Roswaal, Regulus, Capella, the Great Rabbit...
Those four converging in one spot was already enough, and that wasn't counting Gojo's group watching from the shadows.
Without exaggeration, the power packed into this remote little village could topple any nation on the map.
And here it all was, piled together by one accident after another.
"These rabbits look pretty weak. Is there something special about them?"
Gojo turned to Betty.
He'd only skimmed the Great Rabbit in a book once, enough to know it counted among the Three Great Mabeasts and nothing past that.
"The Great Rabbit isn't like the mabeasts you're used to, I suppose. It isn't a single creature. It's a collective, thousands of individual rabbit-form mabeasts acting as one."
"They share a single guiding consciousness, which is why they always move as a pack."
"Outside of that, they're no smarter than ordinary animals. They can't actively hunt or size up what they're dealing with."
"They navigate on instinct, following the strongest mana signals to find their next meal. If I had to guess, Roswaal's magic is what dragged them here."
"And the part that really terrifies people, the thing that makes them what they are, is the endless multiplication. They see everything around them as food, their hunger never ends, and once they've eaten enough, they divide."
Gojo's eyes lit with understanding.
"Sounds like army ants. Though breeding through division puts them in a whole other league."
"No wonder they made the list of the Three Great Mabeasts."
Army ants meant nothing to Betty, naturally, but she'd long since stopped being surprised when Gojo said something incomprehensible.
Back on Earth, army ants had a reputation that made people's skin crawl.
Especially in their native range. Wherever a column passed, almost nothing was left standing.
Insects, small animals, even large ones that didn't flee became prey.
Numbers in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Nothing stood against that.
These rabbits clearly ran on the same playbook.
Just cranked several notches higher.
Asexual reproduction through division.
Given enough energy, enough to eat, there was nothing stopping them from blanketing an entire planet.
Compared to the Witch of Envy's world-swallowing, the Great Rabbit carried the same sort of potential.
A tide of them was pouring in now, funneling toward the village.
Regulus and the others sat in the middle of the ring.
"Speaking of which, Regulus and Capella are Sin Archbishops of the Witch Cult. The Great Rabbit wouldn't go after them, would it?"
"If it were the White Whale or the Black Serpent, maybe you'd have a point."
"But it's the Great Rabbit."
Betty's lip curled.
"When the Great Rabbit is hungry enough, it eats its own kind. It'll eat itself."
"There's no intellect. No reason. Only hunger running the show."
"You think it cares about their titles?"
"Tch. Sounds like we've got a show on our hands."
Regulus was untouchable. Capella, harder to say.
Regenerating was one thing. But if the Great Rabbit tore her apart piece by piece and swallowed every piece?
The pack proved Betty right fast.
Even as Gojo spoke, the swarm below had turned its collective attention upward, fixing on Roswaal in the sky.
Too bad for them.
Great Rabbit or not, they were strictly land creatures. No flight, no ranged attacks to speak of.
When it became clear Roswaal was out of reach, hunger took the wheel again.
The swarm pivoted toward Regulus and Capella without a second thought.
"Brainless vermin. Get out of my sight."
Regulus watched the tide closing in with open disgust. He wasn't Gluttony's lot. He couldn't charm them off.
One sweep of his arm. The air itself scythed through the rabbits.
Red mist bloomed across the swarm. Shredded flesh scattered in all directions.
The smell of blood hit the air. That was all it took.
The encircling rabbits went from predators to a frenzy.
Not a drop hit the ground. The swarm fell on its own dead and tore through every scrap.
No carcasses. No remains.
Nothing left for anyone else to pick over.
Once the corpses were gone, the rest turned back on Regulus without pause.
He didn't bother engaging.
As long as his Authority held, his body couldn't be touched.
If Regulus was getting swarmed, Capella was no surprise target either.
Capella welcomed it. She stood there and let them bite her.
And then...
One by one, the snow-white rabbits sank under a spreading coat of black sludge. In full view of everyone, they transformed into something else. Something wrong.
The reshaped rabbits turned without hesitation and went straight for their own kind.
"Hahahaha, look how popular I am."
The ring of attackers around her had become a ring of twisted things, and they were carving their way back into the swarm that spawned them.
"Hey now. You've been perched up there admiring the view long enough, haven't you?"
Capella tilted her head back toward Roswaal.
The words were barely out.
Her Black Dragon form lunged skyward.
No one was walking away clean. She hadn't planned on it anyway.
She'd come chasing her daughter's trail and stumbled into this mess of interesting faces. She wasn't about to waste it.
"Out of my way, all of you!"
Regulus erupted. The rabbits piled thick enough to bury his silhouette ripped apart in an instant, and he emerged from the carnage untouched.
In the air above.
The Black Dragon and Roswaal traded blows.
"You're a stubborn one, aren't you. Not bad, for a human."
"Praise from you doesn't exactly lift my spirits."
The light orbs in Roswaal's hand had multiplied since the last exchange.
Five of them now, spinning slowly above his palm.
Spells poured out around him, lavish, wasteful, aimed at the dragon.
"How cold. That actually stings a little."
"Still, at this pace, how long do you think you can keep it up?"
"I can do this all day~"
Capella's grin peeled back on rows of jagged teeth.
"True. My mana won't last forever."
"But do you happen to know why your companion turned up here so suddenly, and why he's so desperate to get out?"
Roswaal's pace never broke. The tone stayed conversational, almost lazy.
"Oi, stingy virgin. What's he getting at?"
"None of your business."
Regulus was forcing his way through the swarm, swinging as he went, marching toward the edge with grim determination.
Like a man slogging through deep snow.
Rabbits hurled themselves at him by the hundreds, cannonballs of fur and teeth.
None of them could hurt him. The impact was still there.
Annoying didn't begin to cover it.
He wasn't answering her, though.
Answering would be demeaning in its own right, and beyond that, he flat-out refused to do anything someone else wanted him to do.
"Hah, what an unpleasant man you are. No wonder all those wives of yours must hate you..."
Capella kept needling, and the sound alone had a vein pulsing at Regulus's temple.
The feeling was familiar. He'd felt it dealing with Gojo.
Powerless to lay a hand on the other party while eating barb after barb from their mouth.
"Right, I almost forgot my precious daughters."
"Good girls, your merciful mother has come. Why don't you step out and say hello?"
"How long are you planning to hide from Mother? That man can't protect you."
Her wings snapped. She slipped Roswaal's next spell and skimmed low across the ground.
In the span of that single sweep, every rabbit she passed began to swell and warp.
A breath later, they burst.
What came out of them was flies.
Night had already fallen.
Fat snowflakes drifted down through the dark, and against that winter sky, the wrong season bloomed.
Clouds of flies scattered in every direction, hunting.
The droning hum swelled closer. Felt's face twisted.
"Disgusting. Flies? Really? That's some rotten taste right there."
"Anything else would've been fine. Anything."
"Flies, whatever, doesn't matter."
Gojo's eyes stayed on Roswaal, still exchanging blows with Capella. He rubbed his nose.
"Those two aren't going to shake anything loose from Roswaal. Not today."
"And Regulus. What a letdown that guy turned out to be."
"He put on a show at the start, but after that it's been pure escape mode."
"So what's the plan now?"
"Just walk out there?"
Betty looked up at him.
"Hiding won't matter once those flies sweep through here. We can't stay tucked away."
"That thing's using them as a search net. Tracking down Elsa and the others."
"Which means the work falls to us in the end."
"Then we sat through all this for nothing?"
Felt sounded genuinely put out.
Letting Roswaal skate, a man with a head full of scheming, felt like letting him off far too lightly.
"No, no, you've got it wrong."
"Coming out isn't one move. There are options."
"Elsa, for instance. You can take Meili and step out first. Once Capella has eyes on the two of you, she'll stop looking for anyone else."
"While you're at it, stir the pot a little. Say Roswaal put you up to betraying her. That sort of thing."
"Not that you need to worry. If anything goes wrong, Reinhard and I are on it the second it does."
Gojo turned to Elsa and Meili beside him.
"Big bro, do we really have to go?"
Meili listened to the droning closing in and wore the face of someone one breath from tears.
It couldn't be helped.
The mental scars Capella had left on her ran deep.
"Relax. When have I ever lied to you?"
"Nothing's going to happen!"
After Gojo promised a third time, Meili sniffled, nodded, and took Elsa's hand. The pair stepped out from cover.
They hadn't gone far.
The flies swirling overhead caught them within moments.
Capella registered them in the same instant.
"Oh. My darling daughters. Mother's finally found you."
"You've been such naughty girls. You made Mother so worried."
Her voice dragged Roswaal's gaze along with hers.
He followed the look, spotted Elsa, and froze for a fraction of a second, something close to genuine puzzlement surfacing on his face.
His mind clearly worked the question. What was Elsa doing here?
The hesitation didn't last.
Because Meili was standing next to her, and Meili was the answer.
Gojo's group had gone to lengths to keep the tie to Elsa quiet, but Meili was always with them. Always.
There was no mistaking it.
Elsa's presence here meant Gojo's hand was in it somewhere.
"Lord Roswaal, I've brought her to the Witch's tomb as you instructed."
"I'm counting on you to keep your promise and kill her, as you agreed with us sisters."
Roswaal: ????
Words just came pouring out of her mouth. A lie off the cuff, no draft, no rehearsal.
And she'd pinned the whole thing on him right out of the gate.
The Black Dragon's head swung around at the sound of it, two jets of pale smoke hissing from empty nostrils as Capella fixed her gaze on Roswaal.
"Witch's tomb?"
"That explains the strange smell I caught on the way in."
Capella's teeth gleamed as her face twisted into a grin.
"So this was all set up for my benefit. How thoughtful."
Roswaal opened his mouth to explain. Capella didn't give him the chance. She lunged.
With the two of them back at each other's throats, Meili seized the moment and called out toward Regulus nearby.
"Hey there, big bro. Your friend under the big tree says hi."
"He said to tell you this isn't just the Witch's tomb. It's yours too."
Regulus went stiff.
The first thing he'd done the moment he cleared that dimensional void was scan for Gojo's group, and he hadn't found them.