**
Saramago side
Crack
A giant hand came down from the sky and crushed Toma beneath it.
Wait, a giant hand came down from the sky?
Doesn't that mean we're in danger too?
Dante, the first to grasp the danger of that hand, ordered us to flee.
"Everyone! Retreat!"
The battlefield we saw as we ran was far more of a mess than before.
The hand, targeting only living things and crushing them, was descending over the entire battlefield where the Wing soldiers had been fighting.
Thud!
"Whoa!"
Of course, that included us too!
"We're all going to get turned into paste! Got any plan, smart guy?"
Heathcliff, who barely dodged the hand slamming down behind us, said that.
"I'm listening. The possibilities in a mental landscape are too varied to decide rashly..."
"What's there to think about? A true hero never yields to any hardship!"
"Uh... I don't feel like hauling around a corpse that's been mashed into pulp."
Rodion, who said that, seemed to notice Dante struggling along at the very back and added,
"Ah! Sorry, Dante~ I wasn't talking about you!"
That was really awful.
Just because they were the slowest didn't mean they were guaranteed to be the first one flattened, and yet she had to say it like that.
Thud!
Wow, if we keep dawdling, we really will get crushed.
Looks like just running hard was the best way to survive.
**
"Are you still thinking about it? Huh?! Didn't you say you knew everything!"
Heathcliff, whose patience had started scraping the bottom, raised his voice.
I had felt a little hope when I heard Faust say she knew nothing, and looked at Faust with that in mind, but...
"If you're asking whether I have an immediate solution, then yes. I still haven't obtained one."
"What I can say for certain is that there is no Golden Bough in this vicinity. If there were, Dante would have reacted more actively."
Well, of course.
It was my mistake for expecting anything.
"You're kidding me? That's all you've figured out so far?"
Heathcliff looked ready to snap at her again, his brow twitching nonstop, but...
Thud!
Right after that, he saw the giant hand brush past his side by a hair's breadth and silently picked up the pace.
...I should stop thinking useless thoughts and run too.
**
While we were running for quite a while, Gregor suddenly stopped.
What was he trying to do?
"...Gregor?"
"What? Why'd you stop all of a sudden?"
Gregor said, still not even having caught his breath.
"...I think I know."
"If this is my world..."
Then, after catching his breath for a moment, he looked up at the sky.
"We shouldn't dodge that hand."
"...Have you finally lost your damn mind?"
Unlike Heathcliff, who glared at him with a vicious expression, Faust simply asked him a question with a blank face.
"Gregor, are you certain?"
Hearing her question, Gregor slowly laid out his thoughts.
"I've never once lived by my own will."
"This place too is probably a space where resistance itself is meaningless."
"If that's the case... then maybe the answer is to stop resisting."
Heathcliff still looked dissatisfied.
But perhaps because the prisoners were too exhausted to keep running, most of them seemed inclined to follow Gregor's words.
I was the same, of course.
"...You're serious, all of you?"
"We're not going to find a way forward by just running like this, are we? Hah, everyone looks exhausted already."
"And besides... that fingernail... I mean."
Fingernail?
At that word, I stared closely at the nails on the descending hand.
That was...
"You don't see nail polish with that pattern very often."
"If the owner of that palm really is 'that person,' they'll never give me up."
Hearing that word after "that person's" fingernails made my head reel.
"Faust... you, this is the path of my mind, was it?"
"Then it must be certain."
"My path of mind is scheduled to become a dead end from here on out."
"Because nightmares, and paths... have never once escaped that person's control."
A violent headache kept hammering at my skull.
Who was this "that person" Gregor kept talking about, to make my head hurt this badly?
Maybe... someone connected to the past from two years ago?
"Haa, screw it. Let's just see what happens."
Not long after Heathcliff gave up, a huge shadow fell over the ground, and just before it slammed down, it seized us in its grasp.
And then, almost immediately, I felt the nauseating sensation of being lifted into the air.
Ugh... headache and nausea together? This is hell.
Before long, the dizziness subsided somewhat, and what appeared before my eyes was not a battlefield, but a plain corridor in an L Corp branch.
"Did we... come back?"
"We're in the basement of the Lobotomy Corporation branch. It seems we've escaped Gregor's mental landscape."
Faust's calm assessment came to me.
Come to think of it, the headache... is gone.
Who was the owner of that hand, to cause such a severe headache?
I naturally grew curious, but decided not to think about it any further.
If I thought about the owner of that hand, all I'd get was pain.
Hm? Hearing Dante, I turned my head and saw that the prisoners were already walking inward.
"Ah, sorry. I was just thinking for a moment."
With that, I started walking after the prisoners.
Dante looked at me questioningly, then soon joined the prisoners' line.
My curiosity about that person still hadn't faded, but we weren't going to meet them right now, so it didn't matter.
That was what I thought, at least until then.
**
There are bugs.
Not Gregor or the remnants of G Corp, but actual bugs.
"Aaaah!"
Rodion shrieked and hid behind me.
The reason we ended up in this situation was that, in an alley we were passing through under Yuri's guidance, a swarm of bugs that looked like cockroaches suddenly burst out.
Even with a stomach as strong as mine, the sight was still revolting enough that I reflexively lifted my foot to crush them, but the moment I saw Gregor, my foot came back down.
In a situation like this, what to do is left to Dante's choice.
"Seriously? We're really just going to walk past them?"
Rodion stared at Dante in disbelief, but Dante only averted their gaze.
Rodion's face had gone paler than I'd ever seen it, but what could we do? The boss said so.
"Sara, what do you think? You don't think we should just stomp them, do you?"
Even if she looked at me like that, there wasn't anything I could do for her... ah.
"If you really hate it that much, want me to carry you? No matter what, bugs probably won't crawl up that far."
"R-really? Is that okay?"
"Yeah, sure..."
"Thanks, honey~"
Ugh, heavier than I expected.
Even if she was a woman, the weight of a woman who looked to be over two meters tall was enough to crack my expression for a moment.
...She didn't see that, right?
"Sara? Aren't you moving?"
"No. I was just getting my posture right, haha..."
Thank goodness. She didn't see it.
<...Let's go.>
...You saw it, didn't you?
Let's have a calm talk with Dante later.
For now, we had to get through this corridor.
Tap. Tap.
Ugh, the bugs are crawling up my legs.
This is even more disgusting than I thought.
"Ugh... just looking at them is revolting. Thanks for carrying me, honey."
"If you know that, then behave."
"Hey, you two. Stop chatting and walk faster."
Otis pointed that out to us.
How petty.
Of course, she was right, so I just shut my mouth and kept walking.
One day, I'm going to talk back to her.
After that, nothing much happened.
But maybe because everyone was mentally worn out, they all looked more tired than usual.
"Ugh! There won't be any more bugs now, right?"
...Except for one.
I was the one who suggested it, so I had nothing to say, but... I was jealous of how relaxed she looked all by herself.
Honestly, when would this miserable underground ever end?
With a hopeless sigh, I kept walking deeper inside.
**
Ugh, I'm tired.
We kept moving through the branch and took down something similar to an Abnormality.
My body was already exhausted, but my mind was reaching its limit too.
I wish my body at least hurt less...
What waited behind the door I opened with that wish was a spacious, seemingly safe room.
Usually when we enter a room like this, they say to turn the clock back when we come out. Was it going to be the same this time?
With that expectation, I looked at Faust.
What came out of her mouth was...
"Dante, let's turn the clock back."
The moment I heard that, I sat down somewhere convenient.
At least my body would feel better, so that was a relief.
Not long after, the clock turned back.
I was sitting comfortably, waiting for the signal to depart, when Faust suddenly said something out of nowhere.
"Dante, in front of this isolation chamber. Don't you feel something different from everything we've encountered so far?"
Come to think of it, hadn't Dante said earlier that they could sense something when we got near the Golden Bough?
I felt the end of our first journey drawing near.