The men were stunned. One of the Three Great Mabeasts, which should have been dead after being hunted down, was parading around in front of them as if the subjugation had never even occurred.
"No… It can't be," Marcos stammered, horrified.
"If I'm not mistaken, I manufactured the weapons that turned that thing into a meat strainer. Why is it still alive?" Nadir looked at Leandro, expecting an explanation.
The black-haired youth clenched his fists. He didn't take his eyes off the Mabeast for a second. A theory was forming in his mind, but it still needed to be confirmed.
"The reason doesn't matter right now… That fucking whale picked a terrible time to come back."
With a slight leap, Leandro soared into the sky at great speed. The White Whale had noticed his presence and let out a hostile shriek upon recognizing him.
But before the beast could attack him, Leandro summoned his sword, infused it with the Authority of Sloth, and unleashed a purple slash toward the cetacean's massive body.
The air crackled and tore apart, creating a powerful shockwave. The whale's figure was enveloped by what looked like a cloud of fire, but when the cloud cleared…
The White Whale appeared completely unharmed. Not a single scratch could be seen on its hide.
While Leandro was trying to process the fact that his best attack had done absolutely no damage, his flight was inexplicably cut short and he began to plummet in a freefall.
He tried to activate the Authority of Sloth, but the corrupt power had vanished, and he couldn't feel it at all.
As he hurtled toward the ground, the black-haired youth finally understood.
"…It was true."
An ironic smile played on Leandro's lips. At first, he thought it was a wild idea, but now it seemed like the only answer to justify what was happening.
"There's a Doppelganger… a necromancer Doppelganger."
Only the Swordsman had been able to cancel an Authority before. The Hunter probably possessed that ability as well, but Leandro didn't have any Witch Factor with him back then.
It was illogical, but in its own way, it made sense. The trials were designed to make Leandro stronger, so they would naturally seek to force him to develop his own strength rather than rely on extrinsic powers.
"But then, where the hell is it? It shouldn't be far if it can cancel my Authority."
Just inches away from crashing, Leandro slashed the air and opened a portal, falling through it and emerging from a rift that formed right above the White Whale. The creature's body emanated a repulsive odor, similar to the stench of a corpse.
"Even if there isn't enough mana and I can't use a charged attack, that doesn't mean I can't kill you!" Leandro drove his black sword deep into the Mabeast's flesh, making it shriek in pain and rage.
The whale flipped in midair, attempting to throw its enemy from the heights, but Leandro held on stubbornly. The whale then dove downward and crashed through the buildings, causing massive devastation.
Back at the castle, Marcos and Nadir exchanged glances.
"Three men against a legendary beast," Marcos said.
"Sounds fun," Nadir replied, gripping his spear with an adventurous smile.
And so, the two of them joined the battle.
The Spear of the Bleeding Heart plunged into the whale's body, draining its power and fueling its wielder with it.
Marcos's heavy fists battered the terrible beast, sending vibrations that shook its internal organs.
Leandro was a streak of black lightning: his figure, tiny compared to his adversary, moved at ridiculous speeds while leaving deep gashes all over it.
"DAMN BEAST!"
The scream didn't come from any of the three men. In fact, everyone turned around in surprise, as they had recognized the voice.
"Wilhelm?!" Marcos shouted when he saw the old man. "What happened to you?!"
The Sword Demon was unrecognizable: his hair was a mess, his suit was ruined, and his body was covered in wounds. It gave the impression that he had just fought a brutal battle.
He was breathing heavily, but the hatred in his eyes was more alive than ever.
"YOU DIED BY MY BLADE! YET, SINCE YOU HAVE RETURNED, I WILL GLADLY SEND YOU BACK TO HELL!"
Despite his words, his movements were pitifully clumsy due to exhaustion. If the whale hadn't been busy trying to defend itself from the three men besieging it, it would have devoured Wilhelm without any trouble by now.
"Wilhelm, stay out of this!" Leandro warned. "You're too weak!"
"Nonsense!" The old man ignored him and leapt toward the Mabeast, brandishing his sword.
The whale, although unable to focus its full attention on the old man attacking it head-on—much less shake off the other three—still had an ace up its sleeve.
Its pores opened, expelling a dense, heavy vapor. It was the infamous Mist of Elimination.
Fortunately, almost everyone managed to jump back and get away in time.
Almost everyone.
"NO!" Leandro saw Wilhelm get enveloped by the mist. He extended his hand toward him, but he was too far away to reach him. "SHIT!"
Suddenly, the whale looked at him. Its jaws contorted into a gesture disturbingly similar to a smile.
It was as if it were mocking him.
"Zero casualties?" Leandro could almost hear it speaking to him, as if he possessed Otto's Divine Protection. "Count again."
"YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" The black-haired youth stopped worrying about the mist and rushed toward the Mabeast, but he was held back by Nadir.
"Wait! If you go in right now, you'll disappear!"
"LET ME GO! I HAVE TO AVENGE WILHELM! IT'S MY FAULT HE…!"
"Who is Wilhelm?" Marcos asked, holding his head due to a sudden headache.
That single question made Leandro fall to his knees.
He had fucked up. Again.
And he couldn't undo the disaster.
He was doomed to move forward in a timeline where Rem was dead and where Wilhelm had been erased from existence.
Why? What was the point of any of this?
It would have been better if he had never taken Subaru's place.
His very existence ruined everything.
He should just disappear, just like Wilhelm.
"It's fleeing!" Nadir's voice snapped Leandro out of it. He lifted his head and saw the whale taking flight.
The Mabeast planned to put some distance between them and send its clones to fight in its stead while it recovered.
"As if I'd let you."
Possessed by a murderous rage, Leandro cut through the air with his sword and appeared above the whale, slamming his hand down against the cetacean's massive body.
"El Vita!"
There was a purple flash, and for the first time in its long life, the White Whale felt the power of gravity inexorably pulling its body downward.
A second later, the entire city trembled. The thunderous crash that occurred when the whale hit the ground echoed through the entire underground chamber.
"I am sick of you," Leandro said, raising his sword and plunging it into the whale. But instead of pulling it out, he left it there and began to run around it, faster and faster.
This had a brutal effect: the blade began to spin, tearing through the whale's flesh and carving a hole into it like a drill.
Chunks of the whale splattered the surroundings while the animal itself let out a piercing shriek.
Nadir and Marcos watched the scene, fascinated and horrified by the sheer brutality with which a single man was tearing a legendary beast apart.
They weren't the only witnesses.
Ram, Crusch, and Fourier arrived at the scene just in time to witness the grotesque spectacle.
Even the refined-looking knight was present, though he didn't dare approach the others. Something deep inside told him it wouldn't end well.
Finally, the whale took its last breath and died… again.
Leandro was panting. For the entire duration of his attack, he had been overloading his limbs with mana to maintain that pace.
He didn't feel any less guilty after killing the whale. Even if it was Wilhelm who had rushed to his own doom, the whale should have never been there in the first place.
A Doppelganger had resurrected it.
The Doppelganger couldn't exist without Pandora.
And Pandora was doing all of this just to test Leandro.
It all came down to the fact that it was his fault.
While the black-haired youth sank into dark thoughts, a male voice broke the silence.
"You must be Leandro."
The youth in question lifted his head upon hearing the unfamiliar voice, finding a young man with golden hair and red eyes.
Without waiting for an answer, the young man jumped onto the whale's corpse and extended his hand toward Leandro.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," he said with a smile. "I am Fourier Lugunica."
"Ah…"
It was another resurrected person. Furthermore, his body gave off the exact same stench as the whale, though Leandro suspected that only he could notice it, as it was a subtle trail—as if the smell didn't come from Fourier himself.
Perhaps it was the Doppelganger's imprint.
But if this was the Doppelganger's work, why was the resurrected prince acting so friendly? Shouldn't he be behaving like Theresia and Kurgan in Priestella?
Could it be a distraction?
Suddenly, Pandora's words echoed in his mind.
*"The next trials that await you will be a little different from usual."*
This wasn't "a little different," this was "fucking different and confusing."
Leandro wondered if he should shake Fourier's hand to play along… or if it would be wiser to slaughter him right then and there so as not to put the others at risk.
The mere thought unleashed a wave of bloodlust that took Fourier's breath away. The prince's body stiffened, and he realized he had been far too reckless by standing in front of a traumatized guy who had just brutally slaughtered a resurrected beast… considering Fourier was a resurrected being too.
But when Leandro looked the prince in the eyes, he realized he didn't have the heart to kill him in cold blood. After all, the prince emitted no malice whatsoever.
"Forgive my poor manners. The pleasure is mine," Leandro replied in a hollow tone, reaching out and shaking Fourier's hand.
"It looks like you've had a very long day," the prince remarked, smiling nervously. He had expected to meet a charismatic, optimistic hero, not this gloomy, threatening figure.
"And the worst part is that it's not over yet."
Stepping aside from the casual conversation between the two youths, Marcos Gildark could not comprehend what his eyes were seeing.
"Your Highness…?!"
Crusch looked at the bewildered captain of the knights and offered a compassionate smile.
"I reacted the exact same way you did."
"Is it really Prince Fourier?! I can't believe it!"
"Well, you'll have to believe it…"
The refined knight was also quite astonished, but before he could step closer to get a better look at the resurrected prince, two other people appeared on the scene.
It was Felix and Seraphina. The demi-human looked extremely anxious, and the woman wore an expression that screamed "I hate my life."
"Hey! Did you already defeat the whale?"
Crusch turned around, feeling a mixture of relief and emotion.
"Felix!"
The cat boy froze for an instant upon hearing that voice. His ears and tail twitched with an explosion of excitement, but he suppressed his feelings immediately.
"Lady Crusch…"
Both stepped toward one another, and it looked like they were going to embrace, but neither made the first move.
"Are you alright?" She spoke first, looking at him with concern.
"Yes," he nodded clumsily, but his face gave him away.
Well, even if Felix were good at lying, doing it to Crusch of all people was not the smartest choice.
"Felix, have you forgotten what my Divine Protection is?" She rolled her eyes.
"…I'm sorry, Lady Crusch," he replied, ashamed. "By the looks of it, I'm not just weak, I'm a fool too."
"Why do you say such things?" The duchess frowned.
"It's just… I should be the one rescuing you, not the other way around." His voice cracked. "I don't deserve to be your knight. I… I think I'm going to resig—"
Felix fell silent as he felt a hand gently rest on his shoulder. It wasn't his lady's hand, so he turned around slowly, thinking it couldn't be Marcos's hand—the captain was far too austere in his treatment of everyone—and Reinhard, his only friend among the knights, wasn't present. It couldn't be him, so it had to be someone else, but who?
"Hello, friend."
That voice.
Felix could never forget that voice.
Then his eyes captured the most extraordinary sight.
His deceased best friend was standing right in front of him.
Was it an optical illusion? Felix reached out his hands to check and touched Fourier's face.
"Hey, that's a bit too intimate, even for us…" Fourier scratched his cheek bashfully.
But Felix wasn't paying attention to his words, only to the fact that this didn't seem to be a hallucination.
Was this really happening?
"Your Highness…?"
"Oof, that's about the third time I've gotten that exact same reaction… Felix, you shouldn't be surprised, since you are one of the few with the ability to—"
Fourier was cut off by Felix, who lunged at him and wrapped him in an emotional embrace, beginning to weep against his chest.
Watching the scene, Crusch also shed a few tears of joy.
The others had different reactions: Marcos was still processing everything, Ram bit her lip in distress, Nadir's thoughts were unreadable, and Leandro nodded with a sad smile.
On the other hand, the refined knight with purple hair and yellow eyes covered his mouth as his eyes welled with tears.
At that moment, Leandro felt a sudden chill that tore him away from the sentimentality of the reunion between Felix and Fourier. He remembered that the danger was far from over, as his Doppelganger must still be roaming around somewhere.
Furthermore, he still hadn't located Elsa or Meili.
If something had happened to them…
"Damn it," he muttered, closing his eyes and focusing on his sense of smell, trying to pick up the scent of either woman.
But he found no trace. He would have to search elsewhere.
Just as he moved to do so, Leandro noticed something rather striking.
It was a foul, rancid stench of death and decay. The exact same one he had detected on the White Whale and Fourier.
Curiously, the scent was easy to follow, becoming progressively stronger in a certain direction.
Leandro could swear it belonged to the Doppelganger.
"I'd better handle this on my own."
The black-haired youth wouldn't be able to bear the guilt if someone else suffered a fate similar to Wilhelm's, so he slipped away quietly without anyone noticing.
Almost anyone.
Nadir was the only one who caught Leandro's movements, following him with his gaze until he vanished from sight.
"Good luck, Boss," he murmured.
Leandro moved swiftly through the city, leaping across buildings as if performing parkour. Every jump brought him closer to his other self.
In about five minutes, the black-haired youth stopped on a rooftop. He had reached a large open space: a plaza in the central area of the district.
Located in the heart of the plaza was a monument shaped like a female figure. The sculpture stood about six meters tall and two meters wide, making it quite imposing.
The Doppelganger was standing right next to the monument. Leandro's heart raced at the sight of it.
Its attire consisted of the classic robes worn by cultists, but this individual was remarkably thin and possessed a strange trait: even though it was standing right there, it emitted absolutely no presence, as if it were an inorganic being.
The Doppelganger's pale, bony hands gripped a black staff that featured a skull on the handle.
Its gaze, hidden beneath the hood of its uniform, was fixed on the black-haired youth standing several dozen meters away. It had spotted him immediately; it had likely been waiting for him.
This made Leandro furrow his brow.
"Why did it let itself be found so easily? Is it setting a trap for me?"
Everything pointed to it being a trap, but…
"And what the fuck does it matter if it's a trap? I'm immortal, so I don't give a shit about dying."
Smiling arrogantly, Leandro summoned his sword and prepared to strike, but then he heard the sound of rattling chains.
And suddenly, a girl in a maid uniform appeared.
She had blue hair, and a glowing horn was protruding from her head.