Not that there was anything he could say about it. The only thing left for him now was to deal with the enemy in front of him.
So it was that the moment Betty turned and took her first step away, a thunderous boom erupted behind her.
No drawn-out battle. No raving monologue. Just a single strike, and then silence swallowed the forest whole.
Her stride hitched for half a beat. She didn't need to look. Against Reinhard's power, Geuse had never stood a chance.
In the distance, Gojo watched the plume of dust rising from Reinhard's position. "Looks like it's started." He turned. "Meili, you're up."
"Don't worry, Big Bro! Everything's already in place. If anyone tries to run, I'll tip Reinhard off right away."
She was still talking when a second explosion rolled across the forest.
"He's faster than I expected."
A brief silence followed the second blast. Then the explosions began radiating outward from the cave, one after another after another.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Some came less than a second apart. Reinhard had barely finished destroying one of Petelgeuse's vessels before appearing in front of the next. Speed like that left even the Sin Archbishop of Sloth with almost no time to react.
Not that reaction time would have helped. In a straight fight, Petelgeuse couldn't so much as scratch him.
Each detonation rang out, and Gojo silently tallied the count. He kept going until the number matched the total he'd eliminated in the previous loop.
"That should be the last of them."
Without Subaru present, there was no fresh vessel for Petelgeuse to transfer his soul into. The only thing waiting for him was death. All the obsession and hatred in the world meant nothing against that kind of power.
Betty had just rejoined Gojo and the others when Reinhard returned.
"Lady Felt. The Sin Archbishop of Sloth, Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, and all Witch Cult followers in the area have been eliminated."
He knelt on one knee before Felt, his uniform still immaculate. Not a wrinkle, not a speck of dust. Nothing about him suggested he'd been fighting at all.
Which said everything about how one-sided it had been.
"Nice work! So we can take the proof back and collect the bounty now, right?"
Felt beamed at him.
"Yes. Though we'll need to bring the body back as evidence." He paused. "The remaining cultists should be buried on-site, and we'll need to notify the Knight Order to come verify the scene..."
"All yours!" Felt waved a hand, radiating the particular contentment of someone who had no intention of handling any of it herself.
"Understood." Reinhard hesitated. His gaze drifted toward Betty. "However, regarding Petelgeuse's body..."
The implication hung in the air. Betty had made her feelings clear enough. They'd need her to teleport them back, and now they were about to haul her former teacher's corpse around for bounty money.
"It's fine." Betty turned her face away, her tone flat. "He stopped being the Geuse I knew centuries ago. I don't care."
That was what she said. But Gojo caught it: the faint shadow of loss passing through her eyes.
Betty had gained companions these past weeks. People around her, filling the silence. But the ones buried in her oldest memories were dwindling, one by one. Her mother. The first Roswaal. All of them gone. And now the one familiar face she'd stumbled across after all those centuries had twisted into something unrecognizable.
For someone who'd spent four hundred years alone in the Forbidden Library, it was a particular kind of grief.
"If that's how Betty feels, then bring him along," Gojo said to Reinhard. Then, while she wasn't paying attention, he scooped her off the ground in one swift motion.
"What are you doing?!"
The ambush drew an involuntary yelp. She looked up to find Gojo grinning down at her. "Just saying, these days Betty's got me around no matter what. Right?"
"What kind of nonsense is that."
The sudden sincerity caught her off guard. Her expression froze, caught somewhere between embarrassment and irritation.
"I know, I know. We'll talk about it later. In private."
"Nobody is talking about anything, you idiot! What do you take me for?!"
Her small fists rained down on him like a hailstorm, and under everyone's gaze, a faint blush crept across her cheeks.
But the teasing did its job. The melancholy that had settled between her brows faded, little by little.
Once the commotion died down, Reinhard excused himself to handle the aftermath. Felt trailed after him, keen on searching the cultists' belongings for anything worth pocketing.
It didn't take long. Reinhard carved a deep pit into the earth with ease, buried the cultist bodies, marked the site, and called it done. Petelgeuse's corpse, he brought back with him.
He'd had the foresight to hold back during the kill. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been a body left to collect, let alone one intact enough to serve as proof.
With everything wrapped up, it was time to head back.
"Betty, if you'd do the honors again. I've been absorbing Mana properly this time, I promise."
She responded to Gojo's self-congratulatory tone with a cold snort, then gathered the group and opened the teleportation spell once more. In a blink, the forest vanished around them.
When they reappeared, the towering silhouette of Flugel's Tree loomed overhead. Not far off, the White Whale's carcass lay exactly where they'd left it, sprawled motionless across the ground.
"Done and done! Finally, a break."
Felt let out a whoop and flopped down at the campsite the merchants had left behind at the base of the tree. She poked at the still-smoldering campfire until the flames licked higher, then leaned back against the trunk with a contented sigh.
"Seriously, I barely slept last night, and then all of this..."
A yawn swallowed the rest of her sentence. Her large eyes glistened with involuntary tears.
"Lady Felt, if you're tired, please rest. I'll wake you when it's time to leave."
Reinhard draped his coat over her shoulders, his voice gentle.
"I want to sleep, but I'm starving."
She blinked up at him, helpless. They'd set out in the afternoon, and between the White Whale and the Witch Cult, it was now deep into the night. Of course they were hungry.
The moment Felt said it, the realization hit everyone else too.
"Hey, Reinhard." Gojo sidled up and bumped his shoulder. "Think the White Whale's edible?"
"The White Whale?"
"Sure. One of the Three Great Mabeasts, but still a Mabeast, right? And Mabeasts are just creatures. Why wouldn't you be able to eat one?"
"What do you say we find out?"
Hunger was doing the talking now.
"Well..." Reinhard wavered. Ordinary Mabeasts were one thing. But the White Whale had lived for centuries and been created by a Witch. Whether it was safe to eat was genuinely unclear.
"No problem. We'll let Subaru be the test subject."
Gojo shot Subaru a wink and a grin.
"Come on, do I have to be the guinea pig for every little thing?" Subaru sighed, though he didn't take it seriously. The guy was obviously messing with him.
"If it's poisonous, Subaru dies and we just won't eat any. Simple."
"That's one use for an idiot, I suppose." Betty couldn't resist chiming in.
"Would you quit calling me an idiot, you pint-sized gremlin?"
"An idiot is an idiot. That's a fact of nature. It wouldn't change even if I stopped saying it."
While the two of them went back and forth like a comedy routine, Reinhard stood and looked around at the group.
"I'll go take a look."
He headed toward the whale's carcass.
"Think he can carve meat with just a scabbard?"
"With his strength? Probably. Might just look a little ridiculous."
They watched as Reinhard circled the whale, examined it, and then sliced off a massive slab of flesh from the belly before carrying it back.
"Wow, that's huge!"
Felt's eyes locked onto the cut. Under the firelight, the meat gleamed with a rich, oily sheen. She swallowed.
"I've already tested it. No poison."
Reinhard smiled and got to work. In short order he'd portioned the slab: part of it went over the fire to roast, and the rest he sliced into thin, delicate pieces.
"We don't have seasoning, but the flavor holds up well on its own. Over in Kararagi, they have a style of eating raw fish called sashimi that's quite popular."
"Sashimi?"
Gojo and Subaru exchanged a look. An odd look.
"Yes, it's considered a local specialty," Reinhard continued, arranging the slices. "You take fresh fish, cut it into translucent slivers, and dip them in various sauces. There's another dish as well, something called sushi..."
By that point, both of them were certain. Someone else from their world had been here before them.
"Reinhard, how old are these dishes?" Gojo asked between preparations.
"Around four hundred years. They say the Great Sage invented them."
"The Great Sage again..." Subaru muttered, then tilted his head back to stare up at the trunk of the enormous tree beside them.
The inscription carved into it was still there. Still sharp. Still clear.
"Quite the overachiever," Gojo mused. Sealing the Witch of Envy was impressive enough, but spreading Japanese cuisine across an entire fantasy world on top of it? That took a special kind of person.
"The roast is ready. Help yourselves."
Reinhard's voice pulled everyone's attention back. After sampling the sashimi, expectations for the grilled meat were already sky-high. They grabbed their portions and dug in.
"This is amazing!"
"The fat is so rich. I never would've guessed the White Whale would taste this good!"
"Right? It looks so plain from the outside."
"Hey, Reinhard." Felt paused mid-bite, struck by a thought. "To claim the bounty, we just need to prove we killed it, right?"
"That's correct."
"Then after we haul it back, let's carve off a bunch more. With proper seasoning, it'd be even better!" Her eyes lit up. "And with this much meat, we could sell some to the nobles and merchants. I bet they'd pay through the nose for a taste of one of the Three Great Mabeasts!"
The girl's instincts bent toward profit the way a compass points north.
"You can't eat all of that yourself, though." Subaru pointed at the whale's enormous remains.
"So? We give the leftovers to the people in the Slums. They never get enough to eat anyway. Better than letting it go to waste."
She said it like it was nothing. But Reinhard heard the words, and the warmth in his gaze deepened. To him, this was the kind of mercy a true ruler carried without thinking.
"Oh, and maybe we could partner with a trading company. Export the meat to other countries..."
Felt was still lost in her grand commercial vision when she failed to notice that everyone except Reinhard had their heads down, eating in silence with single-minded focus.
By the time she snapped out of it, every last piece of fish in front of her was gone. The others sat back, hands on their stomachs, wearing the satisfied expressions of people who'd eaten very well.
"You sneaks, you ate it all!"
She stuffed what remained in her own hands into her mouth, cheeks bulging as she chewed furiously.
"Can't blame us. You were too busy talking to eat." Gojo shrugged, grinning at her.
"Don't worry, Lady Felt. I'll grill another round for you."
Reinhard was already on his feet, ever attentive, heading back toward the whale without a word of complaint.
...
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