——A stranger with silver hair.
"Huh?"
If she had simply said "a person with silver hair," it would have been an unnecessarily roundabout way of putting it, but Subaru wouldn't have felt such a strange pang of emotion.
There was no question that
But add a single extra word—"stranger"—and the meaning shifted dramatically.
"A stranger with silver hair…?"
"Yes, that's right. Someone I've never laid eyes on in this tower. At least, there was no hostility directed at us. …She assessed the situation and withdrew for the time being. But—"
"—Regardless of whether someone has joined us as reinforcement, if the opponent is 'Gluttony,' that changes everything."
Ram nodded at Subaru's murmur and turned her gaze in the direction she had come from. It was Julius who picked up where Ram left off, his expression turning grim at the mention of "Gluttony."
He placed a hand on the knight's sword at his hip and pressed his lips into a thin line.
"It was an unexpected encounter, but having crossed paths as enemies here, I can't afford to let them escape. Our original goal is to find a way to undo the damage wrought by the Sin Archbishops of 'Gluttony' and 'Lust.' If they've appeared, we should hear it straight from the horse's mouth."
"I agree. Ram has no intention of letting that one walk away alive. I have to make them regret showing up so brazenly."
"W-Wait! Hold on! I get your enthusiasm! I really do, but…!"
At the sight of the two brimming with hostility toward Gluttony, Subaru couldn't help but call for a halt.
He understood that both Julius—who had been severed from the world as an individual existence—and Ram, whose beloved sister had been devoured from the inside out by Gluttony—both had extremely high motivation to bring down the Sin Archbishop. In truth, Subaru himself felt that this was a convergence of both opportunity and crisis.
But the problem here was— "Emilia's name is missing from your conversation. What's going on with that?"
"——"
With a growing sense of dread, Subaru cut straight to the question.
Ram's unnatural phrasing, and the fact that Julius,
They had taken Ram's "stranger with silver hair" remark at face value.
"Who is this 'Emilia'?"
"——!"
Subaru's throat caught in surprise at Ram's words, delivered with a tilted head and undisguised doubt.
He looked around and saw Julius, Beatrice, and even Echidna staring at him with eyes full of incomprehension. The shock of that was impossible to hide.
Because— It had been barely a minute—less—since Subaru had last spoken of "Emilia" with Julius and the others. In fact, the very reason they had come running from the balcony into the tower was the anxiety over Emilia and Ram failing to regroup with them, and the wish that the two of them were safe.
How could everything have been wiped away in such a brief instant— "Subaru, could it be—"
Beatrice, who had been holding his hand, suddenly tightened her grip as her expression shifted, as though she had noticed something. She was the first to catch on, but the rest of the group were no less perceptive.
They quickly grasped that the name Subaru had just spoken—a name absent from their own memories—was one of great significance to them.
"Emilia… that's the name of the silver-haired woman?"
"…Yeah. If there was a girl with silver hair, that's Emilia. She's one of us. That's why I told Ram to run, and I stayed behind. She's still fighting right now."
"Such a thing could happen, I suppose. It's a feeling I've tasted myself—more intimately than anyone."
"——"
At Subaru's subdued answer, Julius touched his bangs as though he had heard something unbelievable.
Though Julius couldn't hide his astonishment, Subaru too was once again struck to his core by the terrifying scope, the immediacy, and the sheer cruelty of Gluttony's power.
Honestly, even after becoming aware that his own memories had been taken, the impact had felt muted to Subaru.
Of course, the misunderstandings, paranoia, and the hostilities directed toward Emilia and the others born from that lost memory were indelible—a chapter of dark history he wished he could forget for eternity.
But even so, the sense of reality had been thin. Searching for something that wasn't there, trying to feel its shape as though it still existed—it was like fishing in a moonless ocean with no visibility whatsoever.
So the impact had been thin. But this was different.
To forget Emilia—who he had known just moments ago, a companion who had overcome hardships together with him—in an instant. Was there anything more horrifying than that?
The usurper of memories, the violator of recollections, the habitual offender who devoured the bonds between people.
Finally witnessing it firsthand, Subaru understood.
Gluttony was not merely someone who had transgressed into inviolable territory in the pursuit of their own happiness.
"Nn—gk."
"Ram!?"
As Subaru tried to digest his shock, directly across from him, amid the group who were equally stunned by the loss of a companion's memory, Ram suddenly collapsed to her knees.
Leaning against
"What happened? Are you all right?"
"Just… a bit of a headache. That's all. When I try to think about someone I don't know…"
"About Emilia…?"
Subaru furrowed his brow at Ram, who was pressing a hand to her head and shaking it weakly with a pained expression.
If Gluttony had stolen Emilia's memory, then Ram—who had been traveling with her—must have witnessed it happening right before her eyes. Perhaps that was affecting her, Subaru reasoned.
But Beatrice tapped his shoulder and gave a slow shake of her head.
"It would be better not to make her remember any more than that. There are too many gaps."
"Too many gaps…?"
"The crude aspects of Gluttony's Authority are showing. —There are simply too many parts of it that don't function unless the person whose memory was taken is present, so discrepancies are bound to occur."
"——"
Hearing Beatrice's words, Subaru momentarily lost the ability to speak.
But he quickly grasped what it meant and understood.
Gluttony's Authority had activated, and Ram and the others had lost their memories of Emilia.
Ram's relationship with Emilia had been that of a caretaker—or rather, a master-servant bond. The dynamic between the two, while hard to read on the surface, had contained a genuine warmth.
When that was entirely stripped away, a void where "Emilia" should have existed was left inside Ram.
Memories were like items stored away in a drawer.
You never consciously noticed them being there, but when the time came to recall something and you opened the drawer, you could pull items out and find them wearing a thousand different faces. Without that, life simply could not function.
So for Ram, searching for Emilia's's name inside herself now was tantamount to opening drawer after drawer after drawer, none of which yielded anything no matter how many she tried.
"I'll look after her."
"Echidna…?"
Echidna raised her hand and stood beside Ram, whose face was contorted in pain. When Subaru looked at her in surprise, Echidna gave a slight shrug of her slender shoulders.
"There is no time to waste debating here. 'Gluttony' is upon us, and one of our companions is fighting even as her name is being stolen. We cannot afford to stop moving."
"Echidna, I'm counting on you to look after Ram and
"Leave it to me. —Julius, this is the decisive moment, but don't let yourself get too worked up."
"I know. My fighting spirit is frozen solid. Just like this sword."
Julius accepted Echidna's proposal immediately, then turned his sharp, resolute face forward. There burned in his gaze a ferocity so intense that Subaru hesitated to even speak.
"Ram."
"It's infuriating, but right now Ram would only be a burden. Leave me behind. But—leave 'Gluttony's' life intact. You may hand over the rest to Barusu."
"That's a strange way to put it, like talking about cattle or pigs, but just take it easy for now. We're heading out!"
"—Yes. Go give them hell."
Leaving behind the frustrated Ram, Subaru nodded to Echidna and the others who would stay. Then, before breaking into a run, he stroked Patrasche's neck and peered at the profile of the sleeping princess on her back.
"——"
Unchanged, quiet—her breathing so faint it was hard to tell she was breathing at all—Rem lay with her eyes closed, still trapped in a dream from which she would not wake.
That was fine for now. The words he needed from her, he had already received.
As for the rest— "Just you wait, 'Gluttony'…! I'm sick and tired of letting you feast on us any more!"
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ —Honestly, if he started listing them, the questions would keep multiplying without end.
Why was Gluttony's Authority not taking effect on Subaru?
Even now, with Emilia's name stolen and her erased from Beatrice's and Ram's memories, Emilia's name, her appearance, and her voice remained vividly in Subaru's mind.
His tender feelings for her, too—he had not forgotten. They were still firmly in his heart.
"Is it because I came from another world…?"
Maybe that was why the rules of this world didn't apply to Subaru.
If this world's memories were records of life shaved away from the souls of the dead in the "Corridor of Memories," then it was possible that Gluttony's power, which intercepted those records, simply couldn't reach him because of his anomalous nature as someone from another world.
If that were the case, would the memories of "
It was a conclusion so cold it made him shudder once he thought it through.
If that was indeed the mechanism behind Subaru's "Return by Death," then his life would continue existing indefinitely without ever being absorbed into this world's spiral.
In short, he could live for decades in this world and still be unable to die of old age.
If this rule didn't apply to him, and Subaru wanted to live out a full life, then perhaps he would need to entrust his memories to a world where Natsuki Subaru could truly— "Ice Brand Arts!"
"—!?!"
In an instant, his contemplative consciousness was sliced through by a sharp, silvery voice.
Subaru raised his head and looked forward—and in the direction he had been running, the corridor leading to the green room was frozen white. He felt a fierce wave of cold brush against his skin.
And at the origin of that wind, dancing amid a shower of diamond dust, was not a snow fairy—but Emilia, her silver hair streaming behind her as she spun and fought.
"Ha! Yah! Heiya! Yaa!"
Wielding a pair of ice swords, Emilia cried out in battle as she unleashed a furious onslaught. The battle cries were somewhat disarming, but the speed at which those ice blades cut through the air left nothing endearing about it.
Each slash flew true, blazing toward the enemy standing before her, seeking to cleave them in a single stroke.
"That's…"
Around Emilia, who danced and whirled with ice blades in hand, the corridor that served as her battlefield was frozen in white and blue—a sight utterly unlike anything one would expect inside a tower of sand. It looked like a scene from another world entirely.
The freezing was likely the effect of the ice magic Emilia wielded. Its power was extraordinary even by the standards of this world, and both Beatrice and Julius drew sharp breaths.
But beyond even that— "Ahahahaha! Not bad, not bad at all, you've really got it, you've really got it in you, and it's precisely because you can do it, you do it! We've got an appetite to match, y'know!"
The one facing Emilia—a being who swatted aside her ice blades with ease and laughed—oozed an unmistakable aura.
"——"
It was a boy with unkempt, dark-brown hair grown long and shaggy, wearing a grin that seeped with a gloomy sort of madness.
His age was mid-teens at most. His clothes were wretched, even somewhat soiled. The appearance was far from hygienic, but more repulsive than that was the look in his eyes—eyes that revealed an utter contempt and hunger for "life" itself, a willingness to mock and devour others without the slightest hesitation.
One look told you everything. There was no need for anyone to spell it out.
The fact that someone with that kind of gaze existed beyond just Louis Arneb was unbearable.
"The Sin Archbishop of 'Gluttony'!"
"Ahaha! A guest! No wait—you're the main course, big brother! We've been looking forward to meeting you too. Looks like our little sister gave you some trouble, huh!"
Hearing Subaru's roar, Gluttony—having batted aside Emilia's ice blades—grinned even wider. The moment that sinister smile made Subaru's skin crawl, Emilia noticed Subaru and the others behind her. She let out a surprised "Eh!" and called out: "Oh, everyone! I—I know you might not remember me, but the enemy is over there! That person is bad! Please leave this to me… I know you probably don't remember me, but—!"
"——"
Emilia was fully aware of her situation and of the companions standing behind her.
Naturally, she must have been shocked to have her memory stolen from others. That impact was something Subaru, who had never experienced the sensation of being forgotten, could not begin to fathom.
But she had not only kept her composure enough to send Ram away—she was continuing to fight Gluttony while also worrying about Subaru and the others who had come rushing to her aid.
A torrent of emotions surged through Subaru, and he shouted: "It's all right, Emilia! I haven't forgotten you!"
"——"
"And I never will! No matter what happens, I will never forget you!"
Punching his fist into the air, Subaru called those words to Emilia's back.
The moment she heard them, Emilia's eyes went wide—and then, after just an instant, they softened.
"——"
What emotion had passed through her heart in that moment, Subaru couldn't say with certainty.
But the faint smile she wore immediately after told him clearly enough that it was nothing negative.
Without hesitation, Emilia turned back to face Gluttony straight on, hurled her twin ice swords at him, then ripped an ice spear from the floor and descended upon the enemy in a dazzling display of ice work.
"You probably don't realize just how much your words just now affected her, do you?"
"Hm?"
Beside him, Julius—who had been watching the same scene—murmured with a smile. It sounded remarkably meaningful, but when Subaru turned to look at him, Julius offered no elaboration.
He simply drew the sword from his hip, the blade tracing a beautiful arc as he brought it to bear.
Then— "There's no need to ask, but she is our ally, Subaru."
"Yeah, obviously. With that level of cuteness, there's no way she'd be our enemy!"
"—Understood."
Julius answered with a nod, and his figure began to blur at the edge of Subaru's vision. No—that was an illusion.
In the next instant, Julius launched himself forward with a single step and plunged into the frozen chaos. His thrust caught Gluttony, who had crossed both hands before his chest, and sent the Sin Archbishop flying backward with tremendous force.
"Oho, big brother, you—"
"I've been waiting for this moment, 'Gluttony'—!"
Julius's razor-sharp sword strike pierced through Gluttony's smirking form with devastating power. But Gluttony launched himself backward by choice to cushion the blow, planting his feet against a wall of ice and letting out a wretched groan.
Then Gluttony let his long, serpentine tongue loll out in a provocative display and said: "Hey, hey, don't just come charging in like that. Sorry to break it to you, but just because we're 'we' doesn't mean everything we eat gets shared equally. I don't recognize you, big brother. Doesn't that mean it was Roy who got you, not us?"
"——!"
"Well, I suppose there are ways of looking at it where it amounts to the same thing. That said, forget Roy—I don't really find you all that interesting, big brother. You don't quite meet the standard for being eaten, y'know?"
"Standard for being eaten, you say?"
"Yeah, exactly. That is to say…"
Gluttony let both arms hang slack, revealing blades affixed near his wrists. He regarded Julius with those eyes and began to describe a truly repugnant fighting style— But— "Take this—!!"
"—!!"
It was Emilia who, without an ounce of hesitation, slammed a massive block of ice into him mid-sentence, her arms coming down with crushing force.
Her strike was merciless and perfectly suited to the corridor's limited width—it filled the space with ease, leaving absolutely no room to dodge.
Caught in the middle of his own monologue, the overwhelming blow clearly caught Gluttony off guard. His face twisted with alarm as he wriggled beneath the ice block, barely managing to scrape his life together.
"Tch! We knew this from eating her memories, but you don't hesitate at all, Emilia! If you attack like that and people start thinking you're a scary person…"
"Shut up! I'm used to people thinking I'm scary—you should know that! What matters is how I feel about everyone! And besides…"
Gluttony ducked under the ice block, breathing hard—only to eat a white knee strike straight to the face. He caught it with his arms, but the impact sent him hurtling backward.
Emilia, barking her war cry, cast a quick glance back at Subaru as she finished her sentence: "The person I most wanted to remember me did remember me! So right now, I'm super energized!"
"See, this is exactly why I don't do well with the instinct-driven types. My least favorite kind."
"—Is that so. But I find myself in agreement with her."
Gluttony's cheeks twisted with irritation—and behind him, Julius's tall figure had already slipped into position. A downward slash fell, and Gluttony caught it with an arm swung behind his back at the last moment.
But the imperfect block failed to fully stop the cut. His forearm below the elbow was slashed deep, and blood sprayed from the wound. Gluttony let out a pained cry as the barrage continued— "Once, I had been forgotten by everyone and lost my footing in life—I even felt as though my very existence had been denied. But I never needed to wonder where I stand."
"Tch—gah, gyaa—!"
Voiced with quiet resolve, the sharpness of Julius's strikes grew by degrees.
Gluttony couldn't keep up. The wounds accumulated, and finally a clean blow landed squarely on his chest, drawing a scream.
"Subaru."
"I know. I can't cut into that fight."
"…As long as you understand that."
Julius pressed the assault, and Emilia too poured relentless attacks into Gluttony. Caught between the two, Gluttony was on the defensive.
Naturally, if he could, Subaru would have joined them to help corner Gluttony—but he knew full well he lacked the skill to do so.
For now, all he could do was believe in and witness the moment when the Emilia-and-Julius combination defeated Gluttony. But— "Not bad for a hastily formed combo! But how about this, then?"
"What?"
"Ice Brand Arts."
Bleeding, but still wearing that insufferable grin, Gluttony murmured with his head bowed. Subaru and Emilia's eyes widened at those words; Julius and Beatrice furrowed their brows, not understanding. But in the very next instant, all four of them were stunned by what they saw.
From the ground at Gluttony's feet, an ice spear shot upward. Julius dodged with a side roll while Emilia twisted the spear in her hands into an ice hammer and smashed it apart with brute force.
But dodging one attack didn't mean the surprise was over—or that the exchange returned to neutral.
"Ha! How does it feel to be on the receiving end of your own signature move?! What do you think, how is it, what's it like, how's it feel—gluttony! Gluttony!"
"—!? It suddenly—"
"He changed his fighting style?!"
Emilia and Julius exchanged alarmed words as Gluttony pulled ice weapons from the floor. Subaru, watching, caught his breath at the intricate detail of the frozen armaments.
Because they were— "Is that—Excalibur!?"
"Ice Brand Arts may be Emilia's technique, but we're the ones reproducing it, since we ate her memories! Knowledge is power! We're the intellectual Sin Archbishop, after all!"
"——"
With those words, Gluttony swept his replicated ice holy sword and brought a dazzling slash crashing down on Emilia and Julius. Of course, it was merely a weapon recreated in ice from appearance alone—no energy of light erupted from it.
But with that approach, Gluttony continued to conjure weapons that could not possibly exist in this world, catching Emilia and Julius off guard and steadily driving them onto the back foot.
Of course, Emilia and the others quickly recovered their footing, shook off the initial shock, and attempted to counterattack—but each time, Gluttony transformed his fighting style as though he were a completely different person. Forced to adapt again and again, the tide of battle kept turning against them.
"——"
Watching Gluttony's offense and defense, Subaru grasped the true threat of absorbing multiple people's memories.
Emilia's ice weapons were formidable enough on their own, but when paired with the wielder's imagination, they transformed into something with an entirely different face. Particularly dangerous were the weapons reproduced from otherworldly knowledge—the knowledge Subaru himself had brought into this world.
Weapons that didn't exist in this world yet possessed genuine practicality—there were mountains of them. This was the dark history of Subaru's middle school days, when he had voraciously devoured books on weapons from every era and culture.
On top of that, Gluttony had likely absorbed the memories of countless warriors throughout his life, effectively installing an enormous number of fighters' combat abilities with no end in sight.
All he had to do was pull the optimal memory from his stock, and he would instantly become an expert with whatever weapon it was, transitioning seamlessly between offense and defense.
And the reason Emilia and Julius were struggling went beyond even that.
"Julius! Not there!"
"Kuh…!"
Emilia's scream of warning was met with Julius's strained footwork.
Their coordination in combining efforts to bring down a single enemy was simply too raw.
The synergy between Emilia and Julius was poor.
This was largely because Emilia was an "instinct type" who fought on feel, while Julius was a "technique type" who had honed skill upon skill to reach his level.
But between fighters of their caliber, that sort of problem could be easily corrected simply by learning each other's habits.
If, that is, they knew each other well enough.
"It's sad, really. Did you honestly think you could coordinate? There's a huge difference between actually knowing someone and just trusting them blindly—even if you end up facing the same direction, it's totally different. You can't sync because you don't understand each other's thinking. You can't adjust because you don't know each other's habits. And in the end, you get in each other's way… ahaha, pathetic, you two!"
"Kuh…!"
"Knowledge is power! Memory is bonds! We offer up memories as sacrifice and soar ever higher! We grow ever stronger! That's what it means to fly free, to infinity and beyond!"
Leaping into the air, Gluttony lashed out with a kick that caught both of them simultaneously.
His legs were still small and not particularly long, but the soles of his boots struck both their shoulders with textbook precision, sending them tumbling backward with pained cries.
Meanwhile, Gluttony twisted through the air with acrobatic ease and landed on all fours on the icy floor.
"Tricky! Verbose! A real nail-biter! How's that for a taste of our repertoire?! Big brother, are you just standing back there savoring the frustration?"
"You…!"
"Sure, you went on and on about not forgetting and all that, but how much can that really save you? In the end, experience is what counts. It's the accumulation of superior knowledge that enriches a life and makes a person a winner. In other words, that makes us the greatest of all!"
Spreading his arms wide, Gluttony flashed his sharp teeth and laughed as he pleased.
And the words Gluttony had spoken—that was, perhaps, his philosophy. It differed slightly from what Louis, his sister, had articulated as her "philosophy for obtaining happiness," but ultimately it was the same abhorrent ideology: trample over other people's lives to fatten oneself up.
Subaru regarded it as something to be utterly despised from the bottom of his heart—and— "Who the hell do you think you're performing for?"
"Hah—"
"——"
Gluttony, who had been cackling as though he owned the world, went wide-eyed the instant he heard that voice. And the same shock was shared by Subaru and the others.
It was because the intruder had arrived far too suddenly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, striding into the fray with absolute composure.
Slowly, deliberately, footsteps pounded the frozen corridor. A tall figure with red hair, one shoulder of his yukata slipping off his frame. He wore a vicious grin and appeared from the opposite end of the corridor—on the other side of Gluttony, facing Subaru's group.
And then— "The greatest sure as hell ain't gonna be some crooked little brat like you. Greatest, strongest, finest, best—all those words exist for one reason: for me."
As he spoke, descending from the second floor that he should not have been able to come down from,