Julius had been revealing more of himself with every exchange, both in temperament and technique. He wanted to hate the boy. To have a justification to hate him. It would have been easier that way. Easier to frame this duel as nothing more than discipline, the punishment of an insolent brat. But the thoughts clinging to him refused to loosen their grip.
Politics had a way of twisting everything.
His mind drifted back to an earlier exchange.
*Flashback*
It had been halfway through Crimson's rebuking tirade against the candidates when his lady's impeccably sharp intuition had cut cleanly through his own thoughts. Whether Anastasia found it easier to voice her conclusions aloud or simply wanted to test her knight's perception, she had spoken with a whisper edged in amusement.
"Did you notice it too?" she murmured, lips barely moving. "That long-winded scolding of his wasn't posturing. It was bait."
Julius did not turn his head, eyes fixed forward toward the stands as a knight was expected to do. "Bait," he repeated quietly. "For whom?"
"For everyone," she replied without hesitation. "Everything he said was meant to draw attention. A loud performance to pull eyes away from the other candidates, or from someone standing close to them. He wanted to disguise it as ridicule, but really?" A soft, dismissive scoff. "Only those with hearts of glass would be shaken by words like that."
She flicked her gaze toward the remaining candidates, suppressing a laugh. "Other than you, only that insufferable Barielle seems to be playing along."
Emilia stood rigid, trembling just enough to notice if one were looking. Her gaze was lowered toward the direction her self-proclaimed knight had been dragged away. Crusch, by contrast, glared down at her clenched fists, thick leather gloves stretched tight over knuckles surely turned white beneath the strain.
"Look at them," the purple-haired merchant continued softly. "Every scrap of information he 'revealed' would come up in a background check. Even the controversial bits. By dumping it all at once and mixing it in with the scandals of those lower-ranked wise men, he blunted any future leaks."
Her smile sharpened. "If those pasts resurface later, they'll feel stale. Old news. And those idiots are taking it personally." A quiet snort. "Utterly unfit to rule."
Julius frowned. "You're suggesting this was… charity?"
"Or a ceasefire," Anastasia replied lightly. "A favor to all the candidates at once." She sneered. "At least the ones clever enough to realize it. Efficient, really."
"That assumes he has no intention of competing," Julius said. "If that's true, then why go this far?"
Her eyes narrowed with interest. "That's the part I can't quite read yet. If he gains something from this, it's buried deep." She tilted her head, amused. "Still… fascinating."
Then she leaned closer, voice dropping conspiratorially. "Though I do wonder if he would've pulled the same stunt had the bigwigs been present."
Julius stiffened slightly.
"You know Miklotov delegated all authority to Knight-Commander Marcus for this opening ceremony," she continued. "If it weren't for that delightful rodent outbreak in the capital, the elder wise men would be here in person. Instead, they've gone mad and started throwing money at our mercenary corps to handle extermination."
Julius's eyes widened despite himself. As a knight, his role was to guard his lady and ensure her safety. Intelligence on the kingdom's internal chaos rarely reached him directly.
"And you accepted?" he asked before he could stop himself. "There's no way you'd pass up—"
"I declined."
Julius coughed, choking on the words. His expression stiffened into something unmistakably stern as he turned his gaze slightly toward her.
"Don't look at me like that," Anastasia said flatly. "I'm not heartless. It's a safety concern. A sudden pandemic wiped out the entire Lugunican royal family once already. I'd rather not gamble with plagues." Her expression darkened. "Besides, I've reason to believe the outbreak is tied to the Witch Cult."
Julius exhaled slowly, the weight of her seriousness settling in. He bowed his head. "I understand, my lady. I will follow your will."
"Hehe."
She turned to him and gave a sly wink. "Still, I suppose this means you couldn't decipher that haughty bit-witch's little act either. Disappointing. After all that time dealing with merchants, I expected better from you."
Sweat prickled beneath Julius's collar. "Please refrain from calling the other candidates such crude names," he said carefully. "Even unintentionally." He hesitated, then added stiffly, "I admit… my insight was lacking."
He shook his head, forcibly clearing the lingering thoughts. Refocusing on the duel, his pace unconsciously quickened, irritation bleeding into every movement.
If the boy wanted to lose, why keep provoking him? Why force him to fight in earnest?
Was this duel nothing more than theater?
The realization struck like ice water.
From the very beginning, from the moment after their first exchange, the blindfolded boy had never initiated an attack. Every movement was reactive. Defensive. Deliberate. Parry, evade, counter. Not a single motion wasted.
This was not the skill of a rookie knight.
It wasn't even that of a seasoned one.
And Reinhard had trained him for less than a month.
A chill crept down Julius's spine.
Where did you come from?
This monster had not appeared overnight.
And whatever people believed about Crimson being blind, Julius dismissed it entirely. From the moment their gazes had locked, he had known. There would be no guilt-tripping him into restraint.
The ease of the boy's movements.
The precision of his footing.
The certainty behind every response.
It was the opposite of blindness.
It was as if he saw everything.
"The way you read my movements so precisely…" Julius said, voice tight with disbelief, "it's uncanny. You truly are a genius."
He surged forward, closing the distance with force, driving the younger boy back. His longer reach asserted itself, blade pressing relentlessly, denying space, denying breath.
Crimson was clearly under pressure now. Forced back step by step, he grit his teeth, then swallowed hard. The movement of the boys adams apple was unmistakable even as he continued to deflect Julius's blows with flawless timing.
Then he grinned.
A whisper slipped from the boy's lips, so faint it should have been impossible to hear. Were it not for Julius's heightened senses, it would have vanished into nothing.
"Lend me a hand… Witch of Envy."
Julius's thoughts stuttered.
Witch of Envy?
No. He must have misheard. He had misheard.
Why would such a heinous name, of the most feared and hated existence, come from this young candidate?
Crimson's expression went blank. His facial muscles slackened unnaturally as silent words began to spill from his lips—a chant, unheard yet unmistakable in its cadence.
"Return by—"
***
Crimson's soul was invited to the land ruled by the black shadow for the very first time.
There was nothing.
No ground. No sky. No sense of distance or direction. Only his consciousness floated in the void, untethered yet unmistakably present. Unlike Subaru's first summons before the absolute sovereign of the Shadow Garden, Crimson was aware from the very beginning.
He knew where he was.
More importantly, he knew that he existed.
There was no one. There was nothing. Nothing began, and nothing ended. It was a world devoid of being itself.
It felt as though he had been cast into the open sea at night, with no horizon and no stars to orient himself. His thoughts struggled desperately, grasping for meaning in the formless dark.
Why was he here?
A shallow answer surfaced through the haze. He had asked for assistance.
Why had he asked for assistance?
Because he was losing.
How would this help him win?
He didn't know.
With each attempt at reasoning, his thoughts grew heavier, dulled by a strange sensation, as if his mind were stuffed with soft wool. Warm. Smothering. Comforting in a way that robbed him of clarity.
Then, abruptly, the darkness changed.
Something stood before him.
Directly ahead of his consciousness, the shadow began to stretch vertically, pulling itself upward until it formed the silhouette of a human figure. He could not see a face. The outline was indistinct, wavering at the edges.
Yet he knew.
It had the shape of a woman.
The shadow trembled, then slowly extended a hand toward him.
In that instant, information slammed into his mind like a tidal wave.
The Witch.
A name synonymous with taboo. A terror so deeply ingrained that even speaking it chilled the spine. Across the world, there was only one way to refer to her.
The Witch of Envy.
Four hundred years ago, she had not been this thing. She had been a gentle half-elf with amethyst eyes and silver hair, living quietly beyond the eyes of the world. That life ended the moment she absorbed the Witch Factor of Envy, a power so violently incompatible with her nature that it birthed another self entirely.
The Witch of Envy.
A persona driven by jealousy and annihilation. The gentle Satella was buried beneath it, replaced by a calamity. A half-devil whose rampage swallowed half the world in shadow, until she was finally sealed by the combined effort of the first Sword Saint, the Divine Dragon, Flugel, and Shaula.
The strongest beings in this universe to ever exist.
Before Reinhard Van Astrea, of course...
Crimson had often spoken of the two names as though they were interchangeable, but he understood the distinction. He understood it now more than ever.
The presence before him was not Satella.It was the Witch of Envy.
Her hand reached closer.
He could not move.
He could not look away.
His body felt frozen in time, his breath and heartbeat absent, as though existence itself had paused. Fear bloomed, raw and unfiltered.
This wasn't what he wanted.
At most, he had expected time to halt, or perhaps another crushing grip of shadow around his throat. He had never imagined being drawn directly into the Witch's domain, beyond space, beyond time, beyond existence and nonexistence alike.
A flash of black, threaded with misty violet, erupted between them.
As if sensing its master's peril, something coiled into being. Like a serpent shielding its eggs, the authority of Sloth manifested defensively, thickening and elongating as it placed itself between Crimson and the Witch.
The veiled woman frowned.
Her raised hand lowered slowly, and the shadows behind her surged in response. At her displeasure, nearly fifty hands formed from pure shadow shot forward, lashing out viciously toward the Authority of Sloth, intent on tearing the obstruction apart.
But the difference between an Authority and shadows born of Yin magic was negligible.
Even as a fragment, an Authority existed beyond the laws of the world. Unlike Divine Protections, which drew upon the mana heart of reality, Authorities required no mana at all.
Crimson watched in stunned disbelief as the instant the shadow hands made contact, they vanished.
Devoured was not quite the right word.
The manifestation of Sloth resembled a massive, coiling serpent formed of violet mist. Its fingers bent unnaturally, each one splitting into fanged maws. When the shadow hands struck it, they did not collide so much as disintegrate, unraveling upon contact as if reduced to nothing more than smoke.
Absorbed.
The unseen hand did not so much as flinch. More shadows lashed forward, and the Authority surged to meet them, almost childishly eager, like a starving thing intercepting food before it could fall.
[System Notification]
Fragment of Sloth is undergoing evolution.
True nature of the Sin of Sloth has been achieved.
Sloth has gained an ego.
Description: Like all Authorities, the manifestation of a Witch Factor depends entirely on its wielder. Without a clear self-image or understanding of the sin they bear, incompatibility will occur. Possession alone is insufficient. The difference lies in awakening and evolution.
Upon witnessing this, the Witch raised her hand.
Her fingers stretched toward Sloth, then clenched sharply into a fist.
Though sound did not exist in this space, Crimson felt it. A dull, indistinct cracking reverberated through his being. The serpent-like Authority collapsed in on itself, crushed as if something formless had been stomped flat, compressed into the shape of a mangled sheet of metal.
The Witch examined the result with a slight tilt of her head.
Satisfied, the faint frown vanished, replaced by a demure curl of her lips. The shadows beneath her rippled like waves, carrying her forward as she glided toward Crimson.
She reached out once more.
Here, where he was nothing but a soul, he was entirely exposed.
When her fingers brushed his chest and slid downward toward his stomach, Crimson felt an overwhelming urge to weep. A flood of foreign emotion washed over him, heavy and intimate, carrying the unsettling certainty that he had been waiting for this touch.
He wanted the writhing shadows to embrace him.
To swallow him whole.
Her hand sank into his stomach.
There was no blood. No resistance. Her delicate fingers pierced into what passed for flesh, sinking deeper as nausea overwhelmed him. Her voice spilled forth, thick and syrupy, saturated with obsession, yet none of it felt directed at him.
"I won't let you die."
"You are mine."
"I love you."
"I love you."
"I love you."
The words grew louder, more fervent, as her hand descended further, as if his body were quicksand.
Only then did Crimson realize there was another presence.
A second shadow.
White fingers wrapped around him from behind, embracing him gently. Cold. Unmistakably cold.
The moment that chill touched him, the Witch screamed.
Her shriek tore through the silence as she violently wrenched her hand free from his stomach. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks as her arm emerged, and for an instant Crimson's frozen vision caught sight of it.
A charred stump.
The shadow around her recoiled, rushing to envelop the wound as the figure before him began to fade. She cried, but it did not sound like pain.
Crimson, still trapped in a haze, could not understand what he was seeing. The world of nothingness offered no sound, no explanation.
The shadow receded.
Fading.
Fading away.
At the very end, she reached toward his stomach once more, trembling, tears falling freely.
"Subaru… I love you."
Even those words dissolved.
And then the world fell apart.
(AN: It's been a while since my last update. I'll try to post weekly going forward. There are quite a few side plots I've admittedly forgotten about, but I do intend to tie everything together smoothly. Right now, I'm still in the process of recalling and reorganizing everything.
I've seen some questions about Rei's character, so I want to clarify a bit. The obvious reasons are Felt's death and Rei's failure to fulfill her duty as a knight. However, there is another, more subtle reason why she differs so much from her counterpart. I haven't revealed it yet, but it will be addressed later.
I've also been asked where I personally scale Reinhard. I'm not a dedicated powerscaler, but when I do scale characters, I try to stay as fair as possible and rely on the author's direct statements. By those accounts, Reinhard can be lowballed to star+ level based on the feat of fighting the sun, and highballed to outerversal if one takes statements about him being able to defeat Od Laguna and standing above Satella and the Shadow Garden at face value.
That said, looking at it logically, I think a more reasonable assessment places Reinhard at low multiversal. His Dragon Sword is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to offensive power and attack potency, and without it, his upper limits are far more constrained.)