As usual, an attack like that did nothing to Regulus.
Not a single crease in his clothes.
A passing breeze, nothing more.
Even so, coming out of the dimensional space left a flicker of lingering fear in his eyes.
His Authorities stacked together made him invincible, true enough.
But not without limits.
If the wives holding his hearts for him all died, his invincibility topped out at five seconds. Past that, the heart stopped beating and he went with it.
There was another constraint.
Distance.
The farther he got from his wives, the weaker the effect. He had to stay within range of feeling "love."
Trapped in that pocket dimension, he'd felt the protection thinning by the second.
Love didn't carry across worlds. Expecting it to would've been absurd.
For a while there.
Even Regulus.
Had felt genuine dread settle in his chest.
Without his Authority inside that void, the outcome was simple. A dead end. Keep him sealed in there and he'd starve to death with nothing to show for it.
Thankfully.
The worst-case scenario hadn't played out.
After all that time locked in the void, he was finally out.
The moment he hit the real world again, his Authority came flooding back.
Still some distance from his wives, sure, but a world better than the void had been.
Before he could enjoy the recovery, he looked up and registered the two figures in front of him.
"Ugly meat-woman?"
Regulus stared at Capella, caught off guard.
The nickname pulled a cold, mocking sneer onto her face.
"Oh~"
"And here I wondered who it was. Turns out it's you, you stingy virgin."
"This is rich. Tossed out like a dog? Weren't you the one obsessed with defending his rights?"
Capella clearly knew Regulus inside and out. She went for the sore spots right out of the gate.
"I'll kill you, you ugly meat-woman."
"Try it. If you can, come on and try."
"Though my guess is you'll be like any other useless husband. Standing there watching his wife do nothing."
Boom!
The words had barely left her mouth.
Regulus kicked up a plume of sand and sent it at her.
Within a heartbeat, her body had been shredded into a red mist by fine grains of sand.
"Starting to feel like letting Regulus out might have been a mistake."
Felt watched the two ignore Roswaal and go straight at each other, and let out a dry laugh.
"Betty thinks so too."
Gojo stared, speechless.
This had gone sideways.
His plan had been for the two Sin Archbishops to tag-team Roswaal. They were supposed to be on the same side, roughly speaking.
Who knew.
These two were completely mismatched. The second they saw each other, they started trading insults, and the insults became fists.
Nobody could've predicted this.
The blood mist that had been Capella showed off her absurd recovery again. The scattered flesh reconstituted into black slurry, then resolved back into a human shape.
"Weak, weak, weak."
"What a pathetic attack."
"Though I suppose it suits a miser like you."
The stream of mockery turned Regulus's face dark as storm clouds.
Among the Sin Archbishops, the one he got along with worst was Sloth, thanks to old history from centuries ago.
Beyond Sloth.
Capella ranked next. The ugly meat-woman.
She didn't meet any standard he held for what a woman should be. And her mouth never stopped running.
"Heh."
"You use your Authority to reshape yourself, drown in your own self-satisfaction, and actually believe you're someone people desire?"
Fellow Archbishops knew each other's tender spots. They knew exactly where to stick the knife.
Roswaal, who'd been in the middle of trading blows with Capella moments earlier, had been completely forgotten.
He hovered in midair, ignored by both combatants.
A bystander at his own fight.
He didn't mind.
The scene confirmed what he'd already concluded. Capella, Regulus, all of it. Gojo had his hand in every bit of it.
Why exactly Gojo had pulled this, that part he was still turning over.
Has what I've been doing slipped somewhere?
He thought it through quietly.
Even granting that, the plan had been targeted at Emilia specifically. Felt and the rest had no stake in it.
If anything, he could argue he was clearing out Felt's competition. A favor to her.
And what was the result?
The result was two Sin Archbishops stomping around inside the Sanctuary.
He couldn't make sense of it.
But it didn't matter.
His gaze drifted toward the distance.
According to the Gospel, a large enough surge of mana in the Sanctuary around this window would draw the Great Rabbit.
Once the Great Rabbit arrived, the Sanctuary would get a whole lot livelier.
Whatever came of that, the current mess would become considerably more interesting.
The corner of his mouth curled.
Whatever Gojo was after, he'd stopped caring.
His own goal had already been met.
All he needed now was to wait for the pieces to fall.
"So what are we doing?"
"Just stand here and watch?"
Felt looked at Regulus and Capella going all out and raised the question helplessly.
"Here's the thing."
"Watching them go at it for a bit isn't the worst outcome."
"These two aren't stupid. They'll figure out fast that pounding on each other doesn't get either of them anywhere."
"Once they get bored, they'll turn on Roswaal."
Gojo thought it through and laid it out straight.
"Hope so."
From the air, Roswaal watched the two trade blows and smartly kept out of it.
To a casual eye, the fight looked like children scuffling. They'd been going for a while, and neither had taken a scratch.
Roswaal understood the reason, and it had nothing to do with weakness on either side.
The opposite.
Both were so absurdly strong that nothing was landing.
His eyes moved across the village as the two below kept at it.
"Lady Felt. What is the meaning of this?"
"I would appreciate an explanation."
"Oi, oi. Hear that? He's demanding an explanation."
Felt elbowed Gojo and dropped her voice.
"He's demanding it from you. What's that got to do with me?"
Gojo spread his hands, face a picture of innocence.
"You jerk. Not calling your name means you get to pretend nothing happened? This was your idea to start with!"
"Satoru. I always thought we were friends..."
"There we go. Now he's calling for you."
Gojo scratched his head. No dodging it now.
"Relax. Leave him be. Wait till they really start swinging."
"I've got a feeling this guy's cooking something up."
He thought about it and decided to sit tight a while longer.
Down below, Regulus caught Roswaal's words, and more importantly, caught Gojo's name.
His expression shifted.
People who'd ever gotten the better of Regulus were a short list.
The last time, though.
Gojo had left a mark that hadn't faded.
The man couldn't harm his body, but he'd reached past it and struck something else. The mind.
The sensation of being caught in Unlimited Void was still vivid in his memory.
Able to perceive everything. Unable to move anything. Body turned into a prison around the spirit.
That would've been bad enough on its own.
Stuck but still aware of the outside world. Manageable.
But!
That man hadn't stopped there. While Regulus was locked in place, he'd thrown him into dimensional space.
Dimensional space was not somewhere people were meant to exist.
Forget physical damage. The blank nothingness alone could drive anyone to madness.
Body frozen, surroundings empty. A double prison.
Once was enough for a lifetime.
So when Roswaal's mouth shaped the name, Regulus, though he'd rather die than admit it, was already thinking about leaving.
"What, what?"
"Your attacks are getting feebler."
"Or have you finally noticed my beauty and want to fall in love with me..."
Capella caught the shift in him instantly.
She studied his face, smile sharpening into a jeer.
"Out of my way, you ugly woman."
"You stay right here and enjoy yourself!"
Regulus bit the words out and stopped engaging. The priority was clearing out before Gojo showed up.
Everything else could wait.
Leaving late meant risking that hopeless prison again.
That space really would drive a person insane.
"Oh? Leaving this lady here by herself?"
"That's not very gentlemanly of you."
"And, let me make sure I'm seeing this right. That look in your eyes. Is that fear?"
"Hahahaha, this is priceless. Who knew you of all people could pull off an expression like that? Weren't you always the invincible one..."
"Enough!"
The string of jabs tore through what was left of his pride. Regulus erupted.
He flicked his arm, carving a slice of air straight at Roswaal in the sky.
Roswaal: ???
A narrow dodge got him out of the path. Question marks practically floated above his head.
How did this become his problem? He'd been standing there. He hadn't said a thing, hadn't done a thing.
"Who told you to watch from up there, you violated my rights!"
Capella, meanwhile, had turned herself into a perfect copy of Regulus, and delivered the line in a spitting imitation of his voice.
Form, tone, cadence, every piece of the act was flawless.
Hearing his own inner monologue come out of her mouth cranked Regulus's fury one notch higher.
The sliver of reason he had left told him this wasn't the moment to get even.
The only thing that mattered was leaving.
If Gojo actually showed up, getting out wouldn't be an option anymore.
"One day I'll carve you up, ugly meat-woman!"
Regulus snarled and shot a glare up at Roswaal for good measure. He picked a direction at random, ready to go.
Right as he moved.
A soft, scattered sound started up from a distance.
Faint as could be.
Like the sound small animals make when they walk.
But!
It wasn't one sound. It was many, layering on top of each other, building into a wave.
"What..."
His brow pulled tight as he turned toward the darkness beyond the village.
His gaze found them. Pairs of blood-red eyes, surfacing out of the black.
One pair, and then the next. A chain reaction.
Inside a handful of breaths, the entire perimeter of the village glittered with red eyes.
Their owners stepped forward, advancing toward the village.
Soon enough, shapes resolved into view.
"Great Rabbit?!"
The name leapt out of several mouths at once as the first small rabbit, a little horn riding its forehead, came into view.
"Great Rabbit?"
"You're telling me these cute fluffy things are one of the Three Great Mabeasts, the same tier as the White Whale?"
Gojo blinked at the harmless-looking bunnies swarming in from the distance and turned to Betty.
"That's right."
Betty's eyes narrowed, fixed on the rabbits, then on Roswaal.
The Sanctuary had gone from chaotic to utter pandemonium.