7. VERSUS DEADRIM

Air quickly took cover in a dense forest while Deadrim relentlessly attacked them. Looking back, Rain saw the white Exelia close behind them. Isuna sat in the manipulator’s seat and drove the unfamiliar unit skillfully. He made sure Rain and Air didn’t gain too much ground.

Deadrim said he’d gained more time, but Isuna’s wound still seemed rather deep. And yet, it didn’t impact his driving skills in the slightest. Deadrim’s partner, Isuna Cole, was clearly skilled. He’d once described himself as average, but under normal circumstances, he would have been a top military manipulator. He’d built up considerable experience since Deadrim died, which granted him skills that perfectly complemented Deadrim’s abilities with Bullet Magic.

Rain and Air, on the other hand, had no means of striking back. Rain still found himself unable to grip his rifle steadily, while Air had just been evading six enemy units. Her steering grew less steady by the minute. Their opponent was a powerful Ghost, which placed them in a bind.

“Ah…! Rain! Hold tight!” Air shouted just as massive trees rained down in front of them. She rapidly applied the brakes to prevent their Exelia from colliding with them, but the recoil almost made them topple sideways.

Ugh…!

Rain forced his limbs to move. His wound throbbed sharply, but he withstood it and managed to fix his posture as they accelerated again.

The impact of the trees crashing into the ground rattled the air. Their size suggested they weighed thousands of pounds, so they knew if they didn’t evade, their Exelia would be crushed like cardboard.

Unfortunately, the enemy’s attack didn’t stop there. More trees rained down on them incessantly, impeding their path. They felt no need to even turn around and check for the source.

Deadrim!

She’d clearly used the Crystalline Bullet to shift the positions of the trees in the forest, hoping to block Rain and Air. Her power hadn’t shown its true worth earlier, when they were on a large and empty snowscape, but a forest filled with obstacles suited her perfectly. Anything with great mass served as her weapon.

Air managed to avoid her vicious attacks, but Rain couldn’t imagine how this would end well.

This is slowly going downhill…

They didn’t have any way to return fire. Any Bullet Magic they shot required multiple attempts, which seemed out of the question. Even the Turret Model ran dry.

Think… Rain focused his thoughts, hoping to discover a way out. Air had concentrated entirely on evading, so he had to come up with a plan.

There has to be something I’m missing…

He needed to hit an opponent who could freely change their position at will, which meant hitting her from the front was out of the question. If he tried to shoot her and she saw, she simply had to shift away, like he’d seen her do so many times before.

Did she have a weakness? Rain thought back to Deadrim’s earlier words.

If I try to move something beyond a sixty-five-foot radius centered around me, my accuracy drops dramatically.

Deadrim had revealed one of the few limitations the Crystalline Bullet had. She had no true limit on distance, but she had to stick to short-range moves if she cared about positioning. Put another way, so long as orientation didn’t matter, she was essentially invincible. She could send anything, anywhere in a flash, no matter the distance.

…Wait, send anything, anywhere?

The thought confused him. He repeated those words internally and realized something didn’t add up.

What is it? What am I doubting here?

However, even as he racked his brain, Deadrim continued her assault. Like a game of chess advancing toward a preordained checkmate, Air’s evasive patterns got cut off one by one.

Their exchange continued, with Deadrim dealing blows that threatened to narrow their options down to zero. Rain turned around and saw the enemy unit about 150 feet away. Deadrim constantly sent trees and boulders their way from that distance, but…

Oh, I see!

…that made something click in Rain’s mind.

That’s what’s bothering me! Why didn’t Deadrim…?

Rain recalled the events of the previous day. The train had gotten blown off the tracks and it fell down the cliff, forcing the four of them to work together to find a way out. But that made no sense, since Deadrim had had her special bullet all along.

Why didn’t she shift back up after we fell down here?

Her blue bullet allowed her to shift the position of objects freely. With that power, she could have easily returned to the rails. That would have been the shortest route possible off the snowy mountain, as well.

Did she stay behind to steal the second-generation Exelia?

No, that didn’t sound right. She had no reason to risk staying on the mountain when she could have simply stolen a different prototype. Second-generation Exelias were rare and valuable, but there was more than one on the train.

Does that mean she stayed behind for Isuna?

That made no sense, either. If her first priority really was Isuna’s life, then she had all the more reason to return to the rails and escape the mountain. Honestly, Rain couldn’t think of any reason she wouldn’t have climbed up the cliff right away, which meant the answer wasn’t that Deadrim didn’t want to shift up the mountain.

It was that she couldn’t. And there had to be a logical explanation why.

……

All the information Rain had came together and guided him to an answer. A snowy mountain. The four of them being isolated. The second-generation Exelia. An unidentified army. Magic that shifted the position of objects. And…the incessant snowfall.

No way…!

Rain looked up at the sky and spotted a curtain of gray clouds and, of course, the snow fluttering down toward them. He tried to look farther ahead, but the thin, white clouds impeded vision. The visibility remained as poor as the prior day.

“…Air.”

Rain came up with a theory he believed was right.

“What is it? I’m busy.”

“I have a plan. Play along.”

He’d figured how to stop the murderous Ghost.

“We’ll shoot Deadrim down.”

“…You’ve come up with some silly idea, haven’t you?”

“The timing’s going to be critical. If we’re even a second off, we’re goners.”

“Then we’ll just have to execute it perfectly. Go on, tell me.”

Rain told Air what he’d surmised based on their information. He told her Deadrim’s probable weakness.

“It’s worth gambling on,” Air replied once he finished speaking. “If nothing else, it should surprise her.”

“So—about the timing…”

“It shouldn’t be too hard when we’re sitting this close. Try clenching your arm.”

Rain looked down at his chest. The two of them shared the same cockpit, with Air sitting between his legs. His arm extended to the cannon’s trigger, so her body rested right next to his. It felt as small and soft as ever, but that tiny form seemed more reliable than anything else in that situation.

Air…

In that moment, he realized he didn’t want to lose her. That powerful emotion washed over his heart and curbed his fear before they began an operation that was likely to fail.

“Let’s go,” Air said, giving him the signal.

Their Exelia had only been driving to avoid the trees thus far, but as soon as she said that, she let go of the gas pedal and pulled up the clutch at the same time.

Ah…!

They suddenly braked, but their unit didn’t stop in place. The momentum sent it into a leap, which Air used to rotate the Exelia’s bearing midair. As soon as they landed, she kicked the Exelia into reverse, driving backward as the turret faced the unit chasing after them…Deadrim’s white Exelia.

Deadrim didn’t so much as flinch as she continued to close in on them. She appeared confident that she’d evade even a direct shot. Her only offensive option was to launch large masses at them, but if she got close enough, she’d be able to shift right onto their Exelia and cut them down. They were dead the moment she got within sixty-five feet.

One hundred twenty-five feet… One hundred fifteen feet… One hundred feet…

“I’m braking,” Air said as she stomped firmly onto the brakes. And once she did, the distance between them shrank.

Eighty feet.

Now…!

Rain squeezed the trigger. The second-generation Exelia’s turret unleashed a shot of pure heat…straight into the ground.

“Eat this!”

The sound of an earsplitting explosion surrounded them. But instead of hitting the enemy, their blast struck the ground. Deadrim’s unit remained completely unharmed. However, Rain hadn’t missed his shot.

Like he’d planned, a cloud of white smoke enveloped the entire area.

“What?!” they heard Deadrim exclaim in surprise over the wireless transmission. She’d realized the smoke was intentional. The powerful heat cannon instantly evaporated the snow, which created a layer of fog when exposed to the cold air. And it also served to prove Rain’s hypothesis.

I knew it!

Deadrim didn’t shift away despite their odd trick—and everything clicked.

She can’t shift away.

The fog hanging over the area impeded her blue bullet’s powers.

Deadrim can only shift things to places she can see!

Rain had surmised there was some kind of preliminary condition, some kind of limitation on her ability to shift things that explained why she hadn’t gone up the cliff. And whatever that factor was, it had to have been in effect when they fell off the train.

I’m so glad I figured it out…

That condition was visibility. The bad weather when they crashed had covered them with fog, so she had no way to see the top of the cliff. And so, Deadrim had no choice but to rely on Rain and Air to escape the mountain.

In other words, they simply had to cut off her field of vision to render her blue bullet useless.

“Isuna!” Deadrim roared as she likely realized their plan. The distance between them narrowed to sixty-five feet, close enough for her to see Air and Rain directly. She planned to shift herself and hack them to death.

Luckily, Rain’s whole strategy relied on that rash action.

She fell for it!

His hand gripped the trigger again, but he didn’t fire immediately. Attacking randomly would do no good against an ace manipulator like Isuna. He’d evade even at close range, and Rain and Air had no hope of getting in a second shot.

They either took them out in one blow…or died. Rain had to make sure they couldn’t avoid his attack.

Now!

He focused his Qualia as if firing Bullet Magic.

Ugh…

Heat swelled up in the turret. He could feel a massive amount charging, nothing like a normal shot. During their battle on the snowscape, Rain had been too terrified to fire. But now he had to risk everything. He’d realized the machine didn’t simply imitate Bullet Magic, so he just had to make use of the Turret-Model Exelia’s true capabilities.

Here goes nothing!

Rain pulled the trigger.

“Ah…!”

The shot he unleashed became a blinding flash…and blew the forest in front of them off the map.

The heat blast from the barrel greatly exceeded the firepower of normal Bullet Magic. It blew through the snowy forest and left a crater in the ground hundreds of feet away, while the trees in its path were charred and cindered. The attack reduced over half of their immediate field of vision to scorched earth.

…What the hell?! How does something this powerful even exist?!

Rain released the trigger as exhaustion and shock overwhelmed him.

I knew it’d be powerful, but…

Its output had been over ten times what Rain had expected. It blew the forest away entirely. He shuddered, imagining a power like this deployed en masse. He didn’t even want to think of the sheer havoc they would wreak.

Deadrim’s unit, which had taken the blast head-on, had toppled over some distance away with its armor completely melted.

…Wait, hold on; the armor melted?!

Graimar-nuclear-alloy armor could withstand thousands of degrees of heat, but the Turret Model’s blast rendered it powerless. Like ice against fire.

He never imagined the second-generation Exelia would be so powerful… Thinking about it sent shivers down Rain’s spine once more.

“Rain.”

“…I know.”

Still, they didn’t have time to stop and admire its handiwork. After Air prodded him, Rain got out of their Exelia and touched down on the ground. The impact of the fall sent a jolt of pain through his body…and his wound started bleeding again.

“Here,” Air said as she lent him her shoulder. “It won’t be long now. There’s only one thing left to do.”

“…Right.”

Thanks to her support, he made it to the ruins of Deadrim’s unit. Once they got there, the sight of Isuna’s black, charred body greeted them.

“……”

The sight disturbed Rain. He had melted; it was hard to tell his body was ever shaped like a human at all. The ebony Ghost’s body was right next to it.

“Deadrim…”

Her body didn’t look nearly as bad as Isuna’s, but a good half had turned black. She’d likely dived for cover and landed on her side as the blast hit, which helped her evade a fatal wound.

“Agh…”

She probably only had moments left to live no matter what, but even with half her body burned, she clung to life.

“Rain,” Air said, looking down at her. “I’ll leave the choice to use it up to you. You should decide for yourself.”

She relinquished the key decision to him.

“If we shoot Deadrim with the Devil’s Bullet, history will change, and we’ll have safely delivered the second-generation Exelia to its destination. If she ceases to exist, everything that happened on this mountain will be undone.”

“……”

The Devil’s Bullet. A transcendent power that wiped anyone it pierced from the history books. If they shot Deadrim with it, the incident on the mountain would never have even happened. After all, no one other than the ebony Ghost could have launched such an absurd surprise attack on a moving train. And most importantly—

My wound…

The hole in Rain’s chest had already robbed him of most of his strength. He’d managed to stand upright thanks to Air’s support, but if she let go of him, he’d collapse at once. If things didn’t change, he likely wouldn’t even survive another hour. And so—

“Deadrim…,” Rain muttered as he fixed his gun, loaded with the silver bullet, on the wounded girl. “You were quite the warrior.”

Even holding up his pistol felt like torture at that point, but Rain gripped it as tightly as possible out of respect for her. However, right when he prepared to pull the trigger…

“Ah…!”

…Rain’s left leg suddenly buckled, which made him tumble to his knees. He looked down, sensing something tug at him. And when he did, he noticed it was Isuna, the one who’d been burned to a crisp.

“Wait… Please…,” he mumbled. “Heh-heh-heh… First time I’ve had to…play dead…”

His wounds were absolutely fatal, but it appeared he still had a few moments left in him.

“But thanks to that…I heard something interesting…”

“Isuna, you’re…”

“The Devil’s Bullet…you said…”

His burned skin spasmed, and he could barely move. His throat appeared to be crushed; his voice was hoarse.

“I knew…Ghosts had unusual abilities, but…a bullet that erases people from existence…? Ha-ha-ha… How absurd…”

Isuna had listened in on Rain and Air’s exchange. He knew about the Devil’s Bullet, as well as their plan to shoot Deadrim with it.

……

Rain ignored Isuna’s hold on his leg and fixed his muzzle on Deadrim again, but…

“Ugh…!”

…the man suddenly tightened his grip like a vise.

“Stop it,” Rain said as he looked down at Isuna. His strength was unnatural for a dying man.

“…Could you use that bullet…on me instead?”

“…What?”

“If I didn’t exist…Deadrim would never have become a Ghost…”

Isuna Cole, the boy who’d lost Deadrim ten years ago, begged them for help.

“She didn’t resurrect for no reason… She only appeared again because…powerful emotions bound her to the world… And those likely only existed…because she died in front of me.”

All Ghosts harbored powerful grudges. Deadrim had died in front of the boy she loved. On a day that should have been special and celebratory, they’d disagreed over something trivial. Then Deadrim had perished while holding on to that regret.

“If I didn’t exist, Rim, she…would have died…and stayed dead…” Isuna’s voice grew fainter as his strength left him. “Becoming a Ghost made her sadistic. She used to hate having to hold a weapon, but now she uses a sword…and takes pleasure…in killing people…

“P-please…,” he continued with all the energy he could muster. “I can’t…forgive myself for letting her go around killing people as a Ghost…and wiping away the pride she had when she was alive… And I…can’t bear the thought of her never existing in the first place…”

Thus, he wished for another outcome entirely.

“If you erase me, Deadrim’s Ghost will be wiped out… Please…”

The grip on Rain’s leg slackened. Isuna had lost consciousness. He clearly only had a few moments left until he passed on.

“……”

Rain shook off Isuna’s hands, resisting the pull of emotion, and pointed his gun at Deadrim once more.

“Wait!” Air exclaimed, stopping him. Then she walked up to Deadrim, squatted before her half-burned body, and reached into her exposed innards. Rain wasn’t sure what she was doing at first, but when she withdrew her hand, he saw a bullet in her bloodstained palm.

“Ugh, gross…,” Rain muttered. But even through the blood, he saw the vivid black color of the metal.

Isn’t that…?

A jet-black bullet was hidden within Deadrim’s body.

“What’s that bullet…?” Rain asked.

“A pact bullet,” Air answered.

“Pact? You mean like…?”

“Yes, the same bullet I shot into you. This is Bullet Magic all Ghosts share. One that allows us to control other beings in exchange for sharing our power with them.”

Her explanation sounded familiar to Rain. When he’d gained the power of the Devil’s Bullet, Air had shot him with that very same bullet. Due to that, she could order him to do anything at any time, even kill himself if she felt so inclined.

But something didn’t add up. Why was a pact bullet inside Deadrim’s…inside a Ghost’s…body?

“It’s simple, really…,” Air said, gritting her teeth in visible anger. “Another Ghost shot this pact bullet into Deadrim to force her to fight.”

A pact bullet could only be used by a Ghost, but it worked on both living humans and Ghosts. When the bullet activated, it etched the shooter’s name onto it, so Air wiped away the blood in order to examine it.

“The person responsible is…Kaisei. Kaisei Reisman.”

Isuna had mentioned that name to Rain the prior night.

“Though, that’s mainly because Kaisei keeps arranging battles for her…”

He was a man who ostensibly supported Deadrim.

“Kaisei… Deadrim mentioned him,” Air said, seemingly also familiar with the name.

……

They only had circumstantial evidence, but everything fit perfectly.

“She used to hate having to hold a weapon, but now she uses a sword…and takes pleasure…in killing people…”

According to what Isuna had said, Deadrim’s behavior had changed. During battle, she’d acted entirely unlike how she used to in life. If that change had happened due to the bullet in her…then she’d likely been under Kaisei’s sway without even knowing it.

“Do you think this Kaisei forced Deadrim to fight?”

“Well, we don’t have any definite proof, but it makes sense to assume that,” Air said as she reached into her shirt and pulled out a black bullet dangling from her neck. She’d once said it contained her soul.

“This bullet is similar to the accessory I carry, which originally turned me into a Ghost. If it’s truly the same as mine, then this Kaisei person might not even be a Ghost…” Air paused for breath. “He might be the one who created the Ghosts in the first place.”

“That’s…”

“Yes, a clue about the origins of Ghosts. Something I’ve spent a century searching for. A possible solution to the question of who created us.”

The information came from an unexpected source, but it got them closer to cracking a question they had no way of answering. Sure, it was just a single name, but progress was progress.

“I can’t believe it… I finally found something,” Air stated with disbelief. She’d taken a major step forward. Unfortunately, they had no time to celebrate.

“Gaaah, ah… Ugh, aaah…!”

Deadrim started coughing, a bloody froth spewing from her mouth. She appeared to be on the verge of death, and the Devil’s Bullet would not affect a dead body. They had to decide what to do right away.

“……”

“Air,” Rain said as he closed his eyes before opening them once more.

“Yes?”

“I’m going to do what I think is right. Is that fine by you?”

“Go ahead. No matter what happens, I’ll watch over you from the sidelines.”

That’s good…

Those who wielded the Devil’s Bullet needed someone to stay by their side and observe their choices.

“Isuna Cole,” Rain called the man’s name as he held up his pistol and turned the muzzle toward him. “Your existence shall disappear from this world, but I won’t ever forget you. Even when I reach the deepest depths of hell, I will remember you.”

A gunshot resounded. A moment later, a silver bullet pierced Isuna, the man Deadrim longed for even after death.

Thus…

…the world shifted.