Witness

For a while, I tumble in the dark while things break around me.

This isn’t a situation I’m new to, per se—I frequently have nightmares of getting tossed around in the dark for hours, only to be saved by the sound of Aunt Sumire knocking on my door. The difference between this and a dream, however, is that my dreams never include the sound of horses screaming in pain, there are multiple explosions instead of just one, and I’ve never once dreamt a situation where I’m holding someone in my arms.

“Ugh…” I groan.

I try looking around, but it’s a mistake. My body won’t cooperate, and the movement is straining. Pain assaults me from every angle as I’m reduced into a whining mess.

“Primot, are you okay?!”

I can’t make out her expression. It’s too dark. Something has collapsed on us, and thin slivers of light poke through where there are gaps. But they aren’t enough. Not to see. Not to think. I feel dazed. She is pressed close to me, and I can feel her body move with every breath as I lay limply on her. The thought that she might be injured too is making everything worse.

I decide that if my journey is ending here, I don’t need her to follow me.

“Don’t worry about me… worry about… yourself.” Every word I force out is met with a sharp pain.

“I’m unhurt,” she says. “You protected me.”

That’s good.

Something calm washes over me, and suddenly, I’m not in pain anymore. Everything goes... warm. A thought comes into my mind that I can nap for a little bit… why not? I did want to do that earlier…

“Oh… I did..?”

There are loud sounds like explosions, and the rubble on top of us is shaking ominously. Vague noises stir in the background, and I feel like I can hear the sound of metal striking metal. Is someone in a fight?

I realised I don’t care. She is here. She makes me feel safe. Her body is soft. My head hurts, so now I’m going to close my eyes, resting in her embrace…

“You… you’re bleeding!” she gasps.

“...Am I? Not surprised… Feel… sleepy.”

“No, you’re not! Don’t even think about it!”

“Mm… Sorry…”

I haven’t even accomplished anything in this stupid place. I guess I’m worthless after all.

Everything goes dark.

***

A young woman stands in front of me. I try calling out to her, but no sound will pass through my lips.

I try looking down at my body, but there is nothing there. It doesn’t exist.

“Are… are you really doing this to me? But I love you,” she begs.

“I know we have our issues, and I know you’re struggling, but we can work through this… don’t sabotage your life. It’s not your fault that you lived. I can help you!”

“...”

“Say something, Daisuke. Please. Don’t give up on us.”

In an instant, the woman suddenly ages, and her face grows old with wrinkles. Her hair, once a youthful auburn, is now jet black with dashes of white near her roots.

“Daisuke, I love you. Take all the time you need to be well, but please… keep trying.”

“...”

“Your mother… she wouldn’t have wanted you to feel this way. Don’t quit.”

Time seems to move impossibly fast again. The woman morphs once more, but this time, I can’t tell if she was getting any older or younger. All I know is that she is impossibly, impossibly beautiful.

Red hair and amber eyes.

A voice that even gods would stop to listen to.

“Are you taking the easy way out again, Quantum?”

“...”

“You’re all talk and no show. You promise to be great, but then you abandon your goals at the first sign of difficulty.”

“...”

“All kings are born destined to become king. Yet there are legendary rulers and fools.”

“...”

“Play the hand you are dealt—no more complaining. The next time we meet, I hope you won’t be so pathetic. Goodbye.”

Then the woman morphed into Annabelle.

***

I jolted awake.

Annabelle?

As that name crossed my mind, a green light bloomed in the dark, and a warmth began to radiate through my chest. Slowly but surely, the warmth turned into a pleasant lull, and feeling gradually returned to my body.

First to recover was my back. It became readily apparent that I was bearing a large amount of weight—remnants of the carriage I’d just been on, mostly the tarp, some wood. This should have been crushing, but somehow, the specific arrangement in which the beams collapsed made my body capable of supporting everything.

Next, my mind. Evidently, something had hit my head during the crash and messed with my brain earlier—at least, I assumed it was a crash, but stagecoaches definitely couldn’t go that fast. A monster attack, maybe? Do monsters even exist in Quanta TCG? Memories and coherent thought came clawing back with brutal clarity, and a million different scenarios of what could’ve possibly happened raced through my mind.

Something’s coming. Those were the last words the girl had said to us before everything went to shit. I knew I had a bad feeling about the carriage, after all. Nevermind that for now.

Third were my eyes. My vision had sharpened immensely, and what I thought was the shadow of the rubble or a lack of light had actually been a massive black spot in my vision. Squinting harder, I managed to make out the blurry impression of a familiar face with blue eyes staring back at me, albeit with a strangely worried expression.

Oh hey… She’s kind of pretty…

…

Pretty?

“WHAT THE FUCK?! Were you trying to take advantage of me in my sleep?! Gah!”

“Wha— But you’re the one on top of— What?!”

“No, no, no! Begone child! Begone!”

“Stop screaming, please! You’re really close to my ear!”

I immediately tried to plank as hard as I could. It didn’t accomplish anything, because the weight of the rubble and Rowan’s armour was something a NEET’s body obviously couldn’t lift no matter how many days of hiking I’d done recently, so all I achieved was shuffling my butt up and down. Realising how futile this was, I hastily fished around my waist for my shortsword, intending to slice the tarp open and make some space—but I thought twice about it when I figured getting into a stabbing accident now wouldn’t be great.

Oh no. I’m stuck.

I’m stuck, and I’m on top of a girl, and I’m going to prison.

I’d somehow found myself on top of Annabelle with no room for Jesus. On top of that, I’d just spent the last ten seconds fidgeting my lower body aggressively… whilst directly on top of her.

“...”

“...”

Annabelle’s breathing went suspiciously heavy.

This is a set up. This has to be a set up.

As more and more light filtered into my vision, and the rest of my senses gradually returned, something… metallic… assaulted my nose, and the feeling of a strange wetness between our bodies was becoming readily apparent. It felt extremely out of place. Soon, it started to aggressively compete with the sweet scent that was wafting off Annabelle’s neck, and I couldn’t help but begrudgingly peek down to see what the source was. I looked at Annabelle’s body with squinted eyes, torn between feelings of curiosity and guilt, and there I saw…

Blood.

A lot of it.

Her robes were a disgusting shade of crimson.

“Fuck—Annabelle, are you okay?! Are you hurt?!”

Pain gripped my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.

Put pressure on the wound. Find something absorbent. Do something. Do it quick—

“I’m fine,” she said. “This is your blood. I managed to heal you in time…”

A wave of relief washed over me. “Oh… right.”

I’d forgotten. I was the one bleeding out earlier.

“Mhm. It’s okay…”

“I’m sorry about your clothes… I…”

“It’s okay, Primot,” she reassured me. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this.”

“...”

“And more importantly, I’m relieved that you’re okay… I thought you were going to die.”

Die.

Right.

I’d nearly died throwing my body over hers in the crash.

This wasn’t a scenario where I had time to joke around. Soren was fighting outside—if not for him, maybe someone or something would’ve searched the rubble and offed us already. And if not for the fact that Annabelle conveniently happened to be a healer, I would definitely have passed. And furthermore if, inconveniently, our positions had been reversed during the crash and she was the one throwing herself over me, I wouldn’t have been able to save her.

Everything that had happened so far was down simply to luck. And at this point if I still continued to rely on that instead of thinking actively about what to do next, what would happen? I didn’t doubt that Soren was capable, but what if he needed help? Who was he fighting? It couldn’t have been a powerful monster, cause we were near a tutorial zone. So how many of them? Why did they come? Sitting back as a passenger and making a joke out of everything was what had brought us into this situation in the first place, even though I knew better than to board the carriage, so it was only right if I took some responsibility.

“You’re absolutely fine, yes?” I asked her again.

“Y-yeah, I think so. I can check later, but… I think so.”

“Good. Which spell did you use to heal me? Was it a strong or weak one?”

“Um… Rejuvenate. Do you know it?”

Rejuvenate
2 Life Quanta
Spell
Slow Speed

Heal a target for 5 HP. Convert any excess healing into Regeneration tokens.

“Of course I know it,” I told her.

Was the sudden motivation I felt related to the healing I’d received, or something I actually wanted to do myself? Well, it didn’t matter. I could go experiment and figure out how HP worked some other time. What I really wanted to know was the resources we had available to us for a potential confrontation.

My understanding of magic so far informed me she had two other unique heals left in her back pocket. I understood this because I’d been slowly memorising every spell in Annabelle’s Codex as we trained together—this was key to note down in case we encountered any danger, because you couldn’t use the same spell too quickly over and over. Just like a card game, once you “played” a spell, you had to wait to draw it again.

Essentially, we could afford to make two big mistakes—assuming neither of us died instantly. She brought me back from the brink of death that’d surely kill someone in the other world. That seemed like a safe enough cushion to take a risk and peek our heads out.

“Okay, here’s the plan. Listen closely.”

She nodded. Or at least, she tried to nod, but our faces were so close it looked more like an awkward squirm. Realising how close we were, I suddenly felt conscious about our intimate positioning, but I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind.

Do or die.

“Use Safekeep. We need to get out of here eventually, so might as well do it now while Soren’s commanding their attention.”

“W-what? What for?”

“To clear the rubble, obviously. Just dump it somewhere later.”

“It doesn’t work that way. You can only use it on equip—”

“But it does,” I cut her off. “Trust me. I don’t have time to explain.”

Safekeep (2): Exile target artifact till this enchantment leaves the battlefield. Persistent. Dispellable.

Every single inanimate object in Quanta TCG was either an artifact or a location, and the concept of poofing an ex-carriage wasn’t any different from Annabelle plopping camp supplies in and out of thin air. And even if it didn’t work, it was no big deal. We’d just move on to Plan B in that case and burst out of the rubble using Annabelle’s plants, even though it’d be more convenient to save that magic for combat.

“U-um, if you really insist, I’ll try…”

“Good. Once you do that, we need to be prepared to stand up quickly and take note of our surroundings. We’ll be vulnerable for a split second when we’re on the ground. Even though we can probably rely on Soren, there might be other threats around that he can’t keep busy.”

The confidence in my voice seemed to stir her into action. “G-got it.” She raised her hand to cast Safekeep—at least, I assumed so because the feeling of her arms wrapped around my back suddenly disappeared—but then she abruptly stopped to ask a question.

“W-wait. If it’s dangerous outside, wouldn’t it be better to stay in here?”

“No. We need to help the others.”

Truth be told, she had a point. I didn’t have an ounce of a clue on how the world’s power scaling worked yet, but I did know Soren’s current form was relatively powerful. The mystery girl probably also possessed hidden powers of her own, so it’d be difficult to convince anyone they’d have problems with an ambush. If we simply waited for them to finish off our mystery assailants, they’d definitely help us out of the wreckage later.

More importantly, if they did lose, then it’d be all the more important that we were hiding under a pile of rubble and playing dead. They were obviously here for them, not us.

However.

I had decided that, one day, if I wanted to be the one protecting Annabelle instead of a stranger, or if I wanted to be the one healing her instead of being dead weight in her arms, or if I wanted to flourish in this world and actually redeem myself—then this was an experience I needed to go through. I didn’t have the capability to use magic, so I needed to capitalise on my knowledge and figure out how to contribute in some other way. There was no better method to achieve this than to gain experience with Annabelle in a real fight. If things got dicey, we’d just run. Fuck them.

A baptism by fire. I suppose I did live through one of those before.

“...I suppose you’re right,” she muttered. “We can’t leave the two of them behind. I am a Templar, after all.”

Then she sighed… and averted her gaze from mine.

“Yeah. I’m glad you understand.”

“F-fine. I’ll try your idea. And f-for the record, I actually am 20.”

“...Okay?” I didn’t quite understand why that was important to bring up now. “If I find out you’re lying about that, by the way, I promise you we’ll never talk again.”

“I’m not, you idiot…”

She exhaled again, and I felt her body relax a tiny bit. I found it ironic, since we were about to rush into a fight.

“Whatever you say. Anyway, you ready?”

“I’m ready, Primot. Let’s do this.”

“Me too. Alright, let’s go. Cast Safekeep—on the count of three. One—”

“Huh? But you said—”

An emerald light enveloped the both of us—and shortly after that, the soft glow of the afternoon sun.