Shido and Rinne were horrified by the battle unfolding before their eyes.
"Ugh! Uuugh...!"
"Ugh..."
It was just that brutal.
"Ghk!"
Getting cut in half was practically the baseline.
"Kheh...!"
There were deaths where the dragon’s attack crushed the whole body and spilled the organs out everywhere.
"Kraaaah!!!"
There were also endings where a whipping tail smashed every bone in the body to pieces and sent them collapsing to the ground.
On top of that, some bodies were reduced to ash by the dragon’s flames, while others had huge holes torn straight through their stomachs by biting attacks.
At that cruel, horrific sight, Shido and Rinne fought back the urge to vomit.
They could have looked away, but neither of them could.
"You fucking bitch!!!"
How much time passed after that? Minutes? Hours?
When the knight drove the Sunlight Spear into the dragon’s head again, the dragon’s behavior changed.
Its body began trembling as if gathering power.
Then black-violet energy started gathering around it.
Shido and Rinne felt something sticky and disgusting coming from that energy.
-Kwoooooo!!!!!
Once all the energy had gathered, the dragon roared and blasted it outward in every direction. The knight stepped back and caught his breath for a moment.
"Haa...! Phase two."
After muttering that, the knight rolled to dodge the dragon’s charge and rained attacks down on its head.
Slash-! Splat-! Slash-! Splat-!
The sounds of flesh being cut and blood spraying echoed through the massive cavern as the battle continued.
Then the dragon’s behavior changed once more.
White light gathered in its mouth, and it rose up onto two of its four legs.
The light building in its mouth grew even stronger, then fired out in the form of a laser.
KWA-KWAKWAKWANG-PABABABABANG-!
Where the dragon’s laser swept through, explosions erupted and caused secondary damage, but the knight rolled forward as if it were nothing and closed the distance into the dragon’s embrace.
Then he drove his blade into the dragon’s head after the attack ended, and perhaps because it was its final struggle, the dragon collapsed right there.
"Hahh... Fucking... bitch..."
After cursing at the sight, the knight’s hand was holding a massive Sunlight Spear meant to mark the dragon’s end.
"This is the last one! You bastard, Midir!!!"
The knight’s desperate shout echoed through the cavern, and lightning struck the dragon called Midir’s head.
The light that burst from it made Shido and Rinne squint, and only the knight’s muttering remained inside the cavern.
"When the hell am I going home..."
******
"Ugh! Bwaaaah!"
As soon as Shido came out of the cavern, he threw up.
He had never in his life seen anything so brutally, vividly cruel, so it was only natural that the shock made him vomit.
At least Rinne had experience fighting Hieta directly, so she managed to stop at dry heaving.
"Hah, hah... What the hell did we just see...?"
The same words came out of Shido’s mouth, after he had emptied his stomach, and Rinne’s, after she finished gagging.
They couldn’t make sense of what they had just experienced.
Starting with touching the fog and being moved somewhere else, then the appearance of a dragon and a knight in armor named Hieta, the two beings fighting, and then the end of that desperate battle, repeated death after death, with Hieta emerging victorious.
So much information had been dumped into them at once that it felt like their brains were about to overload.
"For now, let’s go home and ask Hieta."
"Yeah. That’s probably best."
They couldn’t figure anything out by thinking about it themselves, so Shido and Rinne decided to go home and tell Hieta what they had seen.
"Ugh!"
Of course, that didn’t mean the shock of seeing something so horrific had gone away.
******
After meeting Black Arus and coming home, White Arus, the one we knew, was standing at the entrance.
Ah, for the record, this house is Itsuka-kun’s house.
"Arus?"
"Arus is here?"
"Yes. Did something happen?"
Mana asked White Arus with a puzzled expression.
"...Um, Arus."
"Yes. Takamiya Mana. What is it?"
"Were you at the Upper District Park a little while ago?"
At Mana’s question, White Arus shook her head and said,
"No. I returned to the Itsuka residence immediately after the event ended."
"You didn’t go anywhere after that, right?"
"Yes. Takamiya Mana, I don’t understand the intent of your question."
"Ah, no, it’s nothing."
At Arus’s answer, Mana gave a strange look and glanced at me.
As if asking who it was that we had just seen.
I didn’t know Black Arus’s identity either, so I could only shake my head and gesture that I had no idea.
"Oh! Arus! Hieta and Mana are back!"
"Ah, Tohka."
While Mana and I were exchanging looks and gestures, Tohka came out to the entrance and fixed her gaze on the bag I was holding.
"You’re late! Hieta, where did you go? I’m already starving!"
"Ah, sorry. Something came up for a bit. More importantly, where did everyone else go?"
Right now, the only presences I could feel in this house were Tohka, White Arus, Mana, and me.
"If you mean the others, they went outside to look around."
At White Arus’s answer, I nodded in understanding.
I could understand how they felt.
When I first came here, I was so amazed that I wandered around the place looking at everything, so why wouldn’t the others do the same?
"Hmm... Then if we start cooking now, it might get cold, so let’s wait until the others come back."
"Mm. Understood!"
Tohka looked a little disappointed, but she shook it off quickly.
Even if she was a bit lacking, she did seem to know how to think of others.
Probably because of Itsuka-kun.
As I was taking off my shoes and heading into the living room to put away the groceries, the front door opened.
"Yoo-hoo! We’re back~!"
"We’re, back..."
"We’re home."
Starting with Yoshino, Yoshinon, and the commander, the people who had gone out one by one were returning home.
One by one, the people who had gone out gathered in the living room, and the last to arrive were Itsuka-kun and Rinne.
The two of them looked at me, flinched a little, and said they didn’t feel like eating.
I gave them a puzzled look and asked why, but they said they’d explain later and wanted to go rest in their room for now.
"Well, if that’s how it is..."
I had no particular reason to stop them, so I didn’t think much of it and went into the kitchen.
"So we’re finally eating! But where did Shido and Rinne go?"
"Oh, those two said they didn’t feel like eating and just went upstairs."
"Really? How strange."
At Tohka’s words, I shrugged and started cooking.
******
After everyone finished dinner, I knocked on Itsuka-kun’s door to ask about his condition.
"Itsuka-kun, it’s me."
-Hm? Ah, just a moment.
A slightly weak voice came from beyond the door.
I wondered what on earth had happened to make someone sound like that.
"I think this is something we should talk about in front of everyone, so let’s go to the living room."
"Huh? What..."
When Itsuka-kun opened the door, he called Rinne and the others as well, and we moved to the living room.
Then Itsuka-kun and Rinne said with serious expressions,
"...Just now, when Rinne and I went out, we saw a wall made of fog."
"When we touched that wall, we were moved somewhere else."
At the words coming out of their mouths, I stood up in surprise.
"What!? You saw a fog wall!?"
"Hiki! Calm down! What the hell is that thing?"
At the commander’s restraint, I took a deep breath and said,
"...Haa. It’s a kind of barrier. It separates the space where you fight a boss—strong enemies—from ordinary spaces."
At my words, the Fire Keeper reacted in surprise, saying, "So there was such a place."
She had only ever been inside the shrine, so it made sense that she wouldn’t know.
"But are the two of you all right?"
If they had encountered a boss, they would have had to fight, so that was what I was worried about.
"We’re fine. It felt like we weren’t recognized there. You walked through me and fought the dragon, after all."
"Huh?"
Why would I be there?
"Hieta was with me, though?"
Mana seemed to feel the same confusion as Itsuka-kun.
Itsuka-kun shook his head and said,
"I don’t know what the hell was going on either. Anyway, to keep going, the dragon and you started fighting there."
"Wait, wait. A dragon? A big cavern?"
A dragon and a huge cavern.
Unpleasant memories began creeping back up.
"You mean, like a huge black-violet dragon?"
"Yeah. At the end, what was its name again...?"
While Itsuka-kun was thinking, Rinne spoke up.
"He said Midir."
"Haa..."
At their words, I let out a long sigh.
Midir.
Also known as that damn dragon dog.
Its concept was that it had been made to eat the Abyss because of Gwyn, but from the player’s point of view, it was nothing more than a bastard that just kept running away.
It was one of the ones I’d had a pretty hard time with in Dark Souls too.
"So, after I fought Midir, what happened next?"
At that question, Itsuka-kun and Rinne’s faces darkened.
Itsuka-kun covered his mouth with his hand like he was trying not to throw up, and after a little while, he finally said,
"...You died."
"Huh?"
"You died over and over. Dozens of times."
At his words, everyone listening in the living room widened their eyes and fell silent.
"Since Yoshino’s here too, I won’t go into detail. But you died horribly and brutally."
"We kept watching Hieta die like that, and only after Hieta finally killed that dragon called Midir did we come back here."
When the two of them finished speaking, the commander opened his mouth.
"Wait. So what you’re saying is that the two of you saw a wall made of fog, touched it, and then watched Hiki’s fight with this Midir guy. Is that it?"
"Yeah."
"That’s right."
The commander let out a low groan, his expression twisting as if he were thinking about something, then looked at White Arus.
"Don’t tell me this was your doing?"
"No, I did not do this."
"But if you didn’t, then you’re the only one who could have done something like this."
"I’ll look into the cause."
White Arus closed her eyes and muttered something.
After a little while, she opened them again and spoke.
"I have confirmed it. I have identified what Ituka Shido and Sonogami Rinne saw."
"What is it?"
"...Higakieta Hai’s memories. When this place’s objects were being implemented, Higakieta Hai’s memories were used, so it seems the memories of the past manifested as an object called a fog wall for some reason."
"So that means..."
The commander frowned and said,
"What those two saw was something Hiki experienced in his previous world?"
"Correct."
That ended the conversation.
In the heavy atmosphere hanging over the living room, I felt uncomfortable and broke out in a cold sweat.
No, it’s just a memory from the past. Why is the mood like this?
"A-alright! It’s just a memory from the past, isn’t it? For now, let’s not touch that fog wall. If we mess with it, we might just end up seeing a whole lot of me dying for no reason."
When I clapped my hands and said that, the heavy mood finally loosened a little.
"Right. Hiki’s right. Especially the ones who have feelings for Hiki should be even more careful. If you’re not careful, it could turn things around. Now then, it’s late, so dismissed."
After saying that, the commander left first.
And I, too, said it was all in the past anyway, stood up, and headed for the spirit mansion.
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