Eligator (3)
Just because they had climbed onto the river where the water was running low didn’t mean it was over.
Because the boat was so close to the shore, it couldn’t take advantage of the current. That left only one option: row with all their strength, or go nowhere at all.
The problem was the Eligators, who never stopped pursuing them.
They had finally stopped hurling trees around with their tails like mindless brutes, but the moment they entered the river, the situation changed in an instant.
Their speed was terrifying.
Free to tear through the water, the Eligators were pure nightmare.
A black streak surged toward the boat.
Lawrence had no room to spare for the oars.
If they were swept up in the spray kicked up by those monsters, the little boat would capsize. That much was obvious.
“Shadow Spear!”
He did everything he could to keep them from closing in.
At the very instant the Shadow Spears rained down, the monsters ducked out of sight.
Whether they hit or missed didn’t matter.
The moment an Eligator dodged a Shadow Spear, that was his opening.
He rowed as hard as he could, trying to put distance between them.
He had no idea whether he was heading the right way.
The swamp, now sinking into darkness, and the driving rain made it impossible to see even an arm’s length ahead.
Still, it wasn’t the worst possible situation.
For one thing, Shadow Light let him keep hold of the surrounding area.
At least he could row without the boat slamming to a halt, and that meant he was managing to widen the gap, little by little.
Then a sinister thought surfaced.
Wasn’t it possible they were herding him toward their hunting grounds, the way hunters drove prey?
He had heard there was a bugbear nest at the far end of this place.
He had also been told that Eligators and bugbears did not interfere with each other’s territory. If he could just keep fleeing, there would come a point when even these monsters would abandon the chase.
All he had to do was endure until then.
Fortunately, the headache from overusing magic hadn’t come yet.
He had cast two-digit numbers’ worth of Shadow Spears already.
Because the situation was so desperate, he had focused on speed over power.
There was no need to waste energy actually killing the Eligators that were pursuing him.
Even if he did bring one down...
Compared to the number still on his tail, it would be a drop in the ocean.
More than force, he needed numbers. He needed to cast more Shadow Spears, not stronger ones, and slow the Eligators’ pursuit that way.
The gambit worked exactly as planned.
In fact, the reason Lawrence had managed to hold out this long was because he had successfully kept up that precarious war of nerves.
There was only one thing he had failed to take into account.
He hadn’t known how long the river would remain low.
The boat, caught in the current, rocked violently.
For a moment it lost balance and lurched to one side.
Then he caught sight of a black streak rising in the edge of his vision.
Too late.
If he couldn’t intercept it, then the only way out was close combat.
“Fire Tail!”
He made the judgment in a heartbeat.
Just before he toppled over, Lawrence struck the river with a whip of fire.
“Ghk!”
He had no time to break his fall properly.
A dull pain spread through his head where it had slammed against the boat.
One impact wasn’t the end of it.
Had he let the monster close in?
He was tossed around inside the little boat as it pitched up and down.
He barely managed to shield his head with both arms, but that only left his elbows and knees exposed, and they kept banging against everything in reach.
The pain made tears leak from his eyes.
But he didn’t have time to groan over it.
Lawrence got to his feet inside the shaking boat and looked around.
There was no sign of the Eligator that had struck the vessel.
Only spray churned where the black shadow had risen.
“Shadow Light.”
He slowly used Shadow Light to reclaim some visibility around him.
He couldn’t afford to relax.
He kept Fire Tail primed, ready to react at any moment.
Fortunately, it seemed the one that had slipped past his eyes was the only one.
Even after searching cautiously, he found no flickering shadows nearby.
He withdrew Fire Tail.
Then he pushed Shadow Light farther out.
He no longer remembered which direction he had been heading.
Everything the light revealed in the swamp looked the same.
And yet he soon realized that had been needless worry.
This wasn’t the end.
It was only the beginning.
Black shadows, too many to count, were closing in.
Seeing them tighten around him from every direction, Lawrence raised a hand.
“Shadow Spear.”
There was no room for stray thoughts.
This was a dead end.
To survive, he would have to struggle with everything he had.
* * *
A severe dizziness raced through his skull.
The sense of a collapsing clock filled him with an indescribable unease.
“Shadow Spear.”
And yet he couldn’t lower his hand.
After casting the spell, Lawrence drew in ragged breaths.
“Huff... Huff...”
How many had it been already?
Twenty? Thirty? He had no idea.
He couldn’t remember how many Shadow Spears he had unleashed.
What he did know was that he had spammed the spell so recklessly it was a miracle he hadn’t hit his limit long ago.
And yet, perhaps because he had been driven to such an extreme, the mind of the boy at the end of his rope had grown astonishingly calm.
He checked the condition of his body.
He could still move. The place where he had hit the boat hurt, but compared to when he had been chased through Spider Forest, it wasn’t serious.
The pain in his chest and the pounding in his head were both reaching their worst from repeated spellcasting.
Given how badly his body had been worn down, he figured he might manage one or two more Shadow Spears at most. Maybe three or four Fire Tails.
It was the same sensation he had felt when he fought the bugbear.
His eyes were open, but his vision had been cut in half.
The bugs that had begun creeping in from the corners of his sight were steadily stealing his eyes’ function.
At some point, he realized he could no longer hear the sound of the Eligators drawing near.
That was not a comforting thought.
Just as his eyes were failing under repeated spellcasting, so too were his ears.
Proof of that was the black streaks still writhing in the endless river.
It was a strange sensation, something he had never experienced before.
And that was why he understood.
Acheron had said it.
Going beyond one’s limits was not a method of training.
He was right.
This was nothing more than ruining his body.
Lawrence realized he had crossed a line no mage should ever cross.
It wouldn’t have been strange if he had collapsed already.
The reason the boy was still holding on to consciousness was because the effort he had honed until now was finally showing its worth.
But he couldn’t stop.
Even if he had reached his limit, that didn’t matter.
The instant he stopped using magic, he was certain to die.
Either way, he died.
So if that was the case, he would burn his life away before he gave up.
Had the monsters learned something, in their own way?
The Eligators’ attacks grew faster as time passed.
They had surely realized that his magic was dangerous, but not powerful enough to take their lives outright.
He had shown them too much.
No matter the beast, if it saw this much magic, it would adapt.
That was how the swamp-dwellers survived.
Lawrence wasn’t standing still either.
The moment he understood that intimidation alone would no longer hold them back, he shifted his magic from restraint to power and speed, changing to a Shadow Spear meant to kill.
The Shadow Spear that flew from the boy’s hand struck an Eligator.
Because he had focused on power, the impact rolled through the water and slammed into the boat.
The boat rocked dangerously.
Clutching it with both hands, Lawrence narrowed his eyes.
He had seen the monster take the hit with his own eyes.
And yet, no matter how long he waited, no corpse surfaced.
The Shadow Spear had been dragged beneath the water, its force seemingly reduced by half.
Only a brief bloom of blue blood spread across the dark surface.
He didn’t let himself be disappointed.
Getting out of here came first.
He seized the oars and rowed with all his might.
The boat cut through the current created by the Shadow Spear and pushed on downriver.
How much time had passed?
Before he realized it, the river was sinking into darkness.
The area he could make out with Shadow Light had grown even narrower.
He could no longer intercept Eligators at long range with Shadow Spears.
Whenever one came too close, he drove it back with Fire Tail.
Each time he bought distance, the boat was rocked, and there was no way to avoid that.
Still, there was no other choice.
He baited the Eligators close, then struck at the last possible moment.
The one thing in his favor was fire. That much wasn’t a lie.
Even with the river between them, fire still dealt real damage to the monsters.
The Eligators let out screams twisted with pain.
Served them right.
The most dangerous enemy was the prey that had been cornered.
He made sure the monsters that came carelessly close learned that lesson well.
Even with Shadow Light shining, he still couldn’t tell where he was going.
It was enough that the Eligators chasing him served as signposts.
Why signposts?
Because all he had to do was run the opposite way from wherever they were coming from.
At last, even Shadow Light, his lighthouse in the dark, vanished.
He could see nothing now.
An endless, featureless expanse.
Like a doll with its strings cut, Lawrence collapsed across the boat.
Had he driven off all the Eligators?
He didn’t know.
He no longer had the strength to stand.
He felt as though the moment he tried, everything would end.
This was no time to lie here.
If the attacks had stopped, he needed to row.
That was the only way to survive this place.
But he simply couldn’t row.
Forget the oars—he didn’t have the strength to move a single finger.
All he could feel was how ragged his breathing had become.
Still, that was a relief. As long as he was still breathing at all, maybe it wasn’t time to die yet.
Not time to die yet.
The thought made him let out a bitter, disbelieving laugh, as if the whole situation belonged to someone else.
...Had he lost consciousness for a moment?
When he opened his eyes again, he felt heat.
His thoughts seemed to melt into the warmth.
Something was running down his face.
Was it raining?
It felt like the same relentless downpour, dripping from above.
No.
This wasn’t rain.
He just hadn’t realized it yet. He was crying.
When he lifted a hand and touched his face, he felt something slick.
Hot. Sticky. And somehow it smelled like blood.
His mind snapped fully awake.
They weren’t tears. It was blood. His eyes were bleeding because his body couldn’t endure the strain of overusing magic.
Not just his eyes.
Blood was leaking from his nose too. And from his mouth.
His body, pushed past its limits, seemed to have become a wreck inside and out.
The alarm bells in his head would not stop ringing.
This was no time to sit there dazed.
If he did nothing, he might really die like this.
With trembling hands, Lawrence groped at his waist.
His fingertips found the shape of a bottle.
There were four of them in all.
Potions he had bought at great expense, just in case.
With difficulty, he pulled out the stopper, and an old woman’s warning surfaced in his mind.
“You think a potion is some kind of miracle? It’s just a sort of drug that forcibly boosts your healing. It tricks the body. If you can fool your body well enough, you live. If you can’t, you die. Just think of it as fate. If you’re going to die anyway, you might as well try before you go.”
Either way, he died.
There was no room for choice.
The potion at the far right of his waist was definitely the twenty-five-silver one.
If it cost that much, then the effect had to be real.
Lawrence tipped the contents of the bottle into his mouth all at once.
Maybe it was because it mixed with blood, but the taste was vile.
He barely managed to hold back the gag reflex.
He couldn’t throw it up. If he wanted to live, he had to swallow every bit of it.
The reaction came at once.
A tearing pain ripped through the throat as the potion went down.
Then through the stomach it passed.
Then deeper still, until it reached his abdomen.
It was like someone had stuffed a knife inside him and begun twisting it.
“...!!”
The pain was unlike anything he had ever felt.
A scream that never became sound burst from his mouth.
He understood instantly why failing to fool the body meant death.
With pain like this, dying might actually be easier.
And the potion’s agony did not end with a single wave.
After the knife-like tearing came fire.
It was as if his entire body had been set over flames, an inferno erupting from within and raging madly through him.
He could no longer keep his consciousness together.
As it slipped away, one thought surfaced.
Come to think of it, Balic had given him one potion.
Where had he put that one?
On the right? Or was it the left?
Had he just swallowed that one by mistake?
Shouldn’t he drink the others too, before it was too late?
There was no answer.
Only darkness.
Only pitch-black darkness.
His fading consciousness fell into the shadow and was received there.
...
......
When he came to, Lawrence was in the lake that held the stars.
Light was blooming all around him.
Countless stars were sewn across the surface of the lake.
A new world that didn’t seem like it belonged to reality at all.
Within that beautiful starlight, the boy reached for a radiance he had no hope of touching.
His body, floating as though in a dream, slowly regained feeling.
His throat felt as if it were burning up.
A voice that seemed to be splitting apart echoed inside his mouth.
The boy, with his face in the lake, drank the water holding the starlight.
It was less drinking than gulping it down.
The texture was somehow sticky, and the swallow felt harsh and unpleasant, but there was no time to think about that now.
After drinking frantically for a while, he finally came to his senses.
Every movement sent awful pain spreading through him.
Each joint creaked and groaned, and he couldn’t keep back the groans that rose in his throat.
The searing pain dragged Lawrence back to reality.
This was not the Spirit World.
And it was certainly not the lake of starlight he had seen through the gap.
Then where was he?
And what, exactly, was this starlight?
Suppressing the headache, he looked more closely and soon realized what it was.
Living insects.
The identity of that brilliant starlight was Kaizle.
A swarm so vast he couldn’t begin to count them was illuminating the cave.
It was truly an enchanting sight.
Even a tiny cluster of lights driving back the darkness...
When gathered in such numbers, did they start to resemble the sun?
For a moment, the view was so beautiful it felt almost like the Spirit World.
Within the faintly cascading sea of stars, the boy saw it.
A structure so massive he couldn’t take it in at a glance.
Blending in with the cave’s natural splendor, it seemed like nature itself.
Lawrence stared, wordless, and then a familiar emblem came into view.
The cross carved into the holy robe he wore.
The symbol of the Holy Cross Order had been etched into the building.
The Lost Sanctuary, which he had searched for so long, stood right before his eyes.
—