CHAPTER 4
THE END OF SLOTH
1
The black, overwhelmingly violent torrent bore down on them head-on, but the rainbow aurora slashed it apart.
“—!”
The sword’s wielder lashed out, slicing down the oncoming evil black hands one after another. The process repeated dozens of times over.
Julius’s rainbow-gleaming sword was an enchanted, certain-death blade imbued with the magic of the six elements. It could even rend Petelgeuse’s Unseen Hands asunder; dispersed into mist, the shadows dissipated and vanished.
Subaru didn’t understand the principles at work. But perhaps it was difficult to reconstitute Unseen Hands severed by the rainbow, for the shadows grew thinner as the sword blows swept away the evil hands; Petelgeuse’s rage grew thicker in their stead.
“This is not amusing. This is not a joke. This is something that cannot be! For such a method, a ploy, a child’s trick! To impugn! My love! My devotion…!!”
“Not a very nice way to recruit someone…and your organizational culture looks pretty awful to me.”
The madman frothed at the corners of his mouth as his inexhaustible shadow arms pounded away. However, Julius countered the evil hands with his rainbow or evaded with his movements alone. With elegant steps the knight danced across the rocky ground, performing a sword dance as he dominated the battlefield.
Even so, the evil hands knew no limits, over ten constantly bearing down upon him, pounding their malice upon him. A single sword swing could not defend against them all. Naturally, Julius’s limbs took glancing hits, and a number of lacerations were carved into him.
“Ngg—”
Though he was willingly on that battlefield, Subaru’s shoulders leaped several times at the sharp pain. The graze of a black finger made the pain of his thigh splitting burn into his brain. For a moment he nearly let out a cry of pain, but he bit into the flesh of his cheek and endured. He strongly clenched a fist in response to the burn of his shoulder splitting.
At that time, Subaru and Julius’s five senses were completely synchronized via the magical sharing of their thoughts. Accordingly, Julius was able to see Unseen Hands through Subaru’s vision; for his part, Subaru had become able to trust in the might of the magic sword in Julius’s grasp.
“—”
However, putting that goodwill aside, the makeshift partnership was extremely precarious.
Thanks to their synchronization, both had been seeing double. When partnered as such, their vision would be constantly blurry, as if the left eye and the right eye were looking at completely separate scenes. And, as touch was included in the shared senses, not only were Julius’s fighting ardor and exhilaration of battle acutely engraved into Subaru, but the pain he felt as well.
There was the sight of the wind grazing his skin, the touch of his leather soles trampling the soil, the taste of blood and saliva mixed together inside his mouth, the ear-ringing sound transmitted to his brain, the smell of risking his life to the utmost, living on the edge between life and death.
The numbers didn’t add up. If both were bathed in the experiences of two people nonstop, it simply meant the burden was double. Taste, smell, hearing, pain, touch, sight—right then, they were all a chore.
The dilemma was like having an itch in a place your hand simply could not reach. Perhaps it was better described as having an itch on the back of someone else’s head.
“To tell you the blunt truth, I really wanna end this right here, right now…,” Subaru murmured, as his body pleaded for an end to the ill feeling and he wet his tongue.
The dryness from the prior moments had probably been passed on to Julius. He couldn’t let other physiological responses rear their ugly heads.
It was hard to endure the awful feeling, even though he’d been the one to propose the plan. To think blurring the border between yourself and another meant randomly clawing away at the core of your humanity to such an extent.
But he did not plead for mercy. It was impermissible. And it was no one and none other than Subaru who refused to permit it.
After all…
“It seems you have grown somewhat accustomed, Subaru. Shall I increase the pace?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m with you all the way!”
Countless evil hands leaped at Julius before Subaru could even reply. With a posture so low you’d think his chin would chafe against the ground, he slipped under the hands, and with a lash of his rainbow mowed all the shadows away.
As those became mist, the madman sent evil hands threading the dispersing shadows, headed for Julius. But even these fell to the blow of the leaping knight’s sword, beautifully blasting them apart.
“—”
Julius elegantly proceeded through the battle, but his brilliant movements slightly faltered.
Of course they did. As the handsome man flung away the remnants of the shadow coiled around his cavalier’s sword, the eyes of his gallant face were closed; they had actually been closed while he was engaged in battle, unlike before combat had begun.
This was to narrow the sets of vision from two to one, to achieve victory through Subaru’s eyes alone.
If they’d kept sharing their synchronized vision, the world’s contours would have become vaguer and vaguer. Accordingly, Julius had closed his own eyes, entrusting Subaru with all visual information.
Julius had made that judgment without consultation. Subaru understood that his judgment was correct.
But at the same time, the true motive behind that action left Subaru indignant.
“Crazy, crazy, you’ve gotta be kidding me! You really are a disagreeable bastard!!”
Abandoning his own vision and making Subaru his eyes on the battlefield was putting his own life on the line, proving that he trusted Subaru not to avert his eyes from the battle.
On top of that, inserting Subaru’s vision into his nervous system was not nearly as simple as it sounded. One way of putting it was that it was like a third-person shooter, fighting on TV while watching himself from behind.
“This isn’t a game, and it’s lunatic difficulty, one hit and it’s game over! Putting your life on the line like this, gotta be nuts… You and me both!”
“I do not believe you have the time to flap your lips!”
As Subaru kept his eyes wide open, Julius kicked off the rock wall, leaping back to rejoin the boy right at his side. With a swing and a thrust, he prevented damage not only to himself, the main target, but from the stray evil hands headed for Subaru.
During that time, all Subaru could do was sit tight, not averting his eyes, and gasp at the vivid display of skill.
A wry smile came over Julius, eyes still closed, at Subaru’s state.
“You are quite a bit of trouble. I understand you are desperately trying, but perhaps you could defend yourself a little more? I cannot face the enemy head-on like this.”
“I’ll take those words and throw ’em right back in your face! I can barely watch you cutting it that close! Or did you miss the desperate knight I was seein’ through my own eyes?!”
“I see a fine young man sad at having to keep his eyes closed. He appears to be handsome and of good upbringing.”
“I’m starting to suspect you and I aren’t looking at the same world here!!”
The two exchanged banter as they leaped away from the evil hands rushing upon them the next moment. Subaru’s feet clumsily slipped, whereas Julius split the wave of shadow with his sword, elegantly slipping through the gap to advance upon the madman once more.
“Amazing.”
Rising up after falling on his backside, Subaru spontaneously voiced his admiration at the sight of Julius in battle. Midbattle, Julius had grown acclimated to the unnatural physical sensations with frightening speed, raising the accuracy and sureness of his sword to new heights.
It was not a feat that knack alone could achieve.
This was the experience he had gained through the pain of ferocious training, cruelly using his body to its utmost limits.
This was the end result of clashing with swords and lives in the midst of battle, honing his own skill and conviction to a fine edge.
Hence, without the slightest fear or doubt, he could swing his sword confident in himself.
“—”
Unable to avert his eyes, Subaru stared at the battle, clenching a fist in fierce regret.
He felt remorse at his incomparable powerlessness in that place, and at having spent day after day in idleness.
That feeling joined the pile of regrets that were the difference between Subaru Natsuki then and Subaru Natsuki as he had become.
It was because he was ashamed, because it burned him so, that Subaru could not avert his eyes.
“—I’ll be going now.”
“Yeah, get goin’.”
It was not that he heard the whisper. But Subaru responded to Julius’s words nonetheless.
Grazes from the hands sent pain from the gouge in Julius’s back, from his thigh, and from his dislocated shoulder slamming into Subaru’s brain.
Subaru gritted his teeth enough they nearly broke, for he could not avert his eyes.
Rush, leap, slide, slice back, step, jump, advance, slip under, stop on a dime, glide past, circle inward, leap sideways, twist and evade, turn around, charge in, leap up, kick, leap about—refined motions all.
“Impossible…”
Slice away, slice down, charge in, slice up, kick away, gliding slice, slam, sweeping slice, thrust, cleave, lash, swing down, knock down, slice away, charging slice, slice in—with repeated sword blows and slices, the Unseen Hands turned to dust.
“Impossible, impossibleimpossibleimpossibleimpossible…!”
Eerie black covered the whole of the sky, yet the sight of the knight carrying on his aurora-shrouded sword dance was so beautiful, Subaru lost track of reality. The scene was so surreal that it could make you forget this was a deadly duel.
That was probably because the thoughts of the quasi-spirits passed through Julius and were conducted to Subaru as well. Those girls loved Julius—and in contrast, they hated the madman. They found the madman intolerable—to such an extent that they could never accept him as one of their own.
“This cannot be! It cannot possibly be so! Why is it! How can this be?! MY Authority…! I am loved, I know I am loved, I am assuredly loved! And yet, to this extent, I AM being—!”
“You persist in illogical thoughts and actions. The fitness of your so-called Authority has diminished. More importantly, I have become sufficiently accustomed to this manner of fighting through Subaru’s eyes.”
As Petelgeuse vented his fury, Julius thrust his sword forward, eyes still closed.
“It is finally time to cut you down in earnest. Here, I shall strike you down with my blade, and bring the long-standing menace Sloth has posed to the kingdom—nay, the world—to an end!”
“As if you can! As if I will let you! I…I am! ONE such as I who has been bathed in the Witch’s grace! Four hundred years! Striving diligently to make Her will a reality! Do you really think a fool like you and your fledgling spirit flunkies can defeat me…!”
Petelgeuse bared his blood-tinged teeth as he raged at Julius’s words. But the madman’s very rage gave Subaru conviction that the final piece needed for his anti-Sloth strategy had fallen into place. Petelgeuse’s abnormal hatred toward spirits rivaled his infatuation with the Witch—in fact, Subaru was counting on it.
“Julius—!”
“Understood! —Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins, prepare yourself!!”
Julius stepped forward, advancing with the speed of an arrow. Petelgeuse opened his mouth, deploying his Unseen Hands with an incoherent shout. The evil hands spread through the sky, along the earth, through the forest, as they enveloped Julius to impale him from all directions—
“—Al Clauzeria!!”
Circling around the chanting Julius, a swirling vortex of rainbow-hued light erased all the pitch-black evil hands from existence.
The aurora burned through the world for only a second—but that second was enough. In an instant, like the blink of an eye, the encircling net Petelgeuse had wrought had completely vanished. And, in so doing, opened an unobstructed path between Julius and the madman…
“Bahaa!”
Petelgeuse, struck by vestiges of the aurora and caught in the explosions of his shadows, tumbled to the earth. His crushed fingers clawed at a boulder, and the madman looked like he was about to spit up blood as he rose to his feet.
Right before his eyes, Julius drew near, unleashing a sharp thrust aimed straight at the madman’s breast.
“I shall…not…let YOU! —Ul Doona!”
Petelgeuse spread his arms wide, intoning a spell as he took a counterattack posture. The next moment, the earth burst upward, and stone walls, a mix of boulder fragments and black soil, enclosed the madman on four sides.
The sword bounced off the rock wall. Mad laughter welled up from the other side, and Petelgeuse let Unseen Hands fly over it, slamming from Julius’s blind side to deliver a serious pummeling.
“—”
Dealing with the evil hands meant giving Petelgeuse, on the other side of the wall, an opportunity to escape. However, if he pursued Petelgeuse, he would be slain by the Authority. Either way, Julius’s sword could not reach him.
That is, if Julius had been waging that battle alone.
“Blaze, fighting spirit! Howl, demon ball! I’ve got fifty pounds of will, right here!!”
Twisting his body, raising a leg, taking a great step forward, shoulder rotating in a full swing—with a speed not exactly that of a fastball, Subaru hurled the crimson magic crystal in his hand.
The youth was no baseball prodigy. But he had once had a burning craving for strikeouts at the nearest batting center. His pitch control, at least, amounted to second rate.
When this was combined with his concentration ability in his state of extreme observation, hitting the center of the rock wall with the magic crystal was downright easy.
“What IS…?!”
The crimson magic stone imbued with destructive energies sailed past Julius and crashed into the wall of stone—and exploded in a flash of light and great heat, burying Petelgeuse’s field of vision with the vermillion flames from the detonation.
“It cannot be that this, too, was your plan from the…”
“Scorning him as powerless is the cause of your defeat!”
As Petelgeuse froze in shock, Julius’s voice reached him from the other side of the flames. The next instant, Julius broke through the flames in a flying leap, burying the tip of his sword in the immobile madman.
“…aa—”
His breast thus run through, the inside of Petelgeuse’s entire body was charred by the rainbow aurora.
Slammed into the rock wall behind him, impaled against it, Petelgeuse flailed his limbs. The madman spit out bloody froth, wept, and bared his teeth, as if unable to believe it.
“Ab…surd. Absurd, absurd, absurd…! This cannot…be happening…to ME…!”
“The rainbow aurora has bitten into your very soul. No matter whose body you reside in, the wicked soul within shall find no escape— Now, fall to pieces at the rainbow’s end!”
At Julius’s voice, the glow of the cavalier’s sword increased. Bathed in that light, Petelgeuse could not unleash Unseen Hands; he could only groan in agony and writhe in the unsightly manner of an insect on the brink of death.
However, as Petelgeuse struggled, the madness in his eyes was undiminished. He had not given up on living.
“It ends not here! It cannot! It shall NOT!! My efforts are diligent! I shall not permit any thoughts of surrendering to laziness or sinking into SLOTH! That’s why, by any means necessary…!”
The madman wailed, struggled, wriggled, and opened his tattered mouth wide as he tried to escape from the sword. Julius gazed in wonder at his implacable tenacity while twisting his sword, pouring destructive energy into the heart of his foe.
If his heart was destroyed, death was inescapable— Before that point, Petelgeuse made his decision.
“Having lost all my fingers, my destruction is inescapable…BUT…BUT! BUT! There is still, one vessel, that remains for me…!”
They’d gone all over the place and preemptively taken out Petelgeuse’s fingers—the spare physical bodies he had brought with him. Consequently, he had to select a replacement on-site.
“—”
His madness-suffused eyes opened wide and moved around. He looked past Julius and caught sight of Subaru.
A chill ran down Subaru’s spine. Simultaneously, Petelgeuse’s mad laughter grew louder, deeper—
“Ahh—my brain…is shaking.”
The moment after his murmur, Petelgeuse’s Julius-impaled body crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut. Light faded from its eyes, and its limbs drooped, all signs of life falling from them.
The time had come. Subaru thrust a hand into his pocket and shouted to Julius.
“Julius! Release!”
“Acknowledged!”
Responding to Subaru’s call, Julius released Nekt just as they had arranged. As a result, Subaru was instantly freed from the ill feeling of two layers of five senses—but didn’t even have time to breathe.
For next, in place of Julius’s five senses, came a foreign existence, overwriting the impudent Subaru.
Stuffed into his chest, the invisible entity robbed him of his right to control his own body—and its shrill, earsplitting laughter echoed inside Subaru’s own skull.
Subaru proceeded to bend exaggeratedly backward, opening his eyes and mouth to their utmost in acclamation.
“I. Knew. It! This flesh is a vessel with the capacity to hold ME! And with no way to stop ME! No way to impede my path! AHH, ahh, you, were LAZY!”
Petelgeuse’s existence felt so close, it was as if they were sitting side by side in the same brain.
This was the final stage of Possession—with his fingers lost, Petelgeuse had moved to take over Subaru’s body.
Subaru had no way to resist that savage blow. He’d lost the freedom of his body as the madman consumed his mind.
“Now this is the body of YOUR friend, yes! Can a knight aspiring to noble virtues bring himself to cut it down?!”
Having taken Subaru as a hostage, Petelgeuse licked Subaru’s face with his own tongue. The words caused Julius, looking ready to rush over, to halt his feet as he spoke.
“Certainly, I cannot bring myself to cut him down.”
“Then—!!”
“Accordingly…”
As Julius spun the quiet word, he showed the madman his own left hand. He held a glowing conversation mirror in the hand opposite to that gripping his cavalier’s sword. Subaru had passed Julius the mirror in his pocket the instant Subaru was being possessed.
Its glowing surface displayed a cat-eared knight who had been observing the battle since the outset.
“Now it is your turn, Ferris!”
“Subawu, you big fat idiot for making me do this! I’m going to rip you to pieces later!”
When Julius addressed Ferris through the conversation mirror, the latter’s voice sharpened to a point. The ill omen made Subaru/Petelgeuse’s eyes open wide, and in accordance with that premonition, Ferris carried out the attack.
However, with his actions having been read through Return by Death, there was nothing he could do—
“Unseen……?! GaAaaaaaH?!”
The instant he tried to unleash the Authority, Subaru/Petelgeuse screamed so much, it seemed his throat would burst. The cause was an explosion inside the body that released a torrent of unfathomably vast heat and anguish.
With a wobble, Subaru’s body lost its strength and, still feeling hot all over, collapsed onto the ground. His skull felt like a sauna within which his brain was boiling, with his scalded mind cutting in and out over and over.
And Petelgeuse, sharing his flesh, had shared that very bitter taste.
“A…ga…haa… What…what…happ…?”
Having experienced the novel anguish of having his brain sterilized through boiling, Petelgeuse moaned, his confusion plain. Subaru, clawing together his mental strength, stuck his tongue out at the abominable soul that was his roommate as he answered.
“If the body you take over ain’t…in good shape, you can’t…do a thing, can you?”
“It cannot be…it cannotcannotcannotcannotcannnoooooottttttttt…be! YOU, you expected ME to shift to your body?!”
You bet! Subaru grandly stated as Petelgeuse expressed shock inside his brain.
They were two minds in one body. It felt odd for Subaru’s declaration to leave Subaru speechless. On the inside, Subaru apologized over the conversation mirror to Ferris for foisting such a distasteful task upon him.
—For it was Ferris, on the other side of the conversation mirror, whose spell had robbed Subaru’s body of its freedom.
For the purpose of healing, Ferris had interfered with Subaru’s Gate, making it possible for him to make the mana inside Subaru’s body go berserk through use of water magic. Indeed, it was he who had delivered fatal damage to Subaru the last time around when Petelgeuse had possessed Subaru’s body.
He’d made Ferris, proud of his power as a healer, use that power to take a human life. And yet, Subaru had asked him to use that power in such a fashion once more, so as to lay the final trap.
“So thanks to that last request, this body’s no good, either… So ready to give up yet?”
“Give up? Give in? As if I would surrender! At this rate, I will rob your flesh, and it will be me, by me, for me, only me—me, me, ME?!”
Beyond his normal madness and fury, Petelgeuse, in a true sense, had begun to go insane.
To so great an extent his moves had been read in advance, his plans thwarted, yet even so, Petelgeuse wailed while tenaciously clinging to his delusions; and Subaru, even as he tasted the suffering of his blood boiling within his body, hardened his resolve.
“At this rate, I’ll die…and that’ll be traumatic for Ferris… I don’t wanna die, either, so I’m gonna settle things with you. We’re just gonna do it my way…”
“What, are…more, unto me! What more, DO you seek from me?!”
Petelgeuse’s voice shook; he was aghast at Subaru’s words, words that foretold what was coming.
That moment, with Petelgeuse sitting right next to him in his brain, he knew. The madman was closer to him than he needed to be, conveying his fear and denial so much that it hurt.
The same went for him. Hence, he knew that Subaru’s resolve was the real deal.
“Are you scared? Now, after all the things that you’ve done?”
“All unto love! All to repay Her favor! What do you know about ME?! All YOU have done is interfere and obstruct my path! What is it with YOU?!”
Petelgeuse knew not Subaru’s true identity. He was simply afraid.
The madman did not understand whence sprung the hatred Subaru bore toward him. Subaru and Petelgeuse’s lives had never crossed, not even once. At the very least, that was true as far as he was concerned.
“Your actions are simply out of irrational resentment…misplaced to the EXTREME!!”
“…There’s no point talking to you anymore. Even among human beings, there are people you can’t have a frank conversation with. That goes double if you’re not even a human being.”
“—”
Subaru’s voice, tinged with disappointment and understanding, sent Petelgeuse into shock.
The madman’s reaction was raw, for Subaru’s declaration had penetrated his stupor to strike at the truth.
“What. Are. You… Are you saying…you know about ME?!”
“The fact I lured you to this rocky place should’ve made you imagine a nut being cracked— It’s a place only for proper spirit mages and—this is flattering myself—people qualified to become ’em.”
This was the final condition for Possession that the conversation between Subaru and Julius had uncovered—
“Forcing a pact onto a human being qualified to be a spirit mage and takin’ over their bodies. That’s the truth behind your Possession, Archbishop of…no, spirit, Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti!”
“You dare—!!”
When his true nature was exposed in a loud, brash voice, Petelgeuse, lurking inside Subaru, forgot his fear and shouted back.
Subaru had realized Petelgeuse’s true nature when in thought in the middle of the Possession incident the last time around. The real tip-off was Ia, the quasi-spirit.
Last time around, Ia ought to have been residing in Subaru’s body, but the instant Petelgeuse possessed him, she was shot out of Subaru. That unnatural occurrence led him to broaden his speculation. It was for this reason Subaru began to suspect that his hatred of spirits—and of the spirit mages employing them—was hatred of his own kind.
Petelgeuse’s Possession was an irregular pact, the effect of Petelgeuse himself being an evil spirit. Accordingly, he saw spirit mages, which already had formal pacts with spirits, as his enemies. Even if he could hijack a provisional pact, he could not do so to a formal one. That was why spirit mages were his mortal enemies.
It was because of Julius’s sword, and the power resting within it, that Subaru had selected him for the decisive battle—
“Wow, getting ticked at me hitting the bull’s-eye. Maybe while possessing people their humanity rubbed off on you?”
“Silence! Do not! Do not compare ME to spirits! Do not put me together with such lowly beings! I am a being beyond that of spirits! I am a chosen being surpassing mere spirits, abandoning vague self-consciousness and granted an objective through Her favor! What do YOU know about me?!!”
Petelgeuse vented, forgetting all about the flesh he had taken over as his rage and hatred exceeded all limits. Ironically, the contents of his words only bolstered Subaru’s deductions, and the more he denied it, the deeper he dug his own grave.
“Love has changed ME! Love has given me will, a reason to exist! This, and everything, is by the grace of the Witch! The Witch’s favor! Thus! Thusthusthusthusthusthus! I must offer this body, this soul, everything to the WITCH!”
“You can save the sermon, Lord Archbishop—I’ll grant you an audience, then…just for you.”
“What?! With whom?! Of what do you speak?!”
“Why, the great Witch you’ve been waiting for.”
Root and branch, Subaru’s statement blew Petelgeuse’s fierce emotions away.
What remained was shock and bewilderment, and for the first time, Subaru had a glimpse of the underside of Petelgeuse’s madness.
As the mad thoughts went blank, Subaru turned toward them, choosing that moment to be the one to draw near.
“—I’ve Returned by Death…”
The instant he spoke the forbidden words, the world lost its color, and all motion came to a stop.
And then it came for Subaru.
2
The world that greeted him was dominated by darkness, and darkness alone.
It was a hazy space, a world of nothing, an empty vacuum where even his own body did not exist.
Whether his body existed or not was unimportant; it was a world where existence or nonexistence held no meaning, a world where you knew not if you even had a soul.
There was a sense of oblivion alone, and there was a blissful, familiar feel to that oblivion. If he could feel anything at all in that place, he could somehow make out his own existence.
Within that darkness, where even his mind was hazy, there suddenly came a change, and the world’s ambiance shifted.
“—”
In that world without light, there was a pitch-black figure blotting out even that darkness.
It was a woman. He could grasp that at least.
Her face and the contours of her body were so uncertain, he could not be sure of anything about them. And yet his heart seethed.
This chance meeting with her—no, not a chance meeting; this was a reunion.
This was blessing, this was grace, this was gospel—this was true love.
His lack of fingers irritated him. He wanted to walk over and take her hand that very instant.
His lack of a mouth irritated him. He wanted to lavish words upon her to express his feelings.
His lack of a body irritated him. If she so desired, he would offer her blood, bone, flesh—all of it.
His being only a soul irritated him, for he had but that single thing to offer her.
“?”
As before, she continued to hold her silence. But her mind had certainly shifted in his direction. That was enough. Being in a world where she paid heed to his existence felt as good as if he had ascended to heaven.
And his soul, yearning for love for so long, would be hers, forever—
“—This is wrong.”
The voice was tinged with disappointment and despondency.
He had prepared to receive her first words with supreme bliss, whatever they might be. Yet the instant he heard her voice, it created a shadow of worry that made his entire being tremble.
Why did it feel like this? Here, in the place that would surely grant the love that he sought…
“—You are not him.”
Her disappointment deepened, her ardor dissipated, and finally her despondency changed into another emotion—anger.
“Why is someone not him here, in our place—?”
The voice shook with anger.
The angry, hateful, accursed words rejected the soul, ripping it into pieces.
Unable to grasp the reason for her pushing him away…unable to accept the reality that she truly detested him, and that his love could never reach her…he desperately sought words of sadness and lament, a voice that he could exhaust to assuage her heart.
But he had no mouth to use to form such words, nor fingers nor a body to act out his will. All he had in that place was his soul—and she had rejected him, not permitting him to offer even that.
“—Begone.”
The bewilderment, consternation, and grief of his thoughts never reached her. They were meaningless, for to her he was worthless, meaningless, and idle.
Bathed in rejection and repudiation, he accepted his despair; the misery shattered his soul.
Torn away from the framework of the world, his mind was cut from it; and so he sank far, far away, the reunion he had so yearned for…severed.
The sight of her grew distant.
She, whom he had so much, so greatly, so earnestly yearned for, vanished into the ether.
But she no longer cared about such laments.
She merely gazed silently, earnestly, into the pitch blackness—
“I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you—”
It was not to anyone present, but someone elsewhere, to whom she continued innocently whispering her love.
3
“—Aaagaah! I’m baaack!!”
Liberated from the agony he’d thought would last forever, Subaru’s mind caught up to the speed of reality.
The pain of his heart’s being mercilessly squeezed was the strict penalty for speaking that which was taboo. The hands wrought from black shadow—they greatly resembled Petelgeuse’s Authority, a fact likely related to the Witch.
Return by Death probably had something to do with some fated connection between Subaru and the Witch of Jealousy. Or perhaps it had something to do with Subaru’s being summoned to another world in the first place.
“Either way, I’ll find an explanation someday… But right now…!”
Brushing his misgivings aside, Subaru moved his cramping limbs and rose to his feet. He vigorously used a sleeve to rub grimy drool off his cheek, practically gluing himself to the boulder right next to him as he climbed upward.
Then, as the foreign element purportedly in him vanished, he shifted his eyes toward the rock face.
“…How…can…this…BE…?!”
Subaru saw Petelgeuse there, crawling in a pool of blood. Having returned to his own corpselike body, Petelgeuse dragged it forward as he wept, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.
He had abandoned Possession of Subaru, breaking the forced pact, his mind returning to his own body. Having shared Subaru’s body, he had to have suffered the same penalty from divulging Return by Death.
In a possessed state, pain was shared, too. Subaru had identified his comparative endurance as his final trump card against Petelgeuse.
“Worst case, I was ready to do that over and over till you tapped out…but you gave up after just once. No guts, huh?”
Wheezing while boasting of victory, the bluffing Subaru felt strength drain from his legs. But he used a branch behind him to support his tottering body, giving a snort toward the side of the face of the man standing beside him.
The knight—Julius—gave a pained smile at his demeanor, swinging his sword and turning it toward Petelgeuse.
“This time, we finish this.”
There was a pale glow along the blade of his bloodied cavalier’s sword as the quasi-spirits shrouded the edge in a rainbow aurora once more.
With the rainbow sword, able to cut all things, resting in his hand, Julius stared straight at Petelgeuse.
“I love…love, my love… My love is…”
Mumbling words over and over, now lacking the strength even to crawl, Petelgeuse did not notice Julius. Even if he had, it surely would not have changed anything.
Blood did not stop coming out of the wound where his chest had been impaled, and the ashen-pale look over his face was that of despair and death.
“—”
Finally, in front of the sheer cliff, the madman set his back against a boulder and turned his head.
Having lost the willpower to even act disturbed, Petelgeuse looked at Julius with a dumbfounded expression. His gaze proceeded to lower, shifting toward Subaru, standing behind the knight—whereupon he suddenly exploded into emotion.
“Why, why…WHY?!!”
Tears flowed from his wide-open eyes. The hot droplets drenched his cheeks.
These were not the tears of joy Subaru had seen from him several times; they simply reflected the extent of the rage and remorse pouring out of him. They were proof of an unsalvageable delusion—proof that the madman’s dream had been shattered.
Petelgeuse wept, looked up to the heavens, tried to clench something that could not be seen, and shouted—
“O Witch…O Witch! O Witch!! I have given this much to YOU! I have done so much for You! Why, why have You forsaken ME?! Why?! Why is it?! O Witch! If it is so, then MY love… Your favor…?!”
“What you offered her wasn’t your own love or faith, or even your own body. You were just offering up the people who happened to be passing by you.”
Petelgeuse lamented as if clinging on, searching for salvation, when Subaru’s words cut him down.
It wasn’t worth listening to a word from him. Petelgeuse was just a self-righteous creep indulging in unrequited love.
Wilhelm had said as much—that it was absurd to call this love.
Shiii—!
Julius sprinted, his sword homing in on Petelgeuse’s slender frame.
The only things Petelgeuse turned toward the swinging, rising sword were teary, misty, wistful eyes. A rainbow-colored sword blow struck his chest for the second time, and the torrent of light burst within him.
The accumulation of mana that was the true body of Petelgeuse—the evil spirit grafting itself to the bodies of others, feasting upon their Odo—was scorched to the core by the brilliantly colored glow.
When the cavalier’s sword came out, Petelgeuse looked down, dazed, as hot blood poured out of his chest.
Then, he trained his unfocused eyes overhead, stretching a hand toward the heavens.
“—My brain…trem…bles.”
From his slender shadow, he unleashed a single Unseen Hand toward the heavens above. It stretched farther and farther, as if aiming for the dazzling sun above.
However, that hand grasped nothing, heading for thin air before finally leaving a large gouge in the sheer cliff, sending large cracks running along the rock face.
He probably hadn’t done it on purpose.
To Petelgeuse, it was a meaningless act. It was an impulse driven by one final delusion.
“—”
A rock slide occurred above Petelgeuse’s head. Giant fragments of the gouged rock face split off and fell. Directly below was Petelgeuse, seeking the heavens, and in the end unable to grasp anything—
“She never loved m—”
The mass of rock crushed his flesh, and there was a grand sound of flesh and bone being squished.
There was a string of rumbles as dust was blown upward from the impact, and in an instant Petelgeuse was crushed, buried by his own hand under the rubble that would serve as his tombstone.
Having escaped from the peril of the rock slide, Julius walked over to where Petelgeuse surely lay. At the end of his gaze, a large quantity of blood was pouring out from under the boulders. Upon seeing this, he shook his head, returning the cavalier sword in his hand to its scabbard.
“—”
Subaru too walked forward, not speaking a single word.
Then, when Subaru stood in front of the tombstone, he made a small sigh.
It was not a sigh of admiration, or a sense of achievement, or satisfaction.
He knew that the only thing spreading within his chest was a deep sense of emptiness.
Subaru would not sully that time and place by speaking of crude concepts such as victory and defeat.
But he did voice the words that came to the back of his numbed brain.
“Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti.”
That single phrase would serve as the marker for the end of that battle.
Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti, Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins of the Witch Cult, charged with Sloth.
He who had battled Julius Eucleus, “The Finest of Knights,” and Subaru Natsuki, the Self-Declared Knight.
Before the rubble that was his tombstone, Subaru exhaled a little, and said this:
“Man, you were lazy.”
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