—What on earth was he looking at right now?
"————"
Subaru's body lay slumped against the bed, face-down, devoid of all strength, his wide-open eyes long since emptied of life.
Of course. Having his throat slit by a dagger and bleeding that much, there was no way he could have survived.
A rare experience: surveying one's own corpse, one's own death, from above.
It was as though his soul had slipped out of his dead body like a ghost, being shown the aftermath of his own demise—a twisted sensation that lingered there.
And while most of that sensation was wrong, the critical part of it was not.
What Subaru was being shown was, beyond any doubt, the scene of his own death.
"————"
The room's furnishings. The faces gathered there. And his own wretched, lifeless form.
Piecing it all together, Subaru realized what scene he was now witnessing.
This was the consequence of Subaru's rash, impulsive actions after defeating Archbishop Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti and saving Emilia—when he first learned of
Subaru had been overjoyed: the
Afterward, racing by dragon carriage to reach the royal capital—at
It had been an impulsive act, born of no deeper thought.
Simply to deny the scene before his eyes. Clinging to "Return by Death" in order to reclaim what had been lost, he had tried to redo the past.
—But that careless act bore no fruit. Subaru, having killed himself, returned not to the moment before the knife, but to the moment of reuniting with the sleeping Rem.
The save point for "Return by Death" had been updated.
Cruelly, it stripped Subaru of any means of recovering Rem, and once again cast him into an abyss of despair and desolation.
Since then, Subaru had steeled himself to reclaim Rem and had vowed to rise again, and for now he was managing to stand—but.
*'I don't know. …I don't know any of this. I don't know—I couldn't possibly know!' It was a scene he had never witnessed.
Of course. Because in this world, Subaru was already dead.
Even Subaru, who had lost his life and possessed the means to return to the world afterward, had no grasp of what became of the world after his death. No—couldn't have grasped it.
But until now, he had never been conscious of that fact.
For Subaru, who had avoided dead-end worlds by dying and returning to walk a different path, a dead world was nothing more than a waypoint—a passage through which no information other than "what caused the death" could be carried forward.
Having decided to use "Return by Death" as a checkpoint on the way to the future he ultimately sought, even this moment's world had been nothing but a thoroughfare, a mere waypoint.
And now—that collapsed.
*'Stop it. Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop—please stop!' Unable to accept the scene before him, Subaru screamed without a voice.
But from a body with no throat, no sound emerged. A face with no eyes could not turn away. A head with no ears could not be covered. And Subaru, who now had only consciousness, was forced by the world to have the truth carved into him.
—the penalty for Subaru's careless act.
"Emilia-sama, this is—!"
Hearing Emilia's anguished cries, a new figure stepped into the carnage.
An elderly man whose muscular frame was wrapped in a pristine butler's suit, his steps betraying no injury—Wilhelm.
The old warrior slid into the room with agile footing, and upon seeing the scene, was struck speechless.
—So even the Sword Demon Wilhelm could wear an expression so stunned.
Subaru, staring directly at Wilhelm's face, had that peculiar, out-of-place thought.
Wilhelm's expression, gazing down at Subaru's corpse, had deviated so far from composure that he could not conceal his agitation.
"What in the… no—right now… Subaru-dono!"
But Wilhelm's confusion lasted only an instant.
He shook his head, immediately quelling the chaos in his mind, and rushed to Subaru's side. Emilia, clinging to the lifeless body, did not notice Wilhelm's approach.
"Subaru… Suba-ru… You lied… You said we'd be together…"
"Emilia-sama, I'm terribly sorry—!"
Wilhelm pushed aside Emilia, who was condemning Subaru's betrayal like a curse, and moved her away from the corpse. Emilia, having lost all strength to support herself, collapsed sideways onto the floor, but Wilhelm spared her only a split second of attention before redirecting it to Subaru. He set to work on reviving Subaru, who was drenched in an appalling amount of fresh blood.
"————"
With a grim expression, Wilhelm stripped off his jacket, wrapped it around Subaru's throat, and without hesitation pulled out the embedded dagger. For a moment, the gushing blood splattered across Wilhelm's fierce countenance, but Wilhelm did not so much as blink as he sealed the wound.
He stanched the blood, then pounded on Subaru's chest—where the heartbeat had long stopped—in an attempt to revive him.
"
Wilhelm roared toward the hallway beyond the door. He continued his resuscitation efforts while pressing on Subaru's wound. But the amount of blood that had been lost was far too great. His limbs and face had been drained of all color, and it was plain to anyone's eyes that the soul of
And yet Wilhelm refused to stop.
"Vil-old-man, what's all the shouting about—"
"Felix, hurry! He's been stabbed in the throat! Every second counts!"
"————!"
Ferris, called over and rushing in, immediately nodded at Wilhelm's instruction. He wove blue waves of mana around his palms and channeled healing magic into Subaru's collapsed body.
Subaru, now merely a hollow shell of a soul, watched as Ferris—whose side profile always maintained its usual nonchalance—now held an unprecedented gravity and seriousness.
*'Just… stop it already. It's useless. It's useless. He's gone—he can't be saved anymore…* No matter what they did, it was all futile.
Subaru's memories held no recollection of having been saved after his suicide attempt.
Natsuki Subaru had impulsively driven a dagger into his own throat in an attempt to deny reality, leaving wounds in the hearts of many that would never heal—and he had vanished without feeling even a shred of remorse for it.
That was the truth. That was the unreachable conclusion to these two people's devotion.
"I will not let him go! I will never let him die! To lose a benefactor in this manner—I could not live with such shame!"
"Why do something so foolish at a time like this—"
Wilhelm, pressing on the wound, shouted with desperate tenacity, while Ferris cursed with exasperation—yet wielded the most gentle magic in all the world.
That scene—the ripples of those two people's emotions—struck Subaru's consciousness again and again.
But even their desperate efforts— "————"
"Felix! Why?! Why did you stop the healing?! At this rate—"
"It's over, Vil-old-man. —There's no soul left. Anywhere."
Ferris pushed Wilhelm away with his palm, removed the jacket the Sword Demon had been holding against the wound, and wiped the gash with a handkerchief drawn from his breast. The wound had sealed over cleanly, and Subaru's body was restored to how it had looked just minutes before—as though the fatal wound had never been inflicted.
Only the vast amount of blood that had been lost, and the soul that had departed, were gone.
Wiping the wound, looking down at Subaru's pallid, deathly face, Wilhelm slowly shook his head.
"Why… why?! Why does it come so easily… Subaru-dono, you—!"
He slammed his fist into the floor. The floorboards cracked with a sharp report.
Blood mixed with the splinters—not only from the floor, but because Wilhelm's own fist had shattered on impact. Blood dripped from his knuckles. He had bitten clean through his lip in the excess of his anguish.
Facing Wilhelm's display of raw emotion, Ferris too gazed down at Subaru with a look of helpless frustration. He let his own beast ears droop as he studied Subaru's death mask—far from peaceful.
"…Coward. Wimp. Leaving everyone—everyone important—behind. …Pushing all the pain, all the suffering onto everyone else… and that's enough for you, nya?"
Too harsh to be called sarcasm, too merciful to be called condemnation.
The complexity of emotion hidden in Ferris's voice was beyond Subaru's frozen understanding.
But from Wilhelm's and Ferris's attitudes, one thing was clear.
—The irrevocable act that Subaru had thrust upon these two.
"————"
His thoughts had stopped completely.
What was he being shown right now?
He knew. He had known long ago what he was being shown.
His sin.
"—Emilia-sama?"
Suddenly, Wilhelm, who had been looking down, called her name.
A note of concern had crept into his voice, because Emilia's weeping had stopped and her body—lying on its side—had gone utterly still.
Sensing the change, a pained expression crossed Wilhelm's face. He himself had only just tasted loss, and having witnessed how close Emilia was to Subaru, he could imagine the magnitude of her shock.
The old man squeezed his eyes shut tightly, then stood.
He walked over to Emilia, still lying on the floor, and reached out to lift her up.
"I owe you an apology, Emilia-sama. But staying like this will only harm you further. Please, take care of yourself…"
"—But I told you."
"Emilia-sama?"
"You told me you loved me…!"
Still on the ground, Emilia hugged her knees to her chest, curling into a small ball as she sobbed.
No one present could have scolded her for looking like a child. Wilhelm pressed his brows together in pain, and even Ferris turned his face away, unable to bear watching Emilia's grief.
And then— "Huh?"
Ferris, dazed, opened his eyes and mouth wide, letting out a vacant sound.
Drawn by that sound, Wilhelm followed Ferris's gaze—and froze.
"————"
—Before their very eyes, Subaru's body—completely decayed and dead—was rising to sit up.
*'————!?* Even Subaru, who now had only his consciousness, was struck with shock beyond comprehension.
The risen body stretched its limbs in a stiff, mechanical motion—like a wind-up toy—and stood. Only the head remained tilted at a ninety-degree angle as the eyes slowly opened.
Unfocused pupils. Lightless eyes. They swept the room.
"Ferri…"
"That's impossible! The body was definitely dead! The revival—it failed!"
Wilhelm, grasping at a faint hope, tried to call out to Ferris, but midway through, Ferris anticipated his intention and screamed his verdict.
Hearing it, Wilhelm immediately made his decision.
That is— "Subaru-dono, forgive me—!"
Even without a sword in hand, the Sword Demon's technique lost none of its razor edge.
Wilhelm snatched up the jacket he had discarded on the floor with a crouching motion, wrung it in his hands drenched in Subaru's blood, and launched his entire body forward, hurling the fabric like a spear.
Gathering speed, adding the weight of blood, twisting the tip as it pierced the air—it was a lance of cloth. With a technique that could only be called Cloth Spear Art, he struck preemptively at the rising Subaru.
True to his aim, the jacket's tip plunged into Subaru's face like a funnel— "—Un."
A cascade of shadows surged up from below, swallowed the cloth whole, and annihilated Wilhelm's strike.
Seeing it arrive with no preparatory motion whatsoever, Wilhelm instinctively jerked his arm back—but damage could not be avoided. Three fingers on his right hand, along with the cloth, were torn off at the first knuckle.
Leaping backward, blood dripping from his hand, Wilhelm clicked his tongue and put distance between himself and the standing Subaru.
"Felix! Take Emilia-sama and get out of here immediately! I'll hold the line!"
"I don't even have a single sword… just this short blade, nya!"
Rolling toward the corner of the room, Ferris flung the dagger he had been carrying at his hip toward Wilhelm. Wilhelm caught it in his left hand and, with a flick of his wrist, drew it from its sheath. "Short prey feels different," he muttered as— "Get out of the mansion and report to Crusch-sama—no, that won't work right now. Felix, use your own judgment. Round up the knights!"
"Vil-old-man all by yourself… things look rough?"
"Equal to the White Whale, or perhaps… What exactly did you have caged inside you, Subaru-dono?"
Gauging the opponent's fighting power, Wilhelm drew a sharp breath, cold sweat beading on his face.
Before the Sword Demon on full alert, Subaru dangled both arms at his sides, his gaze wandering without focus, his upper body swaying left and right.
No reason. Perhaps barely any consciousness either.
The question was whether, in such a state, he still possessed self-preservation instincts.
Wilhelm and Subaru stared each other down—the existence that Subaru had become, utterly unknown.
Meanwhile, Subaru's consciousness looked on from above, battered by a storm of questions.
The situation had clearly shifted from before.
Subaru, whose heart had already been shattered by being shown his sin, was now shown an incomprehensible afterworld on top of it.
What exactly was this scene? Was it something that had truly happened? If it hadn't, then what meaning did it hold? Why was his consciousness here, of all places?
Nothing made sense. Nothing made sense at all, but— "Felix! Emilia-sama—!"
"I know, I know! Emilia-sama, over here…!?"
Responding to Wilhelm's urgent cry, Ferris crossed the room and roughly hauled the collapsing Emilia to her feet. But the instant after, a violent tremor ran through Ferris's expression.
The reason was— "…How dare you make Lia cry."
White miasma bloomed as a small shadow descended into the center of the room.
Gray fur. A tail roughly as long as its body. Small enough to fit in one's palm—yet the pressure it exuded was enough to mistake it for a savage beast one had to look up at.
The Great Spirit, unseen for so long, hovered in the center of the room, looking down at Subaru. Its expression held a hard-to-read severity, and its whispered words dripped with loathing.
"The savage acts of this body's owner are each worth ten thousand deaths—
Cold killing intent saturated the narrow room. Wilhelm, his breath turning to white fog, set his jaw tight as he watched
"A spirit… Emilia-sama, surely…"
"Lia is unconscious. By the contract, I act on my own judgment. The Witch will not be forgiven. Lia will be protected. —And the man who made Lia cry—I won't forgive him either."
"If you fight here now, the damage—"
"My vow has been broken, and Lia's heart has been frozen. —It's time to end this."
Ignoring Wilhelm's plea, Puck's killing intent only intensified.
White miasma filled the room to the brim. It began to freeze. Everything began to die. In a world where even breath might freeze solid, Subaru bore the full weight of Puck's murderous will.
Subaru raised his head and looked at Puck for the first time.
Eyes that reflected nothing fixed on Puck, floating in midair. Then, suddenly, his eyelids moved.
And— "————"
He sneered.
Subaru's corpse twisted its cheek and sneered at Puck.
An expression brimming with malice, distorted and twisted—a mocking, contemptuous grin.
*'————Stop.* Having witnessed everything up to that point, Subaru's consciousness cried out for the end to be halted.
But it did not reach.
Raising its small paw and striking downward, Puck conjured a miniature glacier inside the room. Absolute zero rushed to consume Subaru's corpse—but from below, a geyser of shadow surged up to meet it. A torrent of mana raged through the narrow confines, catching even Wilhelm and Ferris in its vortex before detonating—screams and shrieks, the crack of ice, the sound of shattering things chaining together, and before Subaru's eyes, white oblivion and black despair filled everything at once.
*'————!!
With a soft snap, as though a power switch had been flipped, the world's colors vanished.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ "——Buh."
The pain of his face slamming into the ground jolted Subaru's consciousness back to wakefulness.
His chin struck the damp floor, and sharp pain brought tears to his eyes as he shook his head.
He immediately looked up, his gaze sweeping the surroundings. —No abnormalities.
"In the… tomb…"
The cold air, the dark space, the dampness of the floor, the stale smell—unmistakably the inside of the tomb.
Confirming that, Subaru next opened and closed both hands, checking that his limbs felt normal. His ragged breathing gradually steadied, and he exhaled deeply to forcibly restore calm.
But he could not drive away the sensation of his innards quaking at the root.
"A daydream… yeah, right. Not a chance. But that was…"
What had that been?
Forced to witness scenes against his will, Subaru reviewed his current situation.
Without question, what he had just seen was the scene of Subaru after his death.
Emilia's scream upon witnessing Subaru's death. The devotion of Wilhelm and Ferris that never reached him. And that final, nightmarish clash of powers.
The wounds the first half had carved into his heart, and the suspicion the second half had planted there—both had hammered incomprehensibility and uncontrollability into his soul.
"Ugh—buh—"
The moment he remembered, Subaru doubled over as though his organs were being wrung out, and vomited the contents of his stomach onto the floor.
That said, he had barely eaten anything since dinner. All that came up was a small amount of tea moisture from half an hour ago and some yellowish gastric fluid.
He repeatedly mimed the motion of throwing up, contracting his stomach to appease the body's demands.
And as he retched again and again, Subaru noticed that he had an inkling of what had changed about his situation—and what had caused it.
Inside the tomb, but not summoned to
"No way—the 'Trial'…? Not the past, but the second one…!?"
The possibility that a second 'Trial' had begun—separate from the first that had confronted him with the past.
Realizing this, Subaru was stunned.
For Subaru, overcoming the first 'Trial' had been only a few days ago. But that was only in terms of his soul; as far as his body was concerned, it had been mere hours in this world. He should not have met the conditions to advance to the next stage of the original 'Trial.' And yet, if the 'Trial' had begun regardless, it could only be called an irregularity. Above all, according to what Echidna had said— "She said it wouldn't be as painful as facing the past…"
—If what Subaru had just witnessed was part of the 'Trial,' then even though it had merely traced the surface of it, he could sense that this was the worst possible turn of events.
That scene, for Subaru, was what lay beyond hell.
Hell—Subaru had seen it countless times. He was aware of that.
And to grasp the best possible future, he had resolved to look upon that hell as many times as it took.
—But as for the depths below even hell, the world beneath the abyss—preparing himself for that was something else entirely.
*'Look at the impossible now before you.' "What—!?"
Startled by the terrifying experience and wavering between retreat and resolve, Subaru's ear was suddenly grazed by a whispered voice.
The shock made him stiffen—and in that instant, the loss of consciousness seized his body.
He tried to prop himself up, but could no longer hold himself and collapsed from his shoulder back to the floor.
He desperately tried to lift his face, but both his eyelids and his neck could not resist the invisible force, and he was dragged straight to the bottom of the abyss.
—The 'Trial'—the very bottom of hell—was welcoming Subaru once more.
'————' When his eyes opened, Subaru found himself in a grassland, having just had his throat cut by Julius's blade—and was made to consciously perceive his sin all over again.