Chapter 53 - "Aldebaran II"

"—Sorry for the repeat bit, but the trump card's back."

Right after he declared it, an ultra-massive boulder plummeted straight down from overhead. Prepared to be derided as a rehash, Aldebaran’s tactic made Emilia’s expression change as she flew, slipping past the giant stone arms thrusting out of the cliff face.

"——"

First, her eyes widened at the boulder’s presence; next, the regret from when Aldebaran neatly gave her the slip in the Royal Capital gathered at her cheeks and the corners of her eyes; then, so her heart wouldn’t yield to that sense of defeat, she squeezed her eyes shut, opened them to frame the boulder in her cleared view and, after a brief flicker of doubt—“Can I do this...?”—she fired herself up with a “I have to do it!” and faced forward with a gaze sharper than before she wavered, strength fully restored. —All of this was a hundred expressions in barely a single second; what a lightning-quick rebound of spirit.

"But guts alone won’t cut it."

The giant rock scraped and shaved the canyon wall as it fell. The first thing the re-steeled Emilia tried was to cap its trajectory with a broad lid of ice and take the weight head-on. —But Aldebaran, with a rock cannon that fired stone shells conjured by magic, blasted through the canyon wall itself to interfere. With the wall pulverized, the ice lid could no longer snugly plug the canyon’s span; it became a mere follow-up, dropping alongside the boulder.

"In that case—!"

The instant she saw the ice-lid plan had failed to catch the rock, Emilia moved straight to the next measure. She strapped on the ice wings she had once purged—an angel reborn—tucked those long legs, then lined the soles of her boots with the kicking feet of the ice soldiers attached directly behind her—and took in a burst of leg power the original Natsuki Subaru could never produce, launching in one go.

"——"

Wrong-footed by the ferocity of Emilia’s acceleration, the hundreds of arms reaching from the cliff all swiped at empty air, allowing the angel’s escape—no, her headlong charge at Aldebaran. Having split his attention and actions for interception, Aldebaran’s speed and momentum in flight had slackened, and the distance to Emilia, surging straight at him, shrank fast. From Yae, who had stayed behind to buy time, squandering the advantage she’d created earned him a snide voice: “Al, you’re making my support feel so not worth it~.”

"If I get nabbed here, you’d have a point!"

Snapping back at the hallucinatory Yae, Aldebaran met Emilia with a barrage of stone-shot; but this warmed-over follow-up to the boulder drop, Emilia evaded by twisting her body midair with a godlike grace.

"You gotta be kidding me!?"

Aldebaran gaped at the fact she pulled that off with artificial wings that shouldn’t allow such freedom. Of course, the angelic wings of ice weren’t flapping. The secret to Emilia’s present three-dimensional path was small ice wings added inside the large ones—by layering multiple ice wings, she changed how she cut the wind and, with shifts of her body’s tilt, added edges to bite into the air. And she was absolutely doing that aerodynamic workaround on pure, native instinct.

"I’m going to catch you—!"

Even when she rolled sideways to evade, Emilia hardly bled any speed. The gap she had shouted across dwindled away. At that pace, she would also make it out of the boulder’s blast zone in time. Even the shot he meant as his trump was dodged with ease, and Aldebaran was, quite literally, a hair from disaster—that would have been the shared conclusion of the two principals in that instant.

"—"

Emilia’s violet-indigo eyes flew wide, those large orbs flushing with shock. In her sight, Aldebaran wasn’t doing anything special. The stream of missing pebble-shot continued, but there was no new magic unfolding, no ultra-maneuver to slip past her. The same held even against Emilia’s boosted flight, backed by her ice soldiers; at this rate she would catch the fleeing man and he wouldn’t be able to avoid those freezing fingertips. Which is to say: Emilia would meet the victory condition here. —And yet, there was no joy or triumphant sparkle in her eyes. Because—

"—Told you, it’s a repeat bit."

In exchange for arresting the catastrophic damage that falling boulder would have caused, Aldebaran was allowed to snatch a win and run from his fight with Emilia in the Royal Capital. Hence, unoriginal as it may be called, he executed the very same plan that had worked once. Only, this time there wasn’t a single innocent bystander here to be caught up in it. —The innocents.

"—Al!!"

Emilia’s outcrying hand lunged, recklessly, toward Aldebaran—toward the only existence besides Emilia herself that would be caught in the force of the rockfall.

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「――It's settled! Well done surviving 『Sparka』! From this moment, you're one of the sword-slaves of this Gladiator Island! Welcome, you good-for-nothing!」

The rough welcome and words of praise were indistinguishable from abuse. As the coarse, vulgar cheers swallowed the arena, Aldebaran dropped to one knee, leaning against a massive corpse.

What he slumped against, limp and powerless, was the carcass of the demon beast Guiltylawe, its thick neck pierced deep by a sword, its breath stilled. Guiltylawe had lost its right foreleg and right hind leg, and its face wore an expression that spoke of its life being taken amid confusion and bewilderment more than pain. At that pitiable death-mask, Aldebaran’s shoulders rose and fell with ragged breaths as solemn grief overtook him—only for him to immediately loathe himself for how grossly hypocritical that pity was.

「You really made it out alive. I’m surprised.」

The one who greeted the battered Aldebaran was a roughly dressed man—one of the sword-slaves of Gladiator Island, and the person who had found Aldebaran when he woke. The man’s complicated expression was likely because Aldebaran’s survival of the newcomers’ rite of passage—『Sparka』—struck him as deeply inexplicable. Unlucky for him, as the first to find Aldebaran he’d been assigned as Aldebaran’s caretaker, and he might have felt that if Aldebaran had died in this 『Sparka』, the hassle wouldn’t have dragged on.

In any case, Aldebaran’s survival startled the man, but he wasn’t the only one surprised. Aldebaran himself could not hide his astonishment at being alive.

――Having lost a battle he could not afford to lose, Aldebaran was left behind in an unknown environment.

An unfamiliar environment, strangers, rules explained inadequately—this was, to Aldebaran, truly uncharted land, as if he had been thrown into a new world. The only certainties were that he had likely lost his value for existing, and that he had probably even lost the person who would mourn the loss of that value. Therefore—,

「For all that talk about wanting to die, turns out it was just talk after all.」

The man’s words, equal parts spite and sarcasm, cut into Aldebaran’s heart. When he realized that after his defeat in his first battle he had survived the end he was supposed to meet, Aldebaran, consumed by boundless loss and self-reproach, sincerely wanted to die. For such an Aldebaran, the newcomers’ trial on Gladiator Island, 『Sparka』, was convenient. The blunt explanation had been far too unkind, but in short, those who could not become sword-slaves had no choice but to die; it was a place where you were forced into a life-or-death test of skill.

For an Aldebaran who wanted nothing more than to die, it was almost too convenient. In fact, when he was led into the arena with four other newcomers in the same boat and made to face Guiltylawe there, Aldebaran intended to let himself be killed without resisting.

And yet, Aldebaran survived. As the other men challenged, fled, pleaded for their lives, and were killed all the same, Aldebaran—left as the last one—took the demon beast’s claws, was stomped and had his ribs broken, and was supposed to meet death while spewing bloody froth. And yet—,

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

The instant that line flashed through his mind, Aldebaran had already deployed his 『Domain』. Compared to the opponent he had challenged hundreds of millions of times and still could not defeat, 『Sparka』—in which he managed to kill back on the three hundred and fourth try—was not painful for Aldebaran. The real pain came afterward, in the self-questioning that followed having survived.

――Why, how, for what reason, did I not die?

「Hm? You want to know about the outside? Even if you say that, I’ve been here a long time…」

Recognized as a sword-slave, Aldebaran earned the right to live on this island. Within this closed-off island, he learned that it was part of the Vollachia Empire, that the captive sword-slaves were forced into kill-or-be-killed spectacles, and that public order on the island was dead. But there was still much he wanted to know. As a result, it was his caretaker, the sword-slave, who had to endure Aldebaran’s persistent barrage of questions and answers.

「Not recent affairs but you want to know history…? I’m not all that knowledgeable, you know? Well, stories about the 『the Witch』… I at least know about the 『Witch of Envy』.」

First, he was surprised that the sword-slave even knew about the 『the Witch』, which he’d asked about on the off-chance; and then, when the lore—spoken as though even uttering it were terrifying—turned out to refer only to the 『Witch of Envy』, his surprise was even greater.

The 『Witch of Envy』 who nearly destroyed the world, sealed by the hands of the 『Three Great Heroes』. There are no other legends of the 『the Witch』 in this world, no records of the 『Witches of Sin』 anywhere. And when he was told that this had been nearly four hundred years ago, Aldebaran despaired. Had those long, long four centuries erased the traces of the 『Witches of Sin』 from the world—had even the 『the Witch』 who would have thrown everything away to keep her promise been forgotten? But, more cruelly—

"—The 『Witch of Greed』? What the hell is that supposed to be? Isn't it just your delusion?"

At that man's suspicion, Aldebaran had no words to answer. It couldn't be a delusion. The days he had spent with the 『the Witch』 were surely there within Aldebaran; her teachings, the touch of her fingertips, the words she spoke—he remembered them all. In this world there had indeed been another 『the Witch』 who tried to oppose the 『the Witch』 who harbored terrifying power. —Aldebaran had been her pupil, her trump card.

"Damn it! What the hell! I was just answering what you asked me, and then you go and take a swing at me out of nowhere!"

Those words were spat by the man Aldebaran had struck in a rage after the existence of the 『the Witch』 was denied. In this environment—no, in this new world he had been flung into—his break with his first benefactor happened that way. He fell out with other gladiator-slaves in much the same fashion, and Aldebaran became isolated.

—I heard it more times than I could count: that I was an abnormality bewitched by the 『the Witch』. The one most eager to spread it around seemed to be my benefactor, but in a sense, it's an accurate judgment. I have no intention of correcting it.

However, it infuriated me to be lumped together with that incomprehensible lot they called the Witch Cult. From what I heard, they were the kind who touted the revival of the 『the Witch』 and did nothing but terrorism-like evils all over the land. I'd rampage again, telling them not to equate me with scum like that, and my reputation would sink even further.

…A witch-crazed bastard like you won't die a decent death.

Those were the last, resentful words of his first benefactor, who, in a death match arranged by the then-governor of Gladiator Island, was cut down by Aldebaran's brutal blade. Wiping away the spattered blood of his benefactor, Aldebaran nodded deeply at that parting shot—"won't die a decent death"—accepting that it was likely true.

His 『Domain』 remained intact, and Aldebaran kept surviving the death matches on Gladiator Island. Those who had called Aldebaran witch-crazed were all, sooner or later, matched against him, and one after another they fell before his brutal blade.

It wasn't out of spite. He had no desire to clear the name of the 『the Witch』. In the first place, the end that befell those called 『the Witch』 was not slander, but to have even their existence erased. Therefore, Aldebaran did not seek from the 『the Witch』 a reason for himself to keep living. —He only wanted to know for what he had been kept alive.

To learn that, he could not afford to die. Surviving the first 『Sparka』 and then surviving the death matches thereafter were both for that. So he used his 『Domain』, swallowing hundreds of deaths each time he crossed swords with someone, trampling the lives of every gladiator-slave, to live. To live. To keep on living. And then—

"—Well done surviving. I take my hat off to that cursed luck of yours that lets you best even your betters."

Thus, at Aldebaran's victory—snatching even the tiniest chance to kill a superior foe—the governor voiced a praise that was neither quite exasperation nor admiration. Throwing aside his broken brutal blade, Aldebaran turned his back on the arena, where cheers were scarce.

—The ten years since he had awakened on Gladiator Island had passed in the blink of an eye.

△▼△▼△▼△

『—No one can beat the you I made.』

Ten years is a long time, and they mercilessly scraped away Aldebaran's humanity. The faces, the voices, the warmth he should have been able to recall vividly when he closed his eyes were painted over by the death masks of those he'd laid hands on, by their dying screams, by the cold spatter of blood.

『—No one can beat the you I made.』

True. Those words were true. Indeed, no one could kill Aldebaran. Over these ten years he had been sent out time and again to the 『Sparka』 on Gladiator Island, had crossed the line of life and death more times than he could count in the arena, and had finished off masters and inhuman beings he had no business being able to defeat. With the giant-killings piling up, reckless death matches were arranged more than once or twice to have Aldebaran killed; but each time a promising gladiator was the one who died, and so Aldebaran's treatment was becoming that of a kind of untouchable.

『—No one can beat the you I made.』

Give it ten years, and the faces on Gladiator Island are nothing like they were at the start. Aldebaran had long since become one of the oldest hands, and not a single person remained who knew the rumor about him—the deviant bewitched by the Witch. Once he realized that talk of the Witch was taboo and that most people knew only the surface of the legends, Aldebaran had completely stopped bringing the topic up himself as well. Yet that change didn’t come from disappointment or resignation at not getting the answers he wanted; it was something far more dire.

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

Ten years, left behind on Gladiator Island and forced to keep killing—within that space where only the exchange of lives repeated, what came to rule Aldebaran was a great despair. It was despair that questioned the very existence of the Witch: had she really been there?

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

When he shut his eyes, he could certainly hear that voice. He remembered being told those words. But was that really something that had actually happened?

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

He couldn’t recall the Witch’s face. He couldn’t recall the Witch’s voice. He couldn’t recall the Witch’s warmth.

Like a videotape he had rewatched whenever he had a spare moment for ten years, his memories wore thin; even splicing the torn tape back together wouldn’t let it play, and at last the tape itself turned to dust. And when those memories themselves had scattered, and the dust had all slipped through his fingers, Aldebaran no longer knew.

——Did the Witch really exist? ——Were Aldebaran’s memories truly events that had happened?

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

At times, he was seized by an irrational urge to destroy the existence called himself. In those moments, Aldebaran would deliberately dispel his Domain and enter a death match, let himself get beaten to a pulp by an opponent attacking with their life on the line, and try to peer into the brink of death—no, not just peer into it, but even think he might as well let himself fall right off the cliff.

And yet, precisely at such times, the Domain would save Aldebaran in some unforeseen way.

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

As if to prove the words of that Witch whose reality was in doubt, there were many times when an opponent who should have been one step away from killing Aldebaran suffered a mental collapse right before his eyes. Each time he saw an enemy roll their eyes white and lose both sanity and will to fight, Aldebaran felt that something unseen was trying to keep him alive, and with an unbearable, hollow feeling, he took their head.

Even after ten years, he still didn’t know the meaning for which he had been kept alive. If anything, he had come to doubt whether there had ever truly been anything trying to keep him alive at all.

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

He was simply afraid. That everything that had formed him was a sham; that the trouble and words the Witch had bestowed on him had in truth never existed; that he really was just a madman bewitched by the Witch. Such self-questioning ate away at his heart, and years of sleepless nights followed.

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

Those words that had once been what Aldebaran clung to, the grounds on which he was himself, had now become terrifying beyond measure. To keep doubting that all of this was a product of delusion, that the mission Aldebaran bore and the meetings and partings that should have been had never existed at all—that.

『――No one can defeat the you I created.』

An endless spiral of self-questioning. A sense as if he were sunk not just to the waist but up to the chest in a bog filled with negative despair, pinned in place. That span of time in which only the manner of his dying remained undecided would go on without end from here—so went Aldebaran’s days of stasis, until one day, abruptly, they reached a turning point. That turning point—

『──Hear me, rabble scattered across Gladiator Island.』

—it was a voice, carried through the speaking tubes across the island, that burned with a fierce, flame-like heat.

△▼△▼△▼△

——A plan to assassinate the new emperor, using the sword-slaves’ simultaneous uprising and the response to it as a diversion.

That seems to have been the true shape of the turning point that befell Aldebaran. Even so, there was no way detailed information would trickle down to a mere sword-slave on Gladiator Island, and Aldebaran had no desire to learn any more than that. For the time being, since there had been no change in the island’s administration, he assumed a regime change had not occurred. At the very least, at that point a change of emperors was not something even Aldebaran had heard of. There was, however, one thing in this affair that made Aldebaran keenly feel a major change within himself—and it was obvious: he had saved a silver-haired girl who was in a pinch.

Naturally, that had nothing to do with Aldebaran’s original objective. The silver-haired girl was a dog-kin he had crossed paths with in passing, and she had no connection whatsoever to the silver-haired person related to Aldebaran. However, the fact that he was able to save that girl and, amid the turmoil, the voice of a girl like living flame who, in sovereign self-regard, blazed her own path, pushed Aldebaran to make up his mind.

――To go outside the closed world in order to verify the Witch’s reality.

『――No one can beat the you I created』

Again and again, even as he was killed by the aquatic mabeasts released into the lake, Aldebaran finally escaped the island where he had been imprisoned for over ten years and set foot on land not surrounded by water.――Strictly speaking, since the world is ringed entirely by the Great Waterfall, one could say there is no such thing as land not surrounded by water, but being able to think up a quip like that meant he still had enough bravado to bluff it out.

『――No one can beat the you I created』

To Aldebaran, that was a curse, a comfort, a fetter, and a pardon. To discern the color, the heat, the uncertain certainty of that vast, amorphous, directionless wellspring of feeling, Aldebaran decided to follow the Witch’s traces.

He did not have much time to spare. During the more than ten years he had spent on the closed island, the world Aldebaran now walked had, unwittingly, been drawing closer to the world Aldebaran remembered. All that remained was to confirm whether the thing inside Aldebaran was real. And to confirm that, what he needed was proof of the Witch—

「――Why is your existence not recorded in the Gospel?」

So said the Witch Cult’s Sin Archbishop, tilting their head far more than necessary, and although Aldebaran roughly understood the reason, he fiddled with the metal fittings of his helmet and let his reply grow evasive. The jet-black iron full-face helmet he had started wearing around that time was a parting gift he had taken from Gladiator Island, and he prized it for its sturdiness and for how it hid his face. It seems this Sin Archbishop—absurdly noisy in both voice and movement—did not care for the fact that such a conspicuous figure was not mentioned at all in their precious Gospel.

「――You are 'Sloth', aren’t you?」

To be honest, the fight with this Sin Archbishop was among the hardest of Aldebaran’s life. In the first place, there had been few times he ever won without dying even once, but even so, this was a formidable foe with whom it was a struggle to fish out a winning line. In the end he satisfied the victory condition, but he did not win. Even compared to the Sin Archbishop’s 'witches'—women whose very existence was as dubious as the Witch’s—he felt this opponent was no less vicious. Be that as it may――,

『――No one can beat the you I created』

Having obtained the information he wanted, Aldebaran felt he had at least lived up to that line.――To verify the Witch’s reality, the group most likely to hold the information he sought was the heretical sect he had heard about time and again even on Gladiator Island—the Witch Cult. It was said they hid so well that no one knew where they were most of the time, but that was only if you tried to hunt them down; luring them out was not all that difficult.――If you spread rumors about the Witch of Envy, whom the Witch Cult revered, some would come dashing in. Of course, if you could not deal with the ones who came dashing in, you would simply have your life cruelly taken—the most foolish way to die in the world.

「Stop it! It is blasphemy! Satella! Anyone but Satella! Any talk of a 'witch' other than the Witch of Envy! It is the height of blasphemy! The only one in this world qualified to return is she alone—the one who bestows her favor upon me!!」

He did not know how much of the Sin Archbishop’s statements—behavior that defied common sense, words bereft of sanity, piled up in staggering number—he should believe. But even if that madman’s impassioned outburst meant nothing to anyone else, it meant something to Aldebaran.

『――No one can beat the you I created』

Patiently, he redid his encounters with the Sin Archbishop, drew out their words, exchanged the necessary back-and-forth, provoked them into explosions of fury and offered up his life, then went back to the beginning—and by repeating that relentlessly, Aldebaran obtained the information he wanted from the Sin Archbishop. And then he simply let the gallantly rushing Sin Archbishop pass right by and made it so the meeting had never happened.

「Ah! Ahh! Aah! SlothSlothSlothSlothSloth――aa!!」

He could picture the Sin Archbishop who had let him slip away screaming as if coughing blood over the fact that Aldebaran had slipped the Witch Cult’s encirclement and vanished, but it no longer concerned him. At that time there was only one wish inside Aldebaran—the Witch’s reality, its confirmation.

He knew how the Witches of Sin had met their ends. The Witch of Wrath was ensnared and died raving; the Witch of Lust was burned to cinders in a great conflagration; the Witch of Gluttony withered to death in a sea of sand; the Witch of Pride was drowned beneath a great flood; and the Witch of Sloth slew a dragon and fell into the Great Waterfall. And the Witch of Envy was sealed at the ends of the world, and the last of the Witches—

"—I see. The fact you can enter this place from somewhere other than the gravesite is a structural defect. The Sanctuary’s setup, too—the finishing touch is sloppy. Some parts are unavoidable, I suppose."

A grassland existing under a vast, unreal blue sky that seemed to have no end. A white table and parasol set atop a little hill, through which a cool wind swept. It was unmistakably a scene from a memory within Aldebaran, faded and on the verge of vanishing. At its center stood a beautiful being that could be rendered in only two colors, white and black—

"—Why does love diminish?"

After many twists and turns, he had at last returned to the castle of his dreams. Doubting his own sanity, Aldebaran had nearly come to believe it was a mirage.

The Witch in the flesh—no, the Witch of Greed—marked her reunion with her pupil, after a dozen-odd years for him and over four centuries for her, with a bloodless smile.

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"——"

For Aldebaran, the span of his life since becoming one-armed has already grown longer. So most of the time he hardly feels having only his right arm is a handicap, and yet on the rarest occasions he does feel inconvenienced by it after all. For example, when he has to carry someone who’s unconscious.

"Sorry about the bumpiness."

Muttering that, Aldebaran cradled Emilia—limp and unconscious—in his arms, the stone prosthetic he had fashioned with magic completing the embrace. The aerial chase between Aldebaran and Emilia that had begun over the vast canyon ended with Emilia collapsing, brought down by a dirty trick Aldebaran set up.

Nothing fancy. His trump card was the same as the one he used to slip from Emilia’s grasp in the royal capital. Kindhearted as she is, Emilia cannot look the other way when someone is lost in a fight—she, too, was one who suffered a deep wound in her heart when Priscilla died in the Empire’s Great Disaster. So she did not hesitate to throw herself in to shield Aldebaran, who planted himself on the course of a falling boulder.

"Even if there was no other sure way to land a hit, it’s a trash plan even by my standards."

Naturally, Aldebaran had experimented and tried other measures before arriving at that conclusion. He tested adjusting the boulder’s drop point, shattering it into a rock avalanche, choosing the paths for a barrage of shrapnel, even mixing in other magic—but except for the hostage ploy, Emilia broke through every one of them with on-the-spot flashes of inspiration and instinctive judgment. The foolish Aldebaran who tried the other plans could not escape the future where Emilia’s touch froze him solid, so he had no choice but to rely on a desperate measure.

"Not that that erases the guilt, or that she’ll forgive me."

Such excuses, meant for no one, are so clumsy that even Emilia wouldn’t forgive them. Shielding Aldebaran, Emilia let the mass of the boulder clip her unguarded body; she was struck hard all over and, as expected, lost consciousness. At a glance there were no injuries likely to leave aftereffects—probably just a rather strong concussion. He had adjusted things carefully to make it so.

"That was quite the detour. …Maybe waiting for Yae isn’t the smart move."

Only once the fall from on high and the running battle with Emilia were over did he finally have the leeway to check his surroundings. What he gathered was that this was likely somewhere within Azgadd Canyon, the largest canyon in the world, and that he had been left with a massive difference in elevation from his destination, The Grand Mogolade Geyser. He had already crossed the border of the Kingdom of Lugunica and slipped into the Kararagi City-States, but it would take considerable time to climb back up the several thousand meters he had fallen and return to his original route. And—

"Leaving the alter aside, will Roy and the old man be able to link up…?"

Of the accomplices who had been separated, he had no worries about Aldebaran’s combat power, but both Roy Alphard and Heinkel were deeply questionable in ability and character. Of course, Roy’s actions were bound by a curse brand, so if he valued his life he shouldn’t break the rules.

"Either way, the safest thing is to hope they all gather at the rendezvous point."

Aldebaran’s top priority is to reach The Grand Mogolade Geyser and accomplish the objective. For that, he needs Aldebaran’s power, but in the worst case there are ways to manage even without Aldebaran. In addition, the power of Roy’s authority of Gluttony is indispensable for cleaning up the aftermath of the calamity they leveraged for this plan. So he has to link up somehow, even if it’s after the objective is achieved, and make them follow orders.

「Trying to prevent secondary damage and then causing third- and fourth-order damage—ain't doing anyone any favors」

Grumbling that, Aldebaran slanted the stone wings on his back and, keeping his speed, somehow managed to set down slowly at the canyon’s floor, by the great river that ran through it. —That was a lie. While holding Emilia, he blew himself up six times, and only on the seventh attempt did he finally stick the landing.

「What a joke it’d be if I couldn’t even stand back up here」

At one point not just both legs but even his waist were done in, and he’d nearly ended up paralyzed head to toe, unable even to drink his poison. He’d managed to tumble into the river and drown, but he didn’t want to repeat the same mistake. Anyway—,

「Sorry, Emilia... missy」

So that the great river wouldn’t, on some chance, swell and rise and drown her, Aldebaran laid Emilia not on the very bottom but in a niche in the rock wall slightly above it. As for the last words before abandoning her there, he hesitated over what to call her. He hesitated, and in the end called her the way he always did—as Aldebaran. Any other way of addressing her that would acknowledge the right relationship between himself and her—he didn’t have the courage to use it now, when what lay between them was wrong.

「――ッ」

Right after he cursed his own cowardice, a blinding headache streaked through him and Aldebaran ground his teeth. The moment he got through the crisis and started to let his guard down, all the debts tried to erupt at once. He somehow kept them leashed, took a ten-second deep breath, then swigged poison—repeating that to stabilize his mind. But while that method lets his heart come up for air, his body—especially his brain—can’t.

Already, in real time, he’d kept his brain running for close to a hundred hours straight. Along the way, he’d been papering it over with 『Aldebaran』’s healing magic, but unless he shut his mind and body down completely once, this overheat wouldn’t ease. Even so, he told himself he could squeeze out one more push.

『――No one will beat the you I created』

「Yeah, that’s right, Sensei. —No one can beat me. That’s right. Damn right」

If he closed his eyes, those words resurfaced in Aldebaran’s mind. Leaning on them, Aldebaran—,

『――Behold, again』

「――――」

『Again, my—』

「――――」

『My—』

In broken pieces, a voice came that wouldn’t come through clearly. Because he knew whose it was, when it had been said, and how much it seared his soul, Aldebaran shut his heart’s ears.

Don’t stop. He’d decided that. He had. He decided that, just as he thought, he mustn’t stop. And because he’d decided—,

△▼△▼△▼△

—It was right after Aldebaran, his heart’s ears stopped up, had at last crawled out of the canyon and resumed hurrying toward The Grand Mogolade Geyser.

「Wh—」

What slipped from Aldebaran’s lips was a rasping breath. No wonder it slipped out unthinkingly. After all, it was an accident that came in from outside his awareness, an unforeseen event he’d assumed somewhere deep down was impossible. —A gigantic ice pillar had rammed into the ground just two meters ahead on Aldebaran’s path.

「――――」

Swallowing, Aldebaran looked back and understood that Emilia, far down at the bottom of the canyon where he’d left her, had dropped this colossal ice. But given the damage she’d taken, it should take hours for Emilia’s consciousness to return—in other words, she had hammered in this parting shot while unconscious.

「What insane tenacity...」

That said, if Aldebaran had made it up the cliff just five seconds earlier, he would have been under that ice pillar; in that sense, he’d avoided tragedy twice over. Of course, even if it had hit him head‑on, Aldebaran would have redone it with his Authority and dragged in an outcome where he didn’t take the hit, but both for Emilia’s sake and for Aldebaran’s mental hygiene, the fewer chances there are for him to die by her hand, the better. Even so—,

「Happens from time to time in a battle, but it’s scary as hell」

Even on Gladiator Island’s 『Sparka』, in the middle of fights to the death, there were opponents who, after taking a mortal wound, squeezed out the last of their life and let fly a blow that could take you with them. In Aldebaran’s experience, there were even those who killed him after having their head cut off. An action you’ve decided on—even if your consciousness or life is lost, the residue of that intent lingering in your limbs will try to carry it out.

Emilia’s parting shot just now was likewise her determination to stop Aldebaran no matter what, given form—and—,

「――Wait」

Wanting to commend that mental fortitude, Aldebaran held his breath. Before his eyes, an ice pillar had stabbed into the ground after grazing past him—a huge, huge spear of ice, the kind a giant from myth might whirl about. But for something launched with the aim of finishing Aldebaran off, it was, no matter how you looked at it, overkill. Something this big, almost like—

"—Anchor"

Right after he let that slip. Using the ice spear Emilia had driven in as a marker, just as Aldebaran was about to head for The Grand Mogolade Geyser, a new assassin was sent in. It was—

"—Yo, bucket-head, in the little time I ain't seen ya, you're a wreck, ain't ya."

"...Well, that's mutual—and your mouth's gotten fouler, hasn't it, Philore-Chan."

Both had overcome the first phase of the battlefield and stepped into the next. The mixed force led by Philore Lugunica—no, Felt—was standing in his way, just like when they'd hammered him with Memory's flash grenades.