Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 9

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  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.”

  CHAPTER 5

  —A TALE ABOUT THAT, AND NOTHING MORE
/>   1

  Having tossed his final words toward the tombstone, Subaru turned his back upon the madman.

  When he turned around, he saw Julius, one eye closed, and Patlash, standing beside him with a composed expression. Both were wounded all over, but their considerable mental strength meant they didn’t let it show.

  That said, their mental and physical depletion was severe, and that sense of fatigue was beyond their capacity to conceal.

  “Well, not like I’m one to talk. Even if it was for just a second, I let him get in my body and all.”

  The side effects of Possession by Petelgeuse the evil spirit were utterly unclear. He dearly hoped he wouldn’t suddenly wake up covered in blood from subconsciously self-inflicted wounds.

  In contrast to such absurd thoughts, Subaru was surprised at the oddly despondent feeling within himself. This was Petelgeuse, the most fearsome foe he’d faced since being summoned to another world. Even with him defeated, the sense of loss inside Subaru’s chest outweighed any sense of accomplishment.

  “This has to be just burnout. I don’t feel sad for him biting the dust one little bit… Stupid, stupid.”

  After those words to himself, he slapped his own cheek, using the pain to switch gears away from such soft thoughts.

  They had defeated Petelgeuse. However, Subaru’s goals did not end there. The largest task remained: patching up his relationship with Emilia.

  Starting with the breakup in the royal capital, he’d allied them with the Crusch camp, defeated the White Whale, battled the Witch Cult, and used a white lie to get Emilia and the others to evacuate—once he finished all the follow-up, including explaining after the fact, only then would this string of affairs be concluded.

  Beyond his overusing his body, the various events had left him mentally depleted.

  “But no one’s been maimed, no one’s been killed. This is way better. You realize for the first time how precious peaceful days are when you lose… Nah, I thought that from the start, actually.”

  Even Subaru, who thought peace and security came first, could not escape irrationality’s ire.

  That said, the turbulent times had largely calmed. When Subaru turned his head, he shifted it from Julius and Patlash toward Petelgeuse—and then his feet stopped in midstride.

  The reason: a single book resting atop the blood trail Petelgeuse had left while crawling.

  “—His Gospel, huh?”

  He must have dropped it in his dying moments, for the pages of the Gospel were sullied by blood and grime.

  Subaru picked it up and flipped through the pages to be sure. Just like before, the contents looked like a bunch of hieroglyphics to Subaru’s eyes. The latter half was filled with blank pages, and at any rate, there was no way to ask Petelgeuse about the contents now that he was dead.

  “Best to just grab it and talk to Crusch and Roswaal about it later, huh?”

  Furthermore, his goodwill toward Roswaal was insufficient to give him the first crack at it. His current absence spoke volumes, so in spite of Roswaal’s being an ally, Subaru’s trust in him was at its nadir. He wanted to hope Roswaal would make up for it later.

  “—Subaru.”

  As the boy contemplated how to deal with the Gospel, Julius approached him. When Subaru lifted his face at the voice, Julius’s brows were knotted with a grave expression.

  It was an ill omen. And, as if to bolster Subaru’s premonition, Julius straightened up and spoke.

  “I know we just settled things here, but let us return to the village immediately. A problem has arisen.”

  “…I’ve got one hell of a bad feeling about this. What happened?”

  “I have received word from Ferris.”

  As he spoke, he lifted up the glowing conversation mirror. The mirror’s surface was connected to Ferris on the other end. Julius glanced at it, wariness evident in his handsome yellow eyes as he spoke.

  “There is apparently something disturbing about cargo aboard the dragon carriages used to evacuate—Lady Emilia is in danger.”

  And thus, he spoke the explosive words that turned every presumption on its head.

  2

  When Subaru and Julius arrived back at Earlham Village, the returning expeditionary force had already assembled inside the village.

  They noticed the approaching pair, thanking them for the feat of striking down the Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins. However, even as they grandly lifted their fists in celebration, thick tension remained in the air around them.

  “Not exactly the mood for a victory party to celebrate the mission’s success. If something happened, tell us already!”

  “Yes, yes, of course. But first, I need to check both of your wounds.”

  Responding to Subaru’s search for an explanation, Ferris slipped past the ring of gathered men. Ferris was smiling, but there was sweat on his forehead, and his Royal Guardsman uniform was terribly stained with blood.

  When his attire took Subaru by surprise, Ferris said, “Ahh…” and nodded as he explained, “It’s all right, it’s not Ferri’s blood. It just got messy during healing. Besides, no one here’s as badly wounded as he looks. We had wounded, but no fatalities.”

  “That’s good news… Anyway, leave me for later! Do Julius first.”

  “I can handle your wounds with one hand, meow. Looks like I need to take Julius’s seriously, though.”

  Asserting that Subaru’s wounds were light, Ferris waved a hand over them and activated his healing magic. With a ticklish feeling, the wounds were healed, and even the pain taken away, in the span of a mere ten seconds, the sort of feat expected of him.

  “Okay, we’re done, Subawu. As for Julius… Oh my, that looks painful. Come on, strip off your coat.”

  “Please be gentle.”

  Julius’s reply was crisp, but his wounds appeared deep. It was clear from the grimace on Ferris’s face as he examined the wounds that convalescence would take a fair bit of time.

  “Your job’s finished. Be a good boy and rest… Anyway, Ferris, the other thing. What happened with that cargo…?”

  Subaru glanced at the start of Julius’s treatment, his feelings distant as he changed the subject. Ferris, receiving the question as he employed his healing magic, straightened up.

  “Mm, I know. But I think it’s best you speak to the one who noticed first… Oh, Otto!”

  Subaru’s eyes went wide at Ferris’s mention of the unexpected name as the crowd parted in front of him. A young, ashen-haired man practically fell forward as he leaped, slipping through the gap between the knights…

  “Otto?”

  “Mr. Natsuki! I have been awaiting your return!”

  Otto rushed over, his breath labored. He seemed rather agitated as he looked between Subaru and Julius, patting his chest in relief that both were safe.

  “First, it is good that you are safe. To be frank, I believed fighting a Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins to be nothing short of suicide, but… Ah! More importantly, there is something I must speak with you about!”

  “Calm down! Take your time and explain. But keep it to a brief summary of the main points.”

  “Such difficult conditions…! Anyway, this is about the cargo. Actually, I found something odd when checking the list.”

  “List, you mean of the traveling merchant freight that was left in the village? What was odd about it?”

  Otto lowered his voice as he hastily unfolded the list of trade goods he was holding against his chest. Then he flipped to a certain page and spoke.

  “Sir Kety…I do not know if that is his real name, but the traveling merchant, Kety Muttat. It would appear he was captured as a spy for the Witch Cult, but…”

  “Yeah, I know about him— I see, you knew him personally, didn’t you?”

  Subaru knew from previous go-arounds that Kety and Otto had come into contact with each other any number of times. Otto had to be in shock that someone he knew had been in the Witch Cult.

  But Otto did not ling
er on that part; rather, he moved forward, drawing even closer to Subaru.

  “Sir Kety being a Witch Cultist surprised me, and it is most unfortunate. But that is not the issue— You used his dragon carriage to evacuate the villagers, yes?”

  “—? Yeah, I used it. Owner aside, the dragon carriage did no wrong. I didn’t have the luxury of leaving a usable dragon carriage behind, so I had to use it to get everyone out.”

  “And the cargo unloaded from the dragon carriage is as I see recorded on this list, yes?”

  “It should be…”

  Subaru nodded as misgivings crept in about why Otto was so focused on the minutiae. “I thought so,” said Otto, certainty on his face as he continued to speak to the nervous Subaru, his voice hardening. “When I compared the list to the freight, there is something missing that ought to be in the village.”

  “Missing?”

  “A large quantity of fire magic crystals Sir Kety’s dragon carriage was hauling is missing—a quantity sufficient to blow seven or eight dragon carriages apart cannot simply vanish into thin air.”

  3

  Kety’s dragon carriage was headed to the Sanctuary. Rather, it was being used by the evacuation group taking Emilia and others to the royal capital.

  When Subaru confirmed the distribution of dragon carriages after his talk with Otto, he came to a conclusion.

  There had been three Witch Cultists hidden among the traveling merchants. Once they’d lost their owners, expeditionary force members had taken their carriages; Subaru distinctly remembered that the carriage Emilia had boarded was one of those three.

  “Those magic crystals on the list…they were really loaded aboard? I just have to say, relying on a list from a Witch Cultist is a little…”

  “The frightening thing about Witch Cultists is that they melt into everyday life only to become poison when you least expect it. They act as is appropriate for their false identities… You are merely closing your eyes because you do not wish to see, Subaru.”

  “Even here you whip out the logical…… I know. I’m in the wrong.”