“Normally I’d say it depends on how you use them, but looks like you can’t use them except to hurt people, huh?”
Reason enough to call these curses.
If curses were supernatural powers that existed to bring down others, the practice in his home world of putting needles into voodoo dolls probably counted. Well, not that he actually accepted the existence of the occult in that world…
Subaru sat up more, thinking about the things Beatrice had mentioned in a grave tone of voice.
“So, let me ask this… How do you defend against a curse?”
It was pretty tough to aim a counterattack at the shaman without knowing his identity. Subaru’s one advantage was knowing in advance that an attack would take place. Consequently, figuring out a way to stop the shaman’s attack in its tracks was a wonderful idea…in theory.
“You do not.”
“—Eh?”
“No means exist to defend against a curse once it is activated. Once activated, you are finished. Isn’t that what a curse is, I wonder?”
“I-isn’t there any kind of Instant Death Resist…?!”
In a video game, you dealt with Lv. 1 Death type spells by casting Instant Death Resist in advance.
With the light at the end of the tunnel growing ever distant, Subaru pulled his hair, his brain on fire as it tried to come up with a new plan. He’d underestimated the situation. That reality sent Subaru’s mind into free fall.
“—However, that is limited to curses that have activated.”
“—Huh?”
The words spoken to Subaru a moment later made his eyes go wide.
Beatrice grinned with what seemed to be great delight.
She got me good, thought Subaru as the look on her face confirmed it; all he could do was open and close his mouth like a flounder in a mix of surprise and anger.
“Just as I said, there is no way to defend against a curse once it has been activated. However, an un-activated curse can be blocked. It simply requires a cleansing rite prior to activation, so anyone with the requisite skill would find removing it rather simple.”
“I’ll save getting angry for later… So, who can do that?”
“In this mansion, there’s me, and of course Puckie. Beyond that, Roswaal and…the three little girls do not have the requisite experience, so no. Oh, and of course you cannot.”
“I know that one only too well…”
He’d gone through hell because of his lack of resistance, not once but twice.
Subaru put aside his unpleasant memories as he raised a hand and asked Beatrice a question.
“So how would you know to use a rite before a curse activates?”
“Powerful curses place a commensurate burden upon the body. Perhaps magic and curses share that in common? The side effects of a curse are considerable. Could I say that they are deeply flawed, I wonder?”
“So…is there something you can do in advance to protect yourself?”
Subaru asked his question like he was hanging from a thread. In response, Beatrice closed her eyes for a while, licking her lips.
“Though it depends upon the specific details…there is an iron rule for curses.”
“An iron…rule?”
With bated breath, Subaru prodded Beatrice to continue from where she’d left off.
And so she did.
“—Physical contact with the target. An absolute prerequisite, I wonder?”
“”
Subaru’s brain spun round and round the instant that detail entered his skull.
The caster of a curse needed to touch his target. In other words, both times Subaru had suffered from the effects of the curse, he had made physical contact with the shaman beforehand. That narrowed the possibilities to—
“If it’s no one here at the mansion, then…it’s gotta be the village…”
Subaru had walked to the village both times he’d undergone Return by Death from suffering the effects of witchcraft.
When he thought about it more, he’d gone to the village midway through the fourth day both times.
At the village, the shaman had performed the rite for the curse, and that curse activated that night at the mansion—resulting in his death. That had been the pattern.
The shaman being at the village would explain why Rem had fallen prey to the curse during the last loop. That time, Subaru had never gone to the village, so Rem became the shaman’s target instead. If Ram had gone, she would’ve been the target; if Subaru had gone there with her, no doubt he would’ve been the target again.
It connected. It connected everything.
The shaman was in Earlham Village. It was unclear whether the shaman was a resident or a visitor. If he was the latter, finding him wouldn’t be all that hard. It was a village with a small population. A stranger’s face immediately became known to all, just like Subaru’s had. If the former, it’d have been a carefully premeditated crime, but…
“That doesn’t seem likely.”
In the prior incident, someone tried to throw a monkey wrench into Emilia’s royal candidacy. But that candidacy didn’t exist before the royal family suddenly died out only half a year beforehand. Emilia’s name popping up on the candidate list probably took time, so that meant only three or four months to prepare at absolute most. A shaman would have had to infiltrate the village years beforehand to be considered a native.
“So the shaman’s an outsider. Finding him won’t be all that hard, either…”
Subaru voiced his thoughts out loud as he began to search for holes in his logic. It wasn’t a bad idea to raise a hypothesis, even if you amended it as you went along.
As far as the shaman was concerned, he hadn’t actually done anything yet. Short of his opponent being God or the Devil himself, it was impossible for his existence to be exposed as of yet.
Subaru mulled over the fact that he was still on the night of the second day. He had a long grace period before things were due to take a turn for the worse on the fourth.
In other words, it meant he could do his own preemptive strike on the shaman.
“I’ve got you by the tail now, damn it. I didn’t die twice at your hands for nothing!”
Subaru, finally able to see his situation brightening, clenched a fist as his voice quivered with joy.
While Subaru delighted in the change in circumstances, Beatrice looked quite dissatisfied at having been dropped from the conversation. Her lovely cheeks reddened to emphasize the sourness of her gaze.
“What is that attitude in front of someone you asked for aid, I wonder? If what I spoke was of service, I think you should say as much to my face.”
“Yeah, you’re right! You saved my bacon; I can see the light thanks to you! I love you, Beako!”
“Wha—?!”
Subaru leaped over to Beatrice, picking up her very light body and twirling all around with her on the spot.
Despite her elaborate dress, the girl’s body was as light as a feather. Subaru’s spinning increased in synergy with the buoyancy of his mood.
“Let g—Would you put me down, I wonder?!”
“Ha-ha-ha, I could just fly in the sky right now! Nah, how ’bout we fly together, Beako?!”
“Fly all by your lonesome—!”
“Bwah?!”
She released magical energy from right above him, slamming him hard enough to make him do a full leg split on the floor. The impact he felt on the top of his skull transferred to the rest of his body. Subaru’s internal mana was all a jumble. His eyes were spinning as he continued to rest on his butt.
For her part, Beatrice landed with an elegant flutter of the hem of her skirt, turning her head and sending a snort Subaru’s way.
“Do you see what happens when you get carried away with frivolity, I wonder?”
“That’s not the only thing I saw. They’re white!”
“—. —?! Take this, would you?!”
“Brfhh!”
Subaru took the second shot right between
the eyes, sending him flying into a corner of the archive like a rag doll. He rolled head over heels before slamming into a bookshelf, bringing heavy books down upon his head.
He crawled his way out of the mountain of books, tears in his eyes from the many bumps and bruises.
“The friendship gauge goes down just a little and I get this?! If you’re not happy with something, just say it, geez!”
“Being picked up like a little child, spun around in midair, having my panties seen, you speaking superficially lovey-dovey words, all of it! Is your entire existence a nuisance, I wonder?!”
“Hey, don’t put down my existence; that’s really sad stuff! I’m trying not to be a masochist here!”
Subaru hoped to find ways to improve himself, just like he’d found a chance to improve his circumstances.
Just because I’m powerless doesn’t mean I have to be helpless, too, Subaru thought, nodding at his own internal rebuke.
“Anyway, the situation’s a lot better than it was. It’ll be hard waiting out the night, but tomorrow I’m heading to the village.”
Let’s find out who this shaman really is, he thought.
That’d probably mean going with either Ram or Rem. Considering they both had combat strength, it was a natural choice in case he ended up duking it out with the shaman then and there. If he could get rid of the vile shaman and raise his friendship gauge with both girls in the process, that’d be the grand finale bringing his first week at Roswaal Manor to a successful conclusion.
“Now that I think back on it, I sure went through a lot…”
He knew it was speaking too soon, but it was a light at the end of the tunnel even so. Surely no one could blame Subaru for feeling that way.
Shouldn’t you be thinking of something else? he wondered. Looking up meant missing that which was right at his feet, didn’t it? Subaru, a man of little nerve and much wariness, suddenly remembered…
“The scent…of the witch…”
“What do you mean, I wonder?”
“Right, the witch. Rem mentioned her. You did, too, Beako.”
The moment the word witch formed on his lips, he remembered the various places he had encountered it. The witch was often treated as an abominable being by the residents of that world, but Subaru’s only clue as to why was the broad outline given in the children’s story “The Witch of Jealousy.” That really bothered him all of a sudden.
After all, the road traveled by Subaru Natsuki had been peppered by references to her.
Subaru lifted up his face and looked at Beatrice, who was knitting her eyebrows.
He wasn’t sure she’d even answer the question he was about to ask. It was grave enough that Ram had refused to answer it entirely, while Rem had used it as one of her justifications for attacking him.
He felt that even Emilia strongly resisted the topic.
“Beako, you know about the witch, right?”
“—”
The reply didn’t come immediately. The word thrumming in her ears made Beatrice close her eyes, sinking into silence as if making sure she’d heard correctly. Her reaction left Subaru with no option beyond trying to keep calm and waiting.
When she suddenly murmured the words, Subaru’s breath caught as his eyes went wide.
“She who drinks the world itself. Queen of the Castle of Shadows. The greatest of all disasters—the Witch of Jealousy.”
Upon seeing Subaru’s reaction, Beatrice let out a gloomy sigh.
“In this world, there is only one being indicated by the word witch. Should I add, it is even considered taboo to speak her name aloud, I wonder?”
“So everyone’s in awe and fear of her, and no one defies her?”
“Yes, precisely. Rather, why would you even ask if I know her, I wonder? In this world, aren’t the names you know best those of your parents, then other family, and finally, the name of the witch, I wonder?”
“Oh, come on…”
Subaru tried to poke fun, but he swallowed his words when Beatrice’s expression made plain that she wasn’t the slightest bit joking.
And if she was serious, that meant the witch was an unparalleled darkness in the world.
“The Witch of Jealousy, ‘Satella.’ She consumed the great sinners of yore known as the Six Witches, swallowing up half the world in the process, the vilest of all calamities.”
Beatrice’s words, spoken with emotions suppressed, brought a short, hard breath out of Subaru.
The name, one he’d heard before, bore much more gravity in the context of the rest.
“It is said that the witch desires love. It is said she does not comprehend human speech. It is said she envies everything in this world. That none have seen her face and lived. That her body is untouched by the ravages of time, unable to grow old or decay. That the Dragon, the Hero, and the Sage combined their power to seal her away, because even they could not hope to destroy her.”
Beatrice spoke point by point, not allowing Subaru to get a word in.
“It is said…”
Finally, as if reaching the end of her tale, she paused after her preamble and said,
“…she is a half-elf with silver hair.”
4
—Satella, the Witch of Jealousy.
The Six Witches had made the world scream, but this witch wiped them out in one fell swoop, ushering in a calamity that destroyed half the world.
A hero had sealed her flesh within a crystal, where she continued to sleep, even then, in some corner of the world.
That’s an absurd story, Subaru’s sensibilities as a child of modernity made him think.
Crimes so vile that people spoke of them centuries afterward were already bad enough, but the fact that the perpetrator continued to exist, sealed away somewhere out there, would be unthinkable in his world.
Subaru began to cite a rather extreme example as he sat cross-legged with his chin on a palm, watching a corner of the garden.
“Well, I can’t really go by that. Even if people don’t know the name of their own prime minister, they know the name of, say, the nation’s most popular idol group…”
It was morning as Emilia sat on the grass of the inner garden, conversing with the flickering lights surrounding her.
The scene never lost its mysterious, surreal air no matter how many times he set eyes on it. Seeing Emilia like this every day was one of the most beautiful sights that world had to offer.
Subaru was watching at a distance so as not to interfere with Emilia’s conversation. He was still wearing his servant’s outfit as he suppressed a yawn, letting out a long breath as he sank into a sea of contemplation once more.
It was now the morning of the third day, for night and sunrise had passed since his conversation with Beatrice in the archive of forbidden books.
As the night had crept toward morning, Beatrice had suddenly scowled.
“I suppose my skin shall be compromised if I do not get my beauty sleep. Staying up late like this is quite a bother.”
After being roughly evicted from the archive, Subaru managed to get in a morning bath before meeting up with Emilia in the garden. The sight of her so diligently carrying out her daily routine made him clench a fist with renewed determination.
A gray fur ball—in other words, Puck—popped his face up in front of Subaru’s eyes and called out to him.
“Well you seem to be doing better now.”
Puck continued to hover in the air as he began grooming his face with his short paws like any normal cat. He continued, “To be honest, you were not much to look at yesterday. I’m a little relieved.”
“That so? Sorry to make you worry. But my naive heart still isn’t completely over everything, so I want the feel of your fur to comfort me. Ahhh…”
“Well, if you can bluff like that I suppose you’re fine. Lia did lend you her lap and everything.”
Subaru’s fingers wrapped around the palm-size cat and, searching for something beyond even the surprising sensation of his ears,
arrived at Puck’s tail. From base to tip, the feel of it was beyond even Subaru’s expectations, making his breath catch.
Subaru savored the supremely comfortable touch in his hand as his eyes met Puck’s.
“Did you see the lap pillow, too, by any chance?”
“Only because she did it for so long. It was quite difficult to stay kneeling in that position for hours, and I offered to take over several times, but… Relax, Lia saw it through to the very end.”
Puck’s metaphorical seal of approval abruptly made Subaru, still shy about the awakening of his love, red in the face.
Puck nodded at Subaru’s schoolboy reaction. And then—
“Ei!”
“Ow—! Why did you just scratch me?!”
“You had an explosion of complex feelings of affection for my daughter. Maybe I ought to explode you?”
“You ought not!! That daddy mind-set’s a complicated thing, geez!”
Puck’s “explosion” of fatherly concern threatened to put distance between Subaru and Emilia. Subaru plaintively bowed his head before Puck, somehow managing to keep the situation in check. When this process was finished and he glanced back at Emilia, he saw that she seemed to still be immersed in conversation with the spirits, never noticing the comedy routine between man and beast that had ruptured the calm of the morning.
Subaru watched the side of her face, gazing at the gentle, charming smile so beautiful that you could drown in it, when he abruptly murmured to himself.
“—A silver-haired half-elf, huh?”
It was one of the things Beatrice had said about the Witch of Jealousy.
The witch had shaken the world to its core, and even now, her name was synonymous with terror. He wondered how great a burden it must be to have similarities with such a being.
Even Subaru, who had never felt hardships like this, could imagine it was no easy road to travel. And yet, Emilia had been raised to be an honest, benevolent person… No doubt in the hope that she would live as a lovely, untainted flower.
“Either she grew up in a real friendly environment, or…”
Puck looked back and smiled, one paw on his hip, the other toying with his whiskers.
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Vol. 3 Page 5
