CHAPTER 4
STICK SWINGER
1
—The stairs to the second floor, Electra, were imposing enough to be called a grand stairway.
Compared to the different sets of stairs between the sixth, fifth, and fourth floors, the width and rise of the stairs were both scaled up. They completely filled the room, so the outrageousness of it all was self-explanatory.
“There’s no way this was here before…right?”
“It is difficult to imagine we would have missed such a blatant set of stairs. However, I cannot deny that I failed to notice the room itself.”
“In terms of feeling off while searchin’ around, I think I know what you mean.”
Anastasia and Julius nodded. Subaru was confused by how easily they seemed to accept it, but that was where Emilia raised her hand.
“While you were asleep, Subaru, we gathered on the fourth floor. Rem and Patlash were resting in the green room, and we also tried to solve the third floor’s puzzle. Anyway, we all walked around to figure out where to set our stuff, but…”
“At the time, everyone sort of avoided this room. Thinking back on it now…”
“Almost like there was something that prevented you from perceiving it in order to keep you away?”
Emilia and the rest of the group, who had been first up to the fourth floor, all nodded.
It was a mental blank spot they all started to notice once the third-floor exam had been cleared. And thinking about it like that, the existence of the grand staircase almost felt natural.
“Well, without that, anyone who happened to be in here when the stone slab puzzle on the third floor was solved might get crushed…”
“Subaru, it’s a monolith. I would like to avoid confusion, so please be consistent with the terminology.”
“Monolith, monolith, monolith! Happy now? Moving on.”
Getting a little bit fed up, Subaru fired back perfunctorily before looking at the staircase again.
It was long and straight, long enough to skip past the third floor and go straight to the second. Considering the structure, it almost seemed like following it up would lead straight out of the tower—
“Is it just operating on the mysterious power principle to somehow work…”
“Maybe it doesn’t actually connect to the second floor, but to someplace else entirely… Or would that be too mean?”
“I worry that the longer we spend in this tower, the more it’s going to corrupt your simple honesty, Emilia. We should clear this place as soon as possible before you become more familiar with the thought processes of cruel people.”
It was a great boon having Emilia help solve the layout of the sadistically designed tower, but Subaru could not help worrying whether it would warp her personality.
“Either way, though, this is a pretty good pace. I cleared the third-floor examination on the first try, and we’re about a third of the way through the tower in just three days.”
“It’s certainly an unreasonable pace considering there hasn’t been any progress in over four hundred years.”
“When you put it like that, it’s kind of crazy… No, but unexpectedly, I’m a man who moves history that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years. A man who moves history definitely has a nice ring to it.”
Looking back on it, I was part of the group that slayed the White Whale, crushed the Archbishop of Sloth, and slayed the Great Rabbits. I helped to clear the trials in the Witch of Greed’s tomb and also beat the Archbishop of Greed and reached the Pleiades Watchtower, which has never been reached. And even cleared the first examination that no one had ever even faced, and now we’re about to tackle the second examination.
“Listing the achievements while leaving out the process makes it sound kind of crazy…”
I died over and over throughout all that, so it’s not like it’s all sunshine and rainbows, but still, there have been a lot of historic moments for this world in this past year.
I’m not doing it on purpose, but you better watch out, world—was the mood of it.
“Hmm? What is it, Emilia? Why’d you grab my hand?”
“…Nothing. It’s just, I think it would be better if you appreciated yourself a bit more.”
“That again? You and Beako are already kind enough to me. Anything more than this would be a luxury.”
And if Rem wakes up, I’m sure she would be kind, too. Firm, but kind.
And Petra and Patlash and Garfiel and Otto, too. There was no room for Subaru to go easier on himself with all of them around.
Emilia’s lips quivered as if she wanted to say something, but she just looked up at him, not finding the words.
“…Natsuki’s problem is built into the foundation. It’s not something that’ll fix itself in a day or two.”
“It’s because you’re always saying stuff like that, Anastasia—”
“All right, don’t just stand around all day. Aren’t we gonna go up and see? We might have to rack our brains like on the third floor, or maybe you’ll be able to easily solve it again.”
“If it’s as nasty as the third floor, I honestly don’t have a lot of confidence.”
It was just random chance that Subaru managed to solve the third floor’s examination.
If Flugel was a wanderer from the same world as Subaru like he suspected, then it was possible the examination for the second floor might also require modern knowledge from their world, but…
“If it’s something I don’t know about, that’s all she wrote… His name is Flugel, so if something from German history comes up, there’s not much I can do.”
Flugel is German for wing, if I remember correctly. No clue if it has any connection, but if Flugel really was a German, we might be SOL.
“…Not much point getting worried about it now. Not with the next stage literally right in front of us. Can you call yourself a man if you don’t go? Let’s make it nice and smooth.”
“Unfortunately, aside from you and me, everyone here is a woman.”
“I’m just trying to get fired up—don’t rain on the parade! All right, let’s go, Beako!”
“Ngha!”
Before his mood could get dampened, Subaru lifted Beatrice and started running up the stairs, ready to take the whole long staircase in one go.
“Dadadadadadada!”
“Ah, wait, Subaru!”
Following in the wake of Subaru’s furious dash, Emilia and the rest of the party took to the stairs. Subaru and Beatrice ran at the head of the line, leading the others.
Beatrice dexterously adjusted herself inside Subaru’s arms, her blue eyes narrowing.
“The space here must be warped. Even going up in a straight line this long, there is no indication of leaving the tower.”
“It might just be that we couldn’t tell from the outside that the tower had this sort of shape.”
“An area where this staircase juts out? It would look strange from the outside, which would make hiding this whole stairway pointless.”
“Yeah, I just wanted to put it out there.”
Agreeing with Beatrice’s theory, Subaru looked up as he panted a little bit.
It’s strange. Even after running up this far, there’s no sign of the next floor. Even running this much, it feels like I’m going up the down escalator.
“Emilia’s idea is starting to feel a lot more like a real possibility…!”
She had mentioned the potential existence of a staircase appearing that did not actually connect to the floor above. Just as that thought made Subaru shudder, the space over his head opened without warning.
“Whoa?!” “Hyaa!”
The seemingly endless grand staircase suddenly ended in a white light that swallowed up Subaru and Beatrice.
The stairs had suddenly ended, and Subaru stumbled as he came to a stop in what had at some point become a new room.
It was—
“Another white room…?”
“So it would seem.”
Stopping in their tracks, Subaru gently set Beatrice down on the floor.
A white space just like where the third floor’s examination had been held unfolded before their eyes. The floor and ceilings looked infinite, creating an incomprehensible space that disrupted all sense of depth perception.
“Wah, this room again?”
The only thing that stood out as different in the white world was the staircase they had just climbed. And Emilia and the rest who had followed Subaru began to appear from it one after the other.
Anastasia, who was the last to arrive, looked around restlessly.
“Another white room? Don’t tell me we somehow ended up back at the third floor.”
“I don’t think so. It was fifty-four steps to go up from the fourth floor to the third floor, but this was four hundred and forty-four steps. That’s almost ten times more steps.”
“Y-you counted, Emilia?”
“Heh-heh, actually counting steps in a staircase has been a bit of a hobby lately… Why are you patting my head?”
“A-anyway, that’s a great observation, Emilia. If this really is the second floor like we hope, then…”
“The examination should start. Most likely, that is the signal.”
Dodging Emilia’s question, Subaru looked at where Beatrice was pointing—the place right in front of where the stairway let out. There was an object there that made its presence felt.
“ ”
On the third floor, Taygeta, there was a thing like that in the center of the room, too. Touching it was the signal of the examination’s start. If the setup was the same, then most likely…
“It’s not a monolith this time. It’s a sword.”
Julius’s yellow eyes narrowed as he looked at the object sticking out of the ground in the middle of the room. As he said, it was different from the slab on the third floor.
A sword was standing with its point sticking into the white floor. The naked blade sticking straight up out of the ground looked terribly beautiful to Subaru.
It didn’t have any ostentatious decorations. And he couldn’t comment on the quality of the make or material. But the way it was, bare of excessive ornaments, just the minimum amount of steel needed, felt beautiful to him.
“So is this supposed to be a sword of selection or something…?”
“ ”
Julius raised his eyebrows at Subaru’s comment but managed to control himself.
Leaving his shock aside, Subaru looked over to Shaula first. The words “Whatever you ask, I don’t know!” were written all over her face, so he did not bother asking.
“Subaru.”
“It’s okay, I think. There’s no way some instant-death trap is going to spring on it or something.”
Nodding at Emilia, who looked worried, Subaru slowly walked over to the sword. There was no telling what would happen the moment he touched it. So he made sure to give everyone ample warning.
“Be sure to catch Anastasia. The stairs are long, so if she went rolling, she’d tumble to her doom.”
“I will bear that in mind. You should stay vigilant for Lady Emilia and Lady Beatrice as well.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll will be sure to protect Subaru.”
“Yeah, I’m being protected.”
Emilia flashed Subaru a thumbs-up, and Julius sighed a bit at how fired up she was. Seeing that, Subaru stood in front of the sword.
It was close enough to touch. At that point, it started to feel real. Unlike the monolith, it didn’t seem to be some sort of mysterious object.
“Still, though, to think the day would come when I faced this sort of orthodox fantasy fare.”
Muttering to himself in front of the sword in the ground, Subaru took a breath and then reached out to grab the sword’s hilt.
It came right after that.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
“—Ngh!”
The voice that bypassed their ears and echoed directly in their heads announced the explanation of the examination.
Expecting the voice this time, Subaru managed to avoid the embarrassment of dropping the sword, but the mysterious communication was still unpleasant.
Probably because the voice in my head sounds so much like mine.
“It almost feels like getting carsick… Did everyone else hear that…”
Is it only me, or did they hear it, too? With the monolith, it had applied to everyone, not just the person who touched the monolith, so he expected the same this time as well. But when he turned around, he noticed.
“ ”
—They were all staring past Subaru.
Drawn by their gazes, he turned back around. From the ground in front of where the sword had been standing, a single shadow appeared.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
It was spoken at a quiet murmur, but it resounded loudly in Subaru’s ears.
It was the same line as Subaru heard when he pulled the sword from the ground, but spoken in an actual voice by the person in front of him rather than echoing directly in his head.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
His body trembled when he heard it. He could not tell if it was fear, excitement, pleasure, or grief. At an instinctual level, he could sense a panic-inducing difference in power.
At this range, I can tell my life is in the palm of his hand from the sound of his voice alone.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
—It was a man with long, unkempt red hair flowing down his back.
He was tall. Around a full head taller than Subaru, and his body was covered in a sturdy mass of muscle that matched his height.
He wasn’t wearing armor. Just a crimson kimono casually draped over his body that provided no defense at all. His chest was half bared because he had not even put his right arm through the sleeve dangling at his side, and it was clear he was wearing a white sarashi around his waist. His fiery hair reached the middle of his back, and there was a black eyepatch with an odd design on it over his left eye. His right eye was the sky blue of an unreachable heaven.
If he stood calm and still, he possessed a beauty that would draw all eyes, a visage worthy of a painting—but it was shattered by the savage, cruel, and violent air around him.
It was a figure too handsome for so ferocious a beast.
The most beautiful wild animal—faced with that, Subaru forgot to breathe.
“Eep.”
What finally broke the spell that made time seem frozen in place was a groan. There was a light thud and then the sound of a little girl crying out.
“Ahhh.”
Subaru could not move his eyes, but just barely at the edge of his peripheral vision, he noticed a black-haired woman collapsed back on the floor—Shaula had slumped down beside Meili, who had no clue what had happened.
“N-nooo…”
But Shaula was so badly shaken she looked like she might wet herself.
If it were possible, Subaru would have listened to his instinct crying out and immediately run out of the room.
The only reason he had not was that his quivering legs did not allow it.
“—Ngh…”
Gulping, he forcibly closed his eyes that had forgotten how to blink and took a second to calm himself. And then, not looking away from the man, Subaru took a single step backward. Holding the sword in his right hand and Beatrice’s hand in his left, he pulled her with him.
“E-Emilia…”
“I…know…”
Making sure not to leave her behind, either, Subaru called out to Emilia, who had frozen, too. Emilia’s voice was trembling as she nodded. Unable to keep his knees from wobbling, Subaru slowly moved back in time with her.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
They put some distance between them, but the man still did not move. He just repeated those words.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
Backing away while keeping every last nerve focused on the man, Subaru made it next to where Shaula had collapsed to the ground. Her face was still twisted in fear, and Meili was holding her arm, unable to move.
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
The couplet he was repeating was the prompt for Electra’s examination.
There has to be a reason why he’s repeating it. The words I heard when I pulled the sword out and him repeating them, fool, sanction…
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword; gain…his…”
“—Huh?”
Subaru’s thoughts accelerated as a terrifying conclusion started to take shape. And just then, there was a change in the man’s voice.
—A change forceful enough to shock Subaru and the rest.
“Fool…heavenly sword…gain… Ah, aaaaooo, oooo, aaa.”
“Wh-what? What’s happening?”
“Ahhh, ahh, ahhhhhh!!!”
“EEEK!” “Wah?!”
The man’s speech started to break down, and then it came out in a rush.
Whimpering at that sudden outburst and unable to bear it, Shaula leaped onto Subaru. She clung to him for dear life, and he went tumbling, unable to properly catch her.
“That hurts! Shaula, what are you—?”
“Ahhhh! Master! Save me, Master! I don’t wanna! Save me!”
“—Shut up! Squealing hurts my head when I’m hungover! Quit bitching already!”
“Ah…”
Before Subaru could calm her down, Shaula reached her mental limit.
She passed out and went totally still, which was a one-eighty from how much she had been struggling before. Her arms were still wrapped tight around Subaru’s waist, but she was out like a light.
“Wait, seriously…”
“Burble, burble…”
Conveniently conveying the fact that she was unconscious, Shaula made a complete retreat from the front lines. Her reaction was completely and entirely outside Subaru’s expectations. Her fighting strength at least was the real deal, so for her to be that scared…
“It seems fair to believe that you are not an average person.”
“Wha?”
A single step rang out as the annoyed man growled.
It was the sole of a white shoe hitting the ground as an elegant knight stepped forward—in his hand was the sword that Subaru had dropped when he got bowled over by Shaula. It was Julius, his expression stiff.
“Who are you? Actually, where even is this? Is this supposed to be some kinda joke?”
“No, not in the least. We are also quite confused. You suddenly appeared here. I hope you understand that we cannot help but be on our guard.”
“The hell? Don’t gimme that complicated shit. And don’t talk like my follower. What are you, my apprentice? You aren’t. And if you aren’t, then don’t pull any confusing shit.”
The man responded with annoyance to Julius’s polite but guarded gaze.
It felt a lot more human than before when he was just repeating the examination’s couplet, but it was undeniable that they were not really managing to communicate with each other, either.
“—A babe, a babe, a sexy babe, rugrat, rugrat, apprentice, and a small fry.”
“Unfortunately, I am not your apprentice.”
“Keh! The way you say that makes you sound more and more like him. Quit copying him.”
Hearing Julius’s rebuttal, the man smiled for the first time as if in a good mood—it was like a shark’s smile.
Finally, that smile at least makes him seem ever so slightly human. Or maybe it’s confirmation that he’s a sentient life-form we can actually communicate with?
“Hey you. Explain. What is this place. What’d you do to me? Don’t give me any lip neither. Spill it.”
“Suddenly appearing out of nowhere… Acting all high and mighty.”
Subaru clutched his chest while forcing an answer to the haughty man standing before them. The man rumbled in annoyance.
“Ahh? The hell d’you think you are. What are you sleepin’ there for? Look at you. Sleeping on a bed of tits with that sexy babe there? Trade places with me.”
“Unfortunately, out of respect for her feelings, I’ll have to decline…”
Working his trembling knees to the limit, Subaru somehow managed to stand back up. In the process, he did not take enough care of Shaula, and her head slipped down to the floor, but he couldn’t afford to split his attention.
But…
“—Ahhh? The hell are you? Huh? You messin’ with me?”
“What…? You staring at my face, huh? Well?”
“Kah!”
There was a sharp sound, like teeth being grit as the man grinned ferociously.
And then, ignoring Subaru and his confusion, he turned his one eye to look all around the white space. And then—
“Ohh, ohh. Right.”
He nodded to himself as if understanding what was going on.
“Got it, got it. Well then, shall we start?”
“Start? Wait! You’ve been moving things along at your own pace for too long already!”
“Who asked you? My sleep talk should have explained it more than enough already. You should try listening when people tell you things.”
“Already…?”
“Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.”
Subaru’s eyes spun as he struggled to follow what was going on. In his stead, Emilia murmured the couplet that had been repeated so many times already word for word.
The girls were just starting to recover from the shock. Emilia and Beatrice and Anastasia and Meili were all coming to their senses. Everyone other than Shaula.
“Kah! That babe is different from you, small fry. If I had my real body, you’d be my partner tonight… Looking closer, you’re pretty crazy, hotness! What’s with that face! Talk about looks that could kill!
“Hotness…?”
“You’re…the examiner here! Is that about right?”
The man had an almost lustful glint in his eyes as he looked at Emilia. Cutting in between the two of them, Subaru pointed at him. The man’s sharklike grin widened when he heard the question.
“—How should I know? Not like I give a flying fuck about titles anyone else gives me. If you wanna actually talk with me, then try to make me move even one step from this spot.”
He was calmly standing there while entirely defenseless.
But they couldn’t just laugh it off, because they realized that the requirement he’d set was hard enough to be worthy of being called an examination.
Fool who attained the heavenly sword, gain his sanction.
If he is the ‘fool who attained the heavenly sword,’ then that being the way to get his sanction is a relief.
Now it’s just a simple question of whether moving him is even possible.
“I am Julius Juukulius, Knight of the Royal Guard of the Kingdom of Lugunica.”
Before the battle—or rather, the examination—began, Julius introduced himself as etiquette demanded.
It was both fair and the barest level of respect that should be paid an opponent preceding battle.
The man’s blue eye lit up. He seemed to be enjoying himself and was exuding an abnormal aura.
“I don’t have a name worth saying. I’m just the Stick Swinger.”
The examination for Electra, the second floor of the Great Pleiades Library.
Time: conditionally unlimited. Attempts: conditionally unlimited. Challengers: conditionally unlimited.
—Examination start.
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