The 101st Me, to the 35th You. - 3
I thought about contacting Mirajane again, then decided against it—another fight seemed bound to break out at any moment. I had finished off the outlander warriors just now, but given time, they would come swarming back to pick a fight regardless. I had fought them earlier to make an example of them, yet if their numbers swelled, I would be the one in trouble.
I needed to respond with a cooler head. My purpose here was not to fight but to rescue Mirajane—getting her out safely, slipping away, and rendezvousing with Adele seemed like the best possible outcome.
I ran a check over my body, but nothing was in bad shape. My stamina had taken a toll, certainly, yet handling a few more opponents would be no strain.
Temuchin... well, I had fought him before. He was manageable. The whole reason Temuchin had ever been a nuisance in the first place was how nimbly he scurried back and forth on his wolf's mobility, after all.
The Princess would be staying indoors, and if we did cross paths, it would obviously be inside that building—so there was nothing to fear.
"Whew."
Being accustomed to pain helped in more ways than one. Should I thank Yuria for that? Thanks to how thoroughly she had once bruised me black and blue, all over, wounds like these hardly hurt at all.
I stanched the bleeding here and there and walked on slowly. The cold turned every breath to white mist, but my eyes stayed busy, searching for a way into the building.
In truth, I was still a fair distance from it. I had deliberately doubled back after that first clash with the outlanders, so they likely hadn't noticed my approach—but caution was still warranted.
A glance around revealed nothing but snow-covered rocks. Boulders far larger than a man lay heaped together, wrapping the area like a mountain range. This was why such places were called rough terrain. Anyone entering here could barely squeeze through single file. I felt my way around for a while.
Then I noticed one boulder sitting in a rather curious position. It alone bore only a thin dusting of snow. Nudging it aside revealed a small hole leading inward.
If it were this easy to spot, anyone could have found it. When I rolled the rock back into place, snow bloomed over it again as if by magic. A camouflage spell laid on top, perhaps. Then again, combing through every single boulder in a snowfield like this would have been next to impossible. Without someone telling me, the way I had been told, I doubted I would ever have thought to come near this place at all.
After a quick sweep of my surroundings, I slipped my body into the hole.
"...It's not as cramped as I expected."
What lay inside could only be called a proper building. Raised by the Princess herself, it was lavish enough that one might call it slightly better equipped than an ordinary research facility. Mana stones set into the walls lit the interior like lanterns, and as I followed the corridor along, a staircase leading down came into view.
Mirajane was hiding somewhere below. I spread my mana outward to sense any stray signs of life, but nothing distinct registered.
They were probably all dead. It pained me to think of those who had been sacrificed to protect a single Princess, but this was no time to dwell on it and waste precious minutes. Their sacrifice would only be made complete once I brought Mirajane out alive.
I quickened my pace.
The moment I descended, what I felt was the presence of barriers layered countless times over. Breaking through them would take a while. With the fighting having lulled, I took out the artifact again and called for Mirajane.
"Can you hear me?"
"Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?"
Her asking whether I was hurt pricked at me a little, but I answered in a calm voice. She would see for herself soon enough; there was no need to worry her in advance.
"More importantly, I'm standing before the barriers now. It would take me quite a while to break through them myself—is there any way to release them from your side?"
"Ah, the barriers... the barriers. Just wait a moment. I know how to dispel them."
Even as I waited, Mirajane kept asking about me. Was I hurt? How many had I fought? When I said roughly thirty, she nearly had a fit, and from then on she hounded me relentlessly about how badly I was wounded.
She could simply dispel the barriers and see for herself.
Letting out a small sigh, I spoke with a touch of deliberate hesitation.
"I'd say I'm... a little hurt."
"A little hurt? How badly? Were you hit by an arrow?"
"I took a few hits, but I'm probably fin—"
"A few hits? What part of that sounds fine—!"
Hearing her shout through the artifact, a laugh slipped out of me despite myself. Had she been like this before, too? Mirajane and I had been lovers in more than one regression. We had met several times... and more than once, marriage had come up in conversation. Though it had never once actually gotten that far.
Come to think of it, aside from the Saintess, I had been entangled with them all in one way or another. Adele too... ours was hardly what anyone would call an ordinary relationship, when it came down to it. But in this life, I had no wish to tie myself to anyone. Even if it wounded them, I thought a cold, clean refusal was the kinder path.
And so, the more familiar Mirajane's manner felt, the darker my expression grew.
By now I could hear her bustling about, dismantling the barriers. I brushed away the vanishing layers with my hand, and the moment the last of them cleared, the door beyond burst open.
"Just how badly are you— oh."
Truthfully, I hadn't expected her out that fast, so she was treated to an unobstructed view of me, covered in blood. I had shed my cloak partway here; I must have looked a wreck.
Mirajane stared at me blankly for a moment, then came toward me wearing a look of sheer disbelief.
"Are you insane? Are you actually insane? Seriously."
"...I did try not to get hurt."
"And this—this doesn't exactly look like someone who tried, does it? Do I look like a fool to you? Where, exactly, does a man bleeding this much look uninjured?"
"It isn't all my blood. I'd call it a very small amount, all things considered."
Mirajane glared at me, then—thumping her own chest in frustration—began inspecting my wounds. Counted one by one, there were quite a few. Thirty opponents, and me walking away without a single wound? Impossible.
Just as I was starting to feel a little glum about that, Mirajane's head snapped up as if she had read my mind, and she jabbed a finger into my chest.
"Don't make that sulky face. I gave you a direct order not to get hurt, and you come back to me like this—what am I supposed to do with you? Do I look that easy to you?"
"Yes. Very easy."
"No—wait. What am I even supposed to say when you answer like that?"
At my snort of laughter, she pulled a sulky face and shook her head. If I had to name the person I was most at ease with in this life, it would probably be Mirajane. Honestly, perhaps across every regression as well. Whether that would hold true going forward, I couldn't say—but right now, it was true.
"I'd love to treat your wounds, but I can't right now. Are you really all right?"
"If I weren't, I wouldn't have made it this far. I stopped the bleeding with mana—I can fight a few more times without any problem."
Mirajane eyed me with open suspicion, then nodded as if there were no helping it. Staying here wouldn't have been a problem, in truth. We could wait for Adele, and join her when she arrived. The problem was that our opponent was Temuchin. Temuchin was exactly the sort who might conceive of simply blowing this entire place sky-high.
"I'll be leaving through the passage I came in by. But—is there no other way out besides that one?"
"Of course there is. But you're saying they might have noticed that one, too."
"...Just in case, you should keep the possibility of escaping that way in mind. After all, no one expected the outlanders to push this deep into the Northwestern Region in the first place, did they?"
"But... what happened to the other soldiers?"
When I didn't answer, Mirajane—grasping the meaning well enough—smiled bitterly. She had said before that she sometimes hated being the Princess; a situation like this must have sat poorly with her as well. But she had to live. For the sacrifice of the others to become a sacrifice worth anything at all, she had to get out of here safely.
"Wait just a moment."
Stopping me as I moved to walk on, she tucked something into the front of my clothes and gave my back a few brisk thumps. When I asked what it was, she faced forward again and answered.
"An artifact I smuggled in with me. It conceals your body for a short while. You'll be the one doing the fighting, Lord Taylor—it's better off with you than with me, don't you think?"
An artifact that hid one's body—I did wonder how exactly one was meant to use it mid-fight. If we were weighing every possible contingency, it made more sense for Mirajane to keep it. But her expression was so earnest that I couldn't bring myself to argue, and simply offered my thanks.
We walked the corridor for a long while, and then I spotted it—drops of blood I had shed along the way. Just in case, I dragged my foot over them to smear them away, but Mirajane had evidently noticed long before, and her brow creased. It wasn't as if I could bleed without bleeding. Hardly my fault, I figured. If anyone bore the blame, it was the outlanders who had loosed arrows at me.
Mirajane said nothing as we walked. Whether the deaths of those who had died protecting her weighed on her, I couldn't say—she only stole glances toward the direction the soldiers must have fought, occasionally knitting her brows. In a situation like this, saying anything would help nothing. Better to simply give her the time to think it through alone.
All the while, my own task was to radiate mana and sweep for signs of movement around us. The outlanders might yet find the passage—it was only right to strike first, before they noticed us. Not in haste. Slowly.
A strange atmosphere settled over us as we walked the silent corridor together. As if she had something she wanted to say, Mirajane was staring holes through me, and I gave a small shrug.
"Was there something you wished to say?"
"...No, it's just—something I've been curious about for a while."
After a moment's hesitation, she stole a glance at me and went on.
"Why did you come to save me? We've only just met, you and I. You didn't have to come alone—you could have joined up with the Grand Duchess first, and no one would have thought it strange. There was no need to come by yourself, was there?"
"There was a need."
"What did you just say—"
But Mirajane's words never finished. The presence I sensed in that instant hardened my expression, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, holding her breath. Nothing had been there until moments ago—now, a group had entered the building. Not one or two, but many, and they were heading this way, surely with the aim of capturing Mirajane.
"...The outlanders are inside. It seems the defensive line has been breached."
Mirajane didn't answer. She only nodded, as if waiting to hear what I would say next.
By ill luck, the direction they had entered from lay close to the passage we had been making for. Which meant we could not go that way. Fighting while simultaneously shielding Mirajane would be all but impossible. We needed another route. The trouble was that we could no longer travel it together—for the vast, towering aura I could feel in that presence was unmistakably Temuchin's. However many times I turned it over, the odds of the two of us slipping past that thing were not good.
"We have to take another route."
"Then turn, then! Why are you standing there?"
Mirajane seized my wrist, but I gently, politely, freed my hand and replied.
"I can't go. Only if I hold them here can Your Highness escape."
"...I don't know what you're saying right now. You can't possibly mean to hold off the outlanders alone. In that body?"
I didn't answer. I only nodded. Mirajane put on an angry face—leaving without her was absurd, her look said, and she was clearly scheming to come with me somehow. But that was impossible. Even if we went together, the outlanders would surely block the road and seal this place in. Breaking through that while protecting Mirajane—even for me, I doubted it could be done.
"It's the only way. You have to live, don't you?"
"And you, my lord? Are you planning to just... die here?"
"I'm not going to die. I rather doubt I could manage it—and besides, an outlander chieftain is worth fighting."
Half of it was bravado, but Mirajane hesitated at the words, searching my face. It struck me that our situations had reversed. Once, Mirajane had been the one to refuse to flee together—and Mirajane, departing alone, had died. If I held the outlanders here, she would surely escape safely. Temuchin alone could never handle me, so he would be forced to rally his underlings this way.
I gently took the hand of Mirajane, who was still staring at me. It was to reassure her—and, at the same time, to pass her the artifact.
"Use it should you find yourself in danger. Once you're out, go straight north and join the Grand Duchess. I'll deal with the outlanders and find my own way out."
"......Ha."
I felt Mirajane's glare, thick with incredulity. Her eyes had gone red in an instant. If she kept looking at me like that, wouldn't things get a little strange? It wasn't as if I was walking off to die. Catching outlanders was hardly difficult. I would take a few more wounds, perhaps. But I would not die.
Tap, tap. I patted Mirajane's shoulder—the signal. There was no more time to waste. The moment I drew their attention, Mirajane would have to run the other way, and I would have to hold Temuchin here. She must have known it too, because she turned away without another word. Her lingering figure looked as though it had so much left to say. But Mirajane said nothing more. She simply ran ahead, and vanished from my sight.
Only after confirming that Mirajane was gone could I exhale and murmur:
"I don't think I'll be dying."
There is a certain feeling one gets when death draws near. I felt nothing of the sort—and if it came to it, I still had cards hidden up my sleeve. I had lived through a hundred lives; was I really going to die here?
...And besides—it was for a moment like this that I had taken up the sword. If a situation like the last day of the thirty-fifth regression ever came again—then this time, so that I could finally protect. So that I would have no regrets. That was why I had gripped the sword.
Deliberately, I drew my mana up to its very limit. As my blue mana flared with light, I felt Temuchin's presence turn toward me, drawn to it.
There was something I had thought about when I took up the sword. The reason I held it, and the goal I would one day reach. The reason: having recognized my own weakness, I meant to overcome it—even if I had to wield force to do it. So that I would never again lose someone precious before my eyes. So that I would never again surrender so easily beneath the excuse of powerlessness. That was the goal.
Shing—
There had been a few things I had done for someone else's sake. They remained vivid even now—memories that surged back, sharp and bright, whenever I looked upon the past. But of them all, one thing was certain: the reason I had taken up the sword.
Mirajane.
The life in which I gripped that sword was a life lived for you.
Remembering the Mirajane of the thirty-fifth, Robert of the hundred-and-first gripped his sword.
There had been a life I lived for you. That much, at least, was a truth I could not deny.