Subaru had killed about a dozen demons. The number was not exact. She had stopped counting after the tenth, and the battle had become a blur of movement and steel and fading bodies. Her arms felt slightly sluggish, nothing major, nothing like the exhaustion she had felt during the death loops. More like the feeling after running for a minute straight. A slight heaviness in the limbs. A slight quickness in the breath. Nothing she could not push through.
The other demons were engaged with the human soldiers. Their claws clashed against swords, their bodies twisted and turned, their blank faces showing no emotion even as wounds opened across their flesh. They did not notice her yet. She stood at the edge of the clearing, hidden by the shadows of the trees, her katana dripping with blood that was already turning to mist.
If they told her secret to the humans, she would have to kill the humans too. The thought came unbidden, cold and practical, as if her brain was running calculations without asking for permission. How many soldiers were left? Twenty? Twenty two? Could she take them all before they raised an alarm? How long would it take for reinforcements to arrive?
She stopped herself.
"Oi, oi, hold yourself together, Natsuki Subaru," she said out loud, laughing awkwardly at the absurdity of her own thoughts. "You cannot be a homicidal cold blooded maniac. I am not Kira. I do not write names in notebooks. I do not decide who lives and who dies based on convenience."
She shook her head, trying to clear the fog that had settled over her thoughts. The battle had sharpened something inside her, some instinct that she did not fully understand, and that instinct was pushing her toward places she did not want to go.
Focus, she told herself. You are here to stop the demons. That is all. Nothing else.
Subaru blinked. A strange feeling washed over her, like something was pressing against the edge of her awareness. A presence. A weight. A pair of eyes watching her from somewhere she could not see.
What is this feeling? she thought. It is like something is—
Something hit her.
The impact caught her on the side, a force like a hammer swung by a giant, sending her flying through the air. Trees blurred past her vision. The ground disappeared beneath her feet. She tumbled head over heels, branches scratching at her arms and legs, until she crashed into a clearing far from where she had been standing.
She landed on her back, the breath knocked out of her lungs, her katana still somehow in her hand. For a moment, she just lay there, staring at the gray sky through the gap in the trees, trying to understand what had happened.
I dodged, she realized. I dodged with the scabbard.
The scabbard. The one she had conjured after with the katana, part of the Hiten Mitsurugi style, a tool for blocking and parrying. Her body had moved on its own, bringing the scabbard up to deflect the blow, turning a direct hit into a glancing one. She was not hurt. Not really. Just shaken. Just confused.
She sat up slowly, her muscles protesting, her head spinning.
"Who hit me like that?" she demanded, her voice louder than she intended. "Huh? Show yourself!"
A figure emerged from the woods.
Male. Tall. Very tall. Even sitting on the ground, Subaru could tell that this demon would tower over her if she stood. His horns were medium length, pointing straight up from his head like twin spires. His hair was light colored, long, falling past his shoulders. A scar ran across his right eye, pale against his skin. He wore a long dark tunic and a black coat with gold decorations on the shoulders.
Unlike the other demons she had fought, this one had a grin on his face. A wide, genuine grin, the kind that showed pointed teeth and crinkled the corners of his eyes. His gaze held curiosity, not the blank emptiness she had seen in the others.
Subaru took a defensive stance. Her katana came up, the edge pointed toward the tall demon. Her legs spread, her weight balanced, ready to move in any direction.
But he did not lunge. He did not attack. He simply stood there, looking at her, his grin growing wider.
Then he laughed. A deep, rumbling laugh, the sound of someone who had just heard a very good joke.
"I had heard that Aura was killed by Frieren," he said, "so I assumed her accomplices were dead too." He tilted his head, studying her like a collector examining a curious artifact. "I am curious how you ended up in this predicament, Linie."
Subaru froze. Frieren… does this mean the elf who had killed her once was indeed the Hero's Party's mage and she was alive. Also…
Linie. He had called her Linie. Certainly the name of the demon whose body she now occupied. The name of the creature whose face she wore, whose horns grew from her skull, whose magic flowed through her veins.
He knew. He knew the real one. He saw her and recognized her as one of his own kind.
She could correct him. She could tell him the truth, that she was not Linie, that she was Subaru, that she had woken up in this body less than two weeks ago with no memory of how she got here. But what would that accomplish? He would not believe her. Or worse, he would believe her and become even more interested.
Play along, she told herself. Pretend.
She straightened her posture and forced her face into a neutral expression. "Eh," she said, shrugging as if his words meant nothing, "I have my reasons."
The tall demon raised an eyebrow. "Which are?"
Subaru hesitated. Her mind raced, searching for an answer that would satisfy him without revealing too much. But before she could speak, he waved his hand. "Are you going to keep staring?"
"Why do you care?" she said, repeating his own dismissal back at him.
He laughed again. "I do not really care." He took a step closer, his boots crunching against the dead leaves on the ground. "Anyways, I heard you defeated Wirt in a spar."
Subaru's grip tightened on the katana. "Yeah. So?"
The demon's grin sharpened. "Well," he said, "show me what you have got."
Subaru blinked. A battle maniac, she thought. Of course. A huge, scary, demon battle maniac who wants to fight me because he heard I'm strong.
She had enough mana to kill him. Probably. The other demons had been fast, but she had been faster. This one was tall, but tall just meant more surface area to cut. She could end this quickly, before he became a real problem.
She flashed toward him.
The katana moved faster than thought, the edge aimed at his throat. Inches away. Less than inches. She could already see the blade connecting, could already picture the spray of blood, the look of surprise on his face.
His pupils followed her.
That was the first sign that something was wrong. His eyes tracked her movement, not after she had struck, but during. In real time. As if her speed was nothing special. As if he could see her perfectly well.
His smirk did not move. It stayed frozen on his face, confident, amused, as if she was a child showing off a party trick.
A huge sword appeared in his hand.
Subaru did not see where it came from. One moment his hand was empty. The next, a massive blade filled her vision, longer than her entire body, wider than her torso. It moved toward her in an arc, too fast to follow, too fast to dodge.
She barely had time to react before it passed through her.
Huh?
The world tilted. She saw her lower half still standing, the legs planted on the ground, the boots covered in mud and blood. She saw her upper half falling, the katana slipping from her fingers, the turban coming loose from her head.
Two halves of Subaru hit the ground.
The tall demon walked forward, his boots stepping over the scattered remains. He bent down and picked up her upper half, lifting it by the collar of her dress. Intestines and blood fell from the severed torso, dark and wet, splattering against the leaves.
He looked at her face. Her eyes were still open, still seeing, still processing what had happened. He stared at her with an expression of deep disappointment, as if she had promised him something valuable and delivered nothing.
"W-wha, w-what—"
"What a waste," he interrupted her gasps.
"A—a, I…" Subaru wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that she was not a waste, that she had killed a dozen of his soldiers, that she had survived things he could not imagine. But her mouth would not move. Her lungs would not draw breath. Her body was no longer a body. It was just meat, falling apart, fading into the same dark mist that came from the other dead demons.
Again, she thought. I am going to die again.
But this time was different. This time, she had not been killed by a human. She had been killed by a demon. A demon with a power that looked very similar to her own. The ability to conjure weapons from nothing. The ability to strike faster than the eye could follow.
He is like me, she realized, as the darkness closed in. Or maybe I am like him.
She shouldn't have gotten cocky. She shouldn't have underestimated him.
The tall demon dropped her upper half and turned away. He looked out at the forest, at the battle still raging, at the soldiers fighting and dying and killing.
"Disappointing," he said.
Then the world went black.