You Shouldn't Have Touched Me
"Did none of you hear that just now?"
"Hear what, exactly?"
Ramang frowned. The voice a moment ago had not been a hallucination. It had been a real sound. He turned, scanning the trees for some prankster, and found no one at all.
"Wh-who's there?"
Ramang whipped around so suddenly that the rest of the knights startled and dropped into a perimeter watch, eyes cutting through the dark.
Ah—thank you... but who exactly are you?
A guardian spirit...!
The people of this world loved to believe in things they could not see. They preferred to believe those things meant something. Knights staked their lives on the value called loyalty. The devout proclaimed their faith in Gaia, goddess of the earth. And ordinary, fragile people believed in the existence of unseen wonders—beings of impossible power.
It was an age of faith. An age in which the gods still lived. That was simply common sense.
Spirits numbered among those wonders. Spirit mages were so vanishingly rare that almost no one ever saw a spirit with their own eyes; they belonged to folklore, to the ballads of heroes.
Ramang did not doubt for a second that the presence speaking to him was a spirit. The others couldn't hear a word of it. What besides a spirit could work a mystery like that?
Messi had a spirit?
Ah. So that's why he asked for support to study spirit arts.
The pieces clicked into place at once.
The humans of this world discriminated against other races, and yet they harbored a certain romantic fantasy about them besides. The most popular of those fantasies was the image of a people who commanded spirits. That Messi—a human—happened to have a spirit affinity was nothing more than a coincidence of birth. It just made for a conveniently tidy cover.
But why would Messi's guardian spirit come to me...?
Pardon?
The accusation had come so abruptly that Ramang could only stare, blank-faced, at the three men who had just been named villains.
Laud. Ken. Vlado.
He had known them since they were snot-nosed children. He could have tried to look at them with suspicion and still failed. They were his fellow knights of the Ahental order, and Ereb's own direct retainers. Laud, in particular, was one of the very few people Ereb actually trusted.
"Sir Ramang, what on earth is the matter? Who were you looking for just now?"
It was Laud himself who asked, a strange look on his face. Ramang hesitated, caught between speaking and staying silent.
He glanced at Messi. Their eyes met, and Messi gave a small, firm shake of his head. Don't say anything.
After taking Messi's lead through the Ant Tunnels, the habit of following him had settled in without Ramang quite noticing. He followed it now.
"Ah... forgive me. I must be more worn out than I thought. I've been hearing things now and then."
"Hearing things? Haha. Eager to get home, I take it."
"That's right. As a matter of fact, I just heard my wife's voice! Haha."
As if a married man would be hearing his wife's voice as a hallucination. Ramang had never been any good at lying.
"Then let's finish the mission quickly. Who will you go with? Personally, Commander, there's something I've been wanting to consult you about today."
"Ah—consult? Well, you see..."
The spirit's words snagged at the edge of his mind and would not let go. He flicked a look toward Messi, and a voice arrived as if on cue.
...!
He was already alarmed.
Why would they even—no. More importantly, do you have proof?
Easy, you say?
...Then what about you?
Even through the worry in Ramang's thoughts, Messi's reply came back even and unhurried.
Are you truly confident? Are you going to be all right? If what you're saying is true, you'd be facing two Ahental knights. That is no small thing.
There was something almost incredulous in the way Messi said it—and underneath, a deep, quiet confidence.
Home ground. The sheer certainty in those words was enough. Ramang decided he could trust him this once.
Before they had entered the Ant Tunnels, Messi had been just as sure of those tunnels—and then he had proven, with ability, exactly where that confidence came from.
"All right, Laud. Today I'll sort out whatever's been eating at you."
"Oh—truly? That's a promise, then."
There was an unfamiliar brightness on Laud's face, and the smile Ramang wore in answer grew heavy in his chest. What could be more unsettling than watching a man who never showed expression suddenly smile?
Ramang let his gaze rest on Messi for a moment, then turned and walked away without a word. Laud followed at his heels.
The moment the two of them vanished into the trees, Ken and Vlado's mouths curled into ugly little smiles.
"Right then, other-race. We'll take it nice and easy."
"No, no—this is a search. We ought to comb the corners that don't catch the eye. This way."
As if being conspicuous or inconspicuous meant a damn thing in a forest this dark. The two of them lounged in a leisure that made the skin crawl, like killer whales amusing themselves by playing ball with a seal.
They had reason to feel that way. In their eyes, Messi was a green boy who could neither use mana nor wield a sword.
Messi did not so much as blink. He answered with a smile.
"Very well. Then let's move quickly ourselves."
"Huh?"
"Follow me. I'll sweep the area around the ruins in one pass. The hard-to-spot places included."
He kicked off the earth and shot forward—and it was Ken and Vlado who were left standing there, startled.
"Does that bastard not understand the situation he's in? I thought he'd caught on and was trying to drag Sir Ramang into it."
"Ken. We don't have time for this. He's already that far."
"What the hell? Why is he that fast? Didn't they say he was just Savage Stage?"
Messi was moving fast enough to rattle them, and the reason was the mana running the circuits of his body. He could feel how different that body had become in a single day. Learning Gaston's physical information had been like learning to run. Using mana was like learning to fly.
Movement cost mana, but not much of it. The cultivation method that had been enough to found a lineage of its own fed his mana core as if to say, I can replenish that much all day. He looked good to run for a long while yet.
And there was an unexpected leap forward besides. The Barcelo-style Fast Walk his master had taught him revealed its true worth the moment he laced it with mana.
It was a way of walking and running through the forest—or through ordinary life—faster and more stably than usual, and with less waste. When Ramang had first met Messi, he had remarked that the boy's steps did not look particularly quick, and yet the distance between them closed with a strange speed. This was why.
Messi had taken only a few strides, and already his body was shooting forward as if the ground itself were feeding him distance.
Behind him, Ken and Vlado were starting to sweat.
"We're going to lose the bastard at this rate!"
"What the hell happened? Did someone say he could use mana?"
"There's no way!"
They had treated it as a game at first. Then the gap refused to close, and the laughter drained out of their faces. At some point they realized they were running in earnest. The easy cruelty was gone. Urgency had taken its place.
They burst into the spot where Messi had been visible a moment before, and found not even a trace of him.
"That miserable little shit. When I catch him, I'll kill him."
"Ken. Calm down. You get excited, you kill him, you get blood on yourself—and then we're in real trouble. This job is dunk one green boy and get out. Don't mix feelings into it."
Ken and Vlado dragged in short, broken breaths and raked the trees with their eyes. The forest was already dim under the ancient Black Wood; they poured mana into their sight just to see.
Please. Just show yourself... If we lose him, Captain Laud will leave nothing of us but bones.
Whether a god took pity on that desperate wish or not, a rustle of moving brush whispered past their ears.
Shff-shff-shff.
"There!"
Something moved. The motion was fast, and Ken could not hold himself back—he was the first to break from cover and charge.
From behind, Vlado shouted something. Antennae, or some such. What was that supposed to mean?
The bushes answered the question for him. A long black thing like a harpoon lanced out of the undergrowth, driving straight for Ken's head.
"Oh, you have got to be—"
He wrenched his body aside with everything he had and made it a glancing miss. What came bursting out of the brush in the next heartbeat was a creature he knew all too well.
"No—why the hell are you here?!"
Ken's scream tore out of him like a seizure. The thing that came down on him was none other than the General Ant they had seen in the Ant Tunnels.
High in a tree some distance away, Messi watched the scene and huffed a quiet laugh.
"Captain of the Royal Guard. I didn't expect that one to come looking. I about jumped out of my skin when I saw it waiting for us on the way to the ruins."
The path to the ruins should have taken thirty minutes. It had stretched past an hour because Messi had looped wide to shake the General Ant off their trail. After that, whether it had sensed the princess in danger or not, the General Ant had given chase at speed—and Messi had closed the distance himself, then cut away at the predicted point of contact and drawn Ken and Vlado straight into it.
"I thought it said it doesn't take orders from the princess."
"And you and I are bound by fate now. Protecting you means protecting me."
A frantic wriggle started up in his pocket. There seemed to be some kind of misunderstanding in play, but Messi ignored it, focused mana into his eyes, and watched the General Ant fight the two men.
"So they were holding a card up their sleeve after all."
Ken and Vlado pulled out what looked like Red Scrolls, tore them in their fists—and in the next breath their movements sharpened and their defense turned ironclad.
He had expected they were hiding something. Suspicious men planning to take down a higher-realm fighter like Ramang were never going to come empty-handed.
Even so, the General Ant kept up its assault at a leisurely pace. This was a creature that had held fifty knights by itself, even if it had eventually fled. At this rate, the ones who would lose their lives were those two.
They split down opposite paths and began easing their bodies out of range, clearly meaning to tear apart and run. It was a sound way to throw the General Ant into confusion.
I'm not letting you leave that easily.
Messi sliced a strip from a leather pouch, gathered the vines that grew thick around him, and cut them with his knife. He left the vines long for range, then bound both ends of the leather tight. A makeshift sling.
He dropped down from the tree and picked up a handful of promising stones.
"Watch closely. Master taught me this himself."
Once Barcelo had judged that Messi had no gift for the sword, he had rushed to teach him hunting arts instead. One of those arts was the sling.
A weapon that could deliver a devastating blow with nothing but the stones that littered a forest floor—and one you could cobble together in moments, so long as you had sturdy vines and a scrap of leather or cloth.
Messi whirled the sling a few times to test the weight, then set a stone in the leather and spun it up.
Here. A little surprise gift.
The sling snapped. A vicious whistle cut the air—and the stone was already at Ken's outer thigh. The speed of it was monstrous. That was the terror of a sling: easy to make, materials everywhere, fast, and brutally hard-hitting.
Ken's senses could not have missed it. He took it for the General Ant's attack and threw himself aside in a panic. The General Ant's real strike came in from the other direction. The guard he had been barely holding together collapsed.
"Kh—what the hell?!"
The two of them had been reduced to frantically batting away whatever the General Ant felt like throwing at them. They had been watching for a single opening to run. A sudden attack from an entirely new quarter left them unable to think.
The whistle came again.
They knew the sound now. Somewhere out of sight, someone was slinging stones.
In a fight this desperate they did not need to turn their heads to know who. Ken's face went scarlet with rage; spit flew as the curses poured out of him.
"You—you dog-shit other-race bastard... what a filthy fucking way to fight!"
High praise, coming from an enemy. The dog-shit other-race bastard smiled as if well satisfied, and loaded another stone.
"I only hit one of them."
The sling snapped. A wet, heavy crack.
This time Ken could not dodge. The stone smashed into the back of his iron plate. The shock rattled through his whole body; the armor itself felt dented. In that instant, something in Ken's head simply broke.
"Vlado! Forget it—I'm killing that bastard first!"
"What? And the ant?!"
"Sorry! Hold it—just hold it a little longer!"
"You crazy son of a—!"
Ken tore himself out of the General Ant's reach. The moment he did, every ounce of the creature's assault folded onto Vlado alone.
That son of a bitch. Trying to save his own skin!
The two of them had been barely holding as it was. There was no world in which one man could last.
The General Ant's sword—shaped like an antenna—spread at the joints, and its reach unfurled. The blade curved in like the arc of a whip and drove straight through Vlado's heart.
"Ghk—!"
The instant it punched in, the blade ripped back out. Blood surged in heavy, rolling sheets. The last thing that filled Vlado's vision was the ant, already swinging for his throat.
The whistle of another stone cut the air.
Ken, who had no idea his abandoned comrade was already dead, slipped the incoming stone with nothing but a tilt of his head and committed everything to the charge.
Kill this bastard as fast as possible and run.
There had never been any assumption that he would save Vlado. Killing Messi and fleeing was, as far as Ken was concerned, the only path that let him live.
Sword-light flickered. Ahental Swordsmanship uncoiled toward Messi, the blade hunting his throat. Messi gave ground in a backpedal and knocked it aside with a hard, straining parry.
He blocked it...?
It was as if Messi had known exactly where the cut would come—standing on the line of the sword, waiting, and shutting it down.
The flurry that followed was the same. A blade that sealed every path with an almost nauseating precision. Ken felt his skull might split from the rage of it.
"I will see your blood!!!"
"All right. I'll show you."
"What?"
Messi drew his knife across his own palm with a careless little stroke, and flung the blood straight at Ken.
Hot droplets fell like a sunshower and were gone. Ken, closing the gap, felt them strike—and a warm bead of blood landed in the open, cursing mouth of him.
"You—you—you lunatic!"
Messi's blood ran in Ken's hair, down his face, across his armor. Subjected to this world's first act of blood terrorism, Ken went white as paper. Messi looked at him, and spoke a word over his palm.
"Heal."
⟨ Heal ⟩
The wound closed in an instant. Even the blood that had been running down his hand vanished. Messi turned a cold smile on Ken.
"W-wait—!"
"Then try surviving without me."
Messi turned and fled into the trees.