"Beako, are you sure it's this direction?" Emilia looked up at Flugel's Tree in the distance, the angle of it not quite right.
"Betty hasn't set foot outside in four hundred years, and I didn't exactly admire the scenery from the carriage. Asking me to read a map is really pushing it, I suppose." Beatrice studied the map the chief had given her.
The Monster Auntie carrying them on her back came to a stop and raised a forelimb. Taking the hint, Beatrice handed her the map. Relying on her rather good night vision, the Monster Auntie stared at it hard for a while, compared the bearing against Flugel's Tree faintly visible in the distance, then nodded and broke into a run in another direction.
They'd been going the wrong way.
Beatrice put the map away and smoothed down Yimi's slightly bristling tail to cover the embarrassment of the wrong turn.
"This feeling really is uncomfortable—like I went through something together with Subaru, like I was even saved by him, but I know none of it. It's not just that I don't remember..." Emilia lowered her head. "Speaking of which, that 'Emilia-tan' in Subaru's memories—is that really me?"
"Was your relationship with him really that good?" Beatrice asked.
"I don't understand—probably not, which is exactly why it tangles me up. It's as if the me right now shouldn't be the way I am. If I just treat what someone did for me as nothing because I have no idea about it, isn't that too strange? So..."
"So go beat up 486!" Yimi clenched her little fists and threw wild punches at the air.
Emilia, tangled up a moment ago, helplessly patted her to calm her down. "You can't be like that."
The White One didn't understand a kitty's hardships, standing there making light of it.
Yimi paused, then suddenly pointed ahead. "People." Her night vision was pretty good.
At the edge of the woods ahead, a whole troupe of pretty girls could be seen filing out, muttering things like "gross" and "annoying" as if venting. But when they got closer, the Monster Auntie's appearance froze them stiff with fright. Then again, not screaming at a sight like this in the dead of night meant they had solid nerves.
Yimi sniffed the air. "There's a smell. A lot like that damn 486."
"Subaru's here?"
Emilia quickly hopped down, raised the lantern, and approached the wary girls, explaining, "Please don't be afraid. She's not an evil monster, just a human cursed by the Witch Cult."
"Human? Witch Cult?" The one who answered Emilia was again the older girl, who seemed to be shielding the other girls behind her.
"Yes. Have you seen a man with very fierce eyes? He's not a bad person."
"Fierce eyes—you mean the Sin Archbishop of Greed?" The girl grew faintly wary. From their point of view, they'd been inexplicably saved by two Witch Cult lunatics, and Subaru Natsuki was every bit as unhinged as Petelgeuse—he'd stormed in without a word, pinned Regulus down, beaten him, and tried to kill him.
"Sin Archbishop? No... there must be some misunderstanding. Subaru has nothing to do with the Witch Cult... probably?" Emilia couldn't come up with any wording to defend him. She knew far too little about Subaru.
The girl nodded and answered her. "He left with another Sin Archbishop, saying they'd follow what the Gospel said and go find Lust."
To get Petelgeuse to spare the girls, Subaru had spent a fair bit of breath riding along with the guy's logic—basically just harping on the three words "diligence," "Sloth," and "love."
"Big sister, what do we do with this one?" A little girl stepped out from the very back, dragging along the one in white clothes. The dead one, to be precise—limbs and neck twisted like pretzels, face still frozen in terror, looking like he'd died in real agony.
Seeing a corpse in this state, the fearsome-looking Monster Auntie flinched back a step, and Beatrice reached out to cover Yimi's eyes.
The girl waved a hand. "Just find somewhere to dump it."
Regulus's Authority of time-stopping could put him in a state defying the laws of physics, but it came with the side effect of his heart stopping, so his hard limit for the time-stop was actually only five seconds. He had another, complementary Authority, though, that let him store his heart inside his wives' hearts and move it back and forth freely, sustaining the time-stopped state indefinitely. Because there was a range limit, he brought a whole crowd of wives everywhere he went. In other words, killing all his wives could also break his frozen state—but Subaru had somehow roped in Petelgeuse, who wielded the Unseen Hand and could conjure a whole mass of hands at once... The downside was that with Subaru standing right beside Petelgeuse, he'd now backed himself into a corner he couldn't easily get out of.
"Wh-what is this?" Emilia flinched back a step too at Regulus's grisly state.
The girl dragging him quickly explained, "A really awful, terrible person. He said something like 'some people are pretty but hideous when they smile,' and wouldn't let us make expressions—or else he'd kill us..." That was one of the mildest things he'd done; because the guy's very existence had vanished, this was the only example she could come up with on the spot.
Emilia frowned slightly at that line, not knowing why, just feeling as if it had somehow taken a jab at her. She shook her head and let it go. "By Lust, do you mean the Sin Archbishop of Lust?"
"He asked about some demon beasts, then said he was going to find Lust, and something about a Margrave..."
"The real culprit is Diego!" declared the eye-covered Yimi with total conviction.
"Don't tell me he went to Roswaal's place?" Emilia's little mouth fell open as she caught on at once. Right—their route from the start had been to head back to Roswaal's place, but a sudden incident had blocked them halfway. Or rather than blocking her, it had seemed more like it was blocking Yimi...
Emilia turned and patted the Monster Auntie. "I'm sorry—could we change direction? This time we might have to run pretty far. Can your stamina hold up?"
The Monster Auntie gave a nasal snort and turned her head to show it was no problem.
"I'll help you." Yimi pressed her little hand to her and transferred the fatigue away.
That Sloth Sin Archbishop couldn't be shaken off, but at least he wasn't riding in the dragon carriage too—otherwise, staring face-to-face at that abnormal mug, Subaru definitely wouldn't be able to keep his cool.
Ever since Regulus died, Subaru's stasis had lifted automatically too, and hadn't come back even now. But he had an inexplicable feeling that something of Regulus's had flowed into him. Knowing next to nothing about the Witch Cult, he naturally had no idea it was the Witch Factor of Greed.
He couldn't beat that Sloth, and the guy was headed to Roswaal's place—where there was likely another Sin Archbishop. Setting aside Rem and the others' safety, if these two ran into each other, it definitely wouldn't be as easy to exploit as the Regulus situation.
"Otto, can we go a little faster?"
"Subaru-san, that request of yours is just unreasonable. This is a cargo cart to begin with—how am I supposed to make it go faster?!"
Unless they dumped all the goods.
Suddenly, Otto let out another puzzled sound.
"What is it?"
Otto patted the land dragon. "The land dragon seems to have suddenly gotten a lot more tired."
"These creatures tire this easily?" Subaru studied the land dragon with a heavy, baffled look. "How very slothful."
He was already getting used to saying it.