He swallowed the words he'd been told. Chewed them. Masticated.
They passed down his throat, settled into his stomach, and circulated through his flesh and blood to reach his brain—all in a matter of seconds. As he slowly savored their meaning, he closed his eyes.
"You're taking it better than I expected. I thought you'd be blubbering and throwing a fit."
In response, Subaru gave a small nod and said, "Yeah," before continuing: "There's about three possibilities I can think of."
He raised three fingers, showing them to Beatrice standing before him. Then, as if flaunting it to her silent figure, he bent down the first finger.
"First—black humor. A nasty joke, basically. Honest, it's nothing to laugh at… but if a 'Prank Successfully Completed' banner pops up, I'll laugh. If it's gonna pop up, now's the time, right?"
He made the request with one eye shut, but Beatrice's expression didn't change.
Subaru accepted that his most optimistic possibility had been crushed and, with a sigh, bent down a second finger.
"Second—the wounds were too severe. I actually saw my guts spilling out. Even if someone tells me 'the life-support measures just happened to work,' it doesn't exactly ring a bell… but I can buy it."
"Neither Beatrice nor Nee-chan could ever be inadequate in their treatment. The scars will remain, and even if complete healing hasn't finished yet, given time I should return to normal. We would never let someone who could still be saved just die."
"Right. You saved me even with my guts hanging out, so that's proven… or rather, that was only about three or four days ago, wasn't it?"
Thanks to his maddening days of repetition, he couldn't be entirely sure, but on the proper timeline, Subaru's knife-wound incident at Elsa's hands should have been four days ago.
—And in just four days, he'd ended up in a situation where his stomach had been torn open again. A person whose intestines were tumbling out at this rate within such a short span might actually be quite the rarity.
"Totally nothing to be happy about, though… Anyway, if that's the case…"
He shook the remaining third finger back and forth, then raised the last possibility he could think of.
"There's only one cause of death that actually fits."
Through his days of repetition at the Roswaal mansion, there had been countless ways Subaru had met his end. Of all those, the only one that matched the current situation was— "A curse rematch, huh?"
"When you were attacked by that pack of Ulguarm, they planted quite a few deep inside you."
As if to confirm Subaru's guess, Beatrice folded her arms and replied.
The white scars scattered across his body—the marks of fangs and claws from multiple Ulguarm—Subaru confirmed them all with a grim expression, then: "Just to be safe, let me ask—can you break a curse or not? You're not being all mysterious and keeping quiet on purpose, are you?"
There was a real danger she might come back with something like, "I simply wasn't asked, so I didn't bother"—and he wanted to preempt that.
But she shook her head at his hopeful question: "If it were something that could be unsealed, would I have let you accumulate such an unbeatable debt to me?"
"Hey, give me a break. I've already got more than enough I can never repay."
He'd only ever received and never returned a single thing. Last time, the time before that, and now too.
Beatrice tilted her head with a questioning look, but Subaru waved it off and pressed on: "Can I ask why the curse can't be broken?"
"…You should at least know the way you're going to die. It's a simple story, really. —The curses placed on you have overlapped so many times that they've become impossibly complex."
"The curses… are overlapping?"
Subaru tilted his head, unable to form a picture. Beatrice spread both her hands wide before him.
Then, as Subaru blinked— "Imagine curses as threads."
As she spoke, a red thread suddenly materialized between her two palms. She showed him the taut thread, then tied a knot in it.
"Let's say this knot is the curse's formula. Unraveling a curse, in simple terms, means untying this knot. But—"
Beatrice's fingers moved deftly, and the number of threads spanning her palms multiplied. Blue, yellow, green, pink, black, white—thread after thread appeared. She tied knots in each one as well, then began weaving them together in an intricate tangle— "If it were just a single curse, you could probably work through it and untie it. But when this many threads become entangled like this…"
She extended her hand, the mass of tangled threads resting in her palm, offering it to him. Subaru looked down at the bizarre, complex pattern the threads formed as they draped over his outstretched hand.
"No matter how much I pull or tug, there's no way to untangle it, huh… Yeah, damn, this is seriously high difficulty."
Even if he wanted to untie them one by one, he wouldn't know where to start.
He supposed that given enough time, it might not be impossible to unravel them all.
"You said there's a half-day limit. How'd you figure that out?"
"That's straightforward enough—in half an hour, the Ulguarm are going to get hungry again."
Beatrice raised a finger and thrust it toward Subaru.
"The Ulguarm's curse is particularly focused on one trait: 'draining mana from targets at a distance.' And magical beasts feed primarily on mana… which means the reason for the curse becomes self-evident."
"So they attack people because they're hungry. I see—simple as wild animals. I should be grateful they weren't starving until now, I guess."
He wanted to vent his frustration somewhere, but his hands were currently full of threads. directing inarticulate feelings at the hard knots in the tangled mess, Subaru struggled to untangle them while Beatrice watched with a puzzled expression.
"Aren't you frightened?"
"Huh?"
"What Beatrice is telling you is essentially a death sentence. And even though both Nee-chan and Betty have means to save you, they won't use them because there's no time."
The time Subaru had left was roughly half a day—depending on the beasts' hunger, the curse could activate at any moment, even now.
And in a situation where there was no time cushion to spare, the fact that a trial-and-error approach wouldn't yield results meant the curse's formula eating away at his body was anything but simple.
That was why Beatrice wouldn't gamble on saving him, and the same went for Pack.
Subaru accepted the rationality of their judgment, but he couldn't figure out her intention in saying it out loud like this.
Beatrice gazed straight at him. As he fiddled with the threads in his hands, Subaru suddenly felt he understood what she wanted. It was— "What—you want me to blame you?"
"————"
Beatrice fell silent. In the usual course of things, she would have fired back instantly, but instead she chose silence. Her thoughts were unreadable.
She didn't deny it, but she didn't affirm it either. Subaru managed a wry smile at her attitude: "Your and Pack's judgment—on a human level it might seem heartless, but from a rational standpoint, it's the natural call. Giving everything for someone whose death is a foregone conclusion… it might make for a beautiful story, but that's all surface-level."
Pouring everything into a life you know you can't reach.
As a way of facing mortality, it might be beautiful. But from a practical perspective, there was no denying the reality that it was futile. Of course, it was precisely because emotion factored in that people sometimes threw themselves into such acts.
"I don't think you're heartless. You're right. —I've got another question, though. Can I ask?"
"…What is it?"
"Does
The girl was still asleep in the room Subaru had been lying in, worn out from nursing duty.
He couldn't stop wondering how she had faced a situation that Pack and Beatrice had already written off as hopeless. That, above all, gnawed at him.
Beatrice shook her head at his question: "That half-elf's daughter doesn't know. The reason Nee-chan won't touch your curse is so that the girl never learns of its existence."
"…Ah, right. And Pack wouldn't leave Emilia-tan's side while working on the unsealing, so she'd naturally pick up on the fact that I'm cursed—and that the means to break it are far out of reach."
If they stayed silent until the curse activated, the emotional damage inflicted on her would be limited to a single blow. If Pack was prioritizing Emilia above all else and had judged that tragedy couldn't be avoided, then the reasoning was understandable.
Subaru saw through the unexpectedly shrewd calculation behind Pack's cute exterior. Then— "Anyway—"
He said, marking the end of one thread of conversation, and pointed a finger at Beatrice. He noticed the faint crease forming between her brows.
"The way I see it, you're not the type to come all the way over here just to deliver a death verdict."
"…Just how much do you think you know about Beatrice?"
"At the very least, I've got the feeling of having been around you about four times longer than you think."
As the frown and suspicion on the young girl's face deepened, Subaru thought back over the two-odd weeks he'd raced through—long and short all at once.
His relationship with
Looking back at this loop of repeated days, his score this time around was near-perfect.
If only his own life were factored in.
"Honestly, when those dogs were chomping down on every part of me, I really thought I was dead. Pathetic."
The sensation of life draining away—something he'd tasted more times than he could count. And he'd crumbled before it.
He'd grown too accustomed to dying. He'd developed a resignation habit. After coming this far, after going through all this.
And more than anything— "Rem and Emilia-tan treated my wounds, and you did too, right? If you were going to throw me aside because of the curse or whatever, you wouldn't have bothered treating me so carefully."
It was an insult to the girls who had desperately held him together despite his own selfish surrender of life.
Including the small cat who had used those tiny limbs to mend his body with threads.
"You're terrible liars, all of you."
"…The fact that your chances of survival are far lower is undeniable. And the fact that Nee-chan is trying to keep that girl from any involvement in the method—"
"So you're trying to play the villain and take the heat of my anger on yourself? For a little kid, you're overthinking this. —Just tell me. That tiny possibility."
He made a small circle with his thumb and forefinger, showing it to Beatrice, pressing her for an answer.
After a moment's hesitation, she exhaled as if giving in, then said: "Since the one who cursed you was an Ulguarm, its contents must be something that drains every last drop of mana. That much is certain."
He knew that. And he'd experienced the full force of it firsthand.
Which meant that the moment the Ulguarm that cursed him began to 'feed,' Subaru's life would be cut short. After all, once a curse was active, there was no way to— "Wait. Then how did you unseal the kids' curses?"
The children they'd found deep in the forest had been emaciated. Their condition should have been roughly equivalent to the curse Subaru bore. At the time, his thinking hadn't gone that far— "If the curses were activating and draining the kids' mana, the pattern should've been that they'd be drained completely. But those kids were fine—don't tell me that was just another lie to make me feel better."
If that were the case, Subaru wasn't sure even he could tolerate that.
But Beatrice stopped his hasty conclusion with an outstretched palm: "You're getting ahead of yourself. You should hear the story to the end. But you're close to the core of it. —The village children's curses could be unsealed. And the method aligns with the slim possibility of saving your life."
"The difference between the kids and me…?"
Subaru's mind raced through Beatrice's explanation.
The difference between his curse and the children's. Theirs had been one at a time, while his involved multiple overlapping curses. Active curses. Inactive curses. Mana-draining curses. Weakness from mana depletion. Stolen mana. Stolen mana as food for magical beasts. —If that was the case— A possibility struck his mind like lightning. Subaru looked up and turned back to Beatrice: "When the caster dies, where does the stolen mana go?"
At his question, Beatrice's expression didn't change. She simply nodded once: "When it loses its destination, the curse loses its power altogether. That's because this particular formula was designed not to kill the target but to drain mana—which is the critical condition."
At her confirmation, Subaru felt a surge of understanding.
The children's curses—their progression had halted because the magical beasts responsible for casting them had died. And if the caster was dead, what remained in the children's bodies was a mere formula, which Pack or Beatrice could easily dismantle.
The number of magical beasts they had killed in that forest the previous night must have been substantial.
Starting with the one Subaru had finished off in their first encounter, Rem had cut down no small number of them during their flight.
If the beast that had cursed the children was among those, then nothing currently contradicted his theory.
And that realization simultaneously meant— "Oh… I get it. So that's how it is."
Having confirmed that his reasoning was airtight, Subaru became aware of something.
The reason Beatrice still stood before him in what could only be described as a posture of grim resolve.
Since it was impossible to break the curse through normal means, the only way to undo the curse on Subaru was to kill the caster.
But— "There are too many of them to narrow down which ones cursed me."
He turned around and gazed into the forest where the magical beasts made their home.
A barrier encircled the area, isolating the village and the forest through something beyond the physical. Deep within that ancient forest, scattered packs of magical beasts would be lurking.
Finding them all and exterminating them within half a day was impossible.
"Oh, damn…"
Subaru nearly laughed, pressing his forehead with his palm and bowing his head.
He'd accepted it now. He couldn't look away from the reality staring him in the face.
Unless every last Ulguarm was killed, Subaru's life could not be saved.
The difficulty of accomplishing that within half a day. And above all, the danger of entering that forest and confronting a horde of magical beasts—these were what made Pack hesitate, what made him refuse to tell Emilia the truth.
"Nee-chan…"
"I know without you saying it. If Emilia-tan found out, she'd push herself way too hard. That makes me incredibly happy… but also incredibly terrified."
She was the type who wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice herself for someone else, and that was precisely why—even though he could see it was possible—Subaru couldn't ask her to do it.
If he were to lose her before his very eyes even once, the suffering Subaru would endure would be worse than being torn apart a hundred times over.
"The difficulty is straight-up insane. There's no way. It's impossible. I'll just have to give up—"
*"Then you'll give up?"* The words he'd been about to say died in his throat as that voice resurfaced in his mind.
It was buried in static, distant—as if echoing from the bottom of his unconscious. A thin, wavering voice.
He jerked his head up and looked around.
No one else was here besides Subaru and Beatrice. And yet, that voice just now— *"There has to be another way to save them."* A pleading voice, desperate for help. But somewhere within it lurked a grim, unshakable resolve.
"Did your head start hurting? That's understandable, really."
*"Is that all? Then do as you please."* Beatrice's voice before him overlapped with a different voice from the same Beatrice.
He didn't know where it was coming from. But somewhere, this conversation had definitely happened—a flashback.
His vision flickered, and the pounding alarm bells and headache made him clutch his head. Gasping, he nearly dropped to one knee— *"—I will definitely save them."* The voice of determination and resolve that rang out pulled him back from the brink.
He recognized that voice. The voice that had spoken those words.
And then he realized. Something he hadn't been listening for.
"—Where is Rem?"
From this morning until now, he hadn't caught a single glimpse of the blue-haired girl.
They should have returned from the forest together. She was the one who'd carried Subaru—wounded from head to toe—and the children back. Pack had stated as much.
But only up to the point of their return.
Was she resting somewhere, her injuries too severe?
—Something about demonic transformation, he wasn't sure, but he'd been told she had no external wounds.
If that was the case, maybe she was going around the village with Ram, tending to the villagers?
—If Rem had been allowed in the kitchen, steamed potatoes—one of Ram's signature dishes—wouldn't have been on the menu.
So if she had no wounds and wasn't in the kitchen either, where was she right now?
"Beako… Beatrice, where is Rem?"
At Subaru's halting question, Beatrice stroked one of her ringlet curls and said: "If you were in the same position, what would you do?"
"That's not an answer!"
Subaru lunged forward, fed up with her roundabout way of speaking. But whether from the sudden movement or his blood-depleted body, he lurched badly, his advance thwarted.
He stumbled, stamping his feet to keep his balance.
He knew it was just venting. And he knew Beatrice was standing there specifically to absorb it.
He understood her thoughtfulness, and yet he loathed himself for so readily leaning on that kindness.
Then— "Oh—there you two are. Sorry, but do either of you know where Rem is?"
Hearing his outburst, perhaps? A girl with pink hair appeared from a corner near the plaza. She looked at the two of them quizzically, then tilted her head as if reminding them of the question she'd just asked.
Beatrice maintained her usual expression of studied indifference at the sight of her.
But Subaru couldn't maintain the same composure. He couldn't bear to look at the face of the girl who was the spitting image of the one conjured in his mind, and he reflexively turned away.
His blatant reaction, and the fact that the two of them had been in the middle of a conversation— Ram seemed to glean something from it. Her expression clouded over in an instant as she murmured: "—Clairvoyance, activate."
She slipped a hand into her hair, covering one eye, and uttered the words.
The next moment, Subaru gasped in horror at the transformation that came over her.
With her left eye covered and her right eye wide open, blood vessels crawled across her face in a dense web. The sight of blue-green veins surfacing on that white complexion was grotesque, and Ram's right eye—less bloodshot than literally turned into a pool of blood—only amplified the horror.
Pay no mind to Subaru's shock, Ram's lips trembled: "—I can't see. No—Rem is beyond the barrier!?"
Eyes still bulging with blood, she spun around. Her feet were already heading toward the re-established forest barrier.
Subaru instinctively grabbed her shoulder: "Wait—you can tell where she is!?"
"If I can just get inside the barrier… Don't stop me, Barusu!"
Ram tried to violently shrug off Subaru's hand on her shoulder. But Subaru was just as desperate not to be shaken off. He held her in place, turned, and shouted: "Beatrice!"
"—I've presented the possibilities. That's all. Nee-chan doesn't want to put that half-elf girl in danger, naturally. And Betty, who's strayed this far from the Forbidden Library, is effectively combat-ineffective. Even if you went yourself, you'd be useless. The choices were always limited."
"This isn't about that… so Rem really did…"
—She had entered the forest alone, intending to wipe out the beast packs single-handedly.
If he listed the people who could be counted as combat power at this scene, then yes, perhaps it was the correct call. Rem's abilities had been overwhelming the magical beasts in the night forest.
But— "How many of them can use magic?! And how are you even going to verify that my curse has been unsealed?! You can't just kill them one by one blindly—it's not that simple!"
"What do you mean? Barusu's curse should have been unsealed already…"
At Subaru's blood-soaked shout, Ram's already bloodshot eyes clouded over. Then, turning to Beatrice, she rushed to her side: "What are you saying, Beatrice? What has Rem—?!"
"To unseal the layered curses cast by magical beasts, she entered the forest to annihilate the Ulguarm pack that serves as the casters. —Both that human and your sister are following a method that could save them. However, the odds are infinitesimally small."
At Beatrice's blunt summary, Ram was momentarily struck speechless.
But in the next instant, her expression shifted from anguish to resolve, and without a moment's hesitation she started running toward the forest, ready to follow her sister.
"—Wait!"
Subaru sprang forward, spreading both arms wide, blocking Ram's path. The pink-haired girl fixed him with a piercing glare: "Step aside, Barusu. Right now, Ram doesn't have the patience to be gentle."
"I'm not saying to just go in blindly! There are things I need to ask, so answer me—be honest!"
"There's no time for—"
"If you want to save Rem, and if you think of me as even a fraction of an ally, then listen. Even a small increase in the odds is worth it."
Hearing that the younger sister she was so desperately worried about had a means of rescue—Ram's rigid posture wavered ever so slightly.
Seeing the crack in her resolve, Subaru pressed on: "I've only got two questions. First—with your clairvoyance, can you pinpoint Rem's location inside the forest?"
"…Yes, I can. Ram's clairvoyance shares the vision of 'entities whose wavelengths resonate with Ram's' within range. By shifting the view sequentially across the scenes she sees, I can eventually reach her."
"So it's less of a see-through-everything eye and more of a multiple-vision hub? I'm not totally sure how that looks in practice, but if it means we can regroup with Rem, that's good enough."
Subaru nodded at the first condition being cleared, then raised a second finger: "Second question. —Ram, are you the type of maid who can fight?"
"What exactly do you mean by that question?"
Ram narrowed her eyes and shot back, so Subaru prefaced it with, "Well, you know—"
"Until we regroup with Rem, there's no telling where we'll clash with magical beasts. If you can't defend yourself, that's a problem. And just so you know, I'm going to be a massive liability in a fight."
"W-Wait. Hold on—were you planning to come along in the first place?"
Ram's tone was unusually flustered as she faced Subaru's confident admission of incompetence. He nodded in acknowledgment of her agitation: "I know you're rattled, but it's a prerequisite. Actually, honestly, if the only goal is Rem's safe return, I'm not strictly necessary…"
His voice trailed off. Ram's face took on a suspicious look at the part she couldn't quite catch.
Subaru frantically waved both hands: "Come on—if we're doing this, let's all break through Day Five together! That's what makes all these repeated attempts worth it. So please—I'm asking you."
Ram wavered, unsure what to say, watching Subaru with his hands pressed together in a plea.
But in the end, she tucked it all away behind a sigh: "…If you're expecting me to fight on par with Rem when she's gone full demon, you'll be disappointed."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Unlike Rem, Ram is 'hornless'—so full demonic transformation is impossible. And unlike Rem, I'm not exactly a hand-to-hand combat specialist either. I can only use wind-element magic in a somewhat more aggressive manner."
As she answered, she flicked her finger lightly, and a strong gust of wind swept through, tousling Subaru's hair.
If the technique she'd just casually deployed were to become more aggressive, it could probably gouge through his leg or neck. Just thinking about it sent a chill down his spine even in this gentle breeze.
But as an ally's combat power, she was invaluable.
"Beatrice! I'm going into the forest with Ram. If Emilia-tan wakes up before we're back, cover for me somehow."
"…Bringing back that blue-haired girl means giving up on your own life. Do you understand that?"
"Not quite—I'll correct you on that."
In response to Beatrice's low, probing question, Subaru wagged his finger left and right: "I'm sick of the 'got used to dying and gave up' nonsense. Life is precious—there's only one. You guys fought so hard to keep me going, and that's when I understood. So let me do this, ugly as it'll be."
He'd once selfishly surrendered his life, and they'd fought to keep it going anyway.
The reason Subaru's heart was still beating right now was because so many people had reached out for him.
This was the extra time they had bought him with all that effort— "Let's pull off a comeback. I dragged myself back from a state as horrific as that. I'm greedy by nature, and I want to see the aftermath—everyone, together—with me included. I can't help it."
An absurd reasoning, far from any proper explanation.
It didn't address a single thing Beatrice had intended, but Subaru puffed out his chest with the most self-satisfied grin imaginable.
"I have no idea what you're thinking. But do as you please. I've shown you the options. From here, what you choose is entirely up to you."
"That's how Rem was sent off too. Well—I'm grateful, Beako."
Subaru turned back toward the forest, thinking of the girl still fighting somewhere in its depths.
—that nosy, jump-to-conclusions woman. She always went and imagined other people's feelings on her own, leaped to premature conclusions on her own, and did whatever the hell she wanted. The nerve of her.
"To the extent that you care enough about me to do something, I care enough about you to do something in return. That's what I'm saying."
He cracked his knuckles, steeling his resolve, and made his declaration toward the magical beast forest.
To the pack of black beasts dwelling in its depths, and to the supernatural being that had dragged Subaru into this fate—he renewed the declaration of war he had once made, and nearly forgotten.
"Alright—let's go for the final showdown. Fate, bring it on!"
Stage 2: 'The Roswaal Mansion,' Day Four, the fifth challenge begins—.