67. I Like It

Now and then, flipping through a comic or playing a game, you run into that one line about the miracle of the Red Sea parting. Could a sea really split cleanly in two and open up a road? Was that even scientifically possible? I’d once thought that if it was, I’d want to see it at least once before I died.

I know that came out of nowhere, but the reason it was on my mind was simple.

“Fight! Fight, you idiots! Fight, damn you!”

Gamma was screaming at his minions at the top of his lungs, veins bulging, but his orders might as well have never reached them. The soldiers on the field had pressed themselves flat against the far wall and lined up in two orderly rows down either side, which left a road open right down the middle of the battlefield. A road for me and Gamma, and us alone.

How it got this way was simple too.

I’d come charging in like a lunatic, so the spearmen and cavalry had run for it. To my surprise, though, the archers and mages didn’t give up even after the front line collapsed. If anything, now that they weren’t at risk of hitting their own allies, they poured down arrow-rain and magic bolts to their hearts’ content.

It suddenly reminded me of the shoot-‘em-up games you used to see in every arcade. It’s about as classic as a genre gets. You piloted a fighter jet, blasted the swarms of enemy jets bearing down on you, and in the end destroyed their core base. But the most important job of all was weaving nimbly through the hail of enemy bullets, and it was nerve-racking, trying not to take a single hit.

At first, anyway.

It varied from game to game, but once you got the hang of it, dodging bullets wasn’t all that hard.

Of course, that was always with the sky for a stage.

— Thunk.

The sound of an arrow punching through the air and burying itself in the ground was kind of cute, in its way.

— Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Dozens of them came flying, and every last one was aimed at me alone. One seemed to be going for my eye, while another came savagely for my calf. And it wasn’t just arrows.

— Fwoosh!

A flickering fireball rushed in to roast my thigh, then went away disappointed.

— Bzzzzt!

A lightning bomb dropped at my feet and spat out an unpleasant current, putting on a grimy little show of trying to lure me into a shock.

Wasn’t the shoot-‘em-up’s hero jet basically a natural disaster from the enemy commander’s point of view?

I’d never once spared a thought for that commander’s feelings, but watching myself now, I could dimly understand the despair and rage he must have carried. Still, what could I do? It’s not like I could get hit on purpose.

So here’s the upshot. Once every last bit of firepower the archers and mages could muster had gone into a full-scale assault on my shadow, they quietly withdrew to the far wall.

And that brings us back to the present, with me standing face-to-face with Gamma.

“How about the two of us have a little chat?”

“Hey. Sweet potato.”

At that taunting little nickname, the hem of Gamma’s robe rippled violently.

“…It’s Gamma! You damn bastard!”
“Don’t care what your name is. Anyway, you seem a whole lot worse at keeping your underlings in line than that puppeteer I ran into last time, huh?”

That one set his shoulders trembling.

“Don’t compare me to that infuriating prick! I’m nothing like that guy, strutting around thinking he’s hot stuff!”
“Did you swallow a foghorn? You’re hurting my ears.”

I leveled the tip of my sword at his throat.

“From the looks of it, you’re just gonna ramble on and on about yourself again. So how about I just lop your head off? Saves us both some time, doesn’t it?”
“W-wait! Hold on! What do you want to know?!”

The instant I put real strength into drawing the blade across his neck, desperate groveling bled into his voice, and it was a far cry from the arrogance of a moment ago.

“I’ll answer all your questions… so just spare me. Just this once.”
“Now we’re talking.”

I obediently drew the sword back, but I kept my gaze fixed on his throat as I whispered to the unseen Eve.

With that taken care of, I threw out my first question right away.

“Why’d you descend right into reality this time, instead of hiding inside Big Sis Lillian’s trauma like before?”
“We’ve each got our own assignments. That guy’s job is handling the mental worlds of dangerous elements. Mine’s finding talents who can ruin the world.”
“So basically, Big Sis Lillian was a dangerous element, and you came to this Abyss to scout for someone useful?”
“Yeah. He was supposed to slowly break Lillian down, but thanks to you barging in, he failed so spectacularly it felt great! Serves him right!”

So this Gamma and the puppeteer I’d met before clearly didn’t get along, and the enemy being at odds with each other was very good news.

“But thanks to you, the scenario changed. And… That One got very angry.”

Right on cue, the being called ‘That One’ had made an appearance this time too.

Probably the final mastermind trying to drag this world to ruin.

I waited for Gamma’s next words.

“That One ordered us to deal with you by any means necessary. So because of you, we’ve been working ourselves ragged lately! We can’t even sleep!”

I went on, my eyes still fixed on him.

“So your first priority is killing me and Big Sis Lillian, right?”
“Correct.”
“Then my Sister should be fine, off meeting the master. No, wait — you saw your chance and attacked us because she’s gone, didn’t you? Only your targets are left here, me and Big Sis Lillian.”

“…!”

His bewilderment read clearly even from behind the robe.

I pushed the tip of my sword up under his chin.

“Why the face? All I did was state the obvious.”
“N-no! It’s just your reaction… it felt like you’d already seen everything coming, so I was surprised. For an otherworld resident, this should be confusing to hear, but you’re so unbothered.”

He made his excuse in a fluster, breaking into a cold sweat, while I did some thinking of my own.

I should be careful not to react too calmly.

He’d called me an otherworld resident. That meant he didn’t suspect, not by a hair, that I was a being from another dimension who had possessed Arden. So I needed to be a touch more careful, because the moment I showed even a sliver of my tail, I’d be giving him room to step on it.

“Good. Next question. How did you puppeteer my brothers around like that?”
“The instant you lose in the arena, your soul becomes a slave bound to the victor. Just like those minions sprawled over there. Your brothers lost to the master of this place too, so they’re just being forced to obey.”

As he said it, he pointed at the waiting room, which was blanketed layer upon layer in Lillian’s vines.

“It’s the same reason I didn’t stop you when you were told you could do whatever you wanted with Cerberus. Unless you beat the master of this arena, nothing alive can leave this place anyway.”
“So in the end, the only way to solve this is to beat the master of this place.”

I glanced at Eve.

If Gamma’s words were true, then it more or less added up. But.

Something’s bugging me.

I had the feeling I was missing something extremely important, and as a rule, this kind of nagging unease had never once been wrong. I furrowed my brow and chewed at my nails, turning the feeling over without being able to explain it. Then, slowly chewing over what Gamma had said, I spoke.

“I get that you want to kill us. But trying to do it with a force this puny makes no sense.”

“…”

“So here’s my conclusion: you’re the ones controlling the master of this place.”

Gamma didn’t answer for a long while, but he didn’t need to.

Eve had given me the right answer in his place.

At last Gamma raised his head and forced his mouth open with effort.

“Just what are you? Why do you keep ruining our scenarios, Arden Arne? We should’ve finished analyzing you completely… Is there something latent inside you that we don’t know about? Surely every last one of your patterns was already analy—”

— Sseogeok—!

He never reached the end of it. Before his speculation about me could finish, I drew my blade across his throat in a single straight line, and his head separated from his body and dropped to the floor.

I pitied the robed man whose body had been hijacked, but he’d revive a month from now, good as new, anyway.

I gave the bloodstained blade a couple of habitual flicks to shake it clean.

Huh. I really have become a swordsman.

Just as that needless thought washed over me, Eve spoke up.

I fixed my gaze on the center of the arena, where my Sister Seraphina had vanished, and added one thing.

For now, everything I could do was done. So I let my tension ease and made my way toward the waiting room where Lillian, Elli, and Valerian were. Lillian had kept its entrance sealed tight with her vines the whole time I’d been fighting.

“Big Sis, it’s me. You can open the door now.”

I’d expected the vines to come loose at my call, but all that came back was silence.

“…”

I could clearly hear someone moving around inside, yet no answer came from Lillian. For an instant, gooseflesh prickled up my spine.

Don’t tell me… a detached squad slipped inside while I was out here fighting?

I was certain I hadn’t felt the faintest sign of it, but anxiety surged over me like a wave all the same. I pounded my fist hard against the vine wall and shouted.

“Big Sis Lillian! Is something wrong in there? Answer me!”

After a long stretch of silence, Lillian’s voice finally came through from beyond the vines. Somehow, though, it carried a hint of suspicion.

“…Prove you’re the real Arden. You could be getting controlled, same as our brothers.”

What kind of fresh nonsense was this now?

“The Arden I know was a cute little brother who couldn’t even fall asleep at night unless he said, ‘Big Sis Lillian, I love you most in all the world,’ before bed—”
“Open it right now!”

The instant the words left my mouth, the tightly shut vines parted to the left and right with a soft rustle.

“Oh my. Judging by that rotten temper, you really are our little runt.”

The moment the door opened, Lillian stuck out her tongue and gave me a maddeningly smug grin. And on top of that, a fairly hard-to-believe scene was unfolding in front of me.

“There, there. Aren’t you a good boy.”

Lillian was kneeling, gently stroking Cerberus’s head. The snarling Doberman was nowhere to be found. Instead, the thing was swishing its tail and surrendering its body to her touch.

Was that thing originally this docile?

I took a baffled step closer, and Cerberus, which had been lavishing all manner of affection on Lillian a moment ago, flipped its attitude the instant it saw me.

“Grrrrrrr…”

It bared its gums and growled.

“Unbelievable, seriously.”

A hollow laugh escaped me. Cerberus lowered its body all the way down, radiating an air of being ready to tear out the nape of my neck any second.

“Tsk. No! You’ll get in trouble! Devil!”

Lillian gave its head a light smack with her palm, and the thing instantly shrank into a sulking heap and avoided my gaze.

By the way, what did she just say?

“Devil? What the heck is Devil?”
“It’s this little one’s name. Well? Cute, isn’t it!”
“Cute isn’t the problem — you went and named this mutt?”
“Mm-hm. I talked it over with this little one, and apparently it used to be a guardian serving a demon. So I asked how it felt about the name Devil! Devil says it likes the name an awful lot.”

Lillian rattled on, spilling the whole long-winded story of how she’d come to name the thing. But my interest wasn’t in her trivial naming sense.

“…Hold on, you can talk to this mutt?”
“Mm-hm. I spent ten years in the forest studying plants and animals, so I just naturally picked it up.”

The instant she finished answering, Cerberus barked sharply at my feet.

“Woof! Woof woof! Grrrr!”
“Devil, you can’t say things like that.”

It ducked its head and went meek again under her scolding, and I really couldn’t get used to watching that.

“What’d that mutt just say?”
“…It says if you call it a mutt one more time, it’ll bite you right between the legs.”

A brief silence wrapped around me.

It seemed this thing’s education on who its master was hadn’t quite sunk in yet. So I thrust my index finger right up to its nose and spat out exactly one word.

“Mutt.”

The instant the word dropped, Cerberus lunged straight at me. I caught its head in the crook of my arm as it charged and locked it in a headlock, and it shredded the hem of my clothes to ribbons.

“You little mutt!”
“Woof—!”