—How many times had he now made his way to this room to meet her?
The first time Subaru encountered
His first impression of her—and hers of him—had been, he thought, mutually abysmal.
Having his mana drained from his still-recovering body, Subaru had gone down without a fight. Beatrice had then endured countless provocations from him as he burned for revenge.
Every time they met they'd trade barbs, yet somehow they'd click, and Subaru would inevitably end up stumbling into the very library Beatrice had been trying to hide in.
During the roughly two months Subaru spent at the Roswaal mansion, the two of them had gone round and round, shouting over each other, spitting venom, and engaging in childish back-and-forth—again and again and again.
After the Royal Selection kicked off in earnest and Subaru returned from the capital, their dynamic began to shift.
Beatrice rejecting Subaru. Subaru had come to understand, even just a little, why she was so stubborn—by learning about the girl's past and fate in a place called the
And then, having presumed to understand her loneliness, he'd been utterly devastated by the wailing of a girl whose tears had long since run dry across four hundred years.
After that, there had been nothing he could say to her exhausted form. In the events that followed, Beatrice's life was lost, and all Subaru saw was the last expression on the face of the girl who disappeared while shielding him.
That expression was seared into his mind, and it had driven him back—burned by a passion so fierce it scorched his very soul.
—This time, no matter the cost, he would take this girl out of here.
"You're going to... take Betty out of here...?"
The moment he entered the room and declared his intentions so boldly, Beatrice responded with bewilderment. She clutched the Gospel tightly to her chest, drew her knees up on the stepladder, and said: "How utterly unnecessary. Nobody asked you to do that."
"This isn't about asking or being asked. I'm getting you out of here. That's already settled."
"Why don't you just go away and comfort yourself on that little brat's lap instead?"
"You... That's an act of war! If you're gonna bring that up, it's an act of war!"
Being reminded of the time she'd pushed him to his limit at the mansion before, Subaru strained his voice to cover the shame burning inside him.
Beatrice snorted at his attitude and averted her gaze.
"Like I have time for that kind of nonsense. There isn't as much leeway as you seem to think. Do you even grasp what's going on outside right now?"
"...I know some unwelcome guests have shown up at the mansion. After the big maid and the little maid did whatever they were doing, two absolute monsters have been rampaging around."
"One of those monsters is a helper I brought along. Combat-wise I don't think we're outmatched, but unfortunately I suspect the difference in resolve is going to decide things by a single step. So I can't exactly sit back and take it easy."
"So the plan is to have the helper buy time while the people in the mansion escape... A strategy where you trust your allies—partially, at least. Hard to say it's a clear one."
"It's a strategy that works because he's way too damn soft-hearted. That part I'm perfectly sure of."
Garfiel's current condition, accounting for the recovery effect of the "Earth Spirit's Blessing" up until the time they returned to the mansion, was roughly eighty to ninety percent of full strength. Add in his complete lack of hesitation in a fight, and his combat rating was considerably high. However, Subaru doubted he'd managed to resolve himself to killing his opponent, and that gap in commitment probably cost him on the decisive-strike front, bringing the assessment down a notch.
Elza, on the other hand, was obviously in perfect form. Her inexplicable, off-the-charts combat ability made her roughly even with a full-strength Garfiel from Subaru's perspective. Her tendency to enjoy fighting knocked her rating down slightly, but she possessed some kind of immortality Subaru couldn't fathom. The idea that she'd die after being killed a few times seemed unlikely based on her own remarks. Preliminary assessment: Elza with a slight edge.
"Still, if the plan goes the way it should, Garfiel should be keeping Elza busy while Frederica picks up
"The last person who needs saving... That would be Betty, wouldn't it."
"That's exactly right."
Petra, who had regrouped with Subaru on the first floor, had then been sent to link up with Otto—who'd been guiding the villagers of
By now, with Subaru having reached the Forbidden Library, they should have already escaped.
"So you're coming with me. If you don't want to hold hands and run, I'll carry you on my back, in my arms, whatever—just stay calm and follow me..."
"How many times do I have to say it? I don't need your help."
Her low voice rejected him as he stepped closer and reached out his hand. Subaru stopped. Beatrice turned her head to survey the library around her, as if to indicate it.
"Do you understand? This is an isolated space beyond the Corridor of Time, within Betty's reach. It is Beatrice's Forbidden Library. Whatever threat lurks outside, no one can reach this place. Your concern is nothing but groundless worry."
"That's not gonna work. The randomness of your library's door connections is undeniably a powerful advantage when it comes to escape—but it has a fatal flaw. And our enemy knows about that fatal flaw."
"A fatal... flaw...?"
Beatrice's brow furrowed. That, at least, was not something she could brush off. Subaru nodded under the sharp gaze of the severe girl and gestured toward the door behind him with his hand.
"Your power connects randomly to doors inside the mansion. That's strong. But... it only works on 'closed doors' inside the mansion. In other words, if every door in the mansion is left wide open, eventually they'll all funnel into this one—and this library will be the only place left to connect to."
"———"
"It's a stupidly simple trick. Even someone as sharp as you probably didn't think of it. Hell, I'm amazed I didn't think of it sooner—I only realized it after seeing it with my own eyes."
He recalled the moment Elza had discovered the shortcut through "Door Connecting" and exposed the library.
Once the obstacle that was Garfiel was removed, Elza would undoubtedly use the exact same method to get in here. And then she would take Beatrice's life.
"Now, I'm not saying she'd wipe you out the second she walked in—I'm not underestimating you. But her unpredictability is off the charts in my life experience. If we can avoid dealing with her, that's what we should do."
Defeating Elza would be nice, but it wasn't a mandatory condition for breaking out of this loop. If Roswaal was the one who'd hired her, then once the time limit tied to the events of the Sanctuary was exceeded, Roswaal would have no reason to keep Elza on the payroll.
In that case, Elza would withdraw—as had already been proven by the badge incident in the capital.
For now, all that mattered was surviving this attack on the mansion— "Beatrice. This place isn't safe either. If you weren't here, she wouldn't bother ransacking the library. So right now..."
"Why does that woman know how to break Betty's 'Door Connecting'?"
"———"
Having spat out every reasonable argument he had to convince her to leave, Subaru urged Beatrice to escape.
But Beatrice, the person who mattered most, either hadn't been listening or had been thinking along entirely different lines—because the words she murmured were nothing at all like what he'd been hoping to hear.
As Subaru faltered, Beatrice remained perched on her stepladder.
"She couldn't have encountered Betty's 'Door Connecting' for the first time and instantly figured out how to break it. Whoever gave her that strategy must be someone who knows about Betty."
"Beatrice, this really isn't the time for—"
"It's Roswaal, isn't it."
No deflection was going to work.
The speed at which she'd reached that conclusion made Subaru involuntarily catch his breath.
Seeing his reaction, Beatrice understood everything. That Roswaal had hired Elza, and that his objective was her own death. Which meant— "Roswaal's Gospel must contain instructions telling him to kill Betty, then."
With a soft "Ho," Beatrice let out a small sigh without waiting for Subaru's confirmation or denial.
There was something like relief in that sigh—Subaru was certain it wasn't his imagination. Unable to let it slide, he pressed closer.
"What was that sigh just now?! What do you look like you've just come to terms with?!"
"As you can see, I've come to terms with it. If the contents of Roswaal's Gospel commanded him to do so, then Betty's fate is as good as decided."
"What the hell is that?! Roswaal's book is Roswaal's book, and yours is yours! Does yours say 'Get killed by Roswaal' or something?!"
He jabbed a finger at Beatrice, glaring at the Gospel in her arms.
If it was the same as in previous loops, then those pages would contain nothing but blank space—four hundred years of nothing but empty white.
At Subaru's outburst, Beatrice lifted her gloomy expression and opened the Gospel's pages. She turned them outward so he could see— Nothing but blank pages. Page after page of nothing.
"Nothing is written. Just as before—pure white."
"—!? Then there's no reason for you to go and die according to Roswaal's book! Just like before, you decide what you do!"
"...Betty decides, just like before?"
"Yes! Nothing being written means all the choices up until now were yours, right? From the tiniest things to the biggest, you chose your own path every single time. So this time too, there's no reason to dance on someone else's—"
"What has Betty ever decided in all of Betty's days?"
The force of Subaru's words was crushed flat by the sheer, aching sincerity of that question.
Beatrice tilted her head slightly, gazing at Subaru with nothing but loneliness in her eyes. She turned the blank pages one after another, as though tracing through "empty time" where nothing had been recorded.
"Keeping guard over the Forbidden Library that Mother entrusted to Betty at Roswaal's mansion, spending all that time, all alone, over and over and over... Where in all that is Betty's time? Nothing recorded, nothing written—the time Betty spent living through blank pages. Where in this world does any of that remain? Who is Betty? What has Betty done?"
"Beatrice..."
"Betty's life, Betty's four hundred years—it's the same as this Gospel. Blank. Empty. Everything Betty chose for herself, everything Betty earned, everything that could prove Betty's existence... doesn't exist."
She snapped the Gospel shut with a sharp sound and gently placed it on her lap. Stroking its nameless cover, the girl spoke in a quiet voice.
"Same as a blank book. If Betty is lost here, it's just one blank book disappearing from a shelf. A book that is nothing to anyone—no title, no author, just sitting there on a shelf. Wouldn't it be better to just... cease to exist?"
"And what about the person who'd be in trouble if that blank book weren't there?"
Beatrice looked ready to let her four hundred years and her future slip away without a shred of attachment. Desperate to hold onto her, Subaru managed to force out words.
The answer to Beatrice's anguished question from that moment still hadn't come to him.
But even so, if he didn't keep speaking here, she would give up on herself.
"You said it was nothing but empty blank space. But that book is sitting right there on the shelf. Someone knows it exists. There might be someone out there who intends to pick it up someday—and you're just going to have it thrown away on your own?"
"A book with no title and no author. Even if some eccentric person did pick it up, they'd open it, see the blank pages inside, and be disappointed. Betty has no intention of witnessing the face of whoever picks up that blank book and watching their hopes crumble."
"Then! Then why is that book sitting there in the first place?"
"———"
Beatrice stared at Subaru with emotionless eyes.
He felt as though his persistence had been met with the certainty that this conversation was pointless. Nevertheless, Subaru raised his head and continued reaching out toward Beatrice's distant heart.
"If anyone who picks it up is just going to be disappointed by the contents... then what was that book doing there? Books exist for a reason—don't they?"
"...The author who made that book made it for someone. It may look blank to everyone, but for that one 'someone'—it was designed to appear as something different. So if it has meaning, that meaning is fulfilled the moment it reaches that 'someone's' hands."
"Then—"
"Are you going to say it shouldn't be disposed of before it reaches that 'someone's' hands?"
Subaru stopped breathing.
He realized, a hair's breadth too late, just how cruel a hope he'd been about to voice. Beatrice looked at his expression and forced a smile so painful it hurt to see.
"True. If Betty were really nothing but a single book... then waiting for that day would have been fine."
She could have waited forever for the day when some unknown "someone" would come and turn the pages.
If Beatrice were truly nothing but a book.
—But Beatrice was not a book. She was a girl who had spent a long, empty time shivering in loneliness.
"If Betty had no heart, no self, if she were truly nothing but a single book... she could have believed Mother's instructions without ever wavering. She could have stayed Mother's dear, sweet Betty forever."
If she had been a heartless existence, a doll that could only be decorated—if she had been a book, unmoved by the flow of time—she would never have agonized.
But Beatrice could not be that.
"But Betty has a heart! When enough time passes, you start thinking all sorts of things—things that make it impossible to believe what you want to believe! You start worrying! There were nights when Betty couldn't even remember Mother's face, her smile, and desperately tried to piece together fading memories!"
"———"
"There were times when Betty couldn't stand being alone and just wanted someone to touch! But everyone leaves Betty in the end! They say they have something more important—some reason Betty can't begin to understand—and they abandon her! Mother! Roswaal! —Even Ryuzu!!"
Beatrice's face crumpled, tears threatening to spill as she screamed.
At the name Ryuzu, Subaru recalled what he'd heard about Beatrice's past in the Sanctuary. Ryuzu Meijer—the original of the Ryuzus he knew now.
The story of a girl who sacrificed herself to protect the Sanctuary, and the brief but genuine bond she had forged with Beatrice. —The scars still remaining in Beatrice's heart.
"—So, it's fine now."
With that, Beatrice lost all the momentum she'd had, her voice dropping sharply.
She smoothed the expression that had been twisted by raw emotion back into her usual detached look and pulled the book on her lap close to her.
"Betty's Gospel does not record Betty's future. ...That much has been known for a very long time. Betty's fate was abandoned by Mother long ago."
A future not recorded in the Gospel meant its owner's future had hit a dead end.
That was how Beatrice had described Subaru's own Gospel—the one where the writing had stopped—when he held Petelgeuse's Gospel. The exact same thing was now happening to her.
"If Roswaal's Gospel truly has Betty's fate inscribed within it... how ironic. But Betty also feels relieved. Roswaal would absolutely never go easy on anyone."
"You're about to maybe get killed by someone you've known forever... and you're relieved? Why?"
"That's obvious."
To Subaru's strained voice, Beatrice gave a single nod.
Then, a fragile—yet somehow tender—smile appeared at the corner of her lips.
"If Roswaal's Gospel truly has Betty written in it... then it means Mother never forgot Betty."
—Twisted.
Watching Beatrice smile, Subaru felt himself being swallowed by a torrent of emotion.
Twisted. This sight of Beatrice, rejoicing as though she had touched her mother's love—was grotesque and unbearable. How could this, how could any of this, be called a mother's affection?
"...What are you going to do?"
Subaru bit his lip, holding back what welled up inside, and stepped forward.
Sensing the dangerous aura radiating from him, Beatrice's expression turned guarded.
"———"
"Did you hear me? What are you going to do? I'm telling you now—if you try anything, I won't show mercy. Betty has already accepted her fate."
"Accepted what fate? You're no different from Roswaal. No—you're far worse than that self-aware bastard. You're hopelessly, stubbornly twisted."
Anger surged up inside him.
Ever since touching on the events surrounding the Sanctuary, Subaru had fought this emotion over and over.
Anger at himself for facing the "Trial." Anger at the Witches who manipulated him. Anger at Garfiel for dismissing him with childish stubbornness. Anger at Roswaal for affirming the fragility of one's desires by adhering to what was written. Anger at
—And now, anger once more at Beatrice, and at everyone who had cornered her into this.
"You're an idiot. 'Fate this,' 'Mother's instructions that'—it's painful to even watch. You say you have a heart? That you can't be just a book? No kidding, you idiot! When you lock yourself away in this moldy room, you start losing sight of something that obvious?!"
"Ba—!"
Beatrice's eyes went wide at Subaru's shouting. After a moment of shock, she flew into a rage.
The girl stood up on the stepladder, her skirt swishing, and pointed at Subaru.
"You! Who do you think you're talking to, and what do you think you're saying?! Idiot, idiot? How dare you...! What do you even know about Betty?!"
"I know you're an idiot better than you know it yourself, which means I know you better than you do! You're the idiot! Idiot! Idiot! MORON!!"
"You—you—you...!!"
As Subaru flipped her off and hurled insults, Beatrice's face turned scarlet and she choked on her words. She was so furious she couldn't find anything to say.
And when Subaru saw an opening like that, he did what he did best—he drove straight through it with both feet.
"Four hundred years of nothing? Don't flatter yourself! For four hundred years you just sat there moping and hugging your knees! With that much time to think, why have you been fixated on the same answer this whole time?! Because nothing's written in the book, does that mean 'I did nothing'? What a moron!"
"As if Betty hasn't thought about it! Of course she has! How many times—how many countless times has Betty tried to see if the Gospel's text would change?! But no matter what she did, no matter how long she waited, nothing changed! So!"
"That's what makes you an idiot! Nothing's written in the book, so you tried to coax words out of it like a New Year's card rubbing?! Nobody does that anymore! If that didn't work, then you should've questioned whether there were other possibilities!"
"O-other possibilities...?"
"Like, for starters—maybe your mom gave you the wrong book."
Beatrice was rendered speechless.
But she quickly lashed out at how absurd the answer was.
"Enough! Mother would never do something so foolish! You—what could someone like you possibly understand about Mother's profound intentions?!"
"Yeah, I wouldn't know, idiot. I don't know your mother's thoughts. What I'm talking about right now is you. You said it yourself—'Mother would never do something so foolish.' Are you really sure about that? Can you say that with absolute certainty? Have you never— not even once—doubted your mother?"
"What are you...?!"
"Four hundred years! A book that should have had words appearing in it stayed blank the whole time! The person you were told to wait for never showed up no matter how long you waited! You spent all that time alone, with more than enough time to think until your thoughts rotted—and you never once wondered if something was wrong? You never once thought something was off?!"
To faithfully believe in someone for four hundred years.
It might seem, at first glance, like a beautifully devoted way to live. But that was, in truth, deeply twisted—especially if that person had spent all that time thinking of nothing but the other, of nothing but their words.
It was even more twisted in the case of Beatrice, who had nearly given up on her wish ever being granted.
"Mo—Mother could never be wrong! Of course not! It's Mother! Are you saying you can doubt your own mother's word?!"
"Of course I can! You have no idea how unreliable my mom's statements are! When she misheard 'fell into the atmosphere' as 'fell into Aichi Prefecture' and spread it around, I learned my lesson! I was in third grade!"
She'd taken her mother's words at face value, spread them around, and become the laughingstock of the school. Subaru would never forget that day.
From then on, he had stopped taking his parents' pronouncements at face value. His father's credibility had been lost even earlier.
"You never doubted her once in four hundred years?! I haven't even lived twenty years, and I've gotten into physical fights with my old man more times than I can count on both hands. That's twenty years. You've had twenty times that— and you've never felt that way even once?!"
"What do you—what do you want Betty to say?! I don't understand at all! Your objective, the meaning behind your words—Betty doesn't understand any of it! I don't understand!"
"Then I'll make it crystal clear! So loud that both you and your idiot mother can hear it!"
Subaru approached Beatrice, who was trying to cover her head, and took both her hands.
He brought his face close to hers—close enough to share breath—and looked directly into the teary-eyed girl's face as he delivered his answer.
"Stop letting yourself get jerked around by a blank book and a four-hundred-year-old verbal promise forever. —What you want to do, you choose for yourself, Beatrice."
"———"
"It's been four hundred years. That's more than enough time for one rebellious phase to come around."
Beatrice, who had tried so hard to faithfully uphold her mother's instructions.
Her stubborn determination to keep that promise was what had created the girl's loneliness and empty time.
For
Forgetting even how to cry, forgetting what it felt like to want to cry—what kind of way of life was that? It made him sick.
Still gripping her arms, Beatrice turned her face away from Subaru atop the stepladder.
The girl sitting on the top step was nearly at the same eye level as Subaru. After looking away, Beatrice eventually bowed her head, and then her lips trembled.
"So... what you're saying is... that Betty should break Mother's instructions?"
"............"
"That Betty should throw away what she's believed in for four hundred years and become free... You say something like that so easily, do you?"
The trembling in her voice gradually steadied.
And as that voice took on something that was no longer mere agitation, Subaru felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Since coming to this other world, this particular sense had been honed to a razor's edge—and never once had it been wrong.
It was, in other words, the sense that warned of a grave and imminent danger.
"—You dare! You dare tell Beatrice—to break a contract?! You dare speak as though you understand?!"
"—Guh!?"
Subaru's body was hurled backward as though struck head-on by a shockwave.
He rolled across the library floor on his back, caught up in the wind, and slammed into the wall so hard the air was driven from his lungs. Every bone in his body creaked. His vision flickered. Through it all, Subaru managed to lift his head.
Still atop her stepladder, Beatrice glared down at him with a face twisted in fury.
"A contract is absolute! ABSOLUTE! And this is a pact between a
"—Says the one who was looking for a back door out of that contract, and if she couldn't break it, was going to let herself get killed."
"———!"
As though pushing the pain out of his body, Subaru exhaled and slowly rose to his feet.
Beatrice showed no sign of relenting, her lovely face painted with as much ferocity as it could hold. Looking up at that face, Subaru broke into a vicious grin.
"You're talking absolute nonsense, Beatrice. Do you not realize how incoherent you're being? Of course you do—you're brilliant."
"Be quiet."
"No, I won't be quiet. Breaking a contract? Fine by me. If keeping your promise makes you want to die, then stop keeping it. Nobody's going to blame you."
"Betty will blame herself! Why can't you understand that?! The contract is absolute, and keeping it is—"
"Why can't you understand? If keeping the contract means you die, and breaking it means you survive, then surviving is better. Why is it so hard for me to make that choice?"
Beatrice, who clung so desperately to the contract, was left speechless by Subaru's willingness to throw it away so carelessly. To her, he might have looked like some incomprehensible monster.
As for Subaru, being thought of that way was far more baffling.
Keeping your promises was important, of course.
He'd been called out by Emilia multiple times for breaking promises, and it had hurt each time. So yes, Subaru understood perfectly well how important it was.
And yet, Subaru felt no hesitation in making Beatrice break her promise here.
The reason was exactly what he'd just said to Beatrice.
If someone told him to keep the promise and let Beatrice die, he'd flip them off and say exactly that.
Break the promise, let Beatrice survive. That wasn't even a question worth agonizing over.
"You're just... being brazenly, irredeemably wicked..."
"I know I'm being brazen. I've reflected on it. But it's something I care about, so I won't budge."
Subaru's position had been set from the very beginning. From the start, the rest depended on Beatrice's heart.
Beatrice could not hide her confusion and bewilderment at Subaru's attitude toward contracts. And understandably so. In this world, for beings called Spirits, a contract was that weighty.
Through his experiences with Spirits and Spirit Users, Subaru understood that a bond that was meant to be unshakable and sacred.
And understanding that, Subaru still said what he said.
That she mattered more than any of that.
"If... you were... 'that person'..."
Subaru's utterly outrageous stance toward the contract.
Hearing it, Beatrice's expression faintly crumbled, weakened.
From her lips spilled the formless someone she had been waiting for all throughout these four hundred years—believing her mother's words.
The fictitious existence Echidna had coldly brought into being, solely to learn "which person that child would choose."
Beatrice wanted to be saved.
The proof was in the way Subaru's words shook her heart and made her eyes glisten.
"If you..."
Beatrice's shimmering eyes focused on Subaru, who stood there unmoving.
And the girl's lips trembled as she reached out, as though grasping for something.
"Will you be Betty's... 'that person'?"
It was a question that might have put a full stop to the past four hundred years.
Or perhaps, in accordance with Echidna's design, those were exactly the words the Witch had been hoping for.
Whether Beatrice could find this formless "someone."
The Witch had entrusted that curiosity to her daughter and left her alone for four hundred years.
The culmination of those days was this very question.
Subaru looked Beatrice straight in the eye as she held her breath and answered clearly.
"What, are you an idiot? —I'm obviously not going to be your 'that person' or whatever vague nonsense that is."
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ In the aftermath of the tremendous shockwave that had torn through the Forbidden Library, Beatrice was busy returning the books that had been blown off the shelves to their original positions.
Fortunately, while they had fallen to the floor, none of them had suffered any damage to their bindings.
Regretting having used her power inside the library—this place she'd been told to protect like a mother—Beatrice was nonetheless relieved that the damage had been minimal.
These were her comrades-in-arms, the books that had accompanied her through four hundred years of loneliness.
Her earlier lament about what it would be like if she were a single book had been nothing but the truth. She had fantasized countless times about what it would be like to be an existence like these books—unmoved by the long wait, untouched by the passage of time.
Now, she told herself that such a foolish thought was nothing to hope for.
"I suppose there's no point in denying I was being ridiculous."
That was how cornered she had been—how gracelessly. She could laugh at herself for that. But beyond that, a small, burning fury still smoldered in her chest.
"That man... What in the world... is he...?"
Just thinking about the infuriating man made Beatrice's blood boil. She nearly stomped her foot.
She wanted to lash out at someone—anyone—but every corner of the Forbidden Library was a place her mother had told her to treasure. There was nothing here to take her anger out on, and all she could do was wait for the swelling emotion to subside.
Putting the last book back on the shelf, Beatrice let out a sigh and tidied herself. She then settled back onto her usual stepladder, reached to embrace the black-bound book—and stopped.
The blank book. He'd told her, casually and repeatedly, to just throw it away.
And then, at the crucial moment, when she had tried to find a reason to discard it, hadn't he refused? Truly, honestly—it was so incomprehensible it was infuriating.
"I'm so tired..."
But even that passion wouldn't last.
Beatrice stopped puffing out her cheeks and, despite her hesitation, tucked the book into her heart.
In the end, all the way to the very last moment, the only way she could protect her heart was by leaning on this.
As Roswaal's Gospel had foretold, an end would come for Beatrice before long.
And how should she feel about waiting for that?
Should she simply think, "It'll be over soon"?
She thought she had been thinking exactly that—but now that it was actually approaching, she found herself at a loss.
—I'm an idiot, you said. Why did that, of all things, leave a splinter lodged in her chest?
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ Blown away by the shockwave, Subaru rolled down the corridor and slammed back-first into a wall, groaning in agony. A pillar had struck him square in the ribs, and he writhed in pain.
"Guh! Ugh... no way...! We were in the middle of a conversation, you damn—!"
The door shut in front of him with a snap, and Subaru reached toward it with a resentful expression. Of course, on the other side of the barely-open gap, the scene had changed from the Forbidden Library to an ordinary guest room.
The "Door Connecting" had been activated, and Subaru had been ejected from the library.
"I can't believe she got so mad she threw me out...! Crap, I chose my words wrong...!"
He wasn't wrong in what he'd said—but the delivery and the way it landed had been off.
As a result, Subaru had been kicked out of the library, pushing his objective further out of reach.
"Anyway, I can't stay here. I need to find another door back to Beako's—"
"N-Natsuki-san...?"
Turning toward the other doors to start trying them at random, Subaru heard a voice directed at him. The familiar sound and the name made him stop short, his eyes going round.
There, peeking out from the adjacent room, was Otto—whom Subaru had thought had already left. And below Otto's face, in the same posture, Petra's face was also visible.
"You two...? Why are you still in the mansion?! I told you—as soon as you opened a door, you should have evacuated to at least one other building!"
"Well, unfortunately, the situation outside has changed quite dramatically..."
Otto, his face pale, shook his head as Subaru pressed close.
He wasn't joking. If Otto had given up on evacuating, something serious must have happened.
"What happened? Keep it short."
"Magical beasts. The mansion is surrounded—magical beasts are swarming outside, and we can't move."
"Magical beasts!?"
Subaru's eyes bulged at the unexpected news, and he looked to Petra for confirmation. The girl nodded vigorously several times under his gaze.
"There are a bunch of magical beasts that are different from the demon dogs—two-headed snakes, pouch mice, lots of them."
"You mean the ones that live in the surrounding forest?"
"Yes, but... they shouldn't have been able to cross the barrier to get this far."
"The barrier again..."
During the previous magical beast incident, the barrier between Arlam Village and the surrounding forest had been re-tied. Top priority had been given to monitoring any weakening in the barrier afterward, so a mistake in that short timeframe seemed unlikely.
More importantly—why would magical beasts that had crossed the barrier converge on the mansion?
"Same as that time with the demon dogs—some kind of strange will is behind this...? What about the villagers from Arlam? Are they safe?"
"They were evacuated before the beasts appeared, and all the dragon carriages His Excellency entrusted to us were deployed to get them out, so they should be safe.
"Good. Then I can relax."
Having that intelligent earth dragon lead the way was far more reliable than some clumsy stranger.
Praying that Patrasche would handle it well, Subaru gritted his teeth at yet another deviation from the situation he'd known.
A magical beast attack that had never occurred before.
Naturally, it had to be connected to Elza's assault in terms of timing.
"What about Frederica and Rem?"
"I haven't been able to meet with Big Sister Frederica or Rem-san, but... I don't think you could cut straight through the middle of that place to escape."
"That means they're probably still inside the mansion too. The only silver lining is that the beasts haven't gotten in yet. The question is how far Garfiel can hold them."
He patted Petra's head, praising the girl for her composure even in this extreme situation. At her age, Subaru would probably have wet himself and been screaming bloody murder.
But the situation wouldn't allow him to remain here.
"Where are we right now? Which wing of the mansion?"
"The east wing. Garfiel and the others should be fighting in the west wing, so we avoided going that direction to keep the damage away..."
"So the escape routes available would be..."
Recovering Beatrice was the priority, of course, but getting Otto and the others out was equally essential.
Subaru closed his eyes and tried to picture the mansion's floor plan, searching for viable escape routes. But a voice shattered his thoughts.
"Oh my? All gathered together in a place like this, waiting just for me?"
A chill ran down every spine in the corridor—the sensation of a blade tracing along the nape of the neck.
Subaru instinctively pulled Petra into his arms and turned around with dread.
At the far end of the corridor, where slanting light cut across the passageway, footsteps approached.
Soon, the figure stepped into the light— "Garfiel, what the hell are you doing?!"
"Three of them, all at once—showing off their lovely guts—"
Before Subaru's screaming eyes, the figure kicked off the ground, a black shadow leaping forth—the gut-hunting assassin had arrived.