"Senpai, you're awake."
Mash helped Fujimaru Ritsuka up as he rubbed his eyes, looking at him with concern.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah."
The groggy feeling had yet to fade, and Fujimaru felt somewhat lightheaded.
He had thought too much before going to sleep last night. Sleep itself had merely been a means of escape for him.
"I'm fine now, Mash."
Patting Mash on the arm, Fujimaru stood up and forced both his mind and body awake.
It was a habit that had endured through countless crises.
What good would all his thinking do, anyway?
Just as Napoleon had said, since he had chosen to keep fighting in this Lostbelt, chosen his own history, chosen Proper Human History, this cruel struggle was inevitable.
Rather than agonizing and wallowing in confusion, he might as well press onward stubbornly.
Keep moving forward.
"Today, we're heading back to the Shadow Border. Are you ready, Mash?"
Fujimaru took the Olerus Snowboard that had been put away earlier from his bag.
"Oh! What kind of tool is that? It looks like a snowboard?"
Napoleon leaned over with an intensely interested expression.
He had actually used a snowboard to move quickly around here before, but that one had already broken, and he had not had time to make a new one.
The group left the cave, ready to set off, but—
"Senpai, magical energy—"
"Something seems to be approaching us at high speed!"
Mash suddenly cried out.
On the magical energy radar she carried with her, she could sense something rapidly closing in on them.
"Is it a giant or Valkyries?"
Fujimaru instantly entered a combat stance, pulling out his magical energy hand cannon as he questioned Mash.
"No, it isn't. It's something much larger—"
"Yo, Chaldea. Hello there."
Whoooosh—
A freezing wind swept in, driving the