Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World. Volume. 11.
◇◇◇
Before starting please visit and bookmark our website dranimetv.com to listen audiobook of this Awesome series.
Also, Become our PATREON member to get series you wanted Faster and Earlier with Awesome Merch and Events.
So please check it out and let’s get started.
Diamond. diamond. diamond.
◇◇◇
‘Chapter 2:- GIRL’S GOSPEL.’
Sub-chapter 1.
—Instantaneously, Subaru got the sensation that time had simply stopped.
It was an odd feeling, but he remembered having that sensation before. When his life was in danger, his brain’s survival instincts kicked in, urgently trying to keep its body alive—from there, things would be decided in seconds.
Why was Elsa there? He had no time to ponder such a question.
It was not why he needed to think about, but rather, how? Calmly, to the extent possible, he tried to grasp the situation he was in.
On the one hand, the black-robed butcher was in the doorway; on the other hand, inside the room, Subaru and Frederica were sitting on sofas, and Ram was standing rooted to the spot, cane in hand—but they were not the only ones present.
“”
—Petra was there.
Elsa had made the young Petra stand right beside her as she opened the door. A blade rested against the girl’s throat, and her round eyes had large tears welling up in them.
He understood. She’d led Elsa to the room. Elsa forced her to, forbidding her even from crying.
Right then, there was surely a vortex of fear wildly swirling within Petra’s heart. Her life was in danger; she’d been made to lead Elsa to Subaru and the others; she wanted so desperately to cry out, “Help me”—
“…Frederica, Ram, Subaru…”
With a quivering voice, Petra called out their names.
What could he do for that voice? He wanted to nod to let her know to rest easy, to tell her it was all right for her to cry—
“—Run!!”
“”
Instantly, Petra shouted not “Help me” but “Run,” stoking a searing-hot fire in the trio’s hearts—for Subaru, it was because he recognized the great threat; for Ram, it was the butcher’s ghastly aura; and for Frederica, it was seeing the girl’s tears.
“El Fulla—!!”
In a show of force, Ram raised her cane and unleashed a blade of wind at maximum velocity. Mana coalesced into an invisible slash, tearing its way toward the leisurely standing Elsa. The blade of wind could not be stopped with physical force. However—
“What a refreshing breeze. But the sunlight is gentle today… You needn’t be so considerate.”
Elsa maneuvered her nimble upper body, evading the wind blade of certain death. The figure in black dodged a continuous series of attacks with great ease. It was as if she could read the wind—no, it wasn’t merely a figure of speech.
Ram had launched her attacks in such a way as to avoid Petra, who had been taken as a hostage. Elsa took advantage of that, slipping into the blind spots between her and the wind to dodge the blades of air.
“If you were willing to hit this little maid along with me, it might be a different story…”
“—Unfortunately, it is an ironclad rule in this household that servants support and aid one another!”
“Oh my.”
From behind, Elsa raised an eyebrow, stroking Petra’s cheek, which made something catch in the girl’s slender throat. Both of Frederica’s arms whipped out as she leaped into close combat, apparently aiming to tear Elsa’s torso asunder.
The five-fingered strike was similar to the martial arts move known as a Tiger Claw. But there was one simple difference: The two arms Frederica was attacking with had transformed into genuine bestial claws.
Her slender, pale fingers changed shape and became the talons of a tenacious, ferocious beast, and both of her arms were now wicked implements for the rending of flesh. With a cacophony of furious creaking sounds, sparks flew between Frederica’s bestial claws and Elsa’s kukri.
“Partial transfiguration…! Demi-human blood, yes? Delightful!”
“Thank you for the unwanted praise… I can do this, too! Petra!”
With Elsa overjoyed by the unexpected clash, Frederica lowered her stance in front of the butcher. The instant she called out Petra’s name, the girl’s round eyes flew open.
As the girl stood still, a golden sash seemed to stretch before her. It was a slender animal tail covered with golden fur stretching from the back of Frederica’s skirt.
“!”
The instant she understood that, Petra leaped toward the tail. At the first touch, Frederica used the tail to yank Petra close, pulling out of the butcher’s range with the girl in tow.
When Petra leaped away, Elsa tried to close the distance with her blade, but Ram wouldn’t allow it.
“Fly into pieces!!”
Robbed of her hostage, and thus her safety zone, Elsa was enveloped by wind. Spherical wind blades expanded to cut off her escape route, converging on their prey in the center all at once, the surrounding gale blowing savagely.
“”
It was certain-death timing. Fresh blood spattered about, and there was no doubt the wind had bitten into Elsa. But—
“Her arm…!”
“Ahh, ow, ow… I thought I was going to die.”
Lifting her cruelly gouged-out arm aloft, Elsa licked the blood trickling from the terrible wound.
It was a painful-looking injury, but that single arm was the only damage she had taken. Elsa must have used her arm as a shield while the blades of wind flew in, minimizing the damage. At a glance, it seemed like a reckless choice, but it had very much been the optimal course of action—
“You are a detestable woman.”
“I rather like you, Miss Medium-Size Maid.”
When Ram spat a scathing comment, Elsa shifted her kukri around with her intact arm. One by one, the dully gleaming knife blade displayed the faces of each of the four in the room besides Elsa when she said, “A man and three women, maids large, medium, and small. I shall line you up on the table and compare what is inside your bellies.”
“A pick-up line even worse than Garf’s. In that case— Barusu!”
“I’m on it—!!”
Petra, in Frederica’s embrace, landed behind the others. That instant, at Ram’s signal, Subaru heartily thrust his right arm toward Elsa.
His silent observation of the situation up to that point was not because he lacked the power to intervene. Of course, that was a plenty good reason, but more importantly, he had been calculating the right time.
—Time to play the trump card he’d decided to use in advance should he encounter Elsa.
“—Shamaaaaaaak!!”
He was weaponless, with no means of striking back, with inadequate preparations and resolve, and he was engaged with an enemy defying all expectations. However, the least he could do was take advantage of the best card in his very meager hand. He fired up the imperfect magic reactor inside of him, causing the blood coursing through him to light up from its heat. “Don’t use it,” warned Ferris’s voice in the back of his head.
The instant he crushed his hesitation between his molars, black mist explosively flooded out of his right hand.
Less a shadow of the light and more a thick, all-consuming darkness, the black-attired woman that was his target was swallowed whole. Through the power of magic, the spells victim would plunge into incomprehension, robbed of its powers of thought and movement.
“How’s that…! If you can climb over that wall of oblivion, then…”
Managing to cast his magic exactly as intended, Subaru let fly with some caustic words—and the next moment, it arrived.
“—Giii?! Gaaaah!!”
With the sound of something being sliced apart, nearly unendurable pain exploded in the center of his skull and torso.
The excessive pain blew Subaru’s thoughts away. As he screamed, his vision was dyed in a mix of red and white. Wringing mana out of his incomplete Gate made him feel parched and numb at the same time. Agony came crashing down on his soul.
His vision went blurry, and strength drained out of his knees. At that rate, he’d lose his grip on reality, and with it, his mind—
“Subaru!”
A moment before plunging into darkness, a distant voice and the touch of a palm connected to his mind.
His dimming vision beheld a teary-eyed Petra right in front of him. Her voice was making his heart burn hotter.
He had no time to yield. For a brief moment, he forgot the pain that was shredding his nerves and chipping away at his soul. During the time that the “bluff” was effective, Subaru grasped her hand back.
“—We’re pulling out!”
“This will get a little rough!” “Hyaaa! M-Miss…?!”
When Ram swiftly decided they must retreat, Frederica put a hand around Petra’s waist without hesitation. Then, her remaining arm pulled the wobbly Subaru against her chest as well. It was a soft sensation.
“A-at a safe time I’d like to appreciate this more thoroughly…!”
“As if I’d let you touch me normally! Anyway, out from the window—“
Subaru, still moaning from pain, made a joke that earned a blunt reply from Frederica as she headed to the back of the room. If she broke that window, they’d be able to jump down all the way to the mansion courtyard. The Shamak smoke screen wouldn’t postpone things for long. Instant assessments, instant decisions, and instant actions were required at that moment—
“uu?”
When Frederica crouched down, Subaru realized something soft had hit his back.
Something felt wrong from around his left shoulder and shoulder blade. Breathing hard, he twisted his neck to check. Something like a skewer was sticking out of it. The lingering shudder of the long, slender object was proof that it had hit only moments ago.
—Countless similar objects came flying from the direction of the black haze all at once.
“—Fredericaaa!!”
He shouted. It didn’t come in time.
A flurry of sounds followed as the sharp, glimmering surge sank into soft flesh—
“!!!!” “El Fulla!!”
—The roars of a demon and beast layered atop one another as a blast of wind blew them out of the reception room.
Sub-chapter 2.
Clearing the reception room, Subaru and the others fell straight toward the mansion courtyard.
The expected blow from the fall never arrived thanks to an exquisite performance by Frederica, landing on the grass from the second story with Subaru and Petra under her wing. But the cost of the retreat had been unexpectedly high.
“Miss Frederica!!”
Thrown by the landing, Petra raised her voice into a near-shriek as she rolled on the grass. Her gaze was on Frederica, down on one knee in the yard with skewers stuck in her bloody back.
“I…underestimated our opponent…!”
Frederica was making labored breaths as slender skewers rose from her back like a mountain of swords. The skewers were nearly eight inches in length, and more than a few had doubtless reached her internal organs.
Frederica wasn’t the only one who understood their might, for Subaru had gotten a taste as well.
“Ow……! Shit! She’s like Julius: an enemy that Shamak doesn’t work on…!”
“Surely not. She simply threw them past of the cloud of darkness. She has exceptional intuition.”
Subaru wailed at the skewer impaling his right shoulder as Ram stated her thoughts. Examining Subaru and Frederica’s wounds, her refined eyebrows gently formed a scowl.
“There is no one here capable of using healing magic. If I remove the skewer, you will die of blood loss.”
“I don’t have the courage to touch or even look at it twice, let alone pull it out… Did you get Elsa?”
“I blew the entire room away, but I didn’t get the sense that I hit her. We cannot be optimistic.”
“Damn it all…! I thought I’d bought us a little time at least…”
Gritting his teeth at Ram’s reply, Subaru quietly lamented that no one present was suited to treating their injuries. Previously, Rem had healed his wounds, and Beatrice had healed graver ones still—that was when he belatedly realized it.
“Rem and Beatrice are both…!”
Both were still in the mansion, and Elsa was right there with them.
At that point in time, the idea of running vanished. He couldn’t distance himself from the mansion with both of them inside.
“If we don’t save the two of them…!”
Burning with the pain of his wound, he thought at full-speed, examining their options.
One thing for certain was that Rem was in the mansion’s east wing. The problem was that Beatrice was constantly running her Passage spell. At that critical juncture, the peculiarities of the Passage became poison.
—If, then and there, he prioritized saving Rem, could he hope for Beatrice to deal with the matter herself? Considering the capabilities of the Passage, that was without a doubt another potential plan.
As a matter of fact, at the height of the battle with the Witch Cult some days before, Subaru had failed to bring Beatrice out of the mansion; she’d remained behind, trusting in the power of the Passage during the decisive battle.
If the conditions were identical to back then, the possibility harm would befall Beatrice was—
“Am I…stupid? No, I am stupid. The situation’s totally different from last time…!”
—The Witch Cult’s objective and Elsa’s objective were fundamentally different.
In the end, the Witch Cult’s target—Petelgeuse’s target—had been Emilia. Since they had no information about the occupants, leaving Beatrice behind at the mansion was a viable option because she was wholly unrelated to their objective.
However, Elsa was different. That butcher’s objective was clearly to slaughter everyone in the mansion. She’d targeted Subaru, Frederica, and Petra; naturally, she’d try to kill Rem and Beatrice, too.
“”
He couldn’t leave them behind. He couldn’t. There was no way he could just let them die.
So even without a flash of inspiration for a way to save everyone, he had to act before his useless brain burned out completely—
“Barusu.”
“What?! Right now, I’m thinking of a way to get Rem and Beatrice out of there somehow…”
Subaru was desperately trying to think when Ram abruptly called out to him. When he looked at Ram, it seemed like his burning brain was leaking out of his earlobes while he desperately searched for a way out of their predicament.
As he prepared himself to hear a proposal for a comeback from the brink of certain doom from her pink lips—
“—Given our current situation, the best thing to do is leave those two at the mansion while the four of us escape.”
“Wha?”
Their equal-height gazes met, and the declaration, delivered with great firmness, blanked out Subaru’s thought process.
His eardrums trembled, conveying the words to his brain, his mind immersed in the words as he arrived at comprehension of what she had said to him. Then, the instant he achieved understanding, his emotions came to a boil.
“Wh-what are… What, are you—! What! The hell are you saying!!”
“Angry shouts get us nowhere. Please compose yourself. I believe it is an exceptionally natural thought.”
“Like hell it is! Rem’s in the mansion! Your little sister!! She loves you, and you love her! She’s your little sister; it’s natural for you to protect her!!”
The moment he shouted, the pain of his wound increased. But he didn’t care. Filled with agony and rage, he spat blood as he slammed his ferocious emotions into Ram as hard as he could.
However, though showered by Subaru’s voice, Ram continued with a serene look on her face.
“It is the correct decision under the circumstances, nothing more. Losing Ram and Frederica, and, more to the point, Barusu, will be a heavy blow to our faction. Such sacrifices must be avoided.”
“But! That means sacrificing…!”
“I suppose so. She may well be Ram’s little sister— But if she is Ram’s little sister, she would surely say this.”
To Subaru, at a loss for words due to fierce emotion, Ram paused. Then, she pressed on.
“—Please, sacrifice Rem for Master Roswaal’s sake.”
“”
The instant he heard those words, Subaru felt something inside him being smashed to dust. It was a blow rivaling the cracks in his incomplete magic user’s Gate—no, it caused a greater impact than even that, shaking the soul of Subaru Natsuki to its very foundation.
“I-I didn’t… This isn’t why I…”
—He hadn’t brought Ram and Rem together so that she could speak such words to him.
All memory of Rem had been erased from the world, and nothing of her was left inside of anyone. Even so, if the twin sisters, sharing mutual love and even their souls with one another, yet existed, something of her had to remain.
That was the faint expectation Subaru clung to, something he could not even call a hope. That was what he carried within him when he brought Ram back to the mansion.
—He didn’t know the result would be Ram saying to him the words he never wanted to hear.
“In this world, Ram… Even you won’t be on Rem’s side…?”
This was perhaps the greatest sorrow he had known since Rem’s existence had been taken away.
After all, Subaru knew just how much affection the sisters, Ram and Rem, held for each other—
“—Both of you, this is no time for us to be arguing!”
Subaru was reeling while Ram’s pink eyes were utterly lucid. One shout from the gravely wounded Frederica interrupted their exchange.
In the current situation, allowing a verbal argument to chew up even a couple of seconds could prove a fatal loss of time.
“Cool your heads, both of you! How can you argue at a time like…!”
“…Ram is perfectly composed. Barusu has merely worked himself up all on his own. Frederica, surely you, too, understand whose view is justified and whose is not.”
“Certainly, Ram, you are correct. I shall not say you are mistaken.”
Speaking quickly, Frederica acceded that Ram’s assertion was properly justified. When she took that position, it seemed Frederica, too, was of a mind to leave Rem and Beatrice behind, putting Subaru on the brink of despair.
But before he could cross that precipice, Frederica continued, saying, “However, I think we should rescue both of them.”
“…Are you sane?”
“Yes, of course. You are the one who brought up losses our faction would incur, yes? Based on that, it is indeed best to rescue both—Lady Beatrice and Rem are both important.”
Frederica’s assertion brought a dubious look over Ram’s face. Subaru, too, was taken aback. But with the others at a deadlock, the final person present slowly raised her hand and spoke up. “I-I also… I also agree with going to save, to save them…!”
“…Please be quiet, child. This is not a majority vote.”
“E-even a child can be a proper adult! Miss Frederica says I’m more helpful than Miss Ram!”
Under Ram’s cold glare, Petra did not retreat even one step as she pushed her own view. Pressed into silence by the teary-eyed retort, Ram shifted her gaze toward Subaru and Frederica.
“Are you saying we have a chance?”
“! We know where Rem is! Finding Beatrice is my job!”
“I suppose so. Barusu and Lady Beatrice do get along so very well.”
“Since I’m trying to persuade you, I’ll let that one go this time…”
Though hardly at her wits’ end, Ram made a show of carefully considering the trio’s views. Of course, at that late juncture, even Subaru could not help but acknowledge which plan held the greater odds of survival.
However, what meaning did survival have if Rem and Beatrice were sacrificed for it?
It was meaningless. If that was the form the updated world took, it was better if—
“I…”
“…We are undermanned. We must search for Lady Beatrice and extricate Rem. The enemy interferes with both.”
“—It was I who spoke out, so that is my duty to bear.”
When Ram listed the pending concerns, Frederica, breathing in intense pain, patted her own chest. Her self-recommendation took Subaru and Petra by surprise, leaving Ram the only one who sighed in understanding.
“There you go again, too stubborn to back down when dealt a bad hand. Exactly like Garf.”
“You are both my adorable junior coworkers. Besides, it is not I who resembles Garf. Garf is the one who is imitating me.”
Frederica said it with a wink, hiding the fangs in her mouth as she smiled.
Subaru unwittingly sucked in his breath, sensing the resolve and determination behind that sunny smile. And as Subaru drew his breath in, Frederica did something even more surprising right in front of him.
“Miss Frederica…?!”
Petra was struck with wonder, but that was a natural reaction. Frederica put a hand to her blood-ridden maid outfit, violently ripping it apart. Her pale flesh, bloodstained and covered in a light sweat, became exposed. The spectacular force of the move made Subaru see a part of her underwear, something that made his eyes bulge in spite of the emergency situation.
“—This may surprise you, but please do not raise your voice.”
With those words of warning, the half-bare Frederica knelt onto the lawn. Then, she put Garfiel’s necklace around her own neck—an instant later, the very air grew taut.
“aa”
Had there been no warning beforehand, Subaru might not have been able to keep himself from crying out in surprise.
First, he saw Frederica’s long, beautiful, golden hair shrink. Next, golden fur began to sprout over her exposed flesh, and her skeleton ferociously creaked as it changed shape and grew larger.
She set four paws on the ground as the fangs that defined the inside of her mouth became something sharper, more powerful—a transformation taking but a few, brief seconds that made him doubt his eyes.
“—So this is transfiguration, huh?”
As Subaru murmured, there was a ferocious, golden beast standing before his eyes—the bestial Frederica.
It was a slender, supple feline predator with a stature nearly six feet in length. Of the animals Subaru knew, she resembled a cheetah or a leopard, but her body had no black spots upon it; he could only call the form beautiful.
Were it not for part of that lustrous, golden mane being marred by blood, he truly would have been enchanted by that beautiful beast.
“So it’s not Beauty and the Beast; the Beauty is the Beast… Ahh, I want to get her in the bath and snuggle.”
“I categorically reject the idea of bathing with you.”
“! Y-you can still talk like that?!”
Subaru, trying to conceal his unrest with his flippant tongue, gaped at the face of a ferocious beast seemingly ready to roar. Subaru was surprised on two levels that the tone of voice was that of the pre-transfiguration Frederica.
“I remain myself. Though my appearance has changed, I am completely rational… In addition, thanks to this, my wounds have closed to a fair extent.”
Taking in Subaru’s surprise, Frederica’s body twisted, and numerous skewers fell away. Simply changing forms had closed some of her wounds, expelling the skewers from her body. But the wounds themselves still remained. She needed complete healing to fix those.
“Frederica…”
“Please do not ask me ‘Can you do it?’ I can, and I will.”
“…Yeah, I get it. Please do. You’re the only one we can rely on right now.”
Frederica clawed the ground in high spirits as Subaru ceded the battlefield to her. Accepting Subaru’s request, the ferocious beast turned her eyes toward the two remaining, Ram and Petra.
“Petra, I’m sorry for scaring you. You did very well not to shriek.”
“Yes… Yes, Miss, take care…!”
“You’re a very good girl—Ram, I entrust the rest to you. Worst case, use the Master’s office.”
“That goes without saying. Frederica, if you are late, we shall have words.”
The few words exchanged between them told just how much trust lay between Ram and Frederica.
Finally, Frederica looked overhead at the freshly broken reception room window through which they had fallen. With the crystal necklace hanging from her large neck, the ferocious beast bared her lion-like fangs, ferociously crouching down—
“!!”
She let out a very brief growl. The next instant, Subaru saw the ferocious beast crushing the smashed windowsill under her paw.
Subaru’s eyes gaped at the blink-of-an-eye speed. Her outside appearance brought to mind the cheetah, the fastest animal on land, but Frederica’s sprinting easily put its speed to shame.
Passing through the breached wall, the ferocious beast raised a roar as she charged into the mansion interior. The black mist’s effect was soon to expire. Not long in the future, the battle between the two would resume—
“We cannot just stand here! We must go and make the best of this opportunity while Frederica buys us time.”
“Y-yeah! That’s right! First, Rem in the east wing!”
Elsa’s combat ability was terrifying, but Frederica’s speed was superhuman, too. With her swiftness, she ought to be able to get away safely if Subaru and the others accomplished their objectives sooner rather than later.
With Frederica headed off to act as a decoy, just how quickly could they move—
“—No complaints about property damage, okay?!”
Charging through the front yard, the three raced to the east wing as one. And after climbing over the east wing wall, Subaru picked up a shovel for yard work, smashing a window before leaping into the building. Sullying the carpet with dirt, he rolled onto the mansion floor and lifted his head. The stairs to the east wing, and Rem, were right before him.
But the instant he lifted his head, Subaru was struck by the odd sense something was wrong. Namely—
“…The doors are open?”
In front, so far as the murmuring Subaru could tell, all of the doors of the first floor were open. Turning his head around, the doors behind him were the same; every door in the entire corridor was open.
“Simple forgetfulness cannot account for leaving this many doors unclosed. Petra?”
“I-I haven’t done anything weird like this!! Miss Frederica hasn’t either!!”
Entering the corridor just as Subaru had, Ram gazed at the same sight and questioned Petra about it. Petra was equally bewildered as she denied involvement, but that was nothing compared to Subaru’s strong suspicion that something was horribly wrong.
Open doors weren’t the problem—the problem was that he remembered this scene.
“The doors were open like this last time around, too…”
—Subaru had seen something similar in the mansion just prior to Return by Death.
At the time, Subaru hadn’t been able to decipher the identity of that bad feeling prior to his “death.” Now that he was seeing the image again, he still didn’t know what it meant. But he was certain it was an ill omen.
“If it wasn’t Petra or Frederica, then…”
Naturally, it wasn’t Subaru or Ram either. Rem, still asleep, couldn’t have done it. Perhaps that left Beatrice as the only possible suspect, but she had no reason to do it. The only possible reason would be—
“!! R-Rem’s! Rem’s in trouble! Second floor, quick!”
The only kind of person who had a reason to open rooms one after another was an outsider who didn’t know where anyone might be. At that moment, that description corresponded to only one person in the mansion. And if that individual had already opened every door in the mansion’s east wing—
“Calm down, Barusu! Frederica is pinning down the enemy! There is nothing…”
“What are you saying at a time like…”
Even when her little sister’s life in danger, Ram maintained her cool. Rather than being impressed at how reliably steady she was, Subaru felt angry.
However, Subaru’s raging emotions vanished and flew away in the next instant.
“!!!!”
Howls resounded from outside the building, in the direction of the yard from which Subaru and the others had leaped in.
The next moment, the window—no, the window and the windowsill—were broken apart, seemingly gouged out along with the wall itself. With a high-pitched sound, the glass shattered in a violent dance, and heavy footsteps intruded upon the mansion interior.
There, filling up the corridor, stood a bizarrely shaped monster, its wicked visage resembling that of a lion.
—The second floor, where the Sleeping Princess awaited, felt far, far away.
Sub-chapter 3.
—The situation kept moving.
It was bewildering, something far beyond Subaru’s imagination, and now leaping far, far beyond his comprehension.
“”
Its stout, bizarrely shaped frame, twelve feet long, trod upon the carpet as it pushed its way into the cramped corridor.
It had black fur and a head resembling that of a lion. It had a horse’s hindquarters, and its long, slender tail greatly resembled a snake. A ghastly aura befitting its brutal nature brimmed from the entirety of its body—and on its forehead was a misshapen white horn.
“Demon beast…?!”
Even if the creature was unknown to him, that characteristic, evident from a single glance, made Subaru reel. Hearing his voice from the side, Ram clicked her tongue and pointed her drawn cane toward the demon beast and said,
“Fulla!!”
Without hesitation, Ram pounded a single attack into the demon beast at maximum velocity.
But in spite of its great size, the black demon beast agilely leaped within the corridor to evade the blade of wind. The slash of raging wind grazed past, minimizing the damage before it tensed, bellowed, and charged.
“Subaru! This way!”
Subaru was frozen stiff before the charging demon beast when Petra pulled him by the arm, practically throwing him into the room right next to them. A moment later, Ram leaped into the same room, violently closing the door—
“Stand back!”
Her sharp voice and her arm shoved him deeper into the room. The next instant, a monster claw broke the door with ease. The hinges blew apart, and the door split into two pieces as the demon beast leaped into the room; Subaru instantly held Petra close.
“!”
The room’s doorway was for human use, not something the size of the black demon beast could use to get in. However, the demon beast paid no heed, swinging a claw and demolishing the wall as it pushed into the room.
“Whoaaaa?! Waitwaitwaitwait! Wh-why is a demon beast…?!”
“This isn’t the time! It’s here and that’s that! Petra, the window!!”
As Subaru raised his voice at the menacing demon beast that had savagely widened the entrance, Ram ordered Petra to open the window. They would escape outside of the east wing they had only just entered.
“”
The situation, from which they could only flee, made him nervous. But amid the chaos, a question outweighed that.
It was a strange, unnatural situation. The last time around had had no such turn of events.
Over the course of his various experiences with Return by Death, Subaru had changed circumstances a number of times. Along the way, no matter what actions he had taken, the events that were to unfold were the same each time. He thought that was a hard rule.
For example, no matter how many times he repeated events, the Witch Cult never stopped targeting Emilia.
—For the calamity at the mansion not to have been caused by Elsa Gramhilde was simply…bizarre.
“El Fulla!!” “!!!!”
As the irrationality clawed at his thoughts, behind Subaru, Ram’s magic sliced into the demon beast’s face. It was so focused on enlarging the entrance, it forgot to defend itself as its black lion-like face was smeared with black blood.
Reeling, the demon beast abandoned its destruction midway. But shocking resiliency made it extremely difficult to slash to death.
“Humiliating, having to run from a dim-witted foe like this…!”
Ram insulted the demon beast and rued her own lack of ability as she rushed toward the window. Then, she grabbed Subaru by the collar, leaping out the window Petra had opened in one go.
He felt grass. Having entered the east wing from the front yard, they’d gone out the opposite side of the building, into the back yard.
“Geh! Th-that demon beast back there…”
“A blockhead…or rather, a Giltirau. Without its eyes, it shouldn’t be able to follow us.”
“B-but…that demon beast, it had a horn!!”
Ram named the demon beast, and Petra continued, pointing out something that shouldn’t have been there. “Yeah,” went Subaru, nodding at both statements, particularly Petra’s.
“No way a demon beast like that just wandered in here from the wild. Someone set it loose on the mansion…!”
Demon beasts were enemies of all living things, manifestations not of the instinct to fight but the instinct to slaughter. However, each one had a horn growing from its head; it was said that they learned to obey the person who broke that horn, and only that person.
Using that characteristic, perhaps it was possible to make a simultaneous attack by Elsa and the demon beast a reality, but…
“But this time the horn ain’t broken… How the heck did someone bring that demon beast in here?!”
“It couldn’t be…”
“—?! Ram, you know something?!”
Ram reacted as if something had come to mind. Subaru bit down hard, training a sharp eye on her.
“Surely you did not think the previous Urugarum incident was merely a rampage by wild beasts?”
“At first I did think that… But now that the royal selection’s started, it’s hard to think that way.”
He thought back to the curse from the demon beasts, and the mansion loop that had begun as a result.
Just like the crest theft incident in the royal capital, that incident was clearly sabotage directed at Emilia, a participant in the royal selection. In point of fact, a girl involved in that incident had vanished without a trace—
“—You don’t mean that girl controlled the demon beasts, and she’s come to attack again? If that’s so, this is…”
—A simultaneous attack, by the perpetrator of the crest incident, and the perpetrator of the mansion incident both.
“!!”
“…Ah! Subaru, are you all right?”
The instant he realized the true awfulness of the situation, Subaru wobbled, and Petra held him up.
The odd heaviness of his head felt annoying, but that was largely the effect of blood loss from his right shoulder. They’d left the skewer stuck in him, but the bleeding hadn’t been sufficiently stemmed while they’d been running all about.
“—Barusu.”
“D-don’t…! We just…can’t leave both of them and run…!”
“I have not yet said a word… I understand. I shall bring the land dragon from the stable.”
“Bring, Patlash…?”
Ram looked to the rear, and Subaru, his breath ragged from anemia, followed suit. At a distance, he caught sight of the stables indicated by the direction of her glance.
Going around the back of the mansion put them close to the stable at the back of the grounds. Patlash was tied there, and she would definitely be of service whether they resisted or fled.
“The bleeding hasn’t stopped at all… Subaru, this needs treatment!”
“I-I gave my handkerchief to Frederica…”
“Then I’ll use this one!!”
Ram raced toward the stables; in the meantime, Subaru obeyed Petra’s earnest instructions. She untied the handkerchief wrapped around Subaru’s right wrist, shifting it to his shoulder wound.
“This will hurt, but just bear it! Three, two—!!”
“Gigui—!!”
Midway through the countdown, she drew the skewer out, the intense pain causing Subaru to raise an odd voice as he writhed. But Petra promptly tied the handkerchief over the wound, using it and the sleeve of his tunic to deftly stop the bleeding.
“Y-you saved me… but what happened to saying ‘one’…!”
“You were more relaxed that way… I’m really glad I gave you that handkerchief, Subaru.”
Petra’s deeply relieved voice drew a long exhale from Subaru.
The pure white handkerchief she’d given Subaru as a protective charm was now pure red from Subaru’s blood. Petra showed no sign of caring about that, but instead, it was Subaru who was stricken by pangs of guilt.
“Sorry… I’m always getting you into trouble like this…”
“Don’t say weird things like that!! I’m very grateful to you, Subaru. You’re the one always saving me when I get into trouble!”
Shouting in anger at Subaru’s attempt to apologize, Petra’s face remained red as she indicated the forest. Then, she continued.
“When Ryuka, me, and the others went into the forest, Subaru, you came after us by yourself. I was really worried later when I heard you’d been bitten so badly all over…”
“”
“That’s why it’s all right!! This time, I’m the one saving you. We’ll rescue Beatrice and Miss Rem, and with Miss Ram and Miss Frederica, we’ll get out of this together.”
He wondered if she talked so much because she was frail.
Petra earnestly raised her voice to encourage Subaru, who was becoming weak-willed from blood loss and distress over the situation. The sight made Subaru want to lament the extent of his own foolishness all over again.
“…Petra, you’re incredible. I’m being pathetic.”
“Not at…”
“Nah, I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m saying, since you’re so incredible, Petra, I’ve gotta be, too.”
He shook his heavy, stooped head, raising it as if to sweep away his weak-mindedness.
If he tried to devise some scheme to raise his spirits, he wouldn’t have enough wisdom left for the hopes he should have been still striving for.
—This time, Subaru Natsuki would put it all on the line to offset everything he lacked.
Subaru calmly rose to his feet, extending his left hand toward Petra. For an instant, Petra hesitated to take hold of Subaru’s bloodstained hand, but—
“—Petra, let’s go. We’re going to escape with everyone, just like you said.”
“…Yeah!!”
Subaru’s declaration made Petra’s face brighten in an instant as she took his hand.
Then, a moment after he sensed her gripping his hand, the girl went “Ah,” seeming vexed as the ends of her eyebrows fell.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s not ‘yeah’; you gotta say ‘yes’… I mean, you should have said yes.”
Saying this, Petra mischievously stuck out her tongue.
The girl who had spoken so bravely under such circumstances had forgotten to keep speaking politely. Subaru, feeling saved by her valor, let his tongue slacken just a tiny bit as he clapped back.
“After all this, I’ve gotta get Ram and Frederica to scold you for th—”
—That instant, a roar and a blow from right above him blotted out Subaru’s mind with red.
Sub-chapter 4.
His mind was distant.
“”
Scrape, scrape. Something was being dragged. Scrape, scrape. Scrape, scrape. Scrape, scrape.
He was being dragged over the ground, in a state of not knowing whether he was faceup or facedown…
“A Rock Pig…! Barusu! Can you hear me? Barusu!”
He couldn’t hear very well. Someone was desperately calling out to him.
Be it to reply, be it to respond, he couldn’t do either very well at the moment.
“It wasn’t just that blockhead… This is my failure. I should have seen it sooner…”
“”
“Do what you must. Ram shall as well— Yes, that’s a good girl.”
Scrape, scrape. The speed increased. The force with which he was being dragged increased, resulting in faster scraping.
He searched for someplace somewhere that was free. Head, neck, hip, foot, hand—left hand.
Only his left hand was gripping something. He felt something. He was gripping something, something important, from which he must not let go.
“”
At the same time as he poured his remaining strength into his left hand, not letting that something go, the speed accelerated faster.
His body was floating higher. Something was tightly sandwiching him around hip level. The sway, the breathing, these things conveyed the devotion of the being from which they came—
“Paa…rach…”
The delicate touch, as if handling a fragile object, told him exactly who the unseen party was.
Though he meant to call out her name, only a hollow moan trickled out of his throat. Froth was bubbling up from the corner of his mouth. The froth tasted like iron. Why was he spouting blood froth?
It had to be related to why his body couldn’t move, why his entire body’s senses were so delicate, why his mind was still hazy—
“aa”
His mind connected one dot to the next, and he remembered who he was.
He was Subaru Natsuki. He’d returned to the mansion to save everyone from impending calamity. Elsa, demon beast, Frederica, Ram, Petra, Beatrice, Rem, Rem, Rem—
“Gnh, oo……!”
With a coughing sound, a large volume of blood flowed out of him, seemingly along with his life.
Having his stomach wrung out was too weak a metaphor; he hurt as if all of his insides were being whisked around. The outpour from his throat would not halt, and his liquefied inner organs seemed to be drooling out of him.
Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough hard cough hard cough, and finally—
“—I’m…”
He remembered how to open his eyes. After several blinks, he was freed from the world of darkness.
Tears flowed together with the sharp pain of reality jabbing into his eyeballs. He couldn’t determine whether the tear droplets were clear or the color of blood. One thing, however, was clear.
—Namely, that the world enveloping Subaru Natsuki was dyed the color of blood.
“”
Subaru’s body swayed. Up, down. Left, right.
The pitch-black land dragon had Subaru’s hips in its jaws while it raced away from the mansion grounds.
“!!!”
Next, when his eardrums came back to life, the sounds of explosions pressing upon them all at once made him want to doubt his ears.
There were high-pitched, earsplitting leaden noises, combining to make him feel physically ill. Resounding around him were high-octave voices, roars, neighs—all the cries of the demon beasts hot on their tail.
There was a giant mouse with black fly wings spread. There was a ferocious frog that featured black spots. There was a multi-headed serpent with innumerable necks sprouting from its torso. They were surrounded by misshapen creatures beyond all description.
—Beast Master was the term that popped up into the back of his mind.
“”
With Subaru in her jaws, Patlash was desperately searching for a way out. However, even a land dragon, the fastest of ground creatures, could not overcome such numbers; the roads were blocked, the skies were dangerous, and she was surrounded with no way to break free. Already, there were lacerations beyond counting on her pitch-black scales, from which she was bleeding profusely.
Not far in the future, she would reach her limit— No, her limit had already arrived. Patlash was simply exceeding that limit, burning the remaining fire of her life away for Subaru’s sake.
“!!!!”
Right after a conspicuously huge roar, the land dragon’s speed was dulled as a creature with over twice her bulk pulled alongside.
The black lion had a wound on its face, with blood flowing from the sockets of its smashed eyes—the demon beast from earlier. He’d forgotten its name.
But even if he tried, he would never be able to forget the blow from its claw.
“”
Its vision was compromised. It had unleashed a wild strike. And yet, that blow was aimed directly at the land dragon’s right abdomen. This creature was not relying on sight but something else—smell. The demon beast was drawn by scent.
Faster than he could register the impact, penetrating with the force of an explosion, the world was dyed red with fresh blood.
But it was not Subaru who was affected by that impact. That was because, a moment before the claw strike landed, the land dragon’s neck swung up, hurling Subaru’s body into the air.
“Patl—”
In her final moment, she did not let out a single cry. Such pride suited the sublime land dragon well.
As he spun, a flower of blood bloomed beneath his eyes. Subaru had no time to avert his gaze as his body’s back collided with something, breaking through it with a spectacular sound, before finally smacking the floor, hard.
“K-kha…!”
He was racked by a coughing fit; his right eye had closed from the blood coursing from a cut on his forehead, but even so, he immediately realized it.
He’d been hurled to the second floor of the mansion—the second floor of the east wing, exactly where he’d been heading.
“”
Subaru no longer knew what to think about his beloved land dragon’s final act of devotion.
He’d shed too much blood. It was as if his determination and resolve had flowed out of him with it. He couldn’t summon any energy. His head wouldn’t turn, either. His mind was slowly dying, too.
Even so, even with Subaru like that, there was one, and only one, place that had not lost its strength.
He felt a sensation in the grip of his left hand. Even though his mind was dead, the part telling him not to let go was still alive.
He remembered that, right before everything collapsed, he was holding someone’s hand.
“Pe…tra…”
His gaze arrived at the hand he felt, the wrist, the elbow—and there, it came to an end.
“”
Though he was holding her hand, the girl who should have been there did not go past the elbow.
She had been smashed, crushed, torn away—
“—oooaaAAA!!!”
Subaru Natsuki had managed to protect…nothing.
Sub-chapter 5.
—Just how much time passed as he stared at that arm, torn off at the elbow?
“”
His thoughts were still as he stood in a daze.
Ironically, during that time, his senses of sight and hearing gradually recovered. They helped Subaru understand just how desperate the situation he was in truly was.
Subaru’s state was so terrible, the wound on his right shoulder seemed cute in comparison.
His left leg bent in two more places than it should, and his left arm was flattened, crushed by something. Petra had probably been struck by the same blow. Accordingly, there was nothing of her past the elbow.
“”
That was all his eyesight could tell him of the terrible spectacle. But the information conveyed from his hearing was more terrible still.
Beneath the second floor corridor in which Subaru had collapsed, he could hear the roars of demon beasts around the building from every direction. He couldn’t be bothered to count their numbers and types. But a voice kept pressing into his mind, There’s nowhere to run.
He’d let Petra die. Patlash had been ripped apart before his eyes. He didn’t know what had happened with Ram afterward. Perhaps she was still fighting hard. Perhaps the cunning girl might even survive, but—
“—Ahh, I’ve finally found you.”
These words spoken, he tilted his head, seeing and hearing the presence of a raven-haired woman.
From Subaru’s position, in the middle of the corridor and kneeling on the carpet, the woman was standing straight ahead.
It was the butcher whom Frederica had stayed behind to slow down. If she was there, that meant…
“Fre…derica’s…”
“The big maid? Relax. She amused me quite a bit. If possible, I would have liked to see whether transfiguration changes the contents of a person’s belly, but I was unable to confirm that with my own eyes.”
“…I didn’t…ask you about that.”
He wasn’t asking. However, she made him acknowledge what he knew without needing to question her further.
That she had put up a good fight was no doubt true. Elsa had lost her mantle, and her black clothes were ripped all over the place; her pale skin was splattered with blood—Even so, she was in such a good state that it would be fair to say she was in fine health.
“I must praise you. You have done well coming this far with wounds like those.”
“Throwing me a bone, are you… If it’s your life, I’ll take it…”
“I wonder, should I interpret that as, ‘I want your life’?”
“If I…get to trample it right now, then yeah…”
Venting at Elsa’s off-the-mark answer, Subaru leaned his weight against the wall and lifted himself up. With his left leg wrecked and his left arm twisted, he had wounds running across his entire body.
“Even so, there is a whiff of anger accompanying the scent of your blood… Your intestines are probably sublime.”
“You’re messed up… I don’t, get what you’re sayin’.”
As Subaru rose to his feet, Elsa embraced her own body and let out a hot breath of ecstasy his way. Whatever he said and did, it only brought greater delight to the ravishing butcher’s mind.
“Who hired you to come after us…?”
“I shall not speak of my employer. I owe him that much courtesy, at least. Your return was earlier than expected, so things worked out a little differently than in the contract, though…”
“Worked out…different…?”
“It was supposed to be two maids and one ‘shut-in,’ and everything was supposed to be timed to coincide with your return…”
A wry, blood-colored smile came over Elsa as she pointed the tip of her kukri toward Subaru. Her verbal summation of the plan fit with the tragedy that had occurred in the mansion the last time around.
At that time, Petra and the others’ corpses were probably waiting for Subaru and the others’ return to the mansion—
“I’ve heard enough…”
Shaking his head, he rebuffed Elsa, pressing only cruelties upon him. Subaru’s reply made Elsa’s refined eyebrows grimace. “Is that so?” she murmured in visible disappointment as she started to wrap up.
“I suppose so. Let us finish this. If this carries on any further, Meiri might be captured, and we cannot have that, so I shall console myself with your hot stuff before that happens.”
“”
“All done, are you? Then I shall send you to meet your angels.”
This spoken, Elsa’s posture sank. Running with her posture so low she seemed to crawl across the corridor, the black figure charged, making a beeline toward Subaru. She was so fast. One wouldn’t even think counterattack was possible.
But—
“—Like hell I’m gonna just let you kill me.”
Dragging his smashed leg along, Subaru reached the door beside him quicker—the door to Rem’s bedroom.
His decision made Elsa knot her brows. Even if he fled into the room, it would only prolong the amount of time until the end. Even so, seeing his reaction made her tone down her gloating smirk just a little.
—There was no longer any way to break through the encirclement. It was impossible. Accordingly, he abandoned the thought.
His wounds were deep. His life was pouring out. He was on the verge of expiring without having saved any of the people he had to protect. Then, at the very least, he’d get back at Elsa just a little, so that everything would not have gone as she pleased.
“”
Neither the Bowel Hunter nor the Beast Master had reached Rem’s bedroom.
He absolutely would not allow them to defile the girl who slept within.
Even if the world was soon to end, he would not lose Rem a second time, not to anyone—
“”
He opened the door wide and leaped into the bedroom.
Lifting his head in search of the bed where Rem slept, Subaru was taken aback.
—Subaru, resigned to his end, was greeted by the bookshelves of the archive of forbidden books.
Sub-chapter 6.
The choking musk of old tomes seemed like a rebuke presented to its noisy visitor.
The room’s interior was packed with bookshelves that were chock-full of books. When that aroma and visual information finally hit home, Subaru realized he had stepped into a different place than that he had desired.
—And the late realization of that fact courted a most fatal result.
“—?!?”
Subaru’s head was dominated by one question: Why?! That instant, Subaru felt he was enveloped by wind.
That wind peeled Subaru away from the door, forcefully drawing him toward the middle of the room. With the feet he had planted down nonfunctional, Subaru, unable to resist, tumbled into the room’s center.
The very next moment, he heard the great sound of the door slamming shut straight behind him—
“—W-wait, please!!”
Lunging for the firmly closed door, Subaru desperately tried to open it. But his will couldn’t reach his half-destroyed arms; the ferocious creaking sound only served to fuel his frustration.
And as Subaru, smeared with blood all over, turned toward the door, behind him was—
“—Struggle as you might, you are not leaving this room.”
When he heard a voice and footsteps, he turned to see a girl slipping past a gap in the bookshelves and walking toward him.
She had long, cream-colored braids and a gorgeous, extravagant dress. She had a young, adorable face, but at that moment, a terribly cold expression rested upon it as she glared straight at Subaru.
“Bea—trice…”
“Are you in a simply horrid state, I wonder? Do not walk around; you will only sully the archive’s floor…”
“Open the door!! Right now!! Let! Me! Out!!”
When the girl—Beatrice—gazed at his wounds with a chilly look, Subaru shouted unsparingly at her in anger.
The admonition not to sully the room never even entered his ears. Blood dripped from his bleeding arm as he screamed.
“Why did you come out now?! Why this of all times?! Send me back! Send me back right now!!”
“…And what would you do if I did? What can you do in your current state, I wonder?”
“I know better than anyone I can’t do anything!! But even so…!”
He had to return to that place, to the second floor of the east wing, to the bedroom where Rem slept.
The Passage had activated at the room he had presumably entered. The door leading to the bedroom became the entrance to the archive of forbidden books, whereupon the door immediately cast that duty aside. In other words, the door had resumed its normal duties: those of the door leading to Rem’s bedroom.
“That’s why!”
“It is too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?! There’s no such thing as too late!! I have to get there, right now…”
“Did I not say ‘it is too late,’ I wonder?”
Subaru’s angry voice, straining upward to resist the horror racing through him, fell silent.
In contrast to Subaru, eyes wide and blinking while unable to speak a word, Beatrice continued.
“Just now, the reason you wish to return to that room became no more.”
The proclamation left Subaru at a loss for words— Any means of putting it into words…had vanished.
Beatrice had said it in a calm, composed fashion, but the sheer cruelty of her words asserted their claim to reality and truth.
“aa”
Before he realized it, Subaru had crumpled to the floor right there.
His shoulders fell, his head bent down, and there was a ferocious ringing in his ears echoing throughout his skull.
He wanted it to be louder, noisier. He wanted it to tear at his brain until it split in two. He wanted it to be bad enough that he couldn’t think, so he wouldn’t have to understand.
He wanted it to tear his life away with it. And yet—
“…What are…you doing?”
Haltingly, his voice trickled out. He heard a whisper-like, delicate voice from right beside him.
“Perhaps I cannot stand to see you in pain. Therefore, I am healing your wounds, out of disgust and nothing else.”
The girl who murmured her reply was incredibly close. Her palm had a faint glow around it as she held it over his wounds.
The light asserted its own existence, gradually softening the unrelenting pain that had been eating away at him. He felt it carry heat into his body bit by bit, mostly his horribly injured left side. The bleeding stopped, the bones returned to their proper positions, the gouged-out muscles attached to them, the slashed nerves—
“Are you kidding me?!”
“?!”
With his remaining strength, Subaru howled, wholly rejecting Beatrice’s healing light.
While Beatrice was still reeling from his threatening attitude, he rolled away to put distance between him and the girl. The carpet of the archive of forbidden books was marred by blood. Blood frothed from the corner of his mouth, and in that ghastly state, Subaru glared at Beatrice.
“I don’t…need you to heal my wounds…! Why are you trying to save me…?!”
“That is because…y-you are simply too pathetic; I cannot stand to look at you…”
“Why me?! If you wanted to save someone…why didn’t you save Petra or Frederica?! Or Ram, or Rem!! You could have saved everyone…!!”
With Beatrice’s power, she could have escaped and helped others escape with ease.
“They should have been saved…! I’m stupid, I’m weak…even if I couldn’t do anything, you could have reached them…! Why didn’t you……!”
“Wh-why, should Betty do such a… Perhaps Betty does not have a single reason to save anyone? I do not know. I do not have any such reason…!”
“If that’s true…then you didn’t have any damn reason to save me either, right…?!”
Shaking her head in disgust, Beatrice denied Subaru’s entreaty. Adding his denial to hers, Subaru slowly raised his crushed left arm aloft. He painfully squeezed Beatrice’s throat.
—His emotions were exploding.
“Who the hell…asked you to save anyone…?!!”
“aa”
“Do you even know what you’ve done?! Thanks to you, everything might be completely ruined now!! All of this might’ve overwritten the possibilities, and this piece-of-shit present might be set in stone……!”
Why had she showed herself then, when it was too late?
Knowing that Subaru had been teleported, Elsa would recognize the Passage for what it was. She was getting closer to Beatrice. Why, in spite of that, was she trying to make a half-dead Subaru live?
Why had she saved Subaru the instant he’d given up instead of allowing him the death he desired?
“I…should have died there…! You…should have killed me……!!!”
When it was his time to die, but he let the opportunity slip, Subaru Natsuki was worthless. The only way Subaru could gain the right to redo things was to use his life without a care.
When, spitting blood, he shouted from his very soul, the girl, bathed in his pleas head on, opened her eyes wide.
“I-I do not understand… Can I understand, I wonder…?”
Incomprehension, and perhaps even fear, crossed Beatrice’s face as she shook her head side to side.
The reply made Subaru clench his teeth. If that was how it was, fine. He wouldn’t cling to her.
“Fine, then. If even you… If you won’t save me, then…!”
From the beginning, relying on someone hadn’t been an option. He should have understood that.
His gaze shifted, and his eyes caught sight of a stool near the entrance. It was the stool Beatrice was always sitting on. He kicked it over and then slammed it against the wall with all his might.
“What are you…?!”
Beatrice let out a shriek, eyes bulging at Subaru’s act of violence.
A hard sound reverberated, and the wooden stool was cruelly smashed apart, scattering in a number of fragments. From those fragments, he picked up the biggest, sharpest one.
“”
It wouldn’t be his first suicide. Even a piece of wood like that was enough to easily end a person’s life. If, in a single breath, he stabbed his own throat, his life would come to an end, and Subaru Natsuki would surely be granted another chance.
—In another world, it would be the third time Subaru had chosen suicide.
The first time was in the middle of the mansion loop. He had been determined to fix something that couldn’t be undone.
The second time was at the very end of the loop that had started in the capital. It was from remorse, to save Rem after she’d been taken from him.
And now, the third time would be from indignation, after giving into rage and cursing his own powerlessness to take everything back.
It was a “death” with meaning. It was a “death” with value. Everything besides “death” was worthless—
“Don’t!!”
And yet, the instant he had committed himself to stabbing his throat, a tiny body leaped at him to get in his way.
The hem of her dress fluttered as Beatrice raced through the middle of the archive, impeding Subaru’s suicide by force. She grappled his arms, bit into the right hand containing the fragment, and attempted to wrest the vile implement away.
“You…! Why…!!”
“I won’t let you! I will not…let you die here……!”
“!! Quit it! Let me go, already!!”
His voice grew ragged as they jostled with one another. However, in his current state, Subaru could not easily get even a helpless little girl off him.
They desperately grappled, violently bumped their bodies against a bookshelf, and finally, furiously collapsed onto the floor. He didn’t know if it was the impact that made a moan trickle out. But it had been Beatrice who had accomplished her goal.
“Haaa-haaa……!”
After Subaru had fallen onto his bottom, Beatrice cast the fragment far aside and moved away from him. Glaring at the girl in resentment, Subaru collapsed faceup, unable to move any farther.
“Wh—y…”
For what possible reason had she stopped him from killing himself? Regardless, the end result wouldn’t change. His blood loss was severe. Subaru would soon perish.
Beatrice’s action was completely irrational. He didn’t have a single clue what purpose she had in mind.
Maybe she hated him dying before her eyes? Maybe she just didn’t want him to kill himself? She didn’t want anything to do with it?
He didn’t understand, not at all, not one little bit, but even though he didn’t understand that—
“eh?”
Beaten senseless with incomprehension, Subaru tried to avert his eyes from everything: from Beatrice, from the archive of forbidden books, or perhaps from his own powerlessness, or even his impending “death.”
But when he averted his gaze to do so, Subaru noticed the presence of… it.
“”
—“It” had fallen at the edge of the wreckage from the destroyed stool.
It was a thickly bound, simply covered book, as large and inconvenient to carry around as a dictionary…yet the malevolent aura emitted by the black book bore not the slightest resemblance.
Subaru had seen “it” many times over. He’d seen “it” in the hands of a madman.
“What’s that…doing here…?”
Was it actually a copy of the Witch Cult’s Gospel? The volume once possessed by Petelgeuse ought to have still been packed in the dragon carriage they took to the Sanctuary. It certainly wasn’t there in that room.
—No, he had to face facts. The stool had been hiding the evil black book.
“”
As if affirming Subaru’s shock, the girl in the dress picked up the book.
The girl hugged the book to her chest, letting out a seemingly relieved sigh as she stroked a finger across the cover.
Her touch was tender and loving. With gentle eyes, Beatrice embraced the Gospel.
“…Why…are you treating that book…like it’s so important?”
“”
“It’s not one of the books the Witch Cult has…is it? It just looks like one, right?”
“”
“You hid it because I’d jump to conclusions… Jump to conclusions, get angry, and then…”
“”
“Why…won’t you…deny any of it…?”
For that moment alone, Subaru forgot the anguish of blood loss and his impending “death” as he wove the words together.
If she said only one thing, that would have been enough. That would have been plenty to clear Subaru’s worries away.
Subaru’s words, pleading for nothing more than that, were answered, and just as he had hoped, Beatrice said but a single thing.
“—Betty has not been instructed to answer that question.”
Beatrice spread the book she clutched to her chest, scanned its contents, and emotionlessly spoke those words.
He’d heard that for the Witch Cult, a Gospel was like their Bible. Petelgeuse had said the text functioned as a book of prophecies, showing the future to its owner.
Accordingly, the Witch Cult obeyed the Gospel, doing as the text instructed.
If he matched that fact with Beatrice’s reply—
“What’s written in that book… What is it telling you to do…?”
“Perhaps that question is not in the book, I wonder?”
“You can’t do anything if it’s not in the book…? Then, you sheltering me here before was…?”
“That question is not written in the book, either.”
“And talking to me right now? Saving me, when I was on the verge of dying…!”
“—I wouldn’t know.”
Eyes still cast down at the book, Beatrice continued her empty replies without looking Subaru’s way. She sent replies that weren’t answers back at him, her obstinate mind closed within the tome.
Her doll-like appearance, her eyes with emotions locked away, sent a tremor through Subaru that seemed to make his lungs convulse. Assaulted by dizziness, seemingly forgetting even to breathe, he raised his voice.
“Are you saying…you can’t do anything…anything, if it’s not according to what’s written in that book?!”
“…I wonder? Yes, it is so. Perhaps the Gospel’s guidance must be obeyed in all things, for that is Betty’s reason for living, and the sole reason for Betty to exist.”
“Did you…try to save me because the book told you to?! That time you saved me when I was cursed, too! Lending me a hand when I couldn’t stand on my own! All the time we spent fooling around, yelling at each other, having fun like a couple of idiots, all that time…was all thanks to that book?!”
“—Is that not precisely what am I saying, I wonder?!”
When Subaru, who had been criticizing Beatrice, now tried to appeal to her emotions for his own convenience, she exploded. Beatrice’s face was red with anger, her round eyes glaring at Subaru as she raised a finger and screamed.
“It is as you have seen, and as I have told you! Everything Betty has done until now, all of it was written right here. Is there any way you, the likes of you, could move Betty’s heart, I wonder? Do not be so full of yourself, human.”
“”
“All of Betty is for Mother’s sake. For Betty, her connection to Mother is everything…! The likes of you, the likes of you…human, human, human……!!”
It was as if a dam had been breached. Emotions poured out of Beatrice.
The vast torrent of fierce emotions instantly rendered Subaru speechless; there was nothing he could do but be swept away.
Facing the wordless Subaru, Beatrice very, very tightly clutched the book.
“Do not touch Betty, human. Do not come close, human. Do I even know you, I wonder, human? I hate you. I hate youI despise you!”
This time, the girl’s teary-voiced shout clearly rejected Subaru’s entire existence.
The inside of his chest was filled to the brim with confusion and dismay. That was how great the rejection was for Subaru.
—He’d stubbornly believed, without any basis, that there was a bond between them.
Even if neither he nor she would acknowledge it openly, he believed there was something.
After all, Beatrice had saved Subaru a number of times during the loop that started at the mansion.
It was her presence that had saved his mind, on the verge of breaking as he repeated those days over and over.
And whatever form it took—
“Back then…I…was happy…”
Once again, words Subaru had never spoken aloud slipped out at the very end.
“uu”
His vision warped badly. He vomited something up. It was neither blood nor bile, but life itself. He instinctively knew it—his time had run out.
Blood loss, useless. Grave wounds, worthless. Betrayed, a dog’s death. Gospel, butcher, Beast Master, dying in a rage.
There, having achieved nothing, Subaru Natsuki would perish.
“”
Then, on the verge of death, Subaru heard a miraculous sound.
His ears, on the verge of death, probably picked up the sound of a door opening. Footsteps; someone was entering the room.
The footsteps beheld the fallen Subaru, and exhaled.
“How disappointing.”
The murmur was distant. The footsteps advanced farther ahead, seemingly losing interest in the dead man.
The owner of the voice, a black-clad Grim Reaper, leisurely walked toward the little girl clutching the book.
—Just what would result from this chance encounter between the girl and the butcher?
“Oh my.”
The surprised voice belonged to the woman. A bloodied hand was entwined around the butcher’s long leg.
Meaninglessly, Subaru, on the precipice of death, acted to slow her down with all of his body and soul.
“…eaa, triii…”
“How marvelous. Truly, you are treasured.”
Instantly, a wind blew. The next moment, the right hand with which he grasped her came off—and the wrist along with it.
No blood came out. The wicked blade reversed, and a black glint went…somewhere. Subaru’s head, his neck, his torso…somewhere.
Wherever it was, it would surely impale him in a critical location—
“”
In that final scene, he saw the face of the little girl as she sucked in her breath. There was sadness and pain upon it.
—But as death came for him, that had nothing to do with Subaru Natsuki anymore.
◇◇◇
Diamond. Diamond. Diamond.
◇◇◇
Thank you for Reading on Light Novel Page.
Please like, Share and Subscribe our YOUTUBE Channel.
Also follow me on INSTAGRAM and TWITTER to get future updates.
And support me on PATREON.
This is Dr.Anime & Stay tuned for next Chapter.
◇◇◇
