Subaru opened her eyes. The world rushed back into focus, the trees, the sky, the cold weight of the air in her lungs. She tried very hard not to fall on her knees. Her legs trembled. Her stomach churned. But she stayed standing, barely, her hands pressed against her thighs to keep them from shaking.
Think, she told herself. Think. You have been through this before. You can figure it out.
From what she had learned, Rivale was a very high class demon. His nickname was the Bloody God of War. That was not a title given to someone weak or unimportant. That was a title earned through centuries of killing, through battles that had reshaped the landscape, through a body count that would make the average soldier faint just hearing about it.
He knew her beforehand. He had recognized her as Linie, as if they had met before, as if they shared a history. The way he spoke to her, familiar but dismissive, like a parent addressing a child who had disappointed them.
Subaru's eyes widened.
What if he is Linie's father?
The thought struck her like a physical blow. It made a lot of sense. The same technique, the same spell, the ability to create weapons from mana. The way he spoke to her with such familiarity, such expectation. The way he looked at her when she failed, disappointed, as if he had been hoping for something more.
But why would a father not hesitate once before killing his own child? She had died at his hands multiple times now. Each time, he had shown no remorse, no hesitation, no sign that her death meant anything to him beyond a moment's disappointment.
Maybe it is a demon thing, she thought. Maybe demons do not feel the way humans feel about family. Maybe a child is just another demon, no different from any other, and killing them is no different from killing a stranger.
She was not sure if he was Linie's father or not. The thought was just a theory, a guess, a piece of a puzzle that she did not have enough information to solve. But it felt right. It fit the pieces she had.
Regardless, she could not outrun him. She had tried. He was faster. Much faster. Her legs would give out before she made it a hundred paces.
She could not overwhelm him with brute force. She had tried that too. His strength was greater than hers, his strikes heavier, his endurance deeper. Every clash left her bruised and broken and dying on the ground.
She could potentially try using those moves. The thought came unbidden, the memory of techniques she had seen in animes and read in visual novels, attacks that could theoretically level mountains and split the sky. But those moves would require time. At least twenty seconds to gather the mana, to shape it, to direct it. Twenty seconds of standing still, of focusing, of not getting killed.
He certainly was not going to let her aura farm and pull those moves. Unlike most animes where villains watched curiously as the hero powered up or summoned a weapon, Rivale seemed the type to attack first and ask questions never. He would not stand there with his arms crossed, waiting for her to finish her transformation sequence. He would just cut her head off and move on.
Why am I thinking this much? she wondered. Wait, did I always think this much?
She could not remember. The loops blurred together, the deaths stacked on top of each other like bodies in a grave. She had been thinking a lot lately. Too much, maybe. Or not enough. It was hard to tell.
Rivale stepped out of the woods. He was talking, his voice low and casual, as if they were old friends catching up after a long separation. Something about Aura dying at Frieren's hands. Something about her surviving when she should not have.
Subaru's gulped.
Frieren. The name is so scary. The silver haired elf. The mage who had killed her in that one loop, the beam of light that had torn through her body and turned her to dust. Frieren was alive. Frieren was out there somewhere, probably hunting demons, probably killing anything that looked at her wrong. Or maybe… looking for her? No way, right? Right?
Will Frieren come to kill me too?
Hopefully not. Hopefully she had other things to do. Hopefully she was far away, chasing other demons, ignoring the small fry like Linie who was not worth her time.
Rivale was still talking. He was going through his monologue, the same words, the same tone, the same expression. Subaru had heard it all before, multiple times, and she found herself growing bored despite the terror that gripped her heart.
"Rivale," she said, interrupting him.
He paused. His eyebrow rose. "What?"
"What do you know about a father?"
He stared at her. His expression shifted from annoyance to confusion, his brow furrowing, his lips pressing together. "Father?" He repeated the word as if tasting it for the first time. "That is the first thing you ask?"
Subaru shrugged. She did not explain. She did not have an explanation that would make sense.
Rivale studied her for a long moment. His eyes narrowed, then widened, as if he had just solved a puzzle that had been bothering him.
"You are still trying to understand what a father is?" He shook his head, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Well, you were always unique, so maybe that is it." He straightened his back and raised his chin, as if delivering a lecture to a slow student. "A father is the male counterpart responsible for someone's birth. The one who provides the seed that grows into a child. That is all."
Subaru blinked. That was it. A biological function. Nothing more. No love, no protection, no pride in one's offspring. Just a role, a label, a description of how a child came to exist.
Demon thing, she thought. Definitely a demon thing.
Rivale waved his hand, dismissing the conversation. "Well, enough talk." His grin returned, sharp and hungry. "I heard you have gotten strong. I want to see—"
"Nope!" Subaru dropped into a full Japanese bow, her forehead nearly touching her knees, her arms stretched out in front of her. "I am weak! I slacked off and neglected my training! I am not worth killing! Please let me go!"
She yelled the words, her voice echoing through the forest, desperate and loud. She stayed in the bow, waiting, hoping, praying that he would believe her, that he would lose interest, that he would walk away and leave her alone.
The forest was silent.
Then she heard footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Rivale walked toward her, each step crunching against the dead leaves on the ground.
Subaru did not look up. She kept her head down, her eyes squeezed shut, her body trembling.
Something grabbed her. Not her arm. Not her leg. Not her shoulder.
Her head.
Rivale's fingers closed around her skull, lifting her off the ground. The world spun. She saw her body below her, still in its bow, still trembling, still alive. Then she saw the gap between her head and her neck, the torn flesh, the exposed bone, the blood that had not yet begun to fall.
He had torn her apart. His hands had moved so fast that she had not felt it, not until she was already separated, already dying, already floating in the space between life and death.
Rivale held her head up to his face. His expression was not angry. It was not satisfied. It was tired, bored, the look of someone who had expected a meal and received a single crumb.
"I just realized," he said, "that I have wasted my time and effort on you."
Subaru wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that she was not a waste, that she had killed a dozen of his soldiers, that she had survived things he could not imagine. But her mouth would not move. Her lungs would not draw breath. Her body was elsewhere, crumpled on the ground, already beginning to fade.
Rivale tossed her head aside. It bounced once, twice, rolling to a stop against a tree root. Her eyes were still open, still seeing, still recording the world even as the darkness closed in from the edges.
She watched her body dissolve into mist. She watched Rivale turn and walk away, his boots crunching against the leaves, his back disappearing into the shadows of the forest.
Then the darkness swallowed her completely.
And she died. Again.