—Abhorrent, monstrous, ominous.
Those negative emotions tore through Subaru's mind as he beheld the presence bearing down on him from behind. Petelgeuse's current form had deviated so far from the realm of the normal that it defied all reason.
The body used as a vessel had been half-destroyed by the cave-in. The right side was crushed with bones jutting out, the scalp torn away leaving alternating patches of red and white. The right leg was gone below the shin, and the dangling limbs radiated not the faintest trace of life.
A dead man. A corpse. The thrashing of a lifeless husk. It was the final, desperate struggle of a twisted spirit who hijacked other people's bodies and forcibly dragged them under his control—right up until the very end.
Because— "—My b-b-body! My f-flesh and blood bodyyyyy!!"
"Don't you remember what happened when you crawled inside me…!"
As he said it, Subaru couldn't help but think: even for me, "crawled inside me" is a pretty disturbing way to put it. That said, the fixated tenacity of Petelgeuse's upward stare far surpassed such trivial concerns.
The vessel's body had ceased all life activity. Petelgeuse—in this case, the spirit entity inhabiting the flesh—was extending his Unseen Hands into his own body, binding the limbs and forcing them to move. Even the fine control was off; with every movement, the bones ground together and the flesh was squeezed apart and torn.
If this continued—a process equivalent to self-destruction—his core spirit would lose its vessel entirely and dissipate. But— "Waiting for time to run out isn't gonna cut it… Damn it!"
Subaru slammed his fist against the edge of the shaking cart bed and gritted his teeth, spitting out his frustration.
Whether it was the final blaze of life, or like the brightest flare of a candle just before it guttered out, Subaru could sense the evil black flames writhing with furious intensity.
The pitch-black phantom hands bound his limbs, and the palm pressing into his chest was likely serving as a replacement for his stopped heart. And as an extension of the crumbling body, it spread across the ground, no longer even a shadow—it was a monster born from obsession and a twisted life force.
"So this is a spirit… Where's the part that's spiritual? Isn't it supposed to be something more sacred?"
In Subaru's imagination, spirits were supposed to be brighter, grander, adorned with a fragile beauty so exquisite you'd hesitate to touch them.
But what was this? This dark, paranoid, revolting-to-even-look-at existence—not a shred of reverence, twisted and hideous beyond measure.
"Now I really understand how much effort Pack and the quasi-spirits put into looking friendly to humans."
"—Natsuki-san! What's coming after us from behind?!"
Subaru's disgusted hiss overlapped with Otto's shout. From the driver's seat, Otto couldn't see directly behind him—for him, the nightmare closing in from the rear hadn't yet entered the realm of things he could see.
And for him, that was probably a blessing. Subaru held out a hand to stop the driver from leaning back to look, then raised his voice so the thing behind them couldn't be seen: "There's just a big, dark beast chasing us. I probably stepped on its tail somewhere you don't know about. It's got a terrifying shriek and an ugly face, so trust me—don't look."
"Are you really not going to show me?! Everything you just said makes it sound incredibly interesting!"
"Just drive! If I get bitten, you're next!!"
"Eek—now that IS scary!"
Subaru urged Otto forward with a bark, pushing him to speed up. But no matter how motivated Otto was, the ones actually running were the two ground dragons at the end of his reins. They were already at full sprint, and he couldn't push them any faster.
Which meant— "Stalling you is my job, huh? Another show-stopping moment in the final act… How many final acts are you gonna make me perform! Where's the part of you that's 'Sloth,' you overworked lunatic!!"
"
"Neither you nor I is loved by anyone! What kind of romcom has you trying to crush the heart of the person you love! Count me out!"
Petelgeuse raised his face, his death mask of a countenance echoing with screams.
Even in a body on the brink of death, even knowing he had been betrayed, Petelgeuse still screamed his unchanging "love" for the Witch. For the first time, Subaru found it pitiful.
The scream for a flesh-and-blood body, the shriek for "love" from the Witch—behind them lay the loneliness of a spirit that had so few chances to be perceived, a desperate craving to be loved, a thirst that could never be quenched eating away at his existence for eternity.
—Though of course, that could never justify this existence.
"No special move, no super magic. But your opponent is me. I won't let you get past me, and there's absolutely no way I'm letting you meet the person waiting ahead of me…!"
"Natsuki-san, you care about me that much…!?"
"Can you shut up for one second?! I'm in the middle of being cool here!"
Subaru shouted back at Otto—he couldn't tell if the man was heckling or being sincere—and turned to face Petelgeuse closing the distance.
Thanks to Julius's interception, the total number of Unseen Hands available had been cut down. Plus, some were being used to keep his own body going, so the number that could be directed at Subaru was—at a glance—seven, the same as at the start.
Petelgeuse dragged himself closer, scraping along the ground. The phantom hands he raised snapped through branches like twigs and slammed down from above, cracking the earth. The fingertips grazed the back edge of the cart, gouging into it regardless of material strength.
If the next hit struck dead center of the cart bed, the dragon cart would flip for certain. Subaru would be thrown off and devoured by Petelgeuse—this time from the head down.
"And once he figures out he can't take my body, a mutual destruction play becomes a sure bet."
"Natsuki-san, we're clearing the forest—!"
At Otto's cry, the green of the canopy vanished in an instant.
The cart burst through the trees and accelerating down a grassy slope, sliding down as if on ice. Petelgeuse gave chase, clawing at the earth, having swallowed fallen trees and boulders into his mass of shadow—a grotesque incarnation of evil itself barreling down the slope behind them.
—They had cleared the forest and entered the highway. Before long, they would catch up to
He could not bring Petelgeuse before them. He could not bring Petelgeuse before her. Even without knowing the details of the Archbishop of Sloth's "trial," a tragedy would be inevitable.
So. Therefore. If that was the case— "We're through the forest. —I'm not holding back anymore!"
"Love! Love! Love alone is everything—!!"
Petelgeuse bled tears of blood, opened his broken-toothed mouth, and grinned.
Hearing that ghastly voice, Subaru rummaged through the cargo in the back of the cart and hauled out a heavy container. A pungent, acrid smell hit his nostrils.
He hefted it against his chest and jammed a finger at his own blood-smeared face.
"—Burn to ashes, Petelgeuse!"
"—!!"
The Unseen Hands reached skyward, straining to unleash a torrent of destruction from above. But Subaru was faster.
He raised the jug with both arms, bared a savage grin—and hurled the oil jug.
The black hands were coming down.
To crush the entire dragon cart along with its cargo, to blow Subaru to pieces.
Subaru extended his arm straight, index finger shaped like a gun.
At the tip, a red light blazed—the quasi-spirit of "Crimson" that he had borrowed from Julius.
"I'm borrowing your power,
"Yoooouuuu—!!"
Petelgeuse screamed. The arm bore down from directly above, its appearance the very worst, like some indescribable dark god.
The fingertip tingled with heat. The spirit lending him its power was named "IA." And so— "IA IA HASTUR—!!"
An incomplete incantation, an incomplete caster, and a quasi-spirit without a contract.
Incomplete multiplied by incomplete, yet unified in a single will.
And to interfere with the world, even a single spark would do.
The mana on the verge of running out interfered with the atmosphere through the spirit's power, and the bursting spark ignited the air, hurtling toward Petelgeuse. His ghastly face, smeared with blood and oil, yawned open— "—Aaaaah!!"
—In that instant, Subaru's entire field of vision was engulfed in a searing blaze of red.
Petelgeuse's entire body erupted into violent flame as the oil he was drenched in served as an accelerant. His body was scorched by the billowing fire, and a voiceless scream from Petelgeuse clawed through the atmosphere.
For Subaru, who had nothing but his bare fists as a physical weapon and no effective means of attack against Petelgeuse as a spirit, this was the greatest and final strike at his disposal.
He had considered the worst-case possibility that fire without mana might be useless against a spirit, but Petelgeuse's desperate clinging to flesh told him that attacking a body on the brink of death would not be in vain.
Judging by the sight before him now—agonized screaming wracked by pain and the heat wave—that assessment had not been wrong.
Keeping quiet about it from Otto—who believed he'd unloaded the cargo back at the village—one of the oil jugs he'd secretly brought along had proven its worth here. If this was the result, he wished he'd smuggled two or three more, but there was no time for regret.
Petelgeuse, his voice trembling with excruciating pain, swung the Unseen Hand down like the scythe of the grim reaper.
His head whipping about with eyes burned by the flames of his own body, Petelgeuse hadn't aimed properly.
Subaru reflexively rolled sideways, emergency-evasive maneuvering to the unstable edge of the cart bed—an instant later, an arm crashed down so close it grazed the sole of his foot.
The wooden cart bed buckled under the impact. The section struck by the phantom hand crumpled as easily as if it were paper. Gouged into a U-shape, splinters of wood spraying across half his body, Subaru clenched his teeth and dragged his right leg toward the back of the cart.
"—Gah! Augh, aaghh!"
The grazing fingertips had carved deep into his calf, and the profuse bleeding sent oily sweat bursting from every pore. The pain of having flesh carved away and the sensation of blood draining made his vision flicker and strobe. He pressed a palm against the wound to stanch the flow, but without a bandage, it was pouring water on hot stones.
And above all— "Give it… hand it over… offer it up…!"
Burning black fingertips hooked onto the swaying edge of the cart.
Slowly, he raised his upper body, dragging the ruined lower half of himself with brutal force. With a sickening, wet sound, the mass of black fell onto the cart bed.
Wriggling phantom hands molded a bloated body. The thin, bony frame of the man who had originally been possessed—his original host—had lost all semblance of its former shape. Unseen Hands sprouted from his back and sides, and apart from the tattered right arm, four additional phantom hands had grown where the original left arm should have been—a grotesque visage.
The lower half, dead from the knees down, dragged behind. An arm protruding from mid-thigh served as a substitute for the missing leg.
His face hung downward, whites of the eyes exposed, blood tears half-charred by the flames. His entire body was still licked by tongues of fire, and only the cassock he'd been wearing was barely recognizable—making the overall ugliness all the more pronounced.
Because the abhorrent creature was making an ostentatious point of declaring that it wore a human skin.
"Pathetic state you're in. …Not that I'm really one to talk."
Subaru twisted his face against the pain threatening to contort it and forced himself upright through sheer willpower. The bleeding in his foot hadn't stopped, and time was running short. But the same could be said for his opponent.
Petelgeuse was already rotting from head to toe, and now doused in flames on top of it, moments from burning away entirely. He had no interest in a drawn-out fight either. This would be over in an instant.
His hand of cards was thin. Very thin.
All Subaru had was his incomplete Shamak magic, a below-basic-level fire spell borrowed from a quasi-spirit, and his bare fists, pain be damned.
The options were so few it was almost funny, but he had to use whatever he could to break through. He'd exhausted all his strategies. All he had left was cunning.
"My b-body… won't disappear… it can't disappear, desu…"
"That's what I've been telling you! Even if you get inside my body, it'll only hurt—What's the Witch got to do with anything? Neither you nor I—we're just being yanked around by someone else!"
Petelgeuse shuffled forward, mumbling broken words as he reached for Subaru's body. Subaru roared his fury at that dogged refusal to give up, trying to break through the madman's resolve.
But Petelgeuse's response to the fury took a different form than before.
"—Witch. Satella."
The sudden, clear voice cut through the chaos as Petelgeuse raised his head.
His face—half-collapsed, cheekbone missing, interior exposed—resembled the anatomical diagrams Subaru had seen in school. Staring outward with his skull visible beneath the skin, Petelgeuse's rolled-back eyes returned to focus.
The unfocused pupils wavered, gradually forming an image of Subaru.
"You are… dangerous… Desu. D-dangerous, da-da-da-dangerous, dangerous, DANGEROUS—desu!"
"Huh—!?"
"Receiving, being granted, receiving, while receiving her… affection. Denying love, and driving me, me me me me, to this, to this, death death death death death death—"
"—!"
Head rattling back and forth, Petelgeuse spouted incoherent words in rapid succession. An arm suddenly shot from his body toward Subaru, passing over his shoulder and under his arm to stab into the wall behind—missing by a hair. It wasn't so fast it was invisible; Subaru simply couldn't react because there had been no preparatory movement.
The current Petelgeuse's thoughts were so jumbled that his movements couldn't be read by normal reflexes. He'd always been dangerous in that you never knew what he'd do next, but now he'd entered a dimension where even predicting his next move was impossible.
The Unseen Hands were still extended with Subaru caught between them, forming a straight line between the two facing each other across the front and back of the cart.
If Petelgeuse simply closed the distance inch by inch, Subaru would be swallowed without resistance.
The earlier version of him—the one driven purely by instinct, by nothing but the craving for flesh—would probably have attacked Subaru on a more primitive level. It was precisely because Petelgeuse had regained some intelligence upon hearing the Witch's name that this situation had become so much worse.
"Witch, Witch, Satella, Satella, love, love, love! I love you! I am loved! Satella, you are, you made me, what I am! I have never forgotten, not for a moment… Even if you have forgotten, I, have not!"
Tears overflowed. Not blood—real tears.
For the first time, truly the first time at this point, Petelgeuse screamed words of genuine sanity.
Words, a will, pulling Petelgeuse from his crazed darkness back into reality. With lucid intent settled in those stagnant eyes, Petelgeuse glared at Subaru— "You are dangerous, desu! One day, you will threaten the Witch's Cult! Before that happens! Before your hands can reach Satella! Here! Right here! With these hands! With my own diligence! To bid farewell to the 'Slothful' me and make my love true… you will die, desu!!"
His upper body lurched forward and back, and a tremendous volume of blood erupted from every part of Petelgeuse's body. It was a premonition—the energy of all the Unseen Hands he'd been storing inside was about to burst outward, rupturing through his flesh from within. Petelgeuse no longer cared about seizing Subaru's body; he wanted to kill Subaru so that the Witch he worshipped would have nothing left to worry about.
That was thought—intelligent, willful thought, drawing a clear line between himself and a mere beast.
"If you'd stayed a monster, I would have lost."
Subaru drew something from inside his coat, and Petelgeuse's eyes went wide at the sight.
That reaction sent a pang through Subaru's heart. But he turned away, refusing to look at the sentimentality that flashed through him for just an instant, and swung his arm high.
A black-bound book—the Gospel—sailed from his upraised hand into the air.
"…Satella."
It fell softly from Petelgeuse's lips, in a low, quiet voice—the voice of someone calling a beloved soul to rest.
Gazing heavenward, Petelgeuse thrust his flesh-and-blood arm skyward, and the pitch-black Unseen Hand followed, reaching for the Gospel tumbling through the air. His fingertips caught the cover, and the instant he grabbed it— It happened.
The book, flung far above the cart's height, fluttered in the wind, on the verge of being blown away by its own momentum. That momentum also meant it was catching the full force of the gale, and reaching for a Gospel in that state— "——!"
Petelgeuse, looking upward, was struck by the violent wind and lurched backward. His dragging foot splintered the planking, and his lower half plunged outward as if thrown.
It was a consequence of his fingertips escaping the range of the Wind Resistance blessing—inherited by the ground dragons themselves and extended to the dragon cart in motion.
Once, inside a dragon cart bound for the royal capital, Subaru had ended up in the exact same situation as the result of a foolish prank.
A cart bed with no wind resistance, no blessing, taking the full brunt of wind and violent shaking at full speed—it was impossible to maintain your footing.
"—Oooooh!!"
The instant Petelgeuse tilted sharply, Subaru let out a roar and lunged forward.
The pain in his gouged leg, the pain in his torn shoulder—he forgot them all and exploded forward like a spring. He had no technique that could turn the tide. But he would not miss the moment.
An instinct—the only one he'd earned through countless brushes with life and death.
As Subaru charged, Petelgeuse raised his face and opened his mouth to scream something. Subaru heard nothing. He simply lowered his head and drove forward, aiming for Petelgeuse's core.
Unseen Hands fired out. The palms thrust forward moved slowly—almost sluggishly, as if time had slowed—born of a concentration so extreme it had warped reality.
Subaru tilted his head. His body wouldn't cooperate. The palms would miss a direct hit but would certainly graze his cheek and neck. He could feel the pain coming. The pressure was so immense his eyes nearly squeezed shut on their own.
In that state, a memory surfaced. A memory of being hurt—terribly, continuously, over and over. It belonged to days that had passed, days he'd always believed to be meaningless time.
"—There were two things Wilhelm taught me."
A palm came. The surface of his tilted cheek and a portion of his ear exploded with the searing agony of pressing against hot iron. Pain incinerated thought, and the world bleached white before his eyes.
He dodged. Drew a breath. It wasn't over yet.
"The first was that I have absolutely zero talent for the sword."
Pain burned. Relief loosened his body. Two forces fought to seize his consciousness, and in the space between them, Subaru stared straight ahead.
From beyond the palm he'd dodged, another palm came—this time aimed squarely at his face— "—The second was the guts to not close your eyes when you're punched!!"
He shouted, ducked his head. The palm raked across the back of his neck, but he clenched his teeth and endured. Ahead—Petelgeuse, eyes wide with shock. In a body that no longer resembled a human's, only his face—bones and muscle fibers exposed—still seemed to carry some faint trace of humanity, Subaru thought— "—!!"
A full-swing fist punched through that face. The blow delivered a killing strike to Petelgeuse's already-tilting body—the impact sent him staggering back, his foot slipping off the broken floor, and his body was flung from the cart. And then— "Ooooooooooo—"
Suspended upside-down, Petelgeuse was dragged along by the dragon cart. A torn edge of his cassock caught on the damaged cart bed, tethering him to the vehicle as the ground scraped and ground him underneath.
Blood scattered. Flesh burst. Even the Unseen Hands composing his body peeled away. The existence known as Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti was crumbling apart. Even so, Petelgeuse hung upside-down, raising his disintegrating face to glare at Subaru on the cart above— "It's… ending… not… ending, ending, ending… desu…?!"
"—No. It's over."
Looking down at the impossibly tenacious Petelgeuse, Subaru noticed it—the Gospel lying in the corner of the cart bed. Petelgeuse had reached for it, grabbed it.
He picked it up and leafed through the pages. Toward the back, he hit a blank page.
"The Gospel, that, it… gave me the future, affirmed my actions, gave me a way to repay love, my love is… ah!"
"You were moving according to this. —Then if that's the case…"
Petelgeuse shifted his shoulders, reaching for the Gospel. But his right arm was gone, and his left—already falling off—had lost everything above the forearm in the friction with the ground. Bereft of all four limbs, bereft even of his Unseen Hands, on the verge of vanishing entirely, Petelgeuse clung to the last thing he had: his faith.
Subaru held the Gospel open, displaying the blank page. He scooped blood from his own neck with his right hand. And then, as if striking the book, he inscribed the crimson text onto the Gospel's pages— "Your story ends here—!"
In large, bold strokes across the open spread of blank pages, the word "END" was carved in red.
Petelgeuse saw it. His eyes went wide, his lips trembled. The emotions rippling through those pupils were too complex for even Subaru to read.
And before that passion could become words—reality arrived.
The cart jolted. The hem of Petelgeuse's cassock, caught on the cart bed, came loose. That sent his falling body crashing to the earth. And the torn cassock, before it could hit the ground—caught in the spinning wheel of the cart.
Dragged by the ensnaring cassock, Petelgeuse's light body—drained of blood and limbs—was pulled toward the wheel. The end was visible. The sound of tearing fabric mingled with the sound of scattering blood, and in the final instant, Petelgeuse looked up at Subaru and screamed.
"—NATSUKIIII SUBARUUUUUU!!"
The scream echoed—and became his death rattle.
Still crying Subaru's name, Petelgeuse's body was swallowed by the wheel—ground, chewed to pieces, blood and flesh fragments scattering as life came to its end.
The body vanished. And the spirit that had inhabited it, caught in that violent end, dissipated along with it.
The very last thing—one Unseen Hand that had stretched toward Subaru's face.
It froze a hair's breadth from grabbing his face, and from the fingertips onward, it crumbled away and vanished. That was the definitive proof that Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti had been destroyed.
"This time, for good, just… sleep forever… Petelgeuse."
He was done. Certain of it, Subaru collapsed onto the cart bed.
The instant he did, all the pain he'd been ignoring came flooding back. Subaru half-sobbed—no, he burst into tears and thrashed on the ground.
"It hurts! This is bad! I'm dying, this is actually killing me, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts—!!"
The tears wouldn't stop. The pain wouldn't stop. The wound throbbed with every pulse of blood, and that pain radiated through his entire body without mercy. So even the ache in his chest was simply an extension of that wound's agony.
There was nothing to pity. There was nothing to sympathize with in the madman, the mad spirit Petelgeuse. He had rampaged on his own selfish terms and perished on those same terms.
Screaming blind love while acting only for himself, then rotting away alone.
No one needed to extend pity toward Petelgeuse's end.
—No one but Subaru. Only Subaru could afford to think that way.
"No one's ever going to understand you. You deserved to die. You were overdue to croak. No one—not anyone—is ever going to forgive you. —But that's exactly why I'll sympathize with you."
A monster, alone—whose cry for love could never be answered with love, whom no one could ever understand.
Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti was finally, truly erased.
Leaving nothing behind in anyone's heart or anyone's soul.
Only driving a single wedge of pity into Subaru's chest—and this time, for real.
*** "Natsuki-san, you're absolutely covered in wounds—are you okay?!"
"Does this look okay to you?! I bawled my eyes out! This is the biggest cry since the time the anesthesia wore off mid-cavity filling! Every wound is screaming in a chorus right now!"
Having moved from the half-destroyed cart bed to the driver's seat, Subaru gingerly applied the first-aid supplies Otto handed him, applying them to his wounds with trembling hands. Traveling as a merchant apparently meant being prepared for danger; it seemed these kinds of medicines and tools were standard issue. That thoroughness had saved him.
"No idea how well otherworld medicine's gonna work on my body, though. Hey, this ointment—is it okay for sensitive skin? I'm actually kinda delicate about skincare."
"It's a medicine that activates the body's mana to accelerate wound healing. You're so covered in blood even watching from over here is making me hurt. Apply it and let's go. Double time."
"I'm trying! What's with the—ouch! Wait, what is this?! Hey, this is insane! It stings! It's seeping in! Oi, it's seeping, I'm dyingeeee!"
"Strong medicine stings like hell, doesn't it? The pain'll wear off shortly. —Until then, you'll be tasting the fires of hell, though."
Otto watched Subaru writhing in pain from the medicine with a look that said he'd finally gotten one in, a satisfied grin spreading across his face. Staring at that smug profile like a man facing the devil, Subaru wiped away the fresh tears welling in his eyes— "So how far behind are we?"
"We're not behind at all. In fact, thanks to those two ground dragons giving it everything they had against a situation beyond all reason, we're actually running ahead of schedule. …Seriously, what was chasing us?"
"A sloth. Never heard of them? They're these animals that hang upside-down from tree branches—long arms and all that."
Otto let out a small sigh at Subaru's deliberately deadpan answer and seemed to give up on further interrogation, fixing his eyes forward. Following his gaze, Subaru looked ahead too—at the grasslands of the Fleur Highway stretching to the horizon. He couldn't yet see the figures he sought at the end of that endless road, but— "I'll catch up. This time, for sure, I'm saving you."
He murmured, slapping his own cheeks to refocus. The sharp pain from the wounds stung, but the medicine was working and the bleeding had mostly stopped, so it only brought him to the edge of tears.
"Do you think we'll… make it?"
"We'll make it!"
Otto's words weren't born of doubt. They were a challenge—testing the steel of Subaru's resolve. And perhaps a way of finding his own direction by hearing Subaru's answer.
Subaru snorted, the corner of his mouth twisted in a grimace that bared his teeth in something between a laugh and a snarl— "It's about time
"Is that the name of someone you love?"
"The name of a girl who loves me!"
Hearing Subaru declare that with no embarrassment, no hesitation, full and unguarded, Otto was frozen in momentary shock. Then his face broke into a grin— "Oh, well, when you put it THAT way, you can't exactly back down!"
Otto shouted cheerfully, and the reins cracked in a sharp vertical snap.
The two ground dragons reared and neighed, and the dragon cart's speed—already splitting the wind—climbed even higher.
They raced on. They raced on. They flew down the highway, the dragon cart tearing forward.
Toward the horizon, toward finding once again the precious thing that had grown distant.
Time ticked ever onward. But
Natsuki Subaru looked, nothing more and nothing less, straight ahead.