A Kneeling Salute

This was not a game. This was the real world.

Every villager looked familiar to Subaru. Though he only knew most of them well enough to exchange a nod, they were not NPCs in a game with exclamation marks floating over their heads, nor were they background props that could respawn after dying.

They were people who had lived, people who had spent nearly two months alongside Subaru in this village. Just because there were many lives did not mean they could be disregarded.

Subaru had Return by Death. He had the power to start over. Wasn't this his responsibility? Heaven had not given him this power so he could close his eyes in the face of disaster and say "it couldn't be helped" to the villagers' corpses.

To have the power to start over and not even try to save everyone-Subaru could not do something so selfish.

He first sent Rem away, though she had a lot she wanted to say. He told her he had something to do and would be back soon.

Then he entered the forest outside the village alone. He hoped the Witch Cult had not yet set up its ambush outside the village, and that there was still time to find a route to move the villagers somewhere safe.

As Subaru walked through the familiar forest, he tightened his grip on the magic pistol, and Antares floated up from his shoulder. But he soon noticed something was wrong. It was too quiet.

It was an eerie, bone-chilling silence.

He had been walking through the forest for nearly twenty minutes. Whenever he came here, his rotten luck would have all sorts of Witchbeasts chasing after him, but so far, let alone a Witchbeast attack, not even a squirrel had appeared.

Suddenly, Antares sent him a feeling of alarm.

Several individuals giving off emotional fluctuations were approaching Subaru. Strangely, though, he sensed no malice.

Subaru put his hand on the pistol grip, and sure enough, several figures slowly emerged from deep in the woods.

They wore strange black robes that covered them from head to toe. They were Witch Cultists. They really had been lying in wait here.

Subaru suppressed the anger and fear churning inside him, doing his best to keep any sign of them off his face.

The Witch Cultists stood before him without a word. Subaru wondered how he could take them all out in an instant without causing a disturbance among the others lying in ambush.

...I've already killed people.

The thought suddenly dropped into Subaru's mind. In the last loop, he had fired at those people in black robes. Bullets had pierced their hearts, and flames had consumed their bodies.

He had been driven by anger then, so much so that he had not even realized what he was doing. Only when he thought back on it afterward did he realize his hands had long since been stained with blood.

Even though they were exceptionally cruel Witch Cultists, Subaru still felt uneasy. If he had not witnessed them slaughter the village with his own eyes, he would not have been able to stay calm at all.

To kill the murderers in advance so innocent people can live... surely that can be forgiven, right?

Just as Subaru quietly laid his finger on the trigger, something happened that he could not understand at all.

The Witch Cultists slowly bent their knees, knelt on one knee, and lowered their heads.

It was the posture of followers paying respect to the object of their faith: devout, humble, and utterly defenseless.

They knelt there for quite a while before standing up again. Without a word, they turned and left, their figures disappearing once more into the depths of the forest.

Subaru stood rooted to the spot, his palms slick with cold sweat. He racked his brain, but could not understand why this had happened.

He did not want people like that pledging loyalty to him in the slightest. The mere sight of them kneeling just now had made him feel sick all over.

But Subaru did not pursue them. The experience had been far stranger than he had expected, but he had gotten the answer he wanted most: the Witch Cult had indeed not yet completely surrounded the village.

Subaru hurried back, only lowering his voice to speak after he had confirmed there were no unusual presences around him.

"Anta, how's the Mana in the air?"

Antares sent him a clear emotional response.

"Everything's normal? It doesn't smell strange, is that right?"

Subaru's voice trembled slightly with suppressed excitement. He had a plan for what to do next. The Witch Cult would launch its attack tonight, which meant that, at this point, the Mana had not yet been contaminated.

The Oni could still fight using their horns. If he returned to the village and gathered help now, then led the Oni's strongest fighters back into the forest, couldn't they wipe out the Witch Cult before it made its move?