——Leaving her body to the swaying of the dragon carriage as it made its way down the highway,
She thought she heard her name called and, as if roused from a trance, slowly raised her downcast face. Then she squinted slightly against the strength of the sunlight.
Straight ahead, at the limit of her gaze, several dragon carriages led the procession. Laid upon them were a number of wounded who had participated in the battle to slay the
Every last one of them was returning with nothing more than the barest field dressing applied to their injuries, and the number of seriously wounded was far from negligible. Yet despite the grimaces of pain etched onto their faces, a quiet sense of fulfillment — of finally fulfilling a long-held desire — lingered at the corners of their mouths.
The years of pent-up emotion they had carried for so long — compared to the reality of having achieved it, their wounds were insignificant. As long as they had not died, nothing else mattered.
For those who had accomplished what they set out to do, the road back to the royal capital was a triumphal procession. And yet, watching them, Rem could not suppress the creeping ache in her own chest, and she loathed herself for it.
"You look down, Rem. Still worried, I take it?"
"...Crusch-sama."
When the voice reached her and she looked to the side, there sat Crusch, settled right beside her.
Bandages were wound beneath her light armor, yet her posture betrayed no hint of the serious injuries she carried. Rem could only admire the composure. Still, even Crusch could not entirely conceal her exhaustion. The reason she was riding in a dragon carriage was that her attendants had deemed it unsafe for her to ride an earth dragon alone, and at the very least, the arrangement was for her to share a carriage with Rem until the royal capital came into view.
Receiving Rem's concerned gaze, Crusch shrugged as if to show she was still in fighting shape. "More importantly—" she jerked her chin lightly toward Rem.
"Wilhelm and
"Even so... is it selfish of me to still worry?"
"No matter how many seeds of anxiety you crush, they never run out. If the source lies within yourself, you can deal with it by sharpening your own resolve or by simply accepting it. But when the other party is involved, that becomes much harder. —I'm not skilled at offering comfort. Forgive me."
Seeing Rem's expression darken further, Crusch realized her own misstep and looked away. In that instant, the woman who had seemed so unshakably composed suddenly lost some of her formality, and Rem couldn't help but allow a small smile to soften her lips.
Noticing that smile, Crusch nodded with satisfaction and said, "Yes, that suits you."
"
"Crusch-sama... you look quite different when you smile. You're always so dignified and composed, but when you smile like that you're almost..."
"People have told me that before, and I do think about it. That's precisely why I can't be careless about smiling in front of others. I'd only come across as more of an ice queen."
Rem hesitated, unsure whether it was alright to laugh at a joke, but seeing the faint softness at the corners of Crusch's mouth, she let her own lips part in a grin.
The image of Crusch — always brave, always dignified — was one of the ideals that Rem, who always lacked confidence and wilted under pressure, aspired to. Of course, for Rem, the ultimate ideal was none other than her sister,
But in any case— "What awaits us up ahead is the
"I wouldn't know the depths of my master's thinking, Rem. Even if I tried to probe him, he would never let it slip, you know?"
"You're a hard one. He's our ally now — you could at least let a few things slip."
Crusch was trying to keep Rem's thoughts from spiraling into darker territory. In truth, it was thanks to Crusch steering the conversation this way that Rem could spend her time without falling into the depths of her own mind.
Crusch's reasoning was sound. If it was Roswaal, he surely had some contingency plan prepared for this whole affair. Subaru's actions would complement his master's, and the honor that had been unjustly tarnished would surely be restored.
No — with their cooperation in the White Whale subjugation, his honor had already risen beyond mere restoration.
—The hero Natsuki Subaru.
That was, of course, the rightful assessment from Rem, whose heart and future he had saved. It was the just recognition of the brilliant future he would continue to build from here on.
And if she could remain at his side in that brilliance — if she could be in a position where he might occasionally turn and look her way — then Rem wanted nothing more. That alone was enough to fulfill her.
Whenever she thought of Subaru, Rem's heart was always filled with conflicting emotions.
Warmth. The easing of something heavy. And yet, a gnawing anxiety, a flutter of worry that made her stomach clench.
But Subaru was the only one who could stir such constant turbulence in her heart.
With a smile fixed at the corners of her lips, Rem imagined Subaru's future — and her own future alongside him.
Seemingly finding peace in the sight of Rem's tranquil profile, Crusch reached out to touch the scabbard of the knight's sword beside her and, in silence, fixed her gaze straight ahead along the road — letting her thoughts drift toward the journey home to the royal capital.
Then— "Hmm?"
"—?"
The two sounds came almost simultaneously — Crusch narrowing her eyes with a faint grunt of confusion, and Rem catching a faint noise and raising her head.
What Crusch's eyes registered as an anomaly was the dragon carriage up ahead. And the strange sound that reached Rem's ears had come from the same direction. Both arrived at the same conclusion at once.
—Within Crusch's field of vision, the dragon carriage ahead *collapsed*. In Rem's ears, the precursors of that *collapse* arrived as a cascade of small sounds, like the pattering of rain.
A mist of blood erupted into the air, and the front of the dragon carriage was transformed in an instant into a scene of carnage.
The earth dragon, the carriage, and the wounded inside it — every last thing had been ripped apart, utterly pulverized by an overwhelming, merciless force of destruction.
"——! Enemy attack!!"
The momentary paralysis of shock snapped away, and Crusch's voice rang out as a warning. Immediately, Crusch and the occupants of the other nearby carriages sensed the disturbance and readied themselves for combat.
Rem too pushed aside her own injuries and fatigue, grasped her iron flail, and rose to her feet — and through the wall of blood-mist, she caught sight of a figure.
What kind of enemy? she tensed as her gaze fell upon a person standing perfectly still on the highway.
Empty-handed. Unguarded. Unwary. And behind it all — a merciless, innocent, indiscriminate malice— "——Run them down!!"
Crusch roared, leaping onto the driver's seat and shouting orders to the driver. The knight responded not with words but with a snap of the reins, and the snarling earth dragon accelerated the dragon carriage into a charge — the momentum turning the charging carriage into a super-heavy projectile that would reduce anything in its path to a heap of flesh.
True to its aim, it bore straight down on the figure standing in the road. The person showed not the slightest intention of moving. The carriage made contact, and the slender body was about to be torn apart by the impact— "Crusch-sama—!"
Screaming, Rem seized the waist of Crusch beside her and hurled both of them off the side of the carriage in a sideways leap. She couldn't reach the driver in time. Rem bit down on her lip and landed on the ground.
And then, immediately after— "Oh, come on. I really wish you wouldn't do things like that. I haven't done anything, and you try to run me over? I really don't think that's something a decent human being would do."
The voice belonged to someone who sounded as if they were leisurely strolling through a park on a lazy afternoon. A voice bathed in warm sunshine, in a state of relaxation beyond compare.
If that voice had not come from the point of impact where the dragon carriage shattered and scattered upon contact, Rem would never have been this horrified by its sheer abnormality.
At first glance, the man appeared utterly unremarkable.
A slender build. White hair that was neither long nor short, and not particularly well-kept either. Clothing with a black base that was neither especially lavish nor shabby. His features held no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever. He was the very definition of ordinary — the kind of man you might see anywhere and blend in everywhere, the kind you'd forget within a dozen seconds of passing on the street.
And yet, the earth dragon that had made contact with him had been torn in half mid-stride as it raised its leg to crush him. The knight driving the carriage had been obliterated along with the dragon carriage, reduced to an indistinguishable jumble of wood splinters and flesh.
And what was truly terrifying was this: even Rem, who had not looked away for a single instant until that moment, realized that the man had simply been *standing there*.
Without doing anything special whatsoever, the man had won the collision against the super-heavy dragon carriage by merely standing his ground, and now he stood there with perfect composure.
"Let me thank you, Rem. You saved me. But... the situation hasn't improved."
Crusch, whom Rem had been holding, spoke her thanks and rose to her feet from Rem's arms. She had snatched the knight's sword in the moment of crisis and drawn it from its scabbard. Narrowing her eyes in sorrow, she gazed at the remains of the knight who had followed her orders to the death — now reduced to a state where not even the individual parts could be distinguished.
"Killing my retainers so brutally, and you think you'll walk away unscathed. ...Who are you?"
Thrusting the killing intent gleaming at the sword's tip toward the man, Crusch flung a sharp voice at him. The man received it by placing a hand on his chin, then began to nod as if convincing himself.
"I see, I see. So you don't know who I am. Though, I certainly know who you are. You and your lot are all the talk of the royal capital — no, the whole country, these days. After all, you're next in line to be king. Even someone as detached from current affairs as I am can imagine that you're about to shoulder something tremendously large."
"Chattering away — answer the question, or I strike next."
"That's a rather harsh thing to say. But maybe you need to be that imperious if you're going to carry a whole country. I can't relate to that sensibility at all, but I suppose I could never understand the mentality of someone who would voluntarily seek out something as crushing as a throne. Ah, I'm not denying it just because I don't understand. If anything, I have no intention whatsoever of being imperious myself. Unlike you, I'm..."
The man went on at length, ignoring Crusch's demand entirely, his silver tongue never ceasing to wag.
But— "I said, next time there won't be a warning."
Crusch spoke those words with cold finality, and her arm swept in a blade of wind at the same instant.
Crusch's wind magic and swordsmanship combined into an invisible slash — the legendary ultra-long-range super-stroke known as "One Hundred Men, One Blade" — and it carved diagonally downward across the man's torso. The slash dispatched him before he could even tell where it had come from or who had unleashed it.
The technique had earned its battlefield epithet —
The same slash had torn through the White Whale's hardened skin and contributed greatly to felling its colossal body. Compared to that monster's mass, this man's diminutive frame should have been impossible to withstand.
And yet— "...Attacking someone while they're in the middle of a perfectly good conversation? What kind of upbringing did you receive?"
Tilting his head, the man stood there, lightly dusting off the spot where the slash had struck him.
His existence had been utterly unmoved by the sword strike that had split the White Whale. Not a trace of that blow remained on his body — no, not even his clothes bore a single mark.
This was something entirely different from merely blocking an attack.
Crusch held her breath, and Rem braced herself against this being that existed beyond the pale of all reason. Before the two of them, the man finally let out a small breath and said, "Look here," his voice dropping with irritation.
"I'm talking. I was talking, wasn't I? Interrupting someone while they're talking — isn't that just a little bit wrong? Don't you think so? I don't want to go as far as asserting some kind of right to speak or anything, but still, when someone is talking, not interrupting them — isn't that a kind of tacit understanding? Whether you actually listen seriously or not is up to you, so I won't complain about that. But deciding not to even let someone speak — what do you think about that?"
Speaking rapidly, the man tapped the ground with his foot, making his displeasure plain. Then, pointing a finger at the two women who had gone rigid with dread, he said— "And this time, silence — how is that any different? You heard me. You did hear me. You asked a question. If someone asks you, you answer, right? That's how it works, isn't it? But you won't do that either. You don't want to. Ah, freedom. That is your freedom, yours alone. From your perspective, I was just talking to myself, got slashed, asked a question, and was ignored — that's how it must look to you. And that's your use of your freedom. Fine. Go ahead. But you know, that attitude of yours basically amounts to..."
Leaning forward and tilting his head toward the two women, the man intensified the piercing light in his eyes and fixed them with a stare. Then, in a voice he barely kept from erupting, he said— "—Disregarding my rights. My few meager personal assets. Isn't that what it amounts to?"
A chill raced up Rem's spine. The very next instant, the man took one step forward. An arm that hung limply, casually at his side swung upward from below, and a faint breeze stirred.
Immediately after — in the direct line of the man's arm — the earth, the atmosphere, the very world itself cracked apart.
Round and round, round and round — Crusch's severed left arm pirouetted through the air.
The arm, still clutching the scabbard, hit the ground spraying blood. Crusch's body, blown away by the force of the impact, collapsed to the ground, and violent pain and hemorrhaging triggered violent convulsions.
"Crusch... sama—"
Stunned for several seconds, Rem immediately leaped to the fallen Crusch's side. Squeezing out the last dregs of her mana, she placed her hands on Crusch's wound and began applying every ounce of healing and hemostasis she could muster.
The wound where Crusch's arm had been severed was so clean it was almost beautiful — flesh, bone, nerves, blood vessels, everything in the left arm cut with absolute precision. The razor-sharp elegance of the attack was such that, beyond horror, Rem felt a misplaced sense of awe.
"Ferris... ugh, ah, ugh?"
In Rem's arms, Crusch's unfocused eyes drifted aimlessly as she murmured deliriously. Her remaining right hand gripped Rem's leg, an abnormal crushing force grinding against the bone of her knee. It was proof that the will to survive still remained.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Rem fixed her eyes on the murderous act of the man before her.
She had no idea how he had defended against her attack, nor the true nature of that last strike. She had not missed a single preparatory motion. There was nothing to do but take Crusch and evade.
No — the truly strange thing was the situation itself. Why had none of the others — why had the remaining members of their party not rushed forward to confront this aberration? When their lord had sustained such a mortal wound, the very heroes who had faced down the White Whale — why— "Oh, really now... no matter how much I eat, I just can't get enough! This is why we can never stop living — eating and eating and biting and gnawing and devouring and latching on and tearing apart and crushing and licking and slurping and sucking and licking clean and sucking dry and binging! Gluttony! Ah — thank you for the meal!!"
The words arrived in a high-pitched boy's voice from directly behind.
Feeling the same brand of dread in her spine as the man before her, Rem turned around with her body rigid with tension. And there, in the center of the stopped procession of dragon carriages, she caught sight of a blood-soaked figure arching his back in uproarious laughter.
He was a short boy with thick brown hair that fell past his knees. His height was about the same as Rem's, or perhaps a touch shorter — he looked only slightly older than the children in the village near the manor.
Beneath that long hair, his slender body was wrapped in nothing but tattered, filthy rags, and the slivers of skin that peeked through were stained red with blood everywhere.
Not his own blood, of course. It belonged to the knights collapsed at his feet.
Beyond Crusch and Rem, who were confronting the enemy in front, the knights had been facing another threat that had appeared behind them. And the result had been a rout — one so swift that Rem hadn't even sensed the fighting.
"Who... are you..."
Voice trembling, Rem shuffled backward until she could keep both enemies in her field of vision — one before, one behind. Blood dripped from Crusch and painted crimson lines on the highway, and the air grew colder, as though mocking her terror.
When the question reached them, the man and the boy exchanged a glance.
Then, as if in默契, they nodded to each other and broke into smiles — horribly familiar, violently grinning, demon-like smiles — and introduced themselves.
"Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult, representing Greed —
"Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult, representing Gluttony —
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ "I sensed a disturbance with one of our pets, so I came to check, and — wow, is this a bumper harvest or what! Nice, real nice, so nice, couldn't be nicer, couldn't be better, absolutely perfect! Obsession! Love! Hatred! Chivalry! Every conceivable mix of joy and sorrow — and that's what makes it truly worth savoring!"
The Witch Cult — and not just any members. Sin Archbishops.
Before Rem could freeze at those words, the boy — the one who had called himself Lye Batenkaitos — stomped the ground and let out an ecstatic shriek.
He whirled on the spot like he was dancing, gesturing toward the fallen knights with his arms while gazing at them with something almost like affection.
"You know, it really is great, coming to eat in person like this. Especially lately, I haven't had the chance to meet anyone with this kind of fighting spirit. It's been ages since any of us felt truly satisfied!"
"That aspect of you is something I just can't comprehend, Batenkaitos. Hunger or whatnot — it's not as if you're actually starving. And even if you say you feel satisfied, it's not really yours, is it? Why can't you be content with who you are right now? Listen — a person can only hold as much as fits in their two palms. If you understand that, shouldn't you naturally learn to rein in your own desires?"
"Spare us the sermon. We don't like it. I'm not saying what you're saying is wrong — but I'm not interested either. Ah — really, filling this emptiness is the only thing we care about."
The Gluttony Archbishop, Batenkaitos, laughed with manic fervor. The Greed Archbishop, Regulus, shrugged with an air of boredom.
Confronted with two Sin Archbishops present in the same place at the same time, Rem forced her stalling mind to keep turning, desperately searching for a way to break through the situation.
Combat-wise, defeating both of them here was impossible.
Crusch's bleeding had been stopped, but her condition remained critical. The knights were impossible to gauge — whether dead or alive — and at any rate, they could not be counted as combat strength.
Rem herself had spent her meager mana reserves on the treatment just now. If she went into demon form, she might hold out for a while — but facing these two, she could envision no path to victory.
One was the Greed Archbishop, who showed absolutely no opening in attack or defense. There were rumors he had single-handedly conquered an entire city, and his depth was unfathomable. The other was the Gluttery Archbishop, whose otherworldly nature was equally bottomless. His combat strength was unknown, but he had felled hardened veterans in a matter of seconds. Again — no future could be seen in which she triumphed.
Glancing around, Rem saw that the dragon carriage the Liger group had withdrawn with was nowhere to be found. It was the one carrying the returning and wounded beastman mercenaries — along with the White Whale's severed head they had managed to extract.
They had likely used the chaos to escape, heading at full speed toward the royal capital. Hetaro, the vice-commander of the mercenary company, would be leading them. He was sharp and level-headed — if she could buy enough time, he might return with reinforcements.
But even that — Rem couldn't believe it would arrive in time while she held off two Sin Archbishops.
"The White Whale..."
"Oh my?"
"Huh?"
The Sin Archbishops tilted their heads in unison at Rem's murmur.
*Good — I've bought myself a hook to stall for time,* Rem thought, briefly catching her breath. She spoke quickly, trying to keep their interest from waning.
"Did you come to retrieve the White Whale? We were taking the severed head back to the royal capital."
"A head? Oh — so that's why it had that weird smell. We don't really need the head, and there's no point bringing back something dead, so that's fine by us. We could make another one if we wanted... well, I suppose it'd take the same amount of time to grow."
The Gluttony Archbishop dismissed something critical with casual indifference and cracked his neck. Then he gnashed his teeth — *clack clack clack* — and said forcefully, "More importantly—"
"What we were interested in wasn't that the White Whale died — it was the people who killed it. It'd been puttering along for four hundred years, after all. I was expecting a truly ripe, delicious bunch... and wow, you've exceeded my expectations!"
He nodded his head up and down, sending his long, long hair flying as he laughed and spewed saliva. All the while, *clack clack clack clack*, he ground his teeth — teeth whose canines were conspicuously long.
"Love! Chivalry! Hatred! Obsession! A sense of accomplishment! All of it simmering and stewing and boiling over for so long, so long — and the satisfaction of it going down your throat! Is there a greater delicacy in this world!? No — there isn't, there can't be, there isn't, no way, no chance, never, and that's exactly why — binging! Gluttony! Our hearts, our stomachs are trembling with joy and fullness!"
Rem could not understand what he was saying.
Batenkaitos, looking like he had gone completely off the rails, continued laughing in that shrill boy's voice. His voice had taken on a strained, unhinged quality. When Rem silently shifted her gaze, Regulus waved at her.
"Unfortunately, I'm completely different from that fellow over there. My being here is purely coincidental — not the result of any deliberate action on my part. Naturally. Unlike him, I don't harbor any of those... base desires. Hunger, thirst, and such. I'm perfectly, endlessly content with who I am right now — unlike that perpetually peckish fellow over there."
He spread his arms wide and beamed at Rem.
Having just severed Crusch's arm — and with both arms capable of doing exactly the same — he made grand sweeping gestures, as though boldly proclaiming his own existence.
"I really don't like fighting, you know. I'm perfectly happy just living a quiet, ordinary, peaceful life. Peace, stability, a life that never changes — that's the ideal. My hands are small and powerless. I'm only a fragile individual trying to protect my own meager personal assets."
He clenched his fists and spoke with passionate emphasis. The very man who had used those fists to tear apart an earth dragon, multiple lives, and a woman's arm — and he had the gall to say such things.
Batenkaitos, cackling like a madman, and Regulus, draping himself in self-serving rhetoric — all of it, they were aberrations through and through. As expected, these were members of the Witch Cult.
A boiling fury surged up within her.
Rem laid the comatose Crusch on the grass and forced herself to stand on trembling legs. In one hand she gripped her iron flail. Squeezing out the last traces of her mana, she caused icicles to materialize and orbit around her body.
Seeing this, the expressions of both Batenkaitos and Regulus changed.
"Were you not listening? I said I didn't want to do this. If you heard that and still carry on like this, then you're ignoring my opinion. Violating my rights. Trying to strip away the tiny, pitiful sense of self I've been allowed — my personal assets. —Even someone as unambitious as I am cannot forgive that."
"Are you quite finished talking, Witch Cult?"
To Regulus, who had tilted his head, Rem spoke with unwavering composure. Regulus sneered at her bearing, and Rem rattled the chain of her flail in a show of intimidation.
"Someday, without fail, a hero will appear to strike you down. That hero will make you understand just how selfish you are, just how much suffering your self-satisfaction has wrought upon the world. Rem's one and only hero."
"Oh? A hero. That sounds like something we'd enjoy too. If someone is trusted that much, they must be absolutely delicious from our perspective!"
Clapping his hands and doubling over, Batenkaitos licked his lips and appraised Rem.
It was not the look of an enemy sizing up an opponent, still less of a man appraising a woman. The light that burned in that gaze was the look of a ravenous spirit drooling over food — nothing more.
Behind her, the figures collapsed beyond Batenkaitos grew hazy in her mind.
Who they were, what their positions had been — Rem could no longer grasp it now. Why they were lying there, who they had been, what their relationship to her had been.
The White Whale's mist had been the embodiment of a nightmare — anything it enveloped was erased from existence entirely. If that was so, then the authority wielded by the Gluttony Archbishop, who had commanded it— "
She started to give her formal title, then shook her head.
In this one moment — the name she truly wished to be called by— "I am simply a beloved person. —The attendant of my one true hero, the one who will become a hero someday: Natsuki Subaru. My name is Rem."
A white horn jutted from her forehead. The mana saturating the atmosphere coalesced, flooding Rem with vitality.
Power surged through her whole body. The arm gripping the iron flail coiled with strength. The icicles hovered, poised, ready to answer her call.
Eyes wide open, perceiving the world, feeling the air around her, she fixed only his image in her mind.
"Steel yourselves, Sin Archbishops. —My hero will come to judge you without fail!!"
She raised her flail high. The icicles shot forth. At the same instant, Rem's body launched forward like something breaking free.
To meet her charge, Batenkaitos threw open his fang-filled mouth and— "Ah, what fine spirit — then, *itadakimasu*!!"
They collide, they collide — and in that instant, she thinks: *May he feel even the faintest ripple in his heart, when he learns that I was lost.* —That was Rem's final wish, in her final moment.