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"Save me!"
"Block the door so they can't get in!"
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was people running everywhere, screaming.
Holding my spinning head and looking around a bit more, I could tell that this place vaguely resembled the campus of Frigia Academy that I remembered.
Had I really gone back in time, just as she'd said?
"Hah, this isn't a dream, is it?"
"Hey, you!"
"...Me?"
"Yes, you! Just wait here for now. The guards or the professors will come to help soon. So pull yourself together!"
A woman holding a blood-stained sword spoke to me.
She must have mistaken my confusion at suddenly finding myself back in the past for panic caused by the monsters.
Anyway, that wasn't the important part.
If my memory served, this Frigia Academy was close to the port city of Laverin, so whenever something happened at the port, part of the academy's combat personnel had to go provide support.
Given the nature of a port city, attacks by sea monsters were common, so the academy's combat support within the Laverin region was a routine matter.
"They say it's a Kraken!"
"A Kraken?!"
But the monster now bearing down on Laverin was a catastrophe class monster called a Kraken, so everyone capable of fighting had rushed off in that direction.
And with the combat personnel gone, the mermen who had been swept ashore along with the Kraken seized their chance and attacked the academy, leaving the students with no choice but to take a one-sided beating.
Of course, it wasn't as if there were no first-year students at all capable of dealing with mermen, but those with that kind of ability were mostly high ranking nobles who lived in separate dormitories entirely.
"Status."
[Status]
Name: Benjamin
Age: 18
Talent: Reader, Editor
Body: 10
Synchronizing... Mana: 0
Status Ailments: None
Unlike before the regression, the status window now had an added entry called Editor.
Apparently it was the ability to artificially edit a flow of mana whose logic one had already grasped.
"Is this what she meant when she said the distortion of time would help me?"
But talents were mostly only useful when one could actually use mana, so I couldn't help feeling a bit disappointed, thinking it would have been better if she'd just given me my physical abilities or restored me to my pre-regression body instead.
There was no way someone who had lived by the sword alone could suddenly grasp the logic of magic.
If I ever had the spare time, I supposed I'd have to look for some way to make use of it.
"Um... could I borrow that sword?"
Setting aside my confusion at being regressed for the moment, I first needed to confirm whether the contents of the book the robed woman had shown me were true.
If so, the best course of action would probably be to head up to the rooftop garden on the top floor of the dormitory.
According to what the book had described, that was the place where Aden's childhood friend Aria would go up to look at the flowers and end up attacked by the mermen.
If Aden's condition matched the pre-regression timeline, Aria would suffer an injury requiring more than a month of hospitalization, but if Aden had regressed, then Aden would end up at Aria's side.
"No."
A sigh escaped me at her firm refusal to lend me the sword.
I considered just taking it from her, but thinking it over, that would put this unarmed girl in danger, so I gave up on that and looked around instead.
No matter how much I looked, there wasn't even a single common iron sword to be found.
That was because, at this point in time, I still believed I would become a mage and had enrolled in the Magic Department instead of the Knight Department.
"...Then would you mind stepping aside?"
"No."
Wasn't this a bit much, even for meddling?
I needed to hurry outside and find a weapon from some dead knight student, and here she was blocking my way.
If time ran shorter, I'd end up having to steal a merman's harpoon and swing that instead.
So I slipped past her as she stood guard at the door and made my way toward it.
"Wait, how did you...?! Hey! If you go out there now you'll die for nothing!"
Startled to see me slip past so smoothly, like water flowing around an obstacle, she grabbed my arm in a hurry and shouted.
Whether it was because my Body score had dropped or because this woman simply had an incredibly strong grip, my arm hurt terribly.
"Ah, let go! I have someone I need to meet!"
I shouted from the pain, and she let go of my arm, startled, and stepped back two or three paces.
My forearm hurt so much that I must have unconsciously let out some kind of pressure, though I hadn't even realized I was doing it.
It was just something I did out of habit most of the time.
"Tch... what am I doing, scaring a minor like this."
I casually spoke to her as she stood frozen from the sudden shock.
"Haah... sorry about that, but anyway, I need to get to the roof, so don't grab me."
With that, I waved my hand and walked back toward the door.
"If you have people you need to reach... I'll help you get to the roof."
"Oh, really? How?"
"Hmm..."
While she was still thinking it over, I threw the dormitory door wide open without hesitation.
"Wait! Opening the door like that all of a sudden is..."
I smiled at her as she cried out in alarm.
"Weren't you going to help?"
"Huh?"
"Clear a path."
"What?"
"Clear a path to the roof, I said."
There was no need for me to exhaust myself getting to the roof.
Wasting effort like that just wasn't my style.
The idea that I could get to the roof comfortably, without any effort, fell apart the moment we reached the third floor.
Because the woman confidently leading the way ahead of me started throwing up.
Considering that the dormitory room where I'd woken up was on the second floor, we'd only climbed a single floor, which was honestly kind of funny.
"Bleugh!"
Thanks to staff stationed throughout the building, the students on the second floor had been able to evacuate to the shelter quickly, but from the third floor up, that hadn't been possible.
So the moment we stepped onto the third floor, there was no way around the fact that students' bodies were strewn everywhere.
Worse, the mermen had gnawed at various parts of the bodies as if searching for the tastiest cuts, so there wasn't a single intact corpse left on the entire floor.
I understood why a young student would find such a horrific sight hard to bear.
Still, having my time eaten up like this wasn't great.
"There, there, little one... are you okay?"
I'd only patted her back, but she turned and glared at me.
I even patted her, so why was she looking at me like that?
After glaring at me for a moment, she asked with a puzzled expression.
"For someone who's only a first year... how are you so unaffected by all this?"
"Well, it's not like this is the first time I've seen something like this... more importantly, can you move? There are more mermen coming over there."
At my words, she readjusted her grip on her sword and started glaring in the direction of the mermen as if ready to kill them.
If a gaze alone could kill, she probably could have turned not just the mermen but even the Kraken attacking the port into a plate of boiled octopus in an instant.
"Give me your sword."
But that was that, and this was this.
Whether it was her mental state being shaken by the sight of the corpses, or whether rage had simply clouded her judgment, the hand gripping her sword was trembling.
Whichever it was, it was plain to see that the outcome wouldn't be good either way.
"What?"
"I said give me the sword. In that state, could you even cut a hair off a merman's head?"
"...!"
"Oh, right... they don't have hair, do they?"
At my comment treating the mermen as bald, she stared at me for a moment with a bewildered expression.
Then she held out her sword.
"Thanks. Rest for a bit."
Lightly swinging the sword, I ran out toward the approaching mermen.
I'd gone through all sorts of hell to push my Body score past 300, and here I was, waking up back at a measly 10 points.
Come to think of it, with my Body score lowered, my body's durability must have dropped too.
Getting hit even once by a merman would probably kill me, but well, it wasn't a problem as long as I didn't get hit.
[Harpoon aimed at the heart] [Harpoon aimed at the left arm]
Having fought through countless battles before the regression, I'd naturally come to realize something.
Starting from intermediate rank monsters, mana naturally flowed into every attack.
The fact that mana flowed meant that, through Reader, I could predict attacks, and if I could predict the direction of an attack, then by further calculating the gap in Body scores, I could move ahead of time and engage in exchanges that seemed almost transcendent.
Watching the letters rising from the harpoons, I dodged slightly to the right and slashed at the throat of one of the two mermen.
Unfortunately, it only ended up as a shallow gash across the throat.
Setting aside my disappointment, I swung my sword once more, and the harpoons dropped from the mermen's hands.
If I couldn't cut through something thick, I supposed cutting through something thin would do just fine.
Fingers, for example.
I would have been satisfied with just damaging their hands, but seeing them get severed made me realize the sword really was a good one.
"Kyuu!"
The mermen let out furious shrieks, apparently in a great deal of pain from their severed fingers.
Savoring those shrieks, I swept back the hair that had been blocking my view and put on a solemn expression.
"With my body like this, I have no choice but to use this technique. Let me apologize in advance."
Not understanding what I'd said, the mermen bared their hidden teeth and charged.
Watching them move, I crouched down, lowering my stance.
It was the trump card that had saved my life more than once back in my mercenary days.
As the mermen came within range, I kept my low stance and slashed past them as they charged straight at me.
"Hmm... one got cut cleanly, but the other one..."
Turning around, I found one merman clutching its groin and screaming, and another already collapsed, foaming at the mouth.
The one that had been cleanly severed was screaming, while the one where the cut had failed appeared to have simply passed out.
Given the nature of mermen, only the males could come up onto land.
I'd known that from the start, so it wasn't as if there had been any other outcome, but somehow a pang of guilt rose in me anyway.
Probably because we were both men, after all.
Sorry... be born with something bigger in your next life.
Regardless, I needed to finish things cleanly, so I drove my sword into the throat of the merman that lay screaming on the ground.
Since that was the spot I'd already wounded earlier, I was able to finish it off relatively cleanly.
"W-what was that move just now...!"
Behind me, she muttered in a startled voice.
For those who would one day become knights of this country, watching someone cut off a monster's manhood probably wasn't a pleasant sight.
In fact, I'd used this method in fights against several knights before, and every one of them had shouted at me, calling me a coward, practically wailing about it.
"Just pretend you didn't see that. And since we don't have time, let's hurry up and go."
I hurried along the woman, who had been standing there dazed.
If I left her like that, some merman that had been gnawing on corpses nearby was bound to jump out and attack.
It was a bother, but I had no choice but to bring her along.
Once I confirmed she was following, I rested the sword on one shoulder and strolled leisurely toward the next floor.
Once the neutering of the mermen began in earnest, getting up to the fifth floor wasn't particularly difficult.
"This is the roof."
We arrived at the rooftop before I knew it.
Quietly opening the door leading into the rooftop garden, I saw the bodies of dead mermen scattered everywhere.
Judging by the wounds, all of them split clean in two, I could roughly guess who had done this.
"Aden, I was so scared... hic!"
In the middle of the garden, quietly holding and comforting his childhood friend Aria was a man, Aden.
She was completely uninjured, and given how Aden had swung his blade so freely here, it seemed this was the Aden who had regressed.
And the fact that he was here meant...
"Haah... so everything I saw in that book really is true."
I badly wanted to grasp the current situation in more detail, but with the two of them embracing and lost in each other, it seemed awkward to interrupt.
"Hm...? You're just leaving?"
After watching them for a moment, I turned away without any lingering attachment, and she called out, sounding puzzled.
Ignoring her question, I carefully closed the rooftop door and began organizing everything I'd figured out so far.