Staring at the blood on her hands and the bits of flesh splattered on her clothes, Lara felt her stomach churn violently. She crawled aside and vomited everything up, then dry-heaved when nothing remained.
Bella waited nearly a minute, letting the young Lara say goodbye to her old life, before weakly raising her hand.
"Help... help me..."
Her voice was faint and lifeless, nearly inaudible in the thunderstorm.
But Lara saw her gesture.
Only then did she remember her companion—someone she'd known for less than two hours and barely spoken three sentences to.
Lara helped her sit up.
"We need to go... you've been watched. This is a trap. These people... they knew you'd... come here."
Bella spoke haltingly, sharing her analysis.
Lara wasn't stupid. The hint made her immediately notice the suspicious details.
Staying at the scene was dangerous. They had to leave now.
"The sword, my sword..."
Lara moved to retrieve it, but Bella stopped her. Instead, she had Lara help her to the gunman's corpse so she could pull Fudō Masamune free.
Bella lacked the energy to explain the blade's supernatural properties. She had Lara help her to the two men with severed legs, then slit their throats—one each, killing them both.
"Gun... clothes... supplies." Bella said.
Lara was still extremely inexperienced. Having just killed someone, she was completely rattled.
The handgun lay in plain sight on the ground, yet she didn't think to pick it up.
After fumbling for three minutes, they'd roughly cleaned the battlefield.
Bella had Lara dig a hole and mark the location, then bury Fudō Masamune. Carrying the blade was dangerous right now—she worried Lara might accidentally touch it and die.
Once she recovered, she wouldn't need the sword. If she didn't recover, having it wouldn't help much anyway. Times had changed—everyone carried guns now. People with bushido spirit were too rare.
After burying the blade, nearly ten minutes had passed since the battle.
Bella could barely keep her eyes open. Two gunshot wounds, her old injuries from Sadako's treatment flaring up again—she was running a fever.
But seeing Lara's anxious, deer-like eyes, she forced herself to stay alert.
"We'll follow the beach... seawater will hide... our tracks."
"Watch the mountain slopes. Over there... there should be a cave..."
"Don't enter ones that smell foul... might have... wild animals."
She was at a critical juncture battling Calypso's mirror in her mental realm. Very little consciousness remained to control her body.
Nearly all her weight pressed on Lara. This ponytailed woman in a tank top proved remarkably strong, with stamina to spare.
After walking a hundred meters (328 feet), she apparently decided the pace was too slow. She crouched down, having Bella climb on her back.
"Hold on tight. Let's move."
She gripped Bella's legs while Bella wrapped her arms around her neck.
They traveled through treacherous forest terrain for over a kilometer (0.6 miles).
Whenever Bella regained a bit of clarity, she'd share survival tips. Lara absorbed everything quickly, growing at an impressive rate.
Eventually, Bella fell completely silent. Lara seemed to realize something.
She called out urgently, "Hey! Keep talking! I'm carrying you—I still have strength! Talk to me. We'll find a cave soon, I promise!"
If Bella weren't in such terrible shape, she might have laughed. Too many TV dramas? What was Lara thinking? Did Bella look like she was dying?
Under Lara's persistent urging, Bella had no choice but to rouse herself and respond.
They chatted randomly about everything and nothing.
After exchanging names, they gradually became more familiar.
Bella and Lara... an American and a Brit. A Stanford student and a London university student.
Lara was currently on leave from school. She didn't explain why, and Bella had no energy to ask.
Somehow, the conversation turned to mutual acquaintances.
"You actually know Ana? How did you two meet?" Lara sounded surprised.
Bella spoke in fragments. "We met... once. In... Israel..."
Ana Miller was Lara's guardian—a very close relationship legally.
"I always feel like Ana's hiding something from me, but she really was good to me when I was young. I'm grateful. After my father left, she was there for me..."
Walking and stopping, they finally found a small cave no more than ten square meters (108 square feet) just as the storm intensified.
Seeing they'd reached relative safety, Bella exhaled in relief. She immediately sank all her focus into the mental realm, concentrating on defeating Calypso's mirror.
Lara panicked at first when Bella lost consciousness, but quickly forced herself to calm down.
She took several deep breaths, then began examining Bella's injuries.
After great effort searching nearby, Lara collected dry branches. She started a fire, sterilized tools, extracted bullets, and bandaged wounds.
She worked for hours. When Bella's fever finally seemed to break, Lara leaned against the cave wall and slowly drifted off to sleep.
"Die, you bitch!" In the mental realm, Bella finally condensed the soul blade and cleaved Calypso's mirror from head to toe.
The psychic pollution that had plagued her for hours was eliminated. But her mental landscape lay in ruins.
Mental constructs were fragile—quick to build, quick to destroy.
Compared to Kamar-Taj's method of contracting with demon lords for magical power, mind magic had both advantages and disadvantages.
Kamar-Taj's approach was fast and efficient but carried enormous hidden dangers. Demon lords could grant power—and revoke it.
However, Kamar-Taj had survived for ages with proven screening methods. They sought peaceful, sleep-loving demon lords to contract with. Once contracted, the demons slept for millennia. By the time they woke, the contractors had long since turned to dust. Whether the power was revoked hardly mattered.
Mind magic relied entirely on oneself, with little room for shortcuts.
Bella's mental lake had shrunk by eighty percent. The water had evaporated, the lakebed riddled with craters—a clear case of severe damage.
She needed to absorb external praise again to repair the lakebed and refill the lake. This would be painstaking work.
The good news? She'd eliminated Calypso's mirror. In destroying it, she'd gained a portion of the sea goddess's knowledge—including a divine being's unique perspective on universal laws.
This knowledge proved invaluable.
The lake's width and breadth could be reinforced and expanded through continuous praise.
But the lake's depth—her overall understanding of the world—required her own thoughts, her own comprehension.