This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.
In the most recent parts, the protagonist’s crew, composed of a few main people from duchess Crusch Karsten’s camp as well as the Iron Fang’s mercenaries, intended to decapitate the branch of the Witch’s Cult they were attacking, but they end up figuring out that their leader’s consciousness can jump from body to body whenever he dies. They decided to regroup with Crusch’ team, which was handling the other half of the forest where the fight takes place.
GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.
Your group has run towards the border of the forest with such haste that a few branches and thorny plants have scratched your arms and legs, and the wounds bleed slowly. But eventually your team bursts out of the forest into the open, and you are bathed by the full morning sun again. You appeared on the side of the wide road that leads towards the village.
You force yourself to keep your legs from buckling. You are sweating, your head hurts, your body feels tender like a bruised fruit, and you are running on adrenaline.
Some people are walking as fast as they can through the road towards the village. Someone from your group says something, but your ears are ringing. As you stride towards the strangers, you notice they are wearing the armorial bearings that identify them as belonging to the House of Karsten. Some have bandages around their heads, their legs or their arms, and those who can walk entirely by themselves are carrying fellow soldiers on their shoulders, or hauling them like deadweight between two.
When they realize your group is approaching, a couple of them unsheathe their swords and almost panic, but when they realize you are friendly, they are relieved.
You approach a young guy, maybe twenty two years old, who wears a bandage that covers his right eye. He’s carrying an unconscious soldier who has lost half an arm.
“The duchess, is she alive? Have you also seen a blue-haired maid?”, you ask with a nervous voice.
“The duchess was covering our retreat, and that blue-haired maid has massacred a good bunch of cultists with an enormous flail! She’s a demon!”
“That she is. Where-…?”
A female voice you recognize calls out your name. Your heart jumps, and warmth rises to your throat. Rem is running towards you along the road, while behind her a few other soldiers are exiting the forest. Your beloved demon is holding on to the grip of her flail with her right hand, and to the enormous, blood-dyed spiked ball with her left. Her servant outfit is also heavily stained.
While you run towards her you trip on the uneven stones that pave the road, and when you manage to stand up again with your trembling legs, Rem has already reached you. She smiles widely and her eyes are warm.
“Subaru, you are unharmed!”
You stroke her pretty face.
“I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m certainly alive. Rem, my lovely girl, I want to hug you, kiss you, and do other things with you right this instant, but there’s also the matter of you holding that enormous spiked ball that is dripping blood and brain matter. That’s a good sign in any case. What happened? Is Crusch alive?”
Rem looks behind her towards the spot of the forest’s border where the soldiers were coming from.
“Last I saw her. The duchess volunteered to stay and fight against a superpowered cultist. I think he has the Unseen Hands ability we spoke about. We had ambushed two units without issue, but then we came across a third one as they were traversing the forest. It’s like someone alerted them that we were coming, even though our ambushes were flawless. And around fifteen minutes ago, a tall man with his hood down, speaking like a madman, appeared out of nowhere and killed a bunch of soldiers. There were plenty of casualties, Subaru…”
“That’s around the time we killed our last Petelgeuse”, Wilhelm says from some steps behind you.
“Yeah, his consciousness must have transferred to a Finger on that side of the forest”, you say with urgency. “We need to help her, Wilhelm!”
“I absolutely agree.”
You get close to Rem and put your dirty hand on her mostly clean shoulder.
“Rem, make sure the wounded reach the village, and then protect the place. Your sister must be handling things already, but if some of the cultists have already decided to begin the assault, they might either massacre people at the village or hit straight for the mansion. Someone should probably locate Emilia as well.”
Rem’s eyes glisten with worry.
“Can’t you come with me?”
You open your mouth to speak, but Wilhelm gets ahead.
“Mr. Natsuki has already faced and survived worse threats than what we are going to handle now. Please, miss Rem, hurry. Time is of the essence.”
Rem nods and begins to run towards the injured soldiers. You both exchange nods that don’t properly communicate how relieved you are that she’s doing well.
Your group, including Wilhelm, Julius, Ferris, and a bunch of mercenaries, run towards the spot in the forest that the soldiers had used to leave it. You look over your shoulder at Ferris.
“The apparently numerous wounded soldiers need you more than us, Ferris. You should go to the village.”
You hadn’t focused on Ferris’ expression of distress, nor the fear obvious in her eyes.
“Like hell! I will first make sure that Crusch comes out alive!”
You don’t want to argue. You dislike that you’ve had to shade yourself with the tree tops again when you had just escaped this place, but you can’t imagine how you will feel if you find out that Crusch has been killed. Even though the duchess isn’t Rem, nor Emilia, you care for her to the extent that you’ll want to kill yourself to avoid continuing a life where you have abandoned her to die.
The sounds of crunching leaves, along with a few scattering critters, alert your group that some people are coming in fast. You hide strategically behind some trunks. When three cultists appear with their daggers drawn, Wilhelm lunges forward and decapitates one. Julius impales another cultist’s heart with his sword, and Wilhelm murders the last one so fast you can’t see where he hit him. You leave the corpses behind and keep running.
Shortly after you hear a crazed, unintelligible male voice with a cadence you recognize
“We’re almost there!”, you shout almost out of breath.
Your group comes out into a clearing similar to the ones the cultists had cleared in your half of the forest. Closest to you, the duchess of Karsten is standing while wielding her fancy sword. She’s facing away from you, and her waving red cape is splashed with darker blood. On the opposite side of the clearing stands a tall man, maybe around a hundred and eighty five centimeters, in his forties, with a full beard, and who in general looks like a lumberjack despite the black robe. Around him there are dead soldiers strewn, most dismembered, some crushed. From the cultist’s back, his shadow has swollen into the elongated, ghostly arms that you recognize, but so far he’d need to take a few strides before he could reach Crusch.
This version of Petelgeuse was yelling something likely annoying at the duchess, but when he saw you emerge, he trembled and pointed at you angrily.
“Blasphemer! Rotten, hollow vermin of this broken world! Produce my stolen Gospel before I tear the limbs off everyone you know!”
“Again with that book! Fuck off, Petelgeuse!”
“You are unworthy of Her blessing!”
Crusch looks back just enough to identify those who had come up to her from behind, and then she focuses again on the madman.
“Ferris, Subaru, everyone, I’m so glad you are alive”, she says with a tired voice.
You were going to reply that you are also happy that she’s unharmed, but that’s not the case. Long, half-dried filaments of blood hang from her stained blade, and there are at least two dagger wounds on the side of her torso, under her breastplate. Those areas of her uniform are still wet. You wonder how many of the dead cultists lying around she has killed.
You look for a brief moment at Ferris, who is tightening her lips maybe wanting to avoid distracting her lady. You open your mouth to speak, but the madman’s deep voice floods the clearing.
“The duchess of Karsten, a famous unbeliever whose pawns have resisted, have fought, have murdered my fellow believers in Her love. A royal candidate as well, to fulfill your meaningless role in a passing nation which will fall to oblivion like so many have before! In the end, despite how carefully your ancestors have engineered their line to stand against the putrefaction of time, you are merely a perishable human being who takes a few steps in this world and disappears! You are nothing but a dot against the endless book of Her love!”
“Shut it, idiot!”, you yell.
That annoys Petelgeuse, who narrows his eyes, but while staring at you he pays attention to your companions.
“Is that you, Wilhelm, the king’s dog? Wilhelm van Astrea, another temporarily powerful unbeliever, now ravaged by the unstoppable passage of time! When the worms make a feast out of you, me and my legion of fellow believers will keep fighting to bring Her eternal love back into this world!”
“I have killed you three times,” Wilhelm says with a grave voice that betrays his disdain. “If necessary I will kill you a thousand.”
“Subaru,” Crusch says with a soft voice, barely turning her head. “did you meet my wounded soldiers along the way?”
“Yeah, Rem is escorting them to the village! It seems they are in the clear.”
“That friend of yours is something else. I am glad.”
Crusch clears her throat, steels herself and takes a few steps forward while wielding her sword with two hands, but holding it at her right side, as at the beginning of a wide swing.
Julius speaks softly to his groupies, who are dancing over his palm. The lights fly in an arc until they hover behind Crusch’s head without her noticing.
Petelgeuse advances a little, and his ghostly arms bend in parallel on both sides of the madman, then lock in place like a spider’s legs when it’s ready to pounce.
“Now witness! I will close my Unseen Hands around your duchess, and then squeeze slowly until this pompous unbeliever pleads for a mercy that won’t come.”
You clench your fists hard enough to puncture your flesh with your nails. You are so enraged you want to vomit. You son of a bitch, you think, how dare you say that to my mother!? You take a step forward, but Wilhelm grabs your arm. He’s staring at the duchess with a serious but otherwise calm expression.
Crusch plants her feet firmly on the grass as she turns her torso to her right.
“I’m going to disappoint you, fiend, because I don’t need to get that close to erase your stain from the world.”
Crusch shivers for a moment, and a soft blue flame envelops her sword’s blade. She swings her sword sharply from the lower right to the upper left, slicing the air, and then holds the pose. Petelgeuse’s ghostly arms twitch as if confused. Then you see a slash opened in your view of Petelgeuse as if the blade had cut space itself. In a second, the diagonal break in the view slides towards the madman, entering his torso at the height of his heart, and behind him into the line of trees. Petelgeuse had begun to yell when part of his torso slips off the rest of it while what seems like liters of blood spill out. Behind him, a tree, half chopped, slumps backwards into other trees, but a fully detached trunk falls over the madman’s remains, crushing his lower half as well as other strewn corpses.
Nobody says anything as Crusch shakes her sword to remove part of the blood, and then she sheathes it.
The madman’s upper half trembles on the ground. He attempts to support himself on the bloody stumps of his arms, and lifts his face towards your group to speak, even though blood keeps leaking from his mouth.
“How many Fingers are you going to ruin!?”, he slurs as loud as he can. “No matter, I have some more. I know where you are, unbelievers, and what you are guarding.”
Once Petelgeuse lies still, Ferris runs to her lady, holds her waist with one hand and with the other Ferris hangs her healing magic over the wounds on her torso.
“I thank you, Ferris,” Crusch says, “but miss Rem provided first aid soon after I got stabbed.”
You feel giddy, and you approach the tired looking duchess with a smile on your face.
“What the hell was that awesome thing you just did? A magic spell?”
Crusch drops her war face for a moment to smile back warmly.
“Subaru. Nothing as complicated as magic. The Karsten have passed down this blessing for many generations. Not everybody gets it, but those who do hold the responsibility to use it for good.”
Wilhelm looks around for threats.
“We should get back as soon as possible. Petelgeuse is going to possess another body, whose location we have no clue about.”
Your team walks briskly towards the road right out of the forest.
“What about the healthy soldiers, Crusch?”, you ask. “Nobody stayed behind for you?”
“I ordered them to carry the wounded to safety. Apart from them, when we realized that at least one of the units of cultists was on the move, I split my team into two, so the other half could scout and ambush other possible units in the forest before the cultists joined up and assaulted either the village or the mansion.”
“Standing alone in the open in front of that insane… thing”, Ferris says, barely disguising her anger. “What if you had fallen? What about your household, or the kingdom?”
“He didn’t know what I can do, Ferris. Everything is fine.”
“In any case,” you say, “the rest of your guys in the forest are likely to run into Ricardo, his supersonic cannibal, and the rest of his half-beasts. I feel a bit sorry about whoever they target.”
As you and Rem walk through the dirt path that, once you pass a villager’s two-story home, opens up to the village’s plaza, you see Ram standing guard with a full view of the surrounding forest, as well as the wider path that goes uphill and eventually reaches Roswaal’s mansion. Distributed through the bottlenecks produced by houses or natural rock formations, villagers armed with worn swords and pitchforks pretend like they aren’t going to either fall dead or run away the moment a cultist appears. You spot the lunatic that passes for a village chief around these parts, and he’s wearing his wizardly robe that actual magicians would rather burn than even look at. That guy also has something going on with ducks, but you never got around to caring about it.
Anyway, Ram spots you two as you approach her. Rem had already greeted her once she came with the wounded, but Rem’s bitchy sister hadn’t seen you since Emilia exiled you for acting like an idiot. Ram holds your gaze with the dismissive expression that she reserves almost exclusively for you, and you discover that you really hadn’t missed this woman at all during the confusingly long succession of two days at the capital that you wasted so many energies in. It’s hard to comprehend how this Ram could show to the world such a close copy of your beloved’s face, except for Rem’s light blue hair on top, and yet use it mostly for souring everyone’s mood. You fear you might grow an aversion towards your girlfriend just because she reminds you of the senior servant.
“Ram, I’m so glad to see you again”, you say.
“You’ve disappointed lord Roswaal’s camp twice, Mr. Natsuki. Do you know how?”
You take a deep breath.
“By showing my dumb face again?”
“That’s one, when Emilia was very clear that you weren’t to return. Do you have any idea of how much pain and turmoil you have caused her, when she needs to concentrate on the fight for the throne?”
“I kinda got all that the first time. What is my second failure?”
Ram lowers her head slightly and narrows her eyes, but Rem’s presence right next to you softens the senior servant.
“You are so lucky that my sweet sister has taken pity on you. She always cared for broken and useless things. And I suppose that your buffoonery can confuse the feeble-minded into accepting your company, which is why you seem to have earned quite a bit of following in opposite camps.”
“You still haven’t stated what’s the second way I’ve disappointed you.”
She opens her mouth slightly and furrows her brow, while letting a half-vocalized noise escape from her mouth, as if she can’t believe you are treating her with such disrespect.
“Mr. Natsuki, once the average citizen of this kingdom learns that duchess Karsten’s as well as Anastasia Hoshin’s camps have defended lord Roswaal’s domain instead of the lord himself, what do you think that will mean for Emilia’s prospects as the future ruler?”
“It gives points to them instead of to Emilia’s candidacy, you mean?”
“That much you did understand.”
Ram was about to continue, but you interrupt her.
“Would you rather let Emilia die?”
Ram snorts, and shifts her weight.
“What would we do if the exiled buffoon weren’t here to save us poor defenseless yokels?”
Hey, cool it with the buffoon stuff, you want to say. You work for a clown!
“You would have died, Ram, and so would have pretty much everybody else in Roswaal’s camp. I guess that every single person would have eventually.”
Ram narrows an eye so much she almost closes it, and advances one step towards you.
“The same way Emilia needed to be defended, protected, at the royal summons? You have some obsession, Mr. Natsuki, that the world won’t turn unless you are there to spin it.”
Rem speaks up with her sweet voice.
“… What Subaru said is true, sis.”
Rem’s words stun the senior servant, and her expression takes a few seconds to unthaw. She looks at her sister as if Ram couldn’t have heard those words.
“What are you saying, Rem?”
“The Witch’s Cult’s forces truly would have overwhelmed the village as well as lord Roswaal’s mansion, and given that the cultists had learned the means to access Roswaal’s inner sanctum, where Emilia was likely told to hide if her life was seriously threatened, the Witch’s Cult would have succeded with virtually a hundred percent certainty.”
Ram steps back while she shakes her head lightly. She holds her sister’s calm gaze with a look of betrayal.
“My own dear sister.”
You sigh.
“Ram, if circumstances were different, my nature paired with your constant need to belittle me, humiliate me, question my usefulness and intelligence along with my intrinsic value as a living being, could have turned our relationship into a lifelong love story. I assume that demeaning those in lower positions to yours gets you off, which is fine. God knows there are few things more important in this life than satisfying one’s fetishes.”
“How… indecent…”
“However, we need to start treating each other better, because if there’s such a thing as a sister-in-law in this fantasy world of yours, you are going to be it. You are going to become part of my family, and me of yours. So I look forward to our decades long relationship, sis.”
Ram snorts mockingly, but when her gaze slides to her sister, Rem blushes, lowers her head and hugs your arm, cuddling up to you.
“We are in love, Ram! And one day we’ll have a huge family of half-demons!”
Ram goes pale as her face freezes. Her legs tremble, and the senior servant staggers away. A few steps later, she crouches as if to hug her knees, her back convulses, she retches and vomits copiously into a growing puddle.
Around fifteen seconds later, the senior servant is still going.
“You never break character, do you”, you say with a low voice.
The villagers had set up a zone for the wounded, as well as to line up the sheet covered corpses that are also going to travel to the capital. Ferris and Rem are checking on the progress of the numerous soldiers, and fewer half-beast people, who have found out how it feels to get a cultist dagger stuck in their body, or to be hurled towards trees by an invisible hand, or to have their limbs crushed or torn off by an invisible hand. Whenever the kingdom’s best healer finishes her round of checking up of everybody who isn’t Crusch, Ferris returns to her lady and concentrates on making sure there’s no chance the duchess will die mid-sentence.
Crusch has taken off her breastplate for the treatment, and had sat down on an outside table to eat a home-cooked meal that some impressed family of villagers wanted to serve the duchess of Karsten. Crusch looks tired, and when her mask drops for a couple of seconds, she becomes mournful.
You want to apologize to her the same way you did to Ricardo. Under every sheet from which usually feet stick out, there’s a life that was cut short because you wanted to save Emilia, and the entire world for that matter. Despite that likely most inhabitants of this world would have died in the subsequent, cunt-induced Apocalypse, you wait for anyone to come and blame you for every death, because you feel the guilt in your bones.
You were checking the surroundings, the distant figures of Wilhelm and Julius coordinating the defense at the entrance of the village, when you look back at Crusch to find out that she had been staring at you with an inquisitive, concerned expression.
“How are you doing with all of this, Subaru? We are soldiers, but until a few days ago you didn’t seem to have picked up a sword in your life.”
Thank you for reminding me about that public beating, mom, you think.
“I can’t say I like being on the defensive, nor on the offensive for that matter. I had also expected us to come out clean after a series of ambushes.”
Crusch glances for a moment at the numerous wounded and the line of corpses.
“It would be so nice if plans could work out without any obstacles, but this is war. Has your camp made sure that Emilia is alright? I haven’t been able to move much since I entered the village, but people are quite tight-lipped about it.”
“Emilia is alive.”
Crusch looks at you with a flash of sadness in her lovely eyes.
“You too, Subaru? How do you know?”
“Because if Emilia had died, an impossible, flesh-freezing winter would have descended upon us.”
Crusch looks confused, and seems to wait for you to explain yourself.
“I really cannot say more than that, Crusch, even to you. Puck knows that the inner sanctum isn’t safe, so unless he’s a complete idiot he wouldn’t have hidden her there. They must be holed up in some other place that likely only them both know. I don’t mind that they don’t show up as long as they remain safe.”
“And the lord? It is, after all, his responsibility to defend his own domain.”
When you picture Roswall and his fantasy clown makeup, you feel your blood heating up.
“That’s what I kept saying. Roswaal should have been here and made sure everyone he supposedly cares about survived. But it seems that he’s stuck in some other town to handle some troublemaker, and you can’t send the guy an e-mail. Still, that bastard knew that presenting the Witch of Frost to the world meant that the Witch’s Cult was going to attempt to kidnap my friend, but the lord concerned himself with other necessarily less urgent matters. I tell you, this long, confusing series of repeating events has made me not want to deal with clowns ever again.”
Ferris clears her throat. You are surprised by how tense and angry she looks, as if she’s about to berate you. However, she’s looking at her lady as well.
“My lady and Subaru, I urge you to speed up the evacuation. I know that we haven’t finished the fight, but this is no place to handle the recovery of the fallen. Especially yours, duchess.”
“But we haven’t finished it, Ferris”, Crusch says.
“You have. You will risk your life unnecessarily for other people’s sake, when you have the future of many, many citizens to account for.”
“They explained Petelgeuse’s nature clearly. He must have transferred his consciousness to some other body, and he’s unlikely to have given up on performing the ritual today.”
Ferris’ cat ears twitch, and she rubs one eye. She was about to speak to Crusch again but she looks up at you.
“Please, Subaru, give us some privacy. Camp matters.”
You shrug, excuse yourself an wander away. These people are Emilia’s opponents no matter how you feel about them.
After Ram found you walking around and staring at how the Iron Fang’s big wolves either slept, ate or played around in a nearby field, she urged you to do something useful, and even blackmailed you with the notion that you had to remain in good terms with your future sister-in-law. You took guard duty in a somewhat elevated position, armed with a worn sword and staring constantly at the sea of trees in case some black-robed figure popped out.
You first heard a tumult coming from the entrance of the village, and then a couple of Crusch’s soldiers came up to the village’s plaza to announce that the half-beast people had returned. Ricardo is walking up the dirt road that leads to the village. He’s followed by a good bunch of his white-robed crew, including his monocled quartermaster and Mimi, who is walking briskly with her tiny legs, and who despite having accrued new blood stains in her matted fur and her white, orange-lined robe, she’s showing a carefree smile.
You run up to meet the Iron Fang’s captain.
“How did it go, Ricardo? Did you kill a new bunch of those creepy bastards?”
Ricardo laughs loudly.
“You know it! We didn’t come across that madman either, don’t know where he could be. So we didn’t lose any people. We swept the area for a while, but the forest is now clear as far as our senses go. And they are pretty good ones!”
You hadn’t realized that Wilhelm is standing next to you.
“Mr. Welkin, did you notice by chance if any of the cultist units lacked any of its members?”
Ricardo looks bewildered as if nobody had asked him to count before. He shrugs and scratches the back of his furry head.
“All I can say is that everyone we met we killed. Some we found on the way as they were moving through the trees.”
“I see. Thank you for your work, Mr. Welkin.”
Ricardo grins.
“Our pleasure. Ah, I forgot! We got a captive!”
You snap back your head in surprise.
“A captive? Why would you want to capture one of those bastards alive?”
Ricardo didn’t hear you, because he had turned to address a few of his men. Those half-beast soldiers don’t seem to be the right ones. Ricardo walks away for a moment, only to return with a half-boar guy who is carrying a human being whose ankles are bound with a rope.
“It’s something of a miracle that this little guy survived”, Ricardo says excitedly, “If the lieutenant had aimed a bit to the right, he would have blown up as well. He was in one of the cultist camps, hanging from a spit over a pile of kindling. Didn’t know you humans ate each other!”
You don’t know why Ricardo is surprised about that, given that his lieutenant is half-human and she still eats people.
“I doubt they were going to burn alive one of their own, for sure…”, you say, and wait for the half-boar guy to let the captive down.
The half-boar guy throws the captive on the ground casually, and the bound captive groans. You can’t see his face, but the captive seems young, has a messy head of hair and wears a merchant outfit. When he turns to look around, you recognize Otto Suwen, who looks tired and confused and is squinting at the morning light.
Before you know it you have crouched, you are resting your hands on your knees, and have burst out laughing. Ricardo also laughs for some reason.
Otto sits up. As he takes deep breaths, he’s looking up at the spectators as if they might decide to hang him over another campfire.
“I-I am grateful that this army of half-beast people rescued me, with such explicit methods, from impending doom, and yet I cannot but feel troubled that their general has burst out laughing upon my misfortune.”
You wipe your eyes and contain your laughter. You feel relieved, as if someone had told a very good joke after a tense meeting.
“Sorry, man. I’m just happy that we got you before those cultist fucks did to you whatever crazy shit they were intending. Please, someone free him.”
A fox man scout you recognize crouches next to the merchant and cuts his ropes with a dagger. When he’s finished, you offer a hand to Otto and haul him to his feet. He brushes himself off. He’s frowning and narrowing his eyes as if he has a headache.
“Ah, just my luck”, Otto says. “I couldn’t get through Flugel Road last night because of some mist, and then the Witch’s Cult captures me. I can’t even be surprised at this point! But I thank you again, all of you, for allowing me to suffer my misfortune for a while longer.”
“How the hell were you captured by the cultists when nobody else was? Didn’t you travel along with a group of merchants and travellers?”
“All I remember, sir general, is having drunk too much, getting off my carriage and venturing into the forest.”
“Why would you do that?”, you ask while chuckling.
“I-I like to talk with the animals and then take a nap in peace, but…”
Talk with the animals, huh, you think. Poor bastard.
You pat Otto on the back, but then grab his opposite shoulder and squeeze the merchant against you. Although you are feeling silly and want to joke around for a while, this guy has also almost died. You lean towards the bunch of half-beast mercenaries behind your group.
“Yo, Tivey!”
The tiny quartermaster leaves his sister’s side and comes over to you while adjusting his monocle.
“General!”
“Quartermaster, please seat this guy somewhere comfortable and prepare him a ration of dried slime, will you?”
“Y-Yes, sir.” He tugs on the merchant’s pants. “Please follow me, mister merchant. You are in good hands.”
As Tivey leads him towards the outside tables where some wounded soldiers are eating meals, Otto staggers behind him, but he looks at you over his shoulder as if asking for help.
“Dried slime!? I guess I can’t complain under the circumstances, and yet I feel compelled to…!”
As a minor observation, I love how Mimi being a cannibal, at least regarding half of nature, keeps popping up in the narrative, and it’s something that the AI came up with entirely by itself. It’s just a fun thing for me to throw around, I guess.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 