This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry we witnessed Garfiel going through a mental breakdown, which is more dangerous than usual when the person in question can transform into a ginormous, unstoppable anthropomorphic tiger. Patrasche ended up allowing the protagonist to keep struggling for a bit longer. That ground dragon is the only innocent character in this tale.

This part is much shorter than the rest, the shortest in fact, because I have already written most of the following one and it turned out to be fucking long and had a different feel.

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You are lying on a floor made out of lots of flat stones. You recognize it as the antechamber, but your body knows immediately that something is wrong. When you breathe, the air comes out as a fleeting, misty cloud, and then you feel the cold. It’s as if a winter has descended. Winter has never meant anything good in this new world of yours. The weather in Sanctuary didn’t suggest this cold, so either a lot of time has passed, or Emilia has died.
You sit up and hug yourself. It’s far too cold for your current clothes, and you can’t keep your teeth from chattering. The chamber is illuminated by the shafts of light the descend from the openings in the stone roof, but you notice that snow has amassed on the floor below the openings. Even if Emilia has died, and the world is on its way to another Apocalypse, you must have been out cold for a while.
You hide your face in your hands and try to focus on your situation. With every breath, a few of your ribs hurt. You must have broken some of them when you flew off Patrasche. Garfiel transformed into a gigantic, unstoppable tiger, and he killed Otto, he killed those villagers, he killed your Patrasche… This world needs to end already. It’s another failed run. But at least you will take the opportunity to figure out why the hell would it be snowing suddenly. If Emilia has died, you doubt it would have been by Garfiel’s hands, unless the hick bastard decided to turn around and massacre absolutely everybody else in Sanctuary. Would he have done so?
“Emilia?”, you find yourself calling out, but no reply comes back.
Your eyes are starting to burn, and you’re beginning to feel dizzy. You want to hold the half-elf in your arms and feel for a while that everything is alright. To do so you will need to die again, and you always hate to anticipate that incoming pain and in which form it will come this time. You are far away from that fancy suicide device back at the capital, and it’s not as if you can rely on the safe death that a gun provides.
From the feeling in your chest and the blurry vision in front of you, you can tell your heart is about to give out at any given moment. You stagger up while you grit your teeth. You will return to Ryuzu’s place, that nice Ryuzu that baked you cookies, and find out for sure if your Emilia is dead. When you confirm it, you will procure yourself one of the slow deaths by plunging a knife into your carotid artery.
As you walk slowly out of the antechamber and into the darkness of the stone corridor, you feel again that something isn’t right. Shouldn’t the trial have triggered? You should be experiencing the second trial of the three. Is this part of it? If as they suggested, the second trial represents the present, certainly struggling to deal with Sanctuary’s problems is one of the most pressing issues in your current life. You’ll keep that on the back of your mind.
You exit the witches’ tomb and shuffle up to the edge of the platform. The clearing as far as you can see is blanketed in glittering snow, and judging by how it has amassed against the trees, the snow must be shin-deep. The enclosing forest is topped with white. If you weren’t dreading that you need to kill yourself as soon as possible, and also you weren’t risking hypothermia if you aren’t suffering from it already, you would bask in the beauty of this wintry scene.
You jump off the last stone step to wade into the snow. With every third step you take, the snow rises above your ankle. By the time you’ve taken twenty steps it has swallowed your calves. The world is silent except for some occasional bird calls. All the previous times you ended up at the witches’ tomb you could rely on Otto’s carriage to return to the center of the village, but this time you’ll need to trek there on foot. You hope you’ll remember the way.
It takes you what feels like way too long to reach the first villager homes, farms and barns. You don’t see anybody. The barns and grazing fields are devoid of animals, and the only sign of life are the birds that move in the snowed canopy and that fly over the path. You don’t want to check any of the houses, because you don’t want to deal with any of the villagers if they happen to be huddled inside.
The church is one of the tallest structures in this part of the village, so you know you can head in that direction to find it. Once you spot it, you quicken your pace. Your teeth are chattering bad, your lungs tingle from the cold, your hands and feet are getting numb, snot is coming out of your nose. Living is such a bother. You are already aching for the all too short break of floating in that black bath of love, so you can glare with resentment, even though you won’t have eyes any longer, at that traitorous witch.
Once you reach what passes for the village square in Sanctuary, with both Ryuzu’s home and the church-like building in the background, you would have hurried to check on Emilia if it wasn’t because you see that there’s bunch of clothes strewn about the snow, as if someone had ran around to throw the laundry. As you get closer to one of those sets of clothes, though, it looks different. It’s as if a villager had fallen and his body had disappeared, leaving his clothes lying on the floor. You mess them a bit, to see if there’s a hint of any remains, but you don’t notice anything weird about the clothes beyond them being thrown outside and half-frozen.
The large door of the church is open, and you glimpse lots of either people or clothes gathered on the floor. You shiver in the cold and run towards the church. As you enter you hold your breath. Sets of clothes that had belonged to Roswaal’s villagers are gathered on the floor as if, again, their owners had just fallen and then vanished, leaving the clothes behind. You even spot the idiotic village chief’s wizardly robe.
Your heart stops for a moment. You aren’t going to find Emilia’s dress inside Ryuzu’s home, with the half-elf missing, will you?
You can’t think straight as you exit the church again, but some movement near the center of the square makes you stop on your tracks. A white rabbit seems to have emerged of the snow as if it had been burrowing under it. It looks very similar to the rabbits you knew, except for the solid red eyes and a small horn protruding from its forehead. The animal licks its paws, and when you let out a sigh of relief, it lifts its gaze as if it feared a predator. The white fur that covers most of its body is almost as clean as flour, without a single trace of dirt. The soft hair shuffles on its feet as it moves them on the powdery snow. The rabbit focuses its red gaze on you.
You find yourself smiling. Coming across a beautiful little bunny is the only nice thing that has happened to you recently. You trudge your way through the snow, with more difficulty because of how much your ribcage hurts than because of the depth of snow on this square, and you stop within petting distance of the rabbit. It looks up at you curiously while its ears twitch.
“Look at you, what a cute little fella! I haven’t had good experiences with horned animals in this world of yours, but who am I to judge about horniness?”
The rabbit licks its nose and hops a bit to the side. You crouch down as you prepare yourself to pet it.
“What is a cute little bunny like you doing in a place like this? Do you come here often?”
The rabbit hops a bit to the other side, and your hand hovers just out of reach from it.
“Come on, I promise I wont hurt you. Just let me touch you for a moment.”
The rabbit seems to consider it, and then moves a bit forward. You smile, and you reach with your hand to touch the fur of its head. A chill makes you shiver from head to toe as you feel as if you’ve lost a split second of your life. What just happened? Your right hand feels warm, and it keeps warming as something liquid runs down it towards your wrist. You look at your hand and it takes you a moment to register that the palm is covered in blood, and that both your index and middle finger are missing. You scream and stumble back. The blood from your hand makes it slippery and you fall on the ground.
The rabbit sits there looking at you, blood dripping from its mouth. You notice its teeth are unnaturally long, like fangs, but not normal ones. It hops forward with a grunt and bites on your right forearm with its teeth, piercing the skin through the clothes and sinking them into your flesh.
You push yourself with your heels while at the same time you try to kick at the monstrous rabbit, and when you land a hit on its belly, everything below where the rabbit was chomping on your arm tears off. As you scream, blood pumps out what remains of your right arm. The rabbit devours your detached flesh, including its bones, with a few chomps, and then runs around licking every pool and drop of blood as if cleaning the snow.
You stagger to your feet. You are surrounded by furry balls of white that stand or hop around in every direction of the village square. As gray patches grow on the edges of your vision, your entire world turns into dozens of pairs of red eyes staring at you on a white background.
Your legs wobble. You clench your teeth, fearing to make a single sound, but it’s no use. As if controlled by a single voice, every one of the dozens of rabbits that have emerged out of the snow bare their teeth and charge at you from every direction. You raise your remaining hand as if to beg them to stop, but an uncountable number of rabbits leaps towards you and shove their teeth into your flesh. You fall helplessly to the ground. There’s no popping sound when their teeth puncture your skin, but a slurping sound. It’s as if your body is a block of ice-cream, and the blood that spews out is as pleasurable as the sweet treat. The pain does not come immediately, and you just feel a tingling sensation all over your body, but when the shockwaves of pain do come, it’s along with visions of rabbits tearing off your feet, chomping through your thighs, burrowing into your abdomen, munching through your ribcage, pulling off your genitals. Tiny sharp teeth chew through your skin, shattering your bones. Viscous liquids are mixed together in a blender of sharp claws and jagged teeth grinding against fragile brittle bone that ultimately shatters like glass.
You are unable to scream, the only air that escapes is a stifled wheeze. The grayness you see at the edge of your vision begins to engulf your entire field of view, accompanied by a ringing in your ears. You feel the rabbits feeding on you from the inside, roofed by what remains of your ribcage. Other rabbits are biting your neck and your head, crunching bone.
The soft crunching sound of chewing, the sloshing of liquids being mixed, the disgusting squishing noise of your organs being rearranged. Your brain is fried by the excruciating pain. Your spinal cord is shredded apart, and your nerves are pulled taut like guitar strings. Your heart continues fluttering weakly in an attempt to escape the rigid cage that holds it still. With death approaching, you regret not telling Ram you were sorry. You regret not thanking Emilia for everything she’s done. You regret not being able to say one last goodbye to Rem, who surely…
In the blinding redness that your vision has become you get a glimpse of rabbit faces as they leap onto your head and munch on your face. You feel them plunging their teeth into your eyes and pulling them off, then burrowing further into your eye sockets. The front of your skull is punctured as they bore through. The lobes of your brain are torn as they pull outward, then the jelly-like insides are pulled out, scrambling and destroying the gray mass while they finish chewing through all the soft spots. The blood vessels in your brain and spine explode as you feel yourself falling into an endless pit of darkness.

Blackness all around. I can’t see them. Where are they? They are all over me. Something warm seeps into me. I need to escape. I don’t see the way. There’s nothing but blackness. What’s that shape? A woman. A woman with hazy, glowing purple eyes. She’s coming. She’s reaching towards me, her hands have claws. Stay away! Get away from me! Don’t touch me! No, I don’t want it! Get out of my face! I can’t move! I can’t feel my body! I can’t get away!
“I love you I love you I love you I love y-“
“Aaaggh! Help me! I can feel them, they are all over me!”
“I love you I love you I lo-“
“No! Get away! Leave me alone! They are eating me! They are inside me!”
“I love you I-“
“They are inside of my chest! They are tearing me apart! Get out! I need to escape! I can’t move!”
“I love-“
“No! Get out of my face! My throat! I can’t scream! No, not my eyes! They are tearing my face off! They are clawing crunching eating my skull! They are in my brain!”

You are lying on a stone floor. Your mouth is full of dust. You spit, then break into coughs. Where are they? Where have they gone? They aren’t here. I need to get away. You half crawl half push yourself up the ground to stand up, but there’s a body on the floor. A woman. You trip on the woman and fall on your chest. The pain makes you scream, and you scratch at your clotches so you can pull away those monsters from you. You can’t grab them, they are already inside. Why did they eat you? Why did this happen? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t deserve it. They tore me apart, every limb, every organ. They fed on me until I disappeared.
As your body shakes and you clench your fists against the stone floor, you voice escapes in guttural cries.
“Why!? Why!? Why!?”
Someone speaks in your head, with your own voice. You hear yourself saying a sentence that you hadn’t thought.
“I grant you access to my death-dream.”
Your eyes want to close. Your forearms fail to support your weight, and your cheek hits the cold flat stones. Everything goes dark.

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

We reach part sixty, which is as long as the first season got, and yet this one has much more left in store. Don’t know how I feel about that.

In the previous entry we learned that Garfiel might like wrestling a bit too much, that Otto is a true bro and might or might not be able to communicate with animals and insects, that Ram can appreciate people when they do a good job, that Beatrice is probably not a witch cultist, and that Garfiel is supposed to be as strong as an entire army of warriors.

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Ram, Otto and you are hurrying through the path that eventually reaches the barrier that surrounds Sanctuary. Although you are holding on to your beloved ground dragon Patrasche’s reins, who had grown nervous after picking up on the mood, you still don’t just mount Patrasche and make the fastest run for the exit, because you don’t know if Garfiel has figured out you are missing and has planned an ambush along the way.
It’s a cloudy night in which the starlight fails to illuminate properly what passes for streets in Sanctuary, which lack any kind of artificial light at night. As the three of you pass in front of some houses, you spot behind the window frames the worried and curious faces of half-beast people. They must have a good idea of what’s going on, and might not want the trouble that Garfiel and that Ryuzu Shima have brought by kidnapping and imprisoning you. One of the half-beast families is sitting on the yard. When they notice you, the mother, which seems to be half-racoon, turns pale. The father, whose furry half you can’t identify, stands up, puts his hand to his chest and repeats ‘we are sorry’ a few times. They seem afraid, but you understand practically nothing of the dynamic of the people trapped here, or who simply were born, grew up and will end up dying here, with the power structure of the village.
Turns out that Ram’s warning about how short on time you were to escape should have registered in your brain, because the three of you end up staring at Garfiel, who is standing in the middle of the path, in the direction you need to follow, with his feet firmly planted on the ground. He’s glaring with boiling anger, as if he has been stewing in place for a while.
Ram mutters to herself, and then she leans towards your ear as the three of you keep walking at a slower pace.
“There’s little point in admonishing you now about this likely consequence, Barusu, even though I wish I had the time to do so. At least now we know Garfiel’s location. Follow my lead, and whenever I tell you to, get on your ground dragon and ride as fast as you can out of Sanctuary.”
When the three of you get within speaking distance of Garfiel, he begins to talk. The voice is angry and loud, and his sentences are broken by heavy breaths and fury-driven grits.
“Ya broke out… I told ya we woulda let ya go when the princess passed them trials, but ya just hadta make everythin’ harder… I knew from the moment ya came outta that tomb that ya were terrible news, a weird half-pint like ya… Appearin’ from that nasty world outside ta mess up my home, threaten my home… The frickin’ gall of it… Now ya want ta escape and make fools out of me and me gran…? Everybody thinks we’ve done somethin’ wrong…! I give everythin’ for our home, and they side with a cultist fuck… Ungrateful half-breeds…”
You raise a hand intending to calm him down.
“Just take it easy, Garfiel. The whole thing was a misunderstanding, I told you. I’ll just leave your village and return home. That should be alright. You don’t want a weirdo messing up your place, after all.”
“Shut it! Ya broke outta my grip, makin’ me look all stupid in front of gran, after messin’ in our home, and now ya want ta leave as if you had done nothin’…! We treated ya as guests…!”
You realize that Patrasche is growling. As if Garfiel’s enmity wasn’t clear enough, she must have a grudge for that wrestling move the punk pulled on her the first time you met this hick.
“Garfiel, after I leave, Roswaal intends to smooth the whole thing over. I already explained to the clown bastard that it was all a misunderstanding, that you both were acting to secure the peace in the village. So everything is alright. I’m sure we can wake up Ryuzu Bilma so you can enjoy some more of her snacks while you talk it out with Ram.”
“Her… snacks…!? That’s it!? Ya think I can be bribed by some human food!? How damn unthankful ya be, humie! Ungrateful half-breed… Ungrateful… Ungrateful…”
“Human food? What kind of snacks do you prefer, Garfiel? You seemed very fond of those fried potatoes and the cookies.”
“Ugh…! Ungrateful, both of ya…” Garfiel’s anger seems to be replaced by self-deprecation as he mumbles some incomprehensible complaints. “Both of ya… If I weren’t such a weak bastard, this place’d be happy and safe fer everyone. But I failed. So ungrateful…”
Even though Ram had clearly intended for you to stay at a safe distance away from the punk, you step forward a bit, and your senior servant has no choice but to imitate you.
“Hey, you’re not weak”, you say intending to sound friendly, even though your mind is reaching for a wide variety of ‘fuck off, Garfiel’. “You are the strongest man in the world. I managed to escape that dungeon because I scurried out like a common rat.”
Otto, maybe just realizing what you are doing, stutters for a moment and then contributes.
“Y-Yeah! You just need some help!”
Garfiel was hunched over and clawing at the nasty patch of scarred skin between his eyebrows, as if he needed to tear something from himself. He then turns his attention towards the two of you with a glare.
“Shut it. Both of ya. I’ve had it. I could smell it in ya, even though I couldn’t tell as much as the old hag. Ya came to ruin us. Ya have all that place out there in that fancy world made for ya, but ya came to mess our home. The only one we have. I can’t forgive any of that.”
Ram speaks so loud and so sternly that you flinch.
“Garfiel, you will stand aside and allow Mr. Natsuki to leave the village. This is an order from lord Roswaal. If you don’t do so, you will be severely punished.”
Garfiel’s upper lip is twitching. He couldn’t bring himself to hold Ram’s gaze, until he finds the strength to glare openly at her. His nostrils widen.
“Shut it, Ram. Yer so strong an’ tough an’ hot, but ya gave up yer nature to live with the humans. Ta serve that clown bastard. Yer supposed ta live in the woods with yer kind, aren’t ya? I know all ’bout that, I was very inta ya, after all. But yer a traitor as well.”
Ram’s expression doesn’t change.
“You’re a fool.”
Garfiel closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. As he slowly lets it out, he draws a mocking smile.
“A fool, ya say, huh? That’s all ya see when ya look at me, some worthless turd on the side of the road, don’t ya?” He laughs bitterly. “I didn’t wanna realize that, but one can’t keep himself from knowin’ once he does, doesn’t he? I’m so much madder ’bout that than ’bout damn half-pint breakin’ out. It’s all hopeless an’ pointless, ain’t it?”
You swallow, and your hands start trembling even though you thought that your multiple deaths would have steeled you enough to face this violent hick. Garfiel looks dismantled, as if the few things that managed to keep him going in this dead-end village had been torn apart while he watched helplessly.
“Garfiel, please…”, you say softly. “Let us through.”
He breathes harshly. Slowly, his eyes move from Ram to you, and he lets out a low growl.
“I ain’t movin’ anymore fer nobody.”
“You’re not moving…?”
“I’m stayin’ here. I’m gonna live the rest of my days in Sanctuary. Not even a damn half-pint bastard like you, cultist or not, can get me outta here.”
“I’m sure experiencing the world outside will do you some good, Garfiel. We will figure something out to break that barrier, sooner or later. After this whole misunderstanding is cleared out. And I’m sure that our lovely Ram would be open to spend a nice afternoon with such a strong gentleman like yourself.”
Ram’s glare burns the side of your face.
“I will not entertain such a notion”, the senior servant declares. “I will not lower myself to spend any of my precious time allowing what would pass for courting in this cretin’s mind.”
You snap at her.
“You aren’t helping in the slightest, senior servant!”
“Do not use me as bait, Barusu. It damages my integrity.”
“Lower yerself, huh…?”, Garfiel mutters.
Ram takes a deep breath.
“Because that would be taking advantage of someone who obviously has an interest in me.”
“After ya called me a cretin. I think that means stupid. So after ya called me stupid, now ya pretend ya said that because ya care. You think I’m lower than dirt, don’t ya, Ram…?”
“That is not true, I simply…”
“Don’t lie ta me! Ya’ve been mockin’ me since the first time ya came with that clown bastard, an’ ya’ve been doin’ it in front of everyone! Always lettin’ others know how little ya cared, how little I was worth… It killed me.”
Ram shakes her head and exhales through her clenched teeth.
“I don’t wish to waste my time handling your hurt feelings, Garfiel. I’m sure any of your grandmothers will help you with that. You have done nothing to earn your infatuation. As I said, stop threatening us unless you want to suffer the consequences.”
Garfiel chuckles, even though a thin layer of tears is rimming his lower eyelids.
“Ta threaten others with consequences, ya need ta be strong enough to enforce them, don’t ya? So what are ya gonna do against me, Ram? Ya or yer clown bastard whose piss an’ shit ya handle, anyway. What can ya do against me?”
Ram separates her feet and cracks her fingers, moving into a fighting stance.
“I will do what I must, as usual.”
“Oh, well, that’s a good answer! Should I tremble in fear? Maybe… maybe yer gonna go out with a bang?”
You truly don’t want to attract the punk’s attention at the moment, but you also fear what this guy will do to your senior servant after he has faced that she’ll never have anything romantic or sexual to do with him. He doesn’t seem the type to take rejection calmly.
“Garfiel, you wouldn’t hurt Ram, would you? Look at her. You want to mess that pretty face, ruin those long, slender legs of hers?”
“Shut it! Whatcha mean? I ain’t hittin’ her!”
“That’s right, leave the spanking and a little degradation for the bedroom. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Nah, I’m not… not into that sorta stuff.”
“You sure? Not even a little bit?” You sounded disappointed, so you clear your throat and speak calmly. “Doesn’t matter to me. We can still be friends, you know. I’m on your side.”
Garfiel snarls.
“Piss off! I don’t know what I’m doin’ listenin’ to ya! I’ve had enough with the shit that comes outta yer mouth!”
“Fair enough. But don’t forget, if you’re not going to listen to me, you’ll have no chance with Ram. She doesn’t do anything I disapprove of.”
Garfiel groans and holds his head while trembling. Maybe his brain will just burst from all the abuse and mindfucking, and you’ll merely have to step over him.
Ram pushes your shoulder, more strongly than you would have liked, and motions with her head so you and Otto attempt to pass by Garfiel, taking advantage of his current confusion. However, the senior servant herself barely moves.
“Garfiel, we are leaving”, Ram says casually. “We will continue with these matters at another time.”
“Are ya…?”, Garfiel asks with a raspy voice, his gaze lowered.
“Yes, we are. While I would love to stand here and watch the rest of this play, I too have work to do.”
You and Otto start walking properly in the direction of the barrier, with you in the lead and holding on to Patrasche’s reins, but before you know it Garfiel pushes past Ram and blocks your path off with a threatening stance. If you weren’t a sort of immortal, you’d be shitting your pants.
“Move”, you say as firmly as you can.
“I ain’t movin’ for nobody.”
You narrow your eyes.
“So what, you intend to hold us off here until we get bored and turn around?”
Garfiel’s eyes narrow. He moves closer to you and gets in your face.
“I warned ya before, half-pint. I don’t forget, and I don’t forgive. Ya’ve been a pain in my ass since we met. And now I’m goin’ ta break yer fuckin’ legs!”
Garfiel drops down for a legs tackle, but you leap over him and drag Otto with you. You sit on Patrasche’s back, and as Garfiel gets up you kick him in the face, knocking him back.
“Sorry about this”, you say. “You can be an annoying piece of shit, but I still feel sorry for you.”
You must have kicked him harder than you intended, because blood gushes down his face, making him look like a hell beast.
“Yer sorry fer me!? Ya small-timer, lightweight cultist shit pities me!? I was holdin’ back on y’all ’cause I care, but that’s all done. Ain’t no point in it. I’ll have ta make it so I can’t think straight no more. That’s how the world looks best anyway.”
Garfiel’s body begins contort unnaturally as he moves to a crawling position, his once handsome face becoming blotched and twisted. He lets out a gurgling growl, and he glances at Ram as if forcing himself to.
“As they say, Hoshin was Banan’s sunset.”
The punk’s voice has distorted into something closer to a beast’s. Otto gasps, and jumps forward so he stands between you, even though you are mounted on Patrasche, and the mutating punk.
“What, that meant something!?”, you ask, worried and bewildered.
“Of course! It refers to the conquerer Hoshin of the Wastes, who brought the small nation of Banan to ruin! It means surrender or face an all-out attack!”
“Hoshin, like that royal candidate broad?”
“I believe that miss Anastasia Hoshin took that last name as a declaration of inte-“
“We don’t have time to fill the holes in Barusu’s knowledge!”, Ram shouts sternly. She’s pulling back while keeping Garfiel on her sights, as well as distorting the air above her right palm in a swirl. “Otto, get on his ground dragon. Barusu, ride as fast as you can without looking back. I will hold Garfiel off.”
As if Patrasche had understood her words, or the merchant had asked her, she crouches to the ground, and you feel Otto sitting on the saddle behind you. He holds your waist as if he doesn’t quite want to. You don’t take your eyes off your senior servant even after Patrasche stands up and prepares herself to sprint.
“Don’t you dare die here, Ram! If you see the opportunity, flee!”
Garfiel, whose muscles have ballooned already to thrice their size, is growling intermittently while his body grows grotesquely and his bones groan and creak. Ram extends her shooting arm towards the mutating hick.
“Shut it, Barusu, and get out of here!”
You give your steed a light kick, making her sprint away from Garfiel. You hate leaving Ram behind, having been consistently unable to help her while she sacrificed herself for you, even if she does it out of duty, but you grit your teeth and ride like hell. Presumably Ram shoots her wind spell or does something, because a loud sonic boom occurs behind you. You look over your shoulder to see a massive gust of wind kicking up a violent whirlwind past the point where the path bends and the tall treeline hides the view. You look forward and squint to focus on the poorly lighted path.
“I hope any of us, meaning you, knows the way”, you say to Otto, the guilt evident in your voice.
“We informed a few friendlies about our operation before we rescued you, Mr. Natsuki! Goodness, I sure hope our senior servant is alright, and will be for the foreseeable future! I don’t know her all that much, but I can tell she’s serious and competent!”
“Yeah, she’s one of the best for sure.”
You are getting dizzy. Even though you are toughing it out, your imprisonment has fucked with your mind, and you feel weak. You keep having to remind yourself that all this is real.
You look over your shoulder to check Otto’s expression. He’s worried, but keeps craning his neck as if to spot something up ahead.
“Otto, you better come with me to the mansion”, you say with a raspy voice. “Everything is fucked on both sides, but at least you won’t have to suffer the ire of that self-hating, unfairly strong idiot.”
“But who will lead the people, Mr. Natsuki?” He chuckles nervously. “Just a little joke. Of course, I’d rather stay out of trouble, Mr. Natsuki, and I look forward to basking in the sun while that kind, too young trainee serves me soft drinks. But we need to reach our own sanctuary first!”
You feel the pain in your chest, but laugh. The mansion is, of course, no sanctuary of any kind, as it will be overrun by horrible killers soon, if it hasn’t been already. For the first time since Otto broke you out from prison, you wonder if it’s time for you to die.
“Why are you laughing, Mr. Natsuki?”
“I just thought of something funny. I’ll tell you when we’re safe, promise.”
Otto nods silently. He turns to look over his shoulder briefly, then leans forward and squints his eyes. He points with a rigid arm to the treeline in front and to the right of you both.
“There it is!”
In the darkness between two tree trunks dances a ball of light, a will-o’-the-wisp, which mesmerizes you until Patrasche is about to pass it by. That light comes from a lamp that a half-cat villager is holding. A chill runs through your back, as your body believes that you need to defend yourself against an ambush, but the villager motions for you to hurry along the path. After you leave him behind, another lamp lights up in the path ahead.
“What’s going on?”, you ask Otto, confused.
“It’s an escort. They light up the path for us, so we don’t fall into a ditch or something.”
Light after light, you speed up alongside the villager houses and long stretches of farms and grazing fields until you are rushing past them at great speed. With a look back, you see the lights growing smaller and smaller, some already extinguished.
“Most of Sanctuary has gone out into the forest to guide us through the paths along the village to the barrier! Not only lord Roswaal’s villagers, but the locals as well!”, Otto says close to your ear. “They just want to help!”
You choke up. Why would they help you like this? Why would they care? You haven’t done anything of value for them. You haven’t been anything but trouble for everyone.
As those bright lights pass you by in the darkness of this cloudy night, your mind falls into a dreamlike state. You remember many instances of sitting on the back of your dad’s car during night trips, watching the streetlights pass by behind the windows. You are exhausted, weakened and on edge due to having been imprisoned, and you feel that the only thing that is keeping you going is the knowledge that you have gone through much worse.
As the memories of your past world were about to bring tears to your eyes, above the rushing wind you hear loud booms and cracks coming from the forest to your right and behind you, as if trees were falling into others or breaking like branches. The cacophony is increasing, and you get the sense that something huge is trampling through the forest, gaining ground on a parallel path.
“Otto, are you hearing that!?”, you shout.
You twist your neck to look around behind you, but the treeline is too tall. The only evidence of something huge moving through, apart from the noise, are birds that are taking flight and then flying in circles above the area as if they don’t dare come down.
“Unfortunately I can hear it loud and clear, Mr. Natsuki!”, he answers in a state of agitation. “We are getting close to the barrier, that same point where our dear lady Emilia fell unconscious! Let’s forget about the ominous uproar and hope for the best!”
The sound of destruction becomes louder and louder, shaking you up even more than you already are. What could be powerful enough to topple trees of that size?
You reach a straight stretch of the path enclosed by the forest, and you recall seeing it when you first travelled to Sanctuary. Even though the barrier is invisible, you must be less than a minute away from it. There is a group of human villagers gathered like the crowd at the end of a race. You recognize a shirtless guy, the only one who doesn’t care about catching a cold on this chilly night. He’s holding a makeshift lance, and others are also armed. As soon as they notice you, they wave and extend their lamps towards the path up ahead.
The booms and cracks have become deafening. You don’t want to look, but you sense the trees shaking not far from the treeline to your right. Suddenly, as if something was charging, you hear a quick succession of bursts and shaking leaves heading in a diagonal towards the gathered crowd, and then a tree trunk slams down hard on the path a few meters in front of you as if pushed.
Patrasche tries to brake, reclining her back to an extent that you hug her neck to avoid flying off, but as the ground dragon was turning, her flank crashes against the tree trunk, and you find yourself sailing in an arc until you hit the ground hard and roll for a few meters.
The earth shakes from another impact; a tree falling. You struggle to stand up as quickly as you can. Your body hurts like hell, particularly your ribcage, and you have trouble keeping the air in. You stagger around on your wobbly legs trying to get your bearings.
“Run, Mr. Natsuki!”, the pained voice of your friend Otto comes from your right. A curtain of blood running down from his forehead has forced him to close one eye, but he’s pointing at the path to your left. “The barrier is just up ahead! Sprint and don’t stop!”
A massive tremor knocks you off your feet again. Two of the trees of the line a few meters in front of you are pushed aside as if they were bushes, and a figure as tall as the trees and as wide as five tree trunks emerges out of the darkness. You find yourself staring up at a huge anthropomorphic tiger that stands on two feet. Its fur is light blonde with black stripes, except on parts of the head, the torso and the insides of the arms, where it’s skin-colored. The muscles are obscenely swollen even for such a gigantic frame, and parts of its wide torso and bulging arms are covered in gashes as if slashed by a massive blade. In its head, the eyes are bloodshot with murderous rage, but a spot between its eyes and slightly above attracts your attention. There’s a huge patch of scarred skin, as if the tiger had hit its head hard repeatedly against something and then scratched the skin raw.
The tiger opens its enormous maw and roars at you, piercing your eardrums, showering you with warm saliva.
Before you know it you have stood up, and although you are retreating, not fast enough for a tiger man that is looking at you as if in a few seconds it’s going to lunge at you and rip you apart.
“Did you kill Ram, Garfiel…?”, you ask with a trembling, hoarse voice.
The tiger man exhales loudly through its nostrils, hunches over and walks towards you. The strength of its steps alone would crush a person like a bug. When it would take the tiger man lunging forward to grab you, it raises its left arm, twists its torso and opens its clawed paw as if to take a swipe at you.
Otto yells in surprise. You are paralyzed as you stare at the huge paw that comes towards you, but someone pushes you out of the way, and a disturbance in the air makes you spin. You hear a loud, wet splashing sound, a big insect crashing against a windshield, and another liquid hits you as if someone had thrown the contents of a bucket at you. When you lift your gaze again, a bunch of mangled body parts fall on the patches of grass and the dirt. As if the clothes that some of the remains are wearing weren’t enough to identify who they belong to, Otto’s head hits the dirt and rolls, its eyes and mouth open in surprise.
You panic. You can’t think of anything but fleeing from the gigantic tiger man that just made Otto explode, but you don’t want to turn around and run, because you need to keep the monster in your sight. Someone pushes you further down the path, towards the barrier. You suddenly find yourself surrounded by the villagers who had gathered to send you off. You see the determined, yet terrified, face of the shirtless teen, who is wielding a makeshift lance as if he intends to defeat that monster. Other villagers, most of them past their forties, are either throwing rocks at the tiger man’s head, shouting at it or steeling themselves to spear it when they have the chance.
“Monster!”, the teen yells at Garfiel. “Horrible beast! Get back!”
The monster roars. You see its muscles bulge as it moves for a man with a spear, who backs away in panic, only to freeze when he meets the cold metal gaze of the monster. The spearman screams as the claw reaches for him, then slams into the man’s side. The villagers look on in shock as the man’s organs are sent flying into the air.
You can barely feel your legs as you keep retreating. What are you people doing?, you want to ask. Don’t you see that the monster is going to kill you? Why are you fighting instead of fleeing? Nobody else needs to die, not for me. I’m the one who dies so nobody else has to.
A man in his fifties thrusts his lance against the tiger man’s torso, but it breaks as soon at it hits the skin. Garfiel lifts his leg above the man and stomps on him, crushing him against the ground in a burst of blood and guts as if he were less than a can. A teen screams in a panic while running to the dead man’s rescue, only to get torn a part by the swinging blow of a gigantic paw. As Garfiel moves forward, the paw that had crushed that man lifts into the air with a fair portion of guts, which fall over the ground.
The monster lets out a roar that shakes your body, then begins a true massacre. Blood stains the dirt and grass red while guts and intestines litter the ground like fallen leaves. Legs, arms and other parts that you can’t identify are scattered, adding to the mess of blood and guts.
You can’t feel your body, you can’t tell what you are doing, until you feel someone grabbing the back of your shirt and pulling you in that direction as if you were a child. You see Patrasche’s tail moving alongside your legs as she drags you towards the barrier. Garfiel has killed every single villager, and as if emboldened by the carnage, is now charging towards you. Patrasche notices it, and twists her body to launch you into the air towards the barrier. You find yourself sailing backwards in an arc as you hold Patrasche’s gaze. Your ground dragon is standing there as if making sure that you fall out of danger.
You remember a moment from your past, what seems like very long ago, when you had been walking down a line of ground dragons to choose your first one, only for this weird female to lick your cheek with her rough tongue. You then noticed her properly for the first time: her black, slick scales except for her brown chest and belly, and in her elongated head, those bright orange eyes that looked at you with a fondness you had done nothing to earn.
As you are about to hit the ground, a white glow escapes out of the pocket of your shirt where you put Frederica’s magic crystal, threatening to blind you. Garfiel reaches your ground dragon and stomps on her, bursting Patrasche against the dirt.
The glowing whiteness engulfs you.

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry, the protagonist could hardly care less about playing his role in the repeating events, and although he wanted nothing more than to lose himself having sex over and over with the half-elf princess, he stalked Garfiel to reveal further secrets about their dreary village. He ended up finding out that there is more than one twelve year old grandma, and his nosiness, along with his body odor issues, landed him in a dungeon. Garfiel turned out to be intelligent enough to prevent the protagonist from killing himself.

• Previous part (58)
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If Garfiel had understood one thing about your argument is that you truly want to die, and he’s determined to avoid that all costs. You figure that it must be because if you die under their care and Roswaal ends up finding out somehow, the clown will descend upon Ryuzu and the whole power structure of Sanctuary, which belongs in his ancestral domain. Killing someone who orchestrated an assault against an entire branch and the Witch’s Cult, which ended up defeating it, doesn’t look good, unless you want to seem as if you belong to the Witch’s Cult yourself. So this new Ryuzu and Garfiel need to present what they believe to be significant findings of your betrayal to Roswaal while you stand around like an idiot, fully alive.
You can’t tell the hour of the day, and you are too worried thinking about ways to die or to escape from this place to count how much time has passed. Garfiel comes personally to see you eat slop, and he stands there way too close as you piss and shit into a bucket. It’s as humiliating as they come, but it doesn’t seem to bother him much. He grew up around farm animals, after all. Plenty of times you wanted to bite down hard on your tongue, but this punk would just restrain you, cure your tongue even if just with bandages of some kind, and at the end of the day you’d be more restrained but lacking part of your tongue.
Before Garfiel leaves you, he always stuffs a dirty rag in your damn mouth, big enough that you can’t bite yourself, and then the punk leaves you alone for a few hours. You either wander around while restrained, with your hands tied behind your back, trying to figure out creative ways to use stone walls, stone floors, or metal bars, as suicide devices, or you lie on the floor and just think about how much you want to die. It’s getting truly unpleasant and harmful to your mental health. You can’t just bash your head against the wall over and over like apparently the punk does from time to time, because you might get so stupid that you will forget that you have to kill yourself to return to the past, or you might end up in a coma for months or years.
You also keep thinking about Emilia. Your imagination plays out scenes in which the half-elf discovers you’ve gone missing, and she focuses entirely on searching through the village, maybe door to door, as well as through the surrounding forest, having enlisted the help of most of Roswaal’s villagers. Maybe of some locals as well. But she will never find you, you know that much. You imagine the beautiful face of that girl who loves you and whom you love back, scared and worried sick. You get sick yourself, and end up vomiting twice thinking about it.
You try to sleep, but you barely string a couple of hours together each time, or what feel like a couple of hours anyway. You shiver from worry. This must be hell, eternal punishment for your crimes against the capital, the kingdom, Rem, human decency… You can’t even remember what good you have done, but the evil has been so strong that it overwhelmed whatever good you might have done. Your life is a curse on this world, and now you are being punished for it.
Just as you are about to give up on sleep and enter a state of full alertness, the door is unlocked. It opens grating against the stone floor. You have no idea what time it is. Garfiel enters with a lit torch in one hand, and some bread and water in the other.
“Get up, half-pint.”
“Nah, I’m good”, you say with a raspy voice.
“This is exactly why you’re locked up. Y’know that?”
Your lips feel all dry and chapped.
“I’m sorry I tried to expose your village’s secrets to the public, even though I never found out anything significant.”
Sneering at you, Garfiel drops the bread and water next to you, and moves the torch closer to your face.
“I already told ya, doesn’t matter ta me. Got my orders, same as ya got some others from that clown bastard, and from whatever big boss types at that damn cult. Ya and me are justa couple of fools doin’ what they’ve been told.”
You wait while Garfiel unties your hands so you can shove the stale bread into your mouth. Despite the poor meal that awaits you, it makes you salivate.
“I guess I have to repeat that I’m not a witch cultist”, you say. “Just in case you come up with some bullshit about how not denying it means admitting it.”
“Yeah, not changin’ me mind”, Garfiel says with an unemotional voice. “Yer clown lord will have to deal with that when the shy princess passes them trials.”
The punk finishes untying your hands. Your legs are so numb that you can’t feel them at all. You stand up and have to hop as you try to walk it off.
“Don’t you want to kill me?”
Garfiel shrugs.
“Killin’s too good for scum like you.”
He gives you a poisonous glare, but after your leg stops throbbing you jump at him with a flying punch. It lands on his cheek, and he stumbles back a little. Even though you are still groggy, your instincts take over. Both of your weights clash, but you manage to overpower Garfiel and throw him on the stone floor. However, he soon regains control of the situation as his hands grips your shoulders like a vice. He’s barely using any of his strength, and it clearly amuses him. With a smirk, he flicks you over and then jumps on you with an elbow pressed against your neck. You want to cough, but you can’t. Garfiel stares at you with a hard look.
“Yer not only tryin’ to best the strongest man in the damn world, but someone who grew up wrestlin’ with Frederica! Damn fool!”
“No, don’t suggest this is wrestling”, you push through your throat.
“What are ya sayin’?”
“I’m suggesting that you might be enjoying pinning me a bit too much.”
A punch flies into your stomach and your body convulses on the ground, expelling all of the air in your lungs.
“Don’t say shit like that! Why the hell would I wanna fuck a damn cultist?”
You can barely speak in between coughs.
“I don’t think that’s the issue here…”, you mumble.
“Damn right, it’s not!” He laughs. “Alright, I’ll let ya go. Yer gonna listen to me and follow the damn rules, though.”
“As if I have a fucking choice. Attacking you only brightened your mood.”
When Garfiel stands up, you sit up to cough and rub your neck a bit, taking in a breath.
“Alright, rules.” He says, leaning in, “One, don’t try anythin’. Two, ya try anythin’, I hurt ya family. Three, don’t think I won’t. Four, if ya try anythin’ again and I hurt yer damn family anyway.”
You sigh and stand up while Garfiel backs away.
“Yeah, good luck finding my parents. If you manage to do so, I’ll be so astonished I won’t care even if you punch my dad in the face.”
“Fuck yer dad.”
“Now I’m worried you might. People shouldn’t grow up wrestling, Garfiel.”
A smirk creeps on his face.
“Alright then, I guess that’s it.”
As the punk walked back to what passes for your meal, as if ordering you to shut up and eat, you find the strength to ask what you will regret knowing.
“How is Emilia doing?”
Garfiel shrugs, but then looks away as if having to speak about it is both embarrassing and painful.
“She ain’t eatin’ right nor tryin’ to pass them trials, that’s fer sure.”
“So… what? Is that it?”
“She cries a lot too. Won’t look anyone in the eye either.”
There’s a moment of silence as you feel as if someone has just poured cold water over you. Even though you already had a feeling about how she was doing, it doesn’t make the confirmation sting any less.
“This is the fault of both of you idiots”, you say with a low, growly voice. “You are keeping me locked up because of a misunderstanding, and your condition to release me will never happen! Emilia will only get worse and worse. My lovely girl… You didn’t seem like you were against Emilia, so don’t you feel like shit for doing this to her?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No! I ain’t gonna feel like shit fer doin’ anythin’ that protects my home!”
“You sound like an asshole.”
“An’ ya sound like a pussy, all prisoner like!”
Garfiel glares at you for a moment, and then he shakes his head and motions for you to turn around.
“Why the fuck for?”, you ask, freaked out due to the recent conversation.
“I’m tying ya again. I thought ’bout it, and ya punched me in the face. That means no meal for now. Not that I minded the fight, but ya gotta have some order ’round here!”

You lose track of how many times you have dozed off, half-lost in waking nightmares in which Emilia cries and cries as she runs through a darkened forest. You wish to shout that you are here, so she can finally find you and hug you tightly, but you can barely mumble with the nasty rag that fills your mouth.
Your mind snaps back to reality as you hear a key entering the metallic door of your cell, and then unlocking it. The door opens as if pushed, grating loudly against the stone floor. Someone complains in what you suppose should have barely sounded above the background noise of the forest outside, but it comes out as a worried muttering. You turn on the floor to find yourself staring at Otto Suwen, who has crouched next to you and is surveying your state as if he has to figure out quick whether you even remain sane.
You are too dumbfounded to react. Otto helps you sit up and is cutting through the restraints around your wrists. You try to speak, but you forgot that you’ve been tasting the same nasty rag for hours. The merchant takes off the cord around your mouth, then he extracts the wet rag while grimacing in disgust.
“Otto…? I’m hallucinating, am I?”, you ask with a raspy voice.
“I wish you were, Mr. Natsuki! In such a case you wouldn’t have ended up living through such a terrifying experience! But I’m afraid that you were indeed kidnapped and locked up by the two most powerful people in this forgotten village. We need to get you out of here as soon as possible!”
Otto throws the ropes to the floor, then looks behind him as if fearing that Garfiel will barrel towards him at any moment.
You can barely think straight.
“But… But… How did you find me? And who let you in?”
Otto slowly turns his head towards you. You have never seen him with such a serious expression on his face.
“It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. I had to enlist the help of every critter and insect that wanted to speak to me in this forest. We kept tabs on Garfiel’s comings and goings, and I even convinced a charming bat to find his way through this building until he spotted you. He really saved both of our asses, Mr. Natsuki. I took a risk by entering this place, but I figure that the terrifying hick won’t return for a while. I don’t want to think about how enraged he’ll become then…”
Otto extends his hand towards you, and you grab it. With one powerful pull, he lifts you off the floor.
You begin to feel dizzy and lightheaded, or maybe you just realize that you have been for quite a while. The meals that Garfiel fed you weren’t meant to fill you with energy, merely to keep you alive. You support yourself on Otto’s shoulder.
“I’m so glad that your delusions about hearing and speaking with animals ended up helping me by some miracle.”
“Delusions!? I swear I can communicate with animals, and even insects, Mr. Natsuki! I was born with that ability, which I only started considering a blessing during these last few years! I couldn’t stop myself from hearing them, and it made my life a living hell as a child. Lost my place in the family business! You wouldn’t believe how little respect the animal life has for quiet. They are very useful, though, when you manage to befriend some of them. Otherwise we would have never tracked you down in time. Still, I would stay away from wasps if I were you.”
“I was never a fan of wasps even in my previous world. Nasty little fuckers…”
Although you attempt to free your legs from the rope binding them, you are weakened, and you end up supporting yourself again on the merchant’s shoulder as he crouches down to tear the rope off. When he stands up again, he wipes the sweat from his forehead.
You have barely exited the dungeon into a stone hallway, which looks ancient but not as much as the witches’ tomb, when you stop Otto. Something isn’t sitting well with you.
“Otto, why are you here? How come you ended up searching for me, locating me, freeing me…? Did Roswaal put you up to this?”
Otto stares at you confused.
“I’m not sure what you mean. As soon as we realized you had gone missing, I went looking for you. It soon became clear that Garfiel in particular had something to do with it. The man wouldn’t make a good spy, let’s put it that way. So me and Ram teamed up to follow him, and it was through my animal and insect friends, or acquaintances more accurately, as we aren’t that close yet, that we ended up locating this building that had been clearly built to remain hidden!”
“I got the gist of that, but… why would you want to go through all that trouble for me?”
Otto snaps his head back, shocked. He then avoids your gaze while his eyebrows tremble nervously.
“It’s obvious, is it not? Are you truly going to make me say something embarrassing?”
“I mean, yeah, I am, because I don’t have a fucking clue what you are talking about.”
Otto sighs, then forces himself to hold your gaze.
“You have the right to be confused, and you have remained much more sane than I had expected… But my reasons for freeing you from imprisonment are as obvious as they come! You are my dear friend, Mr. Natsuki.”
You stare at him as he smiles weakly, waiting for you to say something.
“Well?”, Otto asks cautiously.
A smile grows by itself on your lips, and you double over to burst into laughter. When you manage to control yourself, you straighten your back and pat Otto’s shoulders, who looks as if you are making him the butt of a joke.
“Alright, alright, Mr. Natsuki! We all make ourselves look like fools from time to time!”
“No, that’s not it. I guess we have gone through bonding stuff you and I, huh? Drinking ourselves stupid while I revealed my nightmares about sharing a bath with Roswaal, me trying to show you my dick…”
“T-Those are things I would rather forget!”
You grin.
“What I mean is, thank you for being my friend, Otto Suwen.”
Otto takes off his merchant hat and combs his incongruously gray hair with his hand as a nervous gesture. He’s having trouble holding your gaze.
You pat him on the back and motion for both of you to keep going.
“Well, alright, you son of a gun! Let’s get out of here and make them pay!”
“I hope that ‘gun’ word isn’t an insult towards my mother! I’m feeling somewhat sensitive at the moment.”

Otto is guiding you through the dense forest, striding through it as if he was following an invisible arrow on the grass. The moonlight barely passes through the dense canopy. Occasionally Otto lifts his gaze to an insistent cluster of dragonflies that flies towards the merchant, then further into the forest, then back again… You are going to end up going along with his delusion if this continues.
A few minutes later you notice someone waiting near a tree. It’s none other than your favorite senior servant Ram. Her demeanor reminds you of a soldier on guard duty, despite her wearing a black and white servant outfit that shows plenty of those slender, stockinged legs. As you get closer you realize that she’s holding the reins of Patrasche, your ground dragon, who is standing behind the senior servant.
When Ram realizes that the merchant has returned with a freed prisoner no less, she nods towards him.
“Excellent work, Mr. Suwen.”
Otto scratches the back of his head, he smiles and was about to reply something when you interrupt him.
“You better engrave this moment in your mind, Otto. I have never witnessed our dear Ram being so appreciative of someone.”
To your temporary confusion, Ram isn’t annoyed by your comment, but nods at you and bends the corners of her mouth a little.
“In the somewhat unlikely case that your follower ended up succeeding at his perilous task, Barusu, I would have expected him to bring me a broken man. But apart from the horrid stench of sweat and bodily filth, you seem sprightly.”
You shrug.
“I could complain about the food and how hard it gets to sleep properly when you can’t tell the hour of the day, or how many days have passed for that matter. What’s the plan now, Ram?”
As you ask this, you start rubbing the dragon’s snout, who closes her eyes.
“The village is on the verge of rebellion, Barusu”, Ram says calmly. “Our villagers aren’t too happy about one of the lord’s employees having disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and that idiot Garfiel couldn’t seem more suspicious. After all, our villagers have been restrained in Sanctuary against their will, but were hoping for a speedy and peaceful resolution. Although the local villagers don’t like the commotion, plenty are coming over to our side. Lord Roswaal intends for you to pass through the barrier and return to the mansion. Once you are out of danger, we will reveal that you were kidnapped, and some will pay the consequences.”
“Ram… How is Emilia doing with all this? Garfiel himself told me that she wasn’t attempting to pass the trials, and that she must be seriously depressed.”
“Lady Emilia should be sleeping in Ryuzu Bilma’s guest room right now. We won’t attempt to inform her of the changing circumstances until you are out of trouble. Our half-elf princess needs to be handled with care, as usual.”
Ram’s tone evidences that she considers Emilia too weak and unstable for her tastes, but then again few people are as tough and stoic as your senior servant.
“Please, make Emilia know that I’m safe as soon as you can. There are few things I hate more in the world than that girl suffering.”
“Barusu, a child would realize that you hold feelings for our royal candidate. But please understand that at this moment she is no longer the Emilia you knew, and won’t be until she recovers. She’s as close to a nervous breakdown as an intelligent being can be. She truly requires you to be by her side, to an unhealthy degree.”
You sigh, and as you recall the faint ghost of how it felt like to embrace her under the covers, as well as hear her quiet, loving voice pouring into your ear, your heart hurts.
“Yeah, I know. She and I need to work on that, as soon as people around us don’t risk getting kidnapped, or murdered.”
Ram takes a deep breath, then checks your surroundings.
“I hate to end this heartwarming moment, but we must go. You will have no choice but to use the main paths of the village to escape, and you will depend on your ground dragon’s speed and reliability in case any of the local threats focus on you.”
Not waiting for you to agree, Ram starts walking towards the edge of the forest, which is visible from your position despite how close the trees are to each other. You catch up to the senior servant’s side, while Otto follows you both right by Patrasche’s tail.
“Ram, I won’t leave without speaking with Roswaal first.”
Ram shoots you a look of annoyance, which comforts you.
“I can’t be that surprised that you plan on making your escape more difficult than necessary, Barusu”, she says with a tired voice.
“I don’t want to bother you, Ram, and I appreciate everything you have done for me in this reality and in others, but I truly need to clarify certain stuff with our clown overlord. So please, let’s meet with him as soon as possible.”
“Your choice, Barusu. I’m sure you would keep insisting stubbornly otherwise. I will brief you on the full situation in the village during our walk there… But you must promise me that you will leave as soon as possible after that.”
“Yeah, I will. I need to reach the mansion anyway.” You turn to Otto, who has deflated since his heroic rescue. “You will finally get to meet the possible employer who will lead you to a life of luxury, Otto. Make a decent impression.”
Otto chuckles nervously. The cheerful merchant front he puts up in the presence of others is cracking. Despite his many travels he’s still nervous, and with good reason.
“The best first impression I can create in these circumstances is not to delay your escape any further, Mr. Natsuki, and I intend to do just that.”

Now that the three of you are standing inside of the discreet villager house that your clown lord chose to rest from his ghastly injuries, Otto has taken off his merchant hat and is holding it against his torso while bowing slightly. The disquiet in his expression makes you wonder if he regrets his current ambition of getting closer to this important lord to secure himself some lasting employment. After all, you doubt there are many sane people out there who could face Roswaal’s clown face and not realize immediately that they should have remained as far away from your lord as possible.
Roswaal has taken a curious interest in Otto, maybe wondering how he ended up involved in such vital and secretive matters for his household, but his demeanour isn’t threatening. From the angle you are looking now at Roswaal, his painted features over the white foundation make his face seem like made out of rubber, as if a child’s doll was infused with life.
You want to make things less awkward and move the meeting along, so you motion towards Otto.
“This is Otto Suwen, a regular young merchant we rescued from the cultists during the attack, and who has been working hard at fulfilling both my and Emilia’s unreasonable requests ever since. I quite like the fellow, and I figure that we can use a semi-permanent transport guy who also does odd jobs. It also happens that he rescued me single-handedly from a dungeon, so he’s a true bro. I request that at some point after this bullshit is over, we bring him into our household.”
“Do you agree with this statement, young Suwen?”, Roswaal asks with his lilting voice while smiling welcomingly at the merchant.
Otto quickly puts on a serious face befitting of one under scrutiny.
“Mr. Natsuki has stated nothing but the truth, as usual. Indeed, the half-beast mercenaries under his command rescued me from a nasty death, so I would owe him my loyalty for that alone, but it just happens that he has also blessed me with trust and friendship. If you allow me, I will serve the greater interests of your household, including securing the lovely lady Emilia’s prospects as the future ruler of this kingdom!”
Roswaal nods as if satisfied.
“I graciously accept your request to join us, Otto Suwen. You may now address me as your lord and master. I hope you continue supporting us with the immediate, troublesome matter at hand: making sure Subaru isn’t captured again.”
“Understood, my lord”, he sputters out, already intimidated by your powerful ally.
Roswaal turns his attention to you, which makes you as uneasy as usual. Your mind probably must be running in the background the question of why would anyone do that to his own face and then interact with people.
“Now, Subaru, why would have Garfiel decided to imprison you? I have known him to be quite the handful ever since he grew strong enough to assert his power, and yet I have never seen him act this unreasonably.”
“Our personal lioness, that Frederica, had suggested that there were secrets to discover in Sanctuary beyond the fact that it’s surrounded by a magical barrier that can only be lifted by passing the trials. I hoped that learning more would reveal some loophole that would allow us to get Emilia out, I mean without her having to break her mind facing the past. But I ended up talking to a different Ryuzu. It seems there are at least three identical-looking ones, and she determined that I must be a witch cultist.”
“Witch cultist? How so?”
“I mean, it’s because I smell like Satella”, you answer cautiously. “Or so they say. A scent that apparently never goes away no matter how many showers I take. Although now that I stink like sweat, piss and shit, I wonder if that does the trick…”
“That troublesome Witch of Envy, despite having died four hundred years ago, her influence lingers on in this world for people to catch a whiff of her scent. I see, it was a misunderstanding. However, both Garfiel and that Ryuzu, who I guess is the one calling herself Ryuzu Shima, acted rashly, and they will have to be punished for it.”
“That’s fine and all, Roswaal, but you knew that there were different Ryuzus?”
Roswaal plasters a smile on his face even though he seems deep in thought.
“You must understand that we are guests in a territory that used to belong to the magnificent Echidna, the Witch of Greed, and in a way it still does. Her relentless pursuit of the truths of this world left us, after Echidna’s untimely, unfortunate passing, with many unique wonders. We don’t have time to speak at length on the matter, but you should know that some of the Ryuzu are what one would consider self-determined individuals, and as such they can have conflicting agendas.”
“What’s the agenda of this Ryuzu Shima?”
Roswaal looks to the side as if to find the right word, then he nods and looks up at you.
“Insubordination.”
As you try to think quickly about the vital information you would need to secure before Garfiel locates you, you keep coming back to Beatrice. You know that Roswaal will not be able to help you stop the contract killers, given that he had asserted that nobody would have a reason to pay people to kill you, let alone the best contract killer in the kingdom, or possibly the world. Frederica and Petra would agree to escape if you explain the situation to them, but Beatrice would resist stubbornly, which would end up with her getting killed whether before or after you, because you would stay around until the last moment to convince her. You wouldn’t be surprised if you spent an entire run, as soon as you reached the mansion, arguing with the kooky librarian for her to follow you to safety, but she would resist even your attempts at physically dragging her out. And she didn’t even defend herself when the obviously murderous Elsa stepped into your librarian’s domain.
But should you even save her? You want to, for sure, because you already liked her, but if she’s a cultist like her hidden Gospel suggests, then you would be saving the life of someone who at the very least is a spy for a group that intends to resurrect Satella through murdering Emilia. How would Roswaal have missed Beatrice’s true nature, when she has been guarding the library for hundreds of years? Maybe she only turned recently. Maybe she never turned at all, and this is all a misunderstanding. You don’t want to kill her, but you don’t want to die at the hands of a killer, and you probably would if you let your guard down around her.
“Roswaal…”, you start, “This will come out of nowhere, but I found out that Beatrice is hiding a Gospel. That’s how she herself called it. And she admitted that the book mattered to her more than almost anything else except for whoever that Mother of hers was supposed to be. Petelgeuse himself acted similarly when it came to his own book, so that has me all worried.”
To your surprise, Roswaal looks amused.
“Hm, you make a fine point. It would be foolish to assume that just because she has such an item she is an enemy, but it would also be foolish to not take this into consideration. What kind of relationship have you developed with our little librarian to have discovered such a guarded secret?”
“Before I found out about her Gospel, I would have told you that Beatrice and I are friends of sorts, although I doubt she would think so. That hundreds of years old girl is in need of some company, that much is obvious. And she also taught me a magic spell. The thought of her being our enemy really fucked with me.”
“Would you truly be ready to deal with our powerful great spirit as an enemy?”
You can’t tell the clown’s intention under all that makeup.
“When I learned about the Gospel I was certain she was one, but the more I think about it and the more I think about her, the less sure I am. Not even sure if I should trust my own judgement anymore…”
“Thankfully I can remove your worries. What you found is commonly called a Gospel, for lack of an original name, and yet we aren’t speaking of the same kind of item as the books those witch cultists handle.”
You don’t find that reassuring.
“How is it different?”, you ask nervously. “She seemed obsessed with it the same way a cultist would.”
“What our dear librarian has in her possession is one of the most powerful magic tomes in the world, of which only two copies are known to exist. It’s the closest thing to a Tome of Knowledge that has been discovered. It predicts, in terms at times frustratingly general, the probable futures of its owner and the paths to achieve them.”
You snap your head back, and your hands tingle at the thought that not only you live now in a world where such a book exists, but that someone who shares your home would have it. You shake your head.
“Wait a second, Petelgeuse also claimed that his Gospel allowed him to predict the future! So Beatrice’s book is the same thing!”
The clown stares at you in silence for a moment, as if allowing you to come to the proper conclusion by yourself, but eventually he sighs.
“Those thing are a fraud, neither real Gospels nor Tomes of Knowledge. They generate possible futures, which stimulates the imagination and determination of unhinged people and makes those books very dangerous in their hands, but they only give those people powers beyond comprehension in their dreams. I assure you, those books you know as Gospels are only aspiring to become what our dear Beatrice possesses, and the true Gospel isn’t associated with the Witch’s Cult.”
You want to surrender to the relief that is running through your body, but even though you lift your hand to your heart, you press the clown further.
“How sure are you about it?”
The clown stares intently at you.
“I am very sure.”
“So Beatrice isn’t a cultist?”
Roswaal smiles widely, which he must intend to be a reassuring expression.
“She isn’t.”
You give in. You have been learning about this world as you struggled to survive its many dangers, and you only have what people say or what you are forced to face as the facts to build your strategies on. You accept it, then: Beatrice is a friend. But she won’t be for much longer if you don’t save her life.
You step forward, and you hope that your expression will evidence the seriousness of your incoming request.
“I have reasons to believe that Beatrice will be in mortal danger. Tell me, Roswaal, is there any way to convince her to leave her library and follow me to safety?”
“That’s an interesting question… Why would you try to convince Beatrice to abandon her sanctuary, of all places, and expose herself to danger?”
“Because she will die if she doesn’t.”
“Mm… Then perhaps you should convince me.”
You have never been a smoothtalker, a charmer, or even a guy that others go to for advice. But you know how to show your true feelings, and you let them shine now: either he trusts you or Beatrice will die.
“We are too short on time, Roswaal. I work for you as well as for Emilia, and I have proven my intentions enough that you decided to knight me. Please, trust me on this. If I don’t get Beatrice out of her library, we will lose her. I’ve grown too fond of the little shit for that.”
Roswaal closes his eyes and sighs.
“You know how to get your way, Subaru, which has served you well so far. Then listen to this: once you face Beatrice, tell her ‘Roswaal said to ask the question’. Once she does, answer her, ‘I am that person’.”
“That’s all?”
“When you do so, Beatrice will become your ally. She will have no choice. Trust me on this.”
You stand there looking down, thinking about what you might have forgotten to ask, when Ram clears her throat. She has crossed her arms and is staring at you with a strict determination.
“If you are done, Barusu, we need to move. Ryuzu has eyes everywhere, so it’s unlikely that we won’t come across Garfiel along the way. To minimize the possibility, we should have already left.”
“Hey, I survived having him as a jailer, didn’t I?”
“You have not seen what Garfiel is capable of, Barusu. He’s equal to an entire army of warriors.”
As you say your goodbyes and leave the house, you consider Ram’s words. That punk might not be the strongest man in the world as he desperately needs to believe, but he’s tough enough that combined with his grudge against the world, he will have few concerns against lashing out. And if Garfiel prevents you from reaching Roswaal’s mansion, you will have to suffer through having abandoned your friends, as well as your beloved demon servant, to die again.

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry we learned that the hundreds of years old librarian Beatrice didn’t want the protagonist to leave her behind, but then she realized that she didn’t know him after all, so he might as well die. The lovely miss Granhiert interrupted their argument and made the protagonist leave permanently by crushing his throat.

• Previous part (57)
• Next Part (59)

You would have never thought that waking up in a magically lighted tomb, where a hundreds of years old ghost psychologically tortures people with ultrarealistic simulations, would make you feel relieved, but after you bring saliva back to your dry mouth, you turn around on the floor and focus on breathing deeply while you stare at the blue-dyed stone roof, at the myriad of tiny cracks that have opened in them over the centuries.
You don’t think you noticed Emilia’s irregular breathing before. You crawl towards the half-elf, as she lies face down near the center of the antechamber. You turn her towards you, then hug her. You run your fingers through her hair while whatever witch-induced nightmare causes her facial muscles to twitch against your skin. You could do this over and over, you think. You could spend your eternity in this loop, waking up next to Emilia in these ruins and doing little else than have sex over and over with her in Ryuzu’s house, only to kill yourself three or four days later.

After you exit the witches’ tomb carrying Emilia’s body, you barely bother to answer questions or react to the theatre play that the people you know are performing for your amusement. You could recite some of their lines as well. Once Emilia is loaded unconscious onto the back of the carriage, you sit next to Otto on the driver’s seat.
For a couple of minutes, as your merchant pal drives you all back towards Ryuzu’s house, you close your eyes and enjoy the calm of not having to face the worst contract killer in the world, nor escape from random monsters, nor face that your friends Ram and Frederica died for your sake. The world seems so peaceful. You suspect that if you focus on hearing the breeze for a while you will start crying from the relief of having nothing to fear.
“Mr. Natsuki, are you alright…?”, Otto asks warily from your left.
You open your eyes, and it takes you a couple of seconds to register that Otto is looking at you and waiting for a reply.
“I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
He raises an eyebrow as if trying to figure out if you are joking around.
“Because lady Emilia is half unconscious, half delirious, of course.” He chuckles nervously. “I mean, had you ever seen the princess in such a state? I don’t understand how you can be so calm.”
You sigh, then scrape the tip of your shoe against the floor of the driver’s seat.
“She’ll be alright, old pal. She always is. She’s stuck in her old ways, and we haven’t found a way out of her childhood issues, but maybe we’ll figure something.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean, Mr. Natsuki! We first need to make sure Emilia snaps out of her current state!”
“Yes, yes. I know that part quite well. Just focus on the road, will you? I’m aching to eat an unhealthy amount of those cinnamon cookies.”
Otto blinks in confusion, but obeys you and stops bothering you with pointless questions.
You pat him on the shoulder. Otto’s a good guy. Trustworthy and a hard worker. His humbleness is almost as annoying as his tendency to shout during regular conversations, apart from that whole delusion about being able to speak to animals. But seeing him, as well as the rest of the actors in this play, shortly after you start all over again makes you smile.

Once Emilia is resting in Ryuzu’s guest bed, you sit down in your usual place at the living room table and let the others repeat their lines while you drink the tasty tea and eat the elf’s cookies. Right now you don’t care about anything else. And it’s so nice to know that you don’t have to care about anything for a while, you can just let the world breathe on its own.
Well, you would like to enjoy some time in peace, but you feel Ram’s gaze burning your face. Your esteemed senior servant is sitting in front of you, hoping that you will finally speak up about whether you went through the trial or not. She’s her usual pink-haired, red-eyed, fully alive old self.
You sigh and finish eating the rest of your cookie. You offer a smile to the guarded servant.
“How are you feeling on this beautiful night, Ram?”, you ask pleasantly.
Ram narrows her eyes with suspicion.
“I am doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances, Barusu. And yourself?”
“Oh, I’m a little tired from carrying the world on my shoulders. Quite tired about it, actually…”
“Barusu. Please. I want to know if you went through with it. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“I have gone through many things, my dear Ram. Many trials of many types. I ended up liking you quite a bit, you know? That whole thing about running towards your impending death to give me and the trainee the chance to survive… I am so moved that I want to tear up while replaying that in my mind. But you don’t remember any of it. I have to hold all those memories on my own.”
She narrows her eyes even further, as if the act could threaten you.
“Answer me, Barusu. Did you go through with it?”
You stretch out your arms while smiling.
“I don’t have anything to hide, Ram. I went through with it.”
“Barusu…”
“But what about you, Ram? Did you go through with it?”
Ram hunches over, crossing her arms over the table, and glares at you as if you are annoying her intentionally.
“What the hell are you doing? What’s wrong with you? Ever since you exited that tomb, you seem as if you are in a daze, Barusu.”
Otto clears his throat to your right, next to Garfiel, who is slumped on his chair.
“Yes, I worried about that…”, the merchant says. “You looked as if you didn’t care that Emilia had fallen into such a troubling state.”
You shrug, then gulp some more of your tea.
“Nothing much matters when you stop to think about it”, you say with a tired voice, suddenly weary for having to talk. “It all keeps happening over and over, people’s emotions come and go, people die and get reborn. What do you want me to say?”
“Yer own pals can tell yer bein’ as weird as a ghanfal during matin’ season, half-pint, fancy plumage an’ all”, Garfiel says as his blonde hairline glistens in the candlelight, and he reaches for another fried potato. “Can’t believe a damn thing that comes outta yer mouth, it seems.”
You tilt your head towards him and raise a corner of your mouth in a smile.
“That’s rich coming from you, Garfiel. It seems like you don’t care for anyone’s emotions but your own.”
He stares at you for a moment, then he tsks to the side.
“Might as well be true, evil eyes. At least I don’t pretend ta care.”
“I care. And that sister of yours, she looks so majestic when transformed into a horse-sized, fantasy world lioness. The female eyelashes are a bit incongruous, though, but man, her light blonde fur must feel so nice.”
Garfiel snaps his head back, and then he straightens in the chair as if he needs to defend himself.
“Ol’ furryburglar transformed in front of ya? She wouldn’t do that if she didn’t have to, or at least she didn’t use to.”
You lean back on your chair and look at the ceiling.
“She had to, yeah. Ah… I thought she had betrayed us, but in the end she was as cool as they come. I’m glad she’s one of us.”
Before you know it you end up having to wipe some tears. Everyone at the table is staring at you with different levels of bewilderment, but you couldn’t care less.

You want to be honest with yourself: you want to go into Ryuzu’s guest bedroom and get under the covers of that bed so you can bask in the warmth of what would be Emilia’s first time in this new reality. However, you know that if you allow yourself a break, you will allow yourself a second. You will end up repeating the loop dozens, hundreds of times, and maybe the next time you won’t find the strength to climb out of that hole. You might lose the will to do so.
This time you will try something different. At least returning to Roswaal’s mansion wasn’t a waste. The lioness had revealed that there was a secret to discover in Sanctuary, and the only two people you imagine will know what she hinted at are Garfiel and Ryuzu. So as soon as the informal meeting at Ryuzu’s living room ends , you intend to figure out where Garfiel goes whenever he thinks none of you are looking.
You have already refused to meet the clown, which annoyed this current version of the senior servant. And you have let the punk go ahead as he prowls towards and then into the dense forest as if he’s done it regularly for years. You stalk him with the little experience you have, not worrying if you end up failing. You are following a predator in his home turf. If he catches you and he freaks out to the extent that he kills you, you’ll try all over again. Best case scenario, he’ll notice you but allow you to believe you have the upper hand, which will get you closer to learning something new. And once you store in your brain a new fact of this strange world, nobody will be able to take it out no matter how many times they kill you.
The trees are very tall, and their thick branches are interlaced above you letting only scarce rays of moonlight to pass through and illuminate a portion of the ground. It’s a good thing that you have a decent sense of smell, since even vision is barely capable of discerning shapes.
At one point you lose Garfiel, and you stop partially hidden by a tree trunk. You figure that the punk is coming, so you wait until he makes his entrance. There’s no harm in making Garfiel believe it will surprise you.
Sure enough, Garfiel jumps down from one of the trees and you turn to face him, only for him, who seemed to believe you were going to punch him, to deftly jump out of the way.
“Yer slow!” He says with a laugh, “An’ ya didn’t even sense me! That’s two flaws, slowin’ down an’ losin’ yer awareness o’ the environment!”
You stand there looking at him calmly as he leaps towards you and then catches you between his forearm and a tree trunk. He’s pressing down hard between your clavicles. His heart must be pounding on his ribcage, but your nerves haven’t worsened.
Garfiel snarls at you, displaying his triangular teeth, from so close that you can smell the fried potatoes in his breath.
“Damn weirdo, freakin’ out yer own pals, an’ now followin’ me through the forest. Thinkin’ ya could catch me unawares in my own home! Can’t understand whaddya want, but with someone like ya, who can enter them witches’ restin’ place even though them traps shoulda have ripped ya apart, ya followin’ me cannot be anythin’ good.”
“Depends on what you mean by good, Garfiel”, you say imperturbably. “I’m just following your dear Frederica’s guidelines.”
You see a mixture of emotions flash through his eyes: guilt, anger, and fear.
“Whaddya mean? What’s that betrayin’ broad got ta do with anythin’?”
“She has a lot to do with this. As a matter of fact, it was her idea. She decided that I should pay you a visit because apparently you’ve been slacking off.”
He snaps his head back with disbelief, then he leans forward to glare threateningly mere centimeters away from your face.
“Haah!? Slackin’ off! Ain’t nobody who works harder than me in this whole village, except fer the old hag! But she’s a special case above all, havin’ been guardin’ this place since before Gosre Peahles extracted his flamin’ sword from the fabled rock!” He returns to his original position and snarls at you. “Yer just sayin’ stuff ta piss me off, an’ it’s workin’, so how about ya stop talkin’ an’ make yer damn point before I make a point out of ya!”
You take a deep breath.
“I’m saying that your heart is restless, Garfiel. I don’t think guarding is your calling.”
“It has been fer years! Whaddya know anyway!? Apart from them legends ’bout the strongest man in the world who resides in this here place, legends known far and wide, all ya learned came from that betrayin’ Frederica, who left us all ta rot!”
You barely blink as you hold Garfiel’s gaze. His pupils are trembling, and he’s breathing harder.
“Frederica told me something that caught my curiosity”, you say. “She told me that I had yet to learn the secret of Sanctuary. I have always been interested in mysteries, and it’s not as if tending to livestock, talking to the half-beast locals who have known nothing else than these dreary views, or drinking myself into oblivion with the watered down mead of this place could hold my attention for long. You know all there is to know about this here village, don’t you, Garfiel? And sooner or later you will show it to me.”
Garfiel looks as if in a trance. After a while he snarls differently than the happy-go-lucky one you’re used to seeing. It’s a powerful, animalistic one, directed at you. You know you he won’t treat you any other way for as long as you remain in this reality.
“Threaten me an’ mine any further an’ you’ll find out the true meanin’ of pain!”
You laugh at the joke this punk made inadvertently, which confuses him. As he was about to shout at you again, you interrupt him.
“I didn’t come to hurt any of you. In fact, I want nothing more than to free all of you so we can all go home, or somewhere better. Unfortunately we can’t count on my lovely Emilia’s self-punishing determination to lift that hundreds of years old barrier of yours, so I need to expose every single dirty secret of this village. You are either going to help me sooner or later, Garfiel. I have much more time and willpower than you can imagine.”
For a moment he squeezes you tighter against the tree trunk, but you let him ponder your words. Eventually he groans and lets you go.
“I cannot understand ya, half-pint, and ya talk too much. Ya’ll have ta meet someone who will know better how ta deal with yer sneaky cormuto ass.”
You smile and nod, which annoys the punk.
“Great. I was getting tired of just dealing with just the two notorious locals. Who might that new person be?”
Garfiel turns around to lead you somewhere else, but he smirks at you over his shoulder.
“I’m gonna disappoint ya, half-pint, which makes me all happy.”
“Oh, please, anything but disappointment.”
Your witty personality annoys him even more. You keep bickering with him while he guides you further into the darkened forest, until he motions with his head towards a clearing. You crane your neck, but you are indeed disappointed. Sitting on a log waits Ryuzu, that small, sort of twelve year old elf, with that long, straight pale red hair that curves upwards at the ends, and who hides most of her body up to her chin in a bulky coat, as if she were perpetually cold. As soon as she notices that you are following Garfiel, she stands up and narrows her eyes at you in a way you hadn’t seen Ryuzu do before. Then again, you hadn’t intruded into their private world in such a way before.
“Oh, it’s just Ryuzu!”, you say.
Garfiel shakes his head.
“Just, huh?” He then walks up to Ryuzu’s side, and he motions with his head towards you. “See who I brought ya, old hag? Guess ya’ll be able to figure if it’s true or not, won’t ya?”
The elf takes a deep breath while she holds your gaze.
“I’m surprised you got here so fast, Ryuzu, but I guess I shouldn’t”, you say, as you had been thinking about it for a few seconds. “The first I saw of you was when I got teleported to that clearing close to the witches’ tomb. You reminded me of a deer back then, and you ran really fast back into the forest. I guess acting like some decrepit old woman is one of those Sun Tzu things, huh? Feigning weakness where you are strongest. So you actually were a twelve year old with the energy to match, despite Garfiel calling you old hag repeatedly. That’s on me, though. I should have stopped paying attention long ago to whatever Garfiel says. Most of it doesn’t mean anything.”
Garfiel snarls at you as he clenches his fists, but when Ryuzu shares a knowing look with the punk, he relaxes and smirks for a moment.
“So you followed Garfiel into the forest, Young Su?”, Ryuzu asks with an uncharacteristic wariness.
“That’s right”, you answer without hesitation. “For two reasons: first of all one that I haven’t mentioned to your punk grandson of sorts, and the other because I want to uncover the secrets of your dreary village, just like Frederica suggested I should do. And I’m firmly on that German’s side from now on, I think.”
“That first reason you haven’t explained already seems less perilous, so please elaborate on it.”
“Alright. I know you guys won’t allow me to pass the trials for Emilia’s sake. That whole political garbage. But I thought about Frederica, and something wasn’t making much sense.”
“What did you think about?”
“The lioness herself told me before my lovely Emilia ended up trapped here that her mother had come to the village for protection. She had half-beast children, meaning Garfiel and Frederica, although I don’t know if she was the human half or the hopefully intelligent beast half of the equation. While Garfiel has ended up wanting to spend the rest of his punk days in this miserable place, Frederica left. But how the hell did Frederica leave if the other half-beasts can’t? If she managed to pass the trials, then the barrier wouldn’t be there anymore, would it? So there must be a loophole that will allow us to sneak at least Emilia through the border, and maybe your trapped villagers as well.”
Ryuzu stares at you in silence for a few moments before speaking.
“If only such loophole existed, Young Su, I assure you we would have exploited it already.”
“That’s part of what had me confused, sure, but then-“
Garfiel snorts, which makes you focus on him. He shakes his head and puts a hand on his waist while looking as if he hates that he needs to talk about this, and that you brought it up.
“Ol’ furryburglar’s full name is Frederica Baumann. Did ya know that much?”
“Yes.”
He points at his chest with his free thumb.
“This one here’s a Tinsel, as in Garfiel Tinsel. Ya know what that means?”
“I’d have to think about it for a moment…”
Garfiel hardens his voice.
“It’s easy, half-pint. It means my momma is a whore.”
You snap your head back. Ryuzu lifts her gaze towards the punk, and a sudden sadness clouds her face. She looks down to the insides of her bulky coat, hiding her features up to her lower eyelids.
You want to lighten the mood, make some sarcastic comment, but Garfiel keeps staring at you with pure disdain and disgust. Not toward you. Not solely toward his mother even, but the entire world. You end up lowering your head as well.
“… Jeez.”
“It’s true, ain’t it. Both ‘Rica and I are half-breed bastards left behind. What else would ya call a momma that comes inta this secret village that allowed other families of freaks ta grow up safe, only for that momma of ours to leave us so she could prance back to that wide world out there? What do ya call a full human, which she is, that screwed two different beast shapeshifters and when she was round with me, she shat me out and then abandoned us? Damn whore threw us here to rot like some garbage. That’s what goes on in yer place of birth, ain’t it, half-pint? Is that the kinda stuff ya fancy noble-like people do?”
“I’m not a noble, as you already know, but-“
“I can see it. I can see it in yer eyes. The way ya look down on me, like I’m some kinda rat in the gutter. Same way that Ram looks at me. Fuckin’… All of ya should just burn up in hell.”
You’re speechless for a moment. You don’t want this guy to get too angry, not even because he will likely kill you, but for his own sake.
“Young Su”, Ryuzu attracts your attention firmly as if wanting to stop Garfiel from talking.
“Yes, Ryuzu…”, you say with a thin voice.
“I can see you’re a smart individual from the way you act in front of me, and the words you say.”
“Well, that’s much kinder than how most other people have described me.”
“However, you failed to consider, or discover, a vital detail about Frederica that allowed her to leave our Sanctuary without passing the trials. She simply walked out of here, the same way you would be able to.”
“Oh?”
“Frederica ain’t a half-breed”, Garfiel says while crossing his arms and looking down at the grass. “She’s more human than beast. That old Echidna witch was only interested in half-breeds, I reckon. That’s why she trapped them here even if they just wandered inta the place. Like diggin’ a pit and waitin’ for them jotirambos ta fall in, I’m guessin’, then makin’ a nice casserole out of them. So ‘Rica didn’t fully belong here, and she must’ve sensed that. Maybe part of why she turned her back on us.”
You scratch your head.
“Shit… So that whole thing of calling Frederica part beast instead of half wasn’t pointless. I guess I knew it all along! Which means that no loophole exists. Another dead end…”
Ryuzu holds your gaze without blinking nor showing any expression in her young, elfin face.
“Was that all about your first purpose for following Garfiel into the forest?”
“I’m afraid so, yeah.”
“In that case we would move to revealing secrets about our ancient town. For that I will need Young Garf’s help.”
When you were turning your head towards the punk, he lunges at you and you suddenly find yourself gasping for air while your throat burns and the weight of your body pulls on your head. Garfiel has grabbed you by the throat and lifted you into the air so your feet don’t touch the ground. He’s squeezing with the purpose of cutting the supply of blood to your brain, but he’s also preventing you from filling your lungs or letting the air escape. Even though you have gone through plenty of troubling bullshit already, your body goes into a panic, and you grasp at the punk’s wrist and his fingers digging into your throat in an attempt to loosen his grip, but the bastard truly is strong.
“Ya know, ya’ve been givin’ me such creeps, I was achin’ to do this to ya. If ya know what’s good for ya, quit strugglin’. I’ll tear this fucker clean off.”
“Ggg…”, is all you manage to get out of your throat as your vision starts to gray at the edges.
Ryuzu approaches you slowly, then looks up at you as if trying to attract your attention. She’s frowning, but with more worry than hate.
“I can let you in on one of our secrets, Young Su. I’m not Ryuzu Bilma, that dutiful slave.”
Your brain is getting starved of oxygen, darkening the forest even further. You feel as if you will faint at any moment, and the pain in your throat prevents you from focusing on anything or even think.
“We’ll have time for more after cleaning up… this”, Ryuzu says as she wanders away from you.
Your body goes limp, and your vision fades.

Everything is black. How did you die? Ah, Garfiel strangled you. No, you can’t be dead. Not only you aren’t enveloped by that looped witch’s unearned love, but you feel your body. Your throat hurts and you have trouble breathing right, as if something is covering your head. You are also lying on your side on a cold, hard floor that feels like the one at the witches’ tomb. You try to move your hands, which feel cold and unresponsive, but you can’t, and it takes you a couple of seconds to realize that they are bound behind your back. Garfiel and Ryuzu have kidnapped you and restrained you in some building. That’s new.
Not knowing what else to do, you force yourself into a sitting position. It takes a while, and you can feel a shooting pain in your head as you do it. You let out as a sigh of relief as your head rests against the wall behind you. You try to take off whatever is masking your vision by dragging your head along the wall back and forth, and although some fabric slides along your nose whenever you tug, the sack-like thing must be fastened around your neck.
As you get up, a creaky, metallic door opens grating along the floor, and brisk footsteps come toward you.
“Is that you, Garfiel?”, you ask with a dry voice.
“Yeah, an’ I’ve brought you the one thing ya’ll need.”
“Being freed from imprisonment?”
Garfiel chuckles.
“Yer a silly weirdo even after gettin’ choked and thrown inta a dungeon. I just gotta admire that at least. Too bad ’boutta rest.” You hear something wooden being set on the floor carelessly, maybe of the size of a chair. “Nah, I meant a bucket ta shit an’ piss in. I even hafta bother meself throwin’ out yer shit. Guess that if that hot Ram, so strong an’ proud an’ all, will do it fer her lord, I can lower meself as well.”
“So I am the lord in this relationship. Good to know. Too bad about having my hands bound and my head covered by a bag of some kind. These restraints go beyond caution and into sadism. My wrists are numb already.”
“Yer lucky I’m nice, and that the old hag is interested in yer case. With such a bold intruder, I’d just punch ya so hard that yer face would’ve exploded. Then I’d have fed yer re-“
“Fed my remains to the pigs, yeah. I noticed their size, you must keep them pretty happy.”
“I keep meself busy with all this guardin’, I already told ya, half-pint. Lotsa crap ta do. Plenty of it ugly.”
You take a deep breath, but whatever is covering your head smells bad, like it came from a barn.
“Now let’s get serious, Garfiel. Did you throw me into a dungeon just because I followed you into the forest? Or is it because I told you I wanted to reveal your secrets?”
“Nah, I’d just told ya to eat a dick and go away. It’s just that the old hag had wanted from the beginning to get a good sniff at ya, and now she’s sure.”
“Is this a fetish thing? Have I become that twelve year old granny’s personal plaything, locked away forever in her sex dungeon?”
You don’t hear anything for a few seconds, then a punch in your guts makes you fall to your knees and then double over while coughing. Your intestines burn, and you are surprised that your shit didn’t get squeezed out. You figure you will have to endure for a while this electric pain coursing through the lower tract of your digestive system.
“Didn’t yer mom teach ya ta never talk ’bout ladies that way, ya dumbass? I’ll give yer three warnings, then I’m goin’ in all at once.”
You cough.
“Maybe I should keep suggesting dirty stuff about your beloved sister, so you will kill me and we’ll get this over with.”
Garfiel groans, annoyed.
“An’ maybe I’ll tighten the cord on yer neck so much that yer tongue will fall out. I got now how ya operate, evil eyes. Ya say weird things ta people so they get confused and they forget ’bout the important stuff they shoulda brought up with ya. As in ya stinkin’ like the witch!”
You take a deep breath of the foul smelling sack over your head or whatever it is, and you roll your eyes even though Garfiel can’t see it.
“So that’s what throwing me into a dungeon is all about. A fucking misunderstanding. I’m not a witch cultist, damn it. I fight and kill cultists. I already went over this.”
“Yeah, an’ ya also claim that ya fight monsters and such, but after checkin’ with the adventurers’ guild, they said ya haven’t been on any of their sanctioned hunts.”
“Hey, don’t fly off into your delusions! I’m telling you, I know I smell like that Satella broad, but that doesn’t mean I’m a witch cultist. Other people have brought up my foul body odor, which is embarrassing, let me tell you, but eventually they got the point that they were mistaken and that I’m simply a weird guy who goes around smelling like a witch. I even led an operation against the Witch’s Cult, killed one of their Archbishops and everything!”
You hear a taptaptap and you realize that Garfiel is hitting his chest with his fists.
“Alright, alright, settle down. I believe ya.”
“I should hope so.”
“Nah, just kiddin’. Old hag told me that some random people do smell like the witch fer no good reason, a mystery, but she said that none stunk like ya. It’s like ya got that old witch all over ya. An’ ya ain’t a normal dude walkin’ ’round. Ya entered them witches’ tomb without triggerin’ Echidna’s traps, and ya followed me inta the forest even though I’m the strongest man alive, more powerful than Beninges Effidon in his glorious days. Ya should be afraid of annoyin’ me fer a single second!”
You sigh.
“I just know you are a soft guy inside, someone who just wants to return to his sister’s side and bask in the warmth of her big, warm, possibly furry bosom.”
You can feel Garfiel glaring through the sack on your head.
“Yer still useful, so I won’t kill ya, but I’m gettin’ real bored of ya.”
“Then let’s get to interesting stuff. Who is that Ryuzu, and in what way is she different from the Ryuzu that bakes us cookies?”
“Them’s her siblings, in a sense.”
“At least I know there’s more than one. That Ryuzu I met in the beginning, the deer Ryuzu, must be the dumbest of the bunch, huh?”
“Hah, that’s rude. Anyway, none of ya. As in none of ya business, cultist fuck.”
“I’m not with the Witch’s Cult, I’m telling you.”
“Oh, shut it. Unless ya got anythin’ real ta say, I’m gonna shut ya up.”
“Permanently if you don’t mind. Go ahead and kill me, Garfiel. You must have wanted it for a good while.”
Garfiel growls, then looses something around your neck and takes off the sack. The light of the couple of torches makes you wince due to the sudden contrast with the blackness. You are indeed in the closest thing to a fantasy world dungeon that you can imagine. Garfiel, standing in front of you, hasn’t changed a bit: same old messy-haired hick wearing a vest that barely covers his athletic chest, and the same beastly expression on his face, showing his pointy teeth, that he intends to be menacing. You smile at him despite the pain in your bowels, and the punk narrows his eyes nervously.
“Punch me so hard that my head explodes”, you ask. “That sounds fun.”
“Whatever. Ya say any more weird shit like that, an’ I’ll beat ya ta death.”
“That works for me too, as long as I end up dead.”
He tilts his head and stares at you perplexed, trying hard to figure out what you are doing.
“I’m so tired of yer mind games, and I can’t understand the why of this one. Ya’ll end up gettin’ killed fer real!”
“Whatever happens, happens.”
“Quit sayin’ shit like that, creep!” He stares at you murderously for a while, then pokes you with his finger in the chest. “I ain’t gonna kill ya, freak, if only ’cause the old hag didn’t want me to. The village will be a mess with people lookin’ for ya. I’ll have ta lie to that fiery Ram an’ all, and I hate it already. That’s all yer fault. I guess ya deceived yer pals, that clown bastard even, to infiltrate their home.”
“I am not their enemy, nor yours”, you say, “I am your friend, Garfiel. I’m here to free you all from that witch Echidna’s barrier. My main goal is to help my dear Emilia return back to the warm, womb-like safety of our huge fantasy world mansion, where we will test the springs of every single bed. And that’s a whole load of beds, let me tell you.”
Garfiel wrinkles his nose in disgust.
“Bullshit! Yer a creep, an’ ya talk too damn much. If ya were anythin’ other than a damn liar, ya wouldn’t be sittin’ there right now.”
You sigh, then lift your gaze to hold the punk’s nervous one.
“So you intend to keep me alive. What’s your endgame here then? Because I need to be somewhere else as soon as possible.”
“The shy princess will realize that ya ain’t comin’ back. Maybe she’ll believe that ya just went an’ abandoned them. She’ll go back to attemptin’ ta pass them trials, because someone that fancy and royalty-like won’t wanna stay in this nowhere place. If she ends up liftin’ that barrier, then maybe old hag will release ya. We’ll give ya up to the clown so he can figure out what ta do with a cultist that sneaked into their camp.”
“I’m not a damn cultist. Did you even hear a word I said?”
“Sure ya are.”
Your heart has realized before you have that you are in a perilous position. If they manage to prevent you from dying, they won’t have much trouble keeping you in this dungeon for days, weeks, months. You already know that Emilia will never pass those trials. You have to figure out a way for this punk to murder you. Or maybe just wait until he leaves, and then you’ll bite off your tongue. After all, you already know how that feels, and you can lie on your back, let your mouth fill with blood and choke on it. Your mood improves already.
“Just to try make you see reason, we know that at least two contract killers have been hired to assault Roswaal’s mansion. It will happen in around four days from now at the latest. They intend to murder everyone at the clown’s place, which means that Frederica is going to die. Do you want that to happen?”
The thought of his sister dying contorts Garfiel’s face with worry for a moment.
“That’s…”
“Really fucking bad. The killers are a nasty bunch as well. One a sexual freak with the hottest tits I’ve ever seen, and the other a child who has mutated monsters for pets. And they will kill everyone at the mansion, I’m telling you. They will get eviscerated, their remains devoured by monsters. That’s what you are risking by keeping me here.”
Garfiel is silent for a while. His brow furrows and he bites his lips. Then he shakes his head and frowns at you.
“Nah, that’s too convenient, ain’t it? Just as ya were stalkin’ me through the forest, some assassins are preparin’ to kill me sister? There’s no way!”
“So you want to risk it being true, then? Because it is. Your dear Frederica, that awesome lioness, will get murdered, and it will be on you. How will you be able to live with that?”
Garfiel’s voice trembles with fear and rage.
“Yer yankin’ my chain. I can’t believe ya…”
“I’m telling you the truth. Why would I lie about something like that? Would I lie to you about your dear sister, whom you obviously love so much?”
He clenches his fists as if holding back his urge to bash your head in.
“Let me go, Garfiel”, you say seriously. “I’m not your enemy.”
He rubs his fingers on the nasty scar on his forehead while grimacing in pain.
“Yer sure actin’ like one. Crap… Why do ya have ta mess with me head like this!”
You keep staring at him intensely.
“Let me go, Garfiel, and we’ll pretend none of this happened. I was about to leave for Roswaal’s mansion to stop the contract killers. You believing that I’m a witch cultist is a misunderstanding after all, and I hate cultists as well, so I understand your actions. We’ll return back to normal.”
He grits his predatory teeth even harder.
“Shut up!”
He swings his fist into the iron bars, bending them. He then wraps both hands around his head and slams it against the stone wall. When he pulls it back, his scar is covered in blood which is running down towards the bridge of his nose.
You are more than a bit disturbed. No wonder this guy is such a moron. His frontal lobe must have been mush for a long time.
“Garfiel, that’s fully unnecessary, not to mention horrifying”, you say with worry. “Calm down, let’s talk about this.”
He turns and points at you with a shaky hand.
“Shut up! Ya stay away from me sister! Stay away from the mansion! Ya hear me?! I don’t know what kinda lies ya told me, but I don’t trust ya one bit!”
After he calms down, he leans his head against the bars. A single tear drops to the dirty stone floor.
“Why do ya hafta mess with my head? Damn people always messin’ with me. And all ya had to do is help the shy princess, make sure nothin’ happened to ‘er. That’s all people asked of ya, ain’t it? Maybe the stench woulda been nothin’ then. But ya didn’t, ya came in here to destroy our home, the only place we can live in. I can’t forgive anyone fer that.”
You try thinking about how to convince him, but you can tell it won’t make a difference. He intends to keep you locked away until Emilia exits the witches’ tomb triumphantly, which will never happen, so you will never leave this ancient dungeon. You need to figure out a way to die as soon as possible. Maybe you just have to wait for the punk to leave, and when the coast is clear, steel yourself, lie on your back and bite down hard. Elsa showed you how hard you have to do it, and your mind survived intact after losing half of your tongue.
A moment later you realize that Garfiel is standing a meter away from you. As you look up at him, he crouches as if to read your thoughts through staring at you with his fiery eyes. The rolling beads of blood have reached his upper lip.
“I sure wish yer eyes weren’t like that, and it would be better for ya if they weren’t. Anyone can read yer evil intent with a single look.”
“I’m not evil”, you say, but you know it’s futile.
“Yeah, yeah, I should’ve known that ya’d lie. No matter, whatever ya are, ya won’t be in the way of things soon. Shy princess will pass the trials soon enough.”
You sigh deeply, shrug and resign yourself to wait until he gets bored and leaves.
“What’s with that face, half-pint?”, Garfiel asks with worry. “Ya ain’t gonna to mess with me head anymore? Ya ain’t gonna beg in ya way for me to release ya back to the pals ya deceived?”
“I can tell you are going to have it however you like. You won’t let me out no matter how much I complain, so I better save my breath.”
“Heh, ya got that right. But there’s somethin’ more, ain’t it? That whole thing ’bout askin’ me ta kill ya… It’s like ya truly wanted it.”
Your heart skips a beat.
“No, I want to live as much as the next guy, I assure you. I was just messing with your head because I knew you wouldn’t kill me. I just wanted to confuse you, which is as easy as it gets because you are as dumb as they come, Garfiel. Just a hick from a forgotten village who keeps making up nonsense because his life is pointless and hopeless.”
Even though his face twitches with anger, he smirks nervously.
“Hah! There it is! That’s what I wanna see. The guy who doesn’t give a damn ’bout nothin’ and mocks everyone. Sayin’ something so nasty to the strongest man in the world, who has ya locked up in a dungeon no less… That’s a death wish if I ever heard one.”
“I will not die here. I will live a very long life and pass away in my bed, surrounded by dozens of children and grandchildren, some of them part elf and others part demon.”
“Yeah, if ya say so. But knowin’ ya, I’d bet ya that ya’d come back from the dead just ta mock me again.”
“I would never think of doing such a thing.”
“That’s what ya say now, but the dead be comin’ back all the time. That’s why we put them six feet under or feed them ta pigs.”
“What, you have zombies in your fantasy world!?”
“Never heard of those, but that damn necromancer Flinterion the Undying keeps searchin’ fer our humble village. One day he’ll show up and I’ll fight him meself! I’ll have ta claw through a whole army of animated dead first!”
You close your eyes and contain a sigh.
“That would be a very interesting fight to watch. A completely fantastical one as well.”
“I dunno, I’m sure it’d be scary as hell even fer the strongest man in the world. Every time we hear rumbling from underground, me and the other kids used ta hide under our beds. Probably just the wind, but ya never know.”
You open your eyes again and stare at a hesitant Garfiel. He must have recovered his confidence, because he bares his predatory teeth menacingly.
“But I ain’t afraid no more. Becomin’ the strongest man in the world means losin’ all ya fear. Ya don’t even feel it anymore.”
You slowly lean back until you lie on your back, squeezing your tied hands between the floor and your body. The stone floor feels cold through your clothes. A headache is coming, and you want to be left alone to die in peace.
“Knowing your worldview, that makes perfect sense”, you mutter. “Please, let me be for a while, Garfiel, so I can get properly terrified about how much time I’m going to waste locked up in here.”
“Sure, will do. Ya know, it’s funny. I be the strongest man in the world, an’ I’m still afraid of so many things. Of losin’ people I care about, of losin’ a fight… even though it’s rare that anyone is actually strong enough ta challenge me. But yer not afraid of nothin’.”
“I couldn’t care less about the contradictions coming out of your mouth right now. Fuck off.”
“That’s basically what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Yer too full o’ hate to be afraid of anythin’. Ya’ve been eaten by the darkness. That’s a cultist fer ya.”
After a couple of seconds you hear Garfiel’s footsteps as he walks out of the cell. You wiggle your hands from under your body, and take a deep breath. The headache is coming now. However, Garfiel’s footsteps return, and he appears in your field of view. He stares down at you while smirking as if he has you figured out.
“What?”, you ask.
“Nothin’.”
“Don’t say ‘nothing’, you have something to say. Spit it out.”
“I dunno if ya did this intentionally or not, but I think yer startin’ ta get scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Whatever it is that’s not gonna happen.”
He crouches towards you. Suddenly he’s forcing your mouth open with one hand, while with the other he shoves a dirty, nasty-tasting balled up rag, filling your mouth with it. He wraps rope around it to secure it in place. Moving surprisingly quick for someone his size, he steps away from you and out of your view. You try to yell at him, but the gag muffles your voice, and all that comes out is a pathetic whimpering.
“Sorry I can’t hear ya”, he shouts proudly. “Hopefully when they let ya outta there, we can talk properly and find out what ya cultist freaks want with our village.”
You hear the sound of metal clanging together as the door closes and is locked shut.

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry, Garfiel tried to gain points with the unhinged senior servant, the protagonist offered himself to the Oni senior servant as food, the protagonist taught the skimpily dressed servant trainee about the FBI, the senior servant used blood magic on her forgotten, comatose sister, the protagonist confronted a deceitful German, the senior servant insulted the German’s tea, and we found out that contract killer Elsa Granhiert has chosen to begin her murderous assault. Kind of a packed episode.

• Previous part (55)
• Next part (57)

Despite both grown servants having jumped to their feet, and having gotten in a stance to fight against the sudden intruder that is holding a gutting knife to the tween trainee, Elsa’s purple eyes are staring straight at you. You get to see again that luscious soot-colored hair, the beautiful, mature face, and that pleasing, satisfied smile, as if this serial killer lives every moment of her life basking in the after-climax glow. She looks like the only real woman in the room, the only person in control of the situation.
“Whoever you are, intruder, free our trainee immediately or face your death!”, Ram shouts while distorting space in a swirl above her palm.
Frederica tries to maneuver towards Elsa’s flank, even though the contract killer keeps following you all with her gaze. You motion for the lioness to stop.
“Stay away from that woman, she’s a sexual deviant! And a serial killer!”
Elsa darts her eyes towards you, and frowns slightly as if you just insulted her.
“Sexual deviant you say, darling? Now how would you know such a thing? I assure you, anyone who would get to know about my intimate interests wouldn’t see the light of a new day.”
“That’s likely true!”, you shout nervously. “I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to letting you do those things to me again, in the right time and place, but more importantly, why the hell are you here so soon!?”
Although you hold Elsa’s confident, intense gaze, you sense the servants positioning themselves for an attack.
“Two servants, one of them a young trainee, a shut-in spirit… and you, darling. Preferably whenever you came. And I must tell you, you are lovelier than I had imagined.”
Her hungry, seductive voice makes you shiver.
“None of that again, Elsa!”
You hear a nasty creaking of bones coming from Frederica, who is hunched over while facing the contract killer. The German’s arms from her forearms down grow light blonde fur, and her hands distend into paws with long, sharp claws. You are shocked, but Elsa widens her smile as if Frederica was putting on a show for her sake.
“A shapeshifter. How lovely…” Elsa says, unworried. “Will you do me a favor, darling? After I rip open your abdomen and get to enjoy the color of your bestial insides, please turn back into a human so I can compare the change in your guts.”
Petra, shaking and leaking fluids from her eyes and nostrils, stops biting her lower lip to blubber.
“P-Please save y-yourselves! R-Run away!”
Frederica steps closer while clenching her teeth and glaring murderously at the contract killer.
“You will let my trainee go, fiend, or I will have no mercy on you. I’ll have you know, I’m German.”
“What does that mean?”, Elsa asks with a curious tone. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that word.”
Frederica growls.
“It means I’m about to end your whole existence!”
The lioness lunges from an angle at the contract killer, who separates the blade of her gutting knife from the trainee’s throat so she can face her attacker. In a split second, Frederica pushes Petra out of the way with one arm and swipes towards the contract killer’s torso with the extended claws of her other arm. Elsa parries the blow with one of the gutting knives, which produces a clank and a burst of sparks. With a predatory look in her eyes, the contract killer advances on Frederica. She parries another claw strike and stabs at the lioness’ face with the other gutting knife, but Frederica deflects the strike with her furry forearms in a splash of blood.
Ram walks briskly towards Elsa’s flank while extending her arm. In a sudden gust that ruffles your hair, a few thin distorsions slash the space heading for their target, but at the last moment Elsa turns and catches them with her arm. You hear the wind spell digging into the bare flesh of her upper arm, as well as the splashes of blood on the floor. Elsa stands there looking down at the bloody gashes.
“Ouch. You got me good.”
She smears a couple of fingers of the opposite hand with the blood running down her arm, and brings them to her smiling mouth. Her red tongue licks the fingers clean, and she looks satisfied.
While Frederica launches herself at the contract killer with her claws drawn, you look around frantically until you locate Petra, who is crouched near one of the windows while staring at the fight, frozen in fear. Are you as useless as this tween? Can’t you do anything? You don’t have any superpower that doesn’t involve dying, certainly nothing that can damage an infamous contract killer. But is that right? Beatrice had gone through a hell of her own to teach you a little bit of her arts. She had warned you, forbidden you actually, from using them until your magic gate recovered, but this is as huge of an emergency as you can imagine.
Even though your heart is beating way too loud, the area of your arm where Frederica punched you hurts, and the chaos of the fight to the death in front of you should require all your attention, you try to focus on drawing a solid ring in your mind theater. You bring forth your liquid-like magic essence as if coming from your navel, and this time you only amass a small part of it until you form in your mind a congealed mass the size of a bouncing ball. Then, as Frederica swings her arm towards the Bowel Hunter’s head a few meters in front of you, you push slowly, as if threading a needle, that ball of magical essence through the gate.
“Shamac!”, you shout.
An ink-like cloud bursts around you, and you get a still shot of the three combatants stopping their attacks in a sudden confusion. To your surprise you can see the faint outlines of the other people caught in the spell, you guess for magic-related reasons. The voluptuous, big breasted outline of Elsa Granhiert looks around as if trying to get her bearings.
“Hell yeah!”, you say. “Shadow all the way down, baby!”
As soon as you blurt those words out triumphantly even though you haven’t won anything, your body goes cold and you feel as if something has gotten torn inside of your chest. Before you could react to the worrying twinge, someone grabs you from the back of your shirt. You find yourself flying back towards the window. You fall to a stretch of the carpet out of the ink cloud that floats further into the room. In a split second you realize that Ram has run up to you, and you are about to speak when something plunges into the back of your shoulder and lodges itself in the bone. The sudden pain makes you wince, but you have no time to question anything. Closer to the window, Frederica has grabbed the tween trainee and is sprinting to jump out of the window. Ram and you imitate the lioness. You hope that she’ll manage to break through, or else you will all slam into each other.
After you feel more than hear the loud crash of broken glass, you jump through the window frame. As if time had slowed down, you see Frederica falling in an arc as she carries Petra under her arm. In the blink of an eye, four or five throwing knives get stuck into Frederica’s back up to the hilt, and the lioness’ face contorts with surprise and pain. Her jump goes briefly horizontal as the dagger that’s embedded into her spine causes her to arch.
You hit the ground with a roll, and pain shoots throughout your back. You spot Ram’s legs as the senior servant sprints alongside the outside wall of the mansion, and you half crawl half stumble behind her. When Ram finally stops to look back, you fall on your ass right next to her. Frederica and Petra are approaching you, but the lioness is hunched over and staggering as if her legs barely work. There’s blood dripping from her mouth. Her legs seem to give out, and she falls forward onto her furry forearms.
Petra runs to Frederica’s side and tries to support her weight.
“Miss Frederica! Please tell me you are okay!”
“Not in my current form, no…”, she says with a shaky voice, even though she forces a smile for the trainee.
Ram, looking worried, is observing the window you all broke through.
“That woman is way too strong. She came out of nowhere, too…”
“She’s Elsa Granhiert, a contract killer”, you say.
Ram turns her head sharply towards you, and judging by the dread in her face, you might as well have told her that Death had come for her in person.
“I doubt we could win against the Bowel Hunter even if Frederica wasn’t so injured”, Ram says with a low voice. “We need to flee.”
“What!?”, you shout with disbelief. “The moment we leave, that freak will find Beatrice and Rem and kill them both! That’s your own sister you are suggesting we abandon!”
“We don’t have time, Barusu. I hate having to do this, but that Rem, being my sister, would understand my position. She would agree that we need to save ourselves instead of risking all of us dying.”
You clench both your teeth and fists.
“You have no clue! Rem would have jumped right into the fray to save the people she cared about, even if it meant sacrificing herself! That’s who she was. Everyone in this mansion is part of our family. We can’t leave them behind!”
Ram is taken aback by the sudden anger you direct at her, but she glares in turn.
“This is no time to be a hero, Barusu.”
“This is one of the only times when it would make sense to be one!”
“I-I also think we should save the others…”, Petra says shily, tears streaming down her face.
Ram scowls at the trainee as if she hates that the tween is wasting time.
“Shut up. You are a child.”
“Now she’s a child!?”, you complain.
Frederica pushes herself off the ground so she can support herself on her shaky legs. She looks as if she might collapse at any moment. She spits blood to the side, and while more blood drips out of the corner of her mouth, she addresses the rest of you.
“We can’t abandon our people to their deaths. I will transform. Ram, come with me and we’ll handle that Bowel Hunter. Mr. Natsuki, lead Petra out of danger and figure out a way to rescue both our comatose friend as well as our reluctant librarian.”
You don’t want to say it out loud, but there’s no way that Frederica and Ram, as strong as they might prove themselves to be when pushed to their limits, would be enough against someone so clearly monstrous as Elsa Granhiert. Frederica is trying to buy you time to rescue the others, hoping that there’s a chance the both of them will end up escaping the contract killer. You feel terrible for having accused her angrily before. Despite her deceit, she’s a top-notch gal.
Frederica, wheezing from the blood that must be pooling in her lungs, still holds a faint smile as she looks over her shoulder to the knives sticking out of the bloodied back of her servant outfit.
“I won’t be able to be of any help unless I heal these wounds… Please, Petra, don’t be afraid.”
The lioness grabs the front of her outfit with her light blonde, furry paws, which look as if she only dressed with part of a Halloween costume, and she rips her clothes apart, ending up naked except for her panties.
You close your mouth, and force yourself to avoid staring at her big, shapely breasts that she makes no effort to hide. As Frederica clenches her teeth, she falls to her knees. Her head, torso and limbs groan and creak while they bulge, elongate or twist, and grow soft, light blonde fur. The knives stuck to her human form pop out and fall to the ground, pushed out by her bestial transformation. At the end you find yourself staring at a horse-sized fantasy world lioness that has lost the regular Frederica’s voluminous hair, although she has gained a long, fluffy tail. Her head lacks all human features, but she looks back towards you all and stretches her big mouth full of pointy teeth into a smile.
“Phew! That felt good! Petra, you should try it some time!”
The beast’s mouth didn’t form those words. Frederica must be projecting her speech through magic.
“I wish!”, Petra says with a smile, even though she’s still crying. “You look wonderful, miss Frederica.”
“Thank you, dear.” The beast form of Frederica lifts her big head towards you. “Mr. Natsuki, I would have expected you to be scared or even appalled, but what’s with that face?”
“Well… I mean, you look majestic and graceful, the kind of legendary beast that would appear on the flag of a fantasy nation. But we need a monstrous feline that would cause our enemies to piss themselves, you know? Your bestial form even has female eyelashes.”
Frederica looks down, suddenly disappointed. In her current form she looks like a gigantic cat who has been denied food.
“Frederica! We absolutely do not have time for this nonsense”, Ram says with a resolute tone. “If you want us to commit suicide confronting the Bowel Hunter, let’s do so while it means anything.” As she starts walking towards the busted window, she looks at you over her shoulder. “You better not waste this opportunity, Barusu.”
Your chest tightens. You open your mouth to answer, but you can’t form any words. Ram ends up closing her eyes. She faces forwards and both her and the graceful, horse-sized beast that Frederica has become hurry to their likely deaths.
You turn to run in the opposite direction, towards the front doors of the mansion. When you are about to pass by Petra, whose tween face is a mess of tears and snot, she alternates between worrying for the servants and looking expectantly at you. You grab her hand and force her to follow you. However, you feel blood running down your skin from the knife stuck in the back of your shoulder, and your heart hurts because you already miss this version of Ram who had looked at you as something closer to a human than to an insect for a brief moment, when she sat on the living room’s sofa after she understood that you had fought to make her understand the unbelievable truth about her lost sister. This reality is already a bust. You have learned the horrible information that Elsa Granhiert will time her attacks to either the moment you arrive at the mansion, or if you take your sweet time returning, to whether enough days have passed. You don’t think there’s a way you will avoid losing people when that contract killer is already trying to kill you all.
“Petra, you have a better chance of surviving if you just run as fast as you can to the village”, you say to the tween, who is trying to dry her eyes while running. “If I were you I would take this chance to save yourself.”
“No, I want to stay with you, Mr. Natsuki!” She says, clinging to your arm with surprising strength. “I am not leaving you by yourself in this place. Besides, I know you, and you wouldn’t run away! You aren’t doing so right now, and you didn’t do that back at the battle against those horrible cultists! I remember very well how you charged with your ground dragon so you could kill that man who was trying to stab me!”
“That’s because I’ve found out that under the right circumstances dying horribly can feel surprisingly good. You are still a child, Petra. You have a whole boring, unfulfilling life ahead of you. You barely know anything about this world yet.”
“I know you, Mr. Natsuki! You are a hero! I will not leave your side!”
You sigh, disappointed that she won’t listen to reason. It’s obvious she wants to prove her affection for you by staying by your side. Joke’s on her, because she barely registers in your consciousness.
“It will very likely become your funeral, but then again I believe in personal choice. Ever since you started working here I’ve done nothing but berate you and you still won’t get away from me. Some people don’t learn.”
The two of you enter the mansion through the front doors. You can already hear the fight coming from the side of the mansion opposite to where Rem’s room is. You want to pay attention to the muffled crashing, the shouting, the clanking, the magic sound effects, but you would only distract yourself from what you need to do.
As you rest against a marble pillar, you point with your thumb towards your injured shoulder.
“Petra, can you see what the hell is sticking out of there?”
You interrupted the tween as she was biting her nails.
“A knife, like the ones that hurt miss Frederica.”
“Then take it out. Quick.”
“I-I don’t think it’s a good idea. It might be preventing blood fr-“
“I don’t care. I don’t want to live with a knife stuck in me. Take it out, damn it.”
Petra nods. You crouch, then she pushes with one hand your flesh next to the wound while with the other she pulls the knife out. You clench your teeth, but you feel tears forming in your eyes. Petra leaves the bloody knife on a chair.
“It seems that the wound won’t bleed too much…”, she says cautiously.
“Whatever. Let’s go.”
You quicken your pace through the hallway towards your comatose demon servant’s room.
“I would need some time to find whatever door Beatrice put her Passage spell on”, you say without turning your head to the trainee you are dragging around. “And I’d also rather rescue my completely defenseless Rem first.”
After slinking around a couple of corners, you start to hear noises similar to shrieks coming from further down this side of the mansion. You stop for a moment, and when Petra attempts to question why you stopped, you press your hand against her mouth. No, you still hear the intense fight in the distance, but these strange, animal-like shrieks come from the opposite direction. The closer you get to Rem’s room, the more audible they become.
Something alive turns the next corner into the hallway you are walking through. It’s a black, furry creature the size of a small pig. It has an unfriendly face and a horn coming out of its forehead. When he spots Petra and you, it snarls.
“What the hell is that!?”, you shout. “Why is there a random monster walking around in this mansion!?”
The beast makes a raspy, barking sound before sprinting straight for you. Startled, you attempt to slam it with a punch, but it dodges the attack and sinks its teeth into your left arm. The creature shakes its head from side to side, tearing off layers of flesh with its fangs. Petra screams and punches the creature in the back of the head. It whines and opens its mouth, releasing you. When it falls to the floor, you punt it further down the hall.
You wonder if you just hallucinated. Why would there be a monster-like creature wandering around in here? You are about to shout insults to the furry monster when you realize that something close to a swarm of demonic-looking monsters of different sizes is running towards you both while baring their teeth.
“Get back!”, you scream at the young servant girl.
Both of you run in the direction you came from. The bites in your left arm burn and bleed, and you can’t move your hand right. Behind you both you hear loud noises, screams and roars. You are surprised that these monsters haven’t caught up to you yet.
“What… What are those things?”, Petra asks while panting.
“I don’t know! This is your world! Take some responsibility for having failed to make something decent of this place!”
“Ugh! I was just born here! We need to hide somewhere or else those things are going to bite us to death!”
You turn towards the first room to the side of the hallway, and you try the handle. It’s open. You pull the door towards you, then push the trainee inside. You wish you hadn’t looked back at what’s coming for you: there aren’t only cat or pig sized demonic-looking monsters rushing towards you both, but also some the size of Dobermanns, and a couple of the monsters, which look like bats from the glance you got, are flying over the running ones.
Your body acts for you. This is survival of the fittest at its most primal. Before you know it you’ve jumped into the room, closed the door behind you and leaned with your back against it to prevent the monsters from pushing it open. Still, that doesn’t mean you are safe from some horrific abominations jumping at you both from the other side of the glass windows, in case they are roaming the yard.
“Mr. Natsuki, the bolt! Lock the door!”, shouts Petra in a panic, while hunched over, crying and holding her head in her hands.
What sounds like a dozen monsters are growling and shrieking right outside of the door you are holding. They are pushing against it, making the wood tremble through your bones. You have broken in sweat and you can’t even begin to process what the fuck is happening.
“Why don’t you do it, Petra!? I’m quite busy already!”
You shout at her, angry that she is standing around doing nothing.
“I-I’m scared!”, she whimpers pathetically.
“Well, get over it! Do something for yourself for a change!”
As you shout at her, the door is pushed open and you fall over. A claw reaches from behind the door and tries to grab you, but you are already rolling away. Standing up immediately you feel a bit dizzy, probably because of the adrenaline rush. You grab Petra’s arm and run towards the window in order to jump through it. You have no clue if your strength and your speed are going to be enough, but you charge with your injured forearm in front of you, while also lowering your head and squeezing your eyes shut.
After the loud crash and the piercing pain of glass cutting your flesh, you fall to the yard while also pulling Petra out with you. You briefly look back and see that part of the horde is now inside the room. You notice the tween staggering around, and you push her to keep running alongside the wall of the mansion.
“Keep going!”, you shout, almost breathless. “We’ll need to enter through another window, or the first door we see!”
Your eyes start to scan the surroundings for another possible entry point. Fortunately, a door is only several feet away from you both, but as you pass by some windows you notice dark, beast-like figures trying to get out through them. You must have drawn further monsters in with the sound of shattering glass, but there’s no time to think.
You hear muffled noises coming from inside the mansion, and a couple of windows are shaking violently.
You reach the door, and press your back against the wall next to it. Petra, who can’t stop crying and whimpering, hides behind you from the source of the noises. After catching your breath for a brief moment, you slowly open the door. The dimly lit hallway in front of you is deserted, but it won’t be for long. You don’t recall ever having entered the mansion through this side door, and you would need some time to find your bearings regarding how to locate Rem’s room again. What if those random monsters sensed her presence inside and have already broken in? As your heart beats hard against your ribcage, you try to clear your mind of anything but the path in front of you.
You both start walking along the hallway, staying close to the wall so that any potential pursuers would have a harder time spotting you. Although Petra is trying to stay quiet, her tremors pass from her hand to yours. As the oppressive silence continues, the beastly noises from before grow louder. Your heart sinks. Petra can’t help but sob. You can’t get anywhere with those beasts walking around, and you can’t fight them.
Your stabbed shoulder hurts and burns, your bitten arm keeps bleeding and dripping onto the floor, and you have gotten so dizzy that you feel as if you are running through a nightmare. You won’t be able to push yourself for much longer. You head for the first door you see, you open it, you push Petra inside and then close the door behind you. You motion for Petra to crouch against the door and keep quiet.
The room is small, one of the smallest bedrooms you’ve seen on this mansion. For now it’s the safest place around. You take a deep breath and try to calm down your racing heart. As you wait in silence, you wonder whether or not you should open the window to check if the coast is clear outside.
You aren’t sure how much time you have spent sitting on the floor while leaning against the door. Petra is clutching to your shirt while trembling in terror. Her tears and snot keep dripping on your clothes.
Your mind keeps trying to wander off into insanity, maybe as a defense mechanism. Nothing that has happened ever since you parted ways with the only two people who can fight has made any sense. Truly there can’t be a bunch of demonic-looking monsters that came out of nowhere pursuing you. Not even someone who was born in this insane world understands why that would happen.
You feel Petra touching and tugging something on your wrist, a piece of cloth.
“Y-You are still wearing it, Mr. Natsuki”, she whispers as quietly as possible, sounding half-crazed. “I-I’m so glad I could help keeping you s-safe.”
You don’t understand what she means until you look where she’s touching. It’s a handkerchief which for some reason is tied around your wrist. Why would you be wearing a handkerchief as an accessory? Ah, the tween tied it around your wrist before you left, because of superstition. You had forgotten it was there.
You also speak as quietly as humanly possible.
“That you bring up me or any of us remaining safe when there are a bunch of monsters roaming around outside of this room, hoping to tear us apart and possibly eat us alive, and if they don’t we will probably still get killed by the most dangerous serial killer in this world, must be one of those delusions that dumb people cling to when they are about to die. It’s okay, though. You are only twelve, you have the right to be irrational.”
Petra doesn’t answer, and instead keeps trembling and crying almost uncontrollably. You fear that she’s going to end up pissing herself. The smell would likely attract quite a few monsters.
With both of your hands you hold Petra’s mess of a face, with tears and snot running down, to force her to hold your gaze.
“Petra, we can’t just stay here without doing anything. Waiting won’t help us. Truly, if the monsters don’t get us, the serial killer will, because she seemed likely to win against our friends.”
“Th-Then…”
“I will leave through this door and I will try to drive the monsters away from this room. Once you hear them leave, try to climb down to the yard through the window, and run away. Keep running until you reach your village, in fact. You might even spot Patrasche in the yard. My ground dragon is a good girl, she will probably help you even though she must be worried sick about what’s going on.”
“But I… I’ll leave you behind!”
You would be lying if the fact that she is so loyal doesn’t make you feel at least a little good.
“That’s the whole point. I’m ordering you to do so. That’s your chosen profession, isn’t it, obeying the unreasonable requests of noble-like people? Then be a good servant. Shut your damn mouth and do as I say.”
Your harsh words cause her crying eyes to glisten with determination for a moment. She nods. You move her away from the door so you can stand up and open it. You pull the door slowly towards you and make sure there aren’t any monsters in the immediate vicinity. You then exit to the hallway, look at Petra’s face for the last time in this life and close the door behind you.
You walk slowly down the hallway while keeping an eye and an ear out for monsters or their growls and shrieks. You need to find your bearings so you can figure out how to reach Rem’s room from here. And you aren’t even sure what you will do if you do get to your comatose girlfriend’s side. Will you give her a piggyback ride with your injured body, and will you escape the mansion while weighted down and being hunted by both those random monsters and Elsa Granhiert? You are acting out of delusional defiance, but you still feel it’s better than to give up and die.
You get past a stairway to the second floor, and it serves as a landmark for your panicked mind. If you turn around a couple of corners you should be able to sprint down a hallway and reach your Rem. However, as you turn the first one, a lone monster you have never seen before, a pig-sized, insectoid-like creature with vicious teeth, seems to have lost the pack and is skittering across the carpet. You have no choice but to go that way, so you start running towards it. You kick at it, but it dodges. These horrid things seem to have had far more experience at surviving in this world than you, and have been far more successful at it. You run past the monster, but a glance tells you that the insectoid-like creature is getting ready to pursue you. You reach the corner and turn, hoping to reach the hallway that leads to Rem. After making it halfway down the next corridor, you hear a hideous shriek behind you, the high-pitched scream is of a creature spotting its prey. Even though you’d prefer not to, you glance over your shoulder and see that a couple of the black, furry creatures with a horn coming out of their forehead, one of which had made a mess out of your left arm, are exiting a room, followed by some other monsters. One of the creatures looks like a black, hairless monkey with an oversized head and blood-stained mouth, which is currently emitting an otherworldly screech.
That sight gives you the burst of adrenaline you need to reach the end of the corridor. You finally spot Rem’s door, maybe around ten doors away. Perhaps you can still save her. You start running towards it at full speed.
“Come on, come on!”, you whisper to yourself, your eyes trained on the door.
Your body stops by itself in the middle of your path, and staggers for a moment until your burning legs can support your weight. Someone is waiting further down the hall, a woman who is facing your way. It’s Elsa Granhiert, who despite having an arm covered in blood, as well as blood having splashed the bare skin of the impossibly risky cleavage that runs down until slightly above her crotch, she’s standing still as if unharmed, and she’s offering you a welcoming, self-composed smile. At the end of her arms that she keeps at her sides she’s holding on to her blood-dyed gutting knives.
As if the Bowel Hunter wasn’t enough, you can’t help but look behind you to see a dozen monsters barrelling down the hallway towards you while growling, shrieking and pushing each other out of the way as if hoping to tear you apart and eat you first. Your legs wobble.
“Meili, that’s enough!”, the Bowel Hunter shouts, the first time you have ever heard this serial killer’s voice rise above a conversational level.
A couple of seconds later, the monsters stop on their tracks like dogs ordered to do so by the trainer who disciplined them well. They eye you as if they’d rather disobey, but the bunch of nasty, demonic-looking creatures turns around and move away. You suddenly spot a small arm peeking out from an open room, and she waves towards you, or maybe towards the Bowel Hunter. Then her whole upper torso appears. Your dizziness doesn’t allow you to focus enough on the figure, but you can tell it’s either child-sized human being or an actual child, a female with dark blue hair braided in pigtails, who wears a black cape over an also black uniform. The monsters stop near the girl, although they continue growling and shrieking as if disappointed.
“I was so close, Elsa”, the new person speaks with a mischievous, child-like voice. “It would have been fun! But if you’d rather have him, I can’t say no to you…”
“That’s right, darling”, Elsa answers. “Now be a good girl and make yourself scarce. I want some time alone with our lovely target.”
“Alright then”, the child says, disappointed.
She jumps out of the room and runs away from you while hunched over, as if she doesn’t want to be recognized or seen clearly at least. The monsters follow her like pets that don’t want to stay away from their master.
Once you understand that you won’t have to deal with horrible, mutated, demonic-looking fantasy world monsters anymore, you turn slowly towards the other monster, Elsa Granhiert, who clearly wants you to entertain her the same way you did the first time you met this contract killer. Then, Elsa wounded you mortally before you could realize what has happening. Now you have to deal with the anticipation. Besides, you keep seeing Frederica and Ram in your mind, and your throat has tightened as if someone was squeezing it.
“Did you kill my friends, Elsa…?”, you ask with a hollow voice.
The Bowel Hunter smiles as if you’ve reminded her of people she’s fond of.
“They were so lovely. They struggled to their last ounce of strength. They wished so much to keep living. And their insides looked really beautiful.”
This reality is done, you knew it already. You aren’t sure to what hope you were holding on to. Nothing in this whole universe matters anymore, but you can’t relay that to your feelings, because you have to swallow a sudden nausea, and the next time you blink, the tears that built up in your burning eyes roll down your cheeks. You lower your head and glare murderously at the contract killer.
“Although destroying that body of yours through killing you will be to a certain extent like burning down the library of Alexandria, one day I will see you die, and I will enjoy it.”
Elsa spins the knives in her hands then strikes a pose, wielding her weapons as if preparing to strike you. However, you can tell that she’s mocking you, that she doesn’t expect you to attack.
“Then please do come for me, I’m looking forward to it. That shapeshifter as well as the magic user had wisdom to share, but I won’t be able to glean even that from you. You are as weak as they come, aren’t you, boy? Only you and that shut-in spirit remain. I can even afford to take my time checking out the color of your guts before I begin the tiresome task of opening every door of this mansion.”
A wave of unspeakable weariness hits. You stagger and grab the wall to your right, squeezing your head in an attempt to stop the room from spinning. You must have lost plenty of blood already.
“Well, Elsa, this time I’m going to struggle for a bit longer even though everything is ruined.”
You take a deep breath and sprint as if you are charging against the contract killer. Elsa smiles welcomingly. As you are about to pass by Rem’s room, you reach for the handle and open the door wide open. You lunge towards the doorway as Elsa throws one of her knives at you, and you hear it strike the door behind your head. You hear her begin to complain, but when you close the door behind you, her voice disappears. You lean against the wood trying to catch your breath. As you snap out of it you realize that you aren’t in Rem’s room. You see row after row of bookshelves, and smell the musty odor of old books. Beatrice is facing you a few meters away as if receiving you, even though every other time you entered her domain she had been sitting on her chair, barely bothering to lift her gaze from her book. The hundreds of years old child librarian stares at you intensely.
Elsa must have followed you into the room she saw you enter, but the Passage spell jumped to a different door the moment you closed this one. You just led the contract killer to meet Rem.

Note from December of 2020:

This entry was the toughest to get through of all fifty six. I couldn’t get it to flow right. It must have been partially due to the fact that during these last few days I’ve felt completely out of it, in a daze, barely able to focus at work, and experiencing a delay when thinking about or reacting to everything. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me.

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry, Otto and the protagonist had a ridiculous conversation about witch-created simulations, the protagonist surrendered to Emilia’s charms, and the couple of people who matter in Sanctuary refused to allow the protagonist to steal Emilia’s thunder.

• Previous part (52)
• Next part (54)

Right after you failed to convince Ryuzu and Garfiel to let you pass the trials instead of Emilia, you went straight to find Ram so you could focus on making sure you can save Rem and everybody else at the mansion. You start searching near the modest house where the clown is resting. You locate the spartan senior servant as she dumps the contents of a bucket into a marshy terrain close to the treeline behind the house. Due to the stink of the marsh as well as the fact that the bucket has a hinged lid that Ram is quick to close after she straightens her back, you get to feel proud that you realize what she was doing.

“Dutiful servant as you are, you literally get to take care of our wounded clown’s shit”, you say as you approach the pink-haired girl.

What you didn’t expect is the death stare she impales your face with, so full of disdain that you freeze in your spot. You feel like a deer in front of an incoming truck, paralyzed by your impending death. You take a step back as Ram walks up to you, still holding on to the shit bucket.

“Did you merely intend to anger me, Barusu,” Ram asks with a hardened voice, “or was your comment the preliminary to an important point?”

You swallow. Your heart is having a hard time calming down, as you suddenly feel that joking around with this demon servant at any moment has been a horrible mistake.

“I apologize for my characteristic rudeness. I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just being myself. Yes, I was looking for you because I want an audience with Roswaal. I need to bring up Frederica’s betrayal. I intend to travel to the mansion and confront her.”

Ram stands there silently staring at you. The disdain hasn’t entirely cleared out from her red eyes, but eventually she takes a deep breath.

“It seems like an important matter. And yet you need to clarify something to me first: how did you know I was going to be here?”

“Well, you weren’t present during our meeting with Ryuzu, so I figured that you must have been busy tending to your lord.”

“An uncharacteristic display of reasoning on your part, but you have avoided my point. How do you know that Roswaal rests in this part of the village?”

You want to facepalm. Of course, you only knew where Roswaal was hidden because his senior servant had guided you to that dingy villager house. You weren’t supposed to know.

“Ah… Well, my dear Ram, how was I able to defeat an ancient ghost with the power of my mind? Maybe I’m not as small and insignificant as you constantly suggest.”

She narrows her eyes at you, but then she takes a deep breath and walks past you.

“It seems I need to be more careful. That’s on me. Follow me, Barusu, and when I enter a house through the back door, you wait near the front one until I ask you to come in.”

“Sure thing, sis.”

A few minutes later you find yourself sitting on the same chair as you did during your first meeting with your wounded lord Roswaal, and he’s wearing the same horrifying makeup, white foundation, triangles over his eyes, lipstick and everything. It creeps you the fuck out.

You take out the pendant with the emerald-colored, generic-looking crystal that Frederica had given to Emilia, while stating that under no circumstances the half-elf should have taken the pendant off. But because you snatched the pendant from your current girlfriend Emilia, you were the one who got teletransported to the clearing in front of the witches’ tomb instead, where you should have been ripped apart by the magic traps. Roswaal had been informed of most of this, but you go ahead and make your point.

“My request is this, Roswaal: allow me to leave alone on my dear ground dragon to your mansion, so I can confront Frederica and figure out what the fuck was the deal with this underhanded crap. In and out thing, I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Roswaal keeps staring at you while smiling as if he can’t quite tell who you are. Again you wonder whether your lord is all there, but then he speaks with his lilting voice.

“Underhanded? Is this the same Frederica that’s been working in my mansion for years, despite her recent leave of absence? The same girl that I’ve never seen be anything less than respectful and polite with me from the beginning? Indeed, that she would resort to these strange behaviors concerns me. Do you believe you can confront someone as strong as our Frederica, even though she might reveal some malicious intent?”

As hard as it is for you to imagine that easy-going, lively lioness trying to kill you, you clearly wouldn’t be able to defend yourself. If you ever agree to wrestle with her, you wouldn’t be surprised if she killed you accidentally. You imagine yourself struggling as her German body pins you down. Back in reality, you end up coughing against your fist to clear your mind.

“Well, I’m not confident, but the longer we stay here, the more our advantage of surprise disappears…” A loud yawn interrupts your sentence. “Sorry about that. I had a lot to think about in bed last night. Anyway, as I was saying, it’s better if I leave now instead of waiting for something bad to happen.”

“Oh, but I want you to stay, Subaru”, the clown says, pretending to implore. “You are Emilia’s knight after all. Like the bright young man that you are, Ram told me that you had figured out that I intended to make you an official knight as soon as we return home.”

“And I’m grateful for that, lord Roswaal. However, we don’t know in what other ways Frederica’s betrayal means further trouble in Sanctuary. We need to be careful, particularly after Emilia failed to pass the first segment of the trial.”

“Hmmmm… It is true. Still, I am worried for Emilia if something were to happen to you while you are away. You keep Emilia company in her most trying times after all.”

You keep tapping on your knee nervously. If Roswaal agrees to allow you to leave Sanctuary for this task, you risk running into that terrifyingly sexy freak, that Elsa Granhiert, again. You have no doubt that she would murder you again, and you would possibly end up helping her to reach her climax. You aren’t in the mood for such games when the lives of your friends, that Petra trainee, as well as your beloved Rem are on the line.

You raise your gaze towards Roswaal, who was waiting patiently for you to continue.

“Lord Roswaal, you look like a man of culture, with all that clown makeup. Does the nickname Bowel Hunter ring any bells?”

Roswaal narrows his eyes, and he observes your expression as if looking for some revelatory detail. You grow seriously uncomfortable under the gaze of his disturbing clown face.

“Why of course it does! Everyone who holds any power in this kingdom needs to know about miss Elsa Granhiert, their very lives could depend on it. The question is, why is she relevant to our predicament? Surely you understand that your question seems disconnected from the rest of our conversation.”

You open and close your mouth, trying to come up with a proper response. You cannot tell him that Elsa Granhiert has been contracted to murder everyone at his mansion. You can’t come up with a source of that information other than revealing that you can travel back to the past whenever you die, and that’s something you can’t imagine yourself telling to this clown. You sigh.

“I heard scary stories about this woman and how she works from the shadows, and given that Frederica was acting shady, both people connected in my mind.”

“I see, I see”, Roswaal says, scratching his chin. “Now that you mention it, miss Granhiert is an excellent shadow. Scary that a woman like her exists in this world. However, you shouldn’t need to worry about her at the moment. Are you aware of her trade, then?”

“Uh… She’s a professional assassin?”

“Assassin doesn’t quite cover all of her, but yes, it’s correct to an extent. She’s a hunter, but she uses a very wide definition of the word ‘prey.’ Anything alive that can feel pain is her preferred prey, even animals, but she prefers humans above all. Doesn’t matter who they are or what they’ve done. And she’s so good at it that it has turned into a very lucrative profession for her. Many important people hire her preemptively only to make sure she focuses on other targets.”

You fail to contain your spine from trembling. You swallow the knot in your throat.

“Holy fuck. How would one stop such a monster, Roswaal…?”

“Unfortunately, if she’s hired to kill you, you can’t. In such an unfortunate case, Death itself is coming for you. However, you needn’t worry about it! Nobody would want to pay to kill you, Subaru, even if you ruffled some feathers with your very public display of defiance at the royal summons.”

You tighten your lips. None of you expected the ambush that ruined your Rem, as well as stole Crusch’s memories. You have no clue what’s actually going on in this world.

“Yeah… I suppose so.”

“If I were you, I’d be more concerned about our dear Emilia’s attempts at passing the trials, but also about Frederica’s strange behavior. Forget about the Bowel Hunter. She is a monster in the closet.”

Roswaal winks at you. You shift uncomfortably on the wooden chair. You are the monster in the closet, Roswaal, you think.

“Ah… Getting back on track, will you allow me then to jump onto my ground dragon and travel back to your mansion to speak with Frederica? It will be a quick sort of deal.”

Roswaal closes his eyes and sighs.

“You are one stubborn man. I can tell you won’t change your mind, so sure. Please do confront our Frederica and figure out what she intended with her underhanded behavior.”

You nod, happy that you succeeded for once.

“Well, great.”

“However, I will be concerned for your safety if you go by yourself. Despite your numerous strengths, fighting ability is not one of them.”

“Pfft, I’ll have you know I was a warrior of legends in my past life.”

Roswaal’s smile widens.

“If you say so, Subaru. But I want to be extra sure in any case.” He turns to Ram, who was standing to your left like a bouncer that can’t wait to throw you out as violently as possible. “Dear Ram, please do accompany Subaru to the mansion and make sure that no dark fate befalls him.”

Disturbed, Ram uncrosses her arms. She eyes her lord pleadingly.

“I do not wish to do that, lord.”

You feel sad. What did I do to you that was so bad, Ram?, you think. You are my sister-in-law and everything!

“Is it because of the sex in a barn thing, Ram?”, you ask with a thin voice.

Roswaal chuckles.

“Oh, please do tell what you refer to. Ram, have you been involved in such a way with our soon to be knight?”

You wince as Ram’s cheeks redden. Her eyes avert from her lord’s and she mumbles something incomprehensible.

“What was that, Ram?”, Roswaal asks with his lilting tone. “I couldn’t hear you properly, my dear servant.”

“I said no!”, she answers in a louder tone. “I have not, I did not. Barusu has an improper imagination that he keeps tangling innocent people in.”

“Yeah, sorry for threatening you with a good time, Ram”, you say, feeling hollow all of a sudden.

Ram seethes with anger.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it would hurt you like that”, you say in a low voice. “I keep blurting out stuff because it just pops into my mouth, and I can’t stop myself. I guess that I was feeling so despondent that when I stared at someone as stoic and strong and pink-haired and whose long, slender legs look so good in those stockings, I wanted you to share some of your essence. I didn’t mean anything bad.”

Ram squeezes her eyes shut, clenches her fists and turns her face away.

“Stop! Stop now, Barusu! Apologies aren’t enough for the things you say!”

“I don’t know what else to do! I’m trying, really!”

You touch your chest and then reach out with your left hand towards her. Seeing this, Ram holds her head with both hands.

“I’ve heard enough! I will not remain here and be insulted by you any longer! I won’t!”

“I’m not insulting you at all! I’m praising your qualities, if anything! Ram, you are the best Spartan I have ever met, and I’m proud that you became my sister-in-law. I want nothing more than to take care of you as your dear sort of brother for the rest of my life!”

She gives you a scornful look, and then turns away.

“I need to be away from you right now… I don’t think I can trust myself to not kill you.”

“It’s that bad!?”

Roswaal raises his hand in a motion to stop your confrontation. His smile has faded, and he’s even frowning. Ram must be serious then.

“Ram, please calm yourself. You must understand that our Subaru is young and still developing. Don’t allow some careless words of his to get to you. And surely you understand he doesn’t mean any harm.”

Ram has barely turned her face towards her lord when you open your mouth again.

“Ram… If it will satisfy you, just kill me. It’s alright. It would be a honor to be murdered by your hands.”

You bow slightly on the chair as a sign of respect, but your humility and kindness does nothing to change her expression. Ram presses her hands against the sides of her head and seems to be muttering something in between clenched teeth.

“Do it…”, you plead. “You mustn’t suffer the wicked. Kill me, Ram.”

Roswaal raises his hands and makes a clapping motion, which breaks the tension.

“Enough! The pair of you!”

With that, Ram hastily turns towards the door and leaves the house, leaving you and Roswaal alone. She doesn’t look back even once before closing the door.

“I’ll… admit, I was not expecting such a reaction from her”, you say sheepishly, barely able to hold the clown’s gaze. “I suppose I’ve offended her several times in the past, but never to this degree.”

“Hm, I suppose she is quite proud of her heritage.”

“Even so, I don’t think that pride could turn into this sort of passion.”

“Clearly it has. I suggest you tread carefully around her. Not only is she is our senior servant, but if she wished she could easily kill you and only few would be able to stop her. However, this confrontation only served to emphasize for me that you both need to work together better. Return to Ryuzu’s home, Barusu, and I will convince our dear Ram to accompany you back home.”

“That’s not necessary, I-“

“I will send Ram with you, so this matter is settled. Speak with whomever you need, as well as prepare yourself properly, so you can leave for the mansion as soon as possible. You have done a good job of surviving this far, Subaru.”

* * *

You have pulled Emilia into Ryuzu’s guest room so you can speak to her about your departure.

“You are leaving!?”, Emilia asks with confused dismay. “But you told me you would be there for me tonight, after I attempt to pass the trial again!”

“I’m sorry, I really wanted to be there for you, but we’ve got to figure out why Frederica betrayed us like that. Besides, that scary Ram is going to accompany me as my personal demon bodyguard, so I have nothing to worry about. I don’t even have to get terrified about extremely proficient contract killers!”

Emilia lowers her face slightly, and her lips turn down with sadness.

“I need you here, Subaru…”, she says with a voice that pierces your heart. “And I miss your touch already.”

You put your hand on her waist to sit her next to each other on the bed.

“I know, but this came up. Look, I’ll be back tomorrow at the latest, and I’m sure you’ll be fine without me there to cheer you on.”

“But… I feel like for once things are getting better for me…”

You pat her on the head and give her a warm smile.

“They will continue to get better. You just have to trust in that.”

Emilia smiles back, though it’s obvious she is forcing herself to do so.

“Be careful, okay?”

“Of course I will.”

You stroke her beautiful face, then taste her rosy lips. She opens her mouth and plays with your tongue while she grabs the back of your shirt. You are getting the tingles all over.

“I love you, Emilia, and we belong to each other”, you murmur.

“Yes… Yes, we do…”

She keeps kissing you and rubbing your back. You really don’t want to leave this room right now. As Emilia lets out little noises of pleasure, you gasp and pull away from the half-elf. Her face is flushed, and her eyes glisten. She’s holding the tip of her tongue between her lips, as if beckoning for you to kiss her again.

“Emilia, I completely forgot!”, you say, suddenly breathless. “Last night I filled you with cum! You might be pregnant already!”

“I know… but that’s what I want.”

“Eh?”

“I want to have your child, Subaru. Whether later in life or now, I’ll take it as it comes. If it turns out that our child has begun to grow in my womb, I will be so happy.”

“Emilia, you really…”

“No, Subaru, it’s not just the lust talking. I’ve thought about this long and hard. You… You don’t have any special powers, but you have so much love to give. I want a baby… your baby inside of me. I want to carry on your legacy. I want to become large and round with your child.”

You feel as warm as if dunked in a steaming bath. Those purple eyes are staring at you as if you are the only person in the world who matters. Before you know it your heart beats so hard, and your dick is so hard, that you can think of little else than taking off Emilia’s dress and making sweet love to her sexy self.

“Um… Emilia”, you begin with a shivering voice. “You understand that if you get pregnant you might not be able to complete your trials, right? And furthermore, what about the race for the throne? I suppose that the medallion’s enchantment won’t disqualify you because you are pregnant, but showing up in front of that council of decrepit bastards again while pregnant with your knight’s child doesn’t precisely award you points towards eventually sitting on that throne, would it? You need to think strategically as well, or else you will ruin your ambitions!”

You try to put on a caring, concerned face, but it’s hard when your body is bursting with the need to shoot another load into her, even thought it would undermine your side of the argument.

Emilia, with a sad look, moves closer to your face and speaks down to you, her voice almost a whisper.

“I didn’t choose the public life I’m currently living because I wanted to be queen, you know that. I mainly want it for something personal. If we get blessed with a child, then I’ll build everything up around our new family. Just the thought of putting our child to sleep and then going to bed, getting naked and you kissing me, caressing me, licking me down there… Ah, I’m breathing so hard already…”

Emilia rubs your chest with her palm as she bites her lips. You swallow while you feel sweat beading on your forehead. You might come in your pants. Didn’t you need to leave for some place, prevent something from happening…?

“Well, if you think that having our baby as soon as possible will make you happy, then I suppose I’ll try to do it. I mean, its not like I have anything better planned.”

“Yes! Oh thank you, Subaru! Now, kiss me! Show my body that you love it!”

You fill each other’s mouths with each other’s tongues while you fondle her ass cheeks.

“Mm… Nng… Let’s go… Take everything off…” Emilia says with a sexy voice while she rubs your chest with her hands.

You undress, and so does Emilia, who is now completely naked. You throw your clothes all over the floor. After you lay the half-elf on the bed, you move next to her and lick one of her pink nipples while you slide the middle finger of your other hand between her drenched pussy lips.

“Ah! That’s right… Rub there… Lick me…”

You lick her other nipple while you squeeze that breast with your hand. You hum as you enjoy pleasuring her. She puts both of her hands on the back of your head, rubbing and scratching it, while she pushes your head into her bosom. Her legs tremble a bit, and she lets out a long sigh.

“Fuck…” she whispers.

“Are you loving it, you sexy girl?”, you ask with a hungry voice.

“Yes…!”

“You are both out of your minds”, Ram’s voice says from the door.

Emilia and you turn your heads sharply toward the voice. The senior servant is standing with her arms crossed in front of the closed door, her face pale, and glaring at you both with her eyes wide. Her mouth is twisted in a grimace.

“Shit, Ram’s here!”, you say while sitting up. “Fuck, hide! Quick!”

“But she’s already staring at us!”, Emilia says, confused, and covers her moist breasts with her hands.

You clear your throat. Due to the angle you are sitting at, your erect penis is pointed at the senior servant.

“Hm, is something wrong, Ram?”

“Wrong? I should think so”, she says with a hoarse voice. “What are you both doing naked, rubbing and licking each other…?”

“It’s called sex, Ram. You wouldn’t know about it, I guess… But it’s some stuff we do. It’s perfectly innocent, I assure you.”

“Not with her, you don’t!”

“What, you don’t think Emilia is good enough for me? You better apologize, Ram, or else I’ll get real angry even though you could kill me in an instant.”

You give a harsh glance at Ram, who stands there squinting her eyes as she tries to hold in her anger. She breathes out slowly, holds her hands into fists and takes a few steps in your direction, before stopping again.

“You are going to ruin everything, Barusu, by tangling our princess in your disgusting games. You will prevent her from sitting on that throne.”

Emilia, although she has blushed hard, covers both of her breasts with a forearm while she extends her free hand towards Ram.

“Ram, it’s uncomfortable that you got to see us like this, but there’s nothing wrong. We love each other and we are very passionate. So much so what we forgot to close the door properly…”

“Lady Emilia, please shut up”, she says firmly without looking at her. “Barusu, I thought that despite your looks, your words and your actions, there was a modicum of worth in you. I made such a mistake that I should commit ritual suicide.”

You stand up from the bed, naked as the day you were born. Ram glances down at your wobbling, mostly erect penis.

“Look Ram… I’m still me!”, you plead to her. “You might hate what you’re seeing right now, but that’s just how it is. Emilia and I love each other! You can’t be that mad about two people in love. I wish you would know love yourself, Ram, so you would understand. I would have loved to show you love at some points ever since I first met you, but you wouldn’t open up your heart!”

Ram narrows her eyes as her fists tremble.

“Do not presume to know my heart, Barusu. I am a servant of the highest caliber! I’ve dedicated my very existence to serving lord Roswaal until the fateful day my life comes to an end! You know nothing about me!”

“But I want to know more! Ram, you’re one of my best friends! If you would just open up-“

The tremors in her fists move up to her head. Overwhelmed, she turns away from your naked selves.

“Away from me, away from me, your foul stench offends me.”

Ram slams the bedroom door. You stand there stunned, staring at the closed door while your ears ring.

You swallow and turn towards Emilia. She’s no longer covering her pretty breasts, but instead looks up at you sheepishly with those beautiful purple eyes.

“Did… we make a mistake?”, you ask.

“No. We just need to be patient”, Emilia says sweetly.

You nod. You walk up to the bed and kneel down in front of Emilia, who is turning to sit on the edge of the bed. The sight of her gorgeous, wet pussy is making you drool.

“Emilia, please tell me you want me to eat you out as a farewell”, you murmur.

“I do, Subaru.”

You don’t need any more encouragement.

* * *

As you walk away from Ryuzu’s home in the direction of the stables where your beloved Patrasche must be lazing around, you spot Otto as he prattles to some confused half-wolf local villagers. When the merchant spots you and he turns to face you, the villagers excuse themselves and walk away. When you get closer to your pal you realize that he’s drunk. His eyes are glazed, and he sways in place. He offers you a wide smile and pats your shoulder.

“Mr. Natsuki! The luckiest, most blessed man in this world! How are you doing, sir?”

“I’m fine, but you seem pretty drunk for so early in the day, Otto. What’s going on?”

Otto laughs a bit too loudly.

“Drunk? Moi? No, sir! I have taken merely two cups of cider! I am more hydrated than ever!”

As you wonder why you heard a French word in there, the merchant pats his chest to assure you. You nod and sigh.

“Alright then, Otto. I’m glad you feel better. This morning during our meeting it looked as if you had come down with some stomach bug or something. Really soured our meeting a bit.”

“I apologiiiize, sir. It shan’t happen again. Let’s talk about the future!”

“I’m kind of short on time at the moment, but sure. What future are you referring to?”

Otto grins as he stares. You begin to feel uneasy. He points a skinny finger at you.

“The future of course! Your future! Our future! Our beautiful future together! You have the brightest future under the sun and the stars, being able to love and be loved by the most wonderful woman who ever lived. Luckiest man there is…”

You frown as you begin to realize how intoxicated the merchant is.

“Otto, I have to…”

“Do you believe in destiny?”

You pause and look at him. You’ve never really given the concept much thought, but you still understand the general idea of it.

“Yeah, I guess so, or maybe not. What does that have to do with anything now, though?”

“Everything! Everything, I tell you!”

Otto raises his voice louder and louder. Some of the half-beast villagers who walk around are staring at the pair of you, then some glance at each other with concern, but nobody intervenes.

“Do you believe that you and our lovely, pure princess were destined to meet?”, Otto continues. “Was it a love written in the stars, the stuff that songs are written about?”

“I don’t know, man. I love her enormously, but I also love my girlfriend, my other girlfriend I guess, my beloved Rem, enormously as well. I’m confused at the moment. All I know is that it feels so good to hold Emilia’s hand, kiss her sweet mouth, play with her small tits, eat out her hot pussy, and feel her tight insides wrapped around my dick, that I can’t help but get obsessed with her at the moment, you know?”

You take a quick breath. It is at that moment when you realize you’ve been speaking your mind for a while. You didn’t even notice the villagers gawking at you for a few moments, nor did you hear the quiet sobs and sniffles of the man in front of you.

Otto’s shoulders begin to shake as he bursts into tears.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Natsuki, I’m sorry. I can’t…”

You pat his shoulder.

“It’s alright, you are drunk out of your mind and people can get emotional for no reason during such periods. Your breath reeks of alcohol, too.”

“I’m sorry. But your breath also smells different, Mr. Natsuki…”

You open your mouth wide and blow on your palm. After you take a good whiff, you nod.

“You are right, my breath smells like Emilia’s insides. I finished eating her out a couple of minutes ago. Although we were pressed on time, I think she came even harder now… What a sweet girl she is.”

Otto’s eyes widen. He sniffs and turns away from you.

“I don’t want to hear anymore… You two are getting married soon anyway… I’m happy for you…” He wipes his tears and takes a deep breath. “No, I need to stop being sad. This is a joyous day! Rejoice!”

You laugh.

“Old pal, you get weirder every day! I think you need to get some rest, and in general take better care of yourself.”

Otto sighs loudly.

“I’ll try, Mr. Natsuki.”

You wave goodbye, but he was already wandering away.

You continue to the stables. Your good girl Patrasche is waiting outside, near the path. When you get close enough, she looks up at you and whinnies, clearly happy to see you. Your smile fades immediately, though, because the senior servant is standing right next to your ground dragon. Ram has crossed her arms and is trying to murder you with her stare.

“You made me wait as well…” Ram says with a dry voice. “Made me wait…”

You pat Patrasche on the head and begin rubbing her chin.

“Ram, you can’t be so angry all the time. It’s no way to live. I keep trying to cheer you up, but you don’t want any of it. I’m doing my best here.”

“I was doing reasonably good… until you came along.”

Even though Patrasche is nuzzling you with her snout, you get annoyed.

“Damn it, Ram. We need to live in peace with each other, and I personally like you a lot even though you hate me! What can I do so you can be happy?”

Her right eye twitches, and a side of her mouth raises in disgust before she calms herself.

“Barusu, you knew I had been tasked to accompany you to confront Frederica at the mansion. Why did you make me wait this much after I caught both of you lunatics during your foul act?”

You wag your index finger to correct her.

“First of all, there was nothing foul about the act we were performing. Having sex with the person you love, one of them anyway, is the most natural and blessed act in this world or any other. I don’t like ass stuff, because it can get real nasty and you have a hole that lubricates naturally right next, so I never quite understood that, but I swear, if you would just let me, or someone else I mean, eat you out, you would feel more relaxed. You wouldn’t be on edge all the time. Sex solves everything in this world. If people didn’t attempt to kill other people and instead had sex with them, things wouldn’t get so grim.”

Her nostrils widen, and she parts her lips to show her clenched teeth. She’s breathing hard.

“I do not believe there are words in any language to properly express how much I despise you.”

“What the hell…”

“You call what you do sex? I’ll have you know that even an amateur prostitute isn’t as ‘lax’ as you seem to think these things are. You wouldn’t last a minute in bed with a real woman! I’ve seen whores toss men out of their rooms for doing the same thing you do!”

“Well, I guess it just goes to show that whores are idiots and don’t know good sex when they experience it. You only saw me licking Emilia’s pretty tits and rubbing her wet pussy. It’s not as if we showed you our whole performance. Besides, when did you, a complete prude, become the judge of how other people should have sex? You probably don’t even touch yourself.”

“Of course I don’t!”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t touch myself, you despicable fool!”

You feel sad. You are about to pat her shoulder when you realize that she might torture you to death.

“You are so lonely, Ram, it wrings my heart. If I could press a button that had you orgasming every thirty seconds, I would push it so much it would become muscle memory. You are beautiful, your pink hair is cool, you have a great body, you are super strong and can kill people with wind magic. You should be happier in this world or any other.”

Her eyes water. Ram quickly rushes at you, grabbing you by the collar of your shirt and lifting you into the air. Patrasche gets nervous and shifts her weight while looking at the both of you.

“I’ll never be happy, not in a hundred lifetimes”, Ram says with a hollow voice.

She throws you against a nearby tree. You fall to the ground and your bones hit it painfully, your hand feeling as if it’s broken.

“I have nothing to live for, not anymore at least”, Ram says. “I’ll only continue to exist until my purpose has been fulfilled, just like a puppet with its strings cut.”

Ram walks up to you then stares you down while tears stream down her cheeks.

“I can’t be your friend, I can’t even be your fucking enemy. I don’t know how to feel or what to think. All I know is that I need to get revenge. You say I’m lonely? I haven’t even felt loneliness yet.”

You have no answer for her, so you just sit there and let her tears hit your face. Both your back and your hands hurt bad. Patrasche growls at Ram from behind, but the ground dragon seems confused, as if she doesn’t understand why Ram would attack you.

“Get your revenge on me if you want, Ram”, you say with a pained, nearly breathless voice. “It will make you feel better.”

Ram kicks you in the side of the face, knocking out two of your teeth and sending fresh waves of pain throughout your body. You can’t even scream, the kick knocked the wind out of you.

“You don’t understand anything!”, Ram shouts.

She kneels down and grabs your throat, strangling it. You can’t react in any way, you just let her kill you.

Her grip tightens, your eyes start to bug out, and then she stops.

“I’m… I’m sorry”, Ram says.

You manage to cough, even though Ram’s grasp has barely loosened around your throat.

“No, don’t stop, Ram. It was just getting good. You are feeling that anger, aren’t you? That sense of release. Go ahead, girl. I’m here for you.”

Her grip loosens even more, and you feel the life going back into your body. You wish she would just kill you.

“I… I am…”, Ram says with a shaky voice.

An angry, pained cry from Patrasche breaks the moment. Ram’s eyes widen as she looks behind her. You jump up and slam your fist into the side of Ram’s head. Although the punch made her body lean in the direction of the hit, she slowly straightens her back and looks at you surprised and confused.

“I told you not to stop, Ram!”, you shout with a hoarse voice. “What the fuck are you doing!?”

Patrasche takes the opportunity and bites down on Ram’s arm. The senior servant cries out in pain and falls backwards. You take advantage of the situation and get on top of her, slamming both your fists into her face repeatedly. Blood splashes your face.

“Why couldn’t you just fucking kill me?! I wanted to die! You were supposed to kill me!”

You feel your body losing strength, and you slow down. Ram grabs your shoulders and tosses you off of her. You roll on the ground and watch as Ram gets up and readies her stance. Her nose is broken and bleeding heavily, her right eye is bruised and half shut, and in her open mouth, through which she’s breathing heavily, her teeth are dyed red. A couple of teeth are missing. The bite in the senior servant’s arm looks real bad, the bone might be broken. Ram is looking at you with dead eyes.

“Come here, Ram, and finish the job”, you taunt her. “I have done little else than make life harder for you from the beginning, haven’t I? And you don’t even have a sister that would care for you. Come and end my life. I have fucked up enough in this run.”

The wind begins to pick up. Ram is hunched over, and her chest rises and falls deeply as the senior servant’s red eyes stare right through you.

“It was my de… destiny to lead the village one day… You took that away… Now the only thing left… is to pay you back for what you did…”

“Go on, Ram, and fulfill your duty. The world needs to be rid of me. There is nothing good in me that can make a difference, so just end my life.”

Ram leaps at you again, and you get a boot to your face. Although the senior servant tumbles over, she quickly catches herself with one hand. Patrasche appears suddenly in your field of vision, but Ram twists her body and throws such an uppercut against the ground dragon’s chin that it knocks the beast out. Ram turns towards you and drives the other fist into your nose, breaking it and causing blood to squirt out of it. Her own face is soaked in blood. You shake your head in pain, and when you spit blood at the grass to your side, you notice that a few teeth glisten.

“That’s good, Ram”, you say with a hoarse voice. “But you need to be harsher. This isn’t remotely enough pain yet.”

The wind picks up, and a branch falls down next to you. Some critter cries out and scurries into a hole in the ground. You can barely focus your vision as Ram throws another punch, breaking your other cheekbone. Your body is burning up, and you feel your muscles tear.

You can no longer recognize the face you see before you as being that of Ram. Her red eyes almost glow. With the blood oozing out of your mouth, it’s hard to speak or pronounce anything clearly.

“Crush my fucking brains in, Ram.”

Her hands clench into balls, and then she starts pounding your head with all her might. Her thumbs push deep into your eyes, blinding you in a shock of pain that courses through your whole body like an electrical explosion. Your chest heaves and your heart beats against your ribs. Then Ram snaps your neck with one clean twist.

Your body convulses on the ground, and blood leaks out of every orifice. The noises you make turn indiscernible. Ram stops hitting you as your body falls back, but she doesn’t let go of your arm for a few moments as if to ensure you’re dead.

Note from December of 2020:

This entry was a lot of fun until it wasn’t any longer. I guess it’s another failure to chalk up to the protagonist’s inability to deal with horrible news. The fact that the entry starts with Ram murdering the protagonist with her eyes only to end up murdering his eyes and then his entire self is somewhat poetic.

Note from May of 2021:

Although I was already very fond of my personal version of the abrasive, pink-haired servant, this was for me the chapter where I grew to love her. It’s too bad that I hate how the original author of “Re:Zero” paid off her entire arc regarding her natural need to avenge what was done to her.

This entry covers part of the eleventh volume of the original “Re:Zero” novels.

In the previous entry the protagonist got seriously annoyed with the people in his life, because they don’t hold memories of realities they haven’t lived through. Then the protagonist discarded his comatose girlfriend in favor of some delicious half-elf pussy.

• Previous part (51)
• Next part (53)

It must be around seven in a chilly morning, and the sun rays are crashing against the canopy of the enveloping forest without warming the village properly. You are leaning on a wooden fence and staring down at the pond you saw Garfiel throwing bread into. You concentrate on observing those fish-like creatures swimming under the fern-colored surface of the water. Anything, really, that will take you away from the burning guilt in your chest that makes it harder for you to breathe. You feel as if there was something important you were holding onto but that you have lost, and even if you die and return to the past a million times, you won’t ever recover it.

“Ah, so you are here, Mr. Natsuki”, Otto’s lively voice sounds from the path behind you. “Enjoying an early morning walk? I guess there’s no real trouble with it, given that these people won’t attack us even though they restrain us in their village. Still, I’m sure it’s better to know where every one of us is!”

Your mood worsens, even though you know that Otto doesn’t have ill intentions towards you. You barely turn your head towards the side from where he’s approaching you.

“Did you come across me casually, Otto? Did you want to enjoy a morning walk as well?”

Otto puts his hands on the wooden fence a meter and a half away from you. Despite the merchant’s congenial voice, even before he got to look at your face he must have realized that something was wrong, although not in the way a physical attack on the people he likes is wrong.

“No, I usually avoid getting up early in the morning!”, Otto says with a smile and closing his eyes. “Often because I don’t want to handle the usual hangover. I’m feeling it a bit from last night… However, I’m not that comfortable in Sanctuary, so I suspect I’ll end up becoming a light sleeper if this continues.”

Noticing that you choose not to answer, and that your skin color probably looks as if you are a couple of minutes away from puking, he puts on a serious face and holds your gaze.

“Mr. Natsuki, you seem troubled. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I’ll just leave you alone. But if you feel like opening your heart, please allow me to hear it. Everyone has something they can’t bear within themselves.”

“That’s awfully nice for a merchant. Did someone put you up to this, finding me I mean?”

Otto chuckles dryly.

“I’m afraid so. Our lovely lady Emilia was asking for you. She seemed worried in a way that suggests unfinished business instead of fearing you would be found lying dead in a ditch, and because she has already blessed me with her trust, she asked me to please find you and make sure you aren’t acting wildly. Such a request coming from our princess herself, I could never refuse!”

You hang your head low. You don’t feel as if you deserve to hold even Otto’s gaze.

“Otto, I have fucked up real bad”, you say with a low voice.

“We all could tell you were troubled by something last night. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I’m the lowest of the low, Otto. Truly, I’m the worst scum in this dimension, as well of any dimension I’m aware. I hurt the most important person in my life, someone who can’t even defend herself, someone who relies on me to even remember she exists, and I betrayed her like this.”

“Can… can you tell me what happened?”

You turn towards Otto. You aren’t sure what face you are making, but he looks concerned. You swallow, then put your hands on the merchant’s shoulders.

“I did something to Emilia that I should have never done. A bunch of things, in fact. None of which should have happened.”

“It’s okay. Just take a deep breath and tell me.”

“No, it isn’t fucking okay, Otto…”, you say with a serious voice. “Emilia and I snuggled in bed, we kissed, I ate out her delicious pussy, and then I creamed inside of her.”

Otto’s eyes widen in shock. Then he forces a smile out of a corner of his mouth as if you are making a weird, tasteless joke.

“Surely you must be jesting! Lady Emilia is such a pure, proper princess, and the future ruler of this kingdom no doubt! Please, tell me what really happened!”

You squeeze Otto’s shoulders and shake him a bit. He goes paler.

“I wish I could, Otto. I would love to break into laughter and announce that I just made one of my many tasteless comments, but I can’t. I still feel the welcoming warmth of her pussy, that overwhelming, surprisingly sweet smell, and that warm nectar in my mouth that I would gladly drink instead of every other liquid for the rest of my life. I woke up this morning with the feeling of her pussy lips against the sides of my chin, and I almost took care of myself right then only to remember that it wasn’t another wet dream! I was lying in the dark next to the very Emilia whose delicious pussy I ate out hours before. I didn’t even brush my teeth, so I can still taste her in my mouth! I drank so much of it, too…”

“Stop! Stop! You are scaring me, Mr. Natsuki!”

You let go of his shoulders and hunch over to look at the grass.

“Sorry, I got carried away. But I got even more carried away last night is what I meant. I truly ravaged Emilia’s clit with my tongue, and she was overjoyed about it. After she came in my mouth, I broke through her hymen with my erect penis and then pumped into her until I filled her with my cum. She might be already pregnant for all I know.”

“Whaaaaa!? You can’t be serious!”

“But I am. She was a virgin. I was shocked too when she told me. A half-elf that hot. She was also very happy to have given her virginity to me.”

Otto shakes his head. He’s breaking in sweat.

“No, Mr. Natsuki! It’s a misunderstanding!”

You frown.

“A misunderstanding? Then you’re saying that I didn’t ravish our princess in Ryuzu’s guest bed last night? When I licked Emilia’s little button as the warmth of her pussy drenched my mouth and chin, was I eating some random fruit that had been lying around? When Emilia wrapped her arms and her legs around me, preventing me from escaping even as I was about to shoot a huge load of semen inside of her welcoming uterus, was I balls-deep into a barn animal instead? I assure you, there was no misunderstanding: I utterly fucked our half-elf last night, and her body might be already working on figuring out how it can build something resembling a human being from my rotten DNA!”

The merchant covers his face and takes a deep breath, terrified by your brutal and vivid words. He then speaks to you in a firm but calm tone.

“No… None of that happened.”

You lean forward and look at him.

“What? The fuck are you talking about, Otto?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you didn’t desecrate lady Emilia last night.”

You slowly lean back, as you attempt to process what he just said.

“What are you talking about then? I was there! I didn’t see it, because it was pitch black, but I felt every moment of it!”

“Well, you only felt what they wanted you to feel.”

You shake your head as you try to find the words. You couldn’t think straight already when you woke up, and now you fear you will start going along with whatever Otto means.

“Who is this ‘they’, Otto!? Who creates completely realistic simulations of me eating out Emilia’s pussy and then fucking her until I inseminate her!?”

Otto, wide-eyed, waves his hands in front of his face as if attempting to grasp something invisible.

“I don’t know. It’s magic, Echidna’s magic. Something to do with the barrier that surrounds the village.”

“What, there’s magic involved? So that Witch of Greed decided to mess with me and create this… this very realistic dream?”

“Ah… Well, Mr. Natsuki, the dream only encompassed those horrible acts you spoke to me about and that involved the pure lady Emilia! Everything else has been real.”

You smack your face with your palm.

“Of course it fucking was! Fuck, man. I have been so confused recently. Of course I didn’t lick Emilia’s delicious pussy until she filled my mouth with her warm juices, and later on I shoved my nasty penis inside her god-tier, tight pussy! That couldn’t have happened even in this fantasy world!” You fall to your knees, then lean forward slowly until you support yourself on the grass with your hands. “I never betrayed Rem, my lovely Rem, the love of my life, my blessed demon servant! I wouldn’t abandon you like that, my love. This all was a witch-created nightmare. I’m sorry for being such a horny scumbag.

Otto pats you on the back.

“I’m not sure apologies will erase the images you pushed into my mind, Mr. Natsuki. And quite frankly… I don’t think any of us are worthy of lady Emilia’s love, even though I know I will forever dream of holding her smooth, delicate hand and walking with the princess through flower fields under the sun.”

You stand back up, and start walking towards the path. You are getting way too dizzy. Even if you don’t feel nauseous, you want to be, to throw up everything that hurts inside.

“Where are you going?”, Otto asks cautiously. “Shouldn’t we return to Ryuzu’s home? Lady Emilia wanted to know if you are okay!”

“I really need to piss right now. And I can’t hold it.”

“Well, just go behind a tree or something. Is there any other sort of public bathroom in that area of the village?”

“I tried pissing behind a tree. I really had to go, so I squatted down and my dick fell off. It’s still back there, behind that tree.”

Otto stares at you in confusion for a moment. You try to laugh, but you start crying. You fall to your knees again and sob to your heart’s content.

“My dick just goes away! It keeps leaving me. I didn’t deserve to have you, and now you have realized it as well. I wasn’t worth it.”

Otto awkwardly pats you on the back.

“I can’t imagine how much you must be hurting because your beloved is sleeping for… a long time. You should be thankful you had her. I think you should find someone new, like a pretty girl in this village. I believe anyone could get over the half-beast part quick. If there’s someone out there that loves you, even with all your problems, well, then that’s something worth being happy about.”

The tears are running down your wrists of the hands you are hiding your face with. You speak in between sobs.

“Back when my Rem was conscious, I should have cut my dick off and hidden it inside of her. That way my brain wouldn’t imagine me betraying her with almost every other female I come across! I wish I wasn’t a person, Otto. If I had been born a tree, life would have been so easy.”

“Do you really hate yourself that much? Even though I don’t know you that well, I don’t think you’re that sort of person. You seem like a realist to me. You just described to me the life of an average man in this world. Not everyone is blessed with gifts and abilities, and even if you have them, it doesn’t mean they’ll help you in the long run. I myself can speak to animals, and even insects! I was born with that blessing, or curse. But I can’t stop myself from hearing them! It made my childhood so hard! I ended up running away from home for issues related to such a condition.”

You stop crying and look up at him to figure out if he’s pulling your leg, but he holds your gaze with sympathy.

“You can’t hear animals, Otto. That’s pure nonsense. It’s a simulation that the Witch of Greed created to confuse you.”

“No, I swear I can hear bees buzzing right now! Maybe they’re trying to warn us about something…”

“Maybe you are just insane. Take a deep breath and relax.”

He breathes deeply in and out.

“I’m not insane.”

You nod slowly.

“Yes, I’m sure you are… Okay then, let’s go back to Emilia, so she knows she has no reason to worry.”

* * *

As you open the door to Ryuzu’s living room, Emilia alone is standing there with her hand resting on the back of a chair. She’s wearing her gorgeous, expensive-looking white dress lined with purple. She looks worried for a split second, but when she sees it’s you, she welcomes you with a glowing smile and walks up to you.

“Sorry to get worried, but… Well, let’s speak in private.”

As Otto, who was looking at Emilia with his usual smile that reveals his infatuation, opens his mouth to speak, Emilia strokes your cheek lovingly and then stands on her tiptoes to press her warm lips against yours. A noise of dismay escapes through Otto’s open mouth, but then she pushes a hand against it to shut himself up. He’s gone white and looks appalled, as if someone had stabbed him in the heart and he had wandered through the empty streets leaving a trail of blood, and now he sat against a wall waiting to die. He lowers his head and turns around.

“I-I’ll make myself scarce, lady Emilia.”

“Thank you for your understanding, Otto.” Emilia holds your hand. “Let’s go to the guest room.”

You nod and follow her. When the door is closed behind you, she sits on the bed and pats on it, expecting you to sit next to her. You do so, and with a hand she moves your face towards her to kiss you deeply. As her tongue plays with yours, the barriers that had protected you against the onslaught that the guilt was subjecting your sanity to break down, so the guilt comes flooding in like water through an emergency exit. Holy shit, you actually had sex with Emilia last night, and you truly drank the nectar pouring from the half-elf’s heavenly pussy. So you did spit on Rem’s comatose face. Even if she ends up waking up, you will never be able to take this back.

You are a horrible person. You are an evil, rotten piece of shit that deserves nothing but damnation, and that’s exactly what you’ll get for your sins.

Emilia has pulled away and is staring at your crying face. She’s dismayed. She hugs you tighly and strokes your head. Her warmth soothes you, and her remaining saliva in your mouth tastes so good you would have taken shots of it without even knowing her.

“I’m aware, Subaru. I can’t properly understand how bad you must feel about your relationship with Rem now, but it’s okay to feel guilty. You are so loyal and you love so deeply, that you would have ruined your entire life being the partner of someone who can’t even think about you anymore. Don’t worry, we will keep taking care of her. We’ll bring her along with us wherever we go, make sure she remains safe.”

You sniffle. You embrace Emilia again, pressing your cheek against hers, and you wait to speak until you are sure your voice won’t break.

“I loved so much eating you out, Emilia. Your pussy tasted so good, I thought I was in heaven. I wanted nothing more than to keep licking you for the rest of my life. And having you hugging me tightly like that, not wanting to push me away as I was about to fill you with cum… I fear falling so hard in love with you that I will forget about everyone else I’ve ever met.”

She caresses your head, and you feel her mouth smile against your cheek.

“Good.”

You pull back, surprised by her response.

“What do you mean ‘good’?”

She smiles more, now showing all her teeth.

“Because I feel the same way.”

You look down at her beautiful mouth, those moist, rosy lips. You hold her head with both hands and shove your tongue into her mouth. You both lick each other’s tongues slowly as your hands caress her graceful neck and her silky hair. The blood rushes to your head as you begin to breathe heavily. You push Emilia down and get on top of her, careful to not crush her with your weight. Emilia wraps her legs around you, and you can feel your bulge rubbing against her warm crotch through the fabric.

“I want so bad to be inside you right now”, you say with a dry voice.

Her gorgeous, flushed face looks a bit disappointed.

“We can’t now, Ryuzu was coming over to speak about the trials. I want it bad as well, but don’t worry, regardless of how I do at the trial tonight, us making love again will erase every pain.”

You take a deep breath, and wonder how you will get through that meeting while blue balled.

“Alright, but you better get that pussy ready, Emilia, because tonight I’m going to lick you dry.”

“I bet you will, Subaru.”

You get off of her and sit on the bed. She sighs pleasantly, then stands up and walks towards the door to leave the room first. You stare at her ass as it moves left and right with each step.

* * *

Despite the whole blackmailing thing, you can’t find fault in how this Ryuzu elf is taking care of your needs. After all of you gather in her living room, she prepares some delicious tea and cinnamon cookies. You get now why Garfiel refers to her as gran. You would end up calling grandma any person who treated you like Ryuzu, regardless of her age or gender. Otto is present, but he looks as if she wishes he could disappear. He’s hunched over while holding his teacup with both hands, and his unfocused gaze looks through the table. At some points you could swear he was about to drool.

Emilia, who is holding your hand on her thigh, explains that despite her failure at passing the first trial, she’s determined to try over and over until she succeeds. Ryuzu looks concerned, having heard Emilia’s cries and having witnessed her delusional state.

You clear your throat.

“Emilia, everyone, I’d like to suggest an alternative. I will pass the trials so Emilia doesn’t suffer.”

The half-elf turns her head towards you sharply. You are surprised by the dismay in her face, as if she hadn’t expected those words coming from you.

“What do you mean, Subaru? Don’t you risk yourself for me, not anymore!”

“As if I will stop doing that. Are you kidding me? Now more than ever!”

“How are you so sure you would be able to pass them anyway?”

Garfiel tsks, then takes a sip of his tea like a gentleman.

“Evil eyes passed the first trial when he ran inta that tomb to rescue ya, princess. Half-pint got ta visit his parents an’ all! Nice, smooth ride, ain’t it? So yeah, he thinks the rest of them trials will turn out to be that easy.”

Emilia looks at both of you, confused.

“It’s true, lady Emilia”, Ryuzu says calmly. “Your knight rushed into the tomb caring nothing about his own safety, and he carried you out so we could return back home and place you on the guest bed. Of course, at the moment he entered the antechamber, because the magic traps didn’t kill him for some unknown reason, his trial began. He already surmised that maybe our lady of Sanctuary wouldn’t accept his efforts if she considers him too boring, though. I have my doubts that she would reject him.”

“Forget ’bout that. Ya ain’t gonna pass the trials, half-pint”, Garfiel says, annoyed.

“What do you mean?”, you ask.

Emilia shakes her head and intercedes. Her voice sounds troubled.

“No, I’ll do it. I promised I would do this!”

You turn your torso on the chair to stare into her eyes properly, and you hold her hand with both of yours.

“I love you, Emilia. I don’t want you to suffer any longer. That trial will force you to face your past, and in other circumstances it would be valuable to work slowly through everything that went wrong in your cute life. But for now the past is the past, and we need to cherish the present and future.”

You realize that both Ryuzu and Garfiel are looking at you confounded.

“Ya love the shy princess, huh?”, the punk asks, between embarrassed and amused. “Poor bastard, that escaped yer mouth! Can’t take that back now!”

Emilia blushes, but she clears her throat and smiles at the blackmailers.

“He said it freely because there’s no need to hide it. I love him as well. We are a couple.”

The room falls silent. Hearing someone as great as Emilia, so elegant and beautiful, royalty no less, declare her love for you… This must truly be one of Echidna’s simulations.

Garfiel snaps his head back, wide-eyed, and his hand drops into his tea the cookie he was holding. Ryuzu chuckles and claps once.

“That’s great”, Ryuzu says with a smile. “I hope that true love helps you get through the trials, lady Emilia. I figure it must improve your chances quite a bit.”

“But I said I wanted to pass them in her place, though”, you remind them, then turn to Emilia. “My dear Emilia, you don’t remember any of the contents of the trial you went through, right?”

She’s surprised, and observes your expression with her trembling purple pupils as if she had missed something along the way. Then she gets sad.

“That’s true… I can’t remember any of it.”

“Then you will face the trial over and over without learning anything about the previous attempt! That’s a recipe for utter disaster, Emilia! I can’t have my lovely woman going through that nightmare.”

Emilia frowns slightly, looking like a rebellious child, but as she opens her mouth to speak, Garfiel speaks loudly and seriously, startling you both.

“Nah, ya ain’t gonna attempt to pass them trials again, half-pint.”

“Garfiel, you don’t tell her what to do”, you say while washing down your cookie with a gulp of tea. “Apologize to the princess.”

He grimaces in annoyed confusion, then shakes his head and flashes his sharp, triangular teeth.

“Haah!? Ain’t gonna confuse me! Yer the half-pint, evil eyes! I’ll repeat meself again, ’cause now I ain’t even sure if I said it right! Hot princess will try to pass them trials, not ya!”

“Hey, she’s my hot princess. Have some respect.”

Garfiel narrows his eyes and tilts his head.

“I’ll say whatever I damn want, half-pint! Ya ain’t even addressin’ whut I just said! Don’t tryna pretend ya didn’t hear me!”

Emilia had lowered her head and closed her eyes, but she straightens her back again to speak up.

“Please, don’t fight anymore.” She turns towards you and raises her hand to her chest. “Subaru, I understand and appreciate how worried you are about me, but I don’t want you to coddle me. I can’t give up just because the trial will be hard, just because it will hurt me. So many trials await me in the future, on the path to sitting on that throne… You can’t keep saving me from struggling by myself.”

Although she had said it sweetly, with an understanding voice, your heart hurts because she took your concern that way.

“Emilia… What if you never pass the trials?”

“Then I’ll try again. And again. And again. And again, until I do.”

“That’s not the point…”

You sigh, and scratch your head. As you look up at her beautiful purple eyes again, for a split second you recognize a look in her eyes, a strength you could say, that she must have gotten from her adoptive father Puck. A determination to get over the past and become stronger, to achieve greater things than she ever has before. Unfortunately regarding her attempts at passing the trials, she also inherited Puck’s uselessness.

* * *

The meeting finishes shortly after. Garfiel and Ryuzu leave the house and walk further into the dreary village with a destination only the both of them know. You excuse yourself from Emilia and Otto, although the merchant hasn’t opened his mouth nor reacted to anything, and you run up to the couple of blackmailers as they turn a corner on the path and disappear past a farmhouse. When both of them hear your quickened footsteps, Ryuzu turns calmly, but Garfiel gets startled and glares at you as if you are about to stab him.

“Haah!? Ya followin’ us now, half-pint?”

“Young Garf, please don’t be rude”, Ryuzu says calmly, looking up at the punk. “I’m sure he just wants to bring up the topic again, but without the lovely lady Emilia having to hear it.”

“That’s right, Ryuzu. I want to know why you find it unreasonable. Listen, you know I passed my trial without any significant damage to my psyche, but Emilia got traumatized from her attempt, and due to not being able to remember the details, she can’t learn anything! So why would you be against me taking her place?”

Ryuzu looks down inside of her coat to consider your words, and the neck of her coat hides even her nose. She then holds your gaze again with an incongruously intelligent expression for a twelve year old looking girl.

“How powerful do you believe me to be, Young Su?”

“I dunno, but I’m sure you’re more powerful than you look, which is very little. Not to disparage you or anything. Garfiel did say that you have been around for a long time, and I suppose that magical abilities could be hidden easily. That staff you hold most of the time also looks wizardly, but real wizardly, not like our retarded village chief. Still, I’m not sure where you are getting at.”

“It’s a simple answer. I am powerful in Sanctuary, but our little village is contained within a much larger domain that belongs to someone far more powerful than myself.”

“Then that someone is so powerful he can easily crush you whenever he wants, correct?”

“Well, yes, but we are not fearing that kind of retribution at the moment, nor should we for the forseeable future. My point is, Young Su, that Emilia has been chosen to pass the trials because Roswaal needs her to prove herself. It will add clout to her ambition to sit on the throne of a larger domain that contains others of the size of Roswaal’s. So although I believe you are acting out of love and I was personally moved by it, we cannot let you take this chance from her.”

“And yer doin’ this behind that clown bastard’s back”, Garfiel says while pointing at you. “We let ya, them consequences will splash us. We got enough crap ta deal with! Too much of a mess.”

You want to say that Roswaal himself proposed that you passed the trials and credit Emilia, but what if these two blackmailers learn of the lord’s plot and they end up revealing it to third parties? The whole attempt to credit Emilia would turn against her. Or maybe any of these two are informants of some kind. You hide your face with your hands for a moment. You want nothing of this political crap.

“Whenever Sanctuary ceases to be a cage, Young Su,” Ryuzu says, “it will be reabsorbed entirely into our lord’s domain. We need to remain in the best of terms with lord Roswaal. It’s just in everybody’s best interests. Please, trust a bit more in your beloved’s strengths.”