Rem standing before him, the demon beasts standing behind—his life was truly dangling by a thread.
Subaru couldn’t move. The demon beasts couldn’t move. The entire situation would hinge on Rem’s next action.
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and looked straight back at Rem once more.
He didn’t know if he could make Rem’s eyes waver, but he had to give it everything he had and leave no stone unturned.
Then—
“Sister…”
Her voice was tired and faint. However, the sound and its meaning thrummed in Subaru’s ears. Her lips quivered, and she seemed out of sorts as her eyes fixated on the side of Ram’s face.
Even amid a frenzy sufficient to make her lose her sanity, Rem still recognized the sight of her other half, the sister she loved above all. Subaru sighed in astonishment.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had a sister complex. If that brought you back to sanity, I’m all for—”
“—Let her go.”
She interrupted his words as she flung the iron ball at him with the force of a typhoon.
It was close to a miracle that he’d managed to bend his body to the left in time. It was perhaps fortunate that Subaru’s knees were a little wobbly, having not yet recovered from the earlier hard landing.
The spikes of the iron ball grazed his right shoulder as it passed. The anguish clawing out his flesh sent his brain into hysteria.
Biting down to hold back a pain-filled shout, Subaru advanced at an angle.
“That hurt, damn it!”
Subaru turned his gouged shoulder before sidestepping the chain as it lashed downward. A moment later, the chain violently slammed into the spot where Subaru had just been, leaving a snakelike trail on the ground.
If Subaru had been any slower in dodging, his back would have borne an identical mark.
He shuddered, imagining his flesh rending as he looked at Rem. But Rem looked no different from before. Her eyes were steeped in enmity without having regained their sanity.
“Horned form isn’t the problem; it’s whether or not you can control it…”
That was Subaru’s guess based on Rem’s current demeanor.
If that was the case, the issue was how to restore her sanity. She’d been in a frenzied state the night before, too, but her mind had been more Rem than mad demon in the moments before he’d blacked out.
Perhaps the sight of Subaru gravely injured before her eyes would be enough of a shock to snap her back to lucidity.
“Maybe I should try getting hit by the iron ball once? Wait, I’ll be mincemeat then…”
Repeating the conditions from the night before would surely bring Rem around, but by then Subaru would be dog food.
“—”
Ram might have understood the situation, but the girl in his arms was a long way from conscious; he’d been trying to shake her awake, but that was probably going to take some time.
Time that Rem and the demon beasts surrounding him weren’t likely to permit.
Subaru licked a drop of sweat trickling down his cheek, using the moisture on his tongue to lubricate his lips.
If no new option presented itself, he’d just have to try everything.
If charging forward was the only way, then that was that. It was the Subaru way.
“Hey, Rem! Don’t just look at your sister in my arms here, look at me! My name is Subaru Natsuki! The absolutely useless newbie doing odd jobs! The doe-eyed manservant at Roswaal Manor! I probably caused you and Ram a lot of trouble, but we got along some of the time, ri—Whoa!”
He was in the middle of appealing to Ram’s memories and emotions when her short temper put an immediate stop to it.
The whirring iron ball snapped and shattered the trunk of every tree in its path, smashing branches along the way as Subaru made a leaping forward roll to evade. He dodged her next attacks with a pretty hop-step-jump and looked back.
“It’s rude to beat someone to death midsentence! I saw my family’s faces before my eyes there… Ah, here we are!”
As Subaru yelled, Rem leaned forward and murmured, “Give Sister back…!”
But out of the blue, Rem yanked back the iron ball she’d swung with one arm alone, using the momentum to spin her body around on a dime when…
“—!”
…Rem’s backward spinning kick connected with the torso of the demon beast leaping at her from behind. With a roar equal to that of a bomb, the demon beast exploded; even from some distance away, Subaru could clearly make out its innards sailing through the air.
That’s what you get for trying to profit from the misery of others.
The demon beasts had formed a second wave to attack behind the vanguard, but the gruesome sight of that death made them stop in their tracks. But this was folly, no different from offering up one’s belly in the face of one’s predator.
She unleashed a single horizontal attack that smashed together the bellies and skulls of the next two beasts. Rem, unconcerned by the flying blood and flesh, charged in the wake of her attack. One of the beasts drew its head back, so she crushed one of its front paws; now that it had stopped moving, she used her other foot to kick it in the head, snapping its neck.
Her heel continued up, then back down into the torso of the next beast. A third pounced at Rem to avenge its comrade, but she gripped its throat below its wide-open maw and hurled it high into the sky. The demon beast arced through the air, curling its tail as it made a faint yelp. It flew farther and farther, then closer and closer, until finally smashing against the hard ground with a sound resembling that of an overripe fruit.
Slaughter followed slaughter. It was carnage for the sake of carnage, a massacre even by massacre standards.
It was already plain that the beasts could not compare to the destructive power of the single, mighty horned demon who had descended upon them.
Yet even so—
“Damn, numbers really are a weapon all their own.”
Though the demon beasts saw their brethren cut down one after another, they showed no sign of disengaging. They bared their fangs, brandished their claws, and howled menacingly as they sprang at Rem.
Even as they were blown away, crushed, smashed, and dismembered, adding to the pile of demon beast corpses, they carved shallow wounds into Rem’s body little by little. When Subaru saw that the maid outfit, drenched in blood spatter, was reddening not just from the outside but fresh bleeding from the inside, he realized the tide had begun to turn against them.
The battle before his eyes between horned demon and demon beast was extremely intense; they no longer paid any heed to Subaru and Ram whatsoever. Both sides were leaving low-threat opponents for later as they concentrated their rampages on their mortal enemies.
If Rem had been dominating the battle, Subaru would no doubt have let her hunt the demon beasts to extinction without it weighing on his conscience. But her situation was gradually getting worse.
“—”
Rem’s arms flung about, mowing down demon beast torsos. She gasped in pain as claw after claw reached her own body. Blood scattered; lacerations carved into her white skin.
Subaru couldn’t just sit and watch.
There was a way. All he had to do was butt into the fight. But charging in to join the fray directly would only get him wrapped up in the typhoon and blown back the way he came. For him, interjecting meant drawing the horned demon’s and the demon beasts’ attention to something besides one another—it was the only way to save Rem.
He resigned himself, spread his legs, took a deep breath, and looked right at Rem.
—I can do this. Girls have charm, boys have courage.
“Don’t make that scary face, Rem. Smile. I’ve Returned by—”
For the second time that day, the world ground to a halt, and the black cloud brought another banquet of screams.
Even though he’d resigned himself to the extreme pain that would arise, it was not pain one could endu
re. All the more so because this time, it was not just a right arm but a left arm that emerged with it.
Perhaps the completed right arm had developed a taste for this. Before Subaru’s unmoving, wide-open eyes, the right hand slid past his rib cage and brushed against his internal organs as the left hand split off.
The right hand went for his heart; the other caressed Subaru’s cheek like it was fond of him.
—Terror welled within him, and the next moment, pain shot through his every nerve.
He ceased to be himself. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes, he had a horrible, unendurable sense that something was wrong. His brain boiled in a tempest of negative emotions; his consciousness faded in and out.
And yet, the soft touch of the palm on his cheek bore warmth that brought relief when he felt like his mind and body were about to melt. But Subaru knew a feeling of beyond that, so—
“I’m…back!”
His vision was blurred. His soul had been whittled down. None of the pain and suffering had carried over to the real world.
No time had passed. Rem and the demon beasts were in front of him, at each other’s throats just like before.
—But the instant Subaru returned to reality, a great change came over the field of battle. Rem and the demon beasts poured all their attention onto Subaru; it was as if some anomaly had emerged then and there that could not be ignored.
No doubt the cause was that, just as Subaru had planned, the witch’s stench was erupting from him.
“—!”
Rem roared. The demon beasts howled in unison. Subaru, too, yelled at the top of his lungs.
With split-second timing, he evaded the claws of the leaping demon beasts and the iron ball slamming toward him, as if his life, his very soul, had been set on fire.
—And so the great melee began.
7
As the unquestionably odd one out in a battle of horned demon, demon beast, and ordinary boy, Subaru paid attention to every detail of the melee as he bobbed and weaved.
His conduct was exceedingly simple. He’d hold his position as the battle grew more intense, making no effort to increase the distance, dodging only the sparks that fell in his direction—end of story.
“—”
Once again, the demon beasts pounded by the iron ball became wall paste before his eyes. Heedless of their comrades’ deaths, three demon beasts teamed up to attack Rem without pause, aiming to inflict greater wounds upon her. But such crude intelligence went to waste, for her hand knocked them away; once they were immobile, they became easy prey for the iron ball’s descent.
Subaru glanced at the spectacle as he shifted his hold on Ram, in danger of falling out of his grasp, and jumped back. He barely evaded the fangs of one demon beast, only to dance right into Rem’s range of attack.
And when Rem realized Subaru was closing in, she instantly moved to intercept. Subaru came to a very abrupt stop to escape the thrust of her iron handle, then leaped back and ducked to avoid the lash of the chain that followed, with the iron ball passing over his head to change the head of the demon beast chasing behind him into a spectacularly blooming crimson flower.
Subaru heard the body crashing down behind him as he threw shame and honor to the wind and crawled on the ground, cockroach-style, to escape immediately. Rem, hot on his heels, found her path obstructed by demon beasts. Escape successful.
Subaru held his distance as he rewarded himself with a single sigh of relief for the quick thinking that had saved his life.
“—Hah! I’m actually doing pretty well here!”
He’d desperately bounded away to avoid being bitten, foisted the pursuing demon beasts on the maid girl, and had crawled like a bug to escape the angry girl’s wrath. If his actions were ever recorded for posterity, he would want to die then and there, but he focused on the fact that his conduct was intended to keep him alive.
At that moment, things were unfolding according to Subaru’s plan.
The situation could be worse—they were at least buying time and reducing the number of demon beasts. When he glanced up, he sensed the eyes of demon beasts all around the valley. Once they spied the battle, they joined the fray one by one. The demon beasts were obeying their instincts in response to Subaru’s spreading the stench of the witch throughout the forest.
This could work. He saw a chance for victory. That, at least, was what Subaru thought.
“—Uh?”
Subaru engaged in more evasive action when he suddenly felt dizzy and tilted heavily. It wasn’t that he’d been careless with his steps. He was suddenly assailed by a feeling of lethargy as a chill ran through his entire body… He knew.
“The curse… At a time like this…?!”
Subaru looked up to try to see if the demon beast from which the curse hailed was one of those surrounding Rem. But he had no way to tell which was the caster. Besides, it was unlikely the demon beast had triggered the curse just to make Subaru suffer.
It was the simple result of being faced with the menace of Rem and craving the mana with which to fight her. And Subaru was right there with them, rite ready for activation, his mana there for the taking. A simple reason but also a fatal one.
The curse got the better of Subaru, making him lose his balance and crash to the ground. If the demon beasts bit Subaru to death, it was only a matter of time until they weighed Rem down by sheer numbers. But more than that, the very reason Rem had entered the forest would be—
“—Aah!”
A great shout echoed loudly enough to rend the air and split the ground as she swung down, her fist turning one demon beast into dog food.
In a single instant, with incredible, explosive force, Rem had broken through the monster ranks to kill a demon beast far away from her. The sight shocked Subaru and the beasts alike. When Subaru recovered, he immediately realized it.
—He was breathing easier. The lethargy had abated. He had been freed from the effects of the curse.
“—Rem.”
“—!”
Rem returned to butchering the demon beasts surrounding her as if she hadn’t even heard Subaru call her name.
Subaru watched the blue-haired girl in the midst of combat as it keenly sunk in that, though she wasn’t lucid or in a state to recognize who Subaru was, Rem had saved him by turning that demon beast into paste.
She hadn’t mistaken the sight of her beloved older sister. Nor, apparently, had she forgotten the reason why she’d plunged into the forest in the first place.
If that’s the case…, he thought.
Subaru scraped his mind for the thing that only he could do. He thought that he should be faithful to his original goal, not resort to a roundabout plan like this.
“In other words, I’ll have the heartthrob maid sisters, Ram and Rem, send that curse packing!”
If Subaru could accomplish that, he might yet be able to get out of the situation alive.
Furthermore, to do that, he needed to bring Rem back to sanity in a real sense. Subaru’s business was not with the murderous demon but with the superficially polite, quick-to-jump-to-conclusions girl whose running off on her own caused everyone else so much trouble—Rem.
“—The horn.”
Suddenly, Subaru heard a voice from within his arms.
Ram, still in his embrace, faintly opened her eyes, giving Subaru an unfocused upward glance.
“You’re…awake?!”
“I think my timing here is quite…excellent…”
Ram was smiling a bit. Subaru smiled back half seriously as he replied.
“Yeah, you’ve got awesome instincts, Big Sis. What do you mean, the horn?”
Ram pulled her chin in with a look of annoyance.
“It is that horn that has led Rem astray… A single, powerful blow will…bring her back…”
“You’re sure that’ll work?”
“Fairly. Largely. I believe that it will.”
“That’s kind of vague, you know?! But I wanna beli
eve you.”
Subaru cut off his words and looked at Rem.
The white horn jutted out from Rem’s forehead to a length of some four inches. If Puck stood on her forehead, he and the horn would be around the same height.
A single blow—there.
“Doesn’t that seem kinda…impossible?”
“Use your intellect and courage and just do it.”
“Well, I do kind of have a way to do this that involves intellect and courage, but…”
Subaru’s unexpected reply made Ram raise her eyebrows. He smiled weakly at her, as he had difficulty putting it into words.
“It’s probably gonna give you a scare.”
“If it brings my little sister back to sanity, I shall not be upset.”
“Really?”
“Really-really.”
“You swear on Rozchi?”
“…You must really not mind dying to pick that. Yes, I swear on Master Roswaal.”
It was because Ram had said it in such a thoroughly valiant way that Subaru respected her view so highly.
Before them, Rem slowly turned in their direction. The bulk of her attention was trained on them, with the remainder toward the demon beasts surrounding them to warn her if they came close.
In contrast to Rem, on guard for attacks from every direction, Subaru was focused solely on smacking that horn.
Namely—
“Aaaaand, off you go!”
“—Ah?”
Ram had a distant look of shock on her face as Subaru lifted her up by the hips…and chucked her forward.
No doubt that the thought he’d throw her had never entered her mind.
Ram looked aghast, but Rem was equally so. Rem, still in her horned form, stood agape for a brief moment before reaching out as her older sister flew through the air toward her.
The iron ball fell from Rem’s grasp as she welcomed her big sister with open, bloodstained arms. In an instant, her expression, so hard and painted over with hostility and bloodlust, changed into something much softer.
—Subaru sprang forward to not let that instant go to waste.
The same moment he hurled Ram forward, Subaru lowered his body and charged. Rem’s gaze was aimed up, preoccupied with her big sister, while Subaru approached from the blind spot closer to the ground.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 3 Page 17