Chapter 143: The Guilty, Brutal Craving for the Final End
"I'll return to the Royal Capital at once, but... this is not over. Not by a long shot!"
Reinhard did not dare gamble on Emilia lying. He could not afford to.
For a Sword Saint whose whole purpose was to protect, losing the one he was meant to protect would leave no place in this world for him at all.
Even so, he had no intention of letting that Purge King off so easily.
Not far from Pandaemonium, soldiers from the other three kingdoms had already arrived as reinforcements, sent specifically to wipe out the remnants of this secret society.
With a net drawn that tight over heaven and earth, the Purge King would have no chance to escape.
So his own task ended here. Apart from rescuing Emilia, nearly everything he had come for was done.
And so Reinhard wasted no more time. He turned on his heel and set off in pursuit, racing toward the Royal Capital of Lugnica...]
"So it's the Great Rabbit, one of the four great Mabeasts, I suppose..."
Betty's brows knitted tight. She remembered the Sanctuary era, when, after sealing a contract with Subaru, it had taken her four full centuries of accumulated mana to banish the Great Rabbit into another dimension.
That alone showed how impossible the thing was to handle. Under normal circumstances the Great Rabbit simply could not be killed, which was why all she could do was seal it away.
"Something about this is strange. Even if Emilia lures Reinhard away, what good does it do her? Without Puck she doesn't have the strength to fight, and she has even less hope of escaping," Crusch analyzed coolly.
"Ah, maybe she wants to die together with him? When you think about it, that's kind of romantic~" Anastasia clapped her hands once with a grin, and just like that, death sounded weightless coming from her mouth.
Yet neither she nor Crusch thought to ask the one person who mattered—Emilia herself—what she thought.
Still less did they notice that Emilia had vanished from the viewing seats at some point without a word.
"There'd be time enough for a lovers' suicide, sure. But given the state that Purge King's mind is in right now, a double suicide seems pretty unlikely."
Otto's brow furrowed. If things kept trending this way, then Lady Emilia, for all her hope, might well be turned down without a shred of mercy...
[Deep within Pandaemonium.
What lay before Natsuki Subaru now was a fork in the road.
To the right waited the frost-blue princess who hated him for stealing her life away: Emilia.
To the left waited Ram, who bore the grudge of a slain sister and would never, ever stop hating him.
Just as he hesitated over which way to go, a sharp blade drove into his abdomen from behind!
"Mr. Natsuki... that's the name our investigation turned up. I trust I may address you that way?"
The voice that came from behind Natsuki Subaru was gentle, its tone so calm that the man might have been making small talk rather than committing murder.
Natsuki Subaru recognized his attacker almost at once, because the owner of that voice had been negotiating with him in the great hall not long ago.
And according to the name the man had given, if memory served, it was... Russell Fellow.
"Russ... ell Fellow. You've come to kill me too?" Natsuki Subaru pressed a hand over the hole punched through his stomach, frowning as he asked.
"Uh, hold on? Don't tell me you've got a second name, Brother Otto, and it's Russell Fellow?"
Garfiel scratched his head, thoroughly lost. Why was the Cap'n calling him by the name Russell Fellow?
"And by the looks of it, the Cap'n's gonna die by your hand in the end, Brother Otto! There's nobody here who can save him!"
Garfiel caught on all at once and shouted it out with theatrical relish.
"Haah, the moment I saw myself show up as an envoy, I had a rough idea of where this was going." Otto let out a long sigh, then shook his head as he noticed quite a few people around him turning to stare.
"There's really no need to ask me. Keep watching and everyone will understand. And if my guess is right—"
"—the me on that screen probably isn't going to kill Mr. Natsuki. Because I'm not exactly acting of my own free will either..."
As though answering Otto's words, the past of the young man calling himself "Russell Fellow" surfaced gradually on the screen.
[In this possible world, the grey-haired young man Otto never crossed paths with Natsuki Subaru.
As a result, his business—already going badly—collapsed further, and the stockpile of oil he was sitting on was never bought up by Natsuki Subaru.
In the end Otto went completely bankrupt and became the slave of a famous merchant named Russell Fellow.
"This mission was mine only because I came in place of Russell Fellow, who was supposed to be here himself."
The grey-haired young man calmly informed Natsuki Subaru that he was not Russell Fellow. Rather, he was nothing more than a discarded pawn sent to die in another man's place.
"The task Russell Fellow gave me was to kill you. But I don't want to do that."
The grey-haired young man tossed the bloodied dagger to the floor without ceremony and brushed nonexistent dust from his palms.
"This isn't pity for you, nor is it any sort of friendship between us."
"It's simply the only act of defiance a slave is capable of... that's all it is."
Having left those words behind, the grey-haired young man walked away without the slightest hesitation, proving that what he'd said was true.]
How awful...
That was the first thought that surfaced in most of the audience's minds after seeing what Otto had gone through.
Simply for never having met Subaru, he had fallen into debt through one misfortune after another and ended up a slave.
But was that something that happened only to Otto?
The thought set everyone present wondering: if they themselves had never met Subaru back then, what would have become of them by now?
Crusch would have failed to slay the White Whale and had her very existence devoured, forgotten by every single person.
Ferris, with the existence of the lord he lived for erased, would have been left with a gaping hollow inside him, and without Natsuki Subaru there to save him, he would have walked into death through despair.
Emilia would have watched the Mabeast Riot in her territory's forest destroy the village, and been branded as someone who couldn't even protect her own people.
Betty, who had waited four hundred bitter years for "that person," would have gone on waiting without end, until the day she finally wished for her own death.
And at the last, everyone who remained would have gathered in Water Gate City, only to be annihilated together by the Witch Cult's Bishops of Wrath, Lust, Greed, and Gluttony!
[In a dark, silent corridor.
Natsuki Subaru clutched his stomach and dragged himself forward along the wall.
Blood loss had scrambled his thoughts so badly that he couldn't even remember which road he'd chosen back at the fork.
It didn't matter. Either one would do.
Emilia, Ram—whoever killed him was fine. He was already... so very tired.
At last Natsuki Subaru came to a stop. This time he had met no one along the way, encountered no obstacle at all. What he failed to notice was that around a corner not far behind him, a silver figure flickered past and was gone.
Only when Natsuki Subaru caught his breath and lifted his head did he realize that he had somehow arrived at his own bedroom.
He stepped through the door, his gaze tracing a route drawn from memory, and finally settled on a bookshelf standing against the bedroom wall.
Behind it lay a hidden door—a door only he could open.
The defenses there were no weaker than those of the pure white room where Emilia was kept.
Yet the placement itself said something: this concealed room had been set directly behind Natsuki Subaru's own bedchamber, and that carried a meaning all its own.
And the one he had imprisoned inside it was none other than Ram!
Ram... if it's you, you'll definitely kill me, won't you?
The furious king thought back over every person he had wounded up to this day—Emilia, Betty, Frederica...
And so, full of guilt and full of cruelty, he hungered for the end of it all.
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