The 101st Me, to the 35th You — 4
She walked through a pristine white snowfield.
Her legs wobbled from the endless running, and her body shivered in the biting wind, yet still she pressed on, ceaselessly searching for any sign of people.
Thanks to the artifact concealing her, her identity had gone undetected—but if she kept this up, it would only be a matter of time before its power ran dry.
Mirajen bit her lip and let out a small sigh.
She had escaped through the passage, but the problems remained: the likelihood of joining up with Adele Egret, and the likelihood that Robert Taylor would survive at all. No matter how she turned it over, the odds of cutting through all those outlanders and living looked like nothing.
Powerless. At that truth, Mirajen's brow creased.
How many people had died just to save her alone? And now Robert Taylor on top of it. Blocking dozens of outlanders single-handedly so that one person could slip away—words even the Knight Commander of the Imperial Palace would never dare utter.
Yet a man with no ties to her whatsoever had said them. He would buy time, so she should live.
He could have simply fled with her, couldn't he?
Who was she, that he should? A princess clinging to a precarious seat, already pushed to the margins by the Crown Prince. What was she, that anyone should—
"...I don't understand."
"There was a need to."
That was how Robert had answered when she asked why he'd had to see her safe even while coming alone.
What need had driven him to say such a thing? Mirajen found herself recalling his eyes. Unlike usual, they had been a little more tender. Softer.
He often wore that look when he gazed at her—and that was precisely why she could not easily read Robert's heart.
"Mirajen, do you... believe in regression?"
Was it mere coincidence that Adrian's words surfaced now? Regression—if, in a span of time no one knew of, Robert and she had shared something special. If there were memories no one else carried, ones that Robert alone kept alive.
Then perhaps she could understand the way he treated her.
The cold seeped in.
The only reason she could endure even that much was the cloak she had taken from Robert—the one he'd handed over, saying it would only hinder him in a fight. She hugged it tight against her chest.
Feeling the faint warmth still lingering in the fabric, she thought of the resolve Robert must have been carrying. Sacrifice. No—Robert would not die.
He had said so himself. Surely he would live, and they would meet again.
And in the blizzard that grew fiercer by the moment, a faint silhouette began to take shape.
At the sight of a pack of black wolves charging toward her, Mirajen dismissed the artifact.
As her figure emerged from the snowstorm, Adele spotted her and drove the pack straight in.
"Your Highness."
Relief flickered through her that Mirajen was alive—but Adele's gaze confirmed something else: there was no one at Mirajen's side.
Mirajen being here meant Robert had arrived as well. So where was he?
She waited, in case he was circling in from the rear, but Mirajen spoke first.
"There's no time to linger. Lord Taylor is holding the outlanders back alone. We have to reinforce him as soon as—"
"...Robert is. Alone, you say."
A voice so cold it pricked the skin. Mirajen stopped mid-sentence and nodded.
Adele's expression was no different from before. Still that blank face, still the same iron composure.
Only her eyes—the eyes fixed on the place where Robert would be—trembled without end.
Grit. Adele clenched her teeth and exhaled a shallow breath. There was no chance he was facing Temuchin alone. This was the cunning, slippery wretch Temuchin, after all—he would surely be fighting off dozens at once.
There wasn't even time to stand here talking. After a brief check of Mirajen's condition, Adele's gaze fell on the cloak draped across her shoulder, and she spoke.
Blood caked it thickly—and even if little of it was Robert's, there was no way he had come away unscathed. As Adele stared at the hole punched clean through the shoulder, her expression darkened by the moment.
"What was Robert's condition?"
"He was badly hurt. I don't think... he can fight for much longer."
"I see."
Having lent one of her swords to Robert, Adele drew the remaining blade and looked to Toby.
There was no time to move as one. From here on, going alone would be faster.
Ten minutes, perhaps, to reach wherever Robert was. She weighed the distance, then parted her lips.
"Toby, escort Her Highness and rendezvous with Bunta. I'm going to Robert, and I'll bring him back myself."
"You mean to go alone, Your Grace?"
"Yes."
Adele dipped her head briefly to Mirajen and gathered the reins.
Mirajen, for her part, made no move to hold back the woman already surging to leave. On one point, at least, the two of them thought exactly alike: Robert had to be reached, and quickly.
Only a single thought filled Adele's mind. She had to reach Robert as fast as was humanly possible. A cold wind blew.
Unnaturally cold—cold enough to raise the hair on her arms. And at that strange chill, Adele dug in her heels and spurred forward.
Numerical superiority lent a sense of security in every situation, as it always did.
Even three against one, a man felt certain of victory—how much more now, with a full fifty? Gazing at his warriors ringing a single man, Temuchin frowned faintly.
And yet why could no one close the distance? This was a fight that ended the moment one man was subdued. So why could he not simply be subdued?
Even Temuchin, thinking exactly that, could not bring himself to step forward—and so the tedious stalemate dragged on and on.
"Scared, are we?"
Robert sneered.
Slash wounds marked his body in several places, an arrow pinned through his shoulder, and his pure white shirt had long since been dyed red. He wiped the blood trickling down his forehead and considered. The little gambit he'd opened with seemed to be working beautifully.
He had faced one-against-many often enough. Just recently, the knights Mirajen had marshaled to subjugate him had numbered five hundred.
The completed sword had cut down every one of those five hundred—it had simply never reached Mirajen herself.
And even that failure had been his own doing; he had hesitated. To the man he'd been then, the name Mirajen had still been one he could not help but falter before.
He seized a warrior by the hair and sheared the head clean away; the body dropped where it stood with a heavy thud.
In an unfavorable fight, there was only one way to seize the advantage. Carve into them an impression so fierce they dared not approach.
He swept his sword through the air with a whoosh, and the startled warriors flinched, stumbling backward.
"What is the matter with you? Retreating from a single man!"
"B-but he's no easy foe. Seven warriors are already dead, and the ground's too narrow—we can't even surround him properly."
"Then loose your arrows, damn you!"
Every arrow that flew was cut from the air—a display nothing short of sorcery. More than a hundred shots loosed, and only three had found their mark. Was that truly a plane a human being could reach?
Barely had that doubt taken root when Temuchin, reaching his decision, strode forward himself.
Sending in warriors already gripped by fear would accomplish nothing; if ever there was a moment for the chieftain himself to fight, it was now.
The odds of victory. In Temuchin's eyes, Robert's state looked dire. He had to have burned through nearly the whole of his strength by now—judging by appearances, even a feint would be enough to shatter him.
Look at him, already gasping. Watching Robert heave for breath, Temuchin gripped his great sword.
"You don't imagine I've tired, do you?"
Of course, every one of Temuchin's calculations lay perfectly bare before Robert's eyes.
It was true that he was exhausted.
He'd needed an overwhelming display at the start to seize the momentum, and so the present reality was a man running on badly depleted stamina, simply holding the line.
'...Five minutes. Give or take.'
The time he could still draw on his mana was laughably short. Drag things out any longer than that, and his body would simply come apart. He would die as he stood.
So little time. And yet he did not believe he would die.
Confidence? No—conviction was the proper word. He had not lived his lives in vain, not to the point of perishing in a place like this.
Whoosh. Mana bloomed alight around him like flame, wreathing Robert's body.
Unlike before, it burned outward like true fire, seeming to draw in the mana scattered on the wind.
And in truth, it was. When he had at last mastered the handling of mana, only then had he learned to draw upon the mana that existed in nature itself.
Realizing that Robert still had no intention of drawing steel against him, Temuchin promptly slammed his foot into the earth.
Boom! The ground split beneath his heel and dust geysered upward. He meant to end it in a single blow.
Temuchin's specialty was flooding his body with mana in one instant—and the blade, laden with that colossal power, came swinging down, driving straight for Robert.
But it never landed. Robert tilted his head just enough to slip past it, then brought his elbow up and drove it down.
Crack. A groan tore out of Temuchin, his brow knotting.
He swung his whole body wide in answer, and even that strike found nothing.
Robert's movements were like wind slipping through the trees—close enough to touch, and never touched.
"Ngh—!"
Every missed attack was repaid without fail with a blow to something vital; Robert's leg lashed out at Temuchin's staggering thigh.
Catching the man by the collar as his legs buckled, he hauled him upright again.
Letting him fall would only cost time. And what came after Temuchin went down? Robert's eyes swept quickly across the men surrounding them, and he smiled thinly.
Those dozens of warriors would come swarming, surely. Men who prized honor above even their chieftain's life—of course they would rush him, crying vengeance for their fallen chief.
So he had to show them. That even with their chief broken at his feet, he remained overwhelming. That even if every last one of them threw himself forward, there was no winning to be found.
That was why he was rationing his mana. Robert's fist came down into Temuchin's face.
Crunch—the bones of his nose caved inward, and still Robert seized the collar, hauled him up, and drove another fist home.
Crash. His body struck the ground hard enough to crater it, and Temuchin could offer no resistance at all.
The mana suffusing Robert's body wrapped it completely, so that every movement was read the instant it began and the counter came before the thought finished. The hand gripping Temuchin's sword twitched and trembled.
Crunch. Slammed down once more, Temuchin's body spasmed. Blood leaked from nose and mouth; grit and shards of stone ground between his teeth. And still Robert did not stop.
Even as splinters of his own shattered teeth lodged themselves in the man's fist. Even as Temuchin's desperate swing opened a cut along Robert's side.
The blazing mana moved like a flash of light, straight into Temuchin's body.
Swing his sword, and his arm broke. Force himself to move, and his knee was wrecked out from under him. Try to speak, and a fist came down to pulp his nose.
"St... st—"
Crash!
Before the word could even end, the face ground into the dirt screamed.
Even through all of it, Robert could feel his mana slowly bleeding away.
He struck so recklessly for a simple reason: one glance around showed the fighting spirit thinning from the warriors' faces. A few among them had even fled wetting themselves—and at the sight, Robert's fists moved faster still.
There was nothing left to learn from this man. Everything Temuchin knew, Robert already knew.
The only thing that gnawed at him was this: how had they known the Princess was in the northwest?
He paused his fists and slowly drew his sword.
Shring. The mana in his body flowed out along the blade.
The mana-wreathed steel came to rest at Temuchin's throat, and a small bead of blood welled up along its edge.
"S-spare me..."
"You were still hoping to live?"
His life had been forfeit the moment he set his sights on Mirajen. He had never intended to spare him in the first place.
Robert's lips curled in a small sneer as he pressed the blade closer, and the thin trickle of blood began to run faster.
"I have questions. You can answer them, I trust."
"I can! I can, so please, only spare my life—"
"First question, then. How did you know the Princess was in the northwest? Did someone tell you, by any chance?"
Temuchin's head bobbed frantically. That eager affirmation—yes, exactly so—froze Robert's expression cold.
The suspicion he'd only half-dared to harbor had become reality. Then who, in God's name, had told them the Princess was here?
"A w-woman called Theresia told us. That the Princess... was in the northwest..."
"Theresia?"
Robert doubted his own ears. Why would that name surface here, of all places?
The answer that they didn't know her family name drew a low groan from him. If that Theresia truly was Theresia Violet, then he could hardly leave her be.
But that was a matter for later. He was bound for the South regardless—right now, deciding Temuchin's fate came first.
"She said if I wanted her aid, I should come to the s-south. It's the truth, I swear it, so please, only let me live...!"
Temuchin begged for his life.
He knew by now that the storied name of Great Chieftain was worth less than nothing, and so he dragged his dead-legged body down and forced himself to his knees.
Thud, thud. Blood spattered with every bow of his head.
Robert watched the display with distant eyes—and then he simply smiled, thin and cold.
What, he wondered, had these men done when Mirajen begged them for her life?
...They had probably just laughed at her.
And so the sword did not stop.
The blade traced one clean line through Temuchin's neck—and by the time it passed, his head had already gone rolling to a stop at the feet of the other warriors.
Robert's gaze settled on them.
Dozens of faces bloodless with terror, bodies shaking—yet the face looking upon them remained as composed as ever.
Robert shifted his grip on the sword and parted his lips.
"If any of you want your revenge—come."
Though he doubted a single one of them had the courage to try.