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4

Upon his second Return by Death, unprecedented fatigue ate away at Subaru’s psyche.

Experiencing two deaths in a short time frame was undoubtedly a large burden, but the greatest source of his distress was the fact that he had lost his mind twice over. Though both episodes had their differences, he’d tasted mental collapse via mania and psychosis in rapid succession. During the second instance, he’d experienced his very sense of self break down. He never wanted to go through that again.

He wondered if the ultimate cause of his second death was cardiac arrest from extreme terror or simple suffocation from being strung up by his neck. Either way, he’d paid a high price for trying to save Lusbel by himself.

However, Subaru hadn’t died twice in a mere thirty minutes without getting anything out of it.

Sirius had been kind enough to explain what was happening to Subaru as his life came to an end, perhaps as a sort of morbid farewell gift.

“Fear heightening as it passes back and forth between people…like a kind of resonance, maybe?”

Subaru had felt Lusbel’s fear, and in turn, Lusbel had felt Subaru’s. With each subsequent pass, that sensation grew stronger and stronger, culminating in an absolute, all-consuming dread that ultimately led to death.

Based on Sirius’s statements and his own mental collapse, Subaru deduced that this was his opponent’s Authority. He was also finally able to infer the cause of his manic episode during his first visit to the time-tower square.

That time, all the anger and disgust in the crowd had been overwritten with joy and delight. And inside the tower, the fear that Lusbel felt had passed back and forth between him and his would-be savior, shattering Subaru’s mind.

In other words, Sirius’s Authority of Wrath—

“It lets her toy with other people’s feelings however she likes. Shit, that’s bad news.”

Just like Petelgeuse’s Unseen Hands, it was an Authority, a special power not subject to the world’s normal rules of magic. Befitting the title of Wrath, that sinister ability was closely tied to human emotion.

In the end, that was all his second death allowed him to deduce with any confidence. The biggest issue was that he still had no idea what conditions were required for activating this Authority, and he didn’t have a single lead on how to resolve this situation.

It was fair to say that the strategy he employed against Petelgeuse had heavily depended upon luck.

Unseen Hands was the Authority of Sloth, and Petelgeuse himself was an evil spirit who had the powerful ability to possess the bodies of others. Subaru just happened to have ways of countering both.

However, setting his means of resisting possession aside, Subaru still didn’t know what let him see Unseen Hands. At some point since then, he’d learned a skill he called Invisible Providence, which greatly resembled Unseen Hands, but his suspicions remained just that.


“Since Return by Death seems to have something to do with the Witch, I’d hoped it meant the Witch Cult’s rule-breaking tricks wouldn’t work on me or something, but…”

He had no choice but to discard that line of thinking after Wrath’s power had affected him so deeply.

On top of that, based on what he could gather so far, the worst-case scenario was that Sirius’s Authority simply activated upon contact. It was a distinct possibility that hearing her voice or seeing her in person was enough for him to become ensnared.

In that case, the most reliable strategy against Sirius was to blow her up along with the entire building before she emerged from the top of the time tower. That way, she would have no chance to use her Authority. This plan was only possible because Subaru knew Sirius’s exact location due to the short time limit imposed by his Return by Death.

If he acted immediately, Sirius could be defeated for sure—so long as he turned a blind eye and accepted the sacrifice of one little boy.

“—As if I’d ever let that happen.”

There was no way he’d ever invoke phrases like necessary sacrifices.

For Subaru, even if it meant exchanging one life to save many, losing that one life was like giving up the entire world. If he had already made up his mind to not sacrifice himself, how could he reduce the lives of others to mere numbers? That was the act of a god or a devil, and Subaru had no intention of turning into either.

“I’ll save Lusbel and beat Sirius. Gotta make both happen somehow, huh? Man, being Emilia-tan’s knight is tough.”

And yet if he couldn’t do that, Subaru Natsuki had no value whatsoever. Naturally, he knew full well that the kind people around him would surely forgive such weakness.

That’s why he had to do it. Subaru wanted to stand proudly beside the people he cared about. If seeing this through was what it took to make that happen, then so be it. That was Subaru’s way.

“I challenged her alone and lost pathetically. It’s painfully obvious I don’t have enough combat power… I need to borrow someone’s strength.”

The ideal recruit was someone with so much pure combat power that they could overwhelm Sirius. It would have to be a person who’d believe Subaru’s words implicitly and agree to cooperate with him. On top of that, they had to be able to resist Sirius’s Authority.

He needed a powerful character who met all those conditions and who was close enough to reach the time tower in under ten minutes. Subaru almost laughed at himself for wanting such a convenient ally.

“Oh, right.”

He tried to laugh, but then it dawned on him. There was a certain memory.

His first time in the square, he’d come across a particular man. Since that person had also been influenced by Wrath’s Authority, he was far from the perfect counter against Sirius, but even so—

“—Reinhard!!”

Right as Subaru began to feel ridiculous for seeking out a wildly convenient answer to his problems, he was finally able to remember that a man who was the epitome of overpowered really did exist.



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