The evil hands rushing toward them exceeded a hundred, resembling a tsunami capable of covering the whole world, one that would swallow Subaru and Julius up like two pieces of driftwood, crushing them and tearing them into a thousand pieces—
“—Al Clarista.”
A rainbow-colored glimmer flashed forth, mowing the onrushing Unseen Hands down in an instant.
The aurora borealis danced wildly, reflecting light at seemingly random angles to create blades tracing shimmering arcs. Bathed in that glimmer, the black phantasms dispersed like mist down to their roots, and the savagery they were to wreak was permanently halted.
“…What?”
“You should not act so surprised.”
Julius, who had swung his rainbow-imbued blade, elegantly replied to Petelgeuse’s dumbfounded utterance.
“If they can touch us, we can touch them. If mutual interference is possible, a rainbow aura imbued with the six elements can cut it.”
The six types of quasi-spirits contracted with Julius all rested within the cavalier’s sword, giving off rainbow hues. The glimmering aurora of his blade turned it into a beautiful and frighteningly powerful enchanted blade.
However, that wasn’t what was bothering Petelgeuse. The madman resentfully shook his head, his feelings of consternation causing bloody tears to flow as he pointed at Julius and spoke.
“You, YOU cannot see them. Surely you cannot. That exceeds the fact that my Unseen Hands have been cut…! That is the problem! You, you cannot, you cannot possibly see them, and yet…beyond me, they are seen by T-TWO!!”
The fact that after Subaru, Julius could also keep his Unseen Hands at bay made his teeth shake down to the molars, his face stricken less by anger and confusion than by deep, powerful fear.
It was the fear of having his final refuge, the very foundation of his faith, ripped away from him.
For the first time, the sight of Petelgeuse like that made Subaru feel sympathy toward him as a human being—but this was overridden by a sense of accomplishment. Take that, will you? He truly, finally, had found an edge.
“A base villain like you who knows not the favor of the Witch cannot possibly see the grace granted unto me alone…!!”
Visibly spitting blood as he screamed, Petelgeuse was denying the reality before his eyes. Accordingly, Subaru taught him just what was happening, further pounding that reality home.
“I’m the one who sees them, Petelgeuse.”
“…! What?!”
“I’m the one who sees your Unseen Hands. Julius is just seeing what I see. It feels even ickier than I expected, though.”
This was the quintessence of Nekt, the magic to share one’s thoughts.
Normally the magic was used to link together the minds of human beings within Nekt’s area of effect, enabling simple telepathic conversations. However, it required careful use, as befitted high-ranking magic. Once Julius had explained the dangers thus: “If the empathy level is too high, the boundaries between the self and others become blurred, and beings become mixed with one another.”
If you mixed two minds together enough, in other words, synchronized the senses, raising the effectiveness to its highest extreme—
“It is possible to mentally maintain two persons’ senses joined as one—though I had certain doubts about your sanity when you first made this proposal.”
“But we pulled it off, didn’t we? When you put men and courage together, they can do anything.”
Through the power of Nekt, Subaru’s and Julius’s senses were completely synchronized on a deep level.
That moment, through Subaru’s sense of sight, Julius had to be seeing it, too—the sway of Petelgeuse’s countless Unseen Hands seemingly dyeing the forest black.
Subaru was also aware of the mana coursing through Julius’s entire body, and of the warm pulses imparted by the quasi-spirits that flowed into him.
The input from the five senses was doubled in the process, creating the incredibly discordant feeling of having ten senses.
“Just to get this out of the way, I don’t think we can keep this thing going for all that long.”
“I completely agree. Even if you beg, I shall never do this for you again.”
As Subaru twisted his lips, Julius gave his words an ironic laugh as he poised his blade. With the aura-imbued cavalier’s sword, even Unseen Hands, Petelgeuse’s trump card, could be opposed head-on, but neither of them had any room to send a shred of pity or mercy the madman’s way.
“Why you…why you, why you, whyyouwhyyouwhyyouwhyyou whyyouyouyouyouuuuuuuu!!”
Petelgeuse wailed as his unfocused bloodlust made the shadows explode.
Evil hands beyond count scattered and flew in all directions, forgetting even to aim as forest, ground, and boulder were destroyed, shorn, and sent flying.
The shameful sight of the madman surrendering to his basest impulses was so repulsive, it made one want to turn away, but Subaru clenched his fist tighter, not averting his eyes in the slightest.
He absolutely could not avert his eyes for the remainder of the battle.
From the opening to the conclusion, Subaru had to burn the battle into his eyes for both their sakes.
“Doesn’t feel too good to have my fate and yours be one and the same— Let’s get this over with.”
“Yes, so we shall.”
The knight sliced away the pitch-black evil hands pouring down upon them; with a horizontal slash, he neatly sliced one onrushing hand in two.
Julius watched as the arms thus burned away turned into black specks, scattering only to be swallowed by the wind and carried away. He laughed and said,
“With your eyes, I shall strike him down, Subaru Natsuki—my friend.”
CHAPTER 4
THE END OF SLOTH
1
The black, overwhelmingly violent torrent bore down on them head-on, but the rainbow aurora slashed it apart.
“—!”
The sword’s wielder lashed out, slicing down the oncoming evil black hands one after another. The process repeated dozens of times over.
Julius’s rainbow-gleaming sword was an enchanted, certain-death blade imbued with the magic of the six elements. It could even rend Petelgeuse’s Unseen Hands asunder; dispersed into mist, the shadows dissipated and vanished.
Subaru didn’t understand the principles at work. But perhaps it was difficult to reconstitute Unseen Hands severed by the rainbow, for the shadows grew thinner as the sword blows swept away the evil hands; Petelgeuse’s rage grew thicker in their stead.
“This is not amusing. This is not a joke. This is something that cannot be! For such a method, a ploy, a child’s trick! To impugn! My love! My devotion…!!”
“Not a very nice way to recruit someone…and your organizational culture looks pretty awful to me.”
The madman frothed at the corners of his mouth as his inexhaustible shadow arms pounded away. However, Julius countered the evil hands with his rainbow or evaded with his movements alone. With elegant steps the knight danced across the rocky ground, performing a sword dance as he dominated the battlefield.
Even so, the evil hands knew no limits, over ten constantly bearing down upon him, pounding their malice upon him. A single sword swing could not defend against them all. Naturally, Julius’s limbs took glancing hits, and a number of lacerations were carved into him.
“Ngg—”
Though he was willingly on that battlefield, Subaru’s shoulders leaped several times at the sharp pain. The graze of a black finger made the pain of his thigh splitting burn into his brain. For a moment he nearly let out a cry of pain, but he bit into the flesh of his cheek and endured. He strongly clenched a fist in response to the burn of his shoulder splitting.
At that time, Subaru and Julius’s five senses were completely synchronized via the magical sharing of their thoughts. Accordingly, Julius was able to see Unseen Hands through Subaru’s vision; for his part, Subaru had become able to trust in the might of the magi
c sword in Julius’s grasp.
“—”
However, putting that goodwill aside, the makeshift partnership was extremely precarious.
Thanks to their synchronization, both had been seeing double. When partnered as such, their vision would be constantly blurry, as if the left eye and the right eye were looking at completely separate scenes. And, as touch was included in the shared senses, not only were Julius’s fighting ardor and exhilaration of battle acutely engraved into Subaru, but the pain he felt as well.
There was the sight of the wind grazing his skin, the touch of his leather soles trampling the soil, the taste of blood and saliva mixed together inside his mouth, the ear-ringing sound transmitted to his brain, the smell of risking his life to the utmost, living on the edge between life and death.
The numbers didn’t add up. If both were bathed in the experiences of two people nonstop, it simply meant the burden was double. Taste, smell, hearing, pain, touch, sight—right then, they were all a chore.
The dilemma was like having an itch in a place your hand simply could not reach. Perhaps it was better described as having an itch on the back of someone else’s head.
“To tell you the blunt truth, I really wanna end this right here, right now…,” Subaru murmured, as his body pleaded for an end to the ill feeling and he wet his tongue.
The dryness from the prior moments had probably been passed on to Julius. He couldn’t let other physiological responses rear their ugly heads.
It was hard to endure the awful feeling, even though he’d been the one to propose the plan. To think blurring the border between yourself and another meant randomly clawing away at the core of your humanity to such an extent.
But he did not plead for mercy. It was impermissible. And it was no one and none other than Subaru who refused to permit it.
After all…
“It seems you have grown somewhat accustomed, Subaru. Shall I increase the pace?”
“Yeah, don’t worry, I’m with you all the way!”
Countless evil hands leaped at Julius before Subaru could even reply. With a posture so low you’d think his chin would chafe against the ground, he slipped under the hands, and with a lash of his rainbow mowed all the shadows away.
As those became mist, the madman sent evil hands threading the dispersing shadows, headed for Julius. But even these fell to the blow of the leaping knight’s sword, beautifully blasting them apart.
“—”
Julius elegantly proceeded through the battle, but his brilliant movements slightly faltered.
Of course they did. As the handsome man flung away the remnants of the shadow coiled around his cavalier’s sword, the eyes of his gallant face were closed; they had actually been closed while he was engaged in battle, unlike before combat had begun.
This was to narrow the sets of vision from two to one, to achieve victory through Subaru’s eyes alone.
If they’d kept sharing their synchronized vision, the world’s contours would have become vaguer and vaguer. Accordingly, Julius had closed his own eyes, entrusting Subaru with all visual information.
Julius had made that judgment without consultation. Subaru understood that his judgment was correct.
But at the same time, the true motive behind that action left Subaru indignant.
“Crazy, crazy, you’ve gotta be kidding me! You really are a disagreeable bastard!!”
Abandoning his own vision and making Subaru his eyes on the battlefield was putting his own life on the line, proving that he trusted Subaru not to avert his eyes from the battle.
On top of that, inserting Subaru’s vision into his nervous system was not nearly as simple as it sounded. One way of putting it was that it was like a third-person shooter, fighting on TV while watching himself from behind.
“This isn’t a game, and it’s lunatic difficulty, one hit and it’s game over! Putting your life on the line like this, gotta be nuts… You and me both!”
“I do not believe you have the time to flap your lips!”
As Subaru kept his eyes wide open, Julius kicked off the rock wall, leaping back to rejoin the boy right at his side. With a swing and a thrust, he prevented damage not only to himself, the main target, but from the stray evil hands headed for Subaru.
During that time, all Subaru could do was sit tight, not averting his eyes, and gasp at the vivid display of skill.
A wry smile came over Julius, eyes still closed, at Subaru’s state.
“You are quite a bit of trouble. I understand you are desperately trying, but perhaps you could defend yourself a little more? I cannot face the enemy head-on like this.”
“I’ll take those words and throw ’em right back in your face! I can barely watch you cutting it that close! Or did you miss the desperate knight I was seein’ through my own eyes?!”
“I see a fine young man sad at having to keep his eyes closed. He appears to be handsome and of good upbringing.”
“I’m starting to suspect you and I aren’t looking at the same world here!!”
The two exchanged banter as they leaped away from the evil hands rushing upon them the next moment. Subaru’s feet clumsily slipped, whereas Julius split the wave of shadow with his sword, elegantly slipping through the gap to advance upon the madman once more.
“Amazing.”
Rising up after falling on his backside, Subaru spontaneously voiced his admiration at the sight of Julius in battle. Midbattle, Julius had grown acclimated to the unnatural physical sensations with frightening speed, raising the accuracy and sureness of his sword to new heights.
It was not a feat that knack alone could achieve.
This was the experience he had gained through the pain of ferocious training, cruelly using his body to its utmost limits.
This was the end result of clashing with swords and lives in the midst of battle, honing his own skill and conviction to a fine edge.
Hence, without the slightest fear or doubt, he could swing his sword confident in himself.
“—”
Unable to avert his eyes, Subaru stared at the battle, clenching a fist in fierce regret.
He felt remorse at his incomparable powerlessness in that place, and at having spent day after day in idleness.
That feeling joined the pile of regrets that were the difference between Subaru Natsuki then and Subaru Natsuki as he had become.
It was because he was ashamed, because it burned him so, that Subaru could not avert his eyes.
“—I’ll be going now.”
“Yeah, get goin’.”
It was not that he heard the whisper. But Subaru responded to Julius’s words nonetheless.
Grazes from the hands sent pain from the gouge in Julius’s back, from his thigh, and from his dislocated shoulder slamming into Subaru’s brain.
Subaru gritted his teeth enough they nearly broke, for he could not avert his eyes.
Rush, leap, slide, slice back, step, jump, advance, slip under, stop on a dime, glide past, circle inward, leap sideways, twist and evade, turn around, charge in, leap up, kick, leap about—refined motions all.
“Impossible…”
Slice away, slice down, charge in, slice up, kick away, gliding slice, slam, sweeping slice, thrust, cleave, lash, swing down, knock down, slice away, charging slice, slice in—with repeated sword blows and slices, the Unseen Hands turned to dust.
“Impossible, impossibleimpossibleimpossibleimpossible…!”
Eerie black covered the whole of the sky, yet the sight of the knight carrying on his aurora-shrouded sword dance was so beautiful, Subaru lost track of reality. The scene was so surreal that it could make you forget this was a deadly duel.
That was probably because the thoughts of the quasi-spirits passed through Julius and were conducted to Subaru as well. Those girls loved Julius—and in contrast, they hated the madman. They found the madman intolerable—to such an extent that they could never accept him as one of their own.
“This cannot be! It
cannot possibly be so! Why is it! How can this be?! MY Authority…! I am loved, I know I am loved, I am assuredly loved! And yet, to this extent, I AM being—!”
“You persist in illogical thoughts and actions. The fitness of your so-called Authority has diminished. More importantly, I have become sufficiently accustomed to this manner of fighting through Subaru’s eyes.”
As Petelgeuse vented his fury, Julius thrust his sword forward, eyes still closed.
“It is finally time to cut you down in earnest. Here, I shall strike you down with my blade, and bring the long-standing menace Sloth has posed to the kingdom—nay, the world—to an end!”
“As if you can! As if I will let you! I…I am! ONE such as I who has been bathed in the Witch’s grace! Four hundred years! Striving diligently to make Her will a reality! Do you really think a fool like you and your fledgling spirit flunkies can defeat me…!”
Petelgeuse bared his blood-tinged teeth as he raged at Julius’s words. But the madman’s very rage gave Subaru conviction that the final piece needed for his anti-Sloth strategy had fallen into place. Petelgeuse’s abnormal hatred toward spirits rivaled his infatuation with the Witch—in fact, Subaru was counting on it.
“Julius—!”
“Understood! —Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins, prepare yourself!!”
Julius stepped forward, advancing with the speed of an arrow. Petelgeuse opened his mouth, deploying his Unseen Hands with an incoherent shout. The evil hands spread through the sky, along the earth, through the forest, as they enveloped Julius to impale him from all directions—
“—Al Clauzeria!!”
Circling around the chanting Julius, a swirling vortex of rainbow-hued light erased all the pitch-black evil hands from existence.
The aurora burned through the world for only a second—but that second was enough. In an instant, like the blink of an eye, the encircling net Petelgeuse had wrought had completely vanished. And, in so doing, opened an unobstructed path between Julius and the madman…
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 9 Page 13
