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Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu - Volume 4 - Chapter 79.1




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INTERMISSION: THE GUEST OF HONOUR HAS LEFT 

Sekhmet: “Have to wonder whether you're—haa—okay letting them leave like that—huu.” 

Echidna: “It was his decision, his choice. And I would prefer to respect that ...Though that he left while taking the hand of that thing is something I do have some unkind thoughts about.” 

Echidna shrugs in reply to Sekhmet's listless voice. As always the two are inside the castle in a dream, the blue sky above suffering not a single alteration. The fresh breeze blows past, caressing the hair of the witches again without change. 

—After the fracturing world swallowed Subaru and Satella, freeing them from the dream, the world immediately reconstructed. 

Well of course. This indestructible space tied to Echidna's soul would remain in this state so long as Echidna existed. The whole thing amounted to nothing more than an extravagant production, with the two being cast offstage. 

Echidna: “That said, when you fire off shots so helter-skelter I do have to feel some fatigue. It'd be a great help if you could practise a little more moderation when you're going berserk with the healing.” 

Minerva: “I was just following my credo, healing wounds where I could see them. There's no discrimination between humans or witches or creatures or birds or fish or bugs or witchbeasts, the wounds of anything living are my enemy!” 

Echidna: “Yes, but unlike when in life, the burden for your actions gets placed on me. When you were alive the world was made to shoulder the burden, so then I'm sure even your imagination can figure how tough it is for me alone to bear it?” 

Minerva: “Fatigue, or whatever kind of invisible blah I really couldn't be bothered about. I heal wounds. So it shortens the life span of the world or whatever, not like that's my problem.” 

As she crosses her arms, emphasizing her abundant chest, the other witches smile wryly at Minerva. From a glance, the WITCH OF WRATH Minerva would be the witch of sin who was easiest to like— you could even call her a harmless witch. The entirety of her actions are only healing, and to enumerate number of lives she saved during her lifetime would require more than a 5-digit number. 

—However, the one that brought about casualties of equal measure was also Minerva. 

All the destructive energy from punching, kicking, biting and so on would be converted to healing energy once expelled from her. This algorithm was the authority of WRATH, and thus only Minerva was capable of preforming this. Even Echidna, who understood its construction, could not reproduce it. Minerva's healing attacks distanced every living creature from threatening threats. —In a sense her authority seems supreme, but such thinking would be mistaken. 

The healing power triggered by Minerva's fists was the result of a coercive algorithm which twisted karma, and required an immense mana cost for each strike. That mana requirement was not any volume a single human could shoulder, and even for the witch Minerva and her magical groundings, the load was impossible. So where does she get the mana for her attacks? The answer is simple: she steals it from the nexus of the world. 

Ordinarily when people use magic, they inhale the mana in the atmosphere through their gates, convert it into magical energy, and again release it through their gates to cast magic. In Minerva's case the gate isn't the atmosphere, but a direct linkage to the core of the world. Said in more complicated terms, the core of the world is a supernaturally great concentration of mana—call it the place where mana is created. Minerva's attacks withdraw mana from that, converting it into strikes of healing. 

Through continued repetitions of this act, mana which should be provisioning someplace in the world becomes unable to reach it. With a starvation of the mana which is important in constructing the world, an extremely dangerous possibility spawns for these unsupplied regions to suffer natural disaster and calamity. The number of people Minerva had directly punched into health exceeded five digits. —But the number of lives she had indirectly snuffed by bringing about natural disaster was on equal par. 

And so the WITCH OF WRATH Minerva was the witch most regarded as dangerous, and considered an enemy by every nation. 

Minerva: “When we're here, the only mana I can draw is the amount that Echidna has. I'm only able to cure and heal up until you're basically run dry, which is so lame.” 

Echidna: “There shouldn't be any reason for injured people to be happening here in the first place. But with all the ruckus that's gone on here lately you could almost forget that.” 

Minerva: “Right... yeah. There was a ruckus, for a little while.” 

Minerva's energy fades, her loveable face sinking into obvious gloom as she looks up at the sky. 

Minerva: “Do you think he'll do okay? I am soo worried.” 

Echidna: “What would unmistakably go okay was my hand which he rejected. Regardless, he'll be struggling frantically for everything to go well. Doesn't seem he can get the answer yet, though.” 

Minerva: “What is that, that phrasing. You guided him so that he'd reject you, and then you're trying to hide your feelings from us, when we know what you're really thinking? That's just pointless.” 

Echidna: “It wasn't really that I was trying to be rejected. —Since whether he declined or accepted, I would've been glad with either.” 

Echidna seats herself at the regenerated table, clicking her fingers to produce a teacup, ferrying the steaming thing to her mouth. 

Echidna: “I affirm choices, and the outcomes of those choices. I don't much think the particulars of how that choice came about as a problem. The reality of having chosen, the reality of having not chosen, those are what is important. Whether the outcome be bad or good, I can brag of my dispositional ability to enjoy either.” 

Daphne: “But that doesn't, mean you don't, have your pre-fer-en-ces.” 

A black coffin leisurely comes to stand beside the tea-toting Echidna. Daphne has at some juncture nested herself back inside the coffin, devouring the sweets on the table like a dog. 

Daphne: “You say that you'll re-spect out-comes, but Idna-Idna wouldn't hes-i-tate to guide toward an outcome that Idna-Idna wants to see. That you're glad with either is pro-ba-bly truth, but that you're glad it was this I bet wouldn't be truth.” 

Echidna: “You have so very little interest in others, and yet you still manage to hit to the point, don't you, Daphne.” 

Daphne: “Compared to the hunger con-stant-ly tormenting me, this just doesn't bear thinking. Haa, haa, munchmunch.” 

Daphne surpasses the just sweets as she winds up eating the plate too. Echidna sighs at her, then turning her attention to the other witches as they start seating themselves at the remaining chairs. Listlessly, plainly indignant, timidly—and one with an extraordinarily stern look in their eyes. 

Echidna: “You do look angry, Typhon.” 


Typhon: “'Cause you're not honest—Chidna. Not being honest—means you're a liar? And liars are baddies? Chidna—you're a baddie?” 

Echidna: “I act sincerely in accordance to what it is I want. Telling lies is something I have no present recollection of doing.” 

Echidna's roundabout phraseologies do not work on the young Typhon. Should Echidna get Typhon in a bad mood, she knew that everyone present would consequently be in danger. Condemning criminals and judging sinners amounted to nothing more than a fragment of Typhon's authority of PRIDE. 

But, seeing Typhon puff out her cheeks in assent with Echidna's mental tightrope walking, the next one to speak is a witch buried in a ball of hair. 

Sekhmet: “Hiding your real intentions while speaking—haa—makes what you're saying not a lie— huu. Very convenient for you—haa.” 

Camilla: “E-Echidna-chan... is, is really such... a huge, pain... i-isn't she...” 

Echidna: “You two...” 

Echidna scrunches her face beneath the concentrated attack. In seeing it, the other witches smile. The only one whose brows are still peaked low as they watch on is Minerva. 

Sekhmet: Are you planning to be crotchety forever, Minerva? Of course we'd all be talking together. You knew this'd happen if a sage candidate came... 

Minerva: “Yeah I know, shut it. I'm saying I agree with having a real talk. Just, unlike you guys I'm not in a position where I can rationalise about it. I'd like you to understand that.” 

Daphne: For Met-Met who hangs out all the time with Ty-Ty, she wouldn't understand. Everyone just spends way too much of their life on things that aren't eating. 

Minerva and Sekhmet snort displeasedly at Daphne. While the tea party between witches does preserves its kind of equilibrium, the attendants here are still all people with egotistic dispositions. More often than not they fail to see eye-to-eye with each other, and that the conversation turns into spats like this is nothing rare. Notably Minerva, prone to jabbing out at anyone, and Sekhmet, who dislikes conflict, had more than a few verbal skirmishes. Every time, Daphne would interrupt with her disregard to conversational mores, hitting right to the heart of the mater. That the conversations would end like this, without any real conclusion, was ordinary. 

Minerva gets mad, Sekhmet entertains her conversation, Daphne comes in with teasing, Camilla soothes Typhon so that she doesn't explode, Echidna watches on happily from aside—and Satella watches over them, smiling at the safety of the six others. Those were the days from four hundred years ago, never to come again. 

Satella went mad from the witch factor, Minerva died insane in a trap, Camilla burned to nothing in a great fire, Daphne wasted to death in a sea of sand, Typhon drowned in a flood, Sekhmet fell down the Great Cascade as she decimated the Dragon, Echidna gathered their souls and yet remains bound to the present world in soul only. 

This was an imperfect reproduction of those forever-gone days. 

Camilla: “Y-you look, sad... Echidna-chan. You look, very... sad.” 

Echidna: “Hm? There's no reason at all for me to be sad. You're here, and I get my chances to interact with the outside. —No necessity, at all.” 

Camilla: “A-are, you... okay, with that? We're... w-we're just, souls, so... we're not, really us. We're... mm, al-already... dead. There i-isn't, anyone... really with, you... Echidna-chan.” 

Camilla's stuttering words strike Echidna momentarily silent. 

—Echidna's power was what gave the witches, lost of their flesh and existing only as souls, their temporary forms in the form of mental bodies. 

Echidna prepares vessels, and houses the souls in there. But the souls are frozen in the state they were when they died, with not a single change afterwards. Was the Camilla Echidna was gazing at a visage that truly belonged to Camilla? Drawing from their souls their pre-death reactions, manipulating their bodies to put on a show— could this not some form of playing dolls, instigated by Echidna's desires? 

The witches did share Echidna's knowledge. And how to explain that if not with the statement that their existences were produced from inside Echidna? —That said, this quandary was one Echidna had already thought to death countless times over. 

Echidna: “Bundle of narcissism that you are, regardless of you being my friend it's unusual for you to be worried for me. ...Could his boisterousness and simpleness have influenced you, too?” 

Camilla: “Au, gh... I don't, care, any more... Echida-chan you, idiot.” 

Says Camilla, her expression disappointed, in response to Echidna distracting herself from her feelings. Echidna involuntarily clicks her throat as she laughs at Camilla's reply. 

Echidna's attitude attracts the gazes of those witches who had not been paying her focus. Showered in their attention, Echidna spreads her arms. 

Echidna: “Now, I'm sure the tea party will go back to belonging only to witches for a while. His— Natsuki Subaru's—trespass in this place likely won't be happening again.” 

Minerva: “And you're okay with that? Not like I'm really worried about you being lonely, but you did say that something at the end there. You're supposed to be really annoying about getting compensation or whatever for that.” 

Echidna: “Compensation... right, there was that. That was my parting gift for him and his foreseeable tribulation. —If I told you such a thing, would you maybe laugh at me?” 

Echidna puts her hand to her chin as she ponders. The other witches share a glance. And the witches nod, all simultaneously opening their mouths to speak— 

Witches: “—Nope.” 

Echidna: “Goodness, more people have recognized goodness in me than I thought...” 

Minerva: “After all, you getting no compensation and just helping for helping's sake would never happen.” 

Says Minerva with her arms crossed, to which the other witches nod. 

Echidna closes her eyes at their consensus. She gives a cough. 

Echidna: “My thought was I had incredibly many cases requiring of careful discussion with you all. 

Truly, what is that you think of me?” Witches: “—” Echidna: “But, well.” Before the silent witches, Echidna drinks dry her cup, her red tongue licking salaciously over her  lips. Echidna: “—You're not wrong in the least.” 





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