No Chance of Victory

"Sin Archbishop... were you the one who planned this attack on the village from behind the scenes?"

Ram's eyes were filled with killing intent, and a single horn appeared on her forehead once more. Her magical power had fully recovered, and her injuries had long since healed.

"Who would be interested in something like that?"

An extremely impatient look appeared on Regulus's face.

"As someone who is completely satisfied in both body and mind, how could I possibly kill people for no reason? Who do you think I am? I only kill those ignorant fools who violate my rights. But I already said it, didn't I? I'm standing here to eliminate those tactless people who escaped without permission. In other words, you."

His gaze swept back and forth between Ram and Subaru, and he sighed in disappointment.

"And it turns out no one interesting escaped, just two brats. How unpleasant."

"Does Ram's existence make you uncomfortable? Then why not gouge out your own eyes? You won't have that problem once you do."

"...Are you mocking me?"

Regulus froze, looking confused, as though he had never expected to hear something like that.

Then his face began to contort, anger spreading rapidly across it.

"How dare you speak to me in that vulgar! Inferior! Ill-mannered tone-! You little brat-!!"

The giant man-child's true nature was laid bare.

"Aaaah-!!!"

Ram gave him no chance to ramble on. She leaped high into the air, and powerful magic gathered into a visible vortex in her palm.

The air here was unpolluted, and the Oni's self-healing ability had fully restored her body. Her strength had returned to its peak.

"Boom-!!!"

An enormous storm burst outward with Regulus at its center. Savage wind blades swept in every direction, plowing deep fissures into the ground.

The blast forced Subaru back several steps, and he raised a hand to shield himself from flying debris.

Magic of this magnitude would have been enough to severely wound even the White Whale they had just faced.

"Remember this! Every word you just said violated my rights! And no one who violates my rights gets away unscathed! You know what the consequences are, don't you?!"

Regulus's voice rang out from the heart of the storm.

"Of course you don't, because you're the type who speaks without thinking!"

"How pathetic, utterly pathetic! Your patheticness has already bored me! So much that you're not even worth scolding! Look, I can't even be bothered to get angry anymore. This is your failure, your complete and hopeless failure as a 'person'! Do you understand? Of course you don't. How could someone like you possibly understand?!"

Ram's pupils contracted sharply. She immediately abandoned her attack and crossed her arms in front of her. A barrier of wind spread out around her, and then...

"Whoosh-!"

The barrier shattered in an instant. Then the pink figure vanished completely amid a spray of blood, without even having time to scream.

It was exactly the same way the Ground Dragon had died. Not a single bone or strand of hair remained.

Subaru's thoughts froze. Ram had lost. She had been killed in an instant.

There was no doubt about Ram's strength. Without exaggeration, as long as the mana wasn't polluted, even if there had been several times as many Witch Cultists, they would only have been "a little more troublesome" for her.

Yet Ram, as powerful as she was, couldn't withstand even a single attack from that man.

The remnants of the storm slowly faded. Regulus stood on the devastated ground without so much as a wound, or even a wrinkle in his clothes.

"Brats these days really ought to learn some manners. Shamelessly violating other people's rights without even the most basic judgment-it's truly tragic. If everyone in that village is the sort of person who wastes resources just by living, I really wouldn't mind paying a visit and personally wiping those pathetic, ignorant and powerless beings off the face of the world."

His gaze turned to Subaru. He slowly raised his hand.

Unreasoning strength. Subaru couldn't even feel fear anymore; his mind was completely blank. He couldn't think, couldn't run, couldn't raise the gun in his hand.

In the end, driven by instinct, he could only close his eyes and wait for death.

A white dove suddenly flew past in front of Regulus.

"..."

He didn't know how much time had passed. Perhaps several minutes. Feeling no pain at all in his body, Subaru opened his eyes.

There was no one in front of him anymore.

"...Did they... really block off every escape route?"

Subaru didn't understand. But he no longer had the strength to think about it. He didn't know what had happened to Rem, but she had been forgotten. Ram was dead. The Ground Dragon was dead. The village chief, Baren and everyone else in the village-none of them would have survived.

Subaru numbly raised his pistol and pressed the muzzle to his temple.

"I really didn't expect things to come to this~"

Before he could fire, a voice with a strange lilt came from above.

Subaru looked up and saw the figure, a tall silhouette slowly descending from the air.

"...It's you."

Subaru recognized him. He was the last person Subaru had seen in the previous loop, before his heart was pierced and his vision went dark.

"An interesting reaction~ But this is our first time meeting."

The man landed on the ground. His face was covered in heavy makeup, concealing his true appearance and making his real age impossible to tell.

He was probably a man, but the paint completely concealed his face, making any first impression unreliable.

"I'd love to introduce myself, or offer you a few words of comfort~ But with a tragedy on this scale, you'd be unmoved no matter what I said, wouldn't you?"

The man in clown makeup spread his hands, his tone still light and airy.

Subaru didn't answer. His mind raced. Who was this person? Why had he appeared on the night of the massacre? What exactly was his objective-was he an enemy or a friend?

If he had come to save people, why hadn't he appeared sooner? If he hadn't come to save people, why had he attacked the Witch Cultists in the previous loop?

"Normally speaking~ As the Earl of this frontier territory, I have a duty to protect everyone who lives here."

The man rested a finger on his chin. "But if there's a goal ahead that's more worth pursuing, then surely standing by while people die, and feeling no guilt about it, can be forgiven?"

"So in the end, it's the second option. What a shame about that child. Sorry, but since she's dead, I can't take her back. In that case, let me carry out the order as planned."

The man sighed and raised a finger, pointing it at Subaru's chest.

"Whoosh-!"

A beam of light shot from his fingertip. Subaru felt it. In that instant, his heart disappeared.

As his body fell, the last thing he registered was the back of the man in clown makeup as he turned away. There was no hesitation, no reluctance; he seemed convinced that Subaru had no future whatsoever.

His... objective is...

At the end, as darkness enveloped him completely, Subaru vaguely grasped the meaning of those words.

"...Your forehead and cheeks should be fine too, right?"

"...Yeah. There's no problem at all. Rem can do whatever she wants."

Subaru murmured the words unconsciously. His lips responded instinctively to the blue-haired girl's affectionate request. The person in his arms let out a shy, contented hum and buried her face deeper in the crook of his shoulder, tightening her arms a little.

The third loop began.

(There's one more update today.)