With that answer, Subaru came to accept the fact that in the previous world, and the world before that, Subaru had died at the end because—
While Subaru was compelled to stay silent, Petelgeuse glared at Puck and murmured, “Im…possible…”
The madman thrust his intact hand into his mouth, crushing his fingers one by one, and they oozed blood. It was as if that pain was what tethered his perpetual madness to the world.
“This is impossible; it cannot be! A mere! Spirit! A lowly spirit! Cannot possess such power! If that was possible, I—!”
“—Echidna.”
“—”
Petelgeuse’s movements stopped as bloody froth trickled from the corner of his lips, his eyes wide open.
Puck had whispered a word that had interrupted Petelgeuse’s denial. The color of Petelgeuse’s face had changed the instant he heard what was apparently a name.
“As a man of the Cult, you understand what that name means, don’t you?”
“Filthy…!!”
Petelgeuse’s reaction to it was nothing short of dramatic. Along with the sound of something hard, blood gushed from his mouth. It came from his molars. He was so angry, he’d bitten down on his teeth hard enough to break them.
“It is repugnant to even speak that name! Ahh, you poor, lazy fool, ignorant of fear! You dare speak the name of a fallen witch, a witch other than Satella, before me…!”
Petelgeuse’s eyes had gone from bloodshot to scarlet-dyed; maybe the arteries had burst open. Tears of blood flowed from the corners. The madman turned his bitten and torn fingertips toward Puck.
“My faith! My love! That is nothing less than an insult to everything I offer to Her!”
“—A human living mere decades has no business arguing time with a spirit.”
Just like that, Petelgeuse ceased his mad writhing. No—this was not something he had done consciously. He had frozen from the feet up, and that had made him stop.
As Subaru lay on his side, his vision blurry and white, he saw his mortal enemy brought to the verge of death.
Petelgeuse, too, knew that his freezing meant his death was not long in the offing. However, to the very end, his madness was directed not toward his own impending death but at Puck, towering before him.
“The depth of one’s faith has nothing to do with time! You are a lazy beast, born with eternal time, yet exhausting most of it in idleness! Do not compare me with a fool such as you! Ahh! Ahh, ahh! My brain is treeeeeeeeeeeembling!”
Even knowing his own end was near, Petelgeuse’s madness never wavered. To Subaru, who knew no phenomenon more absolute or terrifying than death, Petelgeuse’s behavior was truly deviant.
Seeing him profess his faith at the moment before his demise was proof that he was a truly corrupt being.
“Death is not punishment enough for you—that’s why I hate your kind.”
“The trial has been fulfilled! No matter what happens to this filthy body, so long as my feelings reach the Witch I revere, She shall grant Her favor… Ahh, it will be so good to see Her again!”
Spreading both hands before the sky above, Petelgeuse let out a cackle.
The snow blew with greater intensity, dyeing his gaunt body white. Subaru wasn’t sure whether his voice or his movements gently slowed first.
Yet even then, Petelgeuse’s laughter did not cease.
He was one with his buoyant madness until his laughter finally ceased and, with it, his life.
“—Quit while you were ahead, didn’t you?”
The gray beast murmured as it thrust down its front paw, smashing the Petelgeuse ice sculpture into dust.
Even as Subaru watched the madman’s life expire, his shattered fragments carried away by the wind, no strong emotions stirred within him. He had hated the man so; he had so wished to kill him. Petelgeuse was where it had all started; Subaru had believed that killing him would make everything turn out all right.
But was that truly the result?
Though he had witnessed the death of his hated foe, Subaru had only hollow emptiness inside him. The defeat of Petelgeuse meant clearing away the threat posed by the Witch Cult. But Rem, who ought to have been there sharing his joy, had been erased from the world; Emilia, who should have been quietly waiting for him to bring good news upon his return, had died at Subaru’s own hands.
The accumulated weight of both their deaths had made Subaru desire his own demise, but in the end, he could not even manage that, and a different avenger had claimed retribution—
Subaru had nothing left. He’d done everything over and, as a result, achieved nothing.
“—Now, then.”
Subaru felt his own powerlessness beaten into him as the beast quietly looked down upon him. He was reminded anew that the giant beast was Puck; the enormity of that truth made his body quake. He was reminded of how, previously, he’d watched with detached bemusement when the Knights and the Council of Elders at the royal palace had acted so terrified of fighting Puck when they heard his alias.
“Let’s talk, shall we?”
—Now, he was painfully aware of just what they had felt back then.
The cold was making it hard to think. Already, the pain tearing across his whole body had vanished. Subaru heard the gentle footsteps of his own death drawing near. And just as his body slackened from the sweet premonition that the end was nigh—
“Oh, this won’t do. You’re bleeding out too much—I’ll put a stop to that.”
“—Dwah!!”
He felt like he was being roasted alive, waking up his fading senses.
With merciless pain blocking his throat, Subaru saw that each wound on his body was audibly freezing over. White steam rose as sharp ice connected, stitched, and tethered his wounds, even the ones inside his body.
Through this act of treatment, abandoning all consideration for the human body, Subaru’s flesh was violently healed. Blood vessels exploded within his eyes, dyeing his vision scarlet.
It was more than an ow, ow, ow. The hell that had erupted within his body transcended even pain.
“Subaru, you have committed three sins.”
Subaru reeled, howling with a voiceless scream. The giant beast continued to speak as if nothing had happened. Though he had become enormous in size, his mouth lined with endless sharp fangs, and the tone of his voice had changed, the cadence was as gentle as always.
That terrified him all the more.
“First, you broke your promise with Lia. It seems you do not truly understand just how weighty a promise formed between two people is to a spirit mage. I suppose you truly do not know how much your rashly breaking that promise hurt Lia.”
His mind rejected an understanding of what Puck was saying. No—his mind was dominated by pain. His internal organs were frozen, and his broken bones were connected to one another by ice gouging obstructed flesh. The crimson ice over his open wounds had been ripped away, the areas affected frozen to the core, violently stopping the bleeding. The freezing had spread farther. The pain had spread farther. Death was spreading. It hurts, hurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurtshurts…
“Second, you ignored Lia’s wishes and came back. Do you even know how much that drove her into a corner and made her suffer, when she didn’t want to see you again? Not only did you break your promise, you had to trample on Lia’s heart as you pleased.”
With Subaru on the white ground, limbs spread wide, Puck drew his face close and blew with his icy breath. Subaru’s flowing tears became needles stabbing his eyeballs. His brain convulsed from the intense agony.
“And third, you let Lia die.”
It was like having his very soul filed down. The extreme pain made Subaru forget how to breathe. Amid that agony, like having every nerve in his body immersed in magma, Subaru cursed his own shallowness.
He’d thought that pain was a lesser thing than death. He was wrong. He was wrong about everything. “Pain,” “Death,” “Fear”—these smashed the heart of the weakling named Sub
aru Natsuki in equal measure.
The soul of Subaru Natsuki had been backed into a corner with nowhere to run.
As Subaru’s sluggish mind began to appreciate that terrifying truth, Puck stated to him, “—In accordance with the pact, I’ll be destroying the world now.”
Puck’s eyes had contained anger. Only at that juncture did a new emotion begin to come to the fore.
“I will bury everything under ice and snow, as my parting gift to Lia.”
“…That won’t…”
“It has nothing to do with making her happy or not. No matter what the pact, I will not break what has been agreed upon.”
Puck’s eyes narrowed as he responded to Subaru’s incoherent voice.
“But that act will end unfulfilled, I imagine. Even if I spread this world of ice to cover every land, like the forest where Lia and I dwelled…the Sword Saint will stand before me. That is a battle I will not win.”
Puck seemed to lament the disparity in strength when he brought up a certain red-haired hero’s other name.
Subaru couldn’t believe he was hearing those words.
Puck, wielding such overpowering might, had bluntly stated that he had no chance of defeating the Sword Saint.
And if Puck knew he’d be struck down in the process, why would he sacrifice himself in such a battle?
“Wh-why…?”
“—Lia was the entire reason for my existence.”
Puck responded to Subaru’s inquiry.
The wind grew even colder, stabbing Subaru’s flesh, filling up his eyes, freezing his blood— The end was nigh.
“It is meaningless for me to remain in a world without her. Now that I’ve lost her, I will not allow the world to move on. For me, everything ended when that girl died.”
When Puck finished speaking, the wind’s intensity suddenly spiked.
“How long will it take for a person to die if he’s slowly, gradually frozen from the tips of his extremities on up? Have you ever wondered that, Subaru?”
“—”
“I’ll take that as a yes. I want you to learn the answer.”
Slowly, slowly, the chill consumed more and more of his flesh.
His wounds and internal organs were already frozen, so they were exempt as the rest of Subaru’s flesh expired from the fingertips up.
If pain could truly drive a person mad, his sanity would have been shattered long before.
He wanted his mind to be ripped apart, smashed to bits, scattered in all directions. For if not…
“—Mist is coming. It seems you’ve lured quite a nasty one.”
He couldn’t hear. Someone was saying something, but he couldn’t hear.
“Gluttony’s… Ahh, nowadays they call it the White Whale, don’t they? Calling it over, letting Lia die, losing your own life… You truly are incorrigible, do you know that?”
He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t hear. But even though he shouldn’t have heard it, he heard the voice.
He heard laughter from somewhere. A mocking voice.
Cackle, cackle.
He knew that laughter. The voice of the man he hated to the point of death.
Where is it coming from? With the end near, his consciousness sought an answer to that question.
Then he realized it.
The incessant cackling was coming from his own throat.
Ecstasy began to rule his brain, drowning out his pain.
He took his first steps into a spreading world of madness. The way it warped everything around him felt…good.
The laughter wouldn’t stop.
His own laughter was mocking him—the one who had let Rem die, who had killed Emilia, and who was dying like a dog himself.
Ah yes. He was truly…how would you put it…
“—Subaru, you’re lazy.”
With a sharp sound, he blacked out.
It probably was not only his consciousness, and his life, that had been severed.
—It was something more, something that had been barely holding him together, that audibly came apart in that moment.
Snap.
CHAPTER 5
FROM ZERO
1
Amid the white world, everything vanished.
He couldn’t tell if his flesh had dissolved, if it had been smashed to pieces, or if it would remain as an ice sculpture for all eternity. No matter how terrible the end of the body he had left behind, it was all the same to him now.
There was only one thing he understood with clarity.
Over the course of repeating, repeating, repeating, he’d seen things end cruelly, with the situation growing worse with each repetition, and now, having destroyed with his own hands that which he most wanted to protect, he finally realized it.
—No one expected anything of Subaru Natsuki. Not even him.
No matter how many times he experienced it, he’d never get used to the feeling of the senses he had lost suddenly come rushing back.
He no longer felt frozen to the core, or even cold at all, and he could tell that white world into which he had sunk deeper and deeper was gone.
In the blink of an eye, all his dulled senses became clear, and every last thing was just as it had once been.
Blood flowed through the limbs that had known so much pain. The agony of his nerves being immersed in ice was no more. The cold stabbing his skin had been peeled away, replaced by dazzling rays that could give him a sunburn.
“—”
“—!”
“—aa.”
Sounds from hustle and bustle to the left and right intermingled as his dead sense of hearing returned with a vengeance.
Blocking out the meaningless noise, Subaru checked the condition of his body. His frozen limbs, his injured spine, and his internal organs that had been turned to sherbet were all functioning without any problems.
Everything was back as it should be. Subaru felt relief that the body lost to him was under his control again. And what brought Subaru more tranquility than anything was…
“Why are you staring into space like that, Subaru?”
Behind the counter, Rem tilted her head slightly, gazing at him with concern.
He had been abandoned by everything and everyone, had an implacable sense of powerlessness drilled into him, had despaired at the loss and disappointment at what his own actions had wrought, and after dying like a helpless dog, he had returned.
“—Rem.”
“Yes, it is me, your Rem… What might be the matter?”
Rem responded to the call of his voice, slipping away from behind the counter and heading out of the shop. Subaru was rooted to the spot as Rem walked right in front of him, reaching out with her hand and touching him on the cheek. Her brows knit in worry, revealing a tinge of gloom on her noble face.
“I am sorry for not noticing. The crowd has worn you out, yes? I am a failure as a maid to have forgotten my most important duty of all.”
“Tired. Yeah, that’s right… I am.”
As Rem’s hand rested on his cheek, he slowly lifted up his hand, pressing it down upon hers. The touch between them made Rem raise her eyebrows in surprise, but Subaru’s haggard voice and expression left her at a loss for words.
Rem looked like she was trying to say something, but Subaru didn’t even look at her; instead, he felt Rem’s firm, solid presence against his hand—as if clinging to that warmth to keep it from running away.
“I guess all that…falling and getting worn down…was exhausting…”
Yet in spite of all that, the Rem he had surely lost was right there with him at that very moment, so…
“Subaru?”
Subaru resolved that, if nothing else, he would never let go of the girl right before his eyes.
2
He ran rapidly through the crowd, heading down a gently descending slope. He scowled from the dust kicked up by a passing dragon carriage, but Subaru’s gaze was aimed straight in front of him.
He knew where he was going. His ru
nning feet were sure.
When he thought back, Subaru had harbored nothing but uncertainty during those repeated days: uncertainty about what he should be like, about what lay in Emilia’s heart, about whether his existence held any purpose, about whether he could bring out the best of all possible futures, all amid a vortex of madness. He was an unsure man lost in an uncertain, foreign world.
But Subaru, unable to make a single manly step in one direction throughout, advanced with clarity of purpose he had never before known.
Finally, he’d come to understand.
Now that he’d arrived at that answer, the repeated days had not been in vain.
Backed into a mental and physical corner, Subaru truly realized for the first time what he could do, what he must do.
“—ru!”
His uncertainty lifted, his gaze was trained squarely on his objective, his legs powerfully thudding along the earth. His body was light. Relieved of the pressure on his heart, Subaru wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.
“Please, Subaru, listen to me!”
Pulling his arm forward, he could see the main street at the end of the downward slope. Even in the royal capital, it boasted the greatest width, continuing all the way to the main gate through the stout walls that surrounded the capital.
Everyone entering or leaving the royal capital had to pass through that gate. With the announcement of the royal selection, the main street was even busier with people coming and going; at that very moment, it was bustling with the numerous people along it.
He cut past the shadow of a building. Abruptly, sun rays slid into his field of vision. Subaru used a hand to shield his eyes from the bright light as he raised his face up, looking at the symbols carved into the gate that read, LUGUNICA, THE ROYAL CAPITAL.
One more step, and she and Subaru would be—
“Subaru!”
Having brought him all that way, his feet stopped when he felt a sharp tug on his arm. The unanticipated resistance made Subaru look back. As Rem stood still, her eyes wavered with bewilderment.
When Rem freed her hand from his grasp, she seemed to shrink as she pleaded with him.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 6 Page 17