Chapter 130: FACES IN THE SNOW
Icy winds whip past. Frigid temperatures slice at his skin.
A horde of white hunger swamps everything in sight. The hand he is holding is warm.
Natsuki Subaru feels not a speck of hesitation or doubt about standing here.
Subaru: “Great that we had that cool entrance and all, but isn't this a little weird!?”
Yells Subaru about the unanticipated scene as the snow batters his cheeks.
Roaring wind rages through SANCTUARY, which is currently embroiled in thick snow. Subaru was ready for this to happen eventually, but the date is mismatched to what he remembers.
SANCTUARY would be buried in snow and lure the mob of white witchbeasts at morning—there was supposed to be over half a day of surplus time left.
Behind Subaru there stands a silver-haired girl, breathing white with her shoulders heaving. Emilia has been unable to fully restrain the mana overflowing from her body, and half-encased herself in ice. Her left side is covered in white, and though it must be painful, not a speck of anguish shows on her face.
Subaru mentally praises the bold Emilia, while simultaneously suspecting her as causing the snow.
Was she unable to control this frenzy of magic, bringing snow, and beckoning the Hare?
Subaru: “But then the order's off...”
The sequence between the uncontrolled magic and the Hare's arrival are backwards.
Emilia used her magic to oppose the Hare, which resulted in her suffering damage. If Subaru is following the correct course of things, then the real cause is—
Subaru: “—”
Behind Emilia, Echidna's tomb looms.
Subaru acknowledges the gazes peering at him out from the entrance, and nods. If the people inside are the residents of SANCTUARY, then they are not feeling the effects of the tomb's mechanisms. That means that the tomb's operations have terminated, otherwise said that Emilia has defeated the
TRIAL.
Emilia has overcome the TRIAL. Snow is falling earlier than anticipated. There's the state of SANCTUARY's citizens, and Emilia's resolute shouts and expression. And there's also,
Subaru: “Roswaal.”
Roswaal: “—”
Roswaal, dazedly staring at Subaru while sitting beside the tomb's entrance. Subaru doesn't have time right now to check if Ram, sleeping in his arms, is okay.
All he can do is trust that she is.
Beatrice: “Subaru.”
When the small hand gripping Subaru's own gives him a tug.
Hit with an unfamiliar form of address from a familiar voice, Subaru chokes.
Subaru: “oughbbhnuh”
Beatrice: “...Explain that bizarre reply, I suppose.”
Subaru: “It just feels so novel when you say my name, so. Can you do it again but sounding bashful?”
Beatrice: “What!? You are actually mad, in fact! This is no time for buffoonery, I suppose!”
Beatrice snaps at Subaru's silly request, her expression terrifying.
Subaru reluctantly drops the issue, expecting her to ignore it no matter how much he pesters her, when,
Beatrice: “S-Subaru... there, I did it, in fact.”
Subaru: “Beako you are adorable.”
Beatrice: “—! I'm never saying it again, I suppose! I'll remember this for after we're done, in fact!”
Yells Beatrice, her face red as she swings her held hand in a huff.
Subaru looks at her, charmed, while also directing his attention to the horde of approaching hares. He licks his dry lips.
Subaru: “So, Beatrice. We're fighting the Sizeable Hare, where's your mental prep sitting?”
Beatrice: “I am moments post-contract. The opponent is one of the great witchbeast triumvirate. We are unprepared and conditions are poor. My contractor is a novice. I haven't participated in battle in four hundred years.”
Subaru: “And?”
Beatrice: “I could ask for no handicap finer, I suppose.”
Beatrice smiles fearlessly as the beasts, their teeth chattering, swoop in to close the distance. Subaru steps forward to face their attack and glances to Emilia behind him.
Subaru: “Me and Beatrice are about to crush the Sizeable Hare. Emilia-tan, I'm sorry for this, but some're gonna slip past so I want you protecting everyone!”
Emilia: “I'm...”
Emilia cuts her sentence off there, hesitant for a moment.
But after closing her eyes and taking a quiet breath,
Emilia: “Right. Leave it to me. —And I'm leaving it to you.”
Subaru: “Yup, all mine.”
Put the right people in the right places, split the roles up between them, do what's best for you to do. Emilia gives a deep breath as she concentrates on controlling her magic and erects a defensive line. The snowfall continues to rage as Emilia forms a blockade of ice.
Subaru steps out from Emilia's line of defence as he gazes at the white typhoon.
Red eyes and sharp fangs stretch on as far as his eyes can see. Coated in pure white fur, this is the witchbeast spurred by the most primitive and insatiable hunger in the world. The Sizeable Drove— otherwise said, the Sizeable Hare.
The chittering of their fangs makes the ache in Subaru's soul spread to his whole body.
He has died gruesomely, flesh devoured and innards ravaged, to those fangs. He has felt the agony of a hole gaping through his abdomen, spouting blood while teeth severed his windpipe. And he knows the overwhelming feeling of loss from death, his body chewed up and missing limbs, in Emilia's arms.
To complete this loop series, Natsuki Subaru must surmount this witchbeast.
Beatrice: “—Are you afraid, I suppose?”
Asks Beatrice to Subaru, holding his breath as he gazes at the beast.
Her face is impassive as she glances up at him. But her eyes, and her expression, inform Subaru far more eloquently than her words.
—Inform him exactly who it is that stands beside him.
Subaru: “Nope. Not at all.”
Beatrice: “Oh?”
Subaru: “Emilia's at my back and you're at my side. It's like I'm strongest man in the world.”
Beatrice: “Doubtlessly, in fact.”
Beatrice's cheeks relax into a smile.
So you do get it, says her expression. Subaru joins her in her wicked smile.
The Sizeable Hare enters a frenzy, rushing for the brazen duo.
Beatrice points her free right hand, the one that is not holding Subaru's, at the Hare.
Beatrice: “We'll begin with a warm-up, I suppose. —El Meenya.”
Space spirals alongside the canto as purple crystals materialize around Subaru and Beatrice, surrounding them.
These things, with the brilliance and bearing of icicles, are the magical stakes that Beatrice used in a previous loop to skewer Elsa. In a single instant, forty of them have formed.
It takes less than a moment for one to aim and silently shoot off—without its aim deviating in the least, to spear straight through the open mouth of a hare. The skewer proceeds to plummet through the air and plunge into the rearward horde of hares, where it explodes. Fragments of crystal shred through the hares around the site of impact, slivering them.
That is what one shot can do, and Beatrice fires forty at once.
The looming omnipresent destruction brings bloody flowers to blossom through the white world. The ruthless opening attack annihilates hundreds of hares. Aftermath of the destruction litters the clearing, where the surviving hares shriek in agony. The beast can multiply infinitely and there are still units of it left, but even so, it works Subaru up.
That is, Beatrice's unimaginably devastating destructive capabilities do.
Subaru: “W-woaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!”
Beatrice: “I-is it that incredible, I suppose? It isn't anything so impressive, in fact. This is the lowest of techniques from Betty, I suppose. A piece of cake, in fact.”
Subaru: “No, what, the... this, savage magic! What affinity!?”
Beatrice: “It's obviously going to be yin, I suppose. I'm not the best at other types of magic, in fact.”
Says Beatrice, not looking entirely satisfied about Subaru's praise.
The ravaged witchbeast immediately starts cannibalizing the gore from the corpses and multiplies itself again, but Beatrice pays this not the slightest of mind.
Beatrice: “Pay attention in fact, Subaru. Here's a lecture from one yin user to another, I suppose.”
Subaru: “What, is that all?”
Beatrice: “Huh?”
Subaru: “Was our relationship just about both being yin...”
Beatrice: “Th-that wasn't what I meant, in fact. You're a fellow yin user, my contractor, and also umm... Betty's Subaru, I suppose. Yes. And so here's my lesson to you, in fact.”
Beatrice, flustered, probably doesn't even know what she's saying. She coughs before raising her finger and lowering her voice.
Beatrice: “About the apex of yin—the apogee of Yin Magic.”
Subaru: “What do I need to do?”
Beatrice: “Hold my hand, and keep me from being alone, I suppose.”
Subaru: “I mean I do think that's important, but...”
Beatrice: “...It seems you don't quite understand spiritualism, which gives me some concerns for the future, in fact.”
She can be as exasperated as she wants, it won't change that he doesn't know what he doesn't know.
Beatrice shakes her head at Subaru as he frowns, and pulls him forward by the hand.
Beatrice: “Fundamentally, a spiritualist and a spirit fight on the battlefield as single entity with separate minds, I suppose.”
Subaru: “A single entity with separate minds...”
Subaru thinks about Emilia's fighting style.
The most striking battle that involved both Emilia and Puck was the one with Elsa in the loot house. Emilia had placed Puck on offence while she took charge of defence. She would also use simpler techniques to buy time so that Puck could unleash massive attacks.
That bald old man mentioned that that was the basis of how spiritualists fight.
Subaru: “So I just have to do that. Okay, time for Shamac!”
Beatrice: “Being subject to your defective Shamac would probably damage us as well so I would rather we not, in fact. And Subaru, your gate is...”
Beatrice trails off, looking reluctant to speak. Subaru feels apologetic that he forced her into giving this consideration. His gate is probably junk.
He abused it. He can feel that it's broken. Again, he is speaking fantasies.
Beatrice: “—It's coming, I suppose.”
Mutters Beatrice halfway through her speech. The instant after Subaru grunts in confusion, he realises that his feet are no longer touching the ground.
Beatrice kicks off the ground, and the jump carries the two of them straight into the air like a spring. That exact nanosecond, a horde of witchbeast's fangs closes in on the spot the two had just been. The Hare's fangs clatter against each other as the hares leap off the ground in pursuit of the two.
Subaru: “We're flying!?”
Beatrice: “We only jumped, in fact. I've diminished the effects of gravity with the yin spell MURAK, I suppose. If we desired, we could fly by riding the wind, in fact.”
Subaru: “You see we're falling though!?”
Beatrice: “We could keep riding the wind if we were simply fleeing... but we are annihilating them, I suppose.”
Like leaves tossing in the wind, Subaru and Beatrice are buffeted by blizzard. They regardless fail to gracelessly flip upside-down midair, probably by Beatrice's doing.
The two are on slow descent from their ten-meter high peak. The hares wait below them with their mouths gaping open, leaving Subaru to put his hopes in another rally of magical spears.
Beatrice: “Subaru, a continuation in fact. Spiritualists don't cast magic by using their internal mana, but by directly manipulating the ambient mana, I suppose. A contract with minor spirits is essential for this, so you are not currently meeting those requirements, in fact.”
Subaru: “Ah, uhrm, Beatrice-san? There's, there's kind of a whole bunch of them right under us!?”
Beatrice: “Just listen to me, I suppose. Your gate is trashed, and you cannot use minor spirits. So poor useless hopeless Subaru's only role is to stay at Betty's side and praise Betty's magnificence, I suppose. Why are you even here, in fact?”
Subaru: “That's what I wanna know!”
Beatrice: “Then I'll teach you, I suppose.”
The witchbeasts leaping up from below them will start reaching their feet in no time at all. If their fangs bite on, the hares will never let go. Even he has to find it overwhelmingly lame to take huge damage and start crying after how cool and composed he acted.
Subaru yells rather hysterically at Beatrice.
Subaru: “What do I do!?”
Beatrice: “Visualise, in fact. Imagine the same crystals that I made before, I suppose. They are crystallized mana, spears weaved from corporeal magic. They taper to sharp points, with ruinous shards packed inside them, piercing through defences and stabbing into flesh. —Visualise this attack.”
Subaru: “Visualised!”
Beatrice: “Now all you must do is incant, I suppose!”
The horde of hares waits below them, mouths agape.
Red eyes, bloodstained maw, sharp fangs, instincts that view Subaru as merely a wad of meat. Utterly repugnant, utterly loathsome, this is the greatest adversary in SANCTUARY.
Both: “—El Meenya!!”
Subaru and Beatrice's cantos mirror each other, and the conjured spears rain down at the ground from on high.
Explosions and destruction rock the earth of SANCTUARY, eviscerating the ugly witchbeast.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
Emilia: “Amazing...”
Sighs Emilia in admiration as she freezes a hare that slipped past solid.
Her amethyst eyes stay fixated on Subaru and Beatrice, fighting the beast beyond the shroud of snow.
More specifically, Emilia's eyes stay fixated on Beatrice as she holds Subaru's hand. Emilia herself is a spiritualist, who is using the minor spirits' magic this very instant. She understands to a painful degree how incredible this magical confrontation is.
First, Beatrice is not receiving any magical reserves from Subaru.
They are definitely connected by the pass from their contract: it's simply that Beatrice is abstaining from doing so. Subaru was thrown into combat immediately after forming this spirit contract. If Beatrice siphons the mana she needs from him, he won't last.
Beatrice understands this, and is taking care not to burden Subaru.
Second, it's not that Beatrice is taking magic from Subaru—she's giving it to him.
It's not the most accurate phrasing, but it's the truth. Subaru, as he holds hands with Beatrice, is receiving Beatrice's support, allowing him to use magic that should be inaccessible to him. He isn't using his gate, and is instead using Beatrice's presence itself like a gate.
There is no way that Subaru can possibly understand how monumental this is.
Beatrice the spirit is supplying the magic for both herself and Subaru not from some outside source, but her own magical stockpile.
And third, she is legitimately witnessing advanced yin magic.
The class of a magician's magical affinity greatly influences their future. Specialization in any of the four main types of magic will demarcate them into distinct roles, and the same applies to the two special types of yin and yang; meaning that their essence differs greatly from the other four, even before reaching the advanced stages.
And then is the fact that they initially look to lack uses. They comes with lots of problems, like the time needed to procure results or required quantity of magical power, that are also cons.
So the yin and yang affinities are both rare, and have few advanced practitioners.
Many spells have been lost over time, unlike with the main four, making it a difficult environment to produce any new great magicians.
Yin has all of these glaring issues, and Beatrice has mastered it. And she is using ancient magic, long lost to time and history, as if it's nothing.
Emilia: “Woah, they went really high that time. Huh? They're gone... oh, there they went.”
The way they fight is so dreamlike and phantasmal that it makes her lose her sense of reality. Though part of it probably comes from the fact that Subaru and Beatrice are so amicably holding hands.
Emilia can tell that Subaru is fighting desperately, but Beatrice is even smiling.
She must be having a lot of fun. It's not that she enjoys fighting, or flaunting her power. It's just that doing this is fun for her.
Emilia: “—”
Emilia blinks, and Subaru and Beatrice have moved to a completely different spot. It's teleportation magic akin to the more limited GATE CROSSING. Purple spears blast through a row of hares from either end, the beasts shrieking furiously as they try to leap at the two, only for their bodies to catch on something midair and shred apart.
Emilia strains her eyes. She spots it.
The fragments from the detonated spear have not vanished, and instead sit suspended in space, as if frozen in time. The leaping hares shred themselves on those splinters, ripping themselves apart. The crystalline trap is spread all across the area as the witchbeasts move, jumping, tumbling to resolutely attack the two, all while triggering the trap quite comically.
The Sizeable Hare is a fearsome witchbeast, but the individual hares are not that threatening. They lack any great power, and should an experienced fighter pay mind to the hare's ferocity while combating it, they will definitely come out ahead.
A fighting style as reckless as 'follow your instinct to eat' will learn nothing. They want their fellow hares to be caught and dismembered in the traps, because their hunger is everything. So they pay no heed to the fact that they will die caught in the exact same trap, jump at them, and become a cadaver.
Emilia: “Ah!”
Emilia strikes another hare that escaped the siege with her magic.
She dashes over to the frozen hare and kicks it to pieces without any hesitation. It shatters into shards of ice, so utterly deceased that it cannot reform.
Subaru and Beatrice have been putting in such a good fight that only a surprisingly few hares have slipped past to Emilia. Emilia can even concentrate on suppressing her own magical power.
But even as she watches Beatrice's display of overwhelming strength, Emilia cannot erase the kernel of anxiety within her.
Beatrice's snare is powerful and cunning. The Sizeable Hare keeps catching itself in the trap, building a mountain of corpses. But Emilia cannot see the end.
What Emilia witnesses is one of the hares trembling, when another hare appears as if sprouted out of the first one's back. The hares repeat and repeat this, the beasts multiplying like mice.
100 hares compounds into 200 in an instant, and into 400 in the next.
It has numbers, and wretched instincts ignorant to the concept of 'stopping'.
Which is why this beast is counted as one of the great three, and has gone four hundred years doing whatever it wishes as a CALAMITY—
Emilia: “Subaru, Beatrice.”
Emilia calls their names. Though they look to have an overwhelming advantage, they mustn't fall negligent.
Emilia will never forget how she shivered after returning to the tomb with Roswaal and Ram, and first confirmed the Sizeable Hare's presence.
Those eyes regarded every single thing alive as nothing more than its food.
An entity truly incapable of any co-existence will make those who oppose it feel that utter despair. To oppose that overwhelming absurdity, Emilia needed to demonstrate comparable power.
And that was what she had intended to do.
A torrent of magic churns within her, not fully under her control. It surely cannot all belong to her alone, and should she unleash it, it will annihilate the Sizeable Hare.
She would be offering her life in exchange. And she was prepared to do that, if it came to it.
Emilia: “Subaru...”
She murmurs his name as he fights on.
Her had known about the Hare's attack beforehand, and it doesn't seem that he's fighting it without a plan. He's brought Beatrice out of the Forbidden Archive, and has her so full of life.
He would never do anything to bring gloom to that smile.
And so Emilia believes in Natsuki Subaru.
White magic, capable of ending everything, asserts its presence in her heart. She holds it down, advising that its time has not come yet.
—She believes in his words.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
For Subaru, using magic has always been tantamount to whittling away his soul.
At first it had been exactly like what Puck and Roswaal had said, that Subaru possessed not the slightest of talent as a magician. It was so bad that, when he first used Shamac, he couldn't keep himself from wringing out his mana and so fell immobile.
He next got by on hits of Bocco Fruit. He used magic during his duel even when he was prohibited from doing so, and ultimately he abused his gate so terribly that it collapsed.
He has not any hope of being a magician.
Magic had saved Subaru many times, but he considered it something like whittling away at his already delicate core, sharpening it down, something like that. He thought it inevitable that it broke.
And so he had only dreamed about doing what he's doing now, firing off consecutive blasts of incredible magic, and could only think this reality impossible.
Subaru: “Hey, Beatrice! Should we really keep blasting them like this!?”
The Sizeable Hare generates more hares than what Subaru and Beatrice defeat. The hares eat their dead brethren, steadily compounding in number. It seems like they're using their multiplication as energy, for each hare grows more forceful the more that their number compounds.
This does encourage some dim hopes that, if they keep buying time, the hares will eventually run out of energy to multiply themselves. But,
Beatrice: “There's no limit to their propagation, in fact. That's how they were crafted to be, I suppose. Even when they verge on destruction they will not be destroyed. Unless you annihilate them all at once.”
Subaru: “So what do we do? Do you have any ideas?”
Beatrice: “Subaru, are you trying to rely on adorable Betty for everything, I suppose?”
An explosion of crystal opens a hole in the mob, blasting the hares away, to be dismembered on the suspended shards. Beatrice sees this through as she pulls Subaru's arm and hops into the air. Though neither her tug nor her jump are that forceful, she easily succeeds in both.
Beatrice walks on air, dancing through space to avoid the hares' fangs as she weaves through gaps in her crystalline snare. The lack of a single drop of blood sullying her extravagant dress proves that, in this fight, she feels not the slightest agitation or unease.
Beatrice: “We're moving, in fact.”
Subaru: “Right.”
With that, space bends, and the two engage in a short-range teleport.
They cross through space in a manner unlike GATE CROSSING, reappearing behind the horde of hares. The beasts sniff, but having lost Subaru and Beatrice, remain fraught with openings.
Beatrice: “You take the left, I suppose.”
Subaru: “Right's all yours.”
Visualize. Beatrice's magic reacts to Subaru's fantasy, manipulates the world, and brings about that transformation.
He definitely feels that he is benefiting at her expense, but that's why he's not playing around in the slightest.
The purple crystals of yin's Meenya spells form in accordance to Subaru's imagination.
Subaru generates winding grooves on the projectiles to magnify their piercing force before firing them off all at once. His hands never touch them, but they do fire according to his will.
It's like he's drawing a mental bowstring, to shoot incorporeal arrows.
They spear through the air, landing a direct hit on the undefended hares, blasting the mob of them screeching away.
Beatrice's destruction does the same thing to the right end of the mob, scattering them in all directions.
Fissures in space swallow mobs of hares, sealing several hundreds inside a closed space as if in a picture frame. The hares hop about beyond the looking-glass. Beatrice fires a crystalline spear at the heedless mob of hares—shattering the planar world to pieces, sending the hares inside to their end.
Subaru swallows his breath, astonished at Beatrice's multifaceted sorcery.
While Subaru keeps repeating Meenya like an idiot, Beatrice keeps repeating entirely new combinations of yin magic to annihilate the Sizeable Hare.
It's as if she's showing off every card she has in hand to Subaru. Or as if she's doing it to remind herself of her skills.
Beatrice: “About now, in fact.”
Subaru: “Hm?”
The Sizeable Hare has been cut down in number, only for it to instantly regenerate the exact quantity it lost.
Subaru witnesses this, and again feels the strangeness that he has been feeling for a while now. Putting that together with Beatrice's muttering, Subaru feels the urge for a conversation.
Subaru: “Beatrice. They've been recovering the same number they lost... but doesn't it feel like they've never gone over their original amount?”
Supposing there are one thousand hares, if Subaru defeats one hundred of them, it multiplies to make one hundred more. If he defeats two hundred hares, he gets two hundred more hares. The scales have not tipped once, no matter how many of them he kills. But Subaru has never seen them multiply beyond that highest number. Beatrice nods to Subaru.
Beatrice: “Their multiplication itself may be unlimited, but there is likely a ceiling to how many hares there can be, in fact. So they cannot multiply beyond that, I suppose.”
Subaru: “Then, if we can finish off that ceiling all at once...”
Beatrice: “Theoretically, that will destroy it. ...But that presents its own difficulties, in fact.”
Subaru sees hope, but Beatrice makes a complicated expression.
Well, of course. There are enough hares to drown out everything in sight. If they had the magic to burn everything in visible range then they might be able to destroy the Hare, but how much power would it take to do it all in one second, and get all of them?
It's a violent plan akin to missile bombing the whole region. And if even one of them survives, they will all instantly regenerate. The risk is far too great.
Subaru: “Then... okay. That's it.”
Beatrice: “You've thought of something, I suppose?”
Subaru: “It's me being utterly dependant on you yet again but yeah.”
Subaru watches the witchbeast multiply as he whispers into Beatrice's ear.
Beatrice lowers her gaze in thought, and nods.
Beatrice: “I've been thinking the same thing, in fact. But doing it would require...”
Subaru: “I know there's a bottleneck. However! You better not get the wrong idea, Beatrice!”
Beatrice: “—?”
Subaru: “It's not like we have to solve this problem on our own, yeah?”
Beatrice's eyes widen at this. She gives a quiet sigh, pitching over in Subaru's direction to set her forehead on his chest.
Beatrice: “Truly, Subaru... you present some extraordinary solutions, in fact.”
Subaru: “I do promise to be such a thrillingly fresh and novel contractor that you'll never ever get bored.”
Subaru shoots her a thumbs up, his teeth sparkling. Beatrice smiles wryly before looking up, her face against his chest.
Beatrice: “Fine I suppose, let's do it in fact. But even Betty needs time to pull this off, I suppose. Let's see you manage well over that period, in fact.”
Subaru: “Just pretend you're relaxing on a safe sturdy boat. It's what I'm doing.”
Beatrice: “We'll see who'll be doing the paddling, I suppose.”
Beatrice pushes away from Subaru's chest.
She takes a breath, closes her eyes, and begins focusing on escalating her magic.
Seeing this, Subaru psychs himself up and kicks off the snow.
The witchbeast's fangs click and clatter as it chases Subaru, running. Silhouettes come swooping for his legs. But they're too slow. After these two days of butcheries, the Sizeable Hare looks wimpy.
Subaru: “Out of the way! Move it! I don't have the time to deal with you right now!”
Subaru dodges the fangs, kicks away the hares.
He incants, using crystal spears to force open a path as he charges through the clearing with Beatrice cradled in his arms, sprinting back to the tomb.
Emilia: “Huh, wha, Subaru!?”
Emilia looks shocked as she witnesses Subaru's return.
Subaru skids to a stop beside her before placing Beatrice, her eyes closed, on the snowy ground beside him and stroking her head.
Subaru: “Sorry, Emilia-tan! We're having some trouble pulling it off on our own!”
Emilia: “I-I mean, that's fine, but... what do we do now? Right, I'm going to—”
Subaru: “No, we have an idea for how to beat it. You don't have to use your suicide bomber absolute death moves. Or actually just don't use them. It'll make all our efforts until now pointless.”
Emilia swallows her breath and stares intently at Subaru's face.
Did she seriously think he wouldn't figure it out? She seriously did, didn't she.
Of course Emilia would, if truly backed into a corner in a situation like this, bring harm to herself to land the decisive blow. What an impossible girl.
'It's okay to hurt myself if it saves everyone?' Just stop.
Subaru: “It's best that everyone's safe and everyone's saved, duh.”
Emilia: “...Subaru.”
Subaru: “So Emilia-tan, I have kind of a crazy request. If it doesn't look feasible then I'll think on it more, but if it looks feasible then I want to see your best. —Let's all win this together.”
Emilia: “—”
Emilia puts her hand to her chest, seeming to feel something about Subaru's statement, blinking several times.
Subaru conjures crystal spears and fires them at the witchbeast horde to hold them in check, buying time for Emilia to come to her decision. It does not end up taking long at all.
Emilia: “Alright. Let's do this, Subaru. I'm ready for anything.”
Says Emilia, steeling her resolve, her gaze determined.
Subaru pumps his fists as he glances back to her.
Subaru: “That's the spirit. Here we go!”
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
Subaru feels incredible swells of magic beside him, coming from both sides.
Emilia stands on his left, and Beatrice on his right.
Each of them holds one of Subaru's hands, linking the three of them together. There was no real significance to them doing this. It's just to motivate Subaru.
In context of battle, you call 'motivation' 'morale'. And high morale is essential for dictating the tide of battle.
Subaru: “Visualise, visualise, visualise!”
Subaru envisions the wicked, powerful, magical assault.
He creates pointed amethyst spears and bombards the expanse of approaching hares with them. He fights his hardest, repeating volley after volley to keep the hares from reaching either themselves or the tomb.
Subaru is not using his own mana to cast this magic. So he is casting without suffering any strain— would be a complete misunderstanding.
He is getting the mana he needs to cast from Beatrice, but Subaru is the one regulating the magic. He visualises the spears' force, their aim, their quantity, materializes them and fires them, then instantly moves to the next attack.
He would be suffering even more bodily fatigue alongside this, were he an actual magician. He cannot hope to imagine the immense burden and concurrent workload. He can agree with his lack of talent for it.
The spears strike against the ground, shockwaves and detonations sending the hares flying as they screech in protest. Their fangs click and chitter and click and chitter and click and with the howling blizzard as accompaniment, it sounds like the cog-wheels of hell, or something to that effect.
The cogs on the grim conveyor to send Subaru's team to the guillotine press ever closer.
Subaru: “Meenya! Meenya! Ah, crap! Biting my tongue on this magic!”
While grumbling about the unpronounceable incantation, Subaru takes aim at the charging Hare. He fires the conjured crystals, and the leading hare's head—goes untouched as the spear strikes the ground before it, and the shockwave pushes it back into the mob.
The plan is in phase one.
Subaru is controlling the horde with his conjured spears, but he isn't killing them. They want to avoid disruption to the ceiling, and having the hares multiply at some indefinite juncture.
He is keeping the Sizeable Hare at its ceiling while pinning it in place. Although,
Subaru: “If you're attracted to mana's smell, then there's no way you're prying your attention from us.”
After all, there are two people here maintaining nigh-unwitnessed magnitudes of mana. And they're both beautiful girls. Subaru, right now, has flowers in both hands. Anyone would envy him.
Subaru: “Visualize, visualize, visualize... come on, you gotta be jealous! Wanna try coming closer!”
Hums Subaru, not neglecting to taunt the animal.
Part of it is to inflame the enemy, but it's more about Subaru encouraging himself. If he feigns that an extraordinary situation is an ordinary one, he can manage to keep himself going.
If he doesn't do this, he cannot assure himself steady knees. Both of his hands feel a warmth. With this touch on his palms, he absolutely cannot show the pathetic side of himself.
Subaru: “Visualize, visualize, visualise...!”
Mutters Subaru over and over as he strains his eyes.
The horde of hares has pushed forward; there is a limit to how far Subaru can restrain them. But preparations are not in place yet.
Not Emilia's, or Beatrice's, or Subaru's.
Emilia: “...Subaru.”
He feels someone squeeze his hand, and looks to find Emilia gazing at him, her eyes faintly open. Her preparations are in order, then? She is smiling, awaiting Subaru's signal.
Subaru: “—hk”
Pushed onward by Emilia's gaze, Subaru strains his bloodshot eyes further.
The curtain of blustering blizzard is thick, constantly concealing and revealing the places he is trying to see. But the sight of their wriggling, white forms does tell Subaru of the slight difference between the witchbeast and the snowbanks.
—Just a little more, a tiny, right there, there, there, there!
Subaru grits his teeth. Waits for the moment.
Confirming that the front, the sides, all of it, everything is correct, Subaru's eyes shoot open.
Subaru: “Now, Emilia! Follow the lines!!”
Shouting, Subaru squeezes down on Emilia's hand.
Emilia's amethyst gaze focuses firmly to the front as she looks at the lines Subaru drew.
While he kept the Hare in check with conjured spears, Subaru had been simultaneously drawing lines across the earth with mana. Using formless mana to gouge into the earth had been the utmost in difficulty.
But Subaru, as talentless as people called him, overcame that ordeal by a combination of focus and PRETENTIONS that far exceeded those of the ordinary person. The ones that disallowed him from looking uncool around others, those pretentions.
He drew four lines in total.
Four long lines, that form a box around the mass of hares.
Lines that would tell Emilia where to aim.
Emilia: “Excellent, Subaru! You did sooo wonderful!”
Cheers Emilia at his beautiful set-up, saying things she would usually never say.
Emilia raises her right hand, Subaru's hand still in her grip, and places her half-frozen left hand atop it. And, incants.
Emilia: “—Al Huma!!”
The multitude of magic surges as the world transforms in accordance to Emilia's canto.
Mana rushes to Emilia and Subaru's linked hands before shooting into the atmosphere, piercing through the earth, and converging with Subaru's lines of mana.
—The earth bellows as something incredible occurs.
Subaru: “Woah...”
Says Subaru, astonished, as he watches what happens.
Well of course. Anyone witnessing this would react the same way.
Emilia's magic traces over the lines that Subaru drew—and all of the snow within the box starts levitating.
All of the hares within the box remain atop the snow platform, but they have not noticed that these tremors happened because the ground beneath them is floating.
It may be a limited space, but the floating platform is still about twenty by twenty meters. This sight, of so many hares crowded together and shuddering on this platform, beautifully demonstrates the supernatural nature of 'magic'.
Subaru: “Emilia!”
Emilia: “Got it! I'm not letting them get away!”
But if they stop here, then the Hare is just going to jump off the platform.
There is one more thing they have to do to keep it from escaping.
Emilia raises their linked hands up high—and swings them right down.
The floating snowfield rumbles. Surely, the Hare never imagined what would happen.
A roar, and a frigid blast of stabbing wind.
It showers over Subaru and the others as they keep their eyes fixated on the platform, to see the results through.
—By the time the wind stops, the snowfield is vertically shut.
The left and right ends of Emilia's floating platform have folded to meet at the centre.
The ground has been shut in the same manner as a book, sealing the Hare inside the snow without any means of escape.
Subaru hurriedly looks over the closed platform's surroundings. They missed—none. Movement— nowhere.
All of the hares are in one place, trapped in an extraordinarily small area. With this,
Subaru: “The big one's all on you, Beatrice!”
Subaru calls to Beatrice, telling her that the secondary set-up is complete. Hearing this, and having quietly chanted the canto the entire time, Beatrice's eyes open.
Seeing the sight before her, Beatrice laughs quietly.
It's not surprise or anything like that. A smile abounding with trust arises on her face,
Beatrice: “Here is the pinnacle of yin. —Al Shamac.”
The instant she murmurs the canto, shadow drowns out the world.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
—For a moment, it is manhandled by something like vertigo.
But it really does only last for a moment.
The vertigo stops, and a shock impacts its feet. Then the bondage pressing on its body disappears. It starts off by giving a big shake to get the snow off its fur.
It sniffs the air, looks around the area.
Its eyes, its nose, its ears, all get the better of it as they prioritize the hunt for prey. Its red eyes glance about as it searches for sweet-smelling game.
Nothing. There had been prey so delectable that it made its stomach wrench painfully, right in front of it, just a second ago. With tender flesh and sweet blood, prey that might sate this starvation even temporarily had definitely been right there.
Its nose smells nothing. Its eyes see nothing. Its ears hear nothing.
The prey is gone. It looks around. Nowhere in sight.
Hunger instantly overwrites its disappointment. To distract itself from its hunger and urge to chew, it decides to bite into the white mass beside to it.
It gnashes at it, shreds its flesh, slurps at its blood while clawing out its innards. It chews away to its heart's content, swallows it down, and then notices that identical meals are unfolding all around it.
There's less prey now.
It doesn't feel like it's in danger, but in accordance with its survival instincts, it bites off the head of another white mass that frantically consumes all around it. Bites into it, and swallows it down.
And this repeats. And repeats. Spurred on by endless hunger, it goes to the neighbouring prey, and the prey neighbouring that, and the prey neighbouring that, and the prey neighbouring that, and the prey neighbouring—.
Eventually, after devouring everything around, it is the only thing left.
It licks up the blood soaking the ground, leaving not a single scrap of gore or blood-soaked grass left. Once it tidily cleans up the remains of the meal, it truly is alone.
But even with meat in its stomach, starvation far exceeding its body mass assaults it.
It cries out, teeth chattering, near to madness. Unending starvation, insatiable hunger. The maddening lack of release, no matter how much it eats.
Mother must have felt this too.
For an instant, a mysterious thought passes through a mind dominated by hunger.
The indistinct thing had been a simple flash of emotion, nothing so cultivated as to reach language. And it, too, vanishes eternally in the face of maddening hunger.
The creature trembles, trembles violently. It shrieks as it feels its innards churn about, and it unconsciously creates another entity.
This sudden, new white mass tumbles back-first onto the ground, as if it's forgotten how to walk. Every single one of its organs registers this thing prey, and it bites into the tumbling mass without any hesitation.
It swallows it down without allowing it even to shriek. After eating, the hunger still torments it. And following all this agonized struggling, another creature other than itself is born into the world.
And it repeats, and it repeats, the same thing going on and on and on and on.
It's alone now. Nothing else exists in this world. There are buildings, and forests, and earth, and air and wind, but no prey. It's alone.
And it proceeds to eat.
Eventually, even IT is devoured by another stomach, and disappears.
The new lonely one repeats and repeats it all until it is that no longer. The world turns.
—Insatiable hunger is never to be sated.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
The momentary presence of the incredible shadow makes Subaru swallow his breath.
Subaru: “—”
The black orb that Beatrice's canto created swallows the snowfield trapping the Hare that Emilia sealed, then proceeds to shrink smaller and smaller, before eventually shrinking smaller than a marble and silently vanishing.
Even Subaru, who does not know the theory behind this feat, understands what this means.
Al Shamac, the greatest of Shamac spells, is magic that affects space.
The magic swallowed the Hare and the snowfield, then blasted them all into another dimension. Neither regeneration nor multiplication mean anything any more.
Because it's literally another world's issue.
Subaru: “I know I did... ask you to send them into an isolated space like the Forbidden Archive, but...”
Beatrice: “Do I hear malcontent, I suppose?”
Subaru's voice trembles before the incredible feat, while Beatrice pouts beside him. She puts her hands to her hips, quite displeased with Subaru's attitude.
Emilia: “Seriously, wow...”
The whole thing makes Emilia's eyes open wide as well.
Emilia is more learned in magic than Subaru, so her surprise is happening on another vector. Her powers have probably settled in somewhat after half-freezing herself and using such immense magic. Once she figures out how to control it, she'll probably be fine.
Subaru looks around, confirming that there is nothing where the Hare used to be.
Then he glances behind him, and confirms that the tomb is secure too. Peeking out from the tomb is an expressionless mob of Leweses. Looks like the Lewes doubles have all managed to reach safety too.
Roswaal is leaning against the wall beside the tomb's entrance, with Ram in his arms.
Ram's hand is touching Roswaal's cheek, and Subaru can see that Roswaal is crying.
Subaru: “—”
Witnessing that, Subaru feels the weight in his chest disappear.
There are still so many things that they have to talk about. Otto, Garfiel, and the others are still back at the mansion. He does believe they're safe, but they need to meet up and talk. And on this side, too. He has so many things to ask Emilia.
But somehow, it feels like everything is all right.
There are so many things he hasn't verified yet. But seeing Roswaal crying, and Ram smiling softly as she watches him, makes Subaru feel that: hey, everything's all right.
Emilia: “Subaru, come on!”
Subaru takes his breather, until Emilia suddenly pokes his cheek.
Emilia smiles at Subaru when he looks back at her, and then gestures to the area behind him. Where there Beatrice stands with her arms folded, still looking sulky.
Beatrice: “I believe that this ace deserves a few words, in fact.”
317
Beatrice puffs out her cheeks. Subaru replies with a nod.
And,
Beatrice: “Ah, eep!”
Subaru slips his hands under her arms and lifts her right up.
He ignores her adorable yelp, embracing her as he spins around on the spot,
Subaru: “You did it! Knew you could, I'm so in love with you, Beako!!”
Beatrice: “Wh—hold it! Sto—let me—let me go, I suppose! Betty isn't...”
Subaru: “Yes yes yes! You are adorable! Beako is wonderful! Beako is supreme! All hail Beako!”
Showing her in praise, Subaru spins round and around with Beatrice in his arms. Beatrice's face flashes beet red as Emilia watches them frolic, her gaze awfully gentle.
The spirit and contractor, spinning and spinning in an energetic expression of delight—
Both: “Ah!”
—lose their footing at the last moment, and happily plunge face-first into the snow together.
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