9.4.3

"—Aaagaah! I'm baaack!!"

Liberated from the agony he'd thought would last forever, Subaru's mind caught up to the speed of reality.

The pain of his heart's being mercilessly squeezed was the strict penalty for speaking that which was taboo. The hands wrought from black shadow—they greatly resembled Petelgeuse's Authority, a fact likely related to the Witch.

Return by Death probably had something to do with some fated connection between Subaru and the Witch of Jealousy. Or perhaps it had something to do with Subaru's being summoned to another world in the first place.

"Either way, I'll find an explanation someday… But right now…!"

Brushing his misgivings aside, Subaru moved his cramping limbs and rose to his feet. He vigorously used a sleeve to rub grimy drool off his cheek, practically gluing himself to the boulder right next to him as he climbed upward.

Then, as the foreign element purportedly in him vanished, he shifted his eyes toward the rock face.

"…How…can…this…BE…?!"

Subaru saw Petelgeuse there, crawling in a pool of blood. Having returned to his own corpselike body, Petelgeuse dragged it forward as he wept, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

He had abandoned Possession of Subaru, breaking the forced pact, his mind returning to his own body. Having shared Subaru's body, he had to have suffered the same penalty from divulging Return by Death.

In a possessed state, pain was shared, too. Subaru had identified his comparative endurance as his final trump card against Petelgeuse.

"Worst case, I was ready to do that over and over till you tapped out…but you gave up after just once. No guts, huh?"

Wheezing while boasting of victory, the bluffing Subaru felt strength drain from his legs. But he used a branch behind him to support his tottering body, giving a snort toward the side of the face of the man standing beside him.

The knight—Julius—gave a pained smile at his demeanor, swinging his sword and turning it toward Petelgeuse.

"This time, we finish this."

There was a pale glow along the blade of his bloodied cavalier's sword as the quasi-spirits shrouded the edge in a rainbow aurora once more.

With the rainbow sword, able to cut all things, resting in his hand, Julius stared straight at Petelgeuse.

"I love…love, my love… My love is…"

Mumbling words over and over, now lacking the strength even to crawl, Petelgeuse did not notice Julius. Even if he had, it surely would not have changed anything.

Blood did not stop coming out of the wound where his chest had been impaled, and the ashen-pale look over his face was that of despair and death.

"—"

Finally, in front of the sheer cliff, the madman set his back against a boulder and turned his head.

Having lost the willpower to even act disturbed, Petelgeuse looked at Julius with a dumbfounded expression. His gaze proceeded to lower, shifting toward Subaru, standing behind the knight—whereupon he suddenly exploded into emotion.

"Why, why…WHY?!!"

Tears flowed from his wide-open eyes. The hot droplets drenched his cheeks.

These were not the tears of joy Subaru had seen from him several times; they simply reflected the extent of the rage and remorse pouring out of him. They were proof of an unsalvageable delusion—proof that the madman's dream had been shattered.

Petelgeuse wept, looked up to the heavens, tried to clench something that could not be seen, and shouted—

"O Witch…O Witch! O Witch!! I have given this much to YOU! I have done so much for You! Why, why have You forsaken ME?! Why?! Why is it?! O Witch! If it is so, then MY love… Your favor…?!"

"What you offered her wasn't your own love or faith, or even your own body. You were just offering up the people who happened to be passing by you."

Petelgeuse lamented as if clinging on, searching for salvation, when Subaru's words cut him down.

It wasn't worth listening to a word from him. Petelgeuse was just a self-righteous creep indulging in unrequited love.

Wilhelm had said as much—that it was absurd to call this love.

Shiii—!

Julius sprinted, his sword homing in on Petelgeuse's slender frame.

The only things Petelgeuse turned toward the swinging, rising sword were teary, misty, wistful eyes. A rainbow-colored sword blow struck his chest for the second time, and the torrent of light burst within him.

The accumulation of mana that was the true body of Petelgeuse—the evil spirit grafting itself to the bodies of others, feasting upon their Odo—was scorched to the core by the brilliantly colored glow.

When the cavalier's sword came out, Petelgeuse looked down, dazed, as hot blood poured out of his chest.

Then, he trained his unfocused eyes overhead, stretching a hand toward the heavens.

"—My brain…trem…bles."

From his slender shadow, he unleashed a single Unseen Hand toward the heavens above. It stretched farther and farther, as if aiming for the dazzling sun above.

However, that hand grasped nothing, heading for thin air before finally leaving a large gouge in the sheer cliff, sending large cracks running along the rock face.

He probably hadn't done it on purpose.

To Petelgeuse, it was a meaningless act. It was an impulse driven by one final delusion.

"—"

A rock slide occurred above Petelgeuse's head. Giant fragments of the gouged rock face split off and fell. Directly below was Petelgeuse, seeking the heavens, and in the end unable to grasp anything—

"She never loved m—"

The mass of rock crushed his flesh, and there was a grand sound of flesh and bone being squished.

There was a string of rumbles as dust was blown upward from the impact, and in an instant Petelgeuse was crushed, buried by his own hand under the rubble that would serve as his tombstone.

Having escaped from the peril of the rock slide, Julius walked over to where Petelgeuse surely lay. At the end of his gaze, a large quantity of blood was pouring out from under the boulders. Upon seeing this, he shook his head, returning the cavalier sword in his hand to its scabbard.

"—"

Subaru too walked forward, not speaking a single word.

Then, when Subaru stood in front of the tombstone, he made a small sigh.

It was not a sigh of admiration, or a sense of achievement, or satisfaction.

He knew that the only thing spreading within his chest was a deep sense of emptiness.

Subaru would not sully that time and place by speaking of crude concepts such as victory and defeat.

But he did voice the words that came to the back of his numbed brain.

"Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti."

That single phrase would serve as the marker for the end of that battle.

Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti, Archbishop of the Seven Deadly Sins of the Witch Cult, charged with Sloth.

He who had battled Julius Eucleus, "The Finest of Knights," and Subaru Natsuki, the Self-Declared Knight.

Before the rubble that was his tombstone, Subaru exhaled a little, and said this:

"Man, you were lazy."