· ——The first things he felt upon regaining consciousness were breathlessness and pressure.
"Gah—"
He coughed, spitting out the foul accumulation in his mouth — sand-laced saliva — and forced open his heavy eyelids. He had lost consciousness.
Not a nap, but something more forced — a wave he couldn't resist had swallowed him whole.
The crushing sensation of sand weighing down even his lashes, and fighting against it, Subaru tried to recall what had happened to him — what had occurred just moments before.
There had certainly been a terrible episode of confusion, then he had tried to leave the tower, and he had made it out without anyone stopping him — that much was unmistakable — "The worm… and a white… light…"
The horrific events that followed — those接连 images of impact — flooded back into his mind, and Subaru genuinely began to doubt whether he was still alive.
Whether he could possibly possess the heavenly luck to survive something that extreme.
Well, even if he had died back there, whether he could truly die at all was the questionable thing — that was the nature of the unwanted outsider known as
"After the needles… falling into an antlion pit…"
He remembered the ground caving in, swallowing him underground alongside the enormous remains of the worm. He had stretched his neck trying to secure some oxygen, but ultimately the sand engulfed him, and his consciousness faded.
In the end, he had expected to suffocate to death — but that hadn't happened.
"This is… underground in the desert?"
He looked around, but with no light source, the space was almost entirely pitch black — he couldn't even see his own hands.
He pried open his heavy eyelids and held up the palm that had dug free from the sand, bringing it right before his eyes. He could barely make it out there, but the world was so unreliable that he couldn't even see his lifeline.
——Whether he was truly still lingering in the world of the living — even that felt precarious.
"…Gives me the creeps, you bastard."
Thinking that far, Subaru slowly began moving his limbs, freeing his buried body from the sand's heavy constriction. The pressure bearing down on his entire frame had come from the sand-bed that had swallowed everything from his waist down. That his upper half hadn't been buried was a small mercy.
The approach was like collapsing a sand dune that had a flag planted in it without knocking the flag over. To avoid accidentally burying himself further with clumsy movements, Subaru carefully cleared the sand away and extracted himself.
"————"
He had barely wriggled free of the sand when what he felt was a weariness far heavier than expected.
Having his body heat stolen by the cold sand, and enduring endless compression — that was probably part of it. The terrifying thing was that he couldn't even gauge how long he had been unconscious.
"Guess I'm lucky I wasn't gnawed on by another worm while I was sleeping…"
Muttering, Subaru became aware of the parched dryness in his throat and reached for his waist.
When he had fled the tower, there should have been a leather water bag secured there for desert travel. However, his grasping fingers found nothing, and after groping around several times, he couldn't locate the bag.
"Well, I was buried up to my waist, so of course…"
The water bag must have come loose when the sand swallowed him. At the same time, the bag of emergency rations was also out of reach. That this constituted a fatal situation — yet his mind was strangely calm.
Perhaps his heart had simply grown numb to the cruelty of this situation, and responding to each new blow felt foolish.
"If only it's nearby… Huh?"
He dropped to his knees and felt around the area of the sand dune he'd escaped from with his hands.
There had been that much sand. It was an act with almost no expectation behind it — more for comfort — but right around where his upper body had emerged, he felt something soft.
He confirmed it with his fingers and was startled to realize it was the leather bag he'd been searching for. And then — "To find it empty… that's the second surprise…"
The weight and feel of the bag told him immediately that it was empty. He pressed the opening to his lips regardless, but only the faintest droplet dampened his tongue.
Even that paltry amount of water was precious moisture now. He savored the sensation of relief on his tongue, then reattached the leather bag to his waist and began feeling around the surroundings once more.
"——?"
If the water bag had been there, then the rations might be within reach too.
That hope was fulfilled and betrayed in the same manner as the water.
——Scattered around the sand dune, as though torn apart by something feeding, lay his rations.
"————"
In the darkness, the full scene of the sand dune was unclear.
But he could tell that in various places across the dune, the food he'd brought in was strewn about. And the remnants in his palm — they were not in their original state. Put bluntly, something had torn into them and left them there.
*Gulp.* Subaru's dry throat spasmed.
Food he'd brought, scattered and gnawed around him. That fact, like fingernails tearing and raking at the composure he'd thought he'd achieved, wounded Subaru's psyche in the most repulsive way imaginable.
The fear he'd felt toward the worm — the terror of being preyed upon — surged up, and along his forehead and back, precious moisture spent, cold sweat began to trail downward.
Originally, this place was the passage of that enormous worm — a thoroughfare of monsters, so to speak.
The worm itself was almost certainly dead now, but if other creatures sharing a symbiotic relationship with it inhabited this passage, there would be nothing strange about it at all.
"I need to leave this place right away…"
Subaru thought.
But having thought it, he couldn't see anything around him. Forget walls — he could only crawl on all fours, relying on the ground to confirm that the ground existed, that walls existed, that a path existed, that *he* existed, before fleeing.
"Ow… damn, that hurts…"
His right ear, grazed by the white needles, his fingernails — still regenerating on his right hand — every pain-sensing organ in his body crying out, Subaru crawled and scrambled to escape the area.
To put distance between himself and whatever anomalous presence lurked there. Even if he had no idea what lay beyond — what could possibly exist in the direction he'd fought so hard to reach.
For now, he had no choice but to keep running, to keep putting distance between himself and that nameless terror.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ "————"
Subaru sniffed, his nostrils flaring, and let himself be guided — his limbs moving toward that direction of their own accord.
It grew stronger gradually, becoming a distinct sensation that drew him deeper and deeper.
——This was about an hour after the escape had begun on hands and knees.
Wandering without direction, Subaru slipped down sand dune after sand dune, was blocked by walls along pathless routes, and from time to time tumbled in fright as a rain of sand fell from above.
Through it all, Subaru gradually realized that he was inside a cavern beneath the desert.
Realizing it didn't offer any salvation, but the first genuine sign of something appeared right after that awareness.
——It was a strange, compelling smell that suddenly slipped into his nostrils.
Strange it was, but one could never call it pleasant.
In normal circumstances, a smell would be unreliable information with a low priority in assessing the situation. But with his vision sealed in darkness, in a place where even sound grew ambiguous, that sudden odor felt shockingly vivid.
And so Subaru had begun to crawl toward it, drawn in like an infant following the wall.
His nostrils flaring, in a posture like a dog, following the scent deeper into the cavern — no, whether it was deeper or shallower, he had no idea where he was being led.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
Before he knew it, Subaru's tongue was hanging out, his breathing rough like a true dog's.
He had heard that dogs pant to regulate their body temperature, but that didn't apply to Subaru's current mannerism. Subaru was sticking out his tongue, facing the darkness with a canine expression, because he wanted to bathe the tip of his tongue in the faintly flowing breeze to gather whatever information he could.
"————"
In the darkness, within just a few hours, Subaru had the illusion that he had become a creature adapted to the dark. Naturally, this fleeting sense of omnipotence was far from reality.
As always, the darkness gave Subaru nothing — in this solitary space, only the sound of his own breathing and the faint scraping of sand echoed — yet for Subaru now, that was comforting.
——Scary, terrifying, something must be done.
Those natural human emotions had existed only in the beginning.
Now, Subaru treasured this silence and darkness — this space where no one else existed, this "loneliness."
Here, he wouldn't be hurt.
Here, all he had to do was keep struggling toward escape.
Here, without thinking about anything, he could simply do what needed to be done.
A stagnation — like sinking into lukewarm mire — enveloped Subaru's heart, placed as it was under urgent duress, saturating it like lumpy clay work. He could feel it swelling.
If he could just dissolve into that and disappear, wouldn't that be fine too?
——That was how he'd been thinking, soaking in the escapism of inertia and weariness.
"Damn, what is this…?"
Subaru had been making steady progress, crawling through the invisible cavern.
Along the way, he'd found paths diverging left and right, agonized over which to take, and ultimately chosen the right — and from there came an even longer journey, following the scent.
At the end of it, would there be a place where he could finally rest? Could he reach somewhere bright? With no such prospects whatsoever, Subaru had pressed forward regardless.
And yet — "After all this, a dead end…?"
Enduring a path that grew narrower and steeper with every passing moment, what awaited Subaru was — quite literally — a passage so narrow he could only crawl, and at its end, a wall of sand. In other words, the terminus of the scent.
"After coming all the way here… no, wait."
Furious at the blocked path, Subaru nearly punched the sand wall but stopped himself. Then he racked his brain over the contradiction between the scent he'd followed and his current situation.
Subaru had undoubtedly come to this place relying on the scent drifting toward him.
The scent had traveled on the wind, reaching him far below. Meaning — if there was room for wind to flow, then reaching a dead end like this deep in the sand was impossible.
Wind must have been flowing from outside into this cavern.
"Then — !"
Subaru patted the surroundings with both hands, groping backward as he retreated from the dead end.
Left, right, front, and below — he couldn't have overlooked anything at eye level. So where could he have missed something?
——Had it been above, where he'd never thought to look — too afraid to even glance upward, abandoned by stars?
"——Found it."
Retreating for about an hour, his hand — which had been touching the ceiling — swept through empty air, and Subaru's eyes lit up.
He stood and thrust his arm deeper into the opening. Even with his shoulder inserted, he didn't hit a ceiling. There was a hole. It was more than large enough to fit his entire body through, with room to spare.
In other words, if he pressed his back and feet against the walls, he should be able to climb up.
"————"
From above the hole, a faint breeze flowed downward. The scent Subaru had sought as his sole lifeline — it was carried on that wind, flowing down into the underground.
His nostrils flaring, Subaru confirmed it. There was no option but to climb.
"Nn… nn…!"
He wedged his body into the hole and pressed his back against the wall. Of course, since the walls were made of sand, if he applied pressure at the wrong angle, the structure would collapse immediately and his plan would crumble.
Being careful to avoid that, but bold when it came time to place his feet, Subaru braced his hips and legs in a single fluid motion and began hauling himself up the hole inch by inch.
"————"
Fortunately — or perhaps not — the walls of the hole had indentations here and there, providing adequate support for the solitary climber that was Subaru.
Perhaps someone with superhuman physical ability could use those footholds to bound upward with jumping motions and reach the top in moments.
"Heh."
But Subaru possessed no such physical prowess, and could only continue with dogged persistence.
Still, the body forged through time Subaru didn't know about had apparently been trained to endure this kind of unnatural physical exertion.
Like getting used to a new car, he gradually adapted to a body fitted with a new engine. By the time he was past the halfway point, he'd found his rhythm, establishing himself as a fully capable wall climber.
Of course, before he could demonstrate that capability to its fullest — "—— An exit."
He had no idea how many meters of wall he'd scaled, but by the time he realized it, he must have climbed to a height where a fall would be fatal.
As the reward for that single-minded effort, Subaru finally conquered the wall.
"————"
The sense of accomplishment wasn't as great as he'd imagined.
It wasn't that the thought "once you do it, it's just like this" was the reason.
It was simply this thought: — Compared to what lay before him, climbing a wall was trivial.
Stepping out of the hole and onto new sandy ground, Subaru stood.
And before the imposing figure that stood directly in front of him, he murmured.
"—— A door."
—— There, a single mysterious door stood, leaning against nothing, needing no support.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ —— Confronted by a single door, Subaru stood at a loss.
"I can see it."
The hole Subaru had reached did not open directly to the surface.
This was likely still within the cavern — if the cavern had layers, then the point where Subaru had fallen was B2F, and where he now stood was roughly B1F.
And within this space hidden not so much grandly as deviously, there stood a single door — one that did not integrate with the walls or floor but simply stood there, idle and alone.
Was there anyone who could take one look and understand what meaning this held?
"—— No one but me."
Gazing at the door, Subaru spoke those words with a terrible sense of arrogance.
Hand on his chest, eyes wide open, Subaru was acutely aware of this sudden encounter. — That this was a door meant for him.
There was a strange certainty.
The certainty that this door was his.
The wind that had flowed into the underground. The scent that wind had carried. Following it, he had arrived here.
Everything had lured Natsuki Subaru to this place.
And now, the door before him faintly yet persistently asserted its existence even in this darkness, waiting for the moment Natsuki Subaru would open it.
"————"
As though touching a beloved lover, Subaru approached the door with a light step.
It appeared to be a wooden double door, twice his height. Looking closely, at the center of the double doors was a handle for opening them, and in that area he could see strange markings.
—— What he could see were seven jewels.
"Ahh—"
Gazing at those jewels, Subaru reached out and touched the door.
Instantly, the jewels on the door began to shine brilliantly. — Four of them.
Four of the seven jewels blazed with light, welcoming Natsuki Subaru's arrival — —— And the door's master did not accept the visit of one who carried no key.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ · —— In the instant after blinking, Subaru didn't know where he was, and his eyes darted about.
"Ha…"
He let out a vacant exhalation, then looked down at both his hands.
He could see them. Naturally. There was light here. Color. He could see his footing. He was standing on a stone floor. — On a stone floor.
"——!"
Subaru stiffened and frantically looked around.
Surrounding him were reddish-brown walls — wall after wall — the walls of a tower built in a circular shape. Behind him was the great door leading outside.
This was inside the tower — the fifth floor of the
He had been hurled back to the very place he'd fled with such fierce resolve.
"Ba…"
The word "kana" wouldn't come. No matter what, the words simply wouldn't come.
It should have been the blink of an eye. In an instant, Subaru was standing in this place. Unable to fully suppress his shock, he felt a dizzy spell and his feet wavered.
Bare feet, bare soles. His discarded shoes rolled against his toes. Subaru bit down hard on his back teeth.
This was no time to stand around stunned. He needed to flee immediately — no.
"Why should *I* have to run?"
Bubbling up, murky emotions churned to the surface, and Subaru looked upward with fierce passion.
Like magma reduced to its essence, a seething hatred was swirling hotly inside him.
It was the pointless, indignant hatred born of having everything stripped from him by force — the end of his time in solitude, the end of his peaceful darkness, the end of that scent he'd clung to — everything that place had held.
"————"
Why had Subaru needed to flee?
Because someone had plotted to kill him, and had taken his life not once, but twice. How could they hide that behind a mask of composure and carry on as if they were good people?
—— The suspects existed only within this tower.
Was he supposed to play detective from inside? Was that why he'd fled?
Fool, fool, fool. You understand nothing.
—— If any of the suspects was the culprit, all he had to do was crush them one by one until he hit the right one.
"————"
Fortunately, they were all off their guard around Subaru.
Only the culprit would maintain their vigilance — but even they couldn't possibly know that Subaru suspected them.
Here lay the advantage of having died once.
Having died once, Subaru *knew* that someone was trying to kill him.
Before they could strike again, all he had to do was kill the one who wanted him dead.
"Heheh…"
A vicious laugh surfaced, and Subaru pressed his hand over his mouth.
A brilliant plan had burst forth, and Subaru had been granted the divine mercy of rescuing himself.
"————"
If that was the plan, then he needed a weapon to carry it out swiftly.
Once he reached a conclusion and decided to act, Subaru moved fast. With brisk strides, Subaru descended the spiral staircase even further — toward the sixth floor.
His memory was hazy, but in the tower's lowest level — the sixth floor — there was, supposedly, the lizard they had borrowed to cross the desert, and a wagon of sorts, when Subaru and company — the original "Natsuki Subaru" and his group — had first arrived at the tower.
If those were there, there would naturally be items useful in an "emergency."
"————"
Upon reaching the lowest level and finding the wagon, Subaru stopped in his tracks.
The reason was right beside the wagon — there lay the massive body of the lizard, already lifeless, having collapsed there.
Its head had been blown clean off. The headless body lay toppled on the floor. Whatever force had done it must have been tremendous — the severed head was nowhere to be found.
In its place, blood from the enormous frame had stained the ground, but it had already dried — enough time had clearly passed since the tragedy.
"—— Needles."
In that instant, what flashed through Subaru's mind was the confrontation with the worm just after leaving the tower, and the mysterious white needles that had blown its head apart.
The impression from that needle attack matched the remains of the lizard lying here. Which meant the attack had very likely come from someone inside the tower — one of the suspects.
And to butcher their own creature — practically livestock — so mercilessly — "—— Means they've given up hiding who they are."
Was Subaru's escape the final straw? The culprit had apparently acted rashly.
Trembling at that realization, Subaru entered the untouched wagon — the one apparently used as sleeping quarters — rummaged through the cargo, and found a large knife.
In terms of handling, it was probably close to a survival knife.
Less a weapon and more a heavy cutting tool for clearing obstacles — but in this situation, it would serve perfectly well as a murder weapon for Subaru's purpose.
"Don't know who the enemy is…"
—— But I'll show them what's what.
Consumed by dark, viscous emotion, Natsuki Subaru took the knife in hand and headed for the upper floors.
He contorted his face into a grin, hatred propelling him forward.
If it meant being saved, if it meant escaping — then even murder could be justified. Believing this, he advanced.
—— All without noticing that tears of indelible fear were streaking down his cheeks.