The Flash (Danmachi x OC)

Season 4 Chapter 69 Countdown

They were yelling so loudly it's like they were fighting. Their eyes meet the sky-blue ones that have lost their calm. Her shout is like that of a frenzied criminal. The bitter words hurled at Bell contain no explanation or excuse, only emotion. But—it was enough.

Bell: I understand.

At least for Bell.

Jura: Rabbit Foot, what are you doing? Hurry up and save me! Hurry up and...?

The catman was screaming at Bell as he let the tension drain from his body. Bell's physical body was still standing opposite her, but in his heart, he was no longer opposing her. Jura notices the change. The scene was no longer composed of a criminal, a detective, and a victim. Instead, there were two detectives and one true criminal. And Jura knows it.

Bell: Will you show me your wounds?

Bell ask Jura calmly.

Jura: Huh? What are you talking about...?

Bell: Please show me where your arm was cut.

It just so happens that Bell very, very recently saw a man whose arm had been cut off—the elf Luvis, who had been attacked by the moss huge. Bell didn't want to look at it, but the wound where the monster tore his arm off was really awful. The endless blood, the clothes and equipment stained deep red, the overwhelmingly strong smell of fresh blood.

The sight of his severed arm was so awful Bell felt the blood drain from his head the moment he glimpsed it. But Jura doesn't have any of those symptoms. Sure, his clothes and equipment are covered in blood, but not so much that it would cause irreversible necrosis of the upper arm. The smell of fresh blood that invades one's nostrils was missing, too.

That's what Bell's memory has been trying to tell him all along. That's the sense of incongruence that was flashing in his mind. Until a minute ago, Bell had been so upset he hadn't realized. But now he saw. That missing arm—

Bell: That wound...It's old, isn't it?

Jura glares at Bell angrily. Ryuu said she herself severed his arm and sliced off his ear. But what if she did it in the past, when she was fully consumed by her desire for revenge— during that regrettable period of time Sora told him about with such grief on the eighteenth floor? It makes sense. And it explains a few things.

This catman got upset and refused treatment for his wounds. Could that have been because he was worried about what Bell and the others would discover if they examined his body? Was he afraid Bell and Boris would notice his wounds were old?

In other words, he inflicted his fresh wounds himself. Ryuu hasn't even attacked him yet. There are some other odd things as well. Actually, quite a lot about this whole situation strikes Bell as unnatural. If Ryuu was using magic to cause explosions, then her victims would all have burns on them. But that didn't hold true for one of them: the dwarf Bell had encountered.

He alone was marked with dagger wounds and nothing else. Bell was guessing that dwarf was the only one of Ryuu's enemies whose whereabouts she discovered. And she probably took out her weapon because he resisted.

Bell: I've been thinking this for a while now...but your claims don't add up.

Jura: What are you talking about? I explained...!

Bell: Okay then, why are you alive right now?

Jura:...?!

Bell: If your arm was cut off, your ear was cut off, and you were the victim of magic...why are you not dead?

His opponent was Gale Wind. She destroyed a massive faction single-handedly. She is a legendary Level Four warrior with a bounty on her head. It doesn't make sense that she would capture him but let him escape in the end.