Concentrate.
Kiyoka closed his eyes, sharpening his senses. A hideous sensation, like a foul odor, assailed him, pointing him in the right direction.
Over there.
Due to his long run, Kiyoka’s legs were leaden, and his throat and lungs ached with every breath he took. Yet still he kept moving.
The mountain was untamed, and there was no path for him to follow.
Eventually, he just barely managed to find where Itsuto’s group seemed to have passed through, a space where the tree branches and brush had been cut down just enough to accommodate the width of a single person.
The mountain terrain, muddied from the rain, was slippery and difficult to tread. He would lose everything if he slipped down the mountain, so he ascended with caution, but it ate away at his time.
On top of that, he also needed to push aside the ferns, bamboo grass, and thickets of vines, so he progressed forward at a snail’s pace.
The sound of the rain hitting the tree leaves picked up, turning into a clamor.
Sunset was approaching, and with the weather being as bad as it was, his surroundings darkened surprisingly quickly.
The silver lining was that it was still early autumn, so the days weren’t quite as short as they could be. Even so, he had no time to spare.
Though Kiyoka could have, in theory, created a flame to light the way with his Gift, the rain posed an issue. Maintaining the flame in this weather would sap his energy. He had already disregarded his physical stamina to get this far, so at the very least, he wanted to preserve the energy he would need to fight with his Gift.
With every step he took, a ghostly aura seemed to be freezing his body and soul, growing thicker and thicker.
He began to tremble, but whether this was from the cold of the rain, his nervous anticipation for the fight to come, or from fear, he couldn’t say.
While he knew he should go faster, his instincts were screaming at him to do otherwise. They were begging him not to go any farther.
I don’t have any time to feel scared.
He wasn’t about to stop now. Forcing his instincts to yield to his will, Kiyoka continued to advance.
All of a sudden, he was assailed by a suffocating aura.
All he could see in front of him were trees and brush, but he knew that something bad was ahead. His intuition as a Gift-user would not steer him wrong.
Ba-dump, ba-dump. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
Keep going, push through. Don’t look. Don’t look.
Contradictory impulses fought against each other inside Kiyoka, blanching his thoughts.
The inside of his mouth went dry. His sense of smell disappeared. His hearing disappeared. So intensely did Kiyoka narrow his focus on the path ahead that he lost awareness of his hands, his feet, and even his own breathing.
Until at last, the scene ahead opened up before him.
“Huh?”
A dimwitted gasp escaped his lips.
He had witnessed many gruesome sights up to this point. Tragic situations and atrocious events. But even so…nothing, nothing could have helped him make sense of this moment.
When his hearing returned, he picked up the din of the rain and the sound of something being eaten. The inimitable stench of blood hit his nostrils, mixed with the petrichor of the damp earth. And then his eyes fell on something.
Something caught on a tree branch, like a worn-out rag amid the faded mountain forest.
Something scattered and mixed in with the dark brown color of the soil.
Something run through by the forelimbs of a massive, jet-black spider.
An enormous amount of blood dribbled down. Its crimson hue the only vibrant sight in the curtain of rain.
“M-Mr. Godou…?”
There came a valorous cry. By some supernatural power, the forelimb jerked in the wrong direction, dislodging the thing it had stabbed and letting it tumble like a doll.
That “thing” was a person. Someone that Kiyoka knew very well.
“Mr. Godou!”
Kiyoka practically flew to him. He went to lift the man up, only to stop the moment he reached out for him.
There was a gaping hole in Itsuto’s stomach. He wheezed in short gasps. The wound was so large that it seemed to Kiyoka like Itsuto would fall apart if someone touched him.
“M-Mr. Godou.”
His words didn’t come out right.
If only he’d inherited a healing Gift instead—that was the only thought that came to Kiyoka’s still-frozen mind.
His lips and mouth dyed bright red from all the choked-up blood, Itsuto looked at Kiyoka and gave a crooked, ambiguous smile.
“Kiyoka. Koumyouin, must’ve…sent you…”
Itsuto’s eyes moved. When Kiyoka turned to where the man was looking, he saw Koumyouin leaning against a tree, perfectly motionless.
He was seriously wounded. One of his legs was close to being torn off, and there was a bloody gash in his side. Kiyoka couldn’t tell if the man was still breathing or if his wounds were fatal.
Kiyoka heard a short groan, and he turned back to Itsuto in a panic.
“Mr. Godou! Mr. Godou, I can’t… I don’t know what I…”
Kiyoka was overwhelmed. He didn’t have the slightest idea what to do. Even if his mind was in working order, he still wouldn’t know how to help this man who was so very important to him.
No, it wasn’t that Kiyoka didn’t know.
It was that Itsuto was already too far gone to be saved.
Kiyoka simply didn’t want to accept it.
“It’s all my fault.”
“Why…? Don’t say that.”
Kiyoka immediately put up a barrier behind him. It was an almost unconscious act. Letting out a grating shriek, the massive spider slammed into the shield and was propelled back. While all this happened, Kiyoka never once turned from Itsuto.
He stared down unblinking at his mentor.
He took the man’s hand in his. It felt heavier than ever before, and it was so slick with rain, it felt like it could slip out of his at any moment.
“I-I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Kiyoka…”
“…”
“I’m the one…who told you to choose…b-but this…this wasn’t…”
“That’s not important right now.”
“I’m sorry…Kiyoka. For everything… All of it.”
“Mr. Godou…!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for saddling you with this.”
As Itsuto voiced his apologies like a broken record, tears rolled from his eyes, mixing with the rain.
The light in his eyes gradually faded, changing them to hollow glass beads. The warmth in the hand Kiyoka held tight drained, and it grew hard and cold.
Kiyoka was unable to move from where he sat, his eyes wide with shock.
Itsuto was dead.
Scattered all over the area were the corpses of several unit members that Godou and Koumyouin had brought with them. The conspicuously low number of bodies must have meant the Earth Spider had devoured the rest to recover its stamina.
Kiyoka had known all of them. Had talked with them. Had sparred against them with bamboo training swords and had even faced off against Grotesqueries by their side.
Every one of them had been transformed into silent masses of flesh, all too easily.
Why had things turned out this way? Where had he gone wrong? What could he have done to avoid this tragedy?
After that, things became hazy.