5
It took Subaru a few seconds to absorb that statement and to digest the meaning.
“Reid is…Roy Alphard…?”
Hearing something entirely unexpected, Subaru’s mind stopped one step away from understanding. Like reading a book in a foreign language and not being able to decipher it, no matter how he tried.
It would have made more sense as a riddle.
“ ”
But seeing Julius’s face as he held his sword out while looking at Reid, it didn’t feel like that was the case.
He wasn’t the type to invite more chaos in an already dangerous situation by making a mindless joke. Subaru was sure about this evaluation after getting to know the man again after losing his memories.
If his claim was neither a lie nor a joke, then the situation was grave.
“So the most straightforward assumption is that Alphard guy transformed into Reid and—”
“Hold on, wait up.” Reid wrinkled his nose. “That misunderstanding ain’t funny.”
“Eh?”
“This ain’t some stupid joke, bastard. Don’t go thinkin’ stupid shit like I’m some other dumbass in disguise.”
Subaru couldn’t tell if that annoyance was genuinely Reid’s or a performance by the transformed Gluttony, but it at least didn’t look like he was trying to hide his identity. Simply put, this was just a childish temper tantrum.
“I’m me. Nothing’ll change that. That’s why I’m here. Hear me? Who’s gonna disagree? Huh?”
“ ”
Touching the patch over his left eye, Reid declared his identity like he was baring his fangs.
While Subaru’s confusion deepened after hearing that, Ram shifted in his arms. There was a faint surprise in her pink eyes.
“Could it be…?” she murmured softly. “Lady Beatrice, you mentioned it before. That the Archbishop of Gluttony we fought in the Water Gate City could freely change his form.”
“…Betty was thinking the same thing as you.”
Beatrice’s adorable cheeks tensed as she nodded at Ram’s question. The two of them seemed to have reached an agreement on something, but neither Subaru nor Emilia could follow their logic. Irritated at their reaction, Ram sighed a little.
“The Gluttony we sighted previously in a different location could change his form freely…no, I suppose it was probably limited to the form of someone whose memories he had eaten.”
“An absurd ability to reproduce not just the victim’s personality but even their physical form. It wouldn’t be strange if in the course of doing something like that, the Archbishop’s soul became disassociated, and they could no longer return to normal.”
“So it’s not just techniques? They can even copy bodies? That would definitely be ideal for someone with a copying ability…”
Defeating someone with the ability to imitate other people’s abilities because they couldn’t fully control those powers was a fairly common trope.
So Ram and Beatrice’s theory—replicating the original owner’s physical body to better accommodate the stolen abilities—made a lot of sense.
“And that Gluttony is making use of that…or perhaps made use of that is more accurate.”
“Past tense? You don’t mean…?”
Subaru’s eyes widened as he grasped Ram’s implication. Looking at Julius for an answer, he slowly, elegantly nodded.
Julius’s yellow eyes focused again on Reid.
“Ms. Ram’s and Lady Beatrice’s conclusion is correct. The man standing before us…his flesh is indeed Roy Alphard’s. But his mind is not.”
“—His mind?”
“Roy Alphard consumed Reid Astrea’s memories and then had control of his own soul wrested from him by those very memories. And that is how he descended from the second floor and is standing here without any restrictions.”
“ ”
Subaru stood there speechlessly as Julius confirmed the most preposterous possibility.
Can something like that really happen?
But it explained everything about the mystery surrounding Reid, including how he had suddenly gained his freedom and could walk around the tower in all this chaos even though he was supposed to be confined to the second floor as an examiner. It made perfect sense if he had taken over Gluttony’s body.
“So he fell into the most terrifying trap of replicating memories.”
“In other words, the strongest ego won out… What a risky gamble.”
Ram subtly mocked Alphard’s rashness to challenge someone with an ego as powerful as Reid’s.
Can’t say I disagree. However, while it wasn’t obvious who was the more difficult challenge to defeat, Reid or Alphard, as far as which was more inconvenient, the answer was clearly Reid.
With his strength and the lingering question of whether he even knew what they wanted to learn, he truly was one of the five obstacles in their way, and nothing less than a calamity.
Why did Alphard want to do something so reckless…?
“Roy Alphard said it was his nature. As Gluttony.”
“…You talked to him?”
“As I reached the second floor, I arrived just as Roy Alphard and Reid were facing off with each other.”
Julius explained all that he had seen. Reid and Alphard facing each other in that white space on the second floor. How the anomaly that was Reid Astrea was consumed, and how Alphard’s soul was also consumed in the process.
“…I’m amazed you just let yourself get eaten.”
“You should be amazed he actually had the balls to try and eat me. In the end, no one can go against their nature. The rug rat sacrificed himself on that altar.”
“But you didn’t resist being eaten by Alphard, either. Is that because you were sure you would be able to take over his consciousness?”
“It wasn’t anything smart like that. There’s just one thing I’m sure of.”
Scowling at Julius’s question, Reid scratched his ear with a finger. And then he flashed a ferocious grin.
“—That I’m me.”
Most likely, that was the key to Reid Astrea’s soul, and also the answer that Roy Alphard had misunderstood. Gluttony had not been eaten by a person; he had been consumed by a monster.
And that indicated one undeniable reality.
“Umm, may I ask something?” Having finally gotten a grasp on the situation, Emilia, who had been silent this whole time, raised her hand. Turning her purple eyes to Reid, she asked, “…Does that mean you are alive again?”
“Yeah. Now I can shack up some place better with you, hotness. You’re serving the booze tonight. And not just booze. There’s a lot more on the menu, too.”
“—? Are you inviting me out? I’ve only ever gone on a date with Puck and Subaru, so sorry. Also…”
She had just breezily mentioned some critical information Subaru couldn’t ignore, but this wasn’t really the moment to delve into the details. Moreover, he was a little surprised that Emilia could keep up with Reid’s wild banter.
Despite Subaru’s surprise, though, the corners of Emilia’s eyes raised a little.
“Congratulations on being able to walk around freely now. That’s really great…but we have some business with the boy who tried to eat you and ended up getting eaten by you. So…”
“Give this body back to him? Yeah, I know your situation, babe. There’s somethin’ you wanna get back, right? Keh, that dirty rug rat knows a lot of weird shit.”
“—! You can see Alphard’s memories?! In that case—”
“Lend you a hand? Oy, oy, don’t make me laugh,” Reid spat.
He aggravatedly grabbed the cloth around his waist. Apparently, it wasn’t just being brought back to life; Reid had even stolen Roy Alphard’s memory, the ability to glimpse one part of Gluttony’s authority.
However, it was something that apparently clashed with his aesthetics…
“I ain’t givin’ him over to you, and it ain’t my job to help you, either. And other than hotness there, none of you have passed my examination, either.”
“You’re still insisting on that exam even now?”
“You got it wrong. I’m not being insistent. It’s about the principle.”
Reid bared his teeth, revealing a mindset impossibly at odds with theirs.
I already knew it. Every other loop, no matter how big a disaster hit, he never changed his actions.
Even with his freedom, he still lived up to his role as examiner—no, what he lives up to isn’t some role. He’s just being true to himself.
But either way…
“I see. If you won’t agree, then I guess there’s no helping it.”
Emilia heaved a sigh, like she was saying “Well, that’s a shame.” His response was enough for her to decide it was all right to attack him.
“Sorry.”
That wasn’t directed at Reid, but at Beatrice, who she was holding.
Beatrice’s mouth opened in surprise as she was flung from Emilia’s spinning arms, tracing an arc through the air, and landing gently in a chair made of ice that had formed in the passage.
—Dashing like an arrow through the hall, Emilia swung her ice sword at Reid’s neck.
“Hah!”
Emilia didn’t hesitate once she decided to act, and Reid caught her surprise attack with a laugh. And the tool he used to do it was the pair of chopsticks he had pulled from his clothes.
Those again…
This wasn’t Subaru’s first time seeing him use chopsticks as a weapon, but that didn’t make the sight any less strange. Especially after he sent Emilia flying through the crumbling passage with them.
“Hah! As expected, you catch on quick, hotness! But, you understand, right? Your examination is already over.”
“In that case, let everyone else pass, too!”
“Oy, oy, where’s the logic in that? There’s no reason for me to do that.”
“Please!”
“Your begging’s got no charm. At least strip first.”
It was a plea that was quintessentially Emilia, spoken even as she was in the middle of launching another icy attack, but Reid had no interest in listening.
At a glance, it might have seemed like Emilia was overwhelming him with her superior number of attacks. The truth couldn’t be more different.
Emilia’s strength was the real deal, and it made her more than a match for Gluttony and the scorpion. At this range, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say she could defeat one hundred Subarus with ease. But even so, she was still just child’s play to Reid.
With just a mere handful of exchanges, he used those chopsticks to defeat everything Emilia brought to bear. It was an unbridgeable gap in strength between them that even an amateur could see.
“Lady Emilia…! Ngh, Barusu!”
“I know! Julius! Beatrice! Let’s do this!”
Ram could see the future of Emilia’s defeat, too. Firing back at her raised voice, Subaru decided to challenge Reid with all of their combined strength.
It was an unexpected matchup—ordinarily, the battlefield should not have ended up like this, but it was an actively developing situation.
We have to play it by ear and do our best—
“—That ain’t your style of fighting.”
“ ”
As if he’d read Subaru’s mind, Reid cut Subaru down with those words even faster than with the chopsticks.
And Reid Astrea didn’t need much time to cut through Subaru Natsuki’s shoddy adaptation, either.
Just one minute later, there was no one left standing in the passage, save Reid.
“Uh, ugh…”
Emilia groaned, somehow managing to attempt standing. Her legs were painfully discolored, and they refused to cooperate as she tried to channel her noble spirit into the strength to rise.
“ ”
Facedown a little distance from her, Beatrice was unmoving and unconscious. The excellent mage who appeared to be nothing more than a little girl didn’t have any means of resisting the style of the legendary swordsman revived after four hundred years.
“Humiliating…”
Ram, sitting with her back against the wall as blood dripped from her mouth, had put up the best fight. Even in her battered state, she had wrung herself dry and almost managed to scratch Reid. She was the hero most worthy of the medal of honor.
And—
“You had no chance, even if you used every trick in the book, but it would’ve been better if you at least tried. You’d still be a small fry either way, though. I guess you know that now.”
“Sunova…bitch…”
Reid’s sandaled foot kicked Subaru and pressed his head against the ground.
It was gut-wrenching, but the pain searing his whole body and Reid’s condescending comment really said it all. Even with a desperate charge, he still couldn’t manage more than emulating a cornered rat lashing out at a cat.
But the gap between them was so large that if Subaru was a rat, Reid was a dragon.
There was no hope of winning.
No, that’s not it. I couldn’t create a chance of winning.
“It’s not about numbers. You guys just don’t understand that. You get it now, right?”
“ ”
Standing above Subaru on the ground, Reid turned one eye toward the last remaining opponent—Julius Juukulius. He was the only one who had just barely managed to stay upright, albeit on his knees instead of on his feet.
The will to fight still had not gone out in his yellow gaze.
“Why…?”
“Huh?”
Reid raised his eyebrow at the question. Watching him, Julius rubbed the corner of his mouth, and with knees trembling, he stood. And looking Reid straight in the eye, he continued.
“Why are you obsessed with me?”
“Ah? Me, obsessed with you? Bite your tongue. A guy who’s all talk and looks is the thing I hate most. Why would I be obsessed with somethin’ like that?”
“Then why—?”
“—You’re the one who has a reason to be obsessed with me, though. Or are you really fine with me leavin’?”
“ ”
It was hard to say Reid’s answer was clear. He was the type of person who didn’t feel it worth the effort to put everything into words. And because of that, a lot of his answers were emotive and hard to understand.
“You too, small fry. You don’t get it, either, just like him. You don’t know how to swing your sword. There’s no fun like that.”
“I don…use a sword…gaaah”
“Adaptation or whatever. Doesn’t change that it’s just flailin’. Only the strong get to be invincible all the time, right? So…”
Reid stopped there, his lips twisting as he swung his chopsticks.
The next instant, there was a shrill noise, and the white flash closing in on the side of his face was deflected by the chopsticks.
“Usin’ your enemies ain’t a bad idea. But it was too slow.”
Glancing toward the source of the flash he deflected, Reid snorted. At the other end of the passage, the multiple red eyes floating in the gloom were proof of the menace that they had driven back once before.
Subaru had thought to use the light that tripped his sixth sense as at least a possibility of recovery from this hopeless spot, but…
“Tch, an annoying one’s just arrived.”
“Guh!”
Reid kicked Subaru away out of the attack’s path. The next instant, a downpour of white lights rained down, turning the area where Subaru had been moments earlier into a charred field.
Reid batted aside those arrows and took aim at the unwelcome intruder—
“S-Subaru…”
Subaru landed, just touching Beatrice. As Beatrice regained her consciousness, her face was pale as she said his name. Watching her go through this tugged at his heart. He wanted to do something, anything to help relieve the fear and unease on her strained face.
“It’s not over…Beatrice…we’ll find a way to recover somehow…”
“No…not that! It’s coming!”
“What?”
He assumed she meant the big scorpion. But in the sense of menace at least, Reid and the giant scorpion were matched. What else could come in this terrible situation…?
“—You don’t…”
“Like I said, an annoying one’s just arrived.”
As the thought flashed through Subaru’s mind, Reid confirmed it.
His tone was serious, almost as if he felt the situation would be difficult to digest.
—The next instant, the Pleaides Watchtower jolted upward.
The massive shock knocked Subaru off the ground as the world spun around him.
“ ”
Subaru was helplessly rolled away as the residents of this fantasy world all demonstrated stunning reactions.
In midair, Emilia gave up trying to put any weight on her broken legs and used her magic from a painful position to defend Subaru from the concentrated barrage of light aimed directly at him. Julius dashed across the tilting world, answering Reid’s challenge with a thrust that contained everything he could muster. And Beatrice immediately pointed her small palms toward Subaru to cast a spell.
“—Murak!”
The instant she said that, Subaru was enveloped by a weightlessness that was obviously different from the sensation of being caught in a shock wave. It felt like he’d been freed from the shackles of gravity and let loose into a weightless world.
The world being flipped upside down didn’t have much effect on the situation. They all still did whatever they thought was best.
“Ah.”
And they were swallowed whole by the massive wave of black shadows that laughed at their efforts.
“ ”
The deafening sound of an implosion rang out. The watchtower—made of a material that boasted more strength than any simple stone—was being ground to dust. This was an atrocity committed by a shadow that shouldn’t have had any mass.
It wasn’t a simple harbinger of destruction but a natural disaster that swallowed up even those who possessed superhuman strength in this world.
Even Emilia, who had struggled against the scorpion, praying that she might protect her comrades.
Even Julius, who had answered Subaru’s request with his sword.
Even Beatrice, who had used her magic to protect Subaru before herself.
They were all entwined by the outstretched shadow in the blink of an eye, disappearing into the darkness.
“ ”
There was no sound, no reverberation as their figures were erased.
Subaru couldn’t find the words in his mind to describe what had happened to them in the span of a split second.
But there was one thing he could say for sure.
“—I failed.”
“—I love you.”
The murky words of love were uttered at the same time he accepted reality.
Like a whisper in his ear, like a murderous touch, like a full-body embrace, like a caress on his soul…that world-altering love felt terrifyingly close.
He understood immediately. This was the greatest of the five obstacles—the all-consuming shadow. It wasn’t even clear whether there was a way to deal with it.
It was his third time seeing this shadow, and every time he had, he had lost his life.
And this isn’t any different. The moment it appears and reaches me—
“—The hell are you daydreamin’ about, huh?”
All of a sudden, the black shadow swirling around Subaru was swept away by a single rush of movement.
“—No way.”
“Peel your eyes and look. The hell you mean ‘no way’? Are your damn eyes still workin’? Open ’em and take a good look,” Reid roared. “You think I’m lyin’?”
Swinging the knight’s sword carelessly, he cut back the shadow. He was holding the blade that should have been in Julius’s hand.
Ironically, having lost its owner, it was being swung freely in the hand of the Sword Saint. But there was no time to feel anything about that fateful irony.
“ ”
The effect of Beatrice’s magic persisted, and Subaru’s body was still untouched by the influence of gravity. He watched as the floor and walls and ceiling disappeared and the tower lost all form.
—He saw Ram, who still had not been swallowed by the shadow.
“—!”
Twisting his body, kicking against a fragment of ground, he desperately flew to her slender body. His fingertips just managed to reach her, and he frantically pulled her into his arms.
The structure of the watchtower was already actively collapsing, and he had lost track of what was ceiling and what was wall. There was nothing but an unending black sky and an unending black floor: a black world.
The only thing that felt real in that world that had lost all meaning was the warmth in his arms.
“Argh.”
The warmth from Ram’s unconscious body.
“—!”
Gnashing his teeth, he bit his lip to anchor himself.
Just now, as the darkness threatened to blot everything out, I gave up, not even trying to understand the situation. I was just waiting for the end.
It was unforgivable. Not when this life in his arms was even now struggling to survive.
“Not yet, there’s still…”
Something. Something could be gained from this situation.
Subaru had been swallowed up by the shadow’s evil influence and had lost his life twice before. But both endings had been sudden. He had never been given any time like this before.
This time was different because of Ram, whose frail life carried on, and—
“Ha!”
—and because of the help he got from Reid, who wore a savage grin as he floated in the darkness, just like Subaru.
Of course, he wasn’t going to thank him. Subaru’s whole body was groaning from Reid’s rough touch. And the main reason he had run out of time before the shadow swallowed up the tower was because Reid had inserted himself into this whole mess.
“You’re gonna go down, too. One of us is going to make it happen.”
“At least say it’s gonna be you to the end, small fry.”
Glancing down, Subaru saw Reid holding the sword in a backhand grip and taking aim at him. There was some distance between them, but a few yards was nothing to Reid.
As Reid focused his hostility on Subaru, the pitch-black shadow beneath him started to act more aggressively. But even that renewed assault was no match for Reid’s blade.
Subaru didn’t realize it, but in that moment, he was essentially watching a reenactment of the legendary showdown between the Witch and the Sword Saint that was said to have happened four hundred years ago.
Regardless, death was coming for Subaru.
“At least…”
…Let her survive, even just one second longer.
With that plea, Subaru held Ram’s body tightly in his arms.
The next instant, there was a torrent of light greater than any flashing blade that swallowed Subaru—
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