——"Dragon's Eye."
That was the expression that surfaced in Subaru's mind with instinctive immediacy.
Whether earth dragon, water dragon, or wyvern, opportunities to lay eyes on something referred to as a "True Dragon" were not exactly plentiful. And yet, Subaru—who had glimpsed the Divine Dragon
But what prompted Subaru's intuition wasn't that wealth of experience.
It was something more deeply rooted—a sense born of a living creature's instincts.
When you stood before a "Dragon," this was what you felt. —The difference in *stages* as living beings.
A reverence toward a being that existed on an entirely different plane from oneself—humans feel that toward "Dragons" without question or debate. That very sensation was the answer key.
What Subaru felt upon seeing Crusch's left eye—the one she had freed from its eyepatch—was exactly that.
"————"
An eye that shone gold, bearing an inhuman light—a pupil that could only be called a "Dragon Eye," now nestled in the eye socket of the woman before him. Subaru's blood ran cold.
What had happened to her? What did that left eye mean? Why wouldn't she release her sword even after being told the wind was sealed? How had things come to this?
A maelstrom of unanswered questions clawed at his thoughts—perhaps an instinctive defense mechanism born from fear of confronting the reality before him.
Swallowing those flimsy rationalizations, Subaru forced his mouth open—— "Ah——"
——He felt as though that gaze, suffused with golden light, had pierced clean through his heart.
"Shamak!!"
The instant Subaru froze,
Reading her partner's reluctance to fight Crusch, she chose Shamak—the shadow magic that severed the target's consciousness from reality. The ideal spell for neutralizing an opponent, and she deployed it with a mastery far beyond anything Subaru could muster.
The swirling darkness enveloped Crusch's head, intending to sever her will to fight from the battlefield.
However—— "I can see it."
Without any preamble, the vortex of black mist materializing in thin air was dodged by Crusch with a mere tilt of her head, calm and unhurried.
"Shamak! Shamak, Shamak, Shamak!"
Swallowing her shock at the first strike being evaded, Beatrice conjured barrage after barrage of black mist in midair.
Continuous, self-chaining, closing in to smother her—but Crusch evaded them all with nimble, fluid movement, and ultimately intercepted the magic at its inception, cutting the formula apart before it could even form.
Spell-crushing before activation. —In theory, you could understand the logic: magic only takes effect once gathered mana is given directionality, so disrupting its structure before that point would nullify it.
"But executing that in practice is a *completely* different story, isn't it!?"
Put simply, Tiga, who had just witnessed Crusch perform the godlike feat of slashing apart magic before it even became magic, let his astonishment color his voice as he lunged at her from the side.
Greeting the incoming curved blade and kicks with the tip of her sword dancing, Crusch reengaged in her duel with Tiga. But that—— "I told you. I can see it."
As Crusch said this quietly, even an ordinary observer could clearly see that her movements had changed.
The difference was not merely visible—it was audible. Because what had vanished from the exchange between the two was the sound itself.
The clash of steel upon steel, the sparks that scattered from the impact of blade meeting blade—those sounds were gone.
Tiga's sword strikes, his kicks—Crusch dodged them all, not with her sword, but purely through movement alone.
Anyone, even a layman, could tell which approach required greater composure: blocking or evading. And what made this possible was—— "——The 'Dragon's Eye.'"
Subaru swallowed the exclamation that pressed against his throat.
Perhaps Crusch's physical speed hadn't changed that dramatically. What had changed wasn't the speed of her movements, but the speed at which she *initiated* them.
In a life-or-death exchange measured in instants, if one combatant could shave a fraction of a second from each moment of engagement, the advantage that conferred was immeasurable.
What Crusch was doing now was erasing that fraction of a second entirely.
"Guh… kuh!"
As if to confirm Subaru's speculation, the balance of the swordfight in the office tipped decisively.
Tiga unleashed a dazzling array of techniques that set his whole body in motion, but the sword dance that had until moments ago allowed him to trade blows evenly with Crusch was being disrupted, forcing him onto the defensive.
His attacks were crushed at the source, his sword was thrust into the gaps between his own combo strikes, and his ability to move freely was sealed. The usual cool composure on Tiga's face was replaced by frustration as he barely held on.
But even pure defense couldn't keep him unscathed. Blood seeped from his shoulder, his thigh, and finally a thin cut appeared on his cheek, tracing a crimson line down his face—each mark a testament to his desperate struggle.
If this continued, Tiga would soon join the ranks of the Macmahon estate's victims.
And with Microtoff already beyond salvation, this was the worst possible scenario—one that absolutely could not be allowed to happen.
Therefore—— "Rraaaaagh!!"
While Tiga pressed his sword and Beatrice her magic in their respective attempts to subdue her, Subaru roared as he drew a whip from his waist, letting it crack and whip through the air.
The moment he had decided to use E.M.T, Subaru's objective had been Crusch's subjugation.
He had left the fighting up to Beatrice and the others not solely because he was bewildered by Crusch's transformation or stunned into inaction—it was also for this single, decisive ambush.
Faster than sword, faster than magic, the lash of the Guilty Whip surged toward Crusch.
Regardless of whatever mechanism powered the "Dragon Eye," her response to an unfamiliar attack would be—— "That, I have seen before as well."
"Wha—"
In that instant, struck by two simultaneous impacts, Subaru let a pathetic breath escape his lungs.
The first was the shock of having his meticulously prepared ambush so effortlessly deflected. Crusch brought her sword down before the whip could fully extend, slashing it to the floor.
It was supposed to be the fastest strike in the room—and having it casually cut aside was genuinely astonishing. But compared to what the second impact delivered, it paled into insignificance.
The second impact was the sight of Crusch's eye—the eye that wasn't the "Dragon Eye," her original amber right eye—filled with a raw, aching pain.
"I… I don't get it."
To put it bluntly, she looked like she was about to start crying, and Subaru could feel nothing but bewilderment.
Crusch was the one acting strangely, yet he somehow felt like *he* was being treated as the villain for trying to stop her. He had already died once for crying out loud—this wasn't about beauty's tears being unfair or any such trivial matter.
Of course, if she called it unfounded suspicion, there wasn't much he could say to that.
In truth, Crusch maintained her expressionless composure, merely glancing at Subaru—the one who had wielded the whip—after knocking it aside. And yet, somehow, he thought: *She looks like she's about to cry.* ——He would stop those tears.
"You let your guard—!"
Brushing past the flicker of emotion that crossed Crusch's eyes, Subaru gritted his teeth. But Tiga, seizing a fleeting opening with a different interpretation of the moment, lunged ferociously with his shamshir.
The white blade of the curved sword arced forward, howling like a fang, and closed in on Crusch's slender frame—— "I told you I can see it!"
In that split second, Crusch twisted her body to match the sword's trajectory, letting it graze past her skin with a razor-thin margin, then roared and drove her rising knee into Tiga's jaw.
"Guh—!" Tiga howled in pain as he reeled backward. Successive arcs of light followed, slashing him as he instinctively tried to guard his vitals, spraying his blood across the office.
His feet faltered, stumbling backward—and a devastating kick punched through his midsection. Sent flying in a straight line, Tiga crashed back-first into the wall with a thunderous impact.
But—— "I'll pick up your bones later, my friend!"
Using the precious seconds Tiga had bought him, Subaru closed the distance to Crusch. Swinging his whip once more, he aimed for the hand gripping her sword—— "That, I can see too."
With that, Crusch dodged the lash with a flick of her wrist alone—and in the same fluid motion, the tip of her turning blade became a thrust, driving straight toward Subaru's exposed leg.
The silver light pierced through the top of his foot, and Subaru paid the full price for his reckless advance—— "Beatrice!"
"You—! You only ever say reckless things, partner!"
At Subaru's single call, Beatrice grasped his intent. Grumbling, she poured everything she had into her small frame, channeling every last ounce of her power to grant her partner's wish.
The instant the blade was about to reach him—the supreme defensive magic, E.M.M, activated.
"————"
An original magic born of Subaru and Beatrice, E.M.M shifted existence half a step out of reality, rejecting all physical and magical interference—the ultimate defense. That said, deploying E.M.M while E.M.T was already active was an unprecedented gamble, and success was nothing short of a miracle— "Shall I make it mandatory that you call me every morning, noon, and night, I suppose!"
"I love ya, Beako!"
Paying the adorable price demanded for the miracle without hesitation, Subaru immediately shifted his focus from the failed thrust and locked onto Crusch, who was already preparing her next strike.
E.M.M's ironclad defense came with a fatal flaw: it immobilized its caster. The moment the next step was taken, the invincibility window closed. The next blade would find its mark without mercy.
Therefore—— "Invisible Providence!"
Before the next strike could land, Subaru played his next card in rapid succession.
From Subaru's chest—spraying a nosebleed—an invisible black arm extended, seized the arm holding Crusch's sword, and forcibly halted the follow-up attack she had been about to unleash. The unseen hand crushed her wrist with brutal force, wrenching the sword from her grip and stripping her of her weapon.
Having her actions disrupted yet again by cards she hadn't anticipated, Crusch didn't stop—she threw her entire body into her remaining free arm, and combining it with the demonic hand, Subaru used three arms to pin her against the wall.
"Crusch! Please, just listen to me!"
Clasping both of her wrists and forcing her against the wall, Subaru pleaded with her.
Throughout, Crusch twisted and drove her knee toward Subaru's ribs, but he pushed his body against hers, pressing close enough to feel her breath, sealing her movement.
Right before his eyes, Crusch's two differently colored eyes—amber and gold—stared back at Subaru. Meeting that gaze head-on, he shouted: "This is… this is obviously wrong no matter how you look at it! Something's gotten crossed! We can't just let this keep going!"
"I… I won't accept any of this! Not a single word of it!!"
As Subaru roared at the top of his lungs, Crusch's cheeks tensed.
In the end, his argument was essentially the same as when he had shouted those futile protests before "Return by Death." But while earlier he had merely stood there screaming, he had now given Crusch room to hesitate—and he wanted to believe that this difference could produce a different outcome.
Microtoff was gone. The lives of everyone connected to the Macmahon estate would never come back.
Even so, there had to be something besides sitting idly and waiting for the worst outcome. And for that, it was absolutely essential that Crusch lower her sword here and now.
What he needed was to persuade her—— "Huh?"
With that hope, Subaru waited for Crusch's response—but a rasping breath escaped his throat instead.
It was because of what happened in front of him: Crusch's mismatched eyes suddenly sharpened, and using the recoil from her back pressing against the wall, she forcefully dragged Subaru down with her.
Caught off guard, Subaru crumpled helplessly to the ground. —But this wasn't a counterattack against him. Quite the opposite.
——In the next instant, an inferno of staggering intensity swallowed Subaru's vision in a blaze of crimson.
△▼△▼△▼△ ——He thought he heard a distant sound, like the blast of a steam whistle, as his consciousness slowly surfaced.
The first thing he felt upon breaking through the waters of awareness was a stinging, searing pain. It permeated his entire body, particularly his right arm, and he couldn't help but let a groan escape.
"Ugh…"
"——! Subaru, you've woken up, I suppose? Are you alright?"
That faint groan was immediately noticed by a voice he knew well—the partner who greeted him every morning upon waking: Beatrice.
Though, this particular painful awakening was quite different from the usual ones.
"Beako…? What did I…"
"Don't try to force yourself upright, okay? The burns are still quite bad. …If there were enough mana, Betty could heal you right away, I'm sorry about that."
"You don't need to apologize… Burns?"
Tentatively prying his eyelids open, Subaru saw Beatrice's downcast face peering back at him. The Great Spirit, her large round eyes brimming with sorrow—he instinctively moved to comfort her, then stopped.
The word "burns" jolted his sleeping brain to wake in tandem with his body. Right. He remembered now. Just before losing consciousness, he had seen flames. And before that—— "Crusch!"
The horror of the Macmahon estate flooded back, and Subaru jolted upright with a start.
Once the dam broke, memories restored themselves in vivid succession. Microtoff's death. Crusch's confession that she had struck the killing blow. His own attempt to restrain her. Crusch resisting—the "Dragon's Eye" dwelling in her left eye. Everything had spiraled forward with overwhelming momentum.
But Crusch came first. In the end, using E.M.M and Invisible Providence, Subaru had managed to subdue her. After that, there had been a sudden eruption of flame—— "Right—fire burst up with insane force… This pain in my arm is from those burns? Shit, it stings like hell…! But something like this is no big deal."
"Calm down! Betty hasn't been able to cast any healing magic because of insufficient mana! If you don't stay still, a serious infection could set in!"
"This isn't the time for that! Right now, Crusch matters more than me. Compared to her, me keeling over from a fever is completely—"
He was about to say "irrelevant," about to shrug off Beatrice's concern, when— "So you're awake, Natsuki Subaru."
"Huh?"
A voice he hadn't expected reached his ears, and Subaru's eyes went wide. In his field of vision, emerging from the darkness beyond, was the very person he had been about to go searching for—Crusch.
Her left eye once more concealed beneath the eyepatch, Crusch held a lamp made of Lagmite ore in her hand, illuminating the surroundings. She approached Subaru, who was still locked in argument with Beatrice, took his right arm, and— "As I suspected, these aren't wounds that can be left alone. This is only a stopgap, but take this."
Setting the lamp down at her feet, Crusch drew an embroidered white handkerchief from inside her coat and gently wound it around Subaru's right arm as a makeshift bandage.
As the handkerchief soaked through with the weeping of the burn, growing stained and damp, and as Crusch's hands moved with surprising gentleness, Subaru stared blankly, unable to process the situation.
"…? What's the matter? I feel a wind of bewilderment blowing."
"A pretty strong wind, at that. If my memory serves, we were just at each other's throats with deadly expressions, weren't we?"
"I believe the deadly expression was yours alone."
"In the grand scheme of things! If we're talking about the two of us and one of us had a desperate look on his face, that makes fifty percent desperate!"
"Hmm. That does sound rather reasonable."
Being nodded at with a perfectly straight face, Subaru could only gape in silence.
It was only after that that Subaru finally realized where they were—a rather unsanitary, damp passageway. He had been lying on a cold, hard floor in a space thick with moisture, a fetid smell, and—now that he was truly aware of it—an unmistakable stench of sewage.
"Actually, this is literally a sewer, isn't it?"
"That's partly why Betty doesn't want you exerting yourself right now. If you caught tetanus or something, treating it would be a real hassle at the moment."
"So you're moonlighting as a pretty doctor and a bratty nurse at the same time… That's incredibly helpful, honestly, but more importantly—what's going on here?"
"————"
Despite understanding Beatrice's concern for his well-being, Subaru was no closer to comprehension—and just as dedicated to treating his burns was Crusch.
She narrowed her eyes slightly at Subaru's lowered voice, let out a quiet breath, and said: "This is a section of the sewer not far from the Macmahon estate. Judging by the distance we traveled, we should be roughly midway between the noble quarter and the commercial district. Even using the sewers, we can't bypass the checkpoints that regulate movement to the upper levels. That will be our primary obstacle for now."
"Wait, wait—please, just wait. I'm completely lost. I can't follow any of this. Before anything else, everything around the time I blacked out is super hazy. But—"
"But?"
"This conversation… Am I right in thinking that right now, Crusch and I are in the same party?"
"Par…ty… member?"
Crusch furrowed her brow at the unfamiliar word, but Beatrice—certified second-class Modern Japanese proficiency holder that she was—gave a small nod with a "I suppose."
"There are a lot of complicated factors tangled up in this, but that girl bears no hostility toward Betty or the others. She's the one who carried you all the way here while you were unconscious, I suppose."
"If you had been left there, you likely would have burned to death as well. At the very least, I detected no lies in your words. And your death is not something I desire."
"I see. Thanks for that… but—"
The final image he had before blacking out, combined with the massive burn on his right arm, served as half-proof that Crusch had indeed saved him at the last moment. There was no reason for Beatrice to conspire with Crusch by tricking him.
The reason Subaru couldn't simply say "thank you" was Crusch's manner of phrasing it: his death was not something she desired. But the deaths of Microtoff and the others *were*.
"…Crusch, did you really kill Microtoff?"
"——. I affirmed it at the scene, and it is the truth. Microtoff Macmahon and every soul in that estate whom he had employed—I cut them all down with my own hands."
"——!"
"Does that require explanation as well? I am merely repeating what I said at the time, but Microtoff Macmahon and his ilk were traitors—enemies of the
"That's—that's exactly what I don't understand! Traitors? Enemies of the Kingdom? What does that even mean? Were they really plotting something so outrageous that you couldn't stand it?"
"——At the very least, there is a high probability they were exploiting the Dragon Stone's prophecy for their own purposes."
To burst through the cascade of doubt bubbling up inside him, Subaru pushed the conversation forward, swallowing hard.
The information Crusch had added at the end was precisely what Subaru had wanted to confirm with Microtoff directly today—the matter of the "Dragon Stone."
In the Kingdom, the "Divine Dragon" held tremendous, powerful influence. A stone tablet upon which the contents of its covenant with the Kingdom were engraved—that was the "Dragon Stone," and also the key item that had served as the basis for the Royal Selection in which
However, having only ever heard of it and never seen it firsthand, Subaru had been the kind of person who would have liked to confirm its existence with his own eyes, if given the chance.
"The Dragon Stone is being exploited? By Microtoff?"
"It would be difficult to imagine that the Dragon Stone, which reports great events in the Kingdom, failed to mention the successive deaths of the royal family. If that is the case, the only possibility is that someone in a position of custodianship over the Dragon Stone deliberately concealed the prophecies that should have been revealed, keeping them from the public."
"But… but isn't that way too late to bring up now!? That kind of question should have existed long before the Royal Selection even started. Crusch, you and
They should have had every motivation to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the royal family, given that one of the deceased was the Fourth Prince, with whom Crusch had been particularly close.
Though, Subaru wasn't quite tactless enough to press that point aloud.
"The inability to even entertain the possibility of doubt was my most grievous failing at the time."
Crusch finished the thought he hadn't voiced, acknowledging her own mistake.
Of course, calling it a "mistake" was perhaps too harsh toward someone who had just lost a person precious to them. Subaru had heard from Ferris that the relationship between the Fourth Prince and Crusch was something far beyond mere closeness.
It was likely the greatest motivation behind Crusch's desire for the throne.
But—— "Then why did you suddenly start doubting—"
"You need not ask. They sent the '
"——! Crusch, that's—"
"Ferris is strongly conscientious. My situation being what it was, he was already burdened with worry. To then have the intellect of the Kingdom whisper sweet promises into his ear—there was nothing unnatural about Ferris making a misjudgment. And if not for that——"
"————"
"If not for that, he would never have committed an act that trampled upon the oath between me and His Highness."
Crusch lowered her eyes, dropped her voice, and tried to suppress the emotion welling up inside her.
But the harder Subaru sensed her effort, the more the scales in his heart tilted—he no longer knew which side they should favor.
Emotionally, of course, he wanted to believe Crusch. It was terrible for Microtoff, but if Microtoff truly was a traitor exploiting the Kingdom for personal gain, then Crusch's actions carried legitimacy. Perhaps, in a proper trial, there would be room for leniency based on mitigating circumstances.
But Subaru remembered something: at the Royal Selection, when he had been a humiliated mess that no one could bear to look at, Microtoff had still acknowledged him as Emilia's knight.
Crusch was his benefactor—and Microtoff was his benefactor as well.
Wishing for a tidy conclusion where one side was simply in the right felt impossibly difficult.
And more than that— "Ferris—"
He had chosen to accept the hand extended by the "Divine Dragon Church"—a hand offered by someone who knew full well that it would make him an object of Crusch's hatred, even at the risk of being stripped of his knightly title. He had made that choice with the understanding that it meant his master's withdrawal from the Royal Selection.
Even if it meant trampling the oath he had sworn in the Fourth Prince's name, he had chosen.
And Subaru simply did not want to reduce that decision to "someone manipulated him."
"…I understand your position for now, Crusch. I want to talk this through to the very end. There are also several other things—"
"Wait, Natsuki Subaru. Your questions are entirely valid, but since you're awake, I'd like to prioritize moving first. Lingering here would not be wise."
"Well, sure, this is a sewer—I do want to change locations. But we still need to talk…"
Subaru clung to the conversation as Crusch tried to wrap things up with a slow shake of her head. But then Beatrice tugged at the sleeve of his uninjured left arm.
Glancing over, Subaru saw a flicker of tension in Beatrice's expression.
"Betty agrees with that girl on this one as well. We need to flee first, I suppose. If we waste time, the pursuit party will catch up."
"Even you're being like this—wait, wait, that doesn't sound good at all. Flee? Pursuit party? I don't understand any of this. If that's the case, us being in this sewer is almost as if…"
"————"
"As if we're… running away…"
As the words left his mouth, a creeping dread began to set in, and Subaru felt his tongue go numb.
During that silence, Crusch picked up the lamp she had placed in the corridor, while Beatrice pressed her thin lips together repeatedly, searching for the right words.
Their composed bearing and careful consideration spoke volumes. —They were, without a joke, being hunted as fugitives.
"This makes no sense! There's way too much missing context! And besides…"
As he spoke, Subaru glanced around and confirmed that no one else was present besides Beatrice and Crusch, then pointed out the obvious irregularity. —Tiga's absence.
"Tiga… He was in the same estate too. So why isn't he here? What happened, how did it lead to this, and why are we in this situation? Tell me—"
"Tiga Laurelion, was it? As it happens, he is the one pursuing us."
"…What?"
In response to Subaru's question, Crusch's voice delivered something that only spawned yet another.
Piling the incomprehensible upon the incomprehensible—the structure of understanding had long since collapsed, and Subaru could no longer grasp the full picture. That was only natural.
With exactly that look in his eyes, Subaru stared at Crusch.
She raised the lamp, casting its white light upon her beautiful face—the left eye concealed beneath the eyepatch—and continued.
It was—— "Right now, we are being hunted. By Tiga Laurelion, by soldiers of the Kingdom. —On suspicion of having murdered Microtoff Macmahon and plotted the overthrow of the Kingdom as traitors."