Chapter 194 - Say You Want to Live - Conclusion

“Found you.”

Historia’s murmur sent a chill down my spine. The instant I heard it, I hastily looped the rope around myself and jumped. Free fall—supposedly the most terrifying experience a human could have. I knew I was attached to a rope, but the frightening speed and dizzying emptiness beneath my feet stirred an instinctive fear...

Still, it had to be less frightening than that hysterical voice pursuing me.

Heavy thuds rang out. Strange tremors ran through the building I’d just been standing on. The residents who had been holding their breath inside could no longer contain their terror and screamed.

Understandably so. Right now, Historia was...

Walking up the side of the building, smashing through the walls as she went!

“Stop right there!”

“Would yoooou?!”

Gravity pulled me toward the ground. The rope was a little shorter than I’d calculated. At the bottom of its arc, I let go and rolled into a breakfall.

“Owowowowow!”

Breakfalls had to have been invented by people who didn’t know a damn thing. I’d done exactly what I’d been taught, and it still hurt! How to fall properly? Humans weren’t birds! We weren’t supposed to fall in the first place!

Anyway, I got to my feet and ran for all I was worth, clutching my throbbing left arm.

Not that it did much good.

“Found you!!!”

How do you climb a smooth wall without a single foothold? Simple. Make footholds as you go.

Stamp hard enough to break the wall and anchor yourself, then use that ledge to walk steadily upward.

It sounded like bullshit, but that was exactly what Historia had just done.

Having walked up the residential building’s wall, she stood on the roof and pinpointed my location.

“Huey! Stop right there! Stop or I’ll shoot!”

Usually, giving a warning first meant you had no intention of shooting. Without looking back, I shouted,

“If you shoot me, I’ll die! Haha! Are you really going to shoot an upstanding citizen who’d die from a tap?!”

“You think I won’t?”

Historia’s eyes took on a dangerous gleam. She loaded the bullet in her hand and aimed at me down the sights.

Ah, shit. Had I provoked her for nothing?

‘I’ll just make sure it isn’t fatal. A clean shot through the leg.’

What kind of friend offered to put a clean hole through your leg? I was grumbling to myself and about to leap sideways when—

‘... Wait. What’s that?’

Just before firing, Historia narrowed her eyes at the figure running beside me.

Huh? Someone was keeping pace with me?

I turned my head and found someone running alongside me. The girl was loping along at roughly my speed, utterly carefree, her tail wagging from side to side.

... On all fours.

When our eyes met, Azi beamed and barked.

“Woof! Good to see you! Good to see you!”

Captain. You said someone. This was a dog.

And she couldn’t even help. Azi couldn’t fight humans!

Still!

“This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I’m glad to see you too. So glad I could cry.”

“Woof! Crybaby!”

“I haven’t cried yet, you know?”

‘Doesn’t matter. I should shoot him in the leg first.’

Just before Historia pulled the trigger, Azi’s ears pricked up. Sensing it through instinct before she could hear anything, she leaped with her eyes wide open. In the murky darkness, the light reflected in her eyes became a streak.

BANG!

With the gunshot that followed, Azi’s head snapped sideways—she had darted behind me before I knew it. At the same time, her body flew away and landed on its back.

Azi hopped about, shouting,

“Woof! Hot! Hard! Hurts!”

So she couldn’t fight humans, but she would fight bullets. More importantly...

“Even you hurt when you get shot. That’s a surprise.”

And yet she’d caught a bullet with her teeth. Still, perhaps because it had been fired by one of the Six Generals, she looked to be in pain.

Her eyes brimming with tears, Azi cried out,

“Tooth’s loose! Hurts!”

“Put some spit on it.”

“Woof...! Even if it heals, it hurts! Woof!”

“Then who told you to catch it with your teeth? Can’t you use bullet-repelling energy or something?”

“Woof? Belly-filling? Meat?”

“Never mind. Why am I asking a dog?”

Even Azi probably couldn’t catch Historia’s bullets one after another. The one small mercy was that Historia didn’t have many bullets.

“Stooooop!”

Historia leaped straight off the roof and landed on the ground. Her momentum was so savage that I felt the vibrations through the concrete. Having smashed the ground beneath her landing, she glared with the ferocity of a beast.

“Stop right there!”

Four more bullets rattled into her hand. Historia shoved them into the magazine in one motion and charged, raising her gun again.

But well, where there was a dog, there ought to be someone looking after it.

“Heavenly Sword Art!”

The Regressor landed lightly in front of me. Having literally dropped out of the sky, she immediately spread her invisible sword.

“Sky Mirror!”

This wasn’t bullet-repelling energy. It was a pure distortion of space, created by spreading the sword of the sky, Sky Cherry Blossom, in every direction. A technique that could bend even light.

Having placed a barrier across Historia’s line of fire, the Regressor spoke urgently.

“Hey! How did you end up being hunted by one of the Six Generals?!”

I calmly corrected her.

“Wrong. I was already being hunted. The person hunting me just became one of the Six Generals.”

“What difference does that make?!”

“The order matters. The order! Would I have gotten on her bad side like that if she’d been one of the Six Generals?”

“It doesn’t matter at all! No, isn’t that even worse?! How did the person hunting you end up becoming one of the Six Generals?!”

“Tsk. How was I supposed to know she’d get promoted so fast?”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Sky Mirror diverted the three shots fired in quick succession.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The three stray bullets gouged and tore through the concrete as though it were tofu.

Even knowing they would miss, watching the ground explode on either side of me was terrifying.

And we still weren’t safe. Both the Regressor and I sensed the danger and remained taut with tension.

She knew from her experiences in past lives. I knew because I had read Historia’s thoughts.

The next shot would not miss.

Historia aimed at me with ice-cold eyes.

‘Zeroing in.’

Once three shots established her zero, the next was guaranteed to hit. This was energy marksmanship that only Historia had mastered, fighting with energy layered over her bullets, her barrel, and her shooting technique.

It, too, was an ultimate expression of the energy arts, one that had touched upon the underlying principles of the world, however slightly.

She’d gotten so much stronger. What had I been doing all this time...?

I should skip the next school reunion. Not that I could go anyway, being a wanted man.

Actually, there weren’t enough of us left alive to hold a reunion in the first place. Hehe.

‘I can’t deflect that! I have to block it!’

Perhaps having experienced it in a previous life, the Regressor gave up on diverting the bullet or repelling it with energy. Instead, she swept Earth’s Ripple in a broad arc and overturned the ground itself.

“Earth Staff Style, Groundbreaker!”

When she slammed Earth’s Ripple down, the surrounding ground collapsed and shards of concrete shot upward like spikes. The sudden surge of concrete separated us from the Musketeer.

A bullet punched through it. But after losing momentum breaking through the concrete, it was easily turned aside by the Regressor. Sky Cherry Blossom bent with a sharp twang and split the bullet in half.

‘I can block it a few times, but not forever! Unless I’m going to close in and fight her...!’

Having made her decision, the Regressor immediately shouted,

“Tyrkanzyaka! Block her vision with darkness!”

“Very well.”

The instant that gentle voice rang out, the streetlights flickered ominously.

The Military State’s nights had never known darkness. Until she appeared, the shadows on its lamplit streets had been no more than a fox painting stripes on its face and proclaiming itself a tiger.

Night arrived in the truest sense. As though some immense being had blown upon the Military State’s candles, a breath of wind sounded, and every streetlight went out at once. Darkness blanketed the world.

A calamity known as the Queen of Shadows had come to the night of a country that was “merely” twenty-five years old, wielding power those counterfeit Shadows could not begin to match.

In darkness so absolute I couldn’t even see my own hands or feet, the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka approached gracefully, her parasol resting on her shoulder. Tracking her presence through mind reading, I met a pair of red eyes glowing in the blackness.

Wow. What a relief to have her appear in a crisis. I was just about to greet her when she spoke.

“Congratulations on your marriage, Hugh. So you had a reason to return to this country.”

Those cold words, tinged with a subtle hostility, pushed me away. Huh. Apparently this wasn’t the time for greetings.

As I awkwardly lowered my hand, Tyr fixed me with a gaze full of resentment and hostility.

“Yes. You are of age, after all. It would hardly be surprising if you had a fiancée to whom you had promised your future.”

“Sorry, Tyr, but I don’t think this is the time to discuss that.”

“Is that girl your bride, perhaps?”

Tyr glanced toward Historia, who was charging at us from beyond the darkness. Even in the dark, her red eyes could clearly make out Historia’s ferocious approach.

“Your relationship does not appear to be particularly harmonious. What say you? If you wish, I shall make you a vampire. We cannot have you dying in a marital quarrel, can we?”

“We’re not married. If you say that to her, I really will end up dead, you know?”

“Hmm? You are not married?”

Not wanting to explain circumstances as broad and deep as the ocean, I gave the simplest, clearest answer possible.

“I tried to pull a marriage scam, but things got strangely tangled up and I had to run away.”

“... Then the marriage?”

“False information.”

Tyr’s eyes softened a little.

“How curious, that marriage can be used to commit fraud. In any case, I understand. But why did you flee the bottomless pit?”

“It’s a long story, but I didn’t think even ten lives would be enough if I kept traveling with you.”

“Your current supply hardly seems sufficient either. Shall I make you a vampire, so that you might have the equivalent of ten lives...?”

“No, please. Let’s not.”

A thunderous crash came from beyond the darkness. The Regressor had blocked Historia’s path as she tried to tear through it. With Historia engaging her in close combat, the Regressor scattered Sky Cherry Blossom to intercept her attacks.

Wielding Earth’s Ripple and Sky Cherry Blossom, the Regressor was not easily driven back. Historia delivered a vicious kick to Earth’s Ripple, grimaced at the recoil, and shouted,

“Move!”

Haha. Would she really be the Regressor if she obediently moved just because someone told her to? Now you could get a taste of that pigheaded Regressor too!

“... Maybe I should, at this point? Do we really need to take him with us badly enough to fight one of the Six Generals...?”

Hey! Regressor! Was this really the time?!

Something appeared beside the seriously deliberating Regressor. Sharp claws slashed toward Historia’s side. Historia raised a foot to block the stealthy attacking shadow, but it lashed out with a forepaw and sent her flying.

“Meow... So noisy. Humans change territories far too often, meow...”

Nabi had appeared without warning and stood beside the Regressor, grumbling. Historia’s face twisted at the sight of this sudden new combatant.

“King of Cats...! Do you want to die?!”

“Meooow! You dare ask me if I want to die?!”

Nabi baring her teeth had been troublesome when she was an enemy, but as an ally, nothing could have been more reassuring. So this was what a Beast King hostile to your enemies was like.

Anyway, my benefactors had arrived from the east. I ought to seize the opportunity.

“Excuse me. Tyr. Shei. And you other esteemed beasts.”

I raised my voice so everyone could hear.

“I’d like to live. If you’re not busy, would you mind saving me?”

It was an honest request, with no odd ideas or schemes behind it.

Apparently surprised by my words, Azi and Tyr looked at each other.

Azi was the first to turn back. She smiled brightly.

“Woof! I’ll save you! Give me your neck!”

“So you can grab me by the scruff and run? Sorry, but humans call that an execution.”

I politely declined Azi’s proposal. What nonsense.

“I’m already saving you... Hngh!”

“Yes. And I’m already grateful.”

“Say it with a little more sincerity...! Tch! What a pain!”

Over there, the Regressor was in the midst of a fierce battle. Apparently out of bullets, Historia had reversed her grip on her gun, holding it by the muzzle and swinging it like a club. The Regressor met her with Sky Cherry Blossom.

“Whew. Exasperating though you are.”

Tyr snapped her fingers. At once, the darkness swept away like an ebbing tide and engulfed Historia. Historia immediately blasted energy from her gun, but it still looked as though she would need quite some time to fight her way out.

“I shall give in to you for now. Let us leave this place.”

“We’re retreating, right?! I’ll hold her off a little longer, then pull out!”

The Regressor’s voice came from within the darkness. From farther beyond it came Historia’s frantic shout.

“Shut up! This has nothing to do with you! Leave that bastard Huey behind!”

“Sorry, Ria! I’ve got somewhere to be! I’ll buy you a meal sometime!”

“Heeeey!”

Offering my old classmate a farewell with no promise of meeting again, I climbed onto the coffin Tyr had brought. Riding the darkness, it raced through the streets faster than I had ever seen it move.

Goodbye, Amitengrad. City of ordinary people who had cherished and embraced me.

This ordinary petty criminal would be taking his leave now.

As Amitengrad receded into the distance, I bent deeply at the waist and bowed.