Chapter 54: Beatrice's Answer (Patreon)

"If you ask me, this is what they call 'setting something free.'"

Natsuki Subaru walked up with a smile, picked up the black queen chess piece he'd used earlier from the tea table beside Beatrice, and set it upright on the table.

"Like raising an adorable little pet, and once it's grown, deciding to release it back into the wild because you think that's what's best for it."

"Life finds a way, they say. Looked at from that angle, maybe Echidna just wanted to let you all live freely."

Beatrice stared fixedly at the chess piece on the table, her body trembling faintly.

"Nonsense… this isn't freedom at all. This is abandonment!"

Her voice choked up again.

"Betty watched that door open, again and again, and close again. Every person who came through wasn't the one, and every person who left never came back! If this is freedom… then Betty would rather not have it!"

"You're right, it really was a rotten idea, one that didn't consider anyone else's feelings at all. I suppose that's exactly what you'd expect from the Witch of Greed — an utterly selfish, terrible woman."

"You… you dare insult Mother…" Beatrice stared at Subaru in shock.

"Why wouldn't I dare? If she were standing right in front of me, I'd say it to her face!"

Subaru crossed his arms and gave an irritated huff, glancing sidelong at Ciel beside him.

Now he finally understood exactly who Ciel had inherited that scheming streak from.

"Beatrice, I can tell you clearly — your mission is over. You've already done more than enough. Now it's time for you to take the first step."

"You're joking!"

Beatrice shrieked and swept the chess piece off the table, raising her hand to unleash a burst of wind magic — but the gust only made Subaru's hat wobble slightly before he pressed it back down.

"You liar! You're the one who said you're not the person Betty's been waiting for! Betty's such an idiot… such a huge idiot! To think Betty actually believed all your sweet talk! If you'd just admit you're the one, Betty could finally be free — so why won't you just say it?!"

"Because if I'm not, then I'm not." Subaru kept his fingers pressed to the brim of his hat, its shadow hiding his eyes. "An ending built on a lie — no matter how happy it seems — is nothing more than a fleeting dream."

"Even if it's a lie… even if it's just a lie!" Tears spilled uncontrollably from Beatrice's eyes once more. "If you'd just say the word, Betty… Betty would be willing—"

"Nonsense!"

Subaru cut her off with a sharp shout, and an unprecedented pressure erupted from his body, shaking the entire Forbidden Library.

"Your entire life, your waiting, your obsession — is that really something so cheap? Answer me, Beatrice!"

"Four hundred years of solitude — that's not something a single lie can end. Doing this would only cheapen your own conviction and betray your own oath. That's exactly why I will never claim to be the one you've been waiting for, and why I brought Miss Ciel before you."

As he spoke, Subaru raised a finger and pointed it straight between Beatrice's eyes.

"Only you can decide whether to leave. Only you can decide where your life goes from here. Have you already forgotten everything I told you before?"

"For me, even if the road ahead is long, as long as I walk it by my own will, freely and without regret, that's enough!"

"Now it's your turn to choose, Great Spirit Beatrice!"

"Today, you have to give me an answer. Go, or stay. Give me your truest answer."

Subaru pushed his hand a little further forward, until it was barely an inch from Beatrice's small face — close enough that just a little nearer, and he'd touch her soft cheek.

"Idiot… you huge idiot…"

Beatrice looked at him.

Warm tears fell drop by drop into Subaru's open palm.

"Betty… Betty really hates you…"

"Heh, yeah, I get it. The line of people wanting to settle scores with me could probably wrap around the whole manor."

"So feel free to come find me anytime you want payback — as long as you're willing to leave this ramshackle place."

Beatrice raised both hands, her fingertips brushing against Subaru's palm.

"I'll take that as a yes, then."

Subaru turned his hand over and grasped her small, cold one.

The next instant, a soft lavender radiance of mana burst forth from their joined palms!

The lavender glow of mana slowly faded through the Forbidden Library, like a receding tide, leaving devastation in its wake.

All in all, the scene didn't look great.

Dust drifted through the dim light of the chandelier, and countless grimoires shaken loose from the shelves lay scattered across the carpet — it looked like the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

"Ahem, why did nobody warn me that signing a contract with a Great Spirit comes with an explosion?"

Subaru poked his soot-streaked face out from a pile of books and picked up his hat, which had drifted off to one side, putting it back on his head.

Clearly, the scene left both Ciel and Beatrice utterly stunned — especially Beatrice, one of the two people directly involved.

The golden-haired little Great Spirit sat frozen on the floor in a duck-sit pose, eyes glazed over, wearing an expression that screamed 'Beatrice.exe has stopped responding.'

"Wait… this isn't right!"

Beatrice finally snapped out of it and dashed over to Subaru, cupping his hand in both of hers, feeling the flow of mana within him.

"Your Gates… what on earth happened to your body?! Why is the mana passing through your Gates so terrifyingly hot?"

Her voice trembled uncontrollably, deep unease flickering in her eyes.

"And that— that disgusting, terrifying aura of darkness… Subaru, what have you been through?! Why have you ended up like this?!"

Now that the contract between them was sealed, Beatrice could sense the state of Subaru's soul in the most direct way possible.

His magical aptitude, frankly, was quite poor — his Gates were few in number and mediocre in quality. The one standout trait was an extraordinarily high affinity for the Yin attribute, with his connection to the other four attributes remarkably weak — a rare case of an extreme Yin-magic specialist.

And yet despite such feeble magical talent, the sheer volume of mana flowing within Subaru was abnormally high — high enough that he could frequently cast unfamiliar forms of otherworldly Yin magic she'd never seen before. For Beatrice, an artificial spirit with an inherent flaw that kept her from drawing mana directly from the atmosphere and forced her to siphon it from her contractor instead, this was, in theory, a favorable condition.

But Beatrice couldn't feel glad about it in the least, because she had no way of knowing whether this very overload on his Gates was the cause of the strange changes in Subaru's body.

As for why Beatrice was so worried — it was because the mana inside this man was simply too terrifying—

Every drop of mana passing through the Gates in Subaru's body seemed to have been smelted into molten magma, radiating a scorching heat too fierce to approach, forever locked in a violently destructive, active state. Even a being with the highest possible affinity for Fire magic couldn't produce mana with this kind of heat.

That was probably why, despite Subaru possessing what could only be called an unprecedented affinity for spirits, the minor spirits always fled from him like he was some kind of plague. This wasn't spirit affinity — this was Chernobyl, one wrong move away from meltdown!

If the mana inside him alone was already causing this much trouble, the state of Subaru's soul could only be imagined — and it clearly wasn't good.

If she had to put it into words, it was like a bottomless abyss overflowing with destruction and hatred — next to this man, even any of the Witches might well count as perfectly sane.

Beatrice could hardly imagine how this black-haired young man managed to keep such a carefree, optimistic mental state. Unless he was a genuine, thoughtless fool, how could he possibly seem this normal?!

"Hey, hey, did I scare you?"

Subaru waved a hand in front of Beatrice, a little puzzled, and when she still didn't react, he grew bolder and rested his palm on her cream-gold curls, gently ruffling them.

"Well, whatever the case, I guess you're finally letting me pet you without a fuss. Score!"

"You idiot! Your body's in this kind of state and you can still laugh?! If Betty had known there was something this terrifying inside you, Betty… Betty never would have agreed to sign a contract with you!"

"Too late for regrets now."

Subaru grinned with shameless cheer, and Beatrice's round, baby-fat cheeks puffed up again, flushing with a bashful blush.

"So you were just teasing Betty, weren't you! You jerk! You big jerk! You devil of a contractor!"

Ciel stood off to the side, quietly watching the scene, and couldn't help covering her mouth with a small laugh.

Meanwhile, on that same peaceful morning, Emilia walked alone toward the dark corner beneath Roswaal Manor.

She had refused Ram's company, carrying only a single magic lantern as she made her way alone to the dungeon, to interrogate the two culprits who had attacked the manor and driven Mabeasts to assault Arlam Village, slaughtering many innocent villagers.

One of them had very nearly taken her life back in the royal capital. She thought that if Subaru hadn't been there at the time, she'd probably have ended up gutted open, her insides spilled out, nothing more than a corpse.

She knew that for someone like her — sheltered far too well by Puck and Roswaal, naive to a fault — this was a genuinely enormous challenge.

But she knew even better that if she couldn't even muster this much courage, she'd forever remain the useless half-elf sheltered behind everyone else, watching Subaru's back grow smaller and smaller in the distance.

"Subaru, wait for me."

Standing before the stairs leading down to the dungeon, she took a deep breath, an unprecedented resolve flickering in her pale violet eyes.

"This time, I absolutely won't let you walk ahead alone again."

The dungeon reeked of rust and mildew and rot. Torches burning along the walls stretched Emilia's shadow long and twisted across the floor as she walked, while the magic lantern in her hand lit her cold, composed expression — a face identical to that of the Witch of Envy who once devoured half the world, now finally radiating a pressure not unlike that of the World-Ending Witch herself.

Step by step, Emilia made her way to the bottom of the stairs and arrived before a cell door.

A voluptuous woman leaned against the corner, her arms bound tight in chains and hung against the wall. Beside her, a blue-haired young girl, likewise bound hand and foot, huddled trembling against her, like a frightened young animal seeking its mother's protection — a sight that might have stirred pity, under other circumstances.

But Emilia wasn't about to waste her sympathy on either of them.

The 'Bowel Hunter' Elsa Granhiert, and the 'Mabeast Master' Meili Portroute — both villains whose hands were stained with the blood of countless innocents, both deserving of every bit of punishment coming to them. As far as Emilia was concerned, they deserved something far heavier than mere imprisonment.

Being locked in this dungeon already counted as lenient treatment.

Late last night, Ram had come by to give the two of them a bit of 'memory-refreshing therapy' — perhaps because not knowing whether her sister would live or die had left her somewhat hysterical, she gave them quite the beating. Even now, Emilia could see countless small wounds covering both Elsa's and Meili's bodies.

Ram's wind magic had torn apart their clothes and flesh alike without mercy. Meili, perhaps because of her small frame and weak resistance, hadn't been subjected to anything too extreme. Elsa, however, was a different story — even with her cursed doll physiology and its astonishing regenerative power, it couldn't hide the scars left behind from being cut apart and regrown again and again. It wasn't hard to imagine just how brutal Ram's interrogation had been.

Yet the woman with such twisted tastes now seemed unable to even feel pain, her eyes nothing but hollow and lifeless. Even with Emilia standing right in front of her, she only stared blankly at a small pool of congealed blood on the floor before her, as if questioning that bloodstain for some answer she might never understand.

Everything she'd ever pursued, the spiritual pillar that had sustained her existence — all of it had been utterly crushed beneath Subaru's fists, in the cruelest, most contemptuous way imaginable.

The blazing end she'd sought, saturated with the will to destroy, had never come.

What came instead was nothing but a beating — devoid of beauty, devoid of feeling, pure punishment and nothing more. Her way of life, her aesthetic, the very 'Way' that had given her existence meaning — all of it had become utterly worthless beneath that man's cold gaze.

Meili, huddled beside her, had already noticed Emilia's arrival. Fear brimmed almost to overflowing in her eyes, yet she still mustered the courage to bare her teeth in a snarl, as if attempting some futile show of intimidation.

"Hello, ladies. I'm Emilia," she said.

Emilia spoke softly, her tone cold.

"Hah!" Meili let out a wary snarl, then shrank back behind Elsa, who slowly raised her head, her hollow gaze settling on Emilia as she spoke in a hoarse voice:

"Half-elf… what is it you want? Have you come to see how pathetic we've become?"

"That's not it."

Emilia shook her head, forcing herself to keep a stern expression as she met Elsa's eyes.

"I just have one thing to tell you both."

"Your leader, the Sin Archbishop of Lust, Capella Emerada Lugnica — is dead."

Elsa still showed no reaction. For someone whose heart had already died twice over, the words meant nothing.

But Meili, curled up beside her, couldn't stop her body from trembling violently. Shock and confusion filled her face as she stared at Emilia in disbelief, every trace of her earlier show of intimidation gone.

"Wh— what did you say?"

"Capella is dead." Emilia repeated coldly. "Burned by a black dragon until there wasn't even ash left. Completely dead — no risk of her ever coming back."

Dead… is she?

Meili's pupils shook violently.

The 'mother' who'd raised her like a tool since childhood, who was moody and unpredictable, who tortured her at the slightest whim, who treated the lives of her 'children' as worthless as weeds — was she really dead, just like that?

An indescribable emotion welled up inside her.

Wild joy, relief, and yet confusion too — even a trace of fear.

Meili felt that she really ought to be happy about this.

The monster that had tormented her for so long was finally gone.

She nearly wept for joy, tears of overwhelming emotion streaming almost uncontrollably down her cheeks.

But raised among Mabeasts since childhood, she had no idea what came after this happiness. What expression was a beast that had lost its prey supposed to wear, once caged and stripped of its fangs?

Meili didn't know.

"Good… that's so good…"

She murmured under her breath.

"Sister Elsa… did you hear that? That woman's dead! Dead…" "…Is that so?"

Elsa only lifted her head slowly, her gaze turning with mechanical stiffness, her hollow eyes settling on Meili as though trying to work out just who this person before her was.

Then she said nothing more.

Watching the sister she trusted most reduced to little more than a walking corpse, the last flicker of joy Meili had felt over Capella's death finally faded away completely.

She hesitated for a moment, but finally worked up the courage, fixing her bloodshot eyes on Emilia at the cell door and shrieking with false bravado:

"Hey! Half-elf!"

"If that woman's already dead, then what's the point of keeping us alive?"

Meili's voice still trembled uncontrollably with fear, but she forced herself to raise her pitch, pretending to be strong.

"Isn't it about time you killed us already? A caged beast is no different from a lamb waiting for slaughter anyway. If you're going to do it, just get it over with!"

Unexpectedly, though, Emilia only shook her head again in refusal.

"I'm not going to kill you."

Meili froze for a moment, then stared at her with open suspicion, pressing further:

"Why? Meili killed so many people in the village, and so did Sister Elsa. Don't you want revenge?"

"Of course I do." A cold, sharp glint flashed in Emilia's eyes. "Just thinking of all the innocent people who died because of you, I can't help wanting to make you pay in blood for blood!"

"But, letting you die so easily would be far too kind.