From Everlasting to Everlasting (3)

"This cliff... it seems I still can't get across."

A path ran on toward somewhere, but the height was hopelessly beyond anything the protagonist's jump could manage. From what she'd heard, this was a Metroidvania, so she'd have to come back later, once she'd earned some new ability. Having decided as much, Mary turned on her heel without a second thought.

"I wonder if the villager who got carried off is down the other road?"

Mary murmured it, thinking back to the fork she'd passed a moment ago.

When the protagonist left the clock tower and came down into the village at the mountain's foot, she found the people there slumped in place, drained of every spark of life. The strange part was that clocks hung where their heads ought to have been. Even as she drew near, they gave no reaction at all—they simply sat, collapsed in on themselves.

Still, the words they muttered alone were enough to guess at their circumstances. At some point the villagers' heads had warped into something wrong, and it had not taken long to understand that the clocks fixed there marked whatever span of life they had left. It was, in a word, a kind of curse.

The hands ticked at a different speed for every person, and the moment they completed a single turn, that person died. Try to escape death, and you died all the same. And yet, until the time ran out, you absolutely could not die—even a mortal wound knit itself closed in moments.

Once the villagers realized that no scheme could defy fate, they sank into a crushing lethargy and simply stopped. They wouldn't die even if they never ate, after all. Even when a wolf appeared and dragged one of them away, there was no resistance—not from the one being taken, and not from those who watched. The protagonist couldn't bring herself to stand by and see even that, and so she set off after the wolf. That was how things had come to this moment.

"But in a situation like this... does life truly have no meaning?"

Even as she asked it, Mary's hands were already busy, cutting down a wolf at the roadside. A three-hit string, canceled into a dash; an instant pivot the other way to erase the recovery, then another three hits; cancel into a dash once more, and she was back where she had started. It was the theoretically optimal attack she had refined on the tutorial map.

"Free will... I believe I've heard this is quite important from a religious standpoint as well. Shall I ask Sister about it later?"

Reading that chat, Mary briefly recalled yesterday's conversation—the moment Sister, Sion, had revealed of her own accord that she was no ordinary nun. An elite even among the Church's holy knights. Officially, she belonged to the Vatican's Special Solemn Exorcism Knight Order.

Put in the simplest terms, it was a supranational armed body operating beyond ordinary law, one that beat down anomalies running counter to the Church's will. This, at least, is certainly not something one can speak of lightly... She was no secret agent or special-forces soldier, so there was no particular need to hide who she was—but from the very mention of anomalies, most ordinary people would find it impossible to accept. And under the Secrecy Protocol and all the rest of it, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠existence of anomalies was, as a rule, kept secret from the general public.

"Me? You're asking what I think? Hmm, let's see... that is quite the philosophical question..."

Mary tilted her head for a moment, then went on.

"In the end, isn't it enough simply to enjoy it? Dramas and anime all proceed according to a script that's already written, and yet you can still lose yourself in them, can't you?"

"Oh—no. That hardly matters. I find a masterpiece perfectly enjoyable the second time through, you know?"

Even in the midst of this oddly earnest conversation, the protagonist kept moving across the map. And immediately afterward, what Mary and her viewers witnessed was a pit crammed full of human beings.

A ! flashed across the screen.

"...Eh?"

Some of them twitched where they lay, still injured; others sprawled with their bones laid bare. A great clock was driven into every head. Crunch. The view cut to the wolf that had dragged the villager off only moments ago, greedily tearing into a man who thrashed in agony.

"The art style is all soft and round... but the depiction does get rather cruel."

Mary said it with her pupils trembling. She had a certain tolerance for gore itself, but she had never expected a scene like this to leap out at her.

In the meantime a wolf's howl rolled out, deep and booming. The wolf that had been ripping into the man startled at the sound, dumped him into the pit of bodies, and fled. Inside the pit, flesh began slowly knitting itself back together—until a massive forepaw shot in from off-screen and seized him. The camera eased outward and revealed the paw's owner: a gray wolf vast enough to hold a person in a single grip, rolling blood-red eyes as it snarled.

"My territory. Why did you enter?"

A ?! jolted over the protagonist.

What spilled from the beast's muzzle was human speech. Sound effects braided through with animal noise only sharpened the dread.

...! ......

"No. My food."

The protagonist tried to answer her, but the other party only offered a vicious grin.

"This one... doesn't seem inclined to listen. If I'm to save these people, I suppose fighting is the only way."

"They were dragged all the way here and never even tried to run. They simply stayed still. This is the price of that."

The protagonist's reply came up struck through. ......×

"I doubt they wished to suffer to this extent. Had they known it would come to this, they surely would have resisted."

"You mean to interfere?"

......

"Then I can't very well leave you be."

The wolf cleared the pit in a single bound and came right up before the protagonist. Watching, Mary smiled, bright and sharp.

"At last I can thrash this infuriating little wretch."

"What nonsense is that! I drink nothing but blood packs approved by the Japanese government—and only when the donor themselves has consented, I'll have you know."

That was the setting, at any rate. Ninomae said it while calling Mary Tepes's profile to mind.

Honestly, looking over that profile, Mary had thought the very same thing. But, well... what could she do? The character the company wanted was a queen overflowing with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠confidence, and yet kind at heart—a queen no one could bring themselves to hate. There was nothing for it but to play the part.

"One who stands above others is obliged, more than anyone, to keep the rules. ──Now then. In any case, the clear begins."

"Just you watch, you wicked wolf!" Mary cried, beaming.

To a BGM built on electric guitar, the boss fight began.

Three hits. Cancel. Three hits again. A jump-dash carried her clear of the attack, and she slipped straight back in.

"These patterns are tighter than they look!"

A difficulty hard to believe of a first boss—but that only made the clear more satisfying. Her heart raced at a fight tuned down to the second. She swallowed hard against the tension and hammered the directional keys.

This time... a red light strobed in the wolf's eyes. The tell for a charge. Mary ducked out of its path, then jumped to slip the follow-up that came after.

She dodged the pattern, then stabbed into the opening where an attack was guaranteed to land.

"I won't use that! The damage efficiency is terrible!"

Cancel again, right off another three-hit string. Mary's character dashed, quick as a blink. And the move the wolf chose this time was—

"...Huh. This is a pattern I haven't seen before."

The wolf drew its paws together and sank low. Then the motion stopped dead. Mary's eyes went round. A moment later she glanced up at the top of the screen.

"A pattern that comes out at twenty percent—no, perhaps thirty or below? At this much health, dumping attacks to skip it before it starts is out of the question."

Chat was screaming for an all-out damage dump. And true enough, a boss simply standing there looked like nothing but a damage window. But being that defenseless not after a pattern ended, but right before one—usually that meant something else entirely.

I'm about to smash the player. You had better be ready.

Shaving off the remaining eighteen percent here and now was impossible anyway, and the pattern itself was still unknown. Better, then, not to cram attacks in. She could afford to throw this attempt away; reading the pattern came first.

The ready stance was, at a glance, a posture ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠built for a leap. A charge, then? Judging it so, Mary opened the distance.

"Gyahk?!"

But the wolf was faster. It closed in quicker than the eye could follow and swung a forepaw. A dark-crimson effect carved the arc—and then, at outrageous speed, five hits in a row. Mary never managed so much as a single reaction. She was, quite literally, slain on the spot.

"This... can't be dodged?"

The character's movement speed. The dash's vanishingly brief invincibility, and the distance it covered. Even taking all of it into account, the attack's reach was wider. Strictly speaking, it wasn't so much that the range was absurdly huge as that the combo came so fast it never gave you time to escape—and the damage, on top of that, was monstrous. A single hit nearly halved her HP, and it was a five-hit string. Even overkill ought to know some restraint.

"...But the other way around, that means I can survive two."

Mary's eyes changed. What flickered through her mind were the timings of every motion, and the single way through that they composed. However she turned it over, it was a clear of grotesque difficulty; she even half-suspected some other gimmick lay hidden in the fight. But a route had already been built in theory, and hunting for that gimmick would only be slower.

Mary Tepes pressed the revive button without hesitation.

The boss fight began again. Left, right—she never stopped moving, slamming attacks in to the very limit. It was a road she had already walked. So long as she made no mistake, all she needed was time.

And once again, the ready stance of the killing pattern returned. This time, unlike before, she hammered the motionless boss without pause. She had already confirmed how long the windup lasted before the pattern began.

The first hit was probably a tracking attack. Wherever the player stood, the wolf would leap there—which was to say, she could choose where the boss landed. Mary opened the gap with a jump-dash, and the instant her feet touched the ground the wolf lunged. In the same breath she dashed again, slipping the blow on that brief invincibility.

The second and third hits, of course, could not be avoided. She took them and kept walking, stretching the distance all the while. The fourth she dodged on the dash's invincibility, its cooldown recovered. The fifth, thanks to all that hard-won positioning, simply missed: she had pinned the boss in a corner and stepped clean out of its range.

"Good. I weathered it!"

Her HP was at death's door, but Mary had forced her way through the killing pattern all the same.

"I haven't the health to survive it twice. I'll finish this before that pattern comes back!"

She shouted it as she rushed the wolf again. Unless her HP was full, the same method could not carry her through.

And before long the wolf—cycling through its patterns—crouched once more into the ready stance, but—

It would never get to turn that stance into an attack. Mary didn't miss the opening. She poured the damage in.

"Now—kneel!"

Against what HP remained, she had time to spare. Her hand left the dash key. Even without cancel control, the damage would suffice. And since a streamer's heart would always rather finish on something that looked splendid, Mary drove in the entire five-hit combo with no cancels at all.

The heavy attack, long on delay both before and after, came swinging down—and tolled with the grandeur of a great bell. Mary smiled, satisfied, and then—

"Eh?"

Only now did the explanation appear for the heavy attack she had never once used, having dismissed it all this time as inefficient.

Mary's hollow voice, and the voices of her servants who had been shouting for the heavy attack in chat all along, rang out together into the empty air.