Chapter 85
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
This method of awakening consciousness was by far the worst one I'd ever experienced.
'You fucking rabbit bastard.'
[I-I didn't do it on purpose?! I-I may not know much because I'm a mascot, but why would I deliberately do something like that?!]
'You... fucking...'
If I thought about it rationally, that was true. No matter how much of a bastard the rabbit was, there was no reason for it to try to assassinate me like this after eight years of seeing each other at our best and worst.
...Was there? There wasn't, right? Probably.
However, even that rational judgment was difficult to make with the excruciating pain rising from below.
"A-are you really okay?"
"I-I'm... okay... For now... let's deal with that first..."
Forcing strength into my trembling legs, I raised myself up and glared murderously at the four black circles flying through the air.
The Abyssal Hole. Emerald had given me a rough explanation, but I already knew what it was. I also knew exactly what kind of situation this was.
My attack must have taken a great deal of blood from that Dullahan, and after Emerald fought it, the Abyssal Hole must have opened somehow. With the Dullahan's figure vanishing without a trace and Emerald looking as though she'd been sent rolling all over the place, it wasn't difficult to guess what had happened.
'...I never thought I'd see one here.'
[Be careful. As you know... if it touches your body, everything from the part it touches onward will be sucked in.]
'Of course...'
What a ridiculous thing to worry about. Of course I knew that.
And... putting aside how unpleasant the method had been, I had to admit that I had woken up at exactly the moment I was needed.
If I hadn't woken up then... Emerald, me, the rabbit, and Emerald's mascot would have opened our eyes together in the Abyss. Assuming we even managed to open them.
Just as I was responding to Aia's transmission and working out that I could draw their attention while Emerald and Aia steadily destroyed them with ranged attacks, an unbelievable scene unfolded.
-KUNG!
-Roll...
"Aaaah!!"
"Guh...!"
'...Why are those two here?!'
Black Rose and Mia. They were two of the few junior magical girls whose names and faces I knew... and the two with the weakest combat ability on this battlefield. Not merely weak, either; coldly speaking, they were at the level where their very presence was a hindrance.
Sure enough.
"Wait!! Don't come any farther from there..."
-Vwooom!!!
'Damn it!!!'
-Dash!
This wasn't the time to act like I was in pain.
The black circles had found new targets. The instant I realized that, I ran toward the two of them.
An Abyssal Hole was essentially a small black hole. In the face of its terrifying danger, where touching it meant instant death, one could argue that rank was meaningless.
That was true. It was true, but...
'They can't dodge them!!'
I couldn't imagine Mia and Black Rose evading the Abyssal Holes' pursuit with their mobility. Even now, they'd been unable to dodge an attack and had been sent flying after bouncing off their shields.
"Take my hand! Quickly!"
"S-senior! What happened to your appearance?! You're badly hurt..."
"No time! Hurry!"
-Grab!
Forget the persona or anything else—I roughly grabbed and pulled the hands of the two whose shields had been deactivated. With Alice's physical abilities, lifting two magical girls wasn't difficult.
But... the moment I grabbed them, I realized it.
'...This won't work.'
I had already used StellarShift while carrying Emerald barely a minute ago.
The pain caused by Emerald's mistake wasn't the problem. Even before that, I'd exhausted most of my magical and mental strength fighting an S-rank Abyssal One, then used StellarShift with Emerald the moment I woke up.
Using StellarShift on three people, including me, right now... was impossible.
"...Damn it!"
-Dash!
"Whoa!"
"Whoa!"
I grabbed one of them with each hand and leaped up, trying to escape over the rubble of the surrounding buildings... but the circles of death were approaching faster than I could flee.
-Wooooong!!
'...Ah.'
The four circles descended on the three of us, including me.
StellarShift could only move me along with its passengers. I couldn't move just the other two and dodge using another movement spell.
If I moved... I had to let go of one of the two hands I was holding.
If I did nothing, I would die too.
If I chose to run away alone, I could survive by myself, and if I wanted to, I could save one of them.
Then naturally, saving even one person was the right choice. It was obvious. It was also the rational judgment that fit with the words I'd repeated to myself countless times: Do everything you can.
-Ripple...
Time accelerated. The Abyssal Holes had already drawn close enough to swallow us.
They were exactly the same as the pitch-black hole I'd seen eight years ago.
-Crackle
[Hah... hah... O... oppa... So... this is how... it ended up...]
Before the pitch-black hole, a woman who looked exactly like me lay sprawled on the ground, her snow-white hair dyed dark red with blood.
Around her lay the gruesome corpses of three S-rank Abyssal Ones, their entire bodies riddled with star-shaped holes.
I, collapsed in front of them, looked just as horrific.
My right ankle had been crushed beyond recognition, and the only thing barely supporting my body was an axe once used as a weapon by one of the Abyssal Ones.
The tip of the axe was stained with dark red blood.
It was my responsibility.
I had been the one who was supposed to take responsibility and deal with the monsters unleashed upon the world.
I was her oppa, and I'd been asked to do it.
That was what I had thought.
-Crackle
"...Don't talk bullshit. That bitch, a hero? You. Knowing what she did to me, you can still say that? You... you fucking rabbit. How can you say something like that..."
-Crackle
[This is the eight o'clock news. The frequency of Abyssal One appearances has recently risen sharply. The research team is conducting extensive analysis of this incident, but is there any suspected cause...?]
[Yes... This information was provided by the mascots. Since it comes from a relevant institution, its credibility is quite high. They say it is suspected that the Abyssal Ones have now entered the 'harvest phase.']
[Let's take a look at the data displayed on the screen. If you look at the graph of Abyssal One appearances over the past two weeks, it shows a linear increase. Apparently, this pattern usually appears when Abyssal Ones have become confident about the dimension in question.]
[They've become confident...? What does that mean?]
[Just as it sounds... Since there is nothing left in that dimension for them to fear, they are beginning to act in earnest. It seems... they have determined that this is connected to Alice, the strongest magical girl, who has not appeared for the past two weeks.]
-Crackle
"Is anyone there?! Please help us!! Please...! My child is still at the kindergarten...!"
-Crackle
[Love in the starlight★! Magical Girl Alice! Making her entrance right here★!]
"...I-is this the pose? Should I raise my hand more? No, fuck, an error that small is obviously possible... She got it exactly right down to the angle every time?"
-Crackle
"What the hell is this magic formula... How is a person supposed to calculate this mentally...?"
-Crackle
-Crackle..
-Crackle..........
[...Oppa. I love you. Forever. More than anyone else in the world. More than everything in this world except you.]
The scene of my only blood relative disappearing from the world after those words was something that still appeared in my dreams whenever I managed to forget it.
If someone was sucked into an Abyssal Hole, they died. That was common knowledge and absolute truth vouched for by the mascots.
No one who wasn't an existence of the Abyss could enter the Abyss and survive.
-Ripple
My stomach churned. Even now, Mia and Black Rose were clasping my hands, and the Abyssal Holes were closing in.
My thoughts still hadn't changed. Those who could survive should survive.
And if I were asked to save only one of these two...
-Squeeze tight
-Whoosh!
One of my hands was released.
"...Sen...!"
The starlight created at my fingertips—the same starlight Alice often used as a movement spell—carried Mia and threw her toward Emerald.
I couldn't control it, so its mana efficiency was poor, but since it wasn't the ultimate technique StellarShift, I still had some magical power to spare.
-Clench
I tightly grasped my wand in one hand again. I'd let it drop for a moment while holding the hands of the two juniors.
The power she had left behind. It was the power of the woman I hated most in the world, but the world still needed it.
Humans were contradictory animals. We could depend on the power of a woman we claimed to hate, and the woman who ruined our lives could also be a hero who saved the world.
Humans had more sides than a coin, so it was impossible to understand one by looking at only a single side.
Since humans had always been that kind of animal, there was nothing to be done even if, after pretending to be rational all the time, we made an irrational, uncertain, emotional choice like this.
"...Hold on tight. If you don't want to die."
"S-senior! Just leave me behind...!"
"I-I think I can guess what's coming, you know? So keep your wits about you."
"Senior!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Hey!!! What are you doing over there... Y-you crazy bitch!!!"
Fortunately, Mia had reached Emerald, who was holding her back and preventing her from running toward me.
Mia was quite strong, but how tall was Emerald? Watching her dangling from Emerald's grasp was a sight worth imprinting on my eyes, even if my life ended right there.
-Crackle
"...Rabbit. Is there really no case of someone entering an Abyssal Hole and returning alive?"
[Again with that? I told you, there really aren't any. There isn't a single piece of information like that in the mascots' network. Do you know how vast this network is? There are hundreds, thousands of dimensions as large as Earth...]
"You say that, but you know too, don't you? You know that what's happening now is outside the mascots' common sense, just as you said."
[Ugh.]
Identical twins. A miracle of nature—or perhaps an error—two essentially identical humans born with only their sexes differing.
I didn't know whether the mascots identified humans by their genes, but since we were that alike, it made sense that I had inherited the contract.
But judging from the contract I had with the rabbit... there were many things that couldn't be explained by that alone.
The most representative example was Alice's wand.
Though it was a wand created through a contract with the rabbit, strictly speaking, this wand had been created by the contract between Alice—'Han Serin'—and 'Rabbit A.'
No matter how much I'd inherited the contract, if the wand recognized me as its master while I held it, then it should have been 'Han Sejin's' wand from the very beginning.
However, the power contained in this wand was unmistakably 'Han Serin's' magic. And it even replenished itself over time.
"...That's why you set the contract conditions that way too, right?"
Eight years ago, escaping from the basement of a collapsing building with my ankle crushed had been impossible.
The contract I made with the rabbit that day was for me to pretend to be Alice and inherit the contract, preventing the rabbit from disappearing. In exchange, I would have my leg repaired and be helped to survive and escape from that place.
And there was the retirement condition.
[Handing this contract back to Alice, or completely terminating Alice's contract.]
My contract had been a successor contract from the very beginning.
Since it was a contract layered over 'Alice's' contract, I had to terminate 'Alice's' contract first in order to end my own.
That was why I hadn't been able to retire for eight long years. How could I hand over a contract to someone who didn't exist in this world, or terminate it?
-Crackle
'Rabbit. If you want to live, run now.'
[Hmph. Then who am I supposed to trick into the next contract? Do you have a Han Sebin?]
'Unfortunately, we're not triplets. I hear you nearly died with just the two of us.'
'...Ha. I'd better stop here. I don't know what will happen once we cross over. I need to conserve my mental strength for Acceleration.'
The world sped up again, and the Abyssal Hole covered Black Rose and me.
Black Rose had said to leave her behind, but perhaps she couldn't help being afraid, because she was still gripping my hand tightly.
I had considered throwing Black Rose somewhere else and entering the Abyssal Hole alone, but with Black Rose already marked as a target, it seemed unlikely that four Abyssal Holes would simply be satisfied with swallowing me and then disappear. It was almost certain that Black Rose and I would both be devoured.
If so... with no idea what might happen inside, wouldn't holding her hand tightly at least give us a better chance of surviving?
-Wooooooong!!
'...I don't have the confidence to bring her back alive, though.'
Well, there was no such thing as a zero percent chance.
The only things left to worry about were whether I could return alive and unharmed, and whether Earth would remain intact while I was gone.
Ah. Maybe I should leave a final goodbye.
"Alice, I'm going on a business trip!"
-KUNG!!!
With those words, the world was dyed in the Abyss.