reattach the severed parts, and prepare for transport. Reconnecting Adel's cut nerves and fully treating the wounds would fall to the Saintess and the priests waiting back at the Academy.
"Hic…, cough…!! Still… looks like… you succeeded this time…."
"Adel! Your legs—where are your legs?!"
"…Hhk, over here… on the right…."
There was no time to catch her breath. Enut continued the emergency treatment without so much as a glance at Pierrot, who watched from behind with a steady gaze. She treated the cut surfaces with disinfection and recovery magic, then gathered up the two legs lying discarded nearby and applied the same recovery magic to their severed ends. By some miracle, warmth still lingered in them. Whoever had done the cutting had done it with such precision that the cross-sections of bone and vessel were almost unnaturally clean. If they hadn't been severed and blood-soaked, they would have looked like nothing more than the smooth legs of an ordinary schoolgirl.
—Grit.
"Haa…."
Her own misjudgment had reduced a perfectly healthy student to this. It was an unmistakable failure. Unbidden, the faces of soldiers she had failed to save rose in her mind—the endless border skirmishes between the four powers, where volunteers far younger than herself died without even the hope of survival, while she remained bound by the framework of "humanitarian aid" and could not properly save a single one. Those she did manage to pull out, if they were soldiers, simply returned to the front and died again. Exhausted by that endless cycle of death, she had left the Imperial Army and applied to the Academy.
And yet the situation was the same. Students wounded and dying. Authority limited to a school infirmary. Powerlessness.
No…. Even so, I can still save Adel.
This was not the time for self-recrimination. If she had made a mistake, she would pay the price for it. That was the atonement she had always offered for those she could not save.
Fortunately, the clean cuts meant she could use joining magic without any special tools.
"Adel, this is going to hurt. I'm sorry, but you have to endure it."
"…Ah, nn…."
At Enut's warning, Adel squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth, bracing for the shock. But then—
"If you break your teeth like that, you'll just suffer more. Open your mouth."
Enut forced Adel's mouth open and pushed something smooth and soft between her teeth. When Adel came back to herself enough to look down at what she was biting, she realized it was Enut's forearm.
"Mmph! Mmmph!"
Afraid she might clamp down hard from the pain, Adel tried to push the arm out of her mouth—but it was hopeless. She could barely lift her arms; a tongue alone was never going to dislodge Enut's forearm. All it accomplished was the tiny, licking motion of her tongue against the professor's skin, which made Enut flinch and shiver.
"Adel, I'm starting."
And so the reattachment treatment began.
—Sizzle! Hissssss!!
"Mmph— hnnnnngh!!!"
The pain exceeded anything she could have imagined. Forcing the severed surfaces of her legs back together, reconnecting the major structures of bone and flesh and muscle—it felt as if some enormous centipede-like insect were boring through the inside of her legs, stitching the meat as it went. Adel's limbs trembled without rest. And yet, astonishingly, even through that agony, she never once bit down on Enut's arm. When the emergency procedure was finished and Enut withdrew her arm, the only change was that it was thoroughly soaked with Adel's saliva.
"The urgent treatment is done. But the nerves and blood vessels still aren't properly connected, so the pain will remain as it is. You won't be able to move either, so we're sending you back via emergency return. Where is your emergency return token?"
At Enut's question, Adel mumbled something, producing only short, broken sounds. Completing actual words seemed beyond her. Realizing this, she shifted her half-lidded gaze down toward her own chest. Following that look, Enut found a flow of mana that was invisible to the eye but unnaturally concentrated.
"…Right. You did well. Rest easy now."
It was an emergency return token under a transparency spell. Thank goodness. If she had lost even this in the middle of the fight, there truly would have been no way out. To feel lucky in a situation this horrific—that was fortune of a strange kind.
As Adel's consciousness slowly faded and the light in her eyes dimmed, Enut dispelled the transparency magic on the token and folded it twice—hard enough to produce a sharp click.
—Woooooooom!!
Just as when the two of them had departed through the teleportation launch pad, a flash of blue light flared, and Adel—still lying flat—was sucked into the spatial rift in an instant. A kind of reverse summoning. A failsafe that allowed anyone who had passed through a mana corridor once, and who still held the corresponding token, to return to the original launch pad.
True, the launch pad administrator had fretted like an old man:
Those tokens are extremely expensive and rare, so please use them only in genuine emergencies. I'm giving just two—one to the departing student and one to the professor.
But if this wasn't an emergency, what was? She used it without hesitation. Besides, Adel had been hurt because of a spy hidden among the technicians. If anything, the Military State side owed compensation—no one was going to complain.
Now she could finally breathe. The Saintess would be waiting at the Academy. Adel would no longer need to throw herself into the front of every fight; she could rest without worry.
Which left the remaining business to handle.
"Hoo…. So then—who exactly are you?"
Enut roughly shook the blood from her hands and turned her gaze to meet Pierrot's.
"Impressive skill."
"I don't need the compliment. So what do you want?"
"I simply found that student under attack and helped her. I have business of my own with the cartel scum as well."
A dubious story. Could anyone really be that lucky—to assault the cartel at the exact moment Academy students launched a sweep operation? Still, the claim that he had saved Adel was, given the circumstances, something she had no choice but to believe. And when she followed his gaze and surveyed the surroundings—
"Those cartel members—that was you?"
"Yes. I've cleaned up everything in the vicinity."
"Then how about this?"
Judging by the dozens of cartel corpses he had handled alone, Pierrot's skill was considerable. Enut proposed a condition—partly to keep him under watch and verify his sincerity, partly to finish the Omega Team's mission.
"You stayed behind because you want something from us too. I'll help you with that—so help us until our students make contact with the Alpha Team."
It was not a bad offer. In fact, it was exactly the outcome Adel had predicted.
"Fine. Let's do that."
"Then I'll call the students. Wait a moment."
"Understood."