Episode 17 – Heart III
Serena kept staring at the lance impaled in her own chest.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She simply gazed at the lance stuck through her chest as if it were someone else’s problem.
By that point, it was true—she no longer felt the pain of the lance, nor even the pain from being kicked earlier by the creature.
She assumed that the thick lance had pierced straight through her chest, armor and all. Its tip had likely passed through her body and embedded itself into the wall behind her. But that was only her assumption—Serena couldn’t tell whether it had actually gone that far.
Because by now, she had lost all sensation.
She couldn’t feel the heartbeat of the dragon’s stomach, whose walls she was leaning against. She couldn’t feel the fabric of her clothes. Even the cold touch of the lance skewering her chest was gone. And because of that, she couldn’t tell whether the lance had pierced the wall and caused the dragon’s blood to spill out on the other side.
“Amarelo! Get Serena!”
A deep, booming man’s voice reached her ears. It must have been the big man.
He swung his great spear as if to drive off the creature in front of Serena. The creature yanked its lance out of her chest and leapt back to gain distance from him.
The big man immediately stepped in front of Serena to shield her, while the other man rushed over to her side.
“A-Are you all right!?”
The man in front of her said, but Serena couldn’t even answer.
She covered her mouth with her hand and coughed—blood poured out.
Staring at her bright red hands, she murmured to herself between more gurgling coughs of blood.
Ah… so I’m going to die.
Amarelo immediately drew his wakizashi and sliced open the armor over her chest, then peered at the exposed wound.
Right in the center of her chest—around where the heart should be—a gaping hole was pumping blood out like a fountain.
It was a deep, massive wound.
Amarelo was struck speechless for a moment by the sight. He could see white bone and what looked like the heart itself.
He instantly understood—there was no saving her.
Because—this was a dungeon.
They had no proper medical tools. Amarelo wasn’t a doctor or a healer. He checked his belongings, but he only had a hand towel and some simple portable rations. He quickly looked through Serena’s belongings too, but she only had a few bandages.
Amarelo pressed the bandages together with his hand towel and tried to plug the hole in her chest, but they were immediately soaked red. The blood gushed so violently that even his hands were dyed crimson as he pressed down from above.
It was clear—this tiny amount of bandaging would never close Serena’s wound.
“Nada-dono! Do you have any healing potion!?”
Amarelo asked, placing his hopes on the last possibility—
“No! I left it behind—everything got eaten away by the acid!”
Nada shouted back.
Apparently, Nada had nothing left either.
He yelled while fighting the creature, but in truth, Nada was already badly battered. Up until now, the three of them—Amarelo, Serena, and Nada had barely managed to hold their own together. Now Nada was facing the monster alone.
And he was fighting to stop it from getting to Serena and Amarelo.
Nada launched a relentless assault to keep the creature’s attention off the two injured ones.
He gripped the crescent blade in his right hand, a kukri in his left, battling the creature at point-blank range. He never stopped swinging the crescent blade. No matter how the creature dodged, he chased with more attacks. The creature mostly blocked with its lance. Whenever that happened, Nada—fighting one-handed—would lose in strength, so he would immediately shift direction, twist his body to evade the lance, and extend the crescent blade for another strike.
This time, the creature tried to retreat from Nada.
Nada instantly hurled the kukri at it.
The creature’s attention shifted from Serena and Amarelo back to Nada. That was exactly what Nada aimed for, and he once again swung the Green Dragon Crescent Blade. The creature couldn’t afford to ignore that attack and refocused on him.
Nada continued to swing the blade, opening one shallow wound after another.
He no longer dodged the lance if the blow wouldn’t be fatal.
Dodging would only give the monster time.
And time was something he refused to give.
That was exactly why he didn’t hesitate to swing his crescent blade, even if a lance grazed his flank or thigh. He forced an opening there and sought his chance to win.
However, none of his attacks had much effect on the insect. Its armor was too thick. That chitinous shell, like a suit of metal plating, did not allow Nada’s slashes to pass through easily. One of the reasons for that was because Nada prioritized not the weight of a single blow, but rather using his left hand—wielding the kukri knife or the Solideum—to create pressure through sheer number of strikes, preventing the insect from having any openings.
He did all of it to protect Amarelo and Serena.
But his efforts were in vain.
“It seems… this is as far as I go…”
Serena said this while coughing up blood onto Amarelo.
Her vision was already blurry.
She could no longer distinguish where the battling insect ended and where Nada began.
“Serena-dono! Stay with me! If you hold on just a little longer—!”
Amarelo said that, but in truth, he had already accepted that Serena’s chances of survival were all but gone.
Even so, the reason he was still pressing bandages tightly against her chest was that Nada had asked him to. And if the question was whether he should give up here and go assist Nada… he knew that was not the path he should choose.
“…I know. I know full well it’s impossible now.”
Serena murmured, sounding resigned.
So this is what it feels like to die.
Her barely functioning mind drifted through that thought.
The final sensation she felt was—cold.
It was cold.
Her body.
Even though she should have been wrapped in her own warm blood, Serena felt unbearably cold.
It was as if the heat was draining out of her. As if the life she had walked with until now was leaking out of her body as “warmth.”
—So this is what it means to die.
That was what Serena thought. A crushing sense of loss washed over her.
Even at the brink of death, she saw no panorama of past memories flashing by.
There was only cold.
An endless, merciless cold.
“Serena-dono!”
It felt as if someone nearby was calling her name over and over, but Serena could no longer hear properly.
She felt nothing but the cold.
So she would die like this—cold.
If only… just a little more warmth…
With that final feeling, the last thing that entered Serena’s fading sight was the battle between Nada and the insect.
Perhaps because she was right on the edge of death, she could see the fight clearly.
“Goddammit!”
The voice echoing through the chamber of flesh belonged to Nada.
He was still swinging his crescent blade.
But he was being overwhelmed by the insect immediately afterward.
Mounted on his left hand was the Solideum. The kukri knife, having been thrown once earlier, lay somewhere on the ground.
He wasn't strong enough. That was what Nada felt.
Against this hybrid insect—half-human, half-beast, he was utterly lacking in both muscle and mass.
Even now, he stretched his crescent blade toward the creature’s face with one arm. But it was too far. No matter how large Nada was, no matter how oversized the Green Dragon crescent blade might be, it still wasn’t enough reach against the monstrous size of a creature that seemed as though it were mounted on a horse.
Nada’s slash was easily blocked by the shield attached to the creature’s left hand. The insect then raised its forelegs high, bringing them down with that momentum toward Nada.
He considered dodging—but abandoned the thought at once, rolling instead beneath the insect’s feet.
That place felt like a storm to Nada. The four legs stomped down on him one after another, each step stronger than the last. Any individual strike would likely be fatal. If his head were crushed even once, he would die instantly.
Breaking out in cold sweat, Nada raised his crescent blade to strike at the abdomen of the insect’s “horse” half—but before he could, the weapon was pinned down by one of its legs. Unable to withstand the impact, Nada lost his grip on the blade.
Even so, he didn’t stop attacking.
He pulled back his left arm and triggered the Solideum, releasing its blade.
A thin, silver edge—cold and clear like ice.
With it, he struck the very point he had aimed for earlier with the crescent blade.
As Nada had aimed, the armor plating on the horse's underbelly was thinner, and the Solideum pierced it. Acid splattered onto Nada’s left shoulder, and his skin festered, but the wound was shallow. Even if he managed to injure the creature, that Solideum blade was nowhere near enough to deliver a fatal blow.
The moment the Solideum sank into the horse-part, Nada paused just slightly as he tried to drive it in deeper.
The horse seized that opening and kicked Nada full-force with its foreleg.
Even Nada couldn’t dodge that one; the blow landed squarely on his stomach. But because he was thrown backward, he escaped with only the twisting agony in his gut. In exchange, the shape of the hoof was imprinted into his abdomen.
Even so, Nada had no time to lie sprawled on the floor.
The monster’s focus immediately shifted to the two—Serena and Amarelo.
Nada forced his body up. Maybe because of the damage he’d taken, his knees buckled, but he ignored it and dragged himself upright. His lowered gaze caught the kukri knife that had fallen nearby—the one he’d thrown at the monster earlier.
Since he didn’t have his main weapon, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, he snatched up the kukri and gripped it in his right hand. Then he sprinted with everything he had toward the creature charging at Serena and Amarelo.
Thankfully, Nada’s body felt light. He wore no heavy armor now, and he wasn’t carrying the massive crescent blade.
So he used that lightness, swung behind the creature, and leapt onto it—
As if mounting the horse-part.
“From here, there’s no way in hell you can hit me!”
The creature bucked wildly, thrashing its entire body like a rodeo beast trying to fling Nada off.
Just as Nada expected, the creature couldn’t land a proper hit on the attacker perched on its back. Its lance-arm, its shield-arm, even the horn growing from its head couldn’t reach him.
With the advantage secured, Nada gripped the kukri with both hands and jammed it into the human-torso’s back, right between the armor plates, gouging deep.
The acid that served as the creature’s blood burst from its back, splashing across Nada’s face and hands, but he refused to loosen his grip on the embedded kukri.
He gritted his teeth, clinging to the knife with desperate strength.
The monster went berserk, furiously thrashing in place, trying to shake Nada off.
Nada was lifted completely into the air, hanging from the kukri’s handle alone, but even then, he didn’t let go, his expression twisted with sheer determination.
However, before Nada’s grip could fail, the kukri failed him. The blade, corroded by acid, snapped. Its broken shards remained wedged between the armor plates as the knife’s body broke off.
Nada’s body was hurled through the air and crashed onto the floor.
The creature no longer paid any attention to the other two. Its gaze was fixed solely on Nada.
He landed on his back, tried to rise immediately—but before he could stabilize himself, the creature charged in and slammed him with a full-power body blow.
This time, Nada couldn’t lessen the impact. The hard hoof smashed into his abdomen, sending him rolling across the floor as he screamed. Blood spilled from his mouth. Even so, he didn’t allow himself to lie there. He discarded the useless, broken kukri and struggled to stand again. His body wobbled from accumulated damage.
The creature leveled its lance-arm at its side and sprinted straight toward Nada.
Nada tried to dodge—but his body wouldn’t move.
His face turned pale blue; he couldn’t breathe.
The hoof strike earlier had hit him in the solar plexus.
Watching the lance tip rush toward him, Nada understood he was finished. But all that came from his throat were wheezing, leaking breaths.
—So this is it, Nada thought, glaring at the incoming blade, fighting to move right until the end, but his body simply wouldn’t obey.
And then—
“—UOORYAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!”
—Just before the lance hit him, something struck from the side, knocking the creature off its charge path.
The newcomer was a man with bright red hair.
A man who wielded a silver-white longsword in both hands.
“Hey, hey, HEY! Why the hell are you guys having all the fun by yourselves?! Let me join in too!”
The man—Bramia—said this casually as he stood tall after blocking the monster’s attack on Nada.
“Shut up. Your voice is pounding in my skull…”
Nada finally managed to escape the worst of his breathing paralysis. Holding his stomach, he somehow steadied himself enough to speak.
And the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
“That’s what you say to the guy who just saved your life!? Hah!?”
Bramia stomped toward him, shouting.
“…More importantly… what about Serena?”
Nada’s concern was not for the monster, but for Serena—who, from what he’d seen earlier, had been on the verge of death.
“She’ll be fine! That healer’s a real prodigy, isn’t he?”
Along with Bramia’s words, Nada looked toward where Serena lay—and Dan was already there.
Just seeing Dan and Bramia—two incredibly reliable allies—join the fight made Nada feel like he could push himself a bit further. He immediately ran over to his fallen Green Dragon Crescent Blade and picked it up.
◆◆◆
“You’re safe now.”
Dan approached Serena and Amarelo as he said this.
“Dan-dono, Serena’s wounds…?”
Amarelo’s hands were stained red—both completely soaked with Serena’s blood as he desperately pressed bandages against her chest, trying to keep her alive.
Serena also noticed Dan’s arrival; her eyes quivered faintly. But it was undeniable—she was already on death’s door.
“Don’t worry, Amarelo. If someone’s ninety percent dead, I can still bring them back. You can let go now. Thank you, Amarelo. Thanks to you, her life has been preserved up to this point. Leave the rest to me. More importantly… isn’t there something far more important still waiting for you to do?”
As Dan spoke, he gently removed Amarelo’s hands from Serena’s chest and shifted his gaze toward Nada and Bramia.
Amarelo seemed to understand exactly what Dan meant. Wearing a grin like a fish returned to water, he said:
“Indeed. It seems saving people isn’t as suited to me as taking the lives of monsters—this one is far more my style.”
With that, Amarelo sprinted off toward the other two.
Dan didn’t bother to watch him leave. He immediately removed the bandages covering Serena’s wound and examined the gaping hole through her chest. The bleeding had slowed compared to earlier.
As if he had already figured out the best possible treatment, he quickly reached into his bag and pulled out several vials of potions and a needle threaded with surgical string. Then he spoke to Serena:
“Serena, it’s alright. You’re still alive. And you’re going to keep on living. I swear I’ll save your life—I'll definitely save your life.”
Serena could no longer respond. She couldn’t even cry tears of relief at Dan’s arrival.
But there was one thing—one single feeling—she clearly sensed:
Warmth.
It felt like warmth was returning to her body.
From Dan’s voice.
From the heat of his hands.
As Serena basked in that warmth, relief washed over her…and like falling asleep, her consciousness quietly faded away.
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