This Time, I'll Trust You
"This time, I'll trust you."
All I can do is stare at the place where Sapi should still be.
Khhk!
A massive wooden club comes flying at me, slams into me, and sends me crashing into a tree far away. But there is nothing left in me that wants to fight. I... I made the first person who ever believed in me die.
"O sentient one. I understand your comrade has died. But humans exist beyond counting — their places are forgotten, and others fill them in turn. I bid you come to your senses."
Forgotten? Replaced — Sapi?
No...
"Shut up!!"
FWOOM!
Linear Leap. At this speed, I can split his torso clean in half. I can cut him down for good.
But the Moktak man swatted me out of the air with his club, easy as anything.
"Hah... hahh..."
"Why did you leap from that exact spot?"
"What?"
"This time, you were easy to read."
The Moktak man looked down at me, level and unbothered.
"It was only possible before because that man was splitting my attention."
In that moment, my mind went white.
Sapi... The instant I leapt, the enemy's gaze wavered, and a gap opened. I cut through that gap. All of it... every single time, it was possible because you were there, Sapi.
It was never my Linear Leap that was strong. It was strong because you were there, Sapi.
"Foolish sentient one. Karma, once set in motion, can never be undone."
"..."
"Hmm... I have no taste for killing one already resigned. I shall leave you to another."
This time, I felt iron balls hurtling in from far away. If I moved fast enough, I could dodge them. But I didn't want to move.
?!
As if someone had grabbed my jacket, my body was yanked backward.
BOOM! Ba-ba-BOOM!
The iron balls detonated. But I was already clear of the blast. My mouth opened before I could stop it.
"Sapi...?"
No answer came. That's right... Sapi is dead.
But Sapi — the Sapi who fought so hard to keep me alive — wouldn't want to see me like this.
"Ohh? Your eyes have changed, sentient one."
"Yes."
"Though turning this disadvantage around looks like a tall order. What will you do?"
"You're right. Turning this around would be hard."
"Hmm... then what was that look in your eyes just n—"
"Then I'll just go back to before the disadvantage!"
For a regressor like me, that much is possible.
I drew my beam saber and drove it into my own throat. And so I died. And I regressed.
BANG!
A gunshot tore through the forest. Its source: the gun in Sapi's hand. The bullet punched straight through the Moktak man's heart — and the hole it left sealed itself back over with skin, clean and perfect, as if nothing had happened.
Again. This time, I absolutely will not let Sapi die.
Sapi was still alive. He gave me a strange look, and my body threw its arms around him on its own — which, judging by his face, startled him badly.
"What's gotten into you all of a sudden? Get ready for the figh—"
"This time, I'll trust you."
With those words, I didn't hurl myself at the Moktak man like before. I held my distance instead — and pointed Sapi toward one direction. The direction the iron balls had flown in from in the previous loop.
"There's an enemy that way. Snipe them."
Sapi still looked bewildered, but his body was already moving — fast. He shifted his gun into sniper form and swept it across that direction, hunting for the target.
"Found her."
With that single word, Sapi fired.
I already know there's an enemy waiting far off in the distance. A woman called Beam, her specially modified sniper-shotgun primed, all set to open fire on us.
Under normal circumstances, nobody should have the faintest idea where Beam is — nobody but me, the one who sees the future...
— Heh.
Lebetri... you really are a fascinating one.
I shift my gun into sniper form and settle into a firing stance.
Now, a brief aside. How does a sniper get caught? Plenty of reasons — but the classic one is the sun glinting off their scope.
But... Beam's sniper shotgun has no scope.
Visual acuity of 16.5 in both eyes. Eyesight so superhuman it makes a scope itself unnecessary — that is her strength.
Then... with no lens glare to catch...
I'll simply predict with the Foresight Eye!!!
BANG!!!
I fire. The bullet flies dead straight — and punches through Beam's throat.
Her eyes waver wildly. The face of someone who cannot comprehend.
She'll never work out how she was detected. She'll die lost in the confusion.
Not that she'll die. Beam's ability — Timer Bomb.
Anything she touches becomes a bomb that detonates after a set time, no exceptions. She'll cauterize her own wound with the heat of the blast.
With the nuisance gone, all that's left is... the Moktak man.
The instant the bullet flew, the Moktak man looked at me and asked:
"Curious... Lebetri. How did you know an enemy waited in that direction?"
"..."
His words came soaked in killing intent. Sapi answered in my place.
"You think we're idiots who feed intel to the enemy?"
"Right, Sapi. So what do we do next?"
Everything we'd learned about the Moktak man came down to two things: purely overwhelming physicality, and a habit of soaking up every attack head-on with monstrous regeneration.
If anyone could crack an opponent like that... wouldn't it be Sapi?
"Lebetri. Then don't leap."
"What?"
"To be precise — don't use your ace, the Linear Leap."
"Then... how?"
"The power unit on your prosthetic arm... the booster."
?!
And with that, Sapi kept pouring shots into the Moktak man — a dazzling display of movement, bullets screaming in from every conceivable trajectory.
But the Moktak man regenerated it all, insultingly easily.
"So you too were merely... a foolish sentient one?"
He sounded profoundly disappointed in Sapi. But Sapi simply shifted his gun to shotgun form and deliberately blasted a tree. The trunk toppled, cutting off part of the Moktak man's line of sight.
FWOOM!!!
My ace — the Linear Leap!! In that instant the Moktak man caught the sound and snapped his gaze toward me.
But I was already halfway there. That much was enough.
It was my first time driving the power unit this way... but I can do this.
I cranked the booster output on my right prosthetic to the max and wrenched into a brutal left turn!
?!
A startled sound escaped the Moktak man.
Then a hard curve to the right... and another Linear Leap!!
FWOOM!!!
Hard turns and Linear Leaps, chained over and over — his gaze couldn't keep up with me. No... he had no choice but to fixate on me alone.
And if he's locked onto me alone...
Then it's Sapi's turn to go wild. Come on, Sapi. Cut loose.
"Gatling — form shift."
Clack.
The massive barrel began to spin.
Whiiiiirrrr—
TATATATATATATATATA!!!
Thousands of rounds tore into him, riddling the Moktak man's entire body with holes. Even then he regenerated at monstrous speed — but the shock of the barrage robbed him of movement and sight alike.
Which means... now. Time for my ace — the Linear Leap.
FWOOM!
I closed the distance in a blink. Now — take his head!!
The Moktak man's head tumbled toward the ground.
It's over. I'd killed every last one of the enem—
The headless body closed its hand around my throat.
"My will does not end where my head falls."
The severed head had spoken. I tried to knock the hand away from my neck...
Too strong... it was crushing my throat with unthinkable pressure, and—
"I told you not to use the Linear Leap!!"
Sapi's voice rang out — and my neck broke. Then, regression.
I took his head again. But the body kept moving — it burst my skull open, and I died.
This time I skipped ordering Sapi's sniping and went after Beam instead, meaning to take her hostage. But every time I closed in, she had already relocated somewhere else. I spent the whole loop chasing her tail — until she finally put a bullet in me.
I studied the Moktak man's habits until I found an opening. His club punched through my heart. Dead.
I used the Moktak man as a living shield, trying to blast him apart with the iron-ball bombs. But even blown to pieces, his body regenerated in an instant — and killed me.
Regression.
Regression.
Regression.
Regression.
At some point, I stopped counting which regression this was, or why I had died.
For the first time, I was tired. My whole body ached like it was coming apart at the seams. I just wanted to sleep. More than anything, I wanted to give up.
Trickle... Blood began to run from my nose. That had never happened before.
Seeing me like that, Sapi said:
"I'm sorry... I don't think I can kill them."
The words sank deep into my heart. Sapi had done nothing wrong. The one who kept failing was always me.
"Sentient one. Have you still not come to understand?"
"..."
"Karma never changes. Not ever."
Every word gnawed at my mind, at my heart. Could I... really beat them?
"Lebetri."
Into my despair, Sapi called my name.
"Sapi...?"
"I said I can't kill them."
"..."
"I never said you couldn't survive."
"What?"
"When I attack — run for the heart of the forest."
With that, Sapi walked toward the Moktak man.
"What do you think a sword is?"
Sapi asked the Moktak man.
"A mere implement of slaughter. Nothing more."
"No... a sword is not for taking lives."
"Then you would call it a tool for saving them?"
"Nor that. A sword is not made to shield or to save anyone. Such uses are not its essence."
The distance between Sapi and the Moktak man shrank to nothing. Sapi reached out and closed his hand on empty air.
"A sword is... not conviction. Not hope. Not some thing that deals in suffering. It is none of those."
He was, beyond question, gripping empty air... and yet, to my eyes, it looked exactly as if he held a sword.
And in that instant, something Sapi once said surfaced from memory.
"Ah... my main weapon used to be a sword."
In the same breath, he raised the hand that gripped the void.
In that instant, the Moktak man's body split in two.
But Sapi's eyes — I couldn't say why — looked emptier than I had ever seen them. Sadder, too.
The moment my body realized this was the signal Sapi had told me about, I was already running for the heart of the forest.
Far away, I felt iron balls shrieking in. I poured every last shred of strength into my legs, leaping and swerving to shake them off. One goal, nothing else — forward.
At some point, even the explosions fell silent. In a forest where even the wind had died, tiny lights began to rise between the leaves, one by one.
Fireflies, I thought at first. But deep inside every one of those lights, an eye was watching me.