NBFTR 05

Chapter 5

It Feels Like the Genre Changed

The man lowered his head.

His long, pale hair spilled forward, falling across his face. It was long enough to cover his collarbones, and the sight of it looked strangely unfamiliar.

The hair colors of this household generally fell somewhere along the spectrum between sandy and caramel. The young master had been no exception, possessing the aristocratic sandy-blond hair typical of the family.

Airy almost reached out to stroke it.

She stopped herself and withdrew the hand she had been about to extend. Instead, she gently pried away the man’s grip, which had been clutching her shoulder blades hard enough to crush the bones.

“…Are you really the young master?”

“I am. Laertes Joe Salisbury. The youngest son of this family you knew. It’s really me.”

Airy let out a deep sigh.

She was about to ask what on earth had happened—

—Kiiiaaaaaaaaaah!

An utterly unnatural scream, the sort of sound one might only hear in a movie, rang out through the air.

Airy and Laertes looked up at the same time.

A swarm of monstrous birds was charging toward them through the sky.

If they hadn’t possessed beaks shaped like the jaws of crocodiles, Airy might simply have assumed they were some kind of deranged birds.

The monsters raised their crest-like wings tightly against their bodies and accelerated.

Laertes pulled Airy behind him and raised the crude-looking wand in his hand.

“Shield!”

An invisible force pushed against the air above the stairs, forming a barrier like a shield.

Airy immediately realized that the terrain was working against them.

Then she saw just how absurdly enormous the approaching monsters were.

“What are those things?”

“Monsters.”

Laertes turned his wand around and muttered,

“Explode.”

A vast amount of mana erupted in an instant, blasting the creatures backward.

Airy’s body continued to tremble uncontrollably. Rather than attempting to stand on limbs that no longer possessed enough strength, she rolled backward and put some distance between herself and the monsters.

“Why are they going so crazy? Is it because of me?”

“No. I think the underground area emptied out, causing the magic to shut down.”

“Them realizing that the powerful defensive magic circle blocking this entrance had disappeared.”

Airy looked back at the basement door.

A magic circle she hadn’t even known existed was embossed across the entire door.

She traced the magic circle with her trembling fingers.

Fortunately, she could make sense of the spell structure.

If she entered the basement, it would activate again.

Then they would be protected.

But at that moment, a powerful doubt pierced Airy’s mind.

Will I be able to come back out again?

Will the world I return to really be normal?

Is it infinitely safe inside?

“Airy! Go into the basement and hold the door!”

When Airy turned around, the situation at the top of the stairs was far worse than it had been only moments ago.

Perhaps the monsters’ shrieks themselves generated some kind of shockwave, because the distinction between the earth and the surrounding strata was beginning to collapse.

The uppermost steps had already shattered into gravel, while Laertes’s wand trembled so violently it looked ready to snap.

Crack!

The sound of breaking air rang out as cracks began spreading across the defensive magic.

To make matters worse, more monsters were gathering.

Airy raised her head.

Now that she looked at the terrain above them—which could practically be called a steep hill—she noticed small monsters peering down at the humans.

They drooled as they flicked out snake-like tongues.

Do what I can.

What I can do.

Airy awakened her mana circle and drew out a thread of magic.

Then, using her finger as a pen, she began drawing a spell structure onto the ground beneath her.

Her mind was a complete mess.

Knowledge she couldn’t remember whose theory it belonged to, whose invention it had been—or whether it even belonged to this world at all—was violently churning through Airy’s mind as she was driven into an extreme situation.

Shield has an obvious limit.

These weren’t merely a few beasts or a handful of humans.

They were enormous, yet incredibly fast.

And they weren’t afraid of Airy or Laertes in the slightest.

The only thing they appeared to fear was the enormous amount of mana Laertes was drawing out.

Mana amplification is necessary.

And the method of attack naturally came to her from something she had seen before—the sea.

After briefly checking the blood-stained spell structure, Airy shouted toward Laertes.

“Young master! Please cast this spell!”

“What?”

The danger of an incorrect spell structure was fatal.

Internal injuries to the caster were a given, and sometimes a spell simply failed to activate while consuming an enormous amount of mana.

Moreover, when using a magic circle, other magic could not be cast simultaneously.

There was no way the youngest son of a family of great mages could be unaware of such dangers.

Yet Laertes only hesitated for the span of a single blink.

Then he immediately put his decision into action.

His wand split in half the moment he withdrew its magic.

Airy stared as though she wanted to burn the sight into her memory.

Laertes spread both palms and poured mana into the spell with all his strength.

For an instant—

the magic circle activated.

Dazzling mana flowed along the spell structure, carving out a path.

And it moved exactly as Airy had intended.

—Kyaaaaaaaaaah!

With a horrifying shriek, the monsters surrounding the stairs were swept away all at once by a tidal wave.

The wave of mana had no interest in the existence of the monsters themselves.

It created wind and spun into a vortex according only to the intentions of the person who had drawn it—something even the caster himself could not fully understand.

The monsters, drenched in mana, exposed their blood-red flesh as their bodies rapidly withered away.

“Haaah… haaah…”

Laertes could hardly take his eyes off the result, which even he could not believe.

It had been a moment when he had thought he might finally die.

He had imagined death so many times that he thought he would be able to accept it calmly.

But Airy’s presence had made it unbearably painful.

And yet—

he had survived.

Airy quietly sensed her surroundings.

Then she suddenly sprang to her feet.

“Young master!”

“Airy…”

He stared blankly down at his unfamiliar maid.

She looked unfamiliar.

And yet she hadn’t changed in the slightest from the image preserved in his memories.

Airy grabbed Laertes by the collar and shook him.

“Pull yourself together. If I go inside now, will it definitely be safe? When I come back out, could something else have changed again?”

“You can come out whenever you want. As long as the magic circle on the door activates, it’ll be safe.”

“As for things changing… I don’t think so. Not unless you’ve been inside for twelve years.”

“Twelve years?”

“Twelve years. That’s how long you’ve been trapped.”

Ah.

Only then did Airy realize that there was still a discrepancy she hadn’t been able to mentally reconcile.

“I was only there for a little over a hundred days…”

The two stared at each other for a moment.

But they didn’t have much time.

Laertes opened the basement door first and ushered Airy inside.

Then, just before closing the door, he seemed to think of something.

“A hundred days…”

“More than that, actually. About one hundred and fifty days.”

He blocked the closing door with his body and rummaged through his clothes.

Airy watched him anxiously.

The man pulled something from his pocket and tossed it inside.

Then he closed the door.

Whoosh.

The wind swept across the floor and began circling in a ring.

Soon, the magic circle activated.

Suppressing the terrible memories rising within her, Airy grabbed Laertes’s arm.

“What is it?”

“I’m checking whether there’s any magic here that can stop space and time.”

“There isn’t. I practically memorized the magic circle drawn throughout this basement.”

“There could have been something hidden.”

“I deciphered all of it. If there had been a spell capable of stopping space and time, even if I hadn’t understood the exact details, I couldn’t possibly have failed to remember it.”

Laertes looked at Airy with a complicated expression.

She was beginning to suspect that he was suspicious of her because of the magic circle she had just used.

Airy hurriedly waved her hands.

“There are research books on magic in here, so I studied a little. I actually learned a bit of magic while I was inside.”

“I know. Just a moment.”

He knows?

Airy flinched in surprise.

Meanwhile, Laertes took her right hand in his.

A tiny spot of blood had gathered at her fingertip.

It was such a small wound that it could hardly even be called an injury.

Yet the man who had stepped forward without hesitation in the face of danger now stared intently at Airy’s finger as though he were looking at the most serious wound in the world.

Feeling awkward, Airy pulled her hand away and hid it behind her back.

“This kind of thing heals quickly.”

“It could become infected. You might have come into contact with the blood or bodily fluids of a monster.”

“I’ll disinfect it. But monsters? What happened to the world? When did this happen?”

“Haaah…”

Laertes grabbed his head and sank to the floor.

Then he began a long explanation.

“At the northernmost end, beneath the coastal cliffs, something called a ‘Rift in the World’ appeared.”

“Twelve years ago, on the day you were trapped in this basement, monsters poured out of it in masses. They began killing humans indiscriminately.”

“The army was annihilated. Once we discovered that the creatures only reacted to mana, every mage was summoned.”

“The capital’s mages were given the highest priority. Grandfather and Father, my uncles and aunts. My elder brothers and sisters, and even the family’s disciples.”

Salisbury was one of the greatest mage families not only in this country, but on the entire continent.

It couldn’t be said to be one hundred percent certain, but the talent for becoming a great mage was inherited through blood.

The wealth, honor, and privileges of the Salisbury family had all been passed down through that bloodline.

And the reason for that wealth, honor, and privilege was responsibility.

In a situation like this, it was their responsibility to be the first to march onto the battlefield and protect humanity.

“Four days later, Grandfather came back in a coffin. Only his shoulders had been recovered.”

“Nothing else.”

“We couldn’t recover anyone else’s bodies. We never even learned whether they were alive or dead.”

“…My God.”

“After everything began, Father returned to the mansion exactly once.”

“He hurriedly completed his appointment and became the Duke. The moment he did, he immediately left for the battlefield.”

“What about you, Young Master?”

“I was the only one left from the family.”

“Just me, who was nine years old.”

“Several household members stayed behind to protect me, along with four mages who had deep ties to our family.”

“Now, as you can see, I’m alone.”

“Young master…”

The man’s eyes crumpled.

Tears slipped through his tightly scrunched eyelids.

Without realizing it, Airy pulled his head against her chest and held him.

She stroked his hair and murmured words she had never even had the chance to say to him when he was younger than nine.

“You did well. You did well to survive.”

“You endured so much. You really did.”

He sobbed soundlessly.

Airy was glad that she could hold her young master, who was no longer a boy, more naturally than she ever had before.

The thing Laertes had thrown inside just before Airy entered the basement had been nothing special.

It was simply a single potato.

After his emotions had settled somewhat, Laertes took hold of one of Airy’s hands at her request and went outside with her.

The potato was still a potato.

It hadn’t rotted.

There was no damage to it either.

Before the magic on the door shut down again, the two of them hurried back inside.

And so, the twelve-year gap remained an unexplained mystery.

Only then did Airy finally ask the question that had been lodged in one corner of her heart the entire time.

“What about the south? Is it safe?”

“The south? I haven’t heard anything about the south.”

“Ah…!”

Airy felt as though her insides were burning.

“How did this happen? Twelve years have passed! Has no one even figured out how far the monsters have spread? What about the palace?”

Airy wasn’t someone who could simply close her eyes and forget about her only remaining blood relative—her mother.

Laertes bit his lip several times before answering.

“The capital probably suffered the greatest damage.”

“They eat humans, so they settled first in places where there were the most humans.”

“The first and last time I received information directly from the royal palace was seven years ago.”

“Just before the second Great Assault began.”

“Seven years?”

“At that time, they said the monsters hadn’t crossed the central mountain range yet.”

“They told us to wait safely inside the mansion because they had a plan to exterminate them.”

“After that, the next news we heard from outside was just before the third Great Assault.”

“So, about three years ago.”

“One of our mages went all the way to the royal palace and heard information from a wandering knight.”

“What information?”

“Almost no survivors or returnees.”

“That underground areas protected by mana were safe.”

“That was all.”

“I heard that the royal palace had completely collapsed, and all the magic circles had fallen apart.”

Could there really be a world this hopeless?

Airy began to doubt reality itself.

No.

This is a novel.

It has to be a novel.

With her particular taste for stories—stories that contained only cute, beautiful, or harmless things—there was simply no way she could accept a development like this.

She didn’t know the original story.

But she felt as though she had been tricked into reading an entirely different genre.