—Spread its wings atop the city hall, the black dragon sneered down at Subaru and the others below.
It opened its fanged maw, its long red tongue flicking about, golden eyes narrowed to slits as shrill, grating laughter spilled forth without cease.
The black dragon's appearance was nothing like what Subaru had imagined a dragon to be.
Close enough in its sharp, noble features to
It was lugging that much bulk around. He wanted desperately to believe it couldn't fly, but if that were the case, those impressively unfurled wings would have to be nothing more than decorations.
Which was flatly impossible.
"Don't be staring at me with those hungry eyes, getting all hot and bothered—what, you in heat or something?! Ugh, disgusting, having a bunch of creatures who only think about drooling over me checking me out like that—what a nightmare! That's exactly why I didn't want to come out here!"
It swept its wings toward the ground, and the gale whipped up by the black dragon's movements battered their bodies.
The creature—Capella—licked the air with her long tongue as she glared down at them, her reptilian face contorted into what was unmistakably a grin.
A winged dragon so expressive it was chilling.
There was something to be said for the unknown, for the room that imagination could fill. Patrasche was a perfect example of why—precisely because she never let her emotions show on her face, one could love her without reservation.
Conversely, the worst kind of humanlike quality radiating from the winged dragon before him could only inspire revulsion.
"...Now that I think about it, can dragons actually talk?"
"Dragons that have lived for many ages and developed high intelligence can understand human speech. The Divine Dragon
Julius answered from a short distance away in response to Subaru's hushed voice.
The finest knight shrugged, but his gaze never once left the winged dragon. The other four, and Subaru himself, were the same.
Below them stood two swordsmen of extraordinary caliber. Above them loomed a black dragon calling itself the Sin Archbishop of Lust.
The situation had already been a ticking bomb of anxiety—and now that anxiety had solidified into a wall.
"At least, if it were just the two swordsworns, we might still manage..."
A woman holding a longsword at the ready, and a hulking man testing the weight of his greatsword with a practice swing.
The woman was an unknown quantity, but the giant had taken a hit from Ricardo's attack with his body. That was only because he'd known he could regenerate afterward, of course, but still—the attack had connected. The conclusion that they might stand a chance at range hadn't changed.
But that was only if all six of them poured everything they had into the fight.
"Has anyone here ever fought a dragon...?"
"—Yes."
"Wilhelm, seriously?"
He'd figured it was a long shot, but Wilhelm answered in a low voice to Subaru's question.
The old swordsman tucked his chin and said to the stunned Subaru: "Nearly forty years ago, in the southern reaches of Lugnica, the subjugation of the Evil Dragon Balgren. Near the border with Vollachia, it required concentrating considerable military force, and I recall the diplomatic tensions that caused."
"Setting aside the diplomatic complications, any advice for fighting a dragon..."
"In the battle against Balgren, one-tenth of the knights who participated were killed, and four-tenths were decimated. The subjugation was successful, but it was ultimately a catastrophe. Their breath, their seemingly inexhaustible stamina, and the powerlessness of swordsmen when they take to the air—those are the areas to watch out for."
"Without the numbers to throw at it, our list of hopeless factors just got longer...!"
Subuel went pale, but Wilhelm continued with a measured "That said—"
"Balgren was a formidable foe even among winged dragons—one worthy of being called a true Dragon. That thing, by contrast, is far too small to bear the title. Cut off its head, and it should die in one blow."
"Balgren didn't die from one decapitation?"
"It had three heads to sever."
Recalling the events of that desperate battle of the past, Wilhelm gripped his sword anew.
One head to cut—that was reassuring.
At the sight of Wilhelm assuming his battle stance, Subaru took up his whip once more, and the rest braced themselves as well.
Seeing Subaru's group refuse to break, Capella spoke in a tone of surprise: "Oh my my, what a stubborn bunch you lot are! Normally, after getting your asses handed to you like that, and then having not just reinforcements show up but Sin Archbishops on top of it—wouldn't you lowlifes be scrambling to run away? Isn't that your species' whole thing? Am I confusing you with some other bugs? Kyahahaha!"
"Shut—shut your goddamn mouth! Since when does it matter who the enemy is?! Since when does it matter how many stand in the way?! I'll mow 'em all down and grind 'em under my heel!"
"Kyahaha! Sounds like some real loser-dog howling to me—am I going deaf or something? Oh wait, no. You're not a loser-dog at all, you're a loser-cat! Meow meow meow meow! Your little partner cat got herself killed and now you're throwing a big red tantrum!"
"Ngh—?!"
Garfiel roared back at Capella's taunts, but choked on the retort.
What the black dragon had said had to be about Garfiel's defeat. The fact that she'd described Mimi being taken down in such detail meant Capella had witnessed it firsthand.
What stunned Garfiel even further was what she added: "How the hell do you know I'm a Water Tiga—"
"Ugh, as if anyone needs to ask—get over yourself. Like I have even a sliver or a mote or a single hair's worth of interest in the likes of you? It's obvious just looking at you that you're a filthy half-beast—am I supposed to be impressed? If I wasn't looking down on you when I said it, then you're the stupid one! So stupid you should just die!"
The black dragon spat venomous insults, snorted through its nose, and pinned each of them with its gaze in turn: "Stinks, stinks! Every last piece of rotting flesh reeks like garbage—just trash meat, all of you! Wrinkled old trash meat! Pretend-smart trash meat! Furry beast trash meat! And I don't even know what you are but you piss me off, trash meat! Oh, but—"
After delivering that scathing verdict, Capella's gaze locked onto a single point—Crusch.
Those sharp eyes narrowed, and the slimy weight of that stare made Crusch instinctively wrap her arms around herself. Seeing this, Capella let out a delighted throaty purr: "Not all bad meat in the mix, huh? Pretty and cute, premium cuts just the way I like 'em! Nice aroma, too! That thrill of perversion is just irresistible! That face, that body, that beauty... I just want to tear you apart with my own hands, it's killing me!"
"——That's enough."
"Hm?"
Was she in a trance?
Capella's face was fixed in an expression that could only be called ecstasy as the black dragon's eyes roamed Crusch's body from head to toe like a tongue.
Into that silence, a low voice heavy with suppressed anger cut through.
"————"
The black dragon, whose attention had been on Crusch, raised its head in irritation.
And there, where its eyes opened wide, stood Julius with the tip of his sword swaying like a conductor's baton: "May you burn in the six-colored light—El Primal!"
Six quasi-spirals circled above Julius's head, their six radiant colors merging together before firing in a single straight beam.
The rainbow glow turned white at the point of impact, and the direct hit wrung a scream from Capella.
"——Kyaaaaaaaa!!"
"The price of your monologue. If I could, I'd have wanted it to be the kind of nonsense that still left change—but alas."
At Julius's command, the quasi-spirits' destructive light continued to be unleashed without mercy.
With Capella's soul-rending shrieks as background music, the two swordsmen who had been silent until now kicked off the cobblestones once more and lunged toward them.
"I'll stop 'em!"
"You will not!"
Into that charged moment, Garfiel and Wilhelm charged with a roar.
Wilhelm clashed swords with the female swordsman, while Garfiel caught both of the giant's greatswords squarely on his twin shields.
"————"
"I won't let you retreat. Let's settle this!"
As the woman tried to withdraw after her initial exchange was blocked, Wilhelm's blade flashed.
The old swordsman's full-body lunge and the relentless storm of cleaving cuts drove upward and downward. The woman's longsword worked against her at this range, and Wilhelm's fearsome blade speed left her defense lagging behind.
And yet the woman was terrifying—she managed to dodge strikes that her guard couldn't reach. Her footwork was so refined she could move through a river without disturbing the current, her balance immaculate.
A body shaped for nothing but gripping a sword, honed for nothing but swinging it.
Wilhelm fought with swordsmanship no less fierce than what he had shown against the
"Nngh—haaah!"
"————"
With a shout and a burst of fighting spirit, Wilhelm's blade spun faster.
His aged body—who could mock it? The old swordsman's flurry of strikes captivated the eyes of many young blade-bearers, a pinnacle of the sword that made one think, *that is where I want to be.* His gleaming edge split the air, raced across the sky, gouged the earth, and hurtled toward the woman's flesh.
The woman answered in silence, receiving the blade of years honed straight, deflecting, parrying.
Without a sound, without rallying to any cause—she was a puppet built for war. Blindly obeying the genes of combat etched into her body, she swung her blade like turning gears.
Splitting the air, racing across the sky, gouging the earth—she ruthlessly beat aside the blades hurtling toward her.
The sound of their exchange was quiet—nothing like steel clashing steel.
The woman's sword was no lightweight. The old man's sword couldn't possibly be either.
The difference was that each had honed their edge to eliminate every unnecessary destructive excess beyond cutting down their prey.
It was the domain of the beautiful 'edge'—the ideal that both the weapon called a 'sword' and the existence called a 'swordsman' strove to reach.
"Ooooooh—!!"
"————"
Blade flashed against blade as two swordsmen clashed with silent fighting will.
—It was a sanctum of the sword that no outsider could interfere with.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the plaza, a different battlefield was unfolding.
"Ohhhhhraaah—!!"
"————"
A war cry, muscles bulging, a stomping foot shattering the ground, fists tearing into flesh.
The blows landing made his vision swim, the sensation of punching back drew a roar, the feeling of his organs being crushed wrung blood from his mouth, and the bone-breaking force sent his opponent staggering.
The brawl between Garfiel and the giant was nothing like the swordsman's elegant display—it was raw, brutal, savage.
Broadly speaking, the giant was also a swordsman wielding a pair of greatswords. And yet his fighting style was the furthest thing from refined—no different from a barbarian or a beast without reason.
"Ha—raaah!!"
Garfiel, his opponent, was no stranger to polished fighting form either.
Garfiel's combat was brawling, the product of pure self-taught instinct. Ever since taking Subaru's guidance, he'd taken to calling it "Garfiel-style Battle Shield Form," but in truth it was mindless violence that only Garfiel could intuit and nobody else could replicate.
And that violence meshed perfectly with the giant's barbarian style.
It was a simple, brutish duel—they would keep punching each other until one of them hit their limit and fell—and because of that, the outcome was pure and legible to anyone watching.
"————"
The downward slash of the greatsword was devastating; caught on one arm, it would snap from the elbow. But if he blocked with both arms, he'd leave himself open to the other greatsword.
So against every swing of the greatsword, Garfiel performed a deflection with a single shield. Angling to catch the blade on a slant, bracing the shield with raw strength, then sliding the tip off and letting it pass.
What was terrifying was that this giant wasn't just flailing blindly. His style was savage in the extreme, but his strikes were surprisingly straightforward—bluntly honest, perfectly linear.
Talent alone didn't produce something like this. It took tens of thousands, hundreds of millions of swings to acquire such skill.
Against a blade that swung so straight, half-measures in defense were unacceptable.
If he let his concentration slip at the moment of contact, the silver shield would be cleaved by a greatsword whose cutting edge might as well have been nonexistent—and Garfiel would taste the full force of the blow.
"You gotta be kidding me—!"
That was why Garfiel had to give everything he had against the greatsword's onslaught, every single time.
A downward greatsword—deflected. A sweeping slash from the side—deflected. A follow-up greatsword rising from between his legs—deflected. A punch from a free arm exploiting the opening—he took it. He punched back.
The nuisance was that the giant had six arms beyond the two wielding swords.
Those extra arms would break through Garfiel's guard at critical moments to land punches, and sometimes he'd grip a greatsword in three hands instead of two—it was relentlessly dirty fighting.
In speed, Garfiel had the edge; in power and versatility of strikes, the giant did.
His jaw was rattled, a greatsword was deflected, he drove a kick into the giant's knee, smashed upward at the face as it buckled, was driven back by four backfist strikes and then caught by a downward slash that buried him in the ground.
Blood sprayed, bones cracked, and groans and cheers ruled the savage battlefield.
The spectacle set viewers' blood boiling, and these titans of combat couldn't stop screaming.
The roaring collision of shield and greatsword sounded like percussion instruments, and the scattering sparks made it feel like a theatrical performance on a grand stage.
"————"
Wilhelm's silent battlefield, and Garfiel's thunderous one.
Subaru and Crusch held their breath, unable to intervene in either fight. It wasn't just that they lacked the skill to step in—they were transfixed, feet rooted to the spot.
But unlike Subaru, who was lost in the moment, "Can't wait any longer—time to move."
Ricardo, who had been watching Julius's magic from above, shook his massive frame and stepped forward. The instant Subaru reacted with an "Eh—"
"Subaru-sama!"
"Get back!"
By the collar he was seized and Subaru was shoved down on top of Crusch. Ricardo stepped protectively in front of the two, tilted his head upward, and opened his maw: "WA—HAAAH!!"
The roar generated a wave of sound, and the vibrating atmosphere turned the voice into a visible force of destruction.
The shockwave was the same type of attack Mimi had used with her siblings against the White Whale—a single blast powerful enough to damage that massive creature and interrupt its attacks. Terrifyingly, Ricardo could unleash one entirely on his own.
What met that shockwave head-on was a black flame pouring down through the shattered light toward the ground.
The pitch-black inferno roiled and surged, and it was not its heat but the sheer wrongness of its nature that made one's blood run cold. The black flame that met the shockwave shattered with shocking ease, its embers scattering across the plaza.
But its true horror only manifested after it fell to the ground.
"What the hell is that fire... It won't go out?"
The black flame landed on the cobblestones, and there was nothing there to sustain combustion. And yet the fire remained, writhing and licking outward with tongues of flame.
What was truly terrifying was that the fire persisted even where it fell into the waterways.
Like oil dropped onto water meeting a spark, the flame insisted on its own existence right where it fell.
"You guys—how long are you gonna keep doing that? I mean, normally it'd be the other way around."
"Subaru. Getting shielded by a lady—I hardly think that's fitting."
Ricardo and Julius each tossed words at him. Subaru followed their gaze and realized he was flat on his back on the ground, with Crusch directly on top of him in a protective pose.
"I look so uncool!"
"I'm glad you're safe. Please don't worry—I won't tell
"The fact that I feel relieved by that makes me even more uncool!"
He accepted Crusch's hand to stand back up, adding ten percent more to the total embarrassment.
Slapping the dust off himself, Subaru looked up at the source of the black flame overhead—naturally, at the black dragon that had spewed it—and grimaced at the sight.
It was pure revulsion.
"Don't be staring at me and quivering with sexual excitement, okay? Stop it, don't look, don't ogle me with your eyes! Kyahaha! I said no touching the dancers, so you think you can cop a feel just because it's magic? Kyahaha!"
"What the—"
Capella was still very much intact, having taken Julius's spell head-on.
That wasn't to say she was unharmed. Quite the opposite—Capella's form bore the devastating toll of Julius's magic, wielded without a shred of restraint.
The right side of the winged dragon's prized wings was grotesquely burned and dripping with blood and gore. She'd apparently used her wing to shield her body, but with that level of damage, there was no way it had fully protected her torso.
The magic's power had pierced through the wing and inflicted damage on the black dragon's body as well. Her belly had been sliced open by the heat, and inside, her organs were boiling and bubbling in a mess of pulp. The dragon's head had its right side blown off, the tongue she'd been cackling with was torn, and one eyeball dangled from its socket.
She was beyond half-dead. She was a walking corpse.
And yet what made Subaru's breath catch, what made Julius and Ricardo furrow their brows, what drew an involuntary, ladylike shriek from Crusch, was not the horrific damage itself.
—It was the regeneration of the flesh from that horrific damage.
Blood vessels writhed, flesh swelled, bones creaked, torn fibers knitted back together—Capella's destroyed body regenerated at a terrifying pace.
The spectacle was so far beyond the pale that the generated heat burned the blood into red steam.
"Now that you've seen my beautiful innards up close, are you satisfied?! You perverts, you're so consumed by lust you'd want to see even a piece-of-trash's asshole, huh? Kyahaha! Satisfied? Hey, are you satisfied? Did it make you drool?"
"Your... what is that?"
"Asking what you can plainly see—aren't you just broadcasting how stupid you are? But I'm generous, so I'll tell you. As you can see—I'm immortal, obviously."
Immortal—a blunt, devastatingly clear word of absolute authority.
The fact that Capella had called herself that made Subaru's breath catch. He wanted to laugh it off as absurd, but did he truly believe it was absurd? Or did he just want to laugh it off because he couldn't bear to believe otherwise?
"Is that just... a regeneration ability you took for yourself—"
"Free to imagine whatever you want, yeah? I'm not saying it's invincibility or anything stupid like that, and I'm not going to say I'm just ridiculously overpowered either!"
"————"
"Oh my, you've gone quiet—how cute! It was a lie, you idiot! Die! All you pieces of trash, die! Everyone except me—drop dead! Tsk tsk tsk tsk!"
With that venomous declaration, Capella cut herself off mid-sentence. Then the black dragon, using her freshly regenerated wing, slapped the rooftop of the city hall and heaved her bulk upright.
Subaru tensed—was it finally going to come down to attack them directly on the ground? But instead: "Well, time's up. I've got a broadcast to do, so I'm heading back inside. Talking to you lot is such a waste of time! A frustratingly complete waste! So go on and get yourselves chopped to bits by those so-slightly-less-terrible people over there, and rot and die for all I care."
"Wh—huh?"
Her tone dropped abruptly. Capella yawned dramatically for all to see, then—was "she" even the right word?—Capella truly turned on her heel and lumbered off, her footsteps echoing as she disappeared into the depths of the city hall, out of sight.
It could have been a trick to lure them into a false sense of security—but— "If we're being lured, we should probably assume we are... but if that broadcast actually goes through, the city in its current fragile state will panic. Dammit, we have to go in—in this situation! After her!"
A gut feeling said nothing good would come of this.
How had Capella even gotten inside the city hall with that body in the first place? He could only imagine how large the broadcast room was—a slight shift from Capella and everything would be obliterated. Or perhaps she'd had the
"Well then, it's decided. Leave the folks out here to me and those two. Julius-kid and big brother, along with Crusch-chan—that's your strike team."
Ricardo laid out the plan before Subaru and the others could even deliberate. Subaru hoped there was some deeper logic behind that decisive judgment, but— "No deeper logic. Just—if you're fighting puppets like those, Crusch-chan and Subaru-kid are gonna have a hard time. And inside a building, I'd be clumsy. Julius-kid can handle both. That's about it."
"That's sound reasoning. I'd make the same call. Honestly, leaving Wilhelm and Garfiel behind makes me uneasy, but Ricardo—I'll trust you with that."
"Leave it to me. I'll keep things spinning."
Before Subaru and Crusch could get a word in, Julius and Ricardo nodded to each other.
The two of them, allies through and through, had a shorthand that needed no further discussion. Unable to muster a counterargument, Subaru roughly scratched his head and shouted: "Garfiel! Don't you dare lose! Once you've smashed that guy and the Sin Archbishop of Lust, we've got to go save Emilia!"
"No time to answer right now, boss!"
He called out to Garfiel, who was trading blows in a whirlwind of fists, and Subaru nodded to Julius. Beside him, Crusch pressed a hand to her mouth and addressed Wilhelm: "Wilhelm—I'm counting on you!"
"As you command!"
The short exchange between master and servant was all that was needed. Crusch signaled her assent, and with Julius in the lead, they charged into the city hall.
The three of them sprinted through the center of the plaza toward the entrance. Two shadows, sensing their movement, forgot about their own opponents and moved to cut them off— "If you line up in a straight line, that's just asking for it—hah!!"
A shockwave tore up the cobblestones, and the spreading wave of destructive sound hammered into the woman and the giant from behind. The shockwave had lost power as it dispersed, but it was more than enough to stop both of them in their tracks. And the dance partner they'd neglected caught up in that moment.
"How cruel—to turn your back on me when I can see no one but you!"
"Don't you dare show me your ass in the middle of a fight—I'll pull out every last hair and crush you, damn it!"
"————"
Blade met blade, fist met sword, and the plaza's battlefield became impenetrable to outsiders.
With the sounds of their duel detonating behind them, Subaru and the others didn't slow down for an instant, kicking through the front entrance of the city hall and bursting inside.
"Where's the broadcast room?!"
"I don't know, but probably somewhere on the upper floors—it would be more convenient for projecting sound."
"There might be ambushers. Stay sharp!"
The entrance they slid into was the city hall's reception lobby.
A place that would normally be overflowing with people, where a cute receptionist would greet you—now it was trashed, the lights cut, and a dim, oppressive atmosphere pervaded.
It seemed they'd avoided the worst—no corpses lying around, no visible contingent of Witch Cult members waiting in ambush— "Upstairs, we're going upstairs. There should be some kind of directory with the broadcast room's location!"
"If possible, I'd like to check on the status of the people who were in the city hall... but I suppose that would be asking too much."
"What—"
Subaru peeked over the reception desk, confirmed no one was there, and pointed toward the stairs. Julius answered quietly, but as he did, his eyes were fixed on the back of the lobby, and he shook his head.
Crusch noticed and furrowed her brow, but her expression quickly turned to horror.
Watching Crusch's reaction, Subaru circled around the reception desk and joined them—and froze when he saw what they had seen.
Footsteps. *Taptaptap.* A figure appeared.
Poking its head out from beside the staircase with a grin like a mischievous brat.
At first glance, it looked like a small child.
The slight build was part of it, and the face it showed looked less young than straight-up childish.
But that impression lasted only until the boy looked at them with his eyes.
Matted, long dark-brown hair, and clothes that looked like nothing more than cloth wound around his body.
Beneath a childlike face and that mischievous grin, his eyes glowed with a corrupted light like every poison in the world distilled to its essence—the eyes of someone who was decidedly, fundamentally not right.
And when in a situation like this one, someone who wasn't right could only mean one thing.
It was— "I'm happy, so happy, so happy, overflowing with happiness—because when you're so happy that you can feel happiness, that you can experience it—that's when the first bite of something you've been craving becomes absolutely irresistible!"
Radiating pure delight from the bottom of his heart, the barefoot boy tapped out a light dance.
From a mouth that moved with surprising dexterity, slightly too-long canine teeth were visible. The gesture, the attitude, the lines delivered with such overwhelming self-assertion—Subaru's brain was boiling.
If this guess, this seething certainty was right, then this kid was— "Hey, brat. If you're just some kid who happened to be playing hide-and-seek and got left behind, some edgy little nuisance—fess up now. If that's the case, I really, truly might let it slide. But if you're not—state your name."
"Ahaha, big brother, what's that face? You look so irritated. Did something happen with our group? If I could remember, I'd want to, but we're not exactly bright, and our memories aren't so great, so..."
Swallowing the urge to shout, Subaru forced himself to maintain composure.
As if deliberately scraping those nerves raw, the boy's mouth twisted into a ghastly smirk: "Is that irritation really directed at us, or is it actually aimed at someone else? Why don't you check?"
"Enough. I get it. You're—you're my enemy."
"We are Sin Archbishops of the Witch Cult, overseeing Gluttony—Roy Albarald."
"Gluttony—?!"
The instant the boy named himself as the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, Subaru snapped like a spring-loaded trigger and lashed out with his whip.
It split the air and struck without mercy at the face of the enemy before him. The Sin Archbishop of Gluttony caught the tip of the lash between his teeth, and said, unperturbed: "Well, we do get hated on a lot—"