Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-, Vol. 12

by Tappei Nagatsuki

  “Was I not clear, I wonder? That you should not take me lightly and that this is enough with which to hunt you.”

  “—This is an error on my part, it would seem.”

  Licking her lips, Elsa’s cheeks reddened in arousal as she replied.

  The right arm she used to grip her bladed weapon shattered at the wrist, and the severed remains fell onto the ground. The damage continued to spread in a wave across her shoulder and leg, engulfing her entire right half, leaving Elsa’s body cracking as if it was made of delicate glass.

  Dark magic: Minya, arrows of stagnant time—having demonstrated their true worth, victory and defeat had been completely decided.

  Beatrice showed no futile compassion, such as asking to hear her final words. She thrust an arm toward Elsa, clenching her open hand.

  That was all it took for countless arrows in the sky to converge upon Elsa, impaling the entirety of her body.

  Repeated destructive impacts caused a cloud of dust to rise from the street. When the dust settled, what remained was a remorseless and cruel yet somehow overwhelmingly beautiful work of lethal art.

  Crystal arrows were thrust through her entire body, half of it shattered like inorganic matter. Such was Elsa’s death.

  “Aaaah. Oh, Elsa, how truly, truly stupid of you.”

  With the menace dispatched, Subaru gawked, unable to process what was happening. In Subaru’s place, it was Meili who reacted, having observed the same battle.

  Taking the death of her comrade in stride, Meili showed no sign of pain or loss, wearing only an exasperated look on her face after seeing the result of the battle. Exactly as she had stated, there was no emotion upon it save disappointment toward Elsa.

  It was twisted. It was strange. This was a place filled with death. To show such contempt for it—

  “Now then, with your companion like this, is it your turn next, I wonder? Even the opponent is a child, Betty shall show no mercy.”

  “Oh, don’t say that… You and I don’t look much different at all. We could have been such wonderful friends…”

  “A bald-faced lie. Is such a convenient thing even possible with the likes of you, I wonder?”

  Though Meili was blatantly taunting her, Beatrice’s emotions remained undisturbed as she replied. Above her head, the purple arrows that had so thoroughly pierced Elsa took aim at Meili.

  Considering what had befallen her partner, Meili had to have noticed that she was in imminent and extreme peril. How was it that she could remain so calm despite that fact?

  She was not afraid of death. She thought nothing of death. Perhaps this was the reason why Meili and Elsa could toy with the lives of others as they had.

  “”

  Beatrice’s eyes narrowed, seemingly seeing right through Meili’s demeanor. From the tiny wavering of the purple arrows’ tips, Subaru knew that they were ready to be loosed.

  If launched, Meili would die, just like Elsa. She was their enemy. It was the right thing to do, and yet—

  “She’s a…child.”

  “—An enemy is an enemy, child or no. There is nothing to be gained from allowing her to live.”

  “That’s… But…what about making her say who…asked her to do this or something…?”

  “You mean today’s job? Well, you see, that’d make my client angry, so nope. I won’t say a word.”

  At the last minute, Subaru voiced an idealistic argument in an attempt to counter Beatrice’s sound logic. And it was not even Beatrice but Meili who sliced it down as a foolish notion.

  Of course she did. Even Subaru himself had no idea what he wanted to do. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to witness the death of a child. Or perhaps—

  “Killing a kid, that’s just…”

  “—! You, saying such things again—”

  With a broken voice, he offered his feeble thoughts of revulsion. His murmur made Beatrice twist her lips and look back. Then she turned a tiny palm toward Subaru, stretching it out toward him when—

  “—Eh?”

  —a light impact pressed into Subaru’s shoulder, sending him falling onto his side. With that unexpected act leaving him unable to remain kneeling, Subaru’s eyes opened wide with incomprehension as he gazed up at Beatrice, the one who had pushed him.

  Her anger toward the stupid exchange from a moment earlier ran stale, and then, somehow, her expression shifted.

  Beatrice’s eyebrows fell as she let out a breath of instantaneous relief, forming a thin smile in the process.

  —The tip of a black blade was poking out of her chest.

  “—My, what an odd feeling in the hand. A spirit’s belly really is different.”

  The blade penetrating from behind and peeking out of her chest slowly slid downward, as if to widen the wound. Beatrice’s body gave a heavy shudder. Subaru, dumbfounded, could only watch.

  “…With this.”

  Haltingly, abruptly, something was woven by Beatrice’s lips.

  That instant, Beatrice’s expression and eyes spoke the feelings coming and going through her heart.

  “Finally…”

  “Wait…!”

  He didn’t know what he was trying to say to her. He didn’t know what she was trying to say to him.

  And these were things that Subaru and Beatrice would likely never know for all of eternity.

  Weakly, Beatrice’s body leaned forward and crumpled to the ground. The force of the movement drew out the blade. There was no bleeding from the wound. In its place, light gushed out, as if dislodged from the little girl’s flesh. Subaru could tell from her extremities turning into particles that her very existence was melting into the world around them.

  “W-wait…”

  He didn’t know to whom he made that earnest plea. All he could do was beg as he stretched a hand toward the light.

  Please don’t take her away. Please don’t take this girl away. Don’t carry her away.

  The light scattered. He desperately tried to gather it back together. And yet, the motes passed through his hands, vanishing in the blink of an eye. In the span of a single second, Beatrice had become insubstantial.

  He couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t save her. How did this happen? Who could do this to her—?

  “—Elsaaaaa!!”

  “You don’t need to shout. I can hear you just fine.”

  As he ferociously howled, the side of his face was slammed hard by the tip of the kukri knife.

  The hard impact jostling his brain, Subaru rolled violently across the ground. His eyes rolled, his thoughts raced fruitlessly, and his heart could not catch up to the speed of the world spinning around him.

  “You took your sweet time. I was getting worried. She was about to kill me, you know…”

  “Such a cheeky girl, even after I saved you. As for taking my sweet time, I’m offended at how easily you can say such a thing.”

  As he lay faceup, a pair of figures leaped into his field of vision against the backdrop of the sky. The spectacle horrified him. Standing right beside Meili, flippantly running her mouth, was none other than Elsa Gramhilde.

  The woman who had been blanketed by purple arrows all over, with half her body shattered, was calmly standing right there. There were no visible wounds on her body, but the side effects of the damage had wrecked her clothing, leaving her exposed and half-naked.

  There had been a battle. Without doubt, fatal wounds had been inflicted upon her. And yet—

  “Don’t tell me, you’re…you’re not gonna say you’re immortal or something…?”

  “No? That would be incorrect. I merely live a tad filthier than most. A boon granted by a malicious soul. Though I am fresh from being broken to such an extent, I can count the occasions on one hand.”

  Implication oozed out of that crazed memory as a lustrous, wicked smile came over Elsa. After that, she shifted her eyes to Meili, standing at her side, and said, “One spirit and two maids… Meili, you’re finished with everything in the village?”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, but my shadow lion lost to the big maid and the black land dragon…”

  All three targets had been at the mansion—it was Subaru’s thoughtless decision that had made the villagers into victims. Put more bluntly, Subaru had killed them; just as he’d killed Rem, Petra, Frederica—and Beatrice.

  —This was as far as I go this time, huh?

  “What unsightly eyes you have.”

  “Ga…gyaaa—?!”

  The instant his mind recognized impending death before him, a scalding sensation shot through his left eye.

  Just before the heat burned him, the last thing he saw in the left of his field of vision was a dull black glint—from that, he gathered that the kukri knife in Elsa’s hand had gouged out his eyeball. His brain wailed at the terrible sensation of having lost a part of his body, and Subaru reeled from the pain and the bleeding.

  His right eye could see his optic nerve getting pulled out like a string. His right eye had witnessed the death of the left. His face had an impossible cavity, a blank space, a meaningless hole in it. His left eye had been lost forever.

  “Oh my, Elsa, you’re so cruel… What a poor thing.”

  “One must struggle to live until the very last moment. Otherwise, what meaning is there to life?”

  Elsa replied to Meili with a cold voice. Among the short and few occasions he had come into contact with Elsa, this was the first time she had looked upon him with an emotion that could be called…scorn.

  “The spirit was the poor thing. To think she sacrificed herself for the sake of a child like this.”

  But ironically, it was none other than Subaru Natsuki who agreed most with Elsa’s words.

  Beatrice was an idiot. Why had she done such a thing? She was the one who’d said she wanted to die, wanted someone to kill her. —Why?

  “”

  Wanting to know the answer to that, Subaru held back the blood coursing from his left eye socket as he moved his remaining right eyeball, looking in Beatrice’s direction. Beatrice was lying on the ground, light gushing as she faded away. There was no longer anything left of her little body from the waist down.

  —Her vanishing arm was turned in Subaru’s direction, hand open.

  “No way. Bea—”

  The change in Subaru’s eyes told Elsa and Meili that something was wrong. However, it was already too late, even for them. At the cost of her life, Beatrice the Great Spirit, Librarian of the archive of forbidden books, cast her final spell—

  The blue crystal, still in Subaru’s pocket, glowed.

  —A teleportation occurred.

  7

  When he came to, the first thing he did was confirm he was not dead.

  “”

  The existence of a cavity where his left eye had been told him he continued to live. It was one hell of an easy way to tell. Even Elsa had her moments. The loss of one eye was a remarkably easy-to-understand indicator of a human being who was missing something.

  Subaru treated the wound left by his lost eye by wrapping the sleeve of his ripped jacket over his head.

  It was pretty crude as first aid went. He’d stopped the bleeding, but there would be no subsequent care whatsoever from a trained nurse or anyone else. That was for the best. If he wasn’t dead that very moment, he didn’t care about whatever happened after.

  —Subaru had already decided. He would pay for the crime he had committed in that world with death.

  He’d already lost too much. That world was already wrecked, far too painful to continue living in. Just like before—no, more so than before, Subaru had committed a sin that made him lose so many things.

  If at the cost of his own life, he could get those things back, he would not even hesitate.

  This was a world that had to end.

  He had to undo Rem’s death, Petra’s death, Frederica’s death, Beatrice’s death—all of it.

  His regrets at Rem dying in a place he could not even reach, the promise he exchanged with Petra, the words he had vowed to Frederica, his reply to Beatrice’s laments—he would carry them into the next world.

  If there, he could find an answer, everything else could probably be written off.

  “It won’t… I won’t let it… I’ll remember…”

  He murmured his self-awareness. He repeated his self-admonishment. He could not escape the fact that Subaru Natsuki—was a criminal.

  His powerlessness had caused many deaths. His worthlessness had caused many laments. His recklessness had caused many torments. His inconsiderateness had trampled many a world underfoot. He was an apostle of atrocity.

  “”

  In that room filled with a vile stench, Subaru wobbled as he rose to his feet, placing a hand against the wall. With his left eye gone, the vision of his right hand alone lacked a sense of depth, making grasping things an ordeal. He had no intention to deal with such inconvenience for long, but he would not permit himself an easy death, like a quick slice to the neck.

  Only after he returned with something that rivaled his sin could he begin to be forgiven for the death he carried with him.

  “This is…”

  Looking around, he saw a white floor and white walls in his narrowed field of vision. The unnatural white space, the foul stench hovering in the air—these he remembered, allowing him to form a guess before he could know it for certain.

  —This was the Sanctuary. It was Ryuzu Meyer’s experimental facility, hidden deep within those Lost Woods.

  “Ha.”

  His breath trickled out. He couldn’t really call the broken breaths that trickled out either dry or wet.

  He’d been teleported to the same spot again. His connection with the place ran far too deep. As if it was testing him. Testing, experiment—the experimental facility was laughing at him.

  —Was this the power of the stone? Or was it the final flicker of Beatrice’s life?

  He didn’t know. There were far too many things he didn’t know. He couldn’t leave things like that.

  Regrets, regrets were limitless. He could not allow those regrets to shackle his legs, to pin him in place.

  “Right now…”

  He sank his sense of loss, his sense of despair, down to the lowest depths of his psyche, as his legs slowly stepped forward.

  He’d go back with the knowledge of what happened to the Sanctuary when Subaru was absent. If he could at least do that much—

  “”

  Was that a vow or was it a wish? Subaru did not understand even that much as he headed outside the facility. He left the room, went through the passage, breathing white breaths, trusting his weight to the wall, dragging his feet.

  After some time passed, he finally arrived at the entrance that led outside, and then Subaru saw.

  A silvery world dyed wholly white—the landscape of the Sanctuary enveloped by snow.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE TASTE OF DEATH

  1

  From the cold air pricking his skin, he had been fairly certain.

  Even so, seeing that sight with his very own eye sent an unfathomable blow running through Subaru’s heart.

  That was how much Subaru’s lukewarm assumptions were exceeded by the Sanctuary’s extreme cold.

  “This isn’t funny… It’s still the second day…”

  Grasping his own shoulders and exhaling white breath due to the cold, Subaru clenched his teeth. Without matching up his teeth, he put strength into his jaw, ignored the throbbing of his left eye, and earnestly forced his freezing right eye open.

  The wind felt cold enough to slice into his body, and the powdery snow was slamming against him rather than merely falling and piling up. Both intensely robbed him of body heat, a white nightmare that killed off your vitality second by second.

  —Snow was falling on the Sanctuary. Subaru knew this landscape.

  “But why is it…as soon as this?”

  Subaru had seen this powdery landscape before. During the go-around before last, Garfiel was on the verge of killing him when
the power of the crystal teleported Subaru to that experimental facility. When he exited the facility, the world was already dyed white. —But at that time, the snow had already fallen.

  That was why Subaru had not seen the snow itself as of such great importance, but—

  “So the snow fell this hard…”

  He ought to have guessed. In the span of a few hours, a half day at longest, the Sanctuary had been completely blanketed in snow. The tremendous snowfall in such a short time should have made its force easy to imagine.

  In the present, just like back then, the cold was extreme enough that Subaru’s flesh seemed ready to freeze over.

  “Any way…the settlement is this way…”

  Shaking off the snow accumulating on his body, Subaru trained his mind toward the settlement, seeking to grasp the situation.

  —The throbbing of his left eye made him think of the various tragedies that had occurred just before. Don’t forget, don’t forget, it said to him.

  For that moment alone, he would put it on the back burner. He’d definitely have time to think about it later. For the moment, he focused on what was before him. If Subaru did not do so, his feet would stop moving. That was a certainty.

  “If you’re getting this, answer me, please…”

  Wiping the flickering figures from the back of his mind, Subaru felt something hard in his pocket—and drew out the crystal. Grasping this, he focused his thoughts. If Subaru was still qualified, surely she would come.

  That eye, watching the Sanctuary, would respond to the desire of the Apostle of Greed—

  “—Ah.”

  Enveloped by wind, he did not hear any sound. But slowly, a figure appeared.

  Walking barefoot over the accumulated snow, Ryuzu—or rather, a replica thereof—finally came. As one of the individuals assigned near the lab site, it might well have been Piko.

  “I should’ve made some way to tell you apart from the rest…”

  Perhaps at the time he’d been too stunned to wrap his mind around such a thing. Or perhaps the fact that he’d noticed it only then, when so hard-pressed, indicated weakness and aversion from reality—that was impermissible.