arc1 · 002-ep2

Episode 2: Rescuing the Ojou-sama

The rubble at her back was cold as ice.

Tsukishiro Saya stood frozen with her back pressed to the fallen rock, glaring desperately at the five black beasts bearing down on her.

"Hah, hah...! Stay back...! Go on, get away...!"

She thrust out her staff and forced her voice up, but she could hear how miserably it cracked.

The potion she'd drained earlier was returning her magic bit by bit, but her hands shook so hard she couldn't line up a proper aim.

Beyond the floating camera, the comment feed was scrolling with a strange, feverish heat.

『Whoa, that's a dead end』

『She hasn't got any room left to chant, look at her』

『Somebody!! Isn't there an explorer anywhere nearby!?』

『So the nouveau riche ojou-sama will end it bawling and screaming after all, huh』

『I don't wanna watch but I can't look away』

『Ah, the one in the middle's about to jump』

The largest beast, at the center of the pack, sank low into a crouch.

It's going to leap—the instant she knew it, Saya's mind went white. She opened her mouth to cast a defensive spell on reflex, but out of her terror-seized throat came nothing but a rasped "Ah——".

With a crack of flagstone being kicked to pieces, the black bulk soared into the air.

A fish-stinking breath and a gaping maw swelled up to fill her entire vision. Just as Saya flung both hands over her face and began to squeeze her eyes shut—

——Snap.

From the depths of the dim passage rang a terribly clear sound, like a pebble dropped into still water.

That was the whole preamble.

Without a single voice chanting, in the next instant, impossible sights were blooming in front of her all at the same time.

The lead beast—the one that should have been fastening on her throat—slammed into a translucent wall that had simply appeared in the empty air and was flung back with a dull thud.

At exactly the same timing, spikes of ice heaved up out of the ground beneath the two beasts trying to slip around her flanks, sewing their legs in place; and the two behind them were blown head over heels by a clump of unseen wind and sent rolling against the wall.

"......Huh?"

Saya's hands stopped halfway to her face, and she stood petrified, mouth hanging open.

All the strength left her legs at once and she plopped down into a heap on the cold floor. Before any relief at staying alive could arrive, her eyes—mage's eyes—were nailed to the phenomenon that had just taken shape.

A defensive barrier. Ice that pinned feet. Wind that scattered a pack.

Spells that ought to demand full concentration to fire even one—and all three had taken form before her eyes at the same moment, without a hair's breadth of error. And none of it was brute-forced, either: not one spark of their mana collided—a control as pure and beautiful as a textbook demonstration.

Who, on earth, from where and when, had assembled their incantations to pull off a simultaneous deployment like some godly feat?

From the far end of Saya's stunned, wide-open field of view came light footsteps, tap, tap.

Stepping out of the dark passage was a slim explorer dressed in plain, unadorned light gear—refined, androgynous features, and clipped to the chest exactly one small, old-fashioned camera.

That figure carried no staff—not even one. Iori stepped without hesitation into the midst of the beasts whimpering over their ice-trapped legs.

If this person was the one who'd fired that magic, there was no mistake about it—a first-rate rear-guard mage. And yet the one-handed sword drawn from the hip swung through the smallest of arcs.

With every swing, a monster's vitals were pierced, drawn in as if the blade swallowed them.

Flicking neatly aside the beasts' flailing claws, simply feeding the blade through the gaps between them in turn, with hands that flowed like water—that pack of five was returned wholesale to black mist before Saya could blink.

Silence settled back over the passage, and only the dry clatter of a magic stone rolling across the floor rang out.

Iori gave the sword a light swing to shed the mist, then looked back toward Saya, slumped in a heap before the rubble.

Her eyes met those of the person who wore not one speck of blood-spatter—and Saya's heart gave a huge, single slam.

Seeing Saya sitting on the floor clutching her shoulder, Iori softened that expression just enough not to frighten her, came close, and bent lightly at the knee to bring their eyelines level.

"You okay? Looks like you're hurt. Can you drink a potion yourself?"

The voice, quiet and kind, was impossible to pin as man or woman.

That refined face gazing at her from point-blank range wrung a tiny "hya!" out of Saya, shoulders jerking. The ojou-sama conduct she maintained for her streams had been swept clean out of her head.

"Ah... y-yes... I-I am..."

Not knowing what her own face even looked like, that strained little thread of voice was all Saya could manage.

She owed thanks, and yet the afterimage of that beautiful magic and those flowing sword strokes were still wheeling around inside her skull. How had anyone run three spells at once? And how did a mage fight like that with a sword? The questions jammed up in her throat all at once.

But before Saya could squeeze out a single more word, hurried footsteps and the light of several lamps came flying in from the opposite end of the passage.

"Saya-san! Are you all right!?"

"Damn it, we were too slow linking up! Where's the monster pack... huh?"

It was the vanguard members of Saya's party, having rushed around the collapse. Weapons ready, they charged in—only to find not a single monster remaining and a lone, unfamiliar explorer in light gear standing there, and their eyes went round.

Seeing the women come running up, Iori loosened up with a breath that said plainly good, her friends are here, rose, and sheathed the sword.

As if meaning to slip away before the crowd could close in and get loud, those steps were already drawing silently backward.

"Ah, your friends are here, so you're fine. Take care, now."

"Eh——ah, please wait!?"

Saya snapped to and tried to rise, but her legs, still numb with the fear from moments ago, gave out under her, and her posture wobbled and went down, palms to the floor.

By the time she raised her head, Iori's back was already turned. Without so much as picking up the magic stones from the monsters downed, with just a small lift of one hand, that light-footed stride vanished into the branch passage deeper in, as lightly as it had come.

"Saya-san! Are you all right? Let's get you treated right away—wait. Who on earth was that person just now!?"

Hauled upright under both arms by her rushing teammates, Saya never so much as glanced at her own wound, staring holes into the dark depths of the passage where that person had disappeared.

On the terminal at her hip, comments from the viewers who'd just watched that dramatic rescue were exploding at a speed she'd never once seen.

『What even was that!?』

『Eh, hold on, my brain can't keep up here!?』

『That first spell, I couldn't hear a WORD of chanting! Was it cast from deeper in the passage!?』

『Figured rear-guard mage—but then the sword's monstrous too, what the hell!!』

『A cool, aloof lady!? A guy!? Which is it!?』

『Floating camera, do your job! The face was on screen for like ONE second!』

『Huh, already leaving!? The magic stones are just sitting there...!』

『Rescued like a storm, gone like the wind... is that much cool even legal...』

The comment feed wheeling into an uproar meant nothing to Saya just then.

While her teammates worked on her, she squeezed the hem of her robe tight, frustrated. That beautiful, that unbelievable magic had been shown to her right before her eyes—and she hadn't even been able to make that person stay.

"...I couldn't even... ask their name."

One hand pressed to her chest, where her heart was still beating like an alarm bell, Saya let out a breath as if feverish.

She had to thank them. She had to meet them again, whatever it took, and ask about that magic. And yet—who the person who'd saved her actually was, she hadn't the first clue.