A Game against Fate

Zero days since the Last Death (Nine Deaths)

During the current cycle of death, Subaru had already died four times, and he was unwilling to add up a fifth one. He felt he already had the information needed to solve it without having to do so. Therefore, sticking to the promise he had made to Anastasia, he would fight to stay alive until the end; and he would make it.

First he died in a pathetic way, unable to do anything to avoid it. After returning, he tried to escape to the Hoshin Company headquarters, where he hoped to meet Mimi and Tivey, but his killer found him. However, a stranger who had helped him to his feet only minutes before, followed him and ended up becoming the beacon with the ability to light his way out of that tragedy.

Despite the arrival of the stranger, Subaru perished at the hands of a grieving Mimi. After that death, Subaru decided to look for that Good Samaritan who had extended his life without asking for anything in return, however the search did not bear fruit... No, one could say that it did, but the fruit he obtained turned out to be completely bitter.

In a pathetic display of self-preservation, Subaru used the civilians gathered on the main avenue of the metropolitan area as human shields, thus ending up coated in their remains. In the end, his futile quest to extend his life at the expense of others, led him to bleed to death, covered by what in life had been the little girl who defended him until she succumbed.

Having gathered enough information, Subaru came returned to life and managed to find the location of the one who had selflessly helped him. Halibel, Kararagi's greatest warrior, was the piece he needed on his side of the board in order to win this disheartening game against fate. Even so, his lack of wit, guts, and character were enough to lead him to one more death. A death almost as pathetic as the first, in which he couldn't even turn around before losing his head.

And now that he had almost all the pieces back on the board, the game had resumed; once Mimi arrived, he would be ready to declare check. Subaru, with all the information he had gathered throughout his four previous failures, was determined to end that cycle of death, his third, without dying once more. For the time being, he just had to make sure to stay alive and to warn Halibel in case he noticed that the attacker, supposedly the Great Spirit Zarestia, was about to carry out any of her most lethal attacks...

The Shinobi exchanged attacks with the terrible entity, repelling, dispelling and deflecting her wind attacks with nothing but his Japanese manufactured kunais; or in the case of that world, Kararagian manufactured. Halibel was notably on a level of skill equal to, if not greater than, that of Zarestia. At first glance, it could be determined that he was a man of great experience and natural talent; something that even the battle-weary Natsuki Subaru could notice.

However, no matter how good a fighter Halibel was, his fighting style, that of a Shinobi, was definitely not the most suited to hand-to-hand combat. Like the ninjas of Subaru's world, Halibel was a stealthy warrior, focused on assassination techniques, who never stopped looking for ways to sneak up behind his enemy to stab her in the back.

Disappearing and reappearing thanks to his inhuman speed and agility, Halibel kept searching for a way to place himself behind his opponent's back. With a kunai in each hand, Halibel continued to stand up to the woman who was driven mad by hatred and bloodlust. Dodging a gust of wind that might well have split him in two from the waist, Halibel leapt upward and then fell nimbly to Zarestia's side.

Turning around, Halibel pushed one of his arms in the direction of the hostile entity's abdomen, who kept looking for her target. Grumbling in frustration, she emitted a powerful gust of wind from her body. This time it was not a sharp wind cyclone, but a powerful mass of air that pushed Halibel away. Having got rid of the annoying individual, Zarestia jumped towards Subaru.

"Damn you bitch, leave me alone!" Irritated, Subaru shouted as he moved away from Zarestia and Halibel.

Sliding down the sidewalk, Subaru sought refuge behind a carriage that was parked several meters from the combat area. He'd had this carriage in sight for a couple of minutes, waiting for the moment when Zarestia would lunge at him again, so that he could use it as a one-time refuge.

This is how the fight had been going on for several minutes already. Halibel looking for a way to cause damage to Zarestia, Zarestia looking for the opportunity to snuff out Subaru's life, and Subaru looking for a way to extend his life through a seemingly endless escape. Always with an eye on the next object to take cover with, Subaru ran, slid and jumped out of the impact range of the sharp wind.

What until a second ago had been a beautiful wooden carriage, had now been blown away by the force of the wind and reduced to millions of splinters that were scattered all over the street. Subaru, who had jumped only a few milliseconds before the attack hit the carriage, released a guttural grunt of pain.

"Aaaaarghhhhh! Dammit!" He had managed to avoid coming into contact with any of the murderous air currents; however, he had not avoided the aftermath of the attack. Like thousands of needle-shaped projectiles, the wood splinters had rained down all over that section of the street, inevitably hitting the person closest to the blast of air. "Shit…"

Forcing himself to get back on his feet, Subaru groaned as he shuffled away from the combat area. Why didn't I consider it?! Subaru yelled inwardly, as he forced himself to keep moving forward. Until now, nothing similar had happened to him, since the structure of the stalls had not been so wide and dense as to explode in thousands of miniature projectiles.

And not only that... Until now, during that loop, Zarestia had not attacked with such intensity. As her frustration rose, so did her desire to finish him off. That is something he had already theorized, but now there was no way to refute it… The combination of a very dense structure and an attack of great explosive power, had caused his body to be now full of small wounds that did not stop stinging.

His neck, arms, back, thighs and legs were covered in thousands of splinters that made it difficult for him to move. The desperate need to remove them did not let him think clearly, and his body was getting more and more stained with a reddish hue, because of the blood that flowed in drops from the little wounds. He had made the first mistake, and it had been extremely expensive.

Still, he could not let himself be overcome by the pain, he had to put it in the back of his mind and strive not to pay attention to it until he could get some kind of treatment. Even so, the anxiety and stinging got the better of him, for he inevitably began to pull out the splinters, one by one, with the tips of his nails. However, he did it without moving his shirt sleeves, so he barely managed to remove the splinters that were sticking out of the fabric.

Discomfort and pain were beginning to eat away at the determination he had built up since returning by death. As much as she struggled to ignore the splinters that decorated the back of his body with the glitter of hundreds of drops of blood, the task was proving more difficult than he had thought. They're just splinters and nothing more, he repeated inside his head, pushing himself to accomplish what he had set out to do; if he didn't, he might fail again.

"Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die! Die, die, die, die!" With that phrase being repeated over and over again, just feet away from him, Subaru knew what he must do. Moved only by instinct, he propelled himself to the side, avoiding the deadly blizzard by the tiniest of margins.

"Shit! Leave me alone for just a moment, you annoying bitch!" Verbally lashing out at the attacker, Subaru began to be consumed by the wrath that had been burning nonstop inside his chest. With his determination half-eaten by pain and despair, he anger was all he had left to keep fighting.

Feeling as if thousands of insects were biting and nibbling on him at the same time, Subaru felt the need to release a wail of agony. It was not a burning pain like the one he suffered at the hands of Elsa... It was not a sharp pain like the one he suffered from the jaws of the mabeasts. It was a maddening, exasperating pain that constantly gnawed at his concentration, preventing him from thinking correctly. Unbelievably enraged and on the verge of losing himself in wrath, Subaru fell to the ground.

He had managed to avoid the onslaught of the entity that never stopped chasing him, but in the process the splinters that had covered his arms went even deeper into his flesh, causing a torrent of pain to crash into his brain. Shipwrecked in a sea of suffering, despair and anger, Subaru tried to swim ashore, but there were none in sight. He was lost, lost inside his own mind.

With his reason numbed, Subaru rose from the ground guided only by survival instinct. Grunting, Subaru looked out onto the battlefield and could see that Halibel was busy deflecting Zarestia's wind attacks. It was then that, desperate to find a way to continue living, he quickly approached the battlefield.

"Halibel!" With a voice choked with anger and frustration, Subaru called out to the Shinobi warrior. "Throw your bottle of sake at her!" Halibel, who had managed to get away from another flurry of attacks, looked him straight in the eye.

Subaru, or at least the essence of the Subaru he had met, was not entirely in his gaze. As if his body had been possessed by something within himself, Subaru was once again being driven solely by the burning desire for revenge and the basic need to continue living. With anger burning so hot that his insides were on the verge of charring, Subaru gave his companion a stern look.

"As you like..." Breathing smoke out of his nose and snout, Halibel decided to take Subaru's word for it; after all, the kid had seen the future...

Subaru had not forgotten the usefulness of using alcoholic beverages. If he were correct, the smell of liquor would be enough to petrify Zarestia, so it was definitely something worth taking advantage of. However, he had refrained from doing so because there was also the possibility that, misused, it would simply lead to Zarestia's escape.

Even so, Subaru was no longer willing to wait. With frustration and anger taking hold his being, he concluded that it was best to stop wasting time and use the best weapon he possessed. The only problem was that Mimi had not yet arrived, but Subaru, in the condition he was in, was physically and mentally unable to wait any longer; that was the price of his stupid miscalculation.

Driven by a thirst for revenge, wrath and survival instinct, Subaru watched as Halibel circled Zarestia and got ready to throw the bottle of sake he was carrying in his kimono. On this occasion, Subaru had not seen him with said bottle, however, he done so during the previous loop, and he was sure that had not changed. According to Subaru's assumption, Halibel pulled the bottle out of his kimono, replacing a kunai with it.

"Die, die, die!" However, Subaru did not foresee that Zarestia would react to the mere image of the glass bottle.

In fact, now that he thought about it more clearly, the two times that Zarestia was affected by the presence of alcoholic beverages, she had been taken by surprise. Now that she had seen Halibel take out the bottle, the contents of which visibly shone in the midday sun, she'd had a chance to react. With a shriek of anger, Zarestia brought her hands to her face and then… Subaru noticed.

"Halibel, she's going to surround herself with a wind dome! If that touches you, even you're gonna get hurt!" The time difference between his warning and the appearance of the wind dome was less than a second. And even with that situation against him, Halibel was able to avoid the area attack.

How? By using the technique that during all the loops he was most reluctant to use, but in a way that Subaru had not seen up to that point. A decoy clone, or replacement clone, that would be the best way to define it. Switching places with one of his clones, Halibel disappeared to reappear several yards from Zarestia, where he would be unaffected by the wind dome.

The shadow clone, as expected, was devoured by the sharp cyclone, leaving behind no more than a cloud of smoke and ashes. Halibel had escaped the attack without being harmed. And Subaru, because anger was numbing his body and mind, ironically, was beginning to think more clearly. Finally succeeding in leaving the sting of the splinters in his flesh in the background of his mind, Subaru observed Zarestia.

"What do you think I'd do now, throw the bottle at her even with that wind dome around her?" The question came from Halibel, who had approached him to hear his thoughts on the fight. That was the first time he had done so in the entire cycle of death, showing that Subaru had finally made the right decision.

"No…" Subaru wanted to get rid of Zarestia, or whoever the hell she was, as quickly as possible; especially if that would hasten the treatment of his wounds.

However, now that Zarestia had the wind dome surrounding her, he could not rush things, or the bottle would break too far from her, which would prevent the paralyzing effect from being effective enough. The closer the better, that's what he had noticed. If the bottle did not fall directly on Zarestia, she might as well end up escaping, meaning failure. Feeling the anger and frustration eating away at him, Subaru involuntarily scratched his arms.

"Hey, Subaru, are ya okay? Your clothes are soaked in blood, don't you think you should rip the sleeves off your shirt and…" Before Halibel could finish, Subaru shook his head.

"No!" Subaru, realizing that he had gotten too worked up, took a deep breath and half explained to a bewildered Halibel the reason for his denial. "As long as I'm conscious, it would be best not to move the sleeves off my arms."

From the severity of Subaru's voice, Halibel immediately understood that it was not a subject open to debate. So he decided to put it aside and focus on taking care of the powerful woman who, undoubtedly, fit Zarestia's description; just like the kid had said.

Halibel, noticing that Subaru seemed to have plunged back into his thoughts, stared at Zarestia, whose gaze was not on Subaru, but on the bottle in his hand. Apparently, this was preventing, for the moment, her from lunging at them as she had done before. Therefore, he had two options: either he maintained the stalemate, or he attacked her and resumed the fight.

For a moment he considered asking Subaru, but ultimately decided against it. Halibel was an experienced warrior, and he knew that the best thing to do during this situation was to keep the impasse as long as possible. However, it would have been the other way around had that wind dome that surrounded Zarestia not existed. In the end he decided to prepare for the resumption of the fight in silence.

The seconds passed and no one had even lifted a finger, yet the tension in the air had increased accordingly. Zarestia, who once again had her eyes fixed on Subaru, seemed about to lose her temper completely. The sake bottle was keeping her at bay, but that would not stay that way for much longer. And that proved to be true sooner rather than later, as Zarestia broke the stalemate by launching a frantic wind attack in their direction.

Shin! It was the sound his kunai made as it sliced through the air stream, stripping it of its deadly momentum. Rejecting spell after spell with his incredible speed, Halibel took it upon himself to protect the boy with a promising future. With his gaze ever straight ahead, Halibel kept a safe distance while looking for a way to push back Zarestia without straying too far from Subaru.

Hmm… I should use it now; thought Halibel, referring to his Shinobi cloning technique. Gripping the handles of his two kunais, Halibel set out to use the technique, but was stopped by a hand that took him by the arm. It was Subaru, who had left his position within the relative and fragile safety of the rear. With a movement of his chin, Halibel motioned for Subaru to tell him what he had to say.

"I wanna try something. Could you keep her busy?" Subaru phrased that question, while pointing to the crazed Zarestia, who had temporarily halted her attacks to cautiously watch the shift within her enemies' front lines.

"Hmm? Isn't that what I've been doin'?" Halibel asked back, sardonically.

"In that case... Just keep doing it. If what I want to try works, Zarestia will freak-out and want to attack me with everything she has; but in return I'll end up throwing up blood." As if talking about something unimportant, Subaru revealed his plan to Halibel.

"Wait, wait! What the hell are you gonna do, kid?! Throw up blood?! And what's this about you makin' Zarestia freak-out?! She looks pretty freaked-out to me already! So what's in it for us?" Halibel, losing his casual calmness for the first time since Subaru met him in the alleyway, questioned him about this so-called plan of his.

"We've no time to lose. The last piece on the board should be about to join us, but we may be able to finish the game sooner."

"The last piece on the board? Game? What are ya talkin' 'bout…?" Bewildered, Halibel stared at Subaru's face, making sure that the hostile entity in front of him did not attack them.

"What am I talking about…?" Visibly dismayed, Subaru asked himself that question; as if he didn't understand it himself. However, after a moment's mediation, he shook his head and looked again at the profile of Halibel's face. The demi-human, puzzled, could perceive in Subaru a gaze clouded by a tumult of emotions. "I'm talking about the fact that, if Zarestia loses control, she will attack me with all she has. It's at that moment that an opening in her wind shield will appear. Throw the bottle at her before she can attack, and she will be completely paralyzed... or so I hope."

"Ya hope so?! Did you see it with your blessin', or somethin' like that?" Halibel, increasingly distrustful of the soundness of Subaru's words, once again hurled a flurry of questions at him. However, Halibel fell silent and looked at Subaru, who did not seem willing to answer his last questions. His instincts… His instincts were telling him that it was best to comply with what the boy was saying. Sighing, Halibel blew out a thick plume of smoke. "Don't ya think it's too risky, kid?"

"Maybe... So I guess I've no choice but to trust your skill, Halibel." And with that answer, Halibel let out a second sigh; one of defeat.

"Damn it… Whatever, let's try it! I just hope this wager of yours doesn't lead us straight to death." After responding like this, Halibel took a good puff of smoke and got into an attack posture.

"I hope the same…" Whispering that, Subaru looked directly at Zarestia, who seemed to be about to launch another attack; one that definitely did not carry the amount of power he needed for the wind shield to weaken. Once the Great Spirit of the wind lost her sanity, she would attack with one of her most powerful attacks; Subaru was sure of that. "Halibel, I just have one last thing to say..."

"Hmm?"

"The name of my blessing is Return by- Arghh!" Subaru, who since the attack on the inn at Priestella had not dared to mention the issue even once, thus broke the taboo of the shadow...

While Halibel had been looking for a way to keep Zarestia busy, Subaru went over the options available to him. He needed to find a way to overcome the wind barrier her enemy had placed around her. After thinking and thinking, Subaru found himself needing to revisit a subject that he had already thought about several times.

How is it that Zarestia always found him, no matter what he did? It was a question that could easily be answered on the grounds that it was due to her spiritual abilities beyond human limits. But Subaru felt there was something more to it than just that. Could it have something to do with my smell? He thought, recalling the words of the Mabeast User girl.

Although remembering anything related to her and her assassin partner only destabilized his already unstable mental health, due to the traumas, he had no choice but to do so. So he remembered and remembered, but in the end it was in vain. He didn't know why the mabeasts were chasing him besides his smell, and that wasn't enough to link it to the fact that Zarestia always knew where to find him.

However, that was the only clue he had. His craving for revenge burned ever more strongly within him, which further numbed his reasoning. In the state of mind he was in, betting everything on a hunch did not sound as bad as it should have. Moreover, perhaps his logic was not as faulty as it might appear at first glance.

Zarestia specialized in using the wind element's magic, so she might be able to perceive smells better than anyone else. And if it were true what the assassin girl said about his scent attracting mabeasts, maybe, just maybe, it would apply the same with Zarestia. Perhaps that's why she could find him no matter where he was. Of course, none of that was more than mere conjecture from a desperate, broken mind. However, neither could he rule it out without at least putting it to the test.

And how would he do it? He could only think of one way, and though that would probably lay him in a pool of his own blood, he was willing to go to those lengths. This is how strongly burned the desire to stop the entity that had murdered him four times, and forced him to witness the death and agony of Mimi and the death of dozens of innocent bystanders. That way was to break the taboo of the shadow…

As to what had led him to conclude that there was a relationship between his smell and the taboo of the shadow, it was what happened in the hole in which he hid alongside Anastasia. Subaru clumsily broke the taboo, causing the mabeasts to find them and attack. And that was not all; later, he decided to try to break the taboo again, seeking to verify if that had anything to do with the sudden attack of the mabeasts. Thus he proved that indeed breaking the taboo, for some unknown reason, attracted the mabeasts and put them in a state of frenzy.

If what attracted the beasts of the little assassin was his smell, then perhaps breaking the taboo, in some way he did not understand caused his body to release more of that scent. However, believing that meant believing that what the little girl had said was true. He could not dismiss the possibility that she was lying. Even so, he did not feel that she had the need to lie on that occasion; why should she? She gained nothing by saying that it was his smell what attracted the mabeasts. Or at least that's what he wanted to believe.

Deciding to end that train of thought and conjecture there, Subaru returned to reality. Then, he saw that Halibel seemed ready to resume the fight against Zarestia, so he stepped forward and took him by the arm. After explaining the poor excuse of a plan that he had made on the fly, Subaru let out the words that he had tried not to utter again.

As expected, time stopped and a vortex formed exactly in front of him. From it a shadow emerged, which slowly materialized into a hand, then into an arm, and then into what looked like a sort of torso. The shadow was taking a more defined shape each time he broke the taboo, of that there was no doubt.

Trying to control the hatred and anger that instinctively welled up inside him, Subaru went through another seemingly endless session of torture. Not satisfied until his heart was reduced to shreds, the shadow returned to where it came from, leaving behind a severely afflicted Subaru. With blood gushing out of his eyes, nose and mouth, Subaru fell to his knees.

Halibel, even though he had been warned of what would happen, was surprised by the extreme aura of blood lust exuded by the female figure before him. Losing any trace of reason or logic, Zarestia raised both of her hands and set out to cast a wind attack that could easily reduce not only the street they were on, but also half the metropolitan area, to rubble.

Nevertheless, Halibel was able to notice in time the opening Subaru had mentioned. Without waiting a second longer, Halibel swung his arm vigorously and threw the bottle at the unprotected body of the attacker. Crossing the barrier without turning to dust, the bottle went forward and struck Zarestia on her chest, breaking as it did so.

Glass and sake rose through the air, completely bathing Zarestia. For a moment, a tiny one, the spiritual entity seemed not to understand what had happened, since its reason was still clouded by bloodlust. But when the intense smell of alcohol reached her nose, the change became perceptible. The wind dome disappeared completely and then her face contorted in a grimace of horror. Fear took hold of her and then her whole world dissolved, leaving behind a figure that did not belong to the Most Beautiful Shinigami; she was not Zarestia.

Sorry for the delay... My laptop died and I couldn't continue with either the writing or the translation of the chapters. However, I'm now ready to resume my work. As always, thanks for the support! I'm glad to see that quite a few people seem interested in this story, which makes me rather glad. Anyway, until next Friday!