Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 4 Chapter 4 Part 2

Chapter 4 Part 2

The man slowly circled around the observation room, his knife’s radiant blue-steel blade casually flickering as he moved.
“I lied to you. A lot,” admitted Gab in a flat voice. “But they weren’t all lies. Gab is my real name, and I was a member of a band of thieves. I became a member after the boss stepped onto the island, though.”
“What about when you said you really respected the boss?” asked Atsushi, his voice taut. “Did you really cut his throat and kill him?”
“I did. But only for the moment. I killed him only for the time being. I really do respect the guy. He gave me something important.”
Atsushi thought back to where Gab was killed: the pool of blood Gab was lying in and the drop-off behind him where the aspiring phantom thief

was. He’d seen the boss’s slit throat, but no wounds on Gab’s stomach. That was the boss’s blood. After cutting the boss’s throat and creating a pool of blood, he lay in it himself, then pushed the corpse off the edge. That was why there wasn’t much blood around their head honcho.
“Move.” Atsushi’s voice was as tense as a drawn bowstring. “I’m taking Dazai with me. Yosano should be able to heal him with her skill, wherever she is.”
Yosano was the detective agency’s physician with the extraordinary skill to heal wounds, even seemingly fatal ones, in an instant. Nevertheless, she couldn’t bring the dead back to life, so Atsushi had to hurry.
“Oh?” Gab raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that? When I looked into it, I learned that your mentor’s skill nullified all other skills… So wouldn’t touching him nullify that person’s healing skill?”
Large drops of sweat ran down Atsushi’s cheeks. Gab was right. “Atsushi…,” Dazai mumbled feebly. “Don’t…try to…fight him… He’s
a skill user—no, he himself is a skill…”
Dazai was the one who brought me into the detective agency. His ability to nullify other skills, while extraordinary, isn’t oriented toward fighting. He can’t handle being shot or stabbed like I can. I have to act fast, or else he’s gonna die.
“Gab.” Atsushi transformed both of his arms without even being aware that he was turning into a tiger himself. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to hold back.”
“Same here.”
Atsushi leaped forward like a bullet, throwing his right fist toward Gab’s head…then suddenly stopped before throwing a right kick while his body was already turning from the punch. His tiger leg could have bent a steel pole, but Gab didn’t even blink. In fact, he didn’t even move. Instead, an arm emerged from the ground and blocked Atsushi’s kick.
“What?!”
It was a giant arm. Breaking the law of physics, the floor had taken the form of an arm like clay. It was taller than Gab, and its palm could snugly wrap around Atsushi in a fist. The giant hand easily blocked Atsushi’s hardest kick, not even leaving a single mark on its palm.
“That skill of yours never ceases to freak me out, Matasaburo.” Gab didn’t even flinch. “But, hey, it’s not as scary as what I can do.”

The stone arm suddenly extended toward Atsushi’s side. Without even a moment to dodge, the giant hand grabbed his body. The arm then stretched out and threw Atsushi into the glass behind him.
“Gwah…!”
The durable glass wall shattered on impact. An electric shock shot through Atsushi’s body as if he had just been hit by a car.
“You can’t beat me, Matasaburo,” sneered Gab with a wry smirk. “I’ve been protecting this island since before you even knew how to read and write.”
“What…?”
Atsushi looked at Gab. Gab was clearly younger than him, and this island was created over fourteen years ago. He would’ve been an infant then.
“You don’t seem convinced,” said Gab. “But I’m not here to convince you of anything. Good-bye, Matasaburo.”
“Gab,” began Atsushi as the giant hand held his body. “Just who are you…?”
Gab didn’t say a word. But when he wagged his index finger, the floor under him immediately began to transform. He sank. It was as if his legs were being swallowed by quicksand.
“I am the island itself. But I’m not here to protect the people on it. In fact, I don’t plan on ever protecting them, no matter how hard they pray to me.” He chuckled as he sank into the ground. “Later. I’m gonna go have some fun with the weapon. ’Bout time I changed the scenery around here.”
“Legend has it that its power can freely change the shape of the island and has been protecting it from foreign enemies all these years.”
Atsushi remembered what the captain told him. “Wait… Are you…?”
Gab continued to submerge into the floor. It must have been the same skill he used to create the arm. The floor rippled as Gab’s waist, then shoulders continued to sink.
The legendary guardian of the island…who has been one with the island ever since it was created…
“You’re the island’s guardian?”
“Yes and no,” Gab replied with a smile, neck-deep in the floor. “I am Jules Gabriel Verne, the guardian and the destroyer. My skill is known as

The Mysterious Island… Good-bye, Matasaburo.”
Gab’s head then sank into the floor, and he disappeared.
Dazai continued to hemorrhage blood. Anyone could see that his wound was fatal. A broad blade had pierced his chest, severing numerous vital arteries. It wasn’t an amount of bleeding that could simply be stopped by applying pressure to the wound. When the body rapidly lost blood, peripheral blood circulation stopped due to the decrease in blood pressure. Furthermore, it could lead to a disturbance in metabolism in vital organs. The first symptoms were paleness and a rapid heartbeat due to the stress on the sympathetic nervous system, along with ischemic acidosis in peripheral tissue. However, the biggest issue was the reduction of cardiac contractility due to myocardial ischemia. In other words, the stopping of the heart— hemorrhagic shock.
“Dazai!”
Atsushi rushed over to Dazai after managing to break his arm free from the stone hand. Dazai was trying to say something. He opened his mouth while turning to Atsushi with his pale face and moved his lips, but he couldn’t make a sound. His voice didn’t even have the energy to make it to his throat. It was gone. Dazai moved his lips, and Atsushi tried to read them.
“It’s finally happening.” Dazai smiled. “It’s nowhere near as big of a deal as I thought it’d be.”
Atsushi couldn’t take his eyes off Dazai’s lips as they continued to move.
“Good-bye, Atsushi.”
Atsushi’s head grew hot with rage. Death.
Unavoidable death.
Atsushi quickly pulled out his phone and called Kunikida.
“Kunikida! Bring Yosano to the clock tower immediately! Dazai’s been stabbed, and his pulse is dropping!”
“What?!” Kunikida’s voice and the noise of what sounded like a fierce battle could be heard on the other end of the call. “Damn it! Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse!”
Something wasn’t right. The violent noise of battle… The sound of gunfire… Buildings roaring as they shook…
“A bunch of arms just emerged from the ground and began attacking! The other detectives and I are keeping them at bay, but we’ve already got our hands full protecting the tourists!”
What…? But then Dazai’s…!
Dazai was slumped on the floor with his eyes closed. He was smiling like a child on Sunday. He looked as if he could hop up at any moment and yell, “Just kidding!” But his wrist didn’t have a pulse. He wasn’t breathing, either.
“Kunikida,” Atsushi said while placing a finger on Dazai’s chest. “His heart stopped.”
“I see… Atsushi,” Kunikida said as if he was struggling to suppress something. “You know the procedure, right?”
“I do.”
A healing skill wouldn’t work on Dazai due to his skill. That was an unchanging fact. But at the same time, there was a way to heal Dazai using a skill.
“The problem is these attacks,” grumbled Kunikida. “Even if I headed to the clock tower while dodging them all, there still isn’t enough time. Atsushi, you know who the skill user behind this is, right?”
“Yes,” answered Atsushi.
“Defeat them,” Kunikida concisely ordered. “As quickly as you can. There’s no other way. Whoever they are, they probably have the weapon. Defeat whoever’s really behind this so that there won’t be any more victims.”
Defeat Gab.
Atsushi clenched his fist. He wanted to save Dazai. He would do anything to save him, but there were so many issues at hand. The most prominent being…
“There’s no time,” Atsushi growled as if he were going to cough up blood. “I have to resuscitate him within the next two minutes, but I’m not powerful enough to get past the enemy’s skill. At this rate—”
Out of nowhere, somebody grabbed Atsushi by the shoulder from behind.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I have an idea.” It was Wells.

“Wells…”
Atsushi vacantly stared at her. Wells had been stabbed in the chest. She was clearly dead. The camera hanging from her neck faintly shone.
“Sorry, but I can’t walk on my own with this wound. I have an underground base nearby—take me there. I created a room to defend against the Shell. Even with his skill, he won’t be able to reach us easily in there.”
“But…”
Atsushi hesitated. Each second was a grain of sand in the hourglass of Dazai’s life as it faded away. There wasn’t a moment to spare.
“I can extend that man’s life around twenty minutes using the same method I used on myself. So take me. Please,” pleaded Wells as she looked into Atsushi’s eyes. “I don’t want anyone else to die because of me.”
Those words were what moved Atsushi. He helped Wells up and began to walk. It wasn’t easy carrying both Dazai and Wells. While carrying two adults with Atsushi’s tiger arms and legs wasn’t so much of a problem, both of them were taller than Atsushi, so he ended up having to drag their feet behind him.
“My skill allows me to send people’s consciousnesses into the past just once, but it can also manipulate the flow of time in the area to a certain extent,” Wells said hoarsely as Atsushi carried her. “That’s how I slowed down my bleeding. I should be able to do the same for that man, Dazai, as well.”
Atsushi thought back to the underground room when he was there last time. The room had been cool despite the fiery winds destroying and scorching everything on the surface. Wells had been able to manage this by slowing down time in the room.

“But…Dazai’s body nullifies all skills, so I don’t know if you can manipulate the flow of time for him.”
“I’ve seen plenty of skill battles in my day,” Wells explained. “I’ve got a good idea how these things work. Skills that nullify other skills will not activate if the user is dead. In other words, Dazai—or rather, his body— won’t be nullifying any skills, since his heart has stopped. Therefore, I should be able to slow down his flow of time.”
She was right. Before doing any kind of work at the detective agency, the president always made sure everyone knew what each skill would do in any given circumstance. It was rare for a skill to continue even after death. Atsushi’s, Kunikida’s, and even Dazai’s skill would disappear the moment they died.
“And the only way you can resuscitate him is based on that very same principle,” Wells added as she looked at Atsushi. “Right?”
Atsushi silently nodded back.
What to do to bring back the suicidal romantic when he actually died had been considered in-depth with a focus on Kunikida. The optimal method had been beaten into Atsushi’s head as well. Essentially, the method was decided as follows:
First, when Dazai’s heart came to a stop, the blood supply to the brain would cease, and Dazai would die. When this happened, his skill would cease to exist, and other skills would start working on him again. Therefore, his wounds needed to be swiftly treated, and he’d need immediate resuscitation afterward—even the kind of resuscitation they perform at any ordinary hospital such as using a defibrillator to start up Dazai’s heart through electric stimulation. And if that worked, Dazai would go from being “dead” to being “on the brink of death.”
After that, Yosano could use her skill to completely heal his wounds. In other words, it should be possible to heal Dazai as long as he was on the brink of death. However, Dazai’s nullification skill would still try to get in the way, and if Yosano’s skill didn’t work, there would be no way to treat him, since there were no medical devices or any equipment to do a blood transfusion on hand. If that were to happen, then resuscitating Dazai would have been all for naught.
Nevertheless, there was a small margin of opportunity right before the skills would clash. After Dazai was resuscitated and his heart started moving again, there would be a brief window until the blood reached his brain. Since his heart would be beating, this would mean he was on the brink of death, which meant Yosano’s skill would work, and at the same time, Dazai’s brain wouldn’t be functioning, so his skill wouldn’t get in the way, either. This was a 0.5-second window of opportunity.
It was the difference between life and death, and the only method to use a skill on Dazai to heal him. There were no other options.
There were simply too many conditions that had to be met. Would they be able to treat his wounds? Would electrical stimulation start his heart back up? Would the ischemic interval after his heart stopped be short enough that his vital organs wouldn’t necrotize? The odds of it succeeding were low, but they weren’t zero. In addition, the less time that passed after Dazai’s death, the greater the rate of success would be with this resuscitation method.
Originally, the suicide fanatic Dazai hated this method. He even demanded that nobody use it. But…
“This strategy has a time limit,” Wells said with a soft sigh. “I’ll wait underground with Dazai, but even in this room where time flows more slowly, our wounds will most likely be beyond treatment after twenty minutes go by. Therefore, your mission is to defeat the guardian and bring the healer here before that happens. Everyone’s lives rest on your shoulders.”
“There’s no way around it,” growled Atsushi. “Think you can do it?”
“I have to, or Dazai’s gonna die,” stated Atsushi as he glared at a point in space. “Of course I can do it.”