CHAPTER 5
THE OPERATION TO RETAKE CITY HALL
1
“Old Man Wil! Carry her! I can’t stop the bleeding here!”
Seeing Ferris change his expression, Wilhelm did as he instructed and picked up Mimi’s bloodied body. The two proceeded to rush out of the conference room with urgent steps, heading to the field hospital in the structure’s basement.
With healing magic being ineffective, they had no choice but to fall back onto ordinary medical treatments. Fortunately, Ferris was skilled not only in healing magic, but also surgical techniques as well.
If not for that, it was likely that there would be nothing else they could do but despair.
“Has my heartache reached any of you even a little? Really, for beings lower than insects trapped inside a box, how are you so slow on the uptake? I wuv it! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!!”
Even as some of them were making heroic efforts to save a life, Lust continued her menacing broadcast.
In truth, this could no longer be considered a broadcast that was meant to intimidate its listeners. It was simply being used to mock and scorn, to spit upon the valiant efforts of others. It was a sadistic ritual.
“ ”
Under that downpour of malice, Subaru looked at Garfiel, who had flopped against the wall. Covering his face with both hands and hanging his head, Garfiel sported wounds all over his body. They were definitely not the kind that could be ignored.
However, the gravest wound was not to his body, but his heart.
“You scum are even lower than insects! And now that you’ve deeply hurt me, I really want some payback for this pain to my heart! My heart will be assuaged by what I said before! I expect great things from the smarter meatbags among you!”
Lust redoubled her malice during that time as well. Subaru focused on her voice, searching for a way to land even a single retaliatory blow against this villain who kept rambling without a care for those who were forced to keep listening to her.
Information, weaknesses, clues about the enemy, anything would do—with that mindset, he noticed a particular sound.
Besides Lust’s high-pitched, earsplitting voice, there was also the sound of her clapping and stomping her feet. She acted like a child who was struggling to settle down, and that certainly also grated on Subaru’s nerves—but he was focused on something else.
He heard…another sound.
The source was most likely right beside the broadcasting metia, unintentionally mixing in with her voice and reaching Subaru’s ears through the broadcast.
Then Subaru’s sense of reason instinctively rejected the identity of that sound.
Don’t pay attention. Stop. You don’t need to know— Don’t give in to your cowardice.
“!”
Biting down hard on his lip, Subaru used the pain to come back to his senses. He clenched his teeth as he examined the nature of what he had just rejected.
Concentration, rejection, comprehension, rejection, comprehension, comprehension, comprehension—
That was what hummed in Subaru’s ears.
The buzzing of an unbelievable quantity of insects was mixed in with the threatening broadcast. It was incredibly anxiety-inducing, the manifestation of a nightmare that provoked an instinctive disgust, and the instant Subaru realized that, he—
“Incidentally, isn’t it about time for the smarter meatbags among you to notice something that you really should’ve kept ignoring?”
“—Ah.”
She pointed out with terrifying timing that she’d planned for them to hear it all along.
“Bwa-ha-ha-ha! You should’ve just been enchanted by my beautiful voice, but now you’re paying the price because you just haaad to do something pointless. Speaking of which, the stupid try-hards who tried to force their way in should be having a real bad time right about now.”
Subaru was stunned. She had basically just revealed that they were still dancing in the palm of her hand. Toying with their minds like this wasn’t enough to sate Lust’s malicious appetite.
She smacked her lips and made sure everyone could hear it.
“I’m so deeply hurt that you would slap away the hand that I held out! That’s why I figured it’s time to stop holding back and time to tighten up a bit around here. And all you meatbags who got excited when I mentioned making things tighter just now, I’ll have to teach you what the word serious really means! Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Bwa-ha-ha! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! …Haaah.”
Her laughing gradually lost strength, and by the end, only a tedious sigh trickled forth. That sharp drop in emotion made it sound like Lust had decided to forsake everyone else as she continued:
“—I’ll start by turning the meatbags at my feet into mincemeat.”
“!”
“If you want to avoid that, I’ve only got one demand. If you’re going to surrender, then just get it over with already and bow your heads as low as you can. That’s the smart thing to do, right?”
Calmly, with none of the excitement she had shown just moments ago, Lust thrust her demand onto the city.
That sudden reversal and a threat that promised gore made Subaru gasp for breath.
Then Lust’s disturbing moment of composure ended with such ease and speed that Subaru could have sworn the change was audible.
“Well, that’s all from little ol’ me! …And I said this already, but here’s a friendly reminder that we’ve set up camp in the control towers, so don’t try anything funny. The sight of a drowning human’s face is so awful, I almost can’t bear to look at one again! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!”
With one last screeching laugh, the spiteful broadcast finally came to an end.
It had been a completely one-sided statement of intent that left just as suddenly as it had arrived. Her way of speaking was perfectly in character for an Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins—a manifestation of ugliness in a new form.
“M-messing with us like that…”
At the same time the broadcast ended, Subaru no longer heard the buzzing that had put his heart in a vise. His body instantly relaxed, and as soon as it did, the first words out of his breathless mouth were grumbles.
Of course, trash-talking someone who couldn’t hear it was little more than the distant whimpers of a beaten dog. Subaru clenched his fist in frustration at his total inability to even say a retort that would reach their enemy.
“—Subaru, can you hear me?”
Abruptly, Subaru heard a voice calling his name from the round table. When he looked over, he saw that the conversation mirror, which had been abandoned in haste, had not lost its glow and was currently displaying a morose knight’s face upon its surface.
“Yeah, I hear you. You caught the broadcast just now, right?”
“But of course. Loath as I am to say it, that voice surely reached every corner of the city. There is Mimi’s condition to consider as well. TB and I shall return to you. We will speak again once we arrive.”
“Yeah…”
Once he finished that short exchange with Julius, Subaru closed his eyes once before turning toward the conference-room window.
“…We can talk it over soon.”
The red-eyed flag fluttering atop the control tower in the distance looked like it was laughing at the Water Gate City.
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