CHAPTER 1

BAPTISM

1

At around the same time that Emilia offered up her prayer to the skies above the dry desert…

“”

On a windswept meadow in a distant land, a boy hugged a girl close.

The boy had black hair and an unfriendly demeanor. With his beady eyes and generally unpleasant countenance, some might have gone as far as to say he had the face of a killer.

However, right now, the boy had a tender look in his eyes, and there was the faintest trace of a smile on his lips. He looked like he was on the verge of tears, and it was all he could do to keep his vision from growing fuzzy.

That much was only natural.

How long had he waited for this moment? After all those heartache-filled days, how could he look away from the girl in front of him for even an instant?

As he carefully propped her up, their faces were close, and the girl with bright-blue hair stared right into his eyes.

She slowly blinked, her adorable face and big, round eyes showing faint signs of consciousness. She almost looked like she was half asleep, which wasn’t far from the truth.

She had only just woken from a long, long slumber. Her mind was still stirring, and it made perfect sense that she wasn’t fully aware of her surroundings yet.

“…He…ro…”

With a trembling voice, she repeated what the boy in front of her had said.

The boy—Subaru Natsuki—nodded over and over.

“Yeah, that’s right, Rem. I’m your hero. I’ll always…”

“”

“Rem?”

While trying to control the quivering in his own voice, Subaru strained to hear Rem’s.

Perhaps because her throat was dry, she struggled to speak. Even so, her lips kept moving, so he leaned in close, listening carefully so as not to miss a word.

That Rem was trying to say something—that she was moving like this at all—made him so happy he trembled all over.

“—m.”

“What? Take as long as you need, Rem. What are…”

He was about to continue asking her what she wanted to say but trailed off partway through as he brought his ear close to Rem’s lips. But while he was focused on making out her faint words, his head and jaw were caught in two outstretched hands.

Subaru fell backward with an awkward shout, his voice cracking.

But even that…

“…R-Rem?”

Their positions were flipped. Now Rem was straddling him.

Bewildered by the sudden change, Subaru was slow to react. Rem stared straight down at him, her blue eyes looking him up and down.

And then she spoke quietly.

“Who is Rem?”

“”

“And what is this random talk of heroes all of a sudden? It makes absolutely no sense! Who are you?!”

Pinning Subaru’s shoulders with her knees, Rem put her hands around Subaru’s throat. Subaru struggled to breathe as she held him down with her body weight. He flailed his legs, but Rem was a master of restraint techniques. There was no way for him to regain control.

“Ghk! Aaah, gah…”

“If you won’t speak, then I will simply wait until you do. It does not matter how long it takes. Now answer me. What is your goal? What are you after?!”

Whether it was intentional or not, though, she was using too much force, and her grip around Subaru’s neck kept him from answering.

Subaru desperately kicked his legs. He was about to be strangled to death.

This was their long-awaited reunion, even though he was the only one of them who knew it. He refused to let things end like this.

Even if she didn’t remember anything about him.

“Aaauuh!”

“Aaah?!”

Suddenly, someone leaped in and slammed into Rem from the side. That said, it would have been more accurate to say that whoever it was got tangled up and fell onto the grass along with Rem.

Freed from the weight pinning him down, Subaru rolled onto his side and started coughing. It was for an entirely different reason now that his eyes were watering as he looked over at Rem, who had fallen over.

That was when he noticed the young girl clinging to Rem.

“Uuuh! Uuuh!”

“Wh-what are you…? Please, stop! This is not the time for this…”

The moment he saw the blond girl clinging to Rem, red-faced and with teeth bared, Subaru’s mind went blank.

Before he realized it, he was rushing over to them.

“Get away from Rem, you asshole!”

“Aaah, uuuh!!!”

He knocked away the hand, which was grabbing at Rem’s hair, then immediately put the Archbishop, Louis Arneb, in a full nelson, and dragged her away from Rem.

Gluttony struggled, but flailing around with her arms and legs seemed to be all she could do to resist. While he found this incredibly suspect, Subaru continued to move the danger away from Rem.

“Auuuh! Uuh, uuuuh!”

“What’s with you…? C’mon, behave! Rem, are you all right?! Nothing happened, right?!”

“N-nothing happened. If anything, I should be asking you…”

Rem’s lovely eyebrows arched in confusion as she replied. She was still watching Subaru with suspicion as she slowly started to rise…

“…Huh?”

Her knees buckled without warning, and she fell right onto her bottom.

Subaru’s eyes shot open at the unnatural way Rem had fallen, but she didn’t notice. She was too preoccupied with checking her knees and trying to stand up again.

However…

“…Don’t tell me you can’t stand?” Subaru asked woodenly.

“N-no, of course I… This…this is…”

Rem immediately responded, still trying to get her legs to work. However, the harder she tried, the worse the situation became.

It was almost like her thoughts couldn’t reach her legs.

“Is it possible your legs got weaker because you were asleep for so long? But your arms didn’t feel any weaker.”

Subaru seemed even more panicked about Rem’s condition than she was, and his eyes spun as he watched her struggle to stand.

It was a common-enough story. Many who had long hospital stays lost a great deal of muscle mass due to a lack of exercise. It wasn’t rare to hear that it had caused weakness in the legs, or to need a few weeks of rehabilitation to be able to stand and walk again. But it seemed odd that it would only affect the lower body.

Rem had been bedridden for over a year. Any resulting weakness should have affected her whole body. This sort of imbalanced condition was most likely due to…

“…The feedback from Bis Sis fighting earlier?”

As he tried to figure out what could possibly be wrong, that thought crossed his mind.

Ram had fought hard against Lye Batenkaitos, another Archbishop of Gluttony. Because of Subaru’s weakness, Ram had been forced to use her trump card—sharing the burden of her power with her sister.

Ram had been a prodigy since childhood and would have gone on to become one of the strongest beings alive had she kept her horn. That was the level of power she had unleashed in that fight, and Rem had endured the strain of it while still unconscious.

After getting a small taste of the burden Ram carried, Subaru knew just how terrible that must have been for Rem.

What Subaru had taken on was just a fragment of the burden Ram always carried. Even that had been enough to make Subaru feel like he’d pulled several all-nighters in a row. In addition to incredible exhaustion, he’d been hit with a fever and nausea.

Meanwhile, Rem had taken on a far greater load than him, but without any way of bracing herself for it. He remembered back in the green room what Ram had said about not knowing what might happen when she shared the weight of her full power with Rem.

If that was the reason why Rem couldn’t stand up now, then…

“…It’s all my fault.”

Ram would have immediately berated him if she’d heard those words coming out of his mouth. But Subaru had failed to finish what he had started, and as a result, Ram had pushed herself to the limit. Assuming that was the cause of Rem’s current condition, he fully considered it his fault.

Now that their comrades were nowhere to be found, and with Louis hanging around in a strange state for some reason, that responsibility weighed on him even more heavily.

“Your fault…? What did you do to me?!”

“Wait, that’s not what I meant…”

“Also, I must ask again! Who are you, and who am I?!”

Rem glared at Subaru as she pounded at the legs that refused to move. Rage swirled wildly in her eyes.

Her pained demand that almost verged on a tantrum confirmed Subaru’s unpleasant hunch. A bitter taste filled his mouth.

Rem had asked who she was.

It was painful that she didn’t recognize him. But for her to not even know herself was almost too much for Subaru to bear, given how long he had wished for this reunion.

Of course, he had already suspected as much because of how she had been talking.

“…These are the same symptoms that Crusch had.”

Ever since her name and memories were stolen from her, Rem had been sleeping.

There were two more ways Gluttony’s victims could end up. Those who had their names stolen were forgotten by the people around them, like Julius. And those who had their memories stolen forgot themselves. That was what had happened to Crusch.

Rem had woken up with no memories and no idea what was happening.

The first people she’d seen were a guy with the face of a thug, and a little girl who could only make strange noises. And to top it all off, she couldn’t move her own legs. It was perfectly understandable that she would be confused.

“Uuaauh!”

Apparently exhausted from struggling, Louis had stopped fighting, and at some point managed to slip out of Subaru’s arms, which had gone loose. She landed on the ground and let out a shout. After rubbing her bottom, Louis rolled over.

Paying her no attention, Subaru slowly walked over to Rem instead.

As he approached, Rem remained on guard. The look in her eyes reminded Subaru of the first time they’d met.

Once they’d started getting along, she had stuck so close to him that it was easy to forget how shy and careful Rem was around strangers. Overcoming that initial hurdle had been surprisingly difficult.

With Ram, on the other hand, he got the same treatment from her both before and after he’d gotten to know her better, which was easier to deal with, in a sense.

Though that invited the scary thought that Subaru had simply not become friends with Ram at all.

“Well, never mind Big Sis for now… Hey there.”

“Wh-what? I should warn you, if you intend to do something to me, I… ”

“…You’re Rem.”

“Huh?”

Her face had been incredibly tense, but suddenly she looked almost dumbfounded.

Subaru came to a stop just outside her reach.

“Rem. That’s your name.”

Rem fell silent, unable to hide her confusion. But he could see her red tongue moving slightly as she repeated Rem to herself, as though she wanted to confirm the shape of the name with her mouth.

“If I’m being honest, I don’t really know exactly what happened, either. But we got separated from our friends and wound up in a place I don’t recognize. You should be able to understand that’s not ideal, right?”

“Well…”

Still confused, Rem’s eyes glanced around the meadow they were in.

A breeze blew across the grass, and the sun was high in the sky. The temperature was comfortable. There was a humidity in the air that was nothing like that of the arid Auguria dunes.

They had to be someplace completely different for the change in weather to be this stark.

“”

Subaru didn’t want to worry Rem when she already had her lost memory to deal with and had no idea what was happening. That was why he’d decided to conceal the myriad doubts and worries that were taking root in his mind.

It was clear Subaru, Rem, and Louis had been caught up in some sort of teleportation phenomenon.

The scenery and climate made it clear they had been sent someplace far from Auguria. If the cause of that was the shadow that had attacked the tower, then there was a chance Emilia and the others had been affected as well.

Subaru was totally exhausted, and Rem had originally been bedridden. They were undoubtedly the weakest members of their party, and they were currently safe, so he wanted to trust that Emilia and the others were also fine. However…

“It doesn’t look like there’s much hope of reuniting with our buddies anytime soon. We’ll have to make do by ourselves for the time being. So…”

“So…what? What would you have me do? I can barely move my own legs.”

“…I imagine this is gonna sound real suspicious, but all you need to do is stay right there. Seeing you breathing, talking, and looking around us is more than enough.”

“What? Do you mean I should keep an eye out for potential danger?”

“Not exactly, but that works, too.”

Rem was awake, alert, and active. Subaru couldn’t be happier.

It was a small wish, but what Subaru had wanted more than anything was for Rem to be well. That was the simple truth.

Of course, he still wanted to figure out a way to recover her memories, and also find a way to meet back up with Emilia, Beatrice, and the others. The sooner, the better. He wanted to reunite Rem and Ram.

For Ram’s sake. For the girl who cared so much about the sister she couldn’t remember.

“Could you just trust me here? Please? I’ll protect you even if it costs me my life… Well, I guess if it actually costs me my life, there’s not much point, but I’ll put my life on the line to keep you safe. Promise. So…”

“…Supposing I were willing to accept your request, what do you plan to do?”

“Right. I can’t just start rushing around without a plan, so we should settle on a course of action.”

They were sitting in the middle of a big, open meadow, but a tree line was visible in the distance. They seemed to be in a large clearing in a forest.

Frankly, venturing into a forest in unfamiliar lands was nothing but a massive risk, but…

“The number one rule when you are lost in a forest is letting people know where you are using GPS, but…”

“‘Jee Pee Ess’…?”

“I know, we don’t have that here… But I’m connected with Beako through our contract, so in a sense, I’m our GPS.”

And it was possible Rem and Ram’s connection could serve the same purpose.

If so, both could guide their friends in the right direction.

“The next priority is finding a source of water. Clean water is crucial. Then we pick the best campsite, and from there, we steadily explore our surroundings. As for edible plants and fruits… I was right to learn all that from Clind. Three cheers for Teach…”

While Subaru was learning how to parkour and use a whip, Clind had also taught him all sorts of techniques and other knowledge. Subaru had had plenty of complaints while studying under that butler who could apparently do everything, but thanks to that training, he knew what to do in this situation.

In any case…

“There’s other things we can try, but we can’t move without a plan. Understand?” Subaru smiled reassuringly.

“…To some extent. Even if I wanted to resist, my current condition won’t let me.”

“…I think you just said the quiet part out loud.”

Rem’s response was not exactly a vote of confidence. Having lost her memories, she had very little reason to trust Subaru. If she could walk on her own, there was a good chance she would’ve already booked it.

A small part of him considered it oddly fortunate that her body wasn’t currently in tip-top shape. Of course, he felt a bit guilty the moment that thought crossed his mind.

“Hopefully you’ll be able to move your legs soon.”

“Wha?! You can say whatever you’d like, that won’t change anything. Anyway, what are you going to do?”

“I told you, finding water comes first. There’s the problem of your legs, too, so I would appreciate it if you don’t fight me on this…”

Once he’d taken that one last step toward her, Subaru turned around and crouched. Rem could tell what he was trying to do.

“You plan to carry me on your back?”

“Carrying you in my arms is technically an option, but I won’t last long that way. It would be helpful for me if you’re willing to ride piggyback.”

“”

For a few moments, Rem stared at Subaru’s pathetic face in silence. Then, sighing, she slowly reached out for his back. Once her arms were wrapped around his chest and secure, Subaru carefully stood up. He could feel her weight—she felt terribly light.

He’d had many chances to carry her while she was sleeping over the past year, and each time, he’d realized how difficult it could be to carry someone who was unconscious.

This was different. Rem was holding on to him of her own will.

“Hmm? Did something happen?”

“No, I’m just feeling oddly moved. Now then, time to search for water.”

“Before that…what about that girl?”

“…Right.”

When Rem pointed with her chin over his shoulder, he also looked in that direction, recalling their other problem.

Louis was still rolling around and rubbing her bottom, her long, blond hair a complete mess.

What do I do with this strange Archbishop?

“”

Even Subaru could tell that her current state was unnatural.

She wasn’t really someone anyone would have called “normal” to begin with, but that was because of her viciousness, not this apparent mental regression to infancy.

If anything, she had been far smarter than most would have assumed based on her childlike form, and she’d been fully capable of exploiting even the finest cracks in people’s hearts.

That was before. Now…

“Aah, aauuh.”

She had licked Subaru’s face when he was waking up, and she made funny noises like a baby, and threw tantrums like one, too. Something dramatic must have happened.

However…

“Is that enough to get me to feel any sympathy?”

She was unforgivably evil. That fact was unshakable.

In the final moments of their confrontation in the corridors of memory, Louis had experienced Return by Death and suffered a terrible mental shock. It had left her terrified not just of Subaru, but of the entire world.

At that point, she’d devolved into nothing more than a pitiful girl.

But Subaru had chosen not to save her. And he’d felt no desire to save her, either.

Louis had had any number of opportunities to do things differently, but always took the most inhumane option. In the end, she’d painted herself into a corner and lost her chance to change.

Her two brothers were no different.

Louis Arneb had committed an unforgivable sin, fallen into the depths of hell, and ultimately, transformed into a simple beast.

Why should I have to save someone like that?

“Are you not going to help her?”

“…It’s complicated. She wound up here with us, but she isn’t one of our friends. If anything, she’s the exact opposite. I’m not against just leaving her behind.”

“”

He noticed Rem’s breath catching in her throat as he passed judgment on Louis. But it didn’t change his answer.

“Honestly, we should leave her behind… It’s not just that she would hold us back—she’s a bomb. I can’t go around carrying something like that.”

It had been an error in judgment from the moment he’d grabbed Louis while the shadow was closing in. Maybe he and Rem wouldn’t have been sent so far away if he hadn’t picked her up.

Keeping her around is all risk and no reward.

“Is that your final answer?”

“Yeah, you heard me right. I’m not going to say I won’t lose any sleep over it, but…”

Rem was his top priority. Subaru’s own well-being came next. He couldn’t lose sight of what was truly important. That was why he ignored Louis lying next to him, and headed off in the opposite direction, toward the forest—

“It seems I was right to trust my instincts, hollow as I currently am.”

The voice that spoke was awfully cold and harsh.

Subaru gasped when Rem whispered these words in his ear. But he couldn’t formulate any other response because her slender arms were pressing on his neck.

Rem was strangling Subaru from behind.

“Gah…!”

“You tried to get me to lower my guard with pretty words, and then you abandoned that girl. How can I trust someone like that? Don’t take me for a fool.”

Unlike her legs, the arms crushing his neck had the full strength of an oni.

Unable to peel them away, Subaru fell backward, struggling to breathe. But even with Subaru lying on top of her, Rem’s grip didn’t loosen. She was thoroughly choking him out.

He thrashed about with his legs and tried to roll over, but Rem was too strong. As the seconds ticked by, Subaru’s own strength flagged.

“Ga…aaa…gh.”

As he lost the ability to struggle, the question of why Rem had turned on him filled his head. And as that question mark filled his oxygen-starved brain, Rem quietly exhaled with a mix of distrust and loathing:

“It was obvious you were up to no good, with such a wicked stench coming off you.”

That was when Subaru remembered.

The first time they’d met, Rem had suspected Subaru was a threat, and the biggest reason for that was not that he’d made an awful first impression, nor was it his naturally off-putting gaze.

No—it was the scent of the Witch.

Even without her memories, even without anything to rely on but herself, Rem could still sense it.

That was the biggest reason why Rem distrusted him.

Subaru had realized that too late…

“—Ah.”

He desperately willed his body to move, trying to explain himself, but it was pointless.

Subaru’s consciousness slowly, slowly faded into the abyss.

He screamed, not wanting to just die at Rem’s hands like this.

But his screams did not make a sound.

2

“Ngh! Rem?!”

Suddenly coming to, Subaru sat up with a jolt.

As he did, he began coughing because of a painful lump in his throat, hacking up phlegm as he forced himself to settle down and look around.

He was in a meadow—he had been sprawled in the middle of it.

It was a familiar way to wake up, but Subaru quickly realized this was not the déjà vu of coming back from death—he couldn’t see Rem or Louis anywhere nearby.

“This is…definitely the place we were sent to. I…nghh.”

Recalling what had just happened earlier, he gingerly touched his neck, and the pain brought back an unpleasant memory.

While carrying Rem on his back, Subaru had been choked to death—well, not quite.

“My neck hurts like hell…which means Rem didn’t kill me.”

She had strangled him but stopped short of killing him.

Surprised by her decision given how cold her voice had sounded, Subaru breathed a sigh of relief, then quickly reminded himself that it was too soon to relax.

He was still alive. That meant he would have to pick things up from that last terrible development.

Because of the lingering scent of the Witch, Rem harbored serious doubts about Subaru and had run away with the worst possible impression of him. Since Louis was also missing, he assumed Rem had taken her along.

Left behind here, he had effectively forced Rem to be alone with an incredibly dangerous individual.

“Damn it! The hell am I doing…?!”

Bitter about his series of mistakes, Subaru slapped his cheeks and stood up.

Based on where the sun was in the sky, not much time had passed. He still didn’t want to think of it as a good thing, but Rem would have trouble moving.

He was sure she wouldn’t get very far on those legs.

“I can see the marks from her dragging herself across the grass…! I can follow her!”

It would have been hopeless if he’d had to track her without any clues, but the tracks she’d left after dragging herself across the meadow were still visible. There was no telling how far they would take him, though.

“I’ve taken plenty of risky gambles already!”

That was hardly anything to brag about, but even so, Subaru sprinted off across the meadow, following the tracks in the grass.

Fortunately, they didn’t suddenly end, and he was able to make out where the two of them had entered the forest. The lush and dense plant growth underneath the canopy of tall trees made it look like a tropical rainforest.

Upon closer examination, it was obvious he was sweating from the heat and humidity. This climate was nothing like the bone-dry desert they had just come from.

The big leaves and vibrant vines reminded him of jungles like the Amazon, though he had never been there himself. From what he’d heard, the Amazon was supposed to be a deadly place for anyone who wandered in unprepared, but…

“If that’s where Rem went, then I’ve got no choice.”

Subaru and Rem were equally unprepared for venturing deep into the forest. As he imagined Rem desperately fleeing into the forest despite her uncooperative legs, he couldn’t help berating himself for every rash choice he’d made so far.

“Rem! Please come out! Please! I made a mistake!”

He hesitated for just a moment, and then, praying that Rem was still safe, he boldly dived into the woods, calling out in a loud voice.

His feet sank into the soft ground and endless undergrowth. The chirps of insects he had never heard before and the rustling of the plants he pushed past were loud and annoying, so he raised his voice again.

Of course, he realized that calling out to her like this might scare Rem and make her actively avoid him. But it was better than wandering lost through the forest without any clues or markers to rely on.

And more than anything, he had to do something productive, or the self-loathing he felt would make his heart explode.

After all the things everyone had done for Rem’s sake, if anything happened to her now, how would Subaru ever make it up to her?

He couldn’t even atone with his own death.

“Rem! Where are you?! Please answer me! I’m begging you, don’t leave me!!!”

He shouted through the trees, not caring how hoarse his voice got.

It didn’t take long for his limbs to start feeling like lead. He was fighting a losing battle against immense exhaustion. Thinking back, he had only managed to catch a couple hours of sleep to recover after the hard fighting at the Pleiades Watchtower.

The spirit in the green room increased the natural recovery rate of anyone under its care, but that was a drop in the ocean.

If Subaru wasn’t careful, he might collapse in relief the moment he found Rem.

Wary of such a stupid possibility coming to pass, Subaru pressed on with his search in the rainforest…

“Rem! Please answer! I’m begging you! I’m sorry! I was wrong!”

Putting his hands to his mouth, he continued to shout.

He pleaded with her from the bottom of his heart, but there was no response, and his spirit was flagging.

He continued to chase after a phantom of Rem, keeping his eyes peeled as he moved past tree after tree.

“”

Just as he was about to shout her name for the umpteenth time, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

The slightest trace of movement. Something peeked out from the underbrush, in a gap between the trees. It wasn’t just a breeze rustling the leaves—

“Re—”

Getting his hopes up, Subaru turned in that direction.

That was the exact moment something slammed into his chest with tremendous speed.

“Gh?!”

Before he could so much as shout, he was knocked off his feet and sent flying backward. He crashed into a tree trunk, and the wind was knocked out of him.

“Gah… Wh-what the…?!”

His brain was scrambled by the sudden impact. He looked around, but considering the sheer force of it, he’d obviously been attacked. Before he had a chance to gather his thoughts, he tried to make a run for it.

But he couldn’t, because—

“Agh?”

The thick arrow sticking out of his chest had punched a hole right through him and come out the other side, pinning him to the big tree trunk behind him.

“Gh, bluh…”

As soon as he realized what had happened, he coughed up all the blood that was welling up in his throat.

He was bleeding profusely, both inside and out, and it wasn’t stopping. Coughing up more blood than air, Subaru struggled to breathe.

“Kgh…”

Despite the terrible pain, he grabbed the arrow in his chest and tried to pull it out.

It didn’t even budge. The arrowhead was buried solidly in the tree, preventing him from moving at all.

Whoever had shot him must’ve used a heavy bow to achieve such extraordinary force, enough to pin him down like an insect specimen. All he could do now was struggle pathetically…

“Agh, uggh, hng, nghh…”

When he wasn’t choking on his blood, he continued to call out to the girl who should still have been somewhere in the woods. He could no longer form words, but all the same, he tried to warn her of the menace lurking in the woods.

There was someone out there—specifically, the person walking toward him with a bow and arrow.

The quiet sound of Subaru drowning in his own blood was slowly muffled by the rustling footsteps of the approaching hunter, who had come to confirm the death of their prey.

They were slender and tall. An arrow was nocked in their bow. Everything else was lost to the darkness—Subaru couldn’t make out anything else.

By their hand, Subaru had pathetically, helplessly failed to reach Rem, and…

“—em.”

They’re right in front of me. An enemy. Are they the enemy? Why? What’s going on? What do I do?

What can I do with no one to rely on?

The welling heat and the pain he had been all too slow to notice were steadily spreading through his body. Blood was dripping from his eyes, nose, and ears now.

A feeling of emptiness was growing, a harbinger of a cold death’s approach. Subaru desperately kept his eyes open and called out to her until the very end.

He called her name with his very last breath.

Even as blood spilled from his lips.

Over and over, he called and called and called, until his very last moment.

Calling—

3

The next instant, Subaru’s consciousness rose from the darkness.

“Gagh!”

The agony of drowning he’d been experiencing just moments earlier vanished in an instant, only to be replaced by the pain of his erratic breathing and the unmistakable feeling of the ground under his back.

“Cough, cough. Ack, bleugh.”

Subaru sat up while rubbing his throat, recalling what had just transpired.

He peered down at his chest and couldn’t see an arrow anywhere. Additionally, the scratches he’d gotten from pushing through the underbrush were gone as well.

Of course they were.

He had suffered a terrible blow right through his chest.

“I…died…”

With a shudder and the unshakable feeling that the ground had fallen out from under him, Subaru’s blood turned cold.

After the Pleiades Watchtower was swallowed up by shadow, he’d been carried far, far away, and been awake for not even an hour before abruptly losing his life.

As it dawned on him how dangerous the situation was, Subaru stood up on wobbly feet. He steadied himself and looked around him.

“Damn it. Of course it’s like this…”

He was in the middle of a big meadow, and as luck would have it, he couldn’t see the one person he was hoping would be there.

Unmistakably, it was the same meadow where he had ended up after being whisked away from the tower. The problem was, Rem and Louis were nowhere to be found. Meaning Subaru’s reset point was—

“Right after Rem strangled me…!”

He was starting over from the exact moment after Rem had knocked him out.

It was fortunate that he hadn’t ended up at a point before Rem had woken up, or at a point that would undo their victory at the Pleiades Watchtower. That said, a small part of him had hoped he might be able to talk to Shaula again had he returned to that final part of the previous loop.

“What am I, stupid? Yeah, I guess I am.”

If you’re gonna keep clinging to that, then you should have made more time to listen to her, to be with her, to ask her how she felt. You didn’t, though, so you don’t have the right to grieve now.

“Right now, I have to focus on finding Rem.”

He needed to chase after her and clear up the misunderstanding.

If Rem’s distrust was due to the lingering scent of the Witch, then the smell might have become even stronger after yet another instance of Return by Death. But even if that made her less willing to trust him, he still had to protect her.

“Someone in that forest killed me… That wasn’t Rem’s handiwork.”

She had already strangled him once. It was entirely possible she might attack him again. But there shouldn’t have been enough time for her to find or make a bow and arrows, never mind learn how to use them.

“If my attacker could nail me that accurately from a good distance away, it could be dangerous for Rem, too.”

Since her legs were currently out of commission, she wouldn’t be able to flee if that archer came after her. He had to find her first, even if she didn’t believe he was her ally.

“Let’s do this, Subaru Natsuki. Lemme see just how great you are.”

He slapped his cheeks to clear his mind of that shocking death and the grief of being hated by a girl he cared about so much. It wasn’t clear if he could convince her to stick together even if he found her, but he had to take this one step at a time.

Grief and anger were things you could only feel while still alive.

“”

Once he’d taken a deep breath, Subaru looked for Rem’s tracks in the grass, then charged into the jungle once more. This time, though, he was deeply unsure whether he should raise his voice and call out to Rem.

The archer’s baptism earlier had happened because the enemy had found Subaru defenseless. Their identity was unclear, as was their goal, but having killed him in one shot, it was difficult to imagine that they were friendly. He should assume that being discovered would mean death.

“But a bow and arrow means it’s not a demon beast. It’s gotta be a person.”

There was a chance he could avoid a fight to the death, depending on how negotiations went. Whether they would be willing to sit down and talk was another question, though.

All of Subaru’s deaths had more or less been caused equally by demon beasts and people. People might even have had the edge. Just because the opponent was someone he could communicate with didn’t necessarily mean it would be possible to make friends.

It would be easier to find Rem with more people helping him, but…

“Cor Leonis.”

Closing his eyes, Subaru swept away all extraneous thoughts and activated the authority that lay within him. The new power that he had used to go wild in the Pleiades Watchtower, Cor Leonis, allowed Subaru to locate allies nearby as long as they were willing to support the Little King.

He had hoped it would let him find Rem, but…

“…Nope, there’s no response. Either she’s insanely far away, or she doesn’t consider me an ally.”

He didn’t know the exact range of Cor Leonis, but when it was active, a faint light marked the location of his allies. Sadly, he couldn’t see any lights now, and he concluded that this was either due to distance or the state of their relationship.

At the moment, he also couldn’t sense Emilia and the others who had previously been marked by his power. And even after he had gotten acquainted with Reid or Gluttony in the tower, it still never marked them.

Subaru quickly concluded that Emilia and the others must no longer be in range, and that Rem was in range but didn’t think of him as an ally. His inability to track Louis was also consistent with this conclusion.

“I would never treat her like an ally in a million years. Anyway, looks like my one-sided feelings for Rem aren’t enough for the radar to work.”

He regretted all the misunderstandings that had given Rem the wrong impression.

With the Witch’s scent all over him, maybe convincing Rem to trust him had been impossible from the start. Even so, he hadn’t even bothered to pretend to take care of Louis, or to suggest bringing her along.

“Damn it, damn it… Why…?! Rem… Rem finally woke up, so why do I…?”

Why do I have to chase after her like this?

Even though he had waited so long for the day she could stand up and walk on her own two legs again, now that his wish had finally come true, it was causing him some awful trouble.

And thinking about who was to blame for all this, he felt nothing but rage at Louis and all the other Gluttonies.

“”

Subaru’s thoughts were stuck in a loop as he carefully moved through the trees.

He crouched down as a desperate measure to evade the person who had killed him— I’ll call them the hunter for now.

“Think, think… This is all my crafty head is good for. Rem’s forgotten her memories and doesn’t remember a thing. But she still had the ability to wrestle me to the ground and detect the Witch’s scent. That’s gotta be episodic memory loss.”

Amnesia was a common trope in fiction, and in most cases, it tended to be some form of episodic memory loss. This generally manifested as being able to remember the names of things and retaining ingrained reflexes but failing to recall people or specific memories.

Based on the way Rem had spoken and how she’d doubted Subaru because of his scent, he was convinced.

“Rem’s probably disoriented right now. She can’t run forever. After getting some distance from me, she’ll take some time to calm down and collect herself. And assuming she took Louis with her, that would be all the more reason to stop sooner rather than later.”

It seemed like an insane thing to hope for, but he wanted Louis to slow Rem’s flight down as much as possible. If she threw a tantrum, refused to keep walking, or just generally caused Rem problems, it would give Subaru a chance to catch up to them.

Or was it possible that Louis would become too much to handle and be abandoned by Rem…?

“…Hard to say.”

He honestly wasn’t sure if Rem was capable of abandoning someone who looked like a defenseless little girl.

With her amnesia, Rem didn’t even know who she was herself. She didn’t have the inferiority complex toward Ram that had developed from a young age, or a concrete sense of self.

Ram’s ability to stay composed as if nothing had happened even after losing Rem’s existence was abnormal, but would that also be true of Rem? Without any sisterly bond, without the pride of being an oni or an inferiority complex because of her sister, and having absolutely no opinion about Subaru Natsuki, what would Rem…?

“Hgh!”

As he imagined it, it felt like flames were licking at his heart.

Subaru lurched forward, stepping on a twig that snapped with a loud crack. He almost slipped on the muddy ground underneath and ended up stumbling forward through the high grass.

“Huh?”

Suddenly, the woods opened up and he found himself in a clearing.

A scary thought entered his mind, and he quickly checked to see if he had been wandering through the rainforest all that time only to end up back in the same spot. After a careful study of his surroundings, he confirmed he was in a different clearing.

It was similar to the first meadow, but the grass here was taller. And the first meadow was surrounded by rainforest on all sides, but here there was only the jungle that he had stumbled out of.

Before him, all he could see was the horizon. The sky seemed impossibly high, and staring at it made him feel unsteady on his feet, as if he might get drawn up into it if he wasn’t careful.

But what caught his attention most of all wasn’t the sky. There was a spot in the meadow that had been cleared and was littered with camping tools…

Put simply, there were signs that someone had been here.

“”

Subaru’s body tensed cautiously, and his field of view narrowed.

Fortunately, he couldn’t spot anyone at the simple campsite—only the traces of someone making camp. It was hard to imagine this was an elaborate trap.

The question was, who had set up this campsite?

“The simplest answer would be…the person who killed me.”

If the hunter was actively roaming the woods, then this was probably their base camp.

Subaru realized he should immediately leave and get himself to safety.

Whether it was in the woods or a clearing, the hunter was undeniably a dangerous person to run into.

It was not unheard of for traditional hunters stalking the mountains to mistake a person for a deer and shoot them. But given the apparent skill of the hunter, it seemed impossible they’d mistaken him for a deer when he’d been shouting at the top of his lungs.

The hunter was a dangerous enemy. That was the premise Subaru needed to act on.

However…

“If I could snag at least a knife here…”

The underbrush was incredibly thick. He could really use a tool or two to make faster progress. Unfortunately, all he had on him was his trusty Guilty Whip, crafted from the remains of a powerful enemy.

The clothes he had for dealing with the desert were in a strange way still somewhat useful in a jungle, but having some kind of blade would make a dramatic improvement in his ability to cut through the foliage.

He just needed to get some kind of tool from this camp.

“There’s signs of a fire, and it’s rough…but I think that’s a bed?”

He’d found the remains of a campfire and what looked like a mat of cut foliage beside it. Someone had spent time here for sure.

The camp was otherwise empty, and Subaru couldn’t find anything noteworthy…

“If I could just find anything that can cut stuff…”

“Oh. Looking for a blade? You have shown up in quite the fortunate place, then.”

While he scanned the campsite again in search of any tool that might be useful, a voice suddenly called out to Subaru from behind. He froze, feeling something cold pressed against his neck.

Careful to not even breathe, he slowly looked down and saw a beautifully polished sword resting against the right side of his neck.

“”

Subaru took a deep breath. He understood that his attacker had full control of this situation.

But at the same time, he was confused.

He had been on guard. His life was on the line, so he had been extremely vigilant.

There were superhumans in this world who could move so fast, his eyes wouldn’t be able to keep up. And some could even effectively teleport.

“But come on… How unlucky do I have to be to run into one of those rarities here, of all places?”

“Fool. Who told you to speak? Choose your every word and move with caution. Do not forget that your life rests in my hands.”

While Subaru was bemoaning his luck, the person behind him spoke mercilessly.

Subaru knew that if he tried anything, he would most likely lose his head. He frantically tried to think of some sort of way out.

Judging from their voice, his attacker was a man. Probably around the same age as Subaru, or maybe a little older. There was a distinctiveness to his word choice, but it didn’t sound forced or unnatural.

And more than anything…

“It seems you are probing all of your knowledge while keeping your mouth closed. But you do not risk your life to attack. Hmmm… ”

The man was perceptive enough to pick up on what Subaru was thinking just from his silence.

Evidently, he was contemplating something.

“An outfit ill-suited to Badheim’s climate. Pale skin… You must not be a local.”

“I-I… Whoa.”

“Silence. Who told you to open your mouth? Bother me again, and you can see what it’s like trying to speak out of turn with your head separated from your neck.”

He put a shallow cut in Subaru’s neck, indicating he had no intention of holding a conversation.

There was a twinge of pain, and a rivulet of blood trickled down Subaru’s neck. Apparently, the man did not intend to end his examination of Subaru.

“That whip at your hip. Far too inconvenient to use in the rainforest. Arms and legs developed to a degree, but not enough to match a wolf… It seems you were not tracking me.”

“”

“Why are you silent? Explain yourself. Or would you rather die here?”

“What?! Now I can talk?! Can’t you be a little more reasonable?!”

Subaru started to complain, but he could practically feel the intense gaze boring a hole in the back of his head. He stiffened, realizing he’d said something he probably shouldn’t have, but he finally breathed a sigh of relief when the blade at his neck was pulled away.

“Slowly turn around. If you attempt anything…”

“Off with my head?”

“No. I shall sever each of your limbs, carve out your heart, and burn it before your eyes.”

“That’s way too cruel!”

The threat was ghastly, so Subaru raised his hands to show he had no intention of resisting as he slowly turned around.

Then he took a careful look at the person who’d been standing behind him.

“…Seriously?”

He had locked eyes with a man whose face was covered by a rag wrapped around his head.

4

The man’s appearance was truly strange.

He was a bit taller than Subaru and seemed slender. He had long, lithe arms and legs, and he held a narrow saber in his hand, the one that had been at Subaru’s neck just a moment ago.

He was wearing clothes that gave him the air of a high noble, which was even more out of place for a walk in the woods than Subaru’s outfit. Looking closely, the rags wrapped around his face must have been part of his cloak originally.

It was unclear whether he had bandaged an injury or simply had a pressing reason to hide his identity, but…

“What is that imbecilic expression?”

“Imbecilic or not, people are born looking how they do, so isn’t that slander…? Plus, how could anyone help it when you look like that?”

“How dare you! Your eyes have almost convinced me that I should suspect you of being an assassin again.”

“Don’t decide people’s jobs from looking at their eyes! And my role is the exact opposite of an assassin. I’m not an attacker. If anything, I’m a protector.”

The masked man was watching him carefully, still on guard, with his sword pointed at Subaru.

While delivering this dubious answer, Subaru looked at the man’s equipment and then at the bag placed behind him and furrowed his brow. The man didn’t look prepared for camping and traveling in the jungle. And the bag behind him—it looked like it had appeared out of nowhere, just like the masked man.

Finally, there was the masked man’s weapon. It was obvious he did not have a bow or arrows.

“…I guess you aren’t the hunter.”

“Hunter?”

“Just talking to myself. Incidentally, though… You wouldn’t happen to be able to teleport or make yourself invisible, would you?”

“Oh?”

The eyes peering through the man’s mask lit up at that question.

It wasn’t a sign of anger or him giving up on Subaru, though. His interest had been sparked.

“How did you come to such a conclusion? Speak your reason.”

“…I was cautious in approaching this place. Of course, I know there are plenty of people who can move undetected around me, but you aren’t one of them.”

“Why not?”

“I hope it won’t annoy you if I say this, but I’ve had a lot of opportunities to stumble across powerful people or what you might call superhumans. And compared to those guys who casually defy common sense, the feeling I get from you is…well, normal.”

That sort of comment would definitely anger a warrior of a certain level. But Subaru was simply being honest about his impression of the stranger. The air about the man in front of him convinced Subaru that he knew his way around a sword, but only to the degree of a normal person who had a normal amount of training.

Compared to Reinhard, Garfiel, Wilhelm, and Julius, there wasn’t much to say except that he was clearly inferior to them.

“That’s why I ruled out you maneuvering behind me before I even noticed. Which leaves only teleporting behind me, or else…”

“Using concealment to make myself invisible. I see.”

“Ngh?!”

The man standing in front of Subaru suddenly disappeared.

But that wasn’t the only surprise.

“You disappeared…but you’re still in front of me?”

“Correct. Concealment does not hide my presence.”

To answer Subaru’s question, the masked man appeared again, exactly as he’d been before.

He hadn’t gone anywhere; he had just become invisible. And he’d returned the moment he answered Subaru’s question.

“So it comes undone when someone touches you or notices you?”

“It is still the perfect tool for waiting quietly and hiding,” the man said, before lowering his sword and nodding toward the campsite. “The bed is a lure. I was lying in wait further away. I saw you sneaking around from the beginning. A ridiculous sight.”

“If you see someone being all cautious, of course they’ll look silly… But forget that! If you’re lowering your sword, that means…”

“You are not pursuing me. I know not why you are here or what your intentions are, but you are genuinely lost. In which case, I have no reason to loudly rebuke you or teach you a lesson with my blade.”

Once he’d concluded they had no reason to fight, the masked man sheathed his sword.

Only now did Subaru finally let the tension drain from his body. And in the process, he remembered his original goal.

“This isn’t the time for me to relax. Hey, sorry for asking more questions, but have you seen a blue-haired girl, by any chance? We got separated around here.”

“Blue hair? No, not that I’ve seen. Indeed, yours is the first face I have seen since coming to this place. What are you going to do about that?”

“Nothing! Nothing, but…another swing and a miss? Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be willing to help out with my search, would you…?”

“”

“Yeah, I figured.”

No more information was forthcoming, and his request for help had been batted aside.

Under the man’s cold gaze, Subaru turned back to the forest to begin his search for Rem again.

“Wait. If you were separated in the rainforest, then you will not simply stumble across each other again. Do you not think it would be better to prioritize your own survival?”

“…Sorry, but I can’t do that. She’s more precious than my life. I have to find her, have to bring her back no matter what.”

“More precious… To hear that not in the song of a songstress but from the lips of a man, I can only assume those are empty words.”

Subaru’s eyes gleamed. The man seemed to be scoffing at his recklessness.

“And yet your eyes are intriguing,” the man said, pointing at him.

Subaru recoiled, initially afraid he might get his eye poked out, only for the masked man to chuckle.

“Those eyes speak no falsehoods or lies. I do not know if your life truly hung in the balance, but at least here and now, you speak without deceit.”

“In that case… Actually, what does that mean? If what I’m saying is true, then—”

“—Then I am mildly intrigued. I will lend you my knowledge.”

The masked man tapped his temple.

Subaru wanted to yell at the man to quit messing around, but the words never left his mouth.

For some strange reason, he didn’t doubt the man. He was beyond suspicious, but there was a persuasiveness to him. His natural charisma, perhaps.

“Tell me the details of what happened. I shall devise a way to search for her.”

“…She and I were suddenly sent here.”

Without even realizing it, Subaru had started answering the man.

It wasn’t as if he suddenly believed the masked man or trusted him. But any port in a storm, as they say. In moments like this, no matter how untrustworthy someone might be, it was natural to want to cling to something.

That was probably all it was.

5

The first thing the masked man said after hearing everything was scathing.

“You have blundered terribly.”

Subaru had answered all of the man’s questions, explaining what had happened with Rem simply and carefully—while leaving out some of the more complicated bits.

He’d mentioned how Rem’s memory was messed up, and that she had knocked him out and fled. And that there was a dangerous young girl with her.

“I know. I’m a big idiot. But that’s not all you’ve got to say, yeah? I showed you all my dirty laundry, so you’re not just gonna have a laugh and call it a day, right?”

“Fool. You think I would spend my own precious time ridiculing a clown like you? This girl, is she reasonably intelligent?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

Overwhelmed by the masked man’s aura, Subaru answered honestly.

Rem showed her skills in all sorts of everyday situations as a maid, but being good at chores didn’t necessarily make her intelligent.

That came from her uncanny ability to discover people’s talents, positioning people in the right place at the right time and knowing when to act. In combat, she could read Subaru’s actions and coordinate perfectly with him without saying a word.

Rem was clever. Even if she’d lost her memories…

“In that case, it is likely she has beguiled you.”

“B-beguiled? You mean she tricked me? What do you…?”

“In this sort of situation, it is not an issue of memory. What matters is whether this girl is aware she is being chased, and whether she has the skill to analyze her pursuer. For example…”

The masked man’s eyes looked Subaru up and down. Subaru’s shoulders hunched a bit; he felt attacked for his lack of foresight.

And watching him, the masked man’s eyes narrowed.

“For example, leaving tracks in the meadow intentionally in order to disguise the direction in which she fled.”

“”

“After being knocked unconscious, you were undoubtedly flustered upon awaking. When under pressure to find someone right away, how would most people react to seeing obvious tracks?”

They would run off like a bloodhound chasing a scent.

That was both the implicit answer in the masked man’s mocking gaze, and what had in fact actually happened. Of course, it was possible to tell him he was wrong, but…

“…True, I couldn’t find any tracks as soon as I entered the jungle. But I assumed it was just the poor footing…”

“Not averting your eyes from an inconvenient truth?”

“Me being an idiot isn’t some big new discovery for me. My redeeming qualities are my flexibility and resolve—is what me and the other me concluded.”

That wasn’t an answer that would make sense to anyone else, but that was how Subaru answered anyway.

The masked man’s theory made perfect sense. When Subaru thought about it, the tracks in the meadow had been too obvious. Some wild foxes and rabbits would also intentionally leave tracks and then leap into tall grass to confuse predators.

If the tracks Rem had left in the grass were the same—a cunning trap to trick Subaru—then…

“She sent me off on a wild-goose chase to buy time to escape…”

“In such cases, most people would choose to escape in the exact opposite direction. From a psychological perspective, choosing the direction that puts you farthest away from a pursuer is logical. Do you understand?”

“…It’s aggravating, but I get it. Damn it, Rem!”

The masked man was right. If she had left those tracks to lure him away, then she’d most likely gone in the other direction. Assuming that was where she was headed, he still had a chance to catch up with her if he went to the other side of the meadow.

Though this is really making me feel like the bad guy…

“Whether it’s my face or body odor or whatever, I’m used to leaving a bad first impression. I’m gonna catch you!”

“Quite the spirited response. Here, take this.”

“Whoa?!”

Subaru stood up and was about to rush off because he couldn’t stand hanging around any longer, when the masked man tossed him something he’d fished out of his bag.

Catching it on reflex, Subaru looked down to see a small knife in a leather sheath.

His eyes widened, and the masked man simply shrugged.

“This is not a place to challenge with a single whip. Use it well.”

“I’m definitely grateful and all, but…you sure? I can’t give you anything in return.”

“It matters not. On occasion, even I feel like a spot of charity. Or would you like to try to steal all of my baggage with that knife?”

It was clearly a joke, but he had given Subaru the opportunity to do just that.

The masked man possessed a certain amount of skill, but not so much that the outcome of a fight with Subaru would be a foregone conclusion. In that sense, this could almost have been called a gamble.

However…

“My name is Subaru Natsuki. There’s no denying I owe you one for this, and I repay my debts. I won’t forget this.”

Fastening the knife to his waist, Subaru bowed deeply. The masked man simply snorted.

“The path has been set. You may proceed. Use every means at your disposal and win back the girl’s trust.”

“That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Thanks! Oh, right—almost forgot.”

“What?”

Having waved his hand in gratitude, Subaru was about to run into the forest, but then stopped short. The masked man’s question sounded exasperated, but then Subaru pointed at the forest in front of him.

“I’m going this way to get back to the meadow I was in before, but I wouldn’t recommend you go in there. There’s a scary hunter somewhere in there. They’ll nail you from a distance with a bow, and I don’t think any number of lives would be enough to survive. If you’re planning on moving, I’d go around it if you can.”

“…I see. I shall keep that in mind.”

“Yeah, please do. See you later!”

With that, Subaru had avoided the situation of his benefactor getting done in by the hunter. That would have left a bad taste in his mouth.

Subaru rushed into the forest and sprinted at full speed back to the clearing he had originally been in.

“This is nice and sharp!”

Fortunately, it was not too much effort to get back there. The knife from the masked man was sharp, and it was a lot of help in clearing away the leaves and branches in his way.

A knife this size seemed like it would be quick to chip depending on how it was used, but Subaru didn’t notice any issues. If anything, it felt like a quality piece of work.

“It looked like he had some pretty expensive stuff on him. I wonder who he was…?”

Still mystified about that, Subaru hurriedly made his way back to the meadow. And from there, he searched for the spot where he had woken up, and…

“…Found it. This is the real deal.”

He’d found some irregular tracks leading in the opposite direction of the original set of tracks. Rem had done as much as she could to erase them, but even if she got rid of her own, she couldn’t fully hide Louis’s.

Given the effort it looked like it had taken to cover them, there was no way these were also a trick.

Meaning…

“I’m finally on your tail, Rem…!”

Just as he had noticed before, his words made him sound just like a villain, even as he continued to follow the tracks that would give him a chance to make a second impression. As before, the tracks continued to the entrance of the rainforest, but there was no hiding the footprints in the mud or the broken branches.

“I found it! With this…”

I can catch up with Rem.

Boldly moving forward, Subaru followed the footsteps in the mud, and—

“—Huh?”

Being fully focused on tracking her, he didn’t notice until it was too late. A tied vine snapped beneath his foot. The branch it had been holding in place snapped back with incredible force, slamming into Subaru’s side.

“Gehh?!”

Swiped by a branch as thick as his arm, Subaru went flying. Rolling across the muddy ground with a cough, he struggled to get back up after the impact.

The unexpected attack made his eyes and head spin like a patrol car’s flashing lights from the shock and the pain.

“W-was that…”

After a short while, the pain subsided, and he finally stood up. Subaru could still feel it in his legs, and he could tell he’d been hit hard in his side.

But more importantly…

“A trap?”

Though she was escaping, Rem wasn’t content to just run away.

Even without her memories, she still did everything she could, with all her might. That was what made her so fearsome.

And Subaru Natsuki finally realized something.

—This was the start of his second serious fight with Rem since coming to this world.

CHAPTER 2

A BRAVE CHOICE

1

“Guoowaah! Gaah!”

There was a moment’s weightlessness. Then came the pain of hitting a hard surface.

Even though he knew he was falling and prepared himself for the landing, it was still quite the impact.

The most unexpected thing, however, was that there was another thick branch trap lying in wait for him after he landed. His shoulder blade was hit especially hard, and his eyes watered from the pain.

“Every time… But I gotta say, it’s a good thing these traps have only been followed up with more environmental booby traps. All hail the knife…”

Subaru put the knife away again and caught his breath.

Turning around and looking up, he saw the trunk of the tree that he had been strung up from just moments ago. There was a long vine extending from one of its thicker branches down to the ground. He had cut it with his knife, but further down the vine was…

“A snare… I’ve seen them in manga before, but I didn’t realize this kind of trap would work in real life,” Subaru murmured to himself as he pulled off the snare made of vines that had snagged him by his right ankle.

The trap had been set on the ground, and the moment he’d stepped into it, he had been yanked up into the air. He still wasn’t sure exactly how it worked.

And he didn’t have the time to figure it out, either.

“So this is Rem’s knowledge and dexterity at work, even when she doesn’t have her memories… This whole chase just confirms that she’s definitely Big Sis’s little sister no matter what state she’s in.”

It was obvious, but this experience was really driving it home. Of course, this wasn’t how he’d wanted to come to this realization, so it was a bittersweet feeling.

More than an hour had passed since Subaru had followed Rem into the jungle.

Following the advice of the masked man he had met in the other clearing, he’d managed to discover the tracks that Rem had covered up and find the route she had taken with Louis. But he hadn’t caught up with them because of the traps Rem had set out of pure wariness, and the false leads she had left for her pursuer.

“The fact that Rem can make a pitfall big enough for an entire leg with a single punch is a real problem… The gap in our physical prowess is really showing.”

And mixed in among the smaller traps were some serious traps like that last one, which were designed to seriously stop him in his tracks.

How long would it have taken me to get out of that vine trap if I hadn’t stumbled upon this knife?

The thought alone was enough to make him shudder. And what made him feel most impatient was…

“Hiyah!”

He swung his whip, striking a suspicious bit of ground.

An instant later, there was a powerful crack as one, two, and then three branches whipped out. If they’d all hit him, it wouldn’t have been a surprise if he’d broken an arm or two.

The biggest traps were designed to completely rob him of any ability to act—there were not many of them, but the fact that they existed at all significantly slowed his progress.

The thick branch attack set right at the entrance to the jungle could also have been considered one of those bigger traps.

As he advanced deeper into the jungle, the big traps he discovered grew in both intensity and dangerousness. This was less because Rem was growing crueler, however, and more that she was simply improving.

“She’s studying and getting better at setting traps the longer I chase her… Damn it, you did always like stuyding. I’d prefer if you were a little less dedicated right now.”

He knew Rem was a hard worker and good at putting in effort, and he was happy that she had not lost that tendency even after losing her memories, but still, he wasn’t super happy about this particular instance of it.

Long story short, in the middle of their little battle, Rem was growing. Since Subaru’s growth had pretty much capped out, the already massive difference in their abilities was becoming even starker.

I need to get to her before the gap becomes insurmountable…

“There it is.”

In the gap between the trees that had been used for a trap, he spotted a tiny spot of peeled bark on a tree.

It was a very small mark, like the nicks on a cat’s scratching post. But those little spots of childish play were what had guided Subaru this far.

Basically, they were the signs of a hindrance.

Ironically, what was slowing Rem down and giving Subaru a trail to follow was the Archbishop she had brought along—Louis Arneb.

No matter how carefully Rem tried to cover her tracks, Louis was ruining her efforts.

“That piece of shit…”

Subaru’s heart did not feel any lighter despite that lucky break.

Of course it didn’t. Even if Louis’s presence was benefiting Subaru, he couldn’t be happy about anything related to that horrible Archbishop.

Even if Louis was not the one who’d actually stolen Rem’s name and memory from her, the three Gluttony siblings were equally steeped in sin. None of them was any less guilty than the others.

It didn’t matter that she didn’t have a physical body or that she had lived a messed-up life. That had been Subaru’s answer to Louis Arneb, who had been crying and begging in that white world.

So even if Louis was the reason he was able to stay on Rem’s tail so closely, even if this led to him eventually explaining things to Rem, he had no intention of changing the way he treated Louis. Not in the slightest.

Besides…

“Why do I have to chase after Rem like this in the first place…?!”

Subaru bit his lip in anger at how unreasonable the situation was.

He had considered the possibility that Rem wouldn’t possess her memories or recall her own name when she woke up. Obviously, it would have been best if she had come back exactly as she had been, but with the precedent that had been set by Crusch and Julius, he had not gotten his hopes up too much.

His hunch had been right on the money. Rem had forgotten both herself and him. Even so, Subaru thought he could hold on and still support her. With Emilia, Ram, Beatrice, and everyone in their camp helping, they would be able to support Rem. That was why he’d been able to hang on.

But now he was chasing after Rem in a jungle with no one to rely on, while she was doing everything in her power to get away from him.

“Why did it end up like this…? Why is it always…?”

Nothing ever fell neatly into place.

Rem could have woken up, remembered everything, been surprised by how much time had passed, and then they could have continued their story together. That would have been fine.

Or even if Rem had been in the same condition as she was now, he wouldn’t have had to suffer like this if his reliable comrades were here. That would have been perfectly fine, too.

Fate always set Subaru Natsuki along the most difficult road.

And this wasn’t just true for him. It constantly happened to everyone he cared about, too.

“That’s enough complaining, Subaru Natsuki.”

Gritting his teeth, Subaru slapped his cheeks with both hands.

The sharp pain startled him, and helped temporarily banish his feelings of self-pity.

It was true—fate always directed him down the most difficult path. That was why, despite feeling the lash of countless difficulties, Subaru Natsuki always stood back up and pressed forward, even as he coughed up blood.

“The man who turned the hardship he faced into a whip. That’s me.”

The Guiltylowe that he’d made into his whip had been less like a wall and more like the lowest hurdle in all the trials and tribulations that had blocked his path, but still.

He got himself fired up, letting his spirits swell and channeling all that heat to his brain so he could come up with a plan. That was how he had always done things.

“Think, think, think, think. Even if I keep up the chase, Rem will realize what Louis is doing at some point, and then there won’t be any more tracks. I have to finish this before that happens.”

Assessing their relative strengths, he tried to weigh his advantages against his opponent’s.

At present, Rem’s primary assets were her dexterity and attentiveness, both of which persisted despite her memory loss. There was also her prodigious growth as she continued to build traps on the fly, and her adorable face and voice. He would’ve loved to be able to watch her at work, but that would have to wait.

Meanwhile, the main thing Subaru had going for him was his ability to use a whip and knife. And, as aggravating as it was, the clues Louis was leaving for him. He also decided to count his mean mug as a point in his favor. Plus, there was the fact that he knew Rem better than she knew herself right now.

“…She must have realized I’m following her.”

The repeated traps made that much obvious, but he realized she must have also sensed him on her trail. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of setting this many traps. The first few might have been set just out of caution, and under other circumstances, she would have prioritized fleeing.

The fact that she hadn’t done that and had instead kept setting traps meant she was sure Subaru was pursuing her. And the reason she was sure of this had to be the Witch’s stench.

“How much do I stink right now…?”

In the past, Rem and Beatrice had told him it faded over the course of several days, but it increased sharply right after he died and returned, or whenever he was dying frequently.

And in the past half a day, he had lived through all of the doubled-up Subaru Natsuki’s experiences before being teleported into the jungle.

“I must stink more than I ever have before.”

While he contemplated that, Subaru dismantled two small traps and then a third medium-sized one, continuing to trace Rem’s footsteps using Louis’s clues.

It was like Hansel and Gretel following breadcrumbs. Except Subaru was alone, and the two girls were the ones running away.

“Oh, this time it’s in a pretty obvious place. Next is…”

Noticing a torn bit of bark, Subaru set his next course.

Louis wasn’t intentionally giving him directions, so the marks didn’t actually provide much in the way of guidance, and more often than not, they were very difficult to notice. Most likely, they’d been made when Louis was left alone while Rem was setting the traps.

Most of the previous signs were hard to find, so it was nice to find one that was more obvious.

“These are a huge help. If Rem had noticed and covered them up, I wouldn’t be…”

Just as he was about to finish that thought, Subaru froze.

Then he went back to the tree he had just passed and looked at where the bark had been scraped away. It was a big, healthy-looking tree, and the mark had been put in a fairly noticeable place.

Would Rem really have missed that?

“Knowing Rem…”

Given how attentive and perceptive she was, she would have covered any obvious marks.

If she’d left this one behind, then either she had been distracted, or…

“…There!”

Subaru threw a big clump of plants, mud, and roots at the path he had been about to walk down.

The clod arced through the air, fell into the high grass—

—and there was a loud crash as the grass sank, swallowed up by a massive hole in the ground.

“Whoa…!”

This pit made a mockery of all the other little traps he’d seen so far. As it opened up, nearby trees creaked and also fell in. This was a mega trap. If Subaru had been caught in it, he would have been buried alive and put completely out of commission.

Every previous trap had laid the foundation for one big, decisive move. The clues he’d been relying on had been used to lure him into a formidable trap that would have buried him alive.

It was a method that suited Rem, and he wanted to compliment her on it, but…

“If I know Rem, then this isn’t the end, either.”

Setting a trap that would disable her pursuer would have been the ideal outcome. But Rem was far too observant and too diligent and too adorable and earnest and heartwarming, and—

“When she gets impatient, she’ll come and deal with the problem herself. Isn’t that right, Rem?!”

Spinning around, Subaru looked up at the tree that had been marked.

Just then—

“Ngh!!!”

Rem flew at Subaru from one of its branches with her teeth set in a snarl.

2

She’d been unable to shake off her pursuer, and unable to stop him with traps.

What would the Rem Subaru knew do if she found herself in that situation?

She could find her pursuer by scent, and if she noticed the breadcrumbs he was using to follow her, then she would use them to her advantage to set another trap for him and finish things head-on.

Subaru had read her like an open book. The problem was…

“…Haaaaah!”

…the difference in their combat abilities meant he couldn’t stop her.

“Guooh!”

Subaru was sent flying with a groan as Rem’s arm hit him on her way down.

Frankly, both the fact that she could move as well as she did without any assistance from her legs and the fact that Subaru had reflexively tried to catch her were both fully unexpected.

“How persistent can one man be?!”

“W-wait, Rem, listen to me…” Subaru pleaded, blood dripping from his nose.

“No!”

Crawling across the jungle floor, she glared at Subaru with her blue eyes.

“If you had just given up on us there, I had no intention of doing anything else to you. And still, you chased us… Just stop it!”

“It really hurts my feelings when you put it that way…”

“The stench is unbearable! It’s impossible to miss your approach. And it’s even worse than it was in the clearing…”

Keeping pressure on his nose, Subaru staggered to his feet.

He was standing, whereas Rem was crawling on the ground. At a glance, it might have looked like the situation was in his favor, but if she started crawling across the ground like in a horror movie and knocked him into the big hole with her raw strength, that would be it for him.

Carefully gauging the distance between them, Subaru had no option but to try to resolve the misunderstanding.

“Rem, please listen to me. Apparently I have a pretty strong smell to you—”

“Yes, you stink.”

“Hearing you say that is so nostalgic…! Anyway, I apparently give off a strong smell, and I know it feels evil to you, but I don’t have any bad intentions!”

Raising both hands, he tried to demonstrate his lack of animosity.

Sadly, that wasn’t enough to convince Rem. The Witch’s scent kept her guard up.

No matter where I go, the Witch brings nothing but trouble.

“There’s the stench, and I know your first impression of me wasn’t good, either. I’ve lived with that for eighteen years now. So would you please let me have a do-over?”

“…A do-over?”

“It was my fault. I was wrong. You’re uneasy and don’t remember anything, and I didn’t explain anything. I got so caught up in my own head, I didn’t consider your feelings at all…”

His impatience and anxiety had made him completely ignore how she felt in all this. But there was no point in trying to explain himself. He didn’t need words in order to protect himself. He needed words to reach Rem and soften her heart.

“You’re important to me. I want to protect you. So please listen to me. Please don’t reject me. Please just give me one more chance.”

“…Is that it?”

“…Huh?”

“Is that all you have to say to me?”

Subaru was dumbfounded by her response.

The emotion in her voice was not what he had been hoping for. But it also differed from his worst expectations. Her voice was quiet, tinted with barely controlled anger.

“R-Rem…?”

“Of course I think you are suspicious and strange, chasing us all around, giving off that wicked stench. But…” Rem glared at Subaru, who was watching her in bewilderment, as if he were the manifestation of evil. “More than anything, that cannot absolve you of attempting to abandon such a little girl. How could anyone trust such a terrible and contemptible person?”

“Ah.”

Subaru didn’t know what to say in response to her condemnation.

As the words sank into his brain, he realized the reason he had failed to earn Rem’s trust had nothing to do with the Witch’s scent. His own choices had been to blame all along.

Even if Louis was the pure manifestation of evil, to Rem, she was nothing more than a young and weak little girl. He had completely missed that.

“”

He didn’t know how he should respond.

Subaru had overcome countless difficulties. Sometimes, he failed to overcome them and died, forcing him to approach the problem from another angle. But right now, he didn’t have a solution for this.

Should he apologize? Make an excuse? Tell the truth? Which should he prioritize? No matter what he picked, he couldn’t see it changing Rem’s distrustful gaze.

And all this was the result of a decision he had made that was already locked in, thanks to Return by Death.

“Nothing more to say, I see.”

While Subaru simply stood in place with eyes darting around and face rigid, unable to speak, Rem reached her limit.

She raised her upper body and started to move away from Subaru. It seemed she had no intention of killing him to spare herself any future anxiety.

She probably thought Subaru wouldn’t keep following them after having been cornered here. Of course, he knew that couldn’t be any less accurate. Even if she rejected him, Subaru would continue to hold out his hand until she was willing to take it. But…

“…Re—”

As she prepared to leave, he started to call to her.

He called her name, even without having a clue as to what he should say next.

When…

“”

As he stretched his hand out toward her back, he noticed something.

A shadow peeking through the dense foliage—a familiar figure.

“Rem!!!”

Before a thought could cross his mind, he immediately leaped toward her. Surprised, Rem froze.

The moment he had her small body cradled in his arms, an arrow from that powerful bow passed overhead, and splinters exploded from the tree it slammed into.

3

The big tree cracked and split from the terrible impact.

It was so powerful he could feel it from a distance. He also felt Rem’s warm, soft body in his arms.

Then he quickly confirmed his limbs were all still attached. That was good enough for now.

“Wh-what are you—?”

“Don’t talk, you’ll bite your tongue!”

Rem was slow to react, but he didn’t have time to listen to her complaints.

He stumbled forward, reaching out and seizing her in his arms, then rolled backward while holding her tightly.

He could feel Rem stifling a scream, but it was drowned out by something louder—the thunderous crash of the broken tree falling to the ground.

They rolled, rolled, and rolled some more, until the ground suddenly disappeared.

“Gah!” “Kyah?!”

After a moment of weightlessness, they both hit the ground.

It was the big hole filled with collapsed trees and dirt—the pitfall Rem had set for Subaru. Subaru had rolled into it on purpose to block the enemy’s line of sight.

His plan had succeeded. But it had come at a price.

“Gah, gh… Yeah, that’s broken…!”

He had unconsciously pulled Rem close with his left arm, and she had broken the fingers that held on to her. The middle finger, ring finger, and pinky of his left hand were all badly broken.

Subaru groaned, doing his best not to look too closely at the fingers, which were pointing in the wrong direction, as Rem crawled away from him.

“Of course! You came at me so suddenly… What in the world is happening?!”

“I didn’t get a chance to mention it, but there’s a dangerous hunter hiding in the trees. The odds they’re out hunting deer and just shot at us by accident are pretty much zero at this point… Ghhhhh.”

Cold sweat breaking out on his brow, Subaru made a splint of wood and a handkerchief for his broken fingers.

The only silver lining was that the broken fingers were on his left hand. If they had been on his dominant hand, Subaru would have been about as helpful as a kindergartner going forward.

“A dangerous hunter… Not your ally?”

“You think an ally would provide supporting fire like that? And how would that even be… Whoa?!”

The moment he poked his head out of the hole to check out the situation, the felled tree right in front of him exploded. It seemed the hunter was intent on getting a clean shot at them. It was probably quite obvious they had no means of retaliating from a distance.

“You know, ordinarily a sniper would change position after their location has been revealed. That’s what you’re supposed to do… That ass is definitely looking down on us. Not that I can do anything about it.”

“…That was an arrow? Unbelievable. That’s ridiculous!”

“Yeah! Exactly! It’ll leave a big gaping hole in your chest if it hits you!”

He had already died once, pinned to a tree like an insect in a science experiment.

But there was something odd about this. The last time Subaru had ventured into the jungle, he’d gone in the opposite direction.

“What are you doing over here, you asshole…?”

The pain from his fingers was hammering away inside his head. He gritted his teeth until it felt like they might crack and desperately tried to think.

It seemed highly unlikely this hunter was someone other than the culprit who’d murdered him before.

Both attacks had come from the same powerful bow. The question was, why were they proactively targeting him?

Maybe this is private property, and they’re a little too aggressive about driving out trespassers. The hunter is insanely accurate—but maybe they just suck at holding back?

“Maybe we can talk this through! Hey! I don’t want to fight! It was just by chance that we ended up in this jungle…”

“Wait a moment! Are you including me and that girl when you say that? I refuse to be put in the same group as you!”

“Is this really the time— Whoa?!”

The answer to Subaru’s request for a ceasefire was an arrow that left a giant gouge in the ground.

The powerful impact also silenced his argument with Rem. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before the hunter had cleared all the obstructions between those arrows and the three of them as they hid in the hole.

“It would appear this is not someone who’s willing to talk… ”

“If they’re using arrows, we have to watch out for arcing shots, too… If this hunter was a real sniper, they could wait hours… But with a bow and arrow, it’s not like staring through the lens of a scope and sitting still, so they probably can’t wait forever.”

In manga or movies, there were lots of scenes of snipers waiting for their targets for long periods of time, but a bow and arrow wasn’t the same as a gun that could be fired at a moment’s notice.

“They’re trying to end this quickly.”

Expecting the enemy to try something in the not-too-distant future, Subaru decided he did not have the time to think for long. If they weren’t willing to talk, then there was no avoiding a fight. And he didn’t have many cards to play in a fight.

“The only choice is running away, like Teach taught me.”

Fortunately, because they had slipped into the hole, the hunter couldn’t see their exact positions. If they climbed out the other side and kept low to the ground, they might be able to sneak away into the undergrowth.

Or…

Subaru looked at Rem, who seemed to be waiting with bated breath.

“…? Why did you suddenly stop talking? Did you come up with a plan to flee?” Rem asked.

“…It is an emergency, after all, so I guess you are at least willing to listen to me.” Subaru said.

Seated neatly there on the ground, Rem pouted in annoyance. But if she was not attacking him, then she must have understood this was not the time to argue. If she was willing to call a truce, then that made things easier.

“Rem, listen. I’ll jump out and get their attention. You climb out the other side of the hole and get to safety.”

“Huh…?”

Between fleeing together or making sure Rem got away first, it was obvious which had better odds.

No matter how masterful an archer the enemy was, this was a dense jungle, and Subaru could move while watching out for incoming arrows. He should be able to buy some time.

“After you’ve gotten away, I’ll make a run for it, too. But I don’t want to get too far from you after this, so I’d appreciate it if you could leave me some sort of markers. It might not make a ton of sense, but in my homeland, arrows are a sort of sign you can use to indicate direction—”

“Don’t tell me that.”

Subaru quickly told Rem his plan, but she interrupted him with a sharp glare.

He was confused, not understanding why, which just made her more annoyed.

“Deciding everything by yourself… And to top it off, you are telling me to run away? Me? The person who is furious at you already for attempting to abandon a child?”

She rejected Subaru’s plan for the exact same reason she had rejected Subaru at first.

I get the logic. You could say it’s an answer that a good person would give. But I didn’t think she would force me to do it now of all times.

“That’s… But I…”

“I’ve had enough of your excuses. There is no time. But I refuse to run away alone. I will not leave that child behind.”

Subaru couldn’t contain his surprise as Rem turned her attention to what was outside the hole. She looked past the big tree that had been blown apart earlier—to another one a short distance beyond it.

“I wondered where she was. So you hid her there? How is she staying quiet while all this is going on…?”

“…It was difficult carrying her around, so I knocked her unconscious. She shouldn’t wake up for a while.”

“You…”

Louis was going to be a drag on their escape, even now. That realization put Subaru on the verge of exploding, but Rem’s incredibly typical response made his frustration crumble.

That sort of over-the-top but decisive action was just like her.

“…I don’t think it was a good choice, either.”

“No, it was a spectacular play. Just to check, you aren’t willing to just leave her while the two of us escape together?”

“I do not know who I am, but I would bite my tongue and kill myself before doing such a thing.”

Honestly, abandoning Louis and running away with Rem was the best choice as far as Subaru was concerned, but it didn’t seem like Rem would allow that.

“Damn it, me. You just had to suddenly decide to be a merciful Buddha when the shadow swallowed us…”

When the shadow had reached the green room, his decision to pick up Louis in addition to Rem had led to all of this. There was no going back and changing it now, but he could still shout from the rooftops that he had made the wrong choice.

“What are you going to do?”

“…I’ll do it. I’ll bring her, too. That tree, right?”

“…Yes. In the hollow of the tree. Is there any chance of winning?”

“My Teach taught me to run without hesitation when a powerful enemy shows up.”

Clind had told him that it didn’t come down to a difference in strength or anything like that.

In this world, most opponents were going to be stronger than Subaru, so the safest assumption was that any opponent he ran into was at least one tier above him.

That was why running was his top priority. If he couldn’t escape, then…

“Gotta use anything you can. Rem, I know you don’t like it, but lend me a hand.”

“…If it’s for the sake of helping her.”

She looked right at his outstretched hand and refused to take it.

But she was willing to go along with his plan, even if she wasn’t happy about it.

4

He swung his left arm forcefully once, checking the condition of his broken fingers.

There was…a fair amount of pain. A throbbing sensation clawed at the back of his skull, but he steeled his nerves so they wouldn’t distract him while he was running.

And then…

“Hiiyah!”

He pushed a smaller tree trunk out of the hole. The part that emerged was instantly pierced by a terrifyingly fast arrow. The impact ripped it out of Subaru’s arms and sent it flying.

“Uoooooh!!!”

Ignoring that, Subaru climbed out of the hole and stepped onto the rough ground.

No matter how good the hunter was with a bow, there was still a limit on how fast they could shoot. Unlike a gun, a bow needed to be nocked and aimed again. That opening was his only path to survi—

“—It’s coming!”

Subaru heard those words right as he took his first step after having climbed out of the hole. Only two seconds had passed since the first arrow had blown away the decoy—but that was enough time for the skilled hunter to loose their next arrow.

“Ngh!”

Right after he’d heard Rem’s voice, the ground behind him erupted.

He had managed not to freeze up or drop into a defensive crouch when he’d heard her voice. Perhaps it would have been more apt to say that he was lucky his reaction time wasn’t fast enough to respond to Rem’s warning, but that was still good enough.

As he ran straight for the tree, another arrow came at Subaru two seconds later. If this continued, it wouldn’t be long before Subaru looked like a porcupine.

However…

“I don’t think so…!”

The hunter’s next attack was interrupted by a clod of dirt and a valiant shout.

Sitting with her back against the side of the hole, with a muddy stone in hand, Rem had hurled a missile—or more like a cannonball.

“It’d be better if she remembered how to use magic…!”

When Subaru had been going over what tools they had to fight with, Rem had mentioned that it would be difficult for her to use magic or her oni horn’s strength. More precisely, she couldn’t remember exactly how to use them. And there was no time now to help her remember. What Subaru suggested instead was taking advantage of her raw physical strength—throwing stones in order to attack the hunter that had underestimated them and not changed positions earlier.

“A cornered rat can still bite back! Hope you enjoy the feeling!!!”

Evading the shock wave from the arrow’s impact, Subaru shouted these words as he watched Rem’s big rock fly in the direction where the arrow had come from.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

Not ever knowing how to hold back was one of the things that made Rem so charming.

The rocks he had gathered just in case they might be useful now transformed into deadly projectiles in her dainty hands.

“And while Rem is buying me time…”

Now that the sniper had been momentarily silenced by artillery fire, Subaru reached the tree. Circling around it, he peered inside a hollowed-out cavity and saw Louis sleeping in a blanket of her own blond hair.

“Please do not stop moving!!!”

“Ngh!”

Noticing his moment of hesitation, Rem shouted and put an end to Subaru’s indecisiveness.

Somehow managing to tamp down on the fierce reluctance he felt, Subaru picked up Louis and jumped from the tree.

“Huh?”

Just as he leaped out and was about to start heading back to Rem, however, a black shadow suddenly appeared, blocking his path.

The plan had been to go back to the hole in the ground the same way he’d come. There wasn’t anything here before. Then, looking up at the shadow, he was struck speechless.

“!!!”

The enormous shadow that had slipped silently through the rainforest and appeared right in his path was a giant snake, maybe thirty feet long. The creature had yellow eyes and green scales. Then Subaru noticed a twisted, white horn on its forehead, and realized what it was.

“A demon beast…!”

Subaru regretted overlooking such an obvious danger.

He should have known. He was currently emitting the scent of the Witch more strongly than he had at any other point since he’d arrived in this world. That meant demon beasts would surely be drawn to him, just like in the Auguria dunes and so many other places before.

This dark, deserted jungle was the perfect place for them.

“”

Opening its big mouth, the snake took aim at Subaru.

It was big enough to swallow him whole, and Louis with him. Seeing it up close and personal, he felt time slow down.

Hmm, that’s not good.

It almost felt like it was happening to someone else.

As he cursed himself for reflexively trying to protect Louis, the snake’s mouth—

“?!”

“Uwah?!”

Subaru had instinctively closed his eyes, so when something wet dripped on him from above, he panicked.

At first, he’d assumed the snake was the type of monster that sprayed its prey with digestive fluids before eating them, but that wasn’t it. What had drenched him was pitch-black blood spilling from the mouth of a snake that had been pierced through the torso with a sharp arrow.

5

“Ngh!”

Subaru gasped in surprise, seeing the black blood pouring out of the snake’s mouth.

But his shock had nothing to do with the big snake or the blood covering his body.

“Why did the hunter…?!”

The attack had saved Subaru and Louis, who were about to be swallowed whole by the snake.

The snake’s torso, which looked like it was big enough to hold three Subarus, had been skewered by an arrow shot by the hunter who had caused him so much trouble until just moments ago.

“They saved me…?!”

He didn’t understand, but that was the only answer he could come up with.

He didn’t think this could be neatly explained by something like the typical manga plot device, where the hunter would suddenly declare, “I’ll be the one who kills you.” But regardless of the reason, Subaru had been saved. And this did not end with just stopping the fangs that had been about reach him in that moment.

“!!!”

The snake let out an earsplitting shriek. Instead of chasing after Subaru, it slithered in the direction from where the arrow had come, furiously turning on the archer who had taken aim at it.

The thirty-foot-long snake slithered across the ground, bearing down on its new prey.

It did not seem so slow-witted as its massive body would have suggested. When it slithered across the ground, it was almost like the ground itself was moving.

As the snake approached, the hunter prepared another arrow but missed.

“!!!”

The snake bared its fangs and attacked.

The hunter leaped back, evading the monster while loosing another arrow at close range to finish off the demon beast.

A gruesome struggle to the death was unfolding among the trees. The sounds of a furious struggle rang out as Subaru raced back to the hole where Rem was waiting, with Louis in his arms. And…

“Rem, give me a hand! We need to run now!”

“—! Is the child safe?”

“Yeah, she’s annoyingly fast asleep! C’mon, let’s go!”

Subaru reached out to Rem, who was still leaning against the back of the hole. But she looked at his hand, then shook her head, putting her hand on the edge of the hole.

She was stubbornly intent on not taking his hand. In which case, Subaru withdrew his outstretched hand, then took out his whip and tied Louis to his back.

If he tossed her aside, it would surely lead to another standoff with Rem, and he wanted to avoid that.

“Also…!”

“Wai—!”

After making sure Louis was tied tight and wouldn’t fall, he reached down and lifted Rem into his arms. Her expression immediately grew tense, but…

“Your only choices are me, the hunter, or the snake!”

“…The snake, if it can be talked to.”

“It can’t, so just put up with me as second-best! Let’s go!”

While Rem couldn’t hide her conflicted feelings about what seemed to him to be an obvious decision, Subaru quickly turned and ran from where the hunter and snake were having a fierce battle.

Whichever one won, they would most likely come after Subaru. He did not know how long it would take for the two to settle things, but he wanted to get as far away from them as possible.

“Hah, hah…”

And as he ran while holding Rem, he couldn’t help being struck by a nostalgic feeling. He had run around a forest being chased by demon beasts like this once before.

But he had been carrying Ram in his arms that time, not Rem.

“Big Sis doesn’t remember that, either…hah… I’m the only one who still remembers that one…”

“You are breathing heavily. We’ll be caught at this rate.”

“I know! Both of you sisters…hah…no mercy at all…!”

Even though he was carrying a different person, the commentary was just as scathing.

Subaru pushed himself even as he grew breathless, running through the forest desperately while leaving Rem to watch their back.

I’ve been running all over today.

His body and mind were battered and worn out. He would have loved to just throw everything aside and take a nap if he could.

If we shake off our pursuer, I definitely will. Eight straight hours, even.

“I just gotta hold out until then…!”

“…Ah, wait!”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow?! What?!”

As he shouted encouragement to himself, Rem pulled his ear roughly. Grimacing in pain, Subaru saw Rem point in another direction.

“I hear the sound of flowing water…a river? That would cover our tracks, no?”

“That would definitely help! If we can cross the river, it would make it harder to follow us…!”

Unfortunately, between his hoarse breathing and the pulse hammering in his chest, Subaru couldn’t hear the sound of water, but he had no reason to doubt Rem’s hearing.

“That way,” Rem said, pointing.

Following her guidance, Subaru changed direction and rushed forward in search of a river. And as he broke through a cluster of trees and out into a clearing…

“It is a river! But…”

As they made it out of the trees and the clearing spread out before him, Subaru could finally hear the tremendous crash of water, too—because it was a massive, rumbling river. Flowing about ten yards below them, over the side of a cliff.

As if making a mockery of their idea to cover their tracks by crossing it.

“This is too much…”

Rem gulped, seeing the big river below them.

Considering the raging torrent of water and how high up they were, her reaction was natural. And she seemed to be blaming herself for having led them here.

But there was no time for regret, or blame, or apologies.

“Damn it—did they finish fighting?!”

An awesome roar thundered deep in the jungle behind them.

It sounded like the snake’s cry was filled with some sort of emotion. Whether it had experienced victory or defeat, the survivor of that battle was probably coming for them now.

“Before that, we need to—”

“—Leave me here.”

Subaru was about to say it was time for them to hightail it out of there when Rem interrupted him.

Subaru gasped at the tension in her voice.

“What?”

“Please leave me here. It is my fault that we took an unnecessary diversion. There is no time to delay. I will stop the enemy somehow, so—”

“D-don’t be stupid! I’m not leaving yo—”

“Then what will you do?! Continue carrying two girls who can’t move on their own when you are already out of breath and your knees are quivering? What more can you do?!”

Rem went red in the face as she argued with him. He didn’t let her intensity overwhelm him, but he didn’t have an immediate answer to what she’d said, either.

Subaru was not smart enough to instantly think of a backup plan on the spot. But at the same time, he quickly came to a decision that didn’t require any intelligence.

“No. I’m not going to leave you.”

“Ngh! You stubborn—”

“Who’s the one being stubborn here?! I know you feel responsible! But that has nothing to do with this! You think I could ever leave you behind?!”

“Wha—?”

“There’s no point if you’re gone! If you’re going to die, it would be better for me to die instead. What do I have to do to get you to understand that?!”

Subaru tried to get her to take back her suggestion with his complete and honest feelings.

He meant every word of what he’d said. Of course he didn’t want to die. Even if Return by Death gave him more opportunities, he didn’t want to die. It was simply a matter of picking the least bad option.

But even so…

“I’ll choose a way where neither of us has to die.”

“…What about the girl on your back?”

“If I could use her as bait, I’d do it, but it would be a problem if you complained about it. So for now, I’ll bring her with us, too.”

It was aggravating how Louis was constantly getting mixed up with their other problems, but if he tossed Louis aside now, it would be impossible to patch up his relations with Rem. That was not an option, so as much as he hated Louis, he wouldn’t abandon her here.

“”

Rem’s eyes widened, and she fell silent.

He could almost see her confusion as she tried to decide what to do about the person shrouded in a repulsive odor. As he kept an eye on her, Subaru looked around them, searching for a way out.

Sadly, there wasn’t a path to survival conveniently lying there, waiting to be found. The situation was dire enough that Rem had suggested using herself as a decoy.

In which case…

“Guess we have to jump.”

“Wha…? W-wait a moment! That is beyond reckless! In this situation?!”

“You can’t move your legs, and I’ve got a millstone tied to my back, and three broken fingers, and an iffy rib or two…”

“Your fingers are… No, look! It’s absurd! From this height… If we jump, we’ll just pass out and drown!”

As she pointed down at the river, Rem listed very practical objections.

It was a thirty-foot drop, and they had two girls who couldn’t move as well as an injured guy who somehow had to keep track of them. Any attempt to reach the other side by going through those rapids was essentially a death wish.

“It isn’t suicidal. And worst-case scenario, at least we’ll die together.”

Subaru flashed a toothy smile, only for Rem to slap him.

“Absolutely not!”

“Argh!”

His neck twisted from the impact, and he groaned in pain as his cheek turned red.

“Fine, I get it. Then I’ll make sure we won’t die.”

“”

“I’ll make your wish come true. Because I’m your hero.”

Her eyes opened wide.

Not because these words had brought back a memory, but because she was surprised to hear him still repeating that same suspicious line he’d said right after she’d woken up.

But that was fine.

He was not saying it for Rem’s sake right now. He was casting a magic spell on the pathetic boy reflected in her blue eyes.

Sensing danger approaching, Subaru exhaled.

“Hold on tight.”

Rem was still trying to resist, but Subaru stepped toward the edge before she could say anything else to try to stop him. Anticipating their fall, Rem clutched tightly on to his clothes, and—

“I won’t forgive you if we die!”

Well, I suppose I can’t die, then.

Subaru smiled to himself and kicked off the edge of the cliff.

6

There was a crash and a spout of water. Then a powerful current spun his body around.

He’d just managed to land feetfirst in the water, minimizing the impact on them, but it was still a hard landing, and with Subaru’s HP already flashing red, it was hard to shake the feeling that he was just barely hanging on through sheer determination.

And as luck would have it, he didn’t need to shake that feeling himself.

“Gahgh.”

His whole body was being thoroughly rinsed and scoured by water, like a towel in a washing machine.

I need to get to the surface and breathe. But I can’t move.

Even if he tried to kick his way up, he had something important in his arms, so he couldn’t make it.

“”

The powerful current kept crashing into him, but he could still feel the object of his affection in his arms and the object of his hatred on his back. Neither the whip he had tied around himself nor his arms were going to let go.

“Gagh.”

Water entered his nose and mouth, and it felt like it was getting in his eyes and ears, too.

He moved his arms and legs in vain, struggling as he was carried down the throat of the massive creature that was the river. But if they reached the point where all this water emptied out of the river, there would be no hope of survival.

He had to do something before that happened.

“Gah, gurgh.”

He kicked at the water as random thoughts bounced around his head.

Is Emilia safe? What about Beatrice? Ram and Meili? Julius, Anastasia, and Echidna are probably managing okay. Everyone will be safe if Patlash is around. It would have been a huge help if Patlash was here. If Patlash was here, she would have saved us. Saving and being saved. And the person I most wanted to save broke my fingers. It’s a bit late, but that really hurt, and I did a good job not crying when it happened. I don’t want to look lame in front of Rem. Ram or Beatrice, either, or Petra or Garfiel. Otto, Clind, and Frederica already know I’m pathetic, though, so they’re fine. It would be scary if Roswaal found out, so I have to make sure to hide it from him. I need to get back to Pristella to help those people, and the royal selection, and tomorrow, everyone—

“Gagh, gahh.”

Everyone was…

7

“Geugh.”

Subaru managed to latch on to a branch and pull himself in. He grabbed it with his left hand. His three broken fingers cried out in protest, but he ignored them.

“Ugh, bgh.”

All the water he had inhaled came back up as he heaved. And as he did that, he held the weight in his right arm close and pulled her face out of the water. While looking at her unconscious face, he desperately pulled himself up the river’s bank with the help of the branch.

“Geh, ugh.”

Somehow managing to get up the side of the bank, he gave in to the nausea and vomited up more water. Still struggling against the feeling of water sloshing around inside him, he laid the girl down on the ground.

“”

He checked to see if she was breathing by putting his ear near her mouth. There was no response. Biting his lip, he pushed on her chest and started doing CPR. But she still wasn’t breathing. He leaned down to see if he needed to do rescue breathing, but just as his face got close to hers, she coughed up water. Tilting her head to the side, he helped her eject the water.

As a fresh wave of exhaustion washed over his body, he undid the whip that lashed the millstone to his back and set her down. Maybe it was thanks to her being unconscious to begin with, but she was still breathing weakly with no apparent problems.

Meaning everyone was safe…

“Safe…”

A sudden wave of dizziness hit him, and he collapsed on the spot.

He felt like they needed to get away from the riverbank and at least hide in the brush line, but his body wouldn’t listen. His stamina was completely spent.

Without managing to move another finger, he started slipping into darkness. As he passed out, he hoped that someone else, not the hunter or the snake, would…

“R…em…”

He prayed that she, at least, would be saved.

8

.

.

.

“…Ah.”

Slowly, his consciousness was drawn back up from the cold, dark depths.

Quietly, he remembered to breathe, and air filled his empty body. More, more. He sought oxygen as if he was drowning. He opened his mouth wide, and…

“Pipe down, asshole.”

“Mgh.”

Something was shoved into his mouth quite brusquely.

He opened his eyes to see what had happened but couldn’t see anything. Apparently, something was wrapped around his face and was covering his eyes. But he could tell someone had shoved something into his mouth.

The taste of dirt and grass, something big and solid… Subaru quickly realized it was a shoe.

Someone had shoved the toe of their shoe into his mouth.

“Ugh! Blgh! Wh-what are…? Agh!”

“What do you think you’re doing? Do you not get the situation you’re in?”

“Geh, pwah.”

Right after he’d spit it out, the shoe landed right in his stomach. The man bent down as Subaru gasped and sputtered, and then he spit on Subaru.

As all of this happened, Subaru’s head was still spinning.

He couldn’t see, he did not know what was going on, and all of a sudden, he was being beaten up.

And to top it all off, when he tried to rub his aching chest, he found his arms were tied behind his back. His legs seemed to be tied as well, so standing or running away was out of the question.

“Wh-what…?”

“Ah? How long are you gonna keep—”

“C’mon now, calm down! He doesn’t know anything. Let’s at least undo the blindfold.”

“Tch.”

Subaru writhed, drool dripping from his mouth, while the two men argued over something. The second one pacified the violent one a bit, who then grumbled and seemed to move away in annoyance.

And then came a reasonable-sounding man’s voice.

“Sheesh, sorry about all that. I’m sure you can’t really tell what’s going on, but I’m going to take off the blindfold for now. Sorry, but I can’t untie your hands or feet.”

“”

Though Subaru did not answer, the man slowly reached for his head and undid the tightly tied blindfold. There was a little bit of pain, then a sense of release. Subaru took a deep breath, enduring the pain in his chest, and waited quietly for his vision to return.

“—What is this place…?”

When he could see again, he saw a bunch of tents and campfires. And then he saw men busily moving all around, equipped with swords and armor.

The best description that came to his mind in that moment was—

“…This looks just like a Taiga drama.”

It had nothing to do with the biome he was in. No—it was like a scene straight from a lavishly produced period piece. A camp busy preparing for a battle that was just about to begin.

It was almost like a historical recreation.

No, that’s not it.

“We found you when we went to fetch some water. Sorry, but you’re our prisoner now.”

The person who moved in front of him was presumably the man who’d undone his blindfold.

He put his hands on his hips and looked at Subaru with a good-natured sort of troubled expression.

Subaru Natsuki had become a prisoner.

CHAPTER 3

IT’S ROUGH BEING A MAN

1

Prisoner.

Subaru gulped in massive confusion at that word.

“”

Subaru was a captive in a camp that seemed like a set built for a historical drama. There were dozens of tents set up, and a mixed army of humans and demi-humans were going about their business wearing armor, carrying weapons, and generally looking dangerous.

Subaru was sitting on the hard ground, in a place with a simple tent serving as a windbreak. His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were bound, too.

However, what was more important to him than his lack of freedom was…

“Rem… There should have been a girl with me. What happened to her?” Subaru asked quietly.

“Oh—the first thing you’re worried about after finding out you’re a prisoner is a girl? I guess it would be safe to assume those girls are pretty important to you?”

The guy squatting in front of Subaru, who had bright-orange hair, raised an eyebrow. This was the same man who had stopped the violent guy from sticking his shoe in Subaru’s mouth.

He looked a little older than Subaru, and had an amiable sort of smile, but judging from his light armor and the sword at his waist, he was one of the warriors in the camp.

Not a knight, but a warrior.

After spending over a year in this world, Subaru could tell that much.

Knights were showy, while warriors were unrefined. Not in a bad sort of way. Just different.

A knight was expected to be skilled, but they also had to be composed and inspire the public. On that point, integrity and appearance were all important. Reinhard and Julius were good examples.

Meanwhile, a warrior only needed the strength to fight and win. The guy in front of him was no exception in that respect.

“…I’ll ask again. What about the girl who was with me?”

“You’re pretty stubborn… They’re both safe. A little too spirited, even.”

“Ngh, really?! Then tell me sooner, damn it! As long as the blue-haired girl is safe, that’s good enough.”

“That’s a pretty cruel thing to say!”

The guy scratched his cheek and flashed a wry smile as Subaru suddenly leaned forward.

Subaru had simply reacted honestly, but even if he explained the situation in detail, it wouldn’t make sense to the man. Either way, hearing Rem was safe was a relief. Now he had to get a handle on their situation.

“Being captured is a bit hard to swallow, but putting that aside for the moment… What about Re…the girls?”

“If you want to see them, I’ll let you. As long as you answer my questions honestly. To be clear, the two of them are locked up at the moment.”

“Locked up?! Why would you…guah!”

His immediate assumption was that Rem was in a terrible situation. But as he started to complain, a man with an eye patch stomped on his hands, which were tied behind his back, grinding against the broken fingers specifically.

Subaru gritted his teeth and groaned in pain.

“Shitstain,” the man with the eye patch grumbled. “Looks like you don’t understand what it means to be a prisoner. You should only talk when we ask a question!”

“Jamal, stop it! He’s gonna pass out again!”

The man stepping on Subaru’s hand had a wicked grin on his face.

“Let him learn a little. It’s fine as long as I don’t mess up his head, right? Hell, might as well just break the rest of—”

“Jamal.”

The younger man said his name again in a quiet voice. Jamal’s breath caught in his throat, and he reluctantly withdrew his foot.

“Fine, fine.”

“Gah, gh…”

“Tch. Be grateful to Todd. You piss me off.”

Jamal spat at Subaru and left, seemingly annoyed with everything. Subaru could finally breathe again now that his broken fingers were not being stepped on.

“Phew. Sorry about that. He’s short-tempered and on edge. It was his unit that found you at the edge of the water, but…”

“But…?”

“Apparently the girl who was with you put up quite the fight. Half of his squad got wrecked, and that doesn’t exactly reflect well on him as their leader.”

After Todd had delivered that explanation, Subaru understood Jamal’s anger a little better.

That must have happened after Subaru had climbed out of the river. Rem had woken up first and had then beaten the stuffing out of Jamal and his crew.

It made sense why Jamal would want to take out his anger on Subaru, who was that girl’s companion.

“Still, I hate that guy…”

“Ha-ha, what a coincidence. I don’t particularly like him, either.”

Todd shrugged with an easy smile. It was an answer that held no malice. It was not exactly what Subaru wanted to hear after his broken fingers had been stomped on, but enduring it for the moment, he exhaled.

And, clearing his head of the pain, he looked up at Todd, who seemed like someone who could be reasoned with.

“So you’re Todd, right?”

“Oh, good ears. That’s right, I’m Todd. And as for my questions…”

“Just answer honestly, right…? What do you want to know?”

I’m just an unimportant guy from another world. Just plain old Subaru Natsuki. I don’t know how to cross between worlds, and I’m not a specialist in any field like the protagonists in these kinds of stories usually are. Just lacking in every single way, and the more I delve into it, the more I want to cry.

“What can someone in my position even answer for you?”

“Where does that withering self-pity even come from? Anyway, I don’t really have my hopes up, but we’ll start with one thing I’d like to ask. Are you one of the Shudrak people?”

Todd asked the question kind of showily, but it was not a word Subaru had heard before.

“…‘Shudrak’…?”

“See, knew it.” Todd put his hand to his forehead. “I can already tell. You have no connection with them at all.”

“Okay, wait a sec. I haven’t even answered yet. Isn’t that a little quick—”

“Nope. There isn’t anyone who would lie about their clan if someone asked. And no one would fail to recognize the name of their own clan, either. No one would believe you if you tried to claim you were Shudrak after that.”

Todd said this with finality, and it didn’t sound like a bluff, either. His conviction was persuasive, and Subaru couldn’t really argue.

But in that case…

“So who are the Shudrak, then?”

“The people we’re looking for. They’re somewhere in that giant place…the Badheim Jungle.”

“Badheim Jungle.”

“This area we’re in is all jungle. It would take years to search the place.”

There was a tinge of annoyance in Todd’s voice, and following his gaze, Subaru could understand why.

It was a giant, enormous jungle, big enough to make anyone want to cry.

Looking at the camp where he was being held, the sea of green continued all the way to the horizon on both the left and right, and if a similar view extended behind him as well, then, just as he had thought over and over while traipsing through it earlier, this place really might be comparable to the Amazon.

Given its size, its harsh conditions, and the demon beasts and other unknown species populating it, the jungle was a veritable den of demons.

“…Searching for people here? To put it mildly, isn’t that impossible?”

“You think so, too? Yeah, this ain’t great. If I take years to get back, my fiancée is gonna leave me.”

The tragedy of a soldier sent away to the battlefield and separated from his lover. Sensing something along those lines in Todd’s voice, Subaru couldn’t help but sympathize.

But Subaru was also currently very far from people important to him, so his sympathy wouldn’t last forever.

“Hey, Todd. I think I’ve answered your questions honestly. So I’d appreciate it if you kept your word.”

“A guy’s telling you how he can’t see his fiancée, and you’re asking him to hook you up with your woman? Talk about a heart of stone.”

“I don’t want to hear that from a guy whose buddy just stomped on my broken fingers.”

“Ha-ha, yeah, you got me there.”

Subaru’s response was brazen, but instead of getting angry, Todd just laughed. And then he loosened the rope around Subaru’s ankles, giving him enough freedom to walk.

“You can manage small steps. I’ll take you to the cells.”

“Yeah, looks like it. Lead the way.”

“Bold. You a noble or something?”

Todd chuckled wryly and slapped Subaru on the back.

As he stepped out of the prisoner tent with mincing steps, Subaru could feel the men around him watching curiously.

It really does look like an army camp.

A hastily erected wooden fence surrounded the camp and some basic stables where he could see several slender land dragons tied up. There were tents of different colors all lined up, and it looked like more than a hundred people were milling about the camp.

It was a sizable group…but even so, there weren’t nearly enough of them to search the entire jungle. He could understand why Todd would groan at the thought of a never-ending job.

And just as Subaru was sympathizing with Todd and the fiancée he couldn’t meet…

“Ah, that reminds me… We found a knife in your stuff. Where’d you get that?”

Subaru’s eyebrows furrowed for a moment at the question, and then he realized what the man was referring to.

The knife he had gotten from the masked man in the jungle. The one that had done so much for him in helping him get through the jungle and break out of Rem’s traps. It was a bit late to think of it now, but maybe he was part of the Shudrak.

Would talking about the guy be betraying him?

“What is it?”

Subaru’s silence was making Todd dubious, which forced Subaru to make a difficult choice.

This man had treated Subaru fairly, albeit while still keeping him as a prisoner. It was hard to call theirs an amicable relationship.

Meanwhile, it was likely he would never meet the masked man again, but he had given Subaru useful advice in searching for Rem, and also given him that knife. A fairly high-level benefactor, in the balance of things.

Meaning…

“…It’s my family’s knife. A family heirloom.”

“Really? Damn, you must be something, then.”

“Eh?”

After thinking it through, Subaru decided to cover for his benefactor and lie.

But his response made Todd’s voice rise ever so slightly. Subaru couldn’t understand why, but Todd continued.

“I mean, it’s a knife with the swordwolf crest on it. From what I’ve heard, those are presented by the emperor directly to his retainers. That must mean you’re from some famous family.”

“…Wait a second.”

Hearing Todd’s voice change, Subaru gulped.

The history of the knife he had been given was surprising enough in its own right, but he had to set that aside for the moment.

The problem was the other words he’d said. The swordwolf crest and emperor.

“”

Pursing his lips, Subaru stopped and looked around again.

There were tents and campfires and men laughing at him, and a massive jungle—and beside a particularly large tent, flapping in the wind, was a blue flag.

—And in the middle of the blue flag was an image of a wolf’s head run through with swords.

“No way…”

Subaru had been in this world for more than a year now.

He had been introduced as Emilia’s knight on several occasions, and he couldn’t be an outsider forever, so he had been studying all sorts of things that were considered common knowledge in this world.

And thanks to that education, he recognized the emblem on the flag—the swordwolf crest.

“The Holy Volakian Empire.”

The crest of the empire on Lugunica’s southern border.

For the first time, Subaru realized they had been sent flying across the border all the way into another country.

2

The Holy Volakian Empire.

That was the name of the country where Subaru was currently being held prisoner.

The impression Subaru had from his studies of this world mostly amounted to Empires tend to be sources of evil, like in games, right?

Volakia was one of the four major powers in this world, like Lugunica, and it controlled the most territory, dominating the south end of the map.

Unlike Gusteko to the north or Kararagi to the west, Volakia was blessed with fertile lands and temperate climates, and seemed to have naturally developed a culture that followed the law of the jungle.

Dozens of races, tribes, and peoples lived within its borders, where the strong did whatever they wanted and the weak endured what they must.

A place where violence of that sort was tolerated—in other words, a land that Subaru Natsuki was uniquely unsuited for.

“The Holy Volakian Empire.”

Seeing the martial banner fluttering next to the tent, the words slipped from his lips.

Hearing Subaru’s dumbfounded murmur, Todd cocked an eyebrow slightly.

“Hail Volakia!”

“Whoa?!”

Subaru jumped in surprise at the sudden shout that went up behind him, and Todd laughed.

“What’s with that reaction? You’re the one who started it.”

“Hail Volakia?”

“Hail Volakia.”

That confusing response was enough for him to figure things out.

Whenever someone invoked the name of the Holy Volakian Empire, the standard response was to say “Hail Volakia.” That was a custom cultivated in the empire’s citizens.

The other thing Subaru had figured out was…

“…Now I can’t let it slip that I’m from Lugunica.”

This was actually a bad situation for Subaru.

He was the knight of a candidate participating in the royal selection currently taking place in Lugunica. Under Roswaal’s guardianship, Subaru had received an official knighthood, granting him a noninheritable, lowest-tier title of peerage.

And even without that title, there was no one in Lugunica who didn’t know about the royal selection. Because of that, if they had still been in Lugunica, he could have gotten some accommodations by revealing his identity. At the very least, after making sure Rem was safe, he had considered bringing it up with Todd, who seemed like a man who could be reasoned with.

But if this was Volakia, that was a different story.

“”

Even Subaru could tell from reading the history books of this world that Lugunica and Volakia did not get along great. Four hundred years ago, they had fought repeated, major wars that spanned both of their territories, but there hadn’t been a major war since Lugunica had sworn its covenant with the Holy Dragon. But there had been plenty of smaller border conflicts, and there was no question that both countries were currently in a cold war. He had heard that before the royal selection was announced, they had reached an agreement that the empire wouldn’t use the opportunity to start a war.

But what if he started talking about being a minor noble of Lugunica here in the heart of Volakia? If he were dealing with a sensible Volakian noble, that might have been one thing, but this was a military camp out in the field. Even if he gave Todd the benefit of the doubt, could he really expect a VIP reception from hot-blooded guys like Jamal?

“Not a chance.”

Meaning he had to be careful with his identity.

Looks like there’s a silver lining to Rem forgetting everything. The tiniest, micron-thick silver lining.

“Hey, what happened? Your legs bad, too?”

“Nah, it’s not that. Just the reverence welling up in my heart after hearing ‘Hail Volakia’…”

“I see. Can’t help that. I wasn’t considerate enough.”

Subaru put on the best fake smile he could manage, hoping that cheap excuse would convince Todd.

I only really know about it from books, but looks like this is the empire.

It was safe to assume that his potential trump card of revealing his identity and getting back to the Mathers estate was off the table.

If I run into a sensible sort of person, then maybe they’ll respect my standing, but…

“The odds are a bit low for a gamble.”

“What are you muttering about? C’mon, this is the meeting you wanted so bad.”

“Ah.”

A slap on Subaru’s shoulder pushed him forward as he continued taking small steps.

Looking up, he found he had been brought to metal cages set up on the edge of the camp. And among the cages sat a girl—

“Rem!”

“Ngh! You’re…”

Seeing the girl he had been looking for, Subaru reached out to the cage. Having noticed him, she furrowed her eyebrows and stared at him with the same hostility as before.

That’s fine. As long as she’s okay…

“Thank goodness! They didn’t do anything to you, did they? Are you hur—? Gh!”

Because he was hurrying while taking small steps, his feet got tangled up and he toppled forward. He couldn’t use his arms to catch himself, either, so he slammed headfirst into the metal cage and slumped down with a groan.

Seeing such a shocking display, even Rem’s wariness lost out to her surprise.

“Wh-what was that?!”

“Sorry… I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I am not scared! Don’t belittle me… Are your nose and teeth all right?”

“Eh?! You’re worried about me?” Subaru sniffled while wriggling himself up like a worm.

“Huh? Of course not.”

Rem’s response was cold.

But when he looked into her blue eyes, Subaru let out a little joyful sigh. Rem’s expression stiffened even more.

“Anyway, if you’re all right, that’s what matters. Nothing strange happened, right? Can you move your legs now? You must’ve gotten soaked, but you didn’t catch a cold or anything, did you? Just tell me if there’s anything.”

“Please stop clinging to me and acting so devoted. I cooperated with you in the jungle because I had no choice, but that has not changed anything about your—”

“Actually, since you were asleep for so long, your immune system might not be one hundred percent yet. Hey, Todd! It would be really bad if Rem caught a cold. Could you give her a blanket?”

“Don’t just ignore me and move the conversation along!”

He was trying to improve Rem’s situation, but she was furiously fighting him on it.

Looks like she isn’t any less suspicious of me after all we went through getting away from the hunter and that demon beast.

Subaru was scratching his cheek with almost amused exasperation when Todd clapped his hands.

“All right, I get that it’s an emotional reunion, but you two don’t seem to be on the same page. Now then, is it safe to say you’re Ms. Rem?”

“…I wonder.”

“Well, that’s a problem. There’s gotta be a limit to your stubbornness.”

Todd grimaced at Subaru and Rem’s awful communication.

Rem turned away in a huff, but apparently her cold reception was not reserved for just Subaru. It was apparently dispensed freely for everyone in this camp—Todd included.

Every dog is a lion at home was an apt description for Rem’s personality.

“If you snap at everyone, people will think you’re a mad dog.”

“There’s no need for that. Calling me a dog? Not only do you have an awful odor, but you are also rude.”

“What, you think someone with body odor has to have bad manners? Like cleanliness is next to godliness or something?”

There was a saying that went something like hate the priest, hate the vestments, and that was pretty much exactly how Rem was reacting to Subaru.

The bad first impression I made is really not going away.

Knowing it would be difficult to get Rem to back down, Subaru turned to Todd.

“Anyway, she’s Rem. Thank you for helping her…though when I see her in a cage like that, it’s hard to be too grateful.”

“I told you, didn’t I? Jamal and his unit got walloped. He has a reputation to uphold. He won’t hurt her, though.”

“…Can I trust that?”

“I wouldn’t lie to a noble. Even Jamal won’t grumble too much.”

Todd reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the knife. Subaru’s eyes opened wide as Todd used the knife to cut the rope tying Subaru’s hands and legs together.

“Ohhh… Are you letting us go?”

“Just take her and go…is what I would like to say, but I can’t, sadly.”

“”

“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not malicious. As you can see, we’ve set up camp here to fight the Shudrak in the jungle. But we’re not the only ones out here. If you go wandering around, you’ll get caught by guys from another camp.”

That meant there were other encampments also here to search the jungle. It was a warning that if they ended up wandering into the territory of another camp, there was a danger they would be captured and interrogated again.

“Meaning the chance to eat my fill of boots in a camp full of Jamals.”

“I don’t like pain much myself, so I try to resolve things with words where I can. I’m not really one to talk, but I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to imperial soldiers.”

“In other words, most of your comrades are as overbearing as that rude man.” Rem’s voice was dripping with loathing.

“Pretty much. And I guess that’s what made you angry, so they brought it on themselves.”

Subaru did not exactly have any love lost between him and Jamal, but Rem’s first encounter with Jamal must have been awful. That Todd did not try to protest meant that, even though they were allies, he couldn’t really defend Jamal’s actions.

“I get that you’re worried about us, Todd. But what should we do, then? You were bemoaning your fate and all earlier, too, but we can’t exactly just wait for you guys to finish clearing out this jungle.”

“Of course not, and we’d never hear the end of it for letting an outsider kick around our base forever. You don’t have to worry; a supply unit is going to the nearby town in a few days. You can leave the camp with them.”

“I see—a supply unit.”

It was obvious, but a massive amount of food and water was needed to support a large number of active people. And there was no way of providing that solely with what they could procure locally, so supply units were just as important to an army as combat troops were.

There was a logistics unit attached to this camp, and Todd was recommending that Rem and Subaru accompany them.

“Then it’s all right for us to crash with you…I guess?”

“Why not? The fighting shouldn’t start that quickly… But you should probably stay away from Jamal. Unless you feel like chowing down on another boot.”

“I’ll take that to heart… You all right with that plan, Rem?”

Rem was still looking away coldly, not responding.

But if she wasn’t actively arguing with him about it, that meant she did not have an argument or a better suggestion. I’ll just think of it as an adorable rebelliousness. No—a super cute and adorable rebelliousness.

“You two sure have an odd relationship. What’s between you two?”

“Just think of us as travelers. Rem is precious to me, and I don’t know the other girl—”

“After all this, you still…”

As she listened to his words, Rem’s disbelief seemed to grow.

Subaru knew that he had messed up, but he just couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that Louis was with them.

Honestly, if they’re willing to take her off my hands, I’d love for them to do that.

“Oh yeah—she’s not in the cage with Rem. Where’d she go?”

“…That girl was taken for healing,” Rem said, looking away from him. “When you recklessly jumped into the river, her face was cut somewhere along the way.”

“Healing… Healing?”

Subaru was confused for a moment, and then his expression became serious.

“Did you say ‘healing’?!”

“Wh-what? That’s right. Healing. Or are you saying you’d try to stop her from being healed because you hate her?”

“I mean, you aren’t wrong there, but that’s not the problem. Hey, Todd! Where’s Louis getting healed? Which tent?!”

Todd looked surprised by the sudden change in Subaru’s attitude. The man clearly didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation. Subaru gripped his shoulders and asked again.

“Where?”

“If she’s getting healing, then she’ll be at the tent over there with the red banner. But what’s the big deal?”

“Everyone’s life is in danger!”

Pushing Todd back, Subaru hurried over to the tent with the red banner.

Rem and Todd looked at each other, confused by Subaru’s sudden change in demeanor.

“What was that? Anyway, I’m gonna follow him, but…”

“Please go. If you don’t stop him, he might do something absurd.”

“Why do I have to be the one being told that, though…?”

Todd scratched his head and chased after Subaru, who had suddenly raced off.

And while watching Subaru’s back disappear in the distance…

“…What is with him? Everything he does perplexes me.”

Rem murmured softly, unheard by anyone.

Meanwhile, Subaru’s eyes were scanning the camp, looking for the red tent.

The moment he’d heard that Louis was being healed, the worst possible outcome had crossed his mind.

For whatever reason, Louis was currently not herself, but if she was healed and regained her senses, there was a chance she would return to being the Archbishop of Gluttony.

If that happened, Subaru and the amnesiac Rem wouldn’t be able to fight her. There would be terrible losses even if Todd and Jamal and the rest of the camp fought together.

Subaru’s heart was uneasy.

I can’t let that happen. It has to be stopped.

And facing the red tent that caught his eye, he charged inside.

“Sorry! Is there a scary, blond kid—”

“Aauuuaaah!!!”

Just as he started to push past the tent flap, a blond bullet shot forward. It landed on his upper lip, right under his nose. He recoiled with a grunt and fell backward. He reflexively stopped his fall with his left hand.

The same hand that sported three broken fingers.

“Ghgyaaaaaaa!!!”

“Aaa! Aaa! Uuaaah!”

Subaru almost passed out from the pain. And as he writhed in agony, there was an imp standing over him and dancing almost joyously: Louis.

This was just like when she had woken him up in the meadow. She wore an innocent, abominable smile and kept clinging to his chest.

He wanted to knock her away, but the almost blinding pain stopped him.

“Gh, kh, aaah, aaah…”

“Oof, you land on your left hand? That’s rough…but the girl looks pretty normal from here. Looks like she got the cut on her forehead checked out, too.”

Catching up to Subaru, Todd lifted Louis up off his chest, where she had been playing. She swung her arms and legs, but Todd paid this no mind.

There was a bandage on her head. She had been given treatment, but it was just simple first aid, not magic.

“Kh, gah… R-right. That’s what you meant by treatment for her head…”

Subaru had been mainly concerned about magical treatment, which could potentially heal things he didn’t want healed. But apparently he had been worried for nothing.

“Treating this affectionate kid like you don’t know her, and having the girl you like be so cold… I can’t say I understand, but looks like you’ve got it rough.”

“…I won’t deny it. There aren’t a lot of people who have had it as rough as me.”

If there was a limit to how much suffering someone could experience in a lifetime, then Subaru was just racking up lifetimes’ worth of suffering at this point. On the other hand, if the count reset with each death, then maybe he would never know peace.

The thought alone is terrifying, but…

“For now, just live. That’s the important part.”

“That feels like a low bar… So what are you going to do? Am I safe to assume you’ll wait for the supply caravan and go with them in a few days?”

“Hmm? Ah, right. Yes, please. Sorry for having to count on you for everything.”

“Hmm? You don’t have to worry about that. I don’t plan to let you freeload.”

Subaru looked up in confusion. Todd set Louis down and put his hand on his hip, then gestured to the imperial camp behind him.

“Look at this camp. There’s never enough hands. We’ve got lots of jobs to do, so you’ll have plenty of work.”

“…What, so he who does not work shall not eat?” Subaru muttered.

Hearing that, Todd started rolling the proverb around in his mouth.

“Yeah, exactly. That’s a nice turn of phrase.”

Todd nodded, and beside him Louis started nodding, too, copying him.

Looking up at both of them, Subaru cracked his neck loudly.

“…It’s better than being told not to do anything or having to eat more boots, I guess.”

3

“Uggggggggh…!”

“C’mon, bite on a stick if you need to. This is gonna sting,” Todd said, wrapping a bandage soaked in a pungent medicine around the splint on Subaru’s broken fingers before tying it off tightly.

“The last thing is to drink this medicine. It should help with the pain some, at least.”

Subaru was covered in a cold sweat as Todd gave him a bottle of medicine. Inside was a viscous, green liquid, and steeling himself, Subaru downed the bottle.

“Bleh! Nasty! I-I can feel it clinging to my throat…!”

“It’s famous for being hard to drink. It’s rare and works like a charm, though. It’ll help you heal faster.”

Todd smiled as he picked up the empty bottle.

Subaru wiped his mouth, then…

“Sorry,” he said as he bowed slightly to Todd. “You wasted valuable medicine on someone like me.”

“It’s fine. Honestly, if you’d left it any longer, those fingers would have started rotting off. Can’t exactly call in a favor from a swordwolf knife bearer like that.” Todd laughed magnanimously.

Subaru bit his lip. The reason Todd was being so friendly was that he thought Subaru was connected to high Volakian nobility. He felt bad deceiving someone who was treating him well, and his heart twinged.

“Still, though, at times like this, it makes you think. I could get it fixed in no time with healing magic.”

To mask his guilt, Subaru changed the subject.

He was acting like it was no big deal, but it was something he had been wondering about—the treatments that seemed available here had been pretty lacking in fantasy vibes.

“Oh? Now that’s extravagant. Healing magic isn’t something you run into every day.”

“…I guess that’s just how it is?”

“Well, yeah. Of course, it would be useful if you could heal wounds or sickness as easily as lighting a fire or making a breeze,” Todd said with a shrug. “It’d heal your hand in no time, too.”

Subaru looked down. He felt both uneasy and relieved that his supposition had been on the mark.

In the past, back before he had found out about Roswaal’s plot and thought the man was just some easygoing jester noble, Roswaal had told Subaru about the rarity of healing magic. How magic was influenced by talent, and that people who could use healing magic were incredibly precious.

Add to that the fact that this camp’s medical tent was filled with poultices and bottles of medicine and stocked with medical instruments of all kinds instead of magic items.

And the fact that Todd had not relied on anything magical while taking care of Subaru’s hand—just medicine and a splint.

There was no mistaking it…

“Healing magic really is rare.”

“At the very least, I’ve never seen it before. From what I’ve heard, everyone who can use it is kept holed up in the capital. Either way, for regular folks, it might as well be in a different world entirely.”

“”

“If anything, I’m surprised to hear you even mention it. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me as being an option.”

It was something so unfamiliar, it was like it didn’t even exist.

That was how little the people in the empire, or at least Todd, interacted with healing magic.

And so, having expected that response, Subaru just shook his head.

“No—I mentioned we were travelers, right? We’ve been around, and we happened to run into someone who could use healing magic before, is all.”

“I see. I thought your clothing was odd. Your outfits didn’t seem suitable for the heat around here.”

Todd looked Subaru up and down. The clothes Subaru was wearing were the ones he had worn to get through the desert and take on the Pleiades Watchtower. Despite the desert vibes, the Auguria dunes had not been that hot, but in order to deal with the sandstorms, pretty much every bit of his skin was covered. Because of that, here in hot, humid Volakia, he was wearing an outfit that could only be described as out of season.

“So you ran into a healer during your journeys and were corrupted by the convenience.”

“Phrasing! It is definitely convenient, though.”

Subaru had actually been helped out by healing magic a few times…or maybe a lot of times.

From the very start of his time in this world, surviving his very first major hurdle had required Beatrice’s healing magic. If it had not been for her, Subaru’s stomach would have stayed split, and he would have had to live with his insides hanging out.

“I don’t want to have to trip over my own guts again.”

While Subaru was remembering a fairly unique experience, Todd exhaled quietly.

“Healing magic, huh?”

“—? Todd?”

Subaru furrowed his brow at the sudden change in mood.

“Nah.” Todd closed an eye. “I was just thinking healing magic’s a brutal thing, and I’m glad I don’t see it much.”

“Brutal? …Why? Isn’t it the opposite?”

Subaru struggled to understand what Todd was trying to say.

“I mean,” Todd said, one eye still closed, “healing wounds means not dying. No pulling back because you’re wounded, either. Get your wounds healed, and get back in the fight. That’s what it means to be able to heal wounds.”

“”

“It’s a scary thing. How much did whoever thought of the first healing magic love fighting? Can’t say I wanna see it up close, either.”

Subaru couldn’t formulate a reply.

He wouldn’t say it was an even-handed perspective. It was not like healing magic could only be used on the battlefield. It had a role day-to-day, saving people who got sick or had accidents.

But Todd’s perspective wasn’t wrong, either.

Healing someone who was wounded on the battlefield, then sending them back in to keep fighting. There was no denying that possibility, and no denying Todd’s fear of it, either.

But if Todd’s reaction was the same as the average person’s in Volakia, then Subaru would have to keep another thing in mind on his road back to Lugunica.

That was…

“…I gotta keep it a secret that Rem can use healing magic.”

Subaru might just have been overthinking it, but it needed to be taken seriously.

Right now, Rem had forgotten how to use her magic, and in all likelihood she had also forgotten how to transform into an oni and manifest her horn. But there was no fundamental reason to assume she couldn’t do what she had been able to do before.

If, for some reason, she was able to activate her healing magic, and someone here saw…

“At the very least, it will make the road back home a lot longer.”

Whether it was for good or ill, they would definitely be stopped. And Subaru needed to avoid that. Of course, if lives were on the line then perhaps, but…

“Sorry, I got off track there. Wasn’t trying to give you any more wrinkles.” Seeing Subaru fall silent, Todd tried to reset the mood.

Subaru nodded at a perspective he had not really considered before and said, “It’s fine.”

Then, changing the topic, Todd looked out of the tent.

“But that means that missy out there is your partner on this trip, right? So why is she snapping at you so much?”

“…An unforeseen accident is probably how I’d put it. We got along well before, but for now it’s all one-way communication, in more ways than one. Gotta take the long view on it, I guess,” Subaru said wistfully.

“I mean, it’s no skin off my nose, but it looks pretty rough on you… But in that case—”

Not probing into their relationship any further, Todd touched his chin while looking away.

His gaze moved toward Subaru’s right arm, which Subaru had been rather intentionally ignoring. Clinging to it, like she had been for a while now—

“Aaah?”

—was Louis, vacantly looking up at him while making a silly noise.

She was beaming as if enjoying herself as she clung to his arm, sometimes playing with his fingers and wrapping her hair around them, and just sort of having the time of her life.

“Given the ages here, she’s not your kid. What’s your relationship to her?”

“I already said, she’s no one I know. But she’s nothing good, that’s for sure.”

“That’s pretty harsh… The girl in the cage sure seemed to care about her, though?”

“That’s the problem…”

With Todd pointing it out to him again, Subaru couldn’t help sighing at the complicated situation he had gotten himself into.

Currently, Subaru was striking out with Rem, and a big part of why she was so cold with him was because he ignored Louis.

But even knowing that, he couldn’t bring himself to accept Louis.

Of course he couldn’t. She was an Archbishop of the Witch Cult. Pure evil, with whom he couldn’t coexist.

“How did things end up like this? What are you planning, and what is it you want?”

“Uuh? Aah, aaooh.”

Louis just smiled at his question and did not answer.

Everything about her was annoying. Of course, if she’d answered with the same viciousness as she had shown in the corridors of memory, that would have been a problem, too, but at least he wouldn’t have had any trouble writing her off as an enemy.

It was better than her acting like a baby or a little child like she was doing now, where only he could recognize how dangerous she was.

“Well, you’re on the road together. Wherever you go, you should at least try to get along a bit better.”

“…Who exactly is that FYI for?”

“Huh? Well, you can interpret it however you want.”

Cocking his head at the unfamiliar acronym, Todd stood up.

This was a medical tent, so hanging around chatting any longer than they already had would probably be frowned on. Subaru stood up as well, Louis still clinging to his right hand.

“Now then, we got your hand looked at… Ready to take care of a chore?”

“Hmm? Ah, yeah, it’s better than feeling guilty and sitting around doing nothing. Give me whatever job you want. I’ll take any job other than eating boots.”

“Guess Jamal’s boot really didn’t sit well with you… Fine, fine, I won’t let that happen. For now…”

Todd glanced at a group of tents with black banners, thinking to himself.

Subaru followed his gaze.

“That is…?”

“Gear for the camp. A bunch of general stuff we needed to bring, but it’s difficult dealing with it all piece by piece. So that’s where you come in, my tidy friend.”

“…Did I ever say anything about being tidy?”

“Nope. But I was just thinking it would sure be nice if you were. And even if you didn’t happen to be, I had a feeling you’d do your best anyway, since you’re grateful for being saved and all.”

“…Gee, thanks, Todd. Anyone ever tell you that you have a shining personality?”

Todd was saying something pretty nasty with an amiable smile on his face. Subaru’s cheeks twitched a bit, and he looked over at the bunch of black tents.

At a glance, there were around twenty of them; they were all filled with supplies; and as Todd had said, they were very much not in order.

“This isn’t a one- or even two-day job…”

“Don’t worry about that; just get it done before the resupply wagon leaves. Ha-ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha…”

In other words, “hop to it.”

Considering the state of his left hand, it was a difficult request, but that was just how things went.

“This is for today’s bread, in order to get back to Emilia-tan together with Rem…”

“Uuuh!”

While Subaru clenched his fist and prepared to face the difficult job before him, Louis cheered. Lowering his arm, Subaru grimaced.

The Archbishop was adding to Subaru’s mental, emotional, and physical burdens without even seeming to realize it. She was just as vicious as she was before, but even harder to deal with now.

“After Shaula, too. Too many people I don’t know have been clinging to me lately…”

“Aah, uuiuh.”

Dragging Louis, who seemed cheerful regardless of whether she understood what was going on or not, Subaru headed toward the black tents.

Thinking to himself that—unlike with Shaula, with whom he’d eventually come to an understanding—coexistence with Louis was impossible.

4

“…I kept cleaning up until it was dark, but…”

Coming back after his hard labor, Subaru was greeted by Rem, who was sitting on the ground with her legs extended out to the side.

She had the same grim expression and stiff voice, but it looked like she had left the fierce animosity on the shelf for now. This made Subaru’s expression soften, but seeing that, she glared at him.

“I did not greet you.”

“Don’t read my mind… But they let you out of the cell, right?”

“…At the very least, it seems the people here are not hostile to me.”

The way she averted her eyes was presumably due to the guilt she felt about the bad encounter—or rather, sudden encounter battle—she’d had with Jamal and his squad at the riverside.

Generally speaking, Rem was prickly with people she did not trust. She had become pretty gentle after coming to trust Subaru, but having forgotten all that, her mistrustful tendencies were starting to show again. And it looked like she was beginning to reflect on that.

“Being able to reflect on your choices is great, Rem. You get a gold star.”

“…Who are you to speak to me like that? Being complimented by you is not even slightly endearing. Also…”

Rem answered Subaru’s smile with a verbal backhand, then looked up.

Following her gaze, he saw the coned ceiling of the tent. Subaru cocked his head, and Rem scoffed in annoyance.

“Why do the three of us have to share the same tent? I am aware we are in no position to be asking for too many favors, but a little consideration would have been…”

“No, I think this is already plenty considerate of them. I told Todd we were partners on a trip, so… Owwwwwwww!”

“What right did you have?!”

Just as Subaru sat down next to Rem, one of her hands grabbed the area around his hip bone fiercely. Subaru writhed as his lower back creaked, and Rem’s gaze sharpened.

But then a small shadow broke in between them, stopping Rem.

“You again…”

“Uuh!”

Louis pushed against Rem’s hand, fighting with all her strength.

And Rem, who was for some reason sweet to Louis, sighed in resignation and broke off scolding Subaru. Instead, she pulled Louis toward her knees.

Laying Louis on the legs she struggled to move, she gently patted her.

“Tch.”

“…Why are you scoffing now? I cannot understand how you can be so cruel to her when she is so attached to you.”

Rem’s reaction was not exactly great, given that Subaru had such a bad attitude.

Subaru had no choice but to watch Louis carefully as she lay on Rem’s lap, trying to be ready if she ever showed her true nature.

At Todd’s instruction, Subaru had started cleaning up the black tents.

As he had figured at the start, it was not a job that would be finished in a short time. Part of it was that his left hand was not exactly in top condition, but Volakians were way less tidy than Subaru had expected, and also…

“She got in the way of my work the whole time. There I was, trying to clean up, but she kept undoing my work and making a mess of things. Thanks to her, I didn’t make any progress.”

“She doesn’t understand anything, so it can’t be helped.”

“It’s the same for you, too. But you don’t do that. Quod erat demonstrandum! I rest my case!”

“You are speaking meaningless babble again!”

She’s the reason you’re being so testy with me, so why do I have to not be testy with her?

Subaru, Rem, and Louis would only be in camp for a few days, but Todd had given them this tent to share. He had said that some of their comrades had gone into the jungle and not come back while they’d originally been setting up camp, so this tent did not have an owner, and they were free to use it.

“It’s not funny, though.”

Still, receiving a spare tent to use was a huge help.

He was less worried about himself, but leaving Rem in a camp filled with gruff men was concerning. Todd had said they would be treated like guests, but it was hard to know how far that hospitality would go. And Rem already had an enemy in Jamal.

If possible, he would have preferred having her around so he could watch her even while he was working, but…

“When she hates me this much, anything I say would be pointless…”

“What are you grumbling about? I have yet to even accept this tent situation…”

“Hey, Rem, about your memory…”

“”

As Subaru touched upon that subject, Rem’s face tensed up. Still letting Louis rest on her lap, she looked up at Subaru with rage in her eyes.

It was a powerful anger, the likes of which he had not seen since they’d ended up in this camp.

“…I get why you’re uneasy. But you are Rem. At least accept that much.”

“…I do not know if even that much is true,” Rem said, the anger still clear in her eyes.

“If you can’t even accept that much, there’s not much more I can say…” Subaru answered, with one eye closed.

It would have been easy to say she was just being stubborn and blockheaded. But Subaru couldn’t do that. And not just because he cared so much about her.

Subaru could genuinely understand her feelings.

She was extremely wary. Wary of Subaru filling her emptiness with falsehoods.

“It’s natural when you have nothing. I can understand the feeling.”

“You cannot understand at all how it feels to forget everything and be totally empty.”

“No, actually, I was amnesiac just yesterday, so—”

“Huh? If you are going to lie, please pick something more believable.”

It was actually true, but of course Rem wouldn’t believe him. Of course, that was baked in. But Subaru wanted to get a measure. A measure of just how far apart they were.

Whether she would be willing to accept him telling her everything he knew.

And judging by their distance…

“I’ll wait for your heart to be ready.”

“…Oh.”

At his answer, Rem’s eyes widened. Subaru smiled at her surprise.

“I would love to hurry things along, and I definitely feel impatient. But there would be no point if I ignored your feelings or hurt you in doing it. So…”

“…You will wait? Until I have a change of heart?”

“No, no. What I’m waiting for is for your heart to be ready, not for it to change. Of course, I’m going to do my best so that you might be willing to see me in a new light, too.”

Rem had her hands full dealing with herself. It was arrogant to want her to compromise with him, too.

What she needed was to do her best for her own sake, and to bridge the gap between their hearts, Subaru himself had to build up a trust with her that did not pale in comparison to the Witch’s stench.

“”

Hearing the resolution in his voice, Rem’s lips trembled quietly, and then she deftly slid away, turning her back on him.

I guess I upset her…

Subaru was just reflecting on his poor choice of words, when—

“—Have some.”

“Eh?”

While he was looking down, Rem turned back around to face him and pushed something out at him. Subaru was shocked for a moment, and then his eyes focused, and he saw it was a skewer of grilled meat.

“Umm…what’s this?”

“Food. Or so I was told. It was given out to everyone in the camp, and I received some… Even if it is gradual, I must work on walking.”

Rem rubbed her legs with her free hand.

Like Subaru had thought earlier, Rem had her hands full dealing with her lost memory and the legs that wouldn’t move—So then what is this consideration for?

I thought I had managed to break all communication between us with that last exchange.

“…Will you take it already? My arm is tired.”

“R-right away! Understood!” Subaru reflexively straightened up. “…So, um, you already ate, then?”

“Huh? Why would I eat when this child hasn’t eaten yet? Of course I wouldn’t do something so selfish.”

Rem answered him coldly and glanced at the plate set at the edge of the tent. She took the cloth off it, took a skewer of meat, and brought it to Louis’s mouth. Letting Rem take care of her, Louis nibbled at the meat like a baby bird picking at seeds.

“…She’s like a baby.”

Rem watched her with a pleasant smile.

Looking at them, Subaru also hesitantly began to eat. The meat had only been skewered and grilled, nothing more, and he couldn’t tell what sort of meat it was.

Struggling with the rubbery texture, Subaru worked to digest his surprise at Rem’s behavior.

“Hard and bland… About on par with Emilia-tan or Beako’s cooking…”

Whenever it was their turn to cook, Emilia and Beatrice tended to go hard but strike out most of the time. And they had demonstrated both that same enthusiasm and that same level of unpolished skill during the trip through Auguria.

“What are you muttering…? Ah.”

“—?”

Glancing at Subaru, who was losing himself in memories, Rem’s eyes suddenly widened.

She was looking at Subaru. Which would presumably mean the reason she was surprised had something to do with his face.

“What is it? Please don’t say something sad, like this is your first time actually looking at my face.”

“It is not…that…but, umm…tears.”

“Tears?”

“…You’re crying. Did you not notice?”

Subaru’s breath caught in his throat as Rem slowly, carefully said those words. When he touched his cheek, his hand came away hot and wet, and he was surprised.

It was not some sudden lie from Rem—it was true.

“Huh? I’m crying?”

“Y-you are. Why? Umm, do your fingers hurt, or…?”

Wiping away the tears that dripped down his face, Subaru was confused by the wave of emotion that had overwhelmed him. But his tears were not because of his broken fingers.

It’s something else. Probably, it’s because of being able to spend a simple moment like this with Rem.

“”

It was not like things had completely settled down or anything. They were separated from Emilia and the others, did not have any way to communicate with them, were trapped in a land where it would be dangerous to reveal their identities, and he was in the unpleasant situation of having no connection with Rem. And to top it all off, the ultimate evil in this world, an Archbishop of the Witch Cult, was accompanying them—and the leader of this little band was the stupid, incompetent, reckless, and weak Subaru Natsuki.

There was absolutely no reason to be optimistic. Not a single one. And yet…

“…Being able to talk to you like this…eating together…it makes me happy.”

“”

“S-sorry. It probably doesn’t mean anything to you. Just another weird thing I’m saying. It’s natural it would feel disgusting to you… But it’s just how I really feel.”

Giving up on holding back his tears, Subaru just let them fall, sniffling as he looked at Rem.

“I’ve wanted to be able to spend a simple moment like this with you for so long.”

Putting the skewer down on his lap, Subaru managed to wrest out that much of an explanation.

His sniffling filled the tent as he wiped his tears with his sleeve.

For a little while, that awkward sound was all that filled the air…

“…I do not understand what you are saying.”

Rem’s voice was soft, like a faint breath.

Still wiping his tears, Subaru thought that was a natural answer from her. Even emotional instability had limits. How was she supposed to react to tears or smiles from someone she knew nothing about?

He had just judged that their hearts were too far apart not more than a few minutes earlier, and he’d already messed things up.

Maybe I should just talk to Todd and see about getting a second tent for tonight…

“But I wouldn’t laugh at your tears. I do find them unsettling… Unpleasant, even.”

At that unexpected response, Subaru raised his face.

Rem was rubbing Louis’s head as the girl lay on her lap right in front of him. She was not looking at him but was choosing her words carefully.

“…That is all. Please eat quickly. I am tired.”

“Ah, sure.”

Rem looked away as she said those words quickly, and Subaru was slow to understand. But remembering the skewer on his lap, he quickly started eating again.

“R-right. Yeah, tasty. Nice and salty.”

“That is because of your tears… Because of your stench, the food simply can’t be very tasty. It’s not fair.”

“That’s…umm… Well, I’ll try to think of a way to improve it.”

Rem’s response was cold and sour, but she had not told him to leave, nor had she complained that she did not want to eat with him. So it was up to him to think of some sort of plan.

In order to protect a relaxing moment like this, Subaru could face any trial or tribulation.

“You’re kind, Rem.”

“Please don’t say things that’ll confuse me. What is with you?”

Her response was as cold as ever, and Subaru couldn’t help a wry grimace.

“…But if you want to talk about being unfair, then I have something to say, too.”

“Something to say? What? If it is about your fingers, then…”

“…It’s her. The one resting on your lap.”

Subaru’s lip curled as he pointed at Louis, who was enjoying the best seat in the house. At that, Rem’s eyes narrowed, as if she were saying Not this again.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You are always talking about my… I don’t really like calling it a ‘stench,’ so I’ll say odor. But she has a similar sort of smell. You’re going to ignore that?”

He was talking about the Witch’s lingering scent, which grew stronger the more he died and reset. But that was connected to the Witch—and if it was related to the Witch Factor, then of course Louis the Archbishop should have had the same sort of stench.

Remembering Rem’s extreme reaction to the Witch Cultists, that should have been inevitable…

“…? What are you talking about? Please do not put yourself in the same category as her.”

“…Huh?”

“She does not have the same smell as you whatsoever. Please do not say such strange things in desperation.”

However, Rem’s response was entirely unexpected.

He stared back at her reflexively, but he didn’t see anything unusual in her gaze. She was not lying or trying to dupe him, either, from the looks of it.

Meaning she really doesn’t sense any miasma or lingering Witch’s scent from Louis.

“She can camouflage the miasma? But how?”

In Subaru’s experience, there were not that many people who could sense the miasma that was the Witch’s lingering scent. There was Rem, who had the biggest reaction to it, and then Beatrice and Ryuzu—just a handful of people, really, who had ever reacted to it.

And it was hard to imagine the cultists even thinking to hide something like that. They rampaged through the world like they owned the place. And yet…

“Are you done? If you are finished, I would like to put her to sleep.”

“Ah, umm… What you said before, is that true?”

“Enough.”

Rem completely shut him down. But her attitude just felt like proof that she was telling the truth.

“I am sorry, but could you please put away the plate? I will prepare the beds.”

“Uh, yeah, I got it. Umm, I won’t do anything, so don’t worry.”

“…You saying that only makes me worry more.”

Struck again by that hard voice, Subaru dejectedly left the tent to deal with the plate.

There were campfires visible here and there around the camp in the darkness. Subaru had not been given any orders, but there were people who would be on guard duty through the night.

He only knew of it from manga and games, but preparing for war was a difficult thing.

“…I’d like to get away from here as soon as possible.”

Todd was an amiable guy, but Subaru couldn’t get used to the feel of the battlefield.

He wanted to leave as soon as possible, and find a way to meet back up with Emilia and the others.

Having come to that decision, Subaru clenched the plate, then noticed something.

“…Huh? My fingers don’t hurt. Is that because the medicine’s already working?”

Subaru looked at his left hand and was surprised by the medicine’s effects. His hand did not feel quite right yet, but the fact that he could feel warmth again was proof that his hand was starting to work again.

“We were talking about healing magic and all, but this medicine is pretty damn fast, too…”

Thinking back to his conversation with Todd, Subaru shook his left hand a little and then started walking.

There were a lot of things he needed to think about. About Rem, about Louis, and about himself.

There’s a lot to do, but let’s try and improve things one step at a time.

As long as things can improve bit by bit, just like my hand, it will be fine.

5

And so, the next day, having resolved to improve things bit by bit and work toward a solution to their problems…

“…Coming in to work to see this is pretty hard.”

Subaru scratched his head with a sigh as he looked around the inside of the scrambled tent.

Subaru had been ready to continue the chore he’d been assigned by Todd, which was tidying up the black tents, but he had run aground before he could even start working again.

It was nothing, just—the tent he’d worked so hard to clean up the other day had had its packed bags tossed all over the place again, and it was even more of a mess than before.

“Even if everyone in the empire was messy beyond belief, it still shouldn’t end up like this…meaning this is harassment.”

“Aaauh.”

“Right—there’s the possibility it was you revealing your true nature, eh, Archbishop?”

“Uuuh?”

Picking the scattered things up again, he glared at Louis, who was staring at his hands. But she just bit her own finger and ignored Subaru’s question.

“…And how should I take what Rem said yesterday?”

Louis had tottered around following him this morning, as soon as she’d woken up.

He could remember Rem’s grim look before she’d gone off on her own to work on rehabilitating her legs, but Louis was already getting in his way, so he couldn’t help protesting.

Either way, what Rem had said last night—about not sensing any miasma from Louis—that whole tangent was bothering him.

“There’s no way an Archbishop doesn’t have miasma coming off them. But Rem can’t sense any from you. So what’s the deal…?”

“Aooh?”

While Subaru was at a loss, Louis looked dumbly up at him and made noises.

Sighing at it all, Subaru started seriously working on cleaning up the tent. It was not Louis who had messed everything up; it was probably some soldier in the camp. Todd had acknowledged being an outlier, and he was right—most of the empire’s soldiers were not friendly to Subaru.

“But it’s better than getting beat up out of nowhere or having a shoe shoved in my mouth.”

He could tell his standards for happiness were slipping, but he was used to people thinking he was a nuisance. He had messed up his high school debut and spent almost two years feeling out of place in class. There had not been much active bullying, but he was used to the bitter treatment.

Thinking about it, he even thought his old classmates had been sensible about it.

“I hope all of you kind people are having a good life over there. Inahata in particular—always going to the effort of bringing me printouts. Hope you make it big.”

Remembering the classmates whose faces were just fuzzy recollections at this point, Subaru undid the setback to his work. It was like digging out a hole that had just been refilled, so it couldn’t even be called net zero.

In the past, Emilia had said something about people seeing you work hard, but…

“At the moment, you’re the only one watching, and that’s not enough to motivate me. If Rem at least was watching, it would be different, but…”

“Ooh, uaah.”

Maybe having learned a bit of a lesson from how Subaru had gotten angry, today Louis was not really getting in the way of his work. That, at least, was a relief. Subaru stepped outside to move to the next tent, when…

“Whoooa?!”

Just as he stepped outside, his foot caught on something, and he fell forward. He caught himself reflexively on the ground, and there was a slight ache in his left hand. It was starting to heal, but still needed some time. Grimacing at the pain, Subaru looked around.

“You’re…”

His eyes widened as he saw the epitome of a vulgar man standing beside the entrance of the tent.

With an eye patch over his right eye and a rough five-o’clock shadow, the man looked like the very epitome of a ruffian, and he was also the person who had shoved his boot in Subaru’s mouth the other day.

“If I remember correctly, you’re Jamal… Gah?!”

“Show some respect. You and that girl with you still don’t know your place.”

The moment he’d judged Subaru had not shown him enough respect, Jamal shifted directly into action.

He stepped on Subaru’s splinted and bandaged hand, grinding his heel into it.

“Aauuuh!”

Louis clung to Jamal’s foot with a shout. But she was light—she couldn’t budge him. He grabbed Louis’s long hair and forcefully tore her away from his leg.

That made Subaru snap.

“Hey! She’s just a kid!”

“What about it? And from what I hear, you’re pretty damn cold toward the brat yourself. You suddenly find a new religion or something?”

“I… That’s too much, you’re gonna regret it.”

“Don’t waste my time. At least come up with a better excuse.”

Jamal snorted and threw Louis to the ground. Rolling around on the floor, Louis grabbed her hair and held her head with a groan while glaring tearfully at Jamal.

“Undisciplined little brat. All three of you are a pain in the ass!”

“Guoh!”

Growing more annoyed as he talked, Jamal then kicked Subaru in the side of the head. Subaru had opened his mouth without thinking, and his teeth cut the inside of his mouth, which caused blood to start flowing.

“Bleh… Todd promised us that we would be protected, and that we could stay here, but…”

Subaru’s voice was ragged as Jamal stepped toward him.

“Ha—Todd, huh? As it happens, I’m higher rank than he is. It’s not like I won’t listen to his requests, but that doesn’t mean I have to do what he says.”

Subaru immediately curled up to protect his head, but this time, the kick landed in his stomach. Jamal’s toes pushed into Subaru’s stomach as he relentlessly kicked Subaru, who groaned at the impact.

“First, two of my men got busted up by your girl down by the river. Then I had to send those useless humps back and got chewed out for it. Then when I wanted to settle up over it…that fucker Todd had to go find that damn knife.”

“Ngh!!”

“If it weren’t for that, I’d have torn you to pieces. It’s rough being a soldier, you see.”

Relentless kicks while he tried to set Subaru off with his words.

Even without looking up, it was clear what Jamal was trying to do. He did not just want to hurt Subaru; it was more than that. He wanted Subaru to react to the provocations so that he had an excuse to take it further.

Jamal said he did not have to listen to Todd, but it was clear from Subaru’s very first interaction with the boot that he couldn’t totally ignore Todd, either.

So Jamal wanted a reason, an excuse to kill Subaru. And also a reason to retaliate against Rem. In which case, Subaru wouldn’t rise to the provocation.

If it was to keep Jamal’s maliciousness from targeting Rem, even if his fingers were rebroken, even if all the rest of his fingers were broken—he would win.

If it was for that, he would hold on. Hold on as long as it took…

“—Hey, what’s going on over there?”

And as Subaru continued to endure, another voice rang out. Jamal scoffed and pulled his leg away, slowly stepping back.

And then, accompanied by the sound of footsteps, an orange-haired man appeared—it was Todd.

“I heard you came over here, even though you didn’t have to. So it was for this?”

“Todd? You’re awfully protective. You that interested in that knife? Enough to curry favor with a coward like him?”

Jamal scoffed, and Todd’s expression grew serious. A dangerous mood filled the air between them, but then Jamal put an end to it.

“Screw it. You better learn to watch your feet when I’m around. If you fall like this again, who knows what’ll happen? Ha-ha-ha-ha.”

And then, acting like he had done nothing to Subaru, he walked past Todd.

Subaru did not have anything to say to stop him. If he’d complained about it, it would have been the same as rising to Jamal’s provocation.

Subaru waited for Jamal to disappear from view, then sat up.

“Aaagh… Damn it, that hurts… Man, he’s vicious…”

“You all right? Getting mixed up with Jamal is some bad luck.”

Todd grimaced as Subaru stood up unsteadily. If it had not been for Todd, Jamal would still have been at it.

I’m grateful for him stopping that, but…

“I’m fine. More importantly, what about Rem…?”

“The missy is helping out with cooking. She’s good with her hands if she can sit in a chair. Jamal won’t do anything with other people around…I think.”

However, his words lacked the confidence to be able to reassure Subaru.

Wiping the blood from his mouth, Subaru looked at his left hand.

The splint was broken, and the bandages had come undone. The fingers that had been healed up were now starting to turn a nasty color again.

“Oof… Looks like we’ll have to take care of that again. Damn it, Jamal.”

“…What’s with him?”

“Jamal? Became a soldier at the same time as me. Brightest future of the bunch, too. A lower-tier noble, but with a real shot of making it to general third-class, even… Ah, do you know what that means?”

“No. That a rank or something?”

Subaru shook his head.

Todd nodded and held up his finger.

From his explanation, there were certain ranks for officers in Volakia’s army. There was private, private first-class, general third-class, general second-class, all the way up to…

“General first-class is a different level, and there are only nine in the whole empire. They’re the emperor’s personal warriors, called the Nine Divine Generals. Reaching that level isn’t just a matter of family or achievements, though.”

“Skill, too?”

“Yeah. So average folks like us aim to get to general third-class.”

Hearing Todd’s simple explanation, Subaru thought back to Jamal’s behavior.

The term “general” implied a role as an officer in the army, but Jamal did not really seem like that kind of a person. Selfish and lacking in empathy, he was more likely to be the archetypal incompetent officer.

“You should warn him, Todd. I hear that lots of soldiers on the battlefield die from a stray arrow to the back.”

“That’s a scary thought. So what do you want to do about first aid?”

“Can I ask for some? …Right after I check in with Rem.”

“Sheesh, head over heels, aren’t you…? I feel bad for this little lady.”

Even with the pain in his fingers, he had to make sure Rem was safe first. That was Subaru’s stance, but Todd shrugged and looked over at Louis, who was curled up in front of the tent.

Her fingers were wrapped in the hair Jamal had pulled, and she was growling like a wild animal.

“Looks like you don’t like letting things go, huh? I appreciate a kid who doesn’t like to lose.”

“Aah! Uuh, aah!”

Louis howled, as if answering Todd’s smile.

Subaru started to say, “You can have her if you like her,” but he did not want to have to deal with Rem’s anger if she heard about it, so he zipped his lips.

6

“—That smell—did you hurt yourself even more?”

“Ugh. You can tell?”

“I can. A child is watching you, so bear that in mind,” Rem reminded him as they sat around the same lunch table.

He couldn’t bring himself to accept the implicit advice, but there was nothing to be gained by arguing, either, so he just nodded. And, sitting beside him, Louis nodded as well, copying him.

Lunch at the camp worked on a ration system. Line up at the distribution center, pick up your food, eat, then clean up after yourself. Rem was helping out with food service, so she was in the last group to eat, meaning they had a late lunch.

Of course, given that they were outsiders, the food itself was just leftovers.

“Not that we can complain too much. Just having something to eat is good enough.”

Subaru carried his and Rem’s share and set them down on a small table at the edge of the space. Louis had impudently taken her own share, just like Subaru.

“What have you been doing? Nothing too hard, right?”

“Not particularly. They were considerate of my legs as well… I only helped a little bit with cooking. While being taught along the way.”

“Taught… Did that bring back any memories?”

“…It would be a lie to say I did not have some hopes of that.”

Rem’s blue eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed at Subaru’s immediate question. Seeing that reaction, he worried he was pushing too hard, but Rem slowly shook her head.

“I tried several things, thinking there might be something that felt familiar. But that would have been too convenient.”

Looking down at her hands, Rem sounded embarrassed by her shallow hopes.

But who could call her hopes shallow? Who could do that, seeing her grasping for an answer when she couldn’t remember the building blocks of herself?

“…Why do you have such a pained look on your face?”

“Why? I…” Subaru looked down.

“…Did you not say just last night that you would wait for me to be ready?”

He was stunned by her response. It sounded like the first hint of compromise from Rem. Enough to make the seed of hope sprout in his breast.

However…

“As I said yesterday, no matter how many times you call me Rem, I cannot accept that as my name. No matter what you might say.”

“Ugh…”

“Perhaps it would be different coming from her.”

Rem’s eyes softened, and she rubbed Louis’s head. Louis just let her do it, focused on taking care of the food in front of her that she had obtained for herself.

Unfortunately, even if Louis had been in her right mind, she couldn’t say anything about Rem. And even if she could, Subaru wouldn’t let her. The animosity that he just couldn’t shake wouldn’t let him.

“What’s with the long face? This is a gloomy table.”

Todd casually interrupted their meal.

Feeling like Todd might brighten the awkward mood some, Subaru welcomed the man who sat down next to him. Just earlier, and before that, too. He’s been a huge help.

“I appreciate you taking the time, but are you all right not eating with your men?”

“Hmm? I’ve known them a pretty long time; a day or two not eating together won’t change things between us. I figured I should make a new friend.”

“Not like I’ve got anything I can pay you back with.”

“You can repay it later. Think of this as an investment.”

Todd lightened the mood with his easy wit, then wrapped an arm around Subaru’s shoulder.

“Still, though,” he whispered in Subaru’s ear. “Looks like you’re getting along better than you were last night. Did you manage to make up?”

“…It’s hard to tell. I wanna say my sincerity has gotten through a little, at least.”

“…I can hear you. If you believe I have lowered my guard, you are mistaken.”

“Uguu!”

Rem made her dissatisfaction with their conversation known. She wiped Louis’s mouth, and the girl seemed to be in tune with Rem, as if siding with her.

Subaru had complicated feelings about seeing them so intimate, and his expression visibly sank.

“Don’t get so down. At least she’s someplace where you can talk with her like this. Compared to me, that’s already a big improvement.”

“Ah, oh yeah—you talked about being separated from your fiancée.”

“Yeah, she lives in the capital. That’s why I have to finish up this mission. We’ve been apart too long. Whoo, it’s lonely, I tell you.”

“Is that why you’re looking after us?”

“Yeah. So just let me use you guys for a bit. Make it worth the effort.”

Maybe Todd had only said that to keep him from feeling anxious, but Subaru was genuinely grateful for Todd’s consideration. It would have been tactless to just thank him directly. And Todd seemed to recognize that, too.

The four of them ate with that sort of mood about them, and then…

“You mentioned us being able to catch a ride with the resupply wagon, but how long do you think this mission will take you guys?”

“I told you—until we can find the people of Shudrak hiding in the jungle… If we don’t find them, we might be left out here for years,” Todd said glumly. “Serving the court isn’t easy.”

“People of Shudrak…”

Subaru thought for a bit as he held the wooden spoon in his mouth.

The people of Shudrak—when he’d first heard about them from Todd, Subaru had wondered if this maybe referred to the masked man he had met in the jungle earlier. Subaru owed the guy for the knife, so he had not mentioned him to Todd, but now that felt a bit ungrateful.

At this point, Todd had done at least as much for Subaru as the masked man had.

So how did it make sense to repay the masked man, but not Todd?

“Hey, Todd, what are you guys going to do when you find them? You’ve got a camp like this set up…so are you going to fight?”

He tried to do his best to feign simple curiosity. But he couldn’t totally hide the tension in his voice and body language. It wasn’t exactly a natural subject to bring up, and Rem’s expression changed when she heard it, too. Even if he was conspicuously ignoring it, she had an evasive reaction to the word fight.

Todd closed an eye.

“The generals seem to prefer not fighting if they can avoid it. The Shudrak are a pretty powerful tribe, apparently. It would be a difficult fight if it came to it, so it seems like negotiations are the goal.”

“Negotiations? With a jungle tribe?”

“Don’t go asking a grunt for strategy! …It’s not like I really know, but probably swearing fealty to the capital, and by extension the emperor, I guess?”

“The Shudrak people haven’t submitted to the emperor?”

“Some people don’t. That’s just the Volakian way, though, isn’t it?”

Subaru just answered with a “Hail Volakia” to Todd’s soldierly smile.

If Todd was right, then the imperial army would rather not fight the Shudrak. In which case, sharing what I know with them might help avoid needless fighting.

But what he knew was not really that big anyway, and if he brought up why he’d concealed it, he would also have to come clean about misrepresenting who he was.

“Uggh, this is hard. Either way is a problem…”

“…It feels like you’ve got a few more wrinkles than usual. It’s not like you have the nicest face in the world to begin with—should you not at least try to smile?”

“That is a painful reminder! …Would you be nicer to me if I was all smiles, all the time?”

“Huh?”

Rem’s genuinely perplexed response quickly broke Subaru’s heart.

Todd laughed as Subaru’s smile twitched and his shoulders slumped. It was upsetting being laughed at, but it was also true that he felt relieved that Todd was dealing with him like that. The reason why this situation had not gotten too heavy to bear was undeniably thanks to Todd.

Which is all the more reason I would like their mission here to be finished up sooner, but…

“When were you going to start seriously going through the jungle?”

“Word is, once the other camps are all set, we all go in at once. The jungle is big and deep. Who knows how much ground we can even cover in a single day…?”

“I see. Well, it’s not like it will go smoothly anyway. You never know what you’ll find in there. It’s the sort of place that would probably have big demon beasts, too.”

Subaru suspected that the masked man might have been a Shudrak. The other possibility was the hunter being one. And then there was the giant snake demon beast that had appeared during the encounter with the hunter. And it was possible to run into any number of Rem’s leftover traps, too.

With all that in mind, it was easy to guess that Todd and the soldiers would have a rough time in the forest.

Even if I can’t explain the situation, I should at least mention Rem’s traps. They’ll cause unnecessary problems…

“Demon beasts?”

But as he was thinking that, Todd’s eyes widened, his cup of water still at his lips. Wiping the water from the corner of his mouth, he looked at Subaru in shock.

“Did you just say ‘demon beasts’? There are demon beasts in that jungle?”

“Eh? Um, I mean, I did… What, did I say something strange?”

“Well, yeah, demon beasts aren’t the sort of thing you run into every day. Maybe in the demon beast capital, Lugunica, but we’re not even near the border.”

“”

“You’re kidding…right? Hey, missy.”

Todd’s voice grew more serious, and Subaru couldn’t say a word as he was just confused. So Todd turned his attention to Rem.

“Tell me, please. Did you see a demon beast, too? In the Badheim Jungle out there?”

“If you mean a large creature with green skin, then I did.”

“Was there a horn on its head?”

“A horn? …Yes…a white and twisted one.”

The moment he heard that, Todd spun around to face Subaru.

“What sort of demon beast was it? Do you have a description?”

“A-a snake. A giant snake. Maybe thirty feet long. One big demon beast.”

“One, huh…? Damn it. There’s no way to know if there really is just one in this giant jungle. But you don’t seem to be lying. That changes things!”

As he scratched his head roughly, Todd’s expression had completely changed. He turned away from them, but before he started running, he turned back.

“Right—that was really valuable information. If it weren’t for that, things might have gotten bad. Thanks.”

“…Sure.”

“Gather the squad leaders! I’m getting the general! This is big!”

After letting a little smile break through the grimness, Todd clapped his hands and got everyone’s attention, then headed to the tent in the center of the camp—which was most likely the command tent where strategy meetings were held.

Subaru watched him leave in a furious rush, half in shock.

“…That was quite the reaction. That creature…demon beast…is it really so important? I understand it is a dangerous creature, of course, but…”

“…No, maybe I didn’t fully appreciate its danger, either.”

“Haah…”

Rem sounded, well…suspicious was probably the right word, and Subaru had not quite managed to wrap his head around all of it, either. That was just how out of left field Todd’s reaction had been.

“I guess demon beasts are rare in the empire…”

That was completely unexpected, and honestly something he couldn’t even have imagined.

Demon beasts were inextricably bound up with his new life in another world. Setting the first day aside, demon beasts had played a big part in most of the events that had followed.

Meili’s demon beast mess, Ulgarm, the White Whale battle to fulfill Wilhelm’s wish, and the rabbits trying to consume the Sanctuary.

There had not been demon beasts in Pristella, but Auguria and the Pleiades Watchtower, where they’d gone to deal with the aftermath of Pristella, had been swarming with demon beasts.

And the most memorable demon beast of them all to Subaru—the crimson scorpion.

“Got a little heavy there, but I never really thought of demon beasts as rare.”

He had just seen them like the monsters in a video game RPG—creatures that just sort of appeared everywhere around the world. But apparently this was not the case.

Thinking back on it, it was not like lions or giraffes existed everywhere in his original world, either, so it would probably have been obvious if he had just thought about it.

“This is the first I’ve heard of Lugunica being the demon beast capital…”

Even if it was a powerful creature, just the mention of a single demon beast had been enough to totally change the look on Todd’s face. Judging from that difference in their views of demon beasts, it wasn’t that strange for Lugunica to be called the demon beast capital.

Meili, with her ability to control demon beasts, was probably like something out of a fairy tale.

“Then if she went to a country without that many demon beasts, maybe she would be able to live like a normal girl…”

“Um, pardon me.”

As he thought about Meili and her future, Rem suddenly interrupted, a thoughtful look on her face.

He glanced at her, and she pointed at the table. Looking down, he saw Louis sleeping there, having finished her lunch.

“It seems she is satisfied now that she is full… I resent it, but could I ask you to carry her?”

“You don’t have to be that harsh…”

Grimacing a bit, Subaru reluctantly picked Louis up.

She occasionally clung to him, so he already knew this would be the case, but she was light. She looked like nothing more than a normal girl. And at least in appearance, she really was just a normal girl.

“Are you all right, Rem? My back is free…”

“What do you take me for? I can at least manage myself.”

Rem took up the wooden staff—basically just a thick tree branch she had picked up somewhere—which was leaning against the table. There was cloth wrapped around the grip, turning it into a simple staff. Using that, Rem stood up.

Her steps were still not very steady, but…

“I…am fine.”

“…Really? You don’t have to force yourself. Just rely on me if you need help.”

“I will not. I am fine with this much. Just do not drop her.”

“Haaah. I got it. But just remember, I’m not doing this because I want to, I’m doing it for you.”

“What makes you feel the need to say that…?”

Rem was clearly exasperated by Subaru, who just couldn’t help doing everything he could to make sure no one thought he was actually getting along with Louis. Taking her staff, she slowly followed Subaru.

After taking Rem and Louis back to the tent they were borrowing, Subaru would get back to work cleaning up the tents. —I am curious about Todd and the others, though.

“…Curious about them?”

“…Hmm? Ah, yeah, sort of. I mean, I feel like I’ve been a bit ungrateful to someone I owe big time. And talking about demon beasts might have been unnecessary.”

“…Someone you owe?”

Subaru was feeling down, like he was a villain who kept lying about everything. But having heard those words, Rem then sounded as though she were deep in thought.

“Rem?”

“…No, it is nothing. Please pay me no mind.”

“No, I mean, that’s asking a bit much, after that…”

“Really? Then please do not speak to me.”

“You’re getting further and further away from me! If you were about to say something, then just say it! I’m curious!”

He adjusted his speed to match hers, which made for slow progress. Rem, seemingly annoyed by his doing so, let out a little sigh.

“Umm, that Todd, was it? …I do not have a particularly good impression of him.”

“Huh? Why not? He let us stay here when we didn’t have anything to fall back on, and he protected me from that nasty beast. Not feeling any gratitude at all for that is a little…”

“I did not say I did not feel grateful. I am grateful. However…”

She seemed hesitant to continue. But after a couple seconds of silence, she let out a deep breath and said it.

“It is difficult for me to trust someone who makes no effort to ask someone’s name.”

Subaru’s breath caught in his throat.

He was about to ask her what she was talking about, but then he thought about it.

Someone who makes no effort to ask someone’s name.

Thinking back on it, she’s right.

Todd had not once called Subaru by name. All he said was “you.” And it was natural for him to do this if he did not know Subaru’s name.

“B-but isn’t that just coincidence? You never say my name ei—”

“Subaru Natsuki. Knowing it but not saying it is not the same as never attempting to learn it. That is all.”

“”

“Those are my thoughts on the matter. Either way, we have no choice but to rely on them.”

With that, Rem moved past Subaru, who had stopped moving.

Watching her slowly inch forward, Subaru couldn’t say anything.

Unfortunately, he did not have the skill to melt her stubborn heart. And as had become obvious with the demon beast incident, Subaru was not really aware of what constituted common knowledge in this world. He was not even up to snuff in the kingdom, so the empire was as good as uncharted territory.

There might even have been a different significance attached to whether you asked for someone’s name here in Volakia. Maybe it was rude to ask for someone’s name before introducing yourself, or something.

But even if there were a rule like that, Subaru couldn’t explain it to Rem. He could only regret his lack of knowledge and education.

“…How long are you going to keep standing there?”

“Ah…”

Looking up, he saw Rem had turned around from a little further ahead.

She had a mildly impatient look on her face and was glaring at Subaru while resting both her hands on the staff. His heart ached at the sight of her waiting for him like that.

“Gh…”

“Wh… What is it?! Did your fingers…?”

“No, just the thought of you waiting for me, it just…”

“…I shall not say what, but something just went to waste.”

Unamused, Rem turned her back on Subaru again.

Chasing quickly after her, Subaru apologized, then thought back on what she had just said, his eyes narrowed.

He told himself that it was just Rem overthinking things.

7

—And the doubt that had started to grow in Subaru’s breast was cleared up the next day.

“—Hey, wake up. How long are you going to keep sleeping?”

Subaru was shaken out of sleep by a hand on his shoulder.

“Nn?”

Waking up easily was one Subaru’s few good traits, but waking up yourself and having someone wake you up were two different things. Trying to get his heavy head into motion, he opened his eyes and saw Todd’s face.

“…Todd?”

“Yeah, you look tired. Makes sense, I guess, given you were doing work you aren’t used to. Either way, though, thanks to you…”

“…Subaru Natsuki.”

“Hmm?”

Todd was speaking quickly as Subaru slowly sat up. But when Subaru suddenly said his own name, Todd’s eyes widened slightly. For a second, Todd seemed confused.

“Subaru Natsuki—that’s my name.”

“Hmm… Ahh, did it bother you that I wasn’t calling you by name?”

“Nah, it’s not that, but…I realized I hadn’t introduced myself, and thought I might have done something really rude.”

“Ha-ha, you’re overthinking things. But it’s Subaru Natsuki, huh? I’ll remember that.”

Subaru gave a weak smile and looked down a bit awkwardly, but Todd just clapped him on the shoulder. It came as a huge relief to Subaru that Todd wasn’t acting any different.

Apparently, Rem’s concerns from the previous day had just been her overthinking things, and Subaru’s gloom had been unnecessary, too.

“Messed up there,” Todd muttered to himself—it seemed he’d just forgotten to ask for Subaru’s name before. “Anyway, that’s important, but I’ve got something even bigger to tell you. Thanks to what you mentioned yesterday, the generals have changed strategy.”

“Strategy… For dealing with the jungle?”

“That’s right. Venturing into unexplored jungle is a different story if there are demon beasts crawling around inside it. Our losses would be nothing to sneeze at. So…”

Todd was wearing a big, satisfied smile as he grabbed Subaru’s face in both hands.

“…they’ve decided to wrap up this mission nice and quick.”

“Nice and quick? So you’ll be able to go back to your fiancée, then?”

“Ha-ha, that’s right!” Todd nodded happily.

Subaru cheered, too.

Todd’s joy about having a deployment that was supposed to last for years changed so that he could return home was enormous. Grabbing each other’s hands, Subaru and Todd danced around in the middle of the tent.

And as they were doing that, naturally…

“…Um, could you quiet down a little, please?”

“Ah, sorry, Rem.”

Rem was sitting up and glaring unhappily at the both of them.

“Goodness,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “—? Is there a strange smell?”

“Smell?”

“Yes—one besides your body odor.”

Rem sniffed, then flapped her hand as if trying to clear the air. Subaru was, of course, hurt by the gesture, but Todd quickly apologized.

“Sorry, sorry. I figured it would be fine given the distance, but with a good nose you can tell. But once something’s been decided, it doesn’t feel right to just sit around doing nothing, right?”

“Todd?”

Todd pulled back the flap of their tent and beckoned them outside.

Subaru met Rem’s gaze, then gave her her wooden staff, and went over to the tent entrance. He stood next to Todd, and then he saw it.

“…Huh?”

Dense black smoke was billowing into the sky, and there was a powerful charred smell.

Badheim Jungle—the great jungle that extended as far as the eye could see—was being consumed by brilliant flames that were becoming an inferno.

“This is…”

Rem was struck speechless, too, at the sight of it.

They stood next to each other in shock, watching the burning trees—the jungle inferno, the world ending before their eyes, like a nightmare come to life.

“If demon beasts are lurking in there, there’s no telling how many people we’ll lose. The commander, General Second-Class Zickle, came around once he learned that.”

“”

“Thanks to your information, we can wrap this up without having to lose anyone. You’ve been a great help.”

Todd smiled and gave Subaru a smack on the back. Subaru’s lips trembled as that friendly slap landed. His lungs trembled. His throat trembled. And his voice trembled.

While Todd was acting just as friendly as ever, Subaru asked in a quivering voice…

“Wh-why…?”

“Why…what?”

“You said they didn’t want to fight the Shudrak in the jungle, right?”

Todd had said it would be a difficult battle, if it came to that, and that they were hoping to negotiate the enemy’s submission to the emperor. That was what he had told them at lunch the day before. That was why Subaru had been relieved there wouldn’t be a fight.

“This is…”

“Yeah—they didn’t want to fight. There was no way to know how many losses we would suffer. Even I could have died. But that tidbit about the demon beasts was enough to convince the general, so the problem’s settled. The Shudrak won’t be able to go against the emperor this way, either.”

“—!”

“And I’ll be able to get back to my fiancée soon, too. Seriously, you were quite the find. I told the general about you, so I’m sure you’ll receive an award, too. You might even get a second one of those knives,” Todd said jokingly, giving Subaru another slap on the back.

And then, as if remembering something, he added:

“Right—I was told to get back after I’d showed you what you’ve accomplished. Also, you don’t have to worry about cleaning up those tents anymore. We’ll be breaking camp here before too long.”

“—Aah, eh?”

“C’mon, man, get a hold of yourself. Don’t worry the little lady.”

With that final whisper in Subaru’s ear, Todd left, wearing a genuinely well-intentioned smile.

In the end, Subaru couldn’t say anything as Todd went away.

But as quiet as he might have been, and as much as his mind was ravaged by confusion, it did nothing to change the hellish inferno blazing in front of them.

The flames consumed everything; they would scorch every living thing in that area. That giant snake, the masked man who had been camping in the forest, and the hunter who had taken aim at them. They would all be turned to ash.

“Ngh!”

As Subaru gritted his teeth at the impact of that thought, Rem—who was standing beside him—staggered.

He immediately reached out to support her, but the moment he touched her, her body went tense. Looking up at him, her face was filled with terror and rejection.

“Aaah…”

“I know it isn’t your fault… I know. But…”

“”

“Please don’t touch me.”

Biting back the fear that threatened to consume her, Rem gently pushed Subaru’s hand away. She didn’t shake him off, nor did she break his hand. She simply brushed him off.

She was saying what she really felt. Rem understood that Subaru had not meant for this to happen. But that was a trifling consolation.

In the face of what had, in fact, happened, it was all too trifling…

“…She’s woken up.”

Rem looked away from Subaru, averting her eyes from the blazing jungle, and turned to Louis, who was inside the tent, to avoid looking at something she did not want to see.

Behind her, Subaru couldn’t respond immediately.

He had not come to terms with what had happened himself. Everything he could think to say felt wrong.

So he couldn’t stop Rem from moving away at a crawl.

He couldn’t stop her…

“—Ah?”

As he bit his lip and gazed at Rem’s back after having been rejected, Subaru suddenly felt something small hit his back.

Turning around to see what it was, he couldn’t see anyone or anything there that might have touched his back. But then he noticed something just barely out of the corner of his eye.

Something that moved when he moved as he kept turning around…

“Uuuh!!”

The next moment, Louis shouted from inside the tent like a child throwing a tantrum.

But there were more important things to deal with than a noisy Archbishop having a fit after waking up, an Archbishop who was like a toddler now. Though it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about her making a fuss.

“Uaah, aaaah!!!”

“Ngh! Be quiet! Everything’s fine! I don’t have time to deal with—”

As he was shouting at Louis, Subaru’s brow furrowed.

Rem was seated on the ground holding Louis, who was still fidgeting and struggling. All of a sudden, her expression changed. It was not the fear or rejection she’d displayed before; it was pure and simple shock. She was looking at Subaru with blue eyes gone wide—no, it wasn’t Subaru she was looking at, but…

“…My back?”

Subaru figured out where she was looking from the angle of her gaze. Twisting his head, Subaru looked down at his back, and finally realized just what it was that had been moving behind him while he was turning.

“Arrow feathers…”

That was what had caught his eye. And of course, the arrow feathers were attached to an arrow, and an arrow quivering in his back meant that…

“…Ah.”

…someone had shot him in the back with an arrow.

He quickly lost his balance, and, unable to stand anymore, toppled over on the spot. He reflexively grabbed at the tent’s entrance as he fell, and the tent tilted as he collapsed.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

Rem let out a shrill cry.

Even as Subaru’s mind raced, he had the pointless, out-of-place thought that he had never heard Rem cry out like that before.

“Aaah, uaaah!”

Crawling on all fours, Louis approached Subaru and started roughly shaking him, but he couldn’t muster the voice to yell at her to stop, or the strength to resist.

It was just a single arrow.

“Someone! Someone, please! …I-it will be fine! This wound is…”

Letting go of her staff, Rem came closer, almost stumbling over herself in the process, and staring at his back, she called out desperately.

Rem really is nice.

Even though she’d refused to trust him because of the miasma, even though he had caused this inferno with a single ill-considered comment, she still tried to call for help when Subaru collapsed right in front of her.

I can’t show her my weakness.

It’s just a simple arrow. Show her you can handle it. Just stand up, Subaru Natsuki. You always thought people didn’t have enough guts, dying or getting knocked out by those little arrows in Taiga dramas and period shows and all, didn’t you?

I mean, even if a giant arrow through the chest is different, Rem’s right—this arrow didn’t hit me that hard. It was so soft, it felt like someone brushing against my back, right?

So why is it that…

He vomited as heat welled up inside him.

“Geh, gh, ugh.”

“Ngh! Is it poisoned?”

Rem had come to the same conclusion as him. It was not the impact alone that was killing him. It was the poison that coated the arrowhead.

Subaru couldn’t move his arms or legs, and his head had stopped working, like he had a bad fever. Something spilled from his eyes, from his nose, from his ears, and his whole body started shuddering.

There was an annoying clanging in his ears, and he couldn’t hear Rem’s worried voice. He couldn’t hear Louis’s annoying shouts, either. He’d stopped hearing at all.

Poison. The poison. Someone had… Why? The arrow. The hunter. The forest, burning. Burning. My words… Demon beast, Todd, burning. Rem. Rem. Rem…

His thoughts were jumbled, and he groaned while blowing bubbles of blood out his mouth. Opening bloodshot eyes, he tried to make out Rem’s face, and that was when he noticed it.

—Maybe thirty yards from the tent—not even ten seconds away if he took the distance at a run—was a small shadowy figure, glaring at him.

“”

A child. No bigger than Louis.

A child with a nasty look on her face—no, it wasn’t a nasty look. She was glaring at him. Glaring at him, eyes clouded with hate. She clearly wanted him dead.

Her hair and face were covered in soot, and she held a small bow.

She had, by her hands, with her own will, shot a poison arrow at Subaru.

“”

It was natural she would hate him.

It was natural she would want to kill him.

What he caused had invited fate to set her on a course of hatred.

Then this was just Subaru’s just deserts…

“No! Wait! Please wait! Wait…”

He could hear a desperate voice in his ears.

I’d love to wait. I’d love to just stop here. I’d love to hold hands and smile.

But I can’t do that.

I can’t do anything.

Blowing out more bloody spittle, spasming, with his eyes rolled back into his head, Subaru passed out, vomiting his melting internal organs as he fell into shadow.

“Wai…!”

The hideous, unthinking fool slipped into darkness.

He slipped…

CHAPTER 4

THE IMPERIAL WAY

1

The pain ate away at his body, like his blood had become magma. It peeled layer after layer away from the being that was Subaru Natsuki, revealing his unvarnished self.

The agony persisted, like cold air blowing across an open wound after a scab had just been ripped off it. His soul was exposed to reality, with nothing to protect it.

Was it pain? Grief? Sadness? Or something else entirely? Subaru couldn’t even tell that much.

What he did know was that if any relief was possible, there was only one way he’d get it.

Before that hopeless feeling reached its logical conclusion, it suddenly cut out and he felt a sense of release—

“—Pipe down, asshole.”

“Mgh.”

Set free from his suffering, he opened wide the mouth that had been bubbling with blood.

His body desperately sought oxygen, as if his lungs had a leak, and just as he tried to indulge in that flavorless, unscented treat, something was shoved into his mouth.

Recoiling from the unexpected feeling, Subaru coughed as an angry voice rained down on him.

But he couldn’t tell what was happening. Or more precisely, he couldn’t see. Feeling pressure on his face, he could tell something was wrapped around it, blocking his vision.

—No, it’s not just my face. My arms and legs are tied, too.

Someone had shoved something into his mouth while he was tied up.

“Ugh! Blegh! Wh-why am I tied… Gh?!”

“Why are you resisting, asshole? Don’t you understand what position you’re in?”

“Ah, gah…”

Right after he’d spit out the foreign object in his mouth, someone kicked him in the stomach. Subaru sucked in air and slumped to the side as his attacker spit on him.

The humiliation of being spit on was nothing in the face of the splitting pain in his chest. But as his darkened vision flashed red with pain, Subaru slipped into confusion.

What had happened just a few minutes ago was still tearing through his mind.

“”

He had been woken up by Todd, then brought outside the tent to see the jungle in the grips of fiery hands. And then, right after having realized that this had happened because of a slip of his tongue, he’d been hit in the back with a poison arrow and had collapsed. After seeing the seemingly very young girl who had shot the arrow, he’d lost strength in his body and started spasming.

He’d suffered in agony while coughing up blood, listening as Rem frantically called out for help, had tried to hold on to his fading consciousness, and…

“I’m…here…”

“Huh? How much longer are you gonna—”

“C’mon, now, calm down! He clearly doesn’t know anything. Let’s at least undo the blindfold.”

Confusion swirled, consuming his mind, but the conversation going on overhead brought him back to reality.

He could hear two men. One had a rough, coarse voice, like a man who was the embodiment of vulgarity, and the other had a softer voice, one that seemed friendly enough.

In his mind’s eye, Subaru could just see the faces of those two voices’ owners.

“Tch.”

There were footsteps as the man who’d kicked Subaru backed off. And then came a mildly exasperated sigh.

“Sheesh, sorry about all that. I’m sure you can’t really tell what’s going on, but I’m going to take off the blindfold for now. Sorry, but I can’t untie your hands or feet.”

“”

The man walked over to Subaru and undid his blindfold.

There was a little bit of pain and a sense of release. Subaru took a deep breath before indulging in that, though. And then another, and another, before letting his breathing settle down.

Then, after patiently waiting for his vision to gradually come back, he opened his eyes.

And…

“…Just like I thought…”

As his fuzzy vision came into focus, he saw tents and campfires spread out before him, and imperial soldiers bustling all around. It was not exactly familiar, but he recognized the army camp—he had run all around it doing chores and getting by for a couple days.

“…I…died?”

And returned by death. That’s the most natural explanation.

And with bitter irony, he knew an easy way to make sure of that. He just needed to turn his head a little and see the green jungle on the other side of the camp.

As a result of what he’d said before, the imperial soldiers had gotten permission to burn down the jungle. But the jungle that was supposed to be scorched by hellfire was still there, and still green. It extended across the horizon and looked just fine.

Having confirmed that, Subaru now saw it clearly in his head. Rem crawling toward him after he’d collapsed from the arrow as blood bubbled from his mouth, desperately pleading with him not to die. Her voice, her presence, her plea.

But Subaru had betrayed all of this, dying tragically right in front of her.

How much fear, how much uncertainty had Rem felt, not remembering anything, in some unknown land, watching a man who knew her die, even if she did hate him? The thought of it made his heart ache.

And at the same time…

I’ll never let her experience that again.

“We found you when we went to fetch some water. Sorry, but you’re our prisoner.”

As Subaru’s heart filled with powerful emotions, a man crouched down in front of him.

He knew the man who was looking at him with a gentle smile and kind expression—Todd. In this camp filled with imperial soldiers, he was the one and only person who had been friendly to Subaru and Rem.

He had patiently dealt with Subaru, who knew far too little about the empire, and Subaru himself was grateful that Todd had been there when he’d woken up.

Todd, who’d supported the decision to burn the jungle on the basis of Subaru’s words.

“”

It did not feel like it had even been ten minutes, but a chill ran down his back when he recalled Todd’s carefree report that they were burning the jungle.

The Empire of Volakia respected the strong and tyrannized the weak. A powerful country whose national crest was a wolf with swords thrust into it, a symbol that taught only the swordwolf had the right to live. People with Todd’s mentality were probably not uncommon in the empire.

The empire had a way of life that let its people quickly accept and casually carry out a plan to burn down a jungle after hearing there were demon beasts in it.

Of course, Subaru did not see eye to eye with the people in Lugunica, either. The closest he came to that was maybe Roswaal, that pinnacle of rationalism.

Either way, Subaru was not going to let them turn the jungle into scorched earth this time.

“”

Gulping, Subaru grasped the mistake he had made last time.

Of course, he had been killed as a result, but even if the army had made the decision for the safety of their forces, burning down the jungle was way too drastic. If it had not been for Subaru’s comment, there was a chance Todd and the empire would have been able to negotiate in peace with the Shudrak people and resolve things without bloodshed.

He had robbed them of that possibility and exposed everyone in the jungle to danger— No, don’t try to shirk responsibility. There’s zero chance no one died in that firestorm.

Because of what he’d said, the people living in the jungle had died.

Even if he could no longer influence the events of that world after dying and returning, there was no escaping that fact. He would never forget it.

“”

And so he resolved not to make the same mistake.

Death was a heavy matter, whether it was his own or someone else’s, and not something he could let happen again. With that thought, getting at least the chance to redo his first encounter with Jamal and Todd was a faint silver lining.

I’ll build a good relationship with Todd, and Jamal, too, if possible, and push them toward negotiating with the Shudrak in a way that won’t fail.

And to do that…

“You listening? I get you’re confused at suddenly finding yourself a prisoner, but…”

Todd crouched down in front of Subaru, who had been keeping quiet, seemingly considering what Subaru must have been feeling.

“…Yeah… You’re right. I’m confused. I am. But, umm…”

Subaru thought hard about what to say next.

Last time, his relationship with Todd had been friendly. He felt he should try to maintain that, while keeping open the possibility of gaining accommodations for himself and Rem.

Also, I have to be careful with what I tell him, to avoid any extreme actions on his part.

“I’m surprised, but I get that I’m a prisoner. I remember jumping into the river. If you’re the ones who saved me from that, then I owe you—”

“Wait.”

“Huh?”

Subaru calmly tried to perform the role of someone who had been pulled out of the water and saved. But Todd interrupted him, putting his hand in front of Subaru’s face.

Subaru gulped as the open palm blocked his vision.

And then…

“Why did you look at me like that just now?”

Right after he heard Todd’s cold, stiff voice, something sharp slid into his right shoulder.

Unable to see, he was slow to react to what had happened. Then, feeling a strange sensation in his shoulder, he looked at it and realized what it was.

—The sharp blade of a knife was stabbing into his shoulder.

2

“ghhh?!”

The moment Subaru saw what had happened, a howl rose in the back of his throat.

A terrible heat erupted from the center of his shoulder, and a sharp pain and a tingling sensation spread through him.

The shock of being unexpectedly stabbed was enormous.

“Ghh, gaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

A few seconds later, a clear and obvious cry of pain passed his lips.

He wanted to twist his body, clutch his stabbed shoulder, put pressure on the wound, or do anything about the pain—but he was bound hand and foot, unable even to pull the knife out of his shoulder. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

“H-hey! What was that scream?!”

Subaru writhed in pain, screaming over and over. And having heard that, Jamal—the rough man with the eye patch—hurried back.

The eyes of the man who had just been kicking Subaru went wide at the sight of Subaru writhing on the floor, bleeding from where the knife was still sticking out of his shoulder.

And…

“Hey—this isn’t what we talked about, Todd! You’re the one who told me to hold back ’cause he had that noble’s knife!”

“Yeah, that was the plan before we knew his identity. When it comes to that, I can see why you’d be mad about how this hasn’t gone the way we’d discussed. My bad.”

“…Meaning, you know who he is now?”

Todd’s answer convinced Jamal to calm down. But Todd just cocked his head.

“No clue,” he said, before putting his foot on Subaru’s body while Subaru writhed in pain. “I didn’t ask who he was. But it’s likely he’s an enemy, so I attacked preemptively.”

“Gh, gyaaaaah!”

“Oh—that looks painful. Not much point making you suffer too much, but are you the type who can take a lot of pain? How would you rate yourself there?”

Todd leaned onto the leg resting on Subaru’s body while talking to him in a calm voice.

But Subaru was lying on the ground, and the increased pressure on him pushed the knife deeper into his shoulder, so amid the unbearable pain he couldn’t come up with a response.

“No response. Defiance. So he is an enemy.”

“…With him rolling around like that, he couldn’t answer even if he wanted to.”

“Hmm? Really? Damn, I don’t really feel much pain, so I always mess this sort of thing up. My bad.”

Todd finally removed his foot from Subaru’s body.

The extra pain faded, but the intermittent agony of having been stabbed was still jabbing at him. Subaru bit down on the pain, which was so difficult to endure, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and tears welling in his eyes.

“And you talk to me about my behavior being bad…”

“—? You beat prisoners and your subordinates just to feel better, right? Don’t get judgy with me. I’m just doing what’s necessary.”

Meanwhile, they continued talking, ignoring Subaru’s situation.

It was hard to imagine from what had happened moments ago, but Jamal was trying to pacify Todd after the latter had stabbed Subaru.

What is happening?

Even considering the fact that mental resources were being diverted to deal with the pain, his thoughts were just not making any sense.

Todd had been so good to them, so why would he…?

“So why did you stab him?”

“When he saw me after I took off his blindfold, the look in his eyes was manipulative. Unease or nervousness, I could understand. Fear or tears would have been fine, too. But looking manipulative is weird, right?”

“Manipulative, huh?”

“If you were kicked awake and then had a blindfold taken off, would you be able to think about using the first person you see? I mean, sure, there are some who naturally do that, but they’re scary, and dealing with them just means trouble. It’s better just to kill them.”

Todd coolly explained his thoughts, and Jamal seemed to be considering what he was saying.

The reason he’d stabbed Subaru was because he’d judged Subaru to be dangerous. And because he thought that the best way to deal with danger was by rendering it powerless.

He had simply made a snap decision for his own safety and acted on it.

What the hell?

“There’s no way you can tell if he was thinking that the moment he woke up, right? He might have woken up while we were carrying him and been listening the whole time.”

“No. I was watching the whole time to see if he was faking it. If he’d regained consciousness at some point along the way, he should have had some basic biological reaction. And if he somehow managed to fool me…”

“Yeah?”

“Then he was feigning sleep in order to deceive us and was planning to manipulate me from the start. That’s even scarier, so it’s better to just kill him.”

Subaru gulped with a shudder, even as he struggled against the pain.

Jamal’s tone softened as he listened to Todd’s explanation. He’d been surprised and angry at first at the fact that Todd had stabbed Subaru, but his anger was gradually dissipating.

Todd got close to people, making a point of being understanding, and then he proposed ideas that were beneficial to them. Once their initial momentum slowed down and they became more open to suggestion, those people would then think about Todd’s proposal and start coming around to it.

That was what was happening with Jamal here, and it was exactly what had happened with Subaru in his previous run.

“I don’t know about the two girls with him, either, but they’re easier to deal with. We should nip this potential complication in the bud.”

“Well, I don’t really mind, but…”

“Or do you want to do it? I stopped you from venting your feelings about that blue-haired girl messing up your men, but you could use something to work through that, right?”

“That’s true.”

Todd’s calm proposal brought a nasty grin to Jamal’s face.

Jamal licked his lips and started giving off a more dangerous, violent sort of aura. But what made Subaru freeze up was the way Todd had said this.

He’d offered Subaru up as a way for Jamal to vent, but also, even taking Subaru out of the picture here, Todd still planned to probe their motives in another way. Using Rem, and Louis.

But they wouldn’t be able to answer, no matter what he asked them. No matter how badly she was tortured, Rem didn’t know anything she could tell him.

“Ngh!”

Gritting his teeth, Subaru used the taste of blood in his mouth as a catalyst, propelling himself forward in search of a way to save Rem.

In just a few more seconds, Jamal’s assault would resume, and Subaru would either be killed by these barbaric attacks because he was no longer needed, or he would be left half dead. And even if Jamal had a conscience and didn’t finish him off, Todd wouldn’t let him live.

Todd had set fire to the jungle, so he would have no qualms about ending Subaru’s life.

Jamal approached, step by step.

And in that moment, Subaru’s thoughts raced, searching for an answer within himself. A way out, some kind of plan, a possibility, a miracle to—

“Try to gimme a nice scream, brat. You’re gonna pay for what your girl d—”

“The Shudrak.”

Just before Jamal could unleash himself on Subaru with that classic thug line, Subaru spoke.

Jamal stopped suddenly, and behind him, Todd’s expression changed, too. Jamal’s surprise was evident, and Todd cocked an eyebrow and chuckled.

“Heh—looks like you know how to gamble.”

“Todd, don’t listen—”

“Now, now, give it a second, Jamal. You can punch and kick him later. But it’s hard to make out what someone says when their throat and mouth are busted up. Let’s listen first.”

“Fuck!”

Suddenly having lost the outlet for his frustrations, Jamal kicked a nearby wooden shelf. Meanwhile, Todd faced Subaru again, and terrifyingly, the smile plastered across his face was the exact same one that Subaru knew.

As Subaru teetered on the precipice between life and death, Todd smiled at Subaru in the same way he had while treating Subaru’s fingers, while having lunch with him, and while praising him for his contributions to burning the jungle.

“So you brought up the Shudrak people without being prompted to. Is it safe to expect you’re about to say something we’d like to hear?”

“…Yeah. I know where the Shudrak people are in the jungle.”

“—! Well, that’s just great!”

Todd clapped, a trace of joy in his smile.

Seeing that reaction, Subaru was sure that the miracle he had dragged out of himself had worked. But it was a double-edged sword, too—since he did not actually know their location.

The man who had given him the knife, and the hunter who had taken aim at him—he thought it likely that one, the other, or perhaps both were connected to the Shudrak, but he had no way to get in contact with them from here, and no clue where exactly they were.

Which meant Subaru was staking his life on a major gamble.

“Why do you know that?”

“…Because I’m one of them.”

“I see—so you really are. Skin color aside, you’ve got the black hair. So I’d suspected that might be the case. The Shudrak are famous for having black hair.”

“”

Hearing that, Subaru was greatly relieved and felt a sense of having been saved by luck.

A greasy sweat joined the cold sweat that already coated him from head to toe thanks to the tricky tightrope he was walking. The pain in his shoulder was still growing, and the fingers of his left hand were starting to throb with pain, too.

On top of that, his body had still not recovered from everything that had happened at the Pleiades Watchtower, nor from when he’d chased Rem through the jungle, then escaped into the river.

Holding on as his consciousness wobbled and his mind threatened to give out, he now embarked on an interrogation where any mistake would mean death. All for the sake of survival—all for rescuing Rem.

To return to Emilia and Beatrice, and to reunite Ram and Rem.

“In which case, are you some sort of scout? Are the clothes and knife a disguise so you could blend in with us?”

“…I stole the knife from a traveler. Same for the clothes. And…”

“You tried to slip in to spy on us. That’s a bold plan. It looks like you really did almost drown, and there was always the chance of us not noticing the knife…”

“But it feels more realistic this way, right?”

When Todd pointed out the shoddiness of the supposed plan, Subaru laughed it off as intentional.

He curled his lips, flashing his teeth to make his normal appearance look even nastier and lend his explanation even more credence. Todd considered his claims.

“”

The silence was heavy, dragging out Subaru’s suffering.

In truth, Subaru couldn’t say whether his words actually were convincing, or whether his expressions were lending them any weight at all. The pain and the burden on him were so great that he couldn’t really reflect objectively on the situation.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if Todd had brushed off his excuse with a sneer, and he’d then had his head split open as a cherry on top.

Todd’s position being so unreadable just made it all even more nerve-racking.

After a little while…

“Are you selling out your tribe in order to live?”

Todd closed an eye as he asked that question.

Subaru gulped.

He had drawn out the question he had wanted to hear. Now he just had to not mess up the answer.

Selling out his tribe to live. In addition to claiming himself a member of the Shudrak people, he would sell them out.

He couldn’t afford to be caught in that bluff, and he needed to make sure his expression and voice were appropriate.

The voice and expression of a pathetic man who would sell out his tribe for his own survival.

“…Y-yeah, that’s right. I’ll sell them out.”

“”

“Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll even lure them out if that’s what you want. Anything. Whatever you want!”

Eyes swimming, cheeks tense, coated in a cold sweat, Subaru begged for his life.

He turned into the sort of person who would beg for his life without concern for anyone else. A selfish act that wouldn’t endear him to anyone.

It was nothing.

He had seen plenty of examples of that in his time here in this world.

Not that I ever expected to see the day when I would use those awful Archbishops as a model.

“What a piece of shit. I don’t like those eyes.”

Seeing Subaru’s act, Jamal grumbled in heartfelt scorn and anger.

At the very least, Subaru’s words had pushed Jamal in a bad direction. But he did not have time to be worrying about Jamal. The person who would decide his fate here was Todd.

Whatever their actual roles and ranks were did not matter here. Not in this moment. So, in accordance with imperial custom, where the strong oppressed the weak…

“…That desperation doesn’t look like a lie.”

And, while Subaru was carefully performing the act of a groveling man, Todd finally spoke.

Those words made Subaru feel like he’d managed to survive, even as he was wary of rejoicing prematurely.

“You serious, Todd?!” Jamal erupted. “The sort of shit who would sell out his own tribe—”

“Look, Jamal, he’s sniveling enough to sell out his tribe for himself, right? He’ll be desperate to make it worth our while. If he doesn’t, he won’t get out of here with the life he cares so much about keeping.”

Todd’s explanation made Jamal swallow his argument.

That was exactly the impression that Subaru had wanted to instill in Todd.

A man who would sell out his comrades to save himself. To make them believe that the information he would provide had value, Subaru needed to lower their opinion of him as much as possible.

On that point, screaming so pathetically when he’d been stabbed had probably worked out in his favor. Though he had a feeling the pain he’d suffered was too great for that knowledge to be much comfort.

“Don’t blame me if anything happens!”

In the end, as Subaru had expected, Jamal was convinced.

“Trust me, trust me,” Todd said, slapping Jamal on the back in reassurance. “Valuing life is just fine. Even it’s just his own.”

Todd looked down at Subaru, who was hunched over like he was groveling.

3

“Ngh! Wait! What are you doing to him?!”

Rem grabbed the iron bars of her cell, her eyes flaring in anger as she shouted at them.

The location of this scene was the imperial army camp. Having heard Subaru’s sniveling pleas, Todd and Jamal had begun marching him over to an area away from the camp.

As she remained inside her cell, Rem’s gaze had sharpened when she’d spotted Subaru being marched away.

Subaru looked completely battered and broken.

His body had been pummeled from leaping into the river and being washed away, and he’d received only the barest minimum of first aid for the knife wound on his right shoulder. His broken fingers had been left untreated. The bindings on his legs were undone, but his hands were still tied.

Subaru Natsuki was being led from the campgrounds, looking like a slave.

Rem must have been confused and shocked. Of course, Subaru couldn’t explain the situation to her. After he’d died and come back, what little progress he might have made with her had been reset, too, and everything had to be redone.

She thought him an enemy because of the Witch’s lingering scent, and he hadn’t been given any time or opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding, and on top of that…

“Ngh?! The stench is even worse than before… What is going on?”

Picking up the miasma that grew thicker with each reset, Rem’s wariness had gone up another level.

Subaru Natsuki was like devil spawn to her. And there was no point in correcting her impression, other than that it hurt his heart not to do so, and so he would simply do nothing.

“…You must have a pretty complicated relationship. She’s reacting like that, even though she’s with you.”

“She…both of them… ”

“Both of them?”

“…They’re both just tools I bought in order to make contact with you.”

Unsure how to respond for a moment, Subaru decided to feign cruelty.

He was supposed to be a cold-blooded guy who would sell out his comrades to save his own skin. Of course he wouldn’t feel anything for Rem or Louis. Everything had to be secondary to his own survival.

He had to avoid the two of them—or at least Rem—being taken as hostages.

“They don’t know anything. Interrogating them would just be a waste of time…but it looks like you already knew that.”

“Well, it didn’t seem like they were putting on an act. The little one, her head’s probably seriously messed up, and that other one wasn’t lying, either. Going on a rampage when you don’t even know why is dangerous in its own right, though.”

Todd scratched his cheek with a wry chuckle, and Jamal snorted in annoyance.

The two of them were leading a group of around twenty imperial soldiers out of the camp, accompanied by Subaru. He was supposed to be leading them into the jungle to the Shudrak settlement.

Subaru would guide them to its location, doing his part for the empire’s victory, and in return, he’d get to live to see another day. That was the general idea here.

It was a passable success story for a craven coward.

If you’re willing to overlook the impossibility of it.

“If they’re in your way, I can take them off your hands once I’m free…”

“That’s a little hasty. Positivity is all well and good, but don’t forget that what happens to you next depends on the information you give us. You should worry about your own predicament first.”

“Heh-heh, right, right. Just got a little ahead of myself, thinking about when all this is over.”

If he focused on that now, it would just reveal his fixation with Rem, so he immediately changed tack.

As his hands were tied up, he couldn’t rub them together greedily, but he answered Todd while doing his best to evoke that sort of feeling. Fortunately, Todd did not push any further, just giving Rem in her cell a little wave.

“Just behave yourself, miss. For now, we won’t do anything if no one starts anything.”

“Do you think you saying that would be even slightly convincing?”

“I couldn’t say. Whether you choose to believe me or not is your problem.”

Rem bitterly fell silent.

All Subaru could do was regret his inability to provide supporting fire or even say anything as he engraved her figure and voice into his mind, turning them into fuel to ignite his heart.

I have to get her out of here, no matter what it takes.

He no longer had any thoughts of building a friendly relationship with Todd and the others, or getting them to protect him and Rem. They were dangerous as enemy or as ally.

I should avoid getting any closer than necessary to any Volakian.

This was an incredibly complicated situation, and if he wasn’t careful, it could well turn into more than just a personal problem.

As Subaru strengthened his resolve, Todd called out to his allies.

“All right, we’re heading out. None of you let down your guard.”

“I give the orders here!”

And as the soldiers responded, Jamal snapped back angrily.

4

With Subaru in front, the procession entered the Badheim Jungle.

Their aim was to determine the location of the Shudrak settlement. However, their navigator Subaru was bluffing, and he didn’t know the location of any village at all.

Not only that, but he also had no idea what the true identity of the Shudrak people was.

“”

Proceeding through the dense jungle, Subaru kept an eye out for any sort of opening to escape.

There were eighteen soldiers, and while they were lightly armored, they couldn’t move more freely than Subaru could. If he got the opportunity to escape, it should be possible for him to get back to camp before them and escape with Rem. Or rather, that was the only plan he could come up with at the moment.

Fortunately, it was easy to unlock the cell Rem was in from the outside. The important thing was, he needed to find an opportunity to do it, and of course, there was the question of whether Rem would come with him if he opened the cell for her. And then there was Louis.

“If I say we should leave her, Rem will never come with me…”

Due to the extra miasma from Return by Death, Rem’s trust levels had plummeted again. Even if he returned in desperation, Rem wouldn’t welcome him saying they should abandon Louis. She might even just beat him up on the spot and take Louis with her before leaving him there in the camp.

“…Or maybe not, even for her. She can’t move her legs properly, after all.”

Of course, that was only because she couldn’t pull that off with her legs not working right. If her body recovered, she would absolutely do it. I think. And it would be a huge problem if she did.

Which is why he would have to bring Louis along, too, when freeing Rem. Why does it have to be so hard to give this deadweight dragging us down the slip?

And…

“So how long will it take to reach the settlement?”

“…Generally speaking, about two to three hours, I suppose.”

“Two to three hours! That’s pretty quick. If that’s all, then that’s great to hear. It was looking like a yearslong mission on our end.”

Todd’s face softened at the windfall he’d found.

He was wearing light armor and had a hatchet at his waist. Subaru remembered that Todd was on this mission while his fiancée waited for him back home. Even if he had suddenly decided to attack and potentially kill Subaru, it wasn’t like his background or personality had dramatically changed.

Todd had been sent to this jungle on orders as an imperial soldier, and as a result, he was forced to be separated from his loved ones. And it was not just him, but Jamal and the other soldiers, too. They all had their own situations and their own reasons for being on this mission.

In that sense, there was no reason for him to be fighting them. They’d just been unlucky. Several unfortunate events had overlapped. The situation was not great. There were a lot of ways he could have put it, but that was just how it was.

But…

“…I know it’s not for me to say so, but isn’t this a little careless? For you to only bring this many people to the Shudrak village?”

“You think you’re in a position to worry about us, huh? There’s no guarantee your head’ll still be on your shoulders at the end of this. You better work hard to humor us.”

“Jamal, sir…”

“Don’t get friendly with me, you filthy traitor. I’ll cut you to pieces when this is done, and those damn girls, too… General Second-Class Zickle loves him some women; maybe I’ll offer them to him. I bet he’d love that.”

Jamal’s eyes and voice were dangerous; he seemed to genuinely despise Subaru. And since Jamal’s relationship with Rem was also awful, letting him have the deciding vote in this situation could only go terribly.

“C’mon, Jamal… Spare me all that nonsense. It’s exhausting.”

Of course, Todd was the one to soothe Jamal and calm the situation.

“Relax. Don’t forget, if anything we’ve gotta humor him. He’s giving us information to save himself. And in exchange, we have to save him, or else we’ll end up getting attacked all at once by the Shudrak on our way to the village.”

“Bring it. If they try, we can kill them all ourselves,” Jamal shot back impudently.

“Are you serious? I’m not picking a fight I can’t win. And you don’t want to leave your little sister a widow before she’s even married, do you, Big Bro?”

“Gh…”

Subaru was getting to see a side of them that he hadn’t seen before, but unfortunately, it did not make him feel anything. He had already resolved to do what he had to do when it came to them.

The way they met, this whole situation—it was all a stroke of bad luck.

“But Rem is more important to me.”

So he was going to put them in danger.

“—?”

Suddenly, in the back of the exploration squad, a lone soldier made a noise. He turned his head, as if he’d noticed something and was looking for it.

Feeling faintly uneasy and unable to ignore it, he peered into the depths of the jungle, and—

“Ah?”

—met a pair of yellow eyes floating in the darkness.

“Demon beaaaaaaaast!!!”

Immediately, the soldier warned his comrades.

His reaction was perfect. The same could have been said of his comrades, who immediately prepared for combat.

But then the soldier drew his sword and charged at the demon beast.

That could have been considered rash.

“Whoooooa!!!”

Because the opponent the soldier had charged into the jungle to attack was a giant snake—a thirty-foot-long, green-scaled snake demon beast.

It was of the same species as the one Subaru had encountered earlier, and for the soldiers, who hadn’t known there were demon beasts in the jungle, it came as a complete surprise.

But attempting to immediately deal with the danger of the demon beast was both the correct judgment, and yet also a mistake. Because it was not the imperial soldiers the demon beast was after.

Its goal was none other than Subaru Natsuki, who was standing in a massive cloud of miasma.

“Tsss!!!”

The sword slash struck its scales, and the snake roared while sweeping the soldier aside with its tail. Its yellow eyes gleamed ferociously as it hammered the procession with a tremendous roar.

Having spent a year being a decoy for demon beasts, Subaru was a pro at it.

In most cases, demon beasts would proactively target Subaru, with all his miasma, but only until someone threatened them. It was the same for the giant snake as it had been for the White Whale.

The White Whale had targeted Wilhelm because he’d attacked it, and the snake had turned its fangs on the hunter who had shot it. And Subaru had used that law to his advantage here.

The snake now turned its attention from Subaru to the soldiers in armor, who were directing their malice at the snake.

“Ngh! A demon beast?! No one mentioned anything about that!!!”

Facing down the giant snake’s animosity, Jamal shouted these words while drawing a pair of swords. And surprisingly, he displayed a genuinely high level of skill, boldly attacking the demon beast with swift and agile movements.

However, Subaru wouldn’t support Jamal’s unexpectedly difficult fighting.

Subaru had spent a few hours tromping through the jungle with the soldiers, aiming for this exact outcome.

The soldiers did not know there were demon beasts in the jungle. Demon beasts that were drawn to Subaru by his miasma. He’d used his body’s smell to control demon beasts like always, making him a skilled demon beast master, too.

When I meet up with Meili again, I should challenge her to the title of demon beast master by comparing our stats.

But I don’t have time to worry about that right now.

“I have to…”

…use this opportunity to get back to camp and free Rem.

Just as he was about to start running, he felt a terrifying chill at the nape of his neck. Reacting immediately, he frantically ducked his head.

Just then, a hatchet swung right through where his head had been and landed in the trunk of the tree right next to him.

“Ngh!”

Had he not ducked, Subaru would have died on the spot.

Shuddering at that realization, Subaru turned around and looked at his attacker.

Todd was glaring at him with a furious scowl.

“Ngh!”

Not wanting to be pinned in place by that gaze, Subaru started sprinting through the jungle.

If he stopped, Todd would catch him. And if he was caught, Todd would surely kill him. Those eyes were filled with that sort of powerful determination. A pitch-black resolve.

Subaru felt a different sort of terror than he’d felt when facing Archbishops, demon beasts, or even Reid Astrea.

Those eyes shone with unrelenting tenacity.

“Gah?!”

As he ran, there was a heavy thud in his back.

Although he didn’t turn back, he could tell a knife had buried itself right by his shoulder blade—it looked like the knife had returned to him in an unpleasant way.

Subaru ran desperately, breathing raggedly with the knife still sticking out of his shoulder.

Behind him, the demon beast and the soldiers were still fighting, but Subaru kept running to avoid bumping into any other demon beasts or being caught by Todd.

Desperately, desperately, desperately running and running and running.

Subaru ran—breathing ragged, coughing up blood, tripping any number of times then actually falling, his whole body covered in mud as he continued to flee, desperately trying to get back to the army’s camp.

“Rem… Rem… Re…em…”

His speed had fallen to the point where a child could walk faster than him, and as his parched throat itched and he ran out of oxygen, focus, and endurance, he was fixated on only one thing.

Reach Rem, get her out, save her, and get back to everyone.

Return to where Emilia and Beatrice, Ram and Petra and Frederica, Garfiel and Otto, and even Roswaal were, and recover Rem’s happy moments.

The time she should have had, that happy time surrounded by love, and…

“…Ah.”

As he reached toward that faint dream, Subaru’s leg swung through the air.

Having suddenly lost his footing, he couldn’t support himself with his arms as he tumbled and fell upside down.

It felt like he was falling upside down. He couldn’t shout. He couldn’t open his mouth.

He just fell.

He fell, and fell, and like a bubble popping, his dream shattered, too.

“Rem…”

His parched voice rang out hollowly as he passed out.

5

“How long do you intend to sleep, fool?”

“Chokobi?!”

A shock jolted his mind out of the dark abyss.

The blow landed on the side of his head, like someone was stepping on his head as he lay on the ground—no, not like that. It seemed that was exactly what was happening.

The right side of his head was pressed against the floor, and the left side was being stepped on, which made both sides hurt. And thanks to that sharp pain, he had been woken up…

“…Hu…uh? I…gah.”

Subaru sat up blearily, the metallic taste of blood in the back of his throat.

Suddenly, his right shoulder and his back, his left hand and his legs, and all the rest of his body cried out in pain.

His vision turned red from terrible agony, and he slumped again, quivering like a fish out of water.

He’d been able to ignore the pain somewhat on an adrenaline high, but after having passed out and woken up again, it had all come rushing back. But every part of him hurting like that meant…

“…I’m…not dead.”

“Of course not. Could a dead man speak? Your current state is more impressive than your half-hearted jester act. I shall at least compliment you there.”

“Huh?”

As he checked himself in a daze, Subaru was struck by that haughty retort.

When his mind had made sense of what was being said, and while he remained cautious of the pain that was surely about to return, Subaru slowly sat up.

Looking around, he saw that he had been lying on the ground and that there were several thick branches here and there around him— No, these branches have been woven together.

Flashing back to Rem yet again, Subaru realized he was in a prison cell made of tree branches. And he was confused.

He felt uneasy, thinking he might have messed up and been caught by Todd or the others, but…

“You need not scramble so. Your pursuers are not here. Though I won’t deny that the situation is a tad too uncomfortable for me to say, ‘Be at ease.’”

“You’re…”

“I did not expect to see your face again, Subaru Natsuki.”

Subaru’s ears twitched in doubt as the man said Subaru’s name with a smirk.

Only his eyes were visible, so Subaru couldn’t say for sure, but he seemed to be smiling.

The haughty man was laughing, while locked inside the same cage as Subaru.

CHAPTER 5

THE EMPIRE OF VOLAKIA

1

Subaru quietly inhaled, hearing an arrogant and overbearing laugh.

There was no way Subaru would fail to recognize the haughty man who had given him directions when he’d been separated from Rem back at the meadow, the same man who had given him that knife. Because of the face covering, it was hard to say for sure, but his voice and attitude were exactly as Subaru remembered them. And the fact that he knew Subaru’s name was also proof it was the same person.

“”

Subaru had been sleeping on the bare ground inside a wooden cage, and his entire body was battered and bruised, so apparently, he had managed to stay alive.

He had brought Todd and the other soldiers into the jungle, used his miasma to lure out a demon beast, and then used the opportunity when they were being attacked to escape…

“And then I…”

“From what I heard, you triggered a trap while wandering in the jungle. The villagers were making a fuss about a person getting caught in a trap set for a beast.”

“Trap… Village…?”

Subaru swiveled his aching head and looked outside the cage.

The cage he was enclosed in was far rougher in make than the metal cells he had seen in the army camp. It looked simple, or perhaps like it had been built in a rush.

And outside, in the distance, he could see a cluster of tall trees, and an open patch of ground that had been created by clearing the space between those trees—to Subaru, it felt almost like the village in the Sanctuary.

The Sanctuary was a village built deep in the Cremaldi Forest. However, unlike the Sanctuary, which had buildings like houses and a church despite being in a forest, this village could generously be described as a bunch of log houses. It was mostly a collection of primitive lean-tos.

Seeing that, the words came to Subaru’s lips.

“The Shudrak?”

“Oh—you know of them? Well, judging by your unsightly appearance, you have surely borne quite a number of burdens in a single day. Did you find the woman from whom you were separated?”

“…Yeah, thanks to you.”

As the masked man questioned him, Subaru let out a deep breath.

The man was acting composed, but given that he was also inside a cell, he was in the same position as Subaru—the odds of him being an important member of the village who just happened to like being inside the same cell as village prisoners was incredibly low.