Re:Zero: Wrath Route Yandere Emilia Watches the Projection Chapter 13 13: Lay the Chips on the Table

The air seed to freeze solid.

Reinhard stared at his empty palm, then at the shards scattered across the ground, disbelief written across his face.

For the first ti, his expression showed sothing he was never supposed to feel — being caught completely off guard.

The sword. It had finally shattered under the recoil of his own power.

Against Elsa alone, he was confident he could end the fight barehanded and in short order.

But now he was facing two opponents at once — Emilia, who was possibly the Witch of Envy herself, and the wanted criminal Elsa Granhiert.

Worse still: he had sent the soldiers away in advance, which ant there was no spare weapon anywhere within reach.

A flicker of surprise crossed Emilia's eyes as well — but it was swallowed almost imdiately by sothing colder, sothing more absolute.

An opening. It felt like one had just appeared right in front of her.

Across the battlefield, Elsa lay crumpled on the ground, pain blacking out the edges of her vision.

And yet the corners of her mouth curled into a twisted, blood-soaked smile as she wheezed silently into the dark.

...

Out in the open ground before the Loot House, the three-way battle involving Reinhard continued — but it had ground into a stalemate.

At the far edge of the battlefield, Natsuki Subaru was gnawing on his fingers, cold sweat beading at his temples, his mind running at full throttle as he searched for a way to break the deadlock.

Two won were standing in front of him as his shield. Until the very last mont — until death itself ca — how could he dare give up?

First things first: brute force was absolutely not going to stop Reinhard.

He had fought side by side with Reinhard during the Water Gate City arc.

No one in the world understood better than him exactly how monstrous that man's strength was.

There might be so misunderstanding buried in all of this.

Subaru genuinely could not wrap his head around the idea that in so other possible world, he had beco Reinhard's enemy.

But how was he supposed to find out what had driven Reinhard to want him dead?

Then, suddenly —

A voice broke the silence that had settled over the battlefield. Elsa spoke, and Subaru's attention snapped to her.

"Ahhh… that familiar scent of hatred. It's you, isn't it? No question."

"Mm. No question at all~"

Subaru's thoughts spun rapidly as he turned the words over, searching for aning.

Elsa clearly knew Reinhard from before — that much was obvious. But then what did her words actually an?

"So you ca back too. No wonder you've been using Subaru as your hunting target all along…"

Elsa parried a flurry of Reinhard's blows — fists and feet both — while wearing an expression of open mockery.

"Did having the thing you protected destroyed by Subaru finally teach you so wisdom?"

"Am I right? A knight stripped of his worth. A Sword Saint whose honor has been dragged through the mud. Reinhard."

Elsa's words sliced through Subaru's mind like a bolt of lightning.

"That's it. That's it!"

Subaru muttered under his breath, and from those few scattered words alone, he had pieced together the answer to a question that had been nagging at him.

He had always assud the three people across from him ca from different possible tilines.

But based on what Elsa had just said —

At minimum, Elsa and Reinhard were from the sa world.

They knew each other's histories. They had lived through the sa events.

And that — that was enough.

"Elsa!"

The mont the pieces clicked into place, Subaru shouted across to her, urgency cracking his voice.

"Why did I destroy the thing Reinhard was protecting?!"

"What exactly did I do? And —"

"In your eyes — what am I?"

Elsa heard him, and a beautiful curve spread across the corner of her lips.

She turned her head without a mont's hesitation, fixing Subaru with a gaze that burned.

"How sharp of you, Subaru."

"I knew it — Subaru! Reinhard is the single most perfect instrunt for your transformation!"

"I can answer your questions right now —"

"You despise Reinhard. Because you envied his power. Envied that heroic figure of his."

Two words rang through Subaru's mind like a struck bell.

"— Envy?"

Could it really be that the version of him in another world had envied Reinhard?

Just because he himself didn't possess that kind of power?

But that didn't sound anything like the thoughts a Natsuki Subaru who had already beco a "hero" would have…

While Subaru stood there in bewildernt —

On the other side, Elsa seized her mont and slipped free of the fight, appearing at Subaru's side in the blink of an eye.

Before he could react, she pulled him into a close, intimate embrace.

Skin pressed against skin, breaths mingling together, and in that sa voice she began laying out in ticulous detail every act that "Natsuki Subaru" had committed.

At that, the two combatants still on the battlefield — Reinhard and Emilia — seed to reach so wordless accord, and their fighting gradually, silently ceased.

They stood apart, facing each other in silence.

Both listening intently to everything Elsa described about Natsuki Subaru —

"Still wet behind the ears, yet he killed the Witch's Cult Sin Archbishop of Sloth with nothing but a mortal body."

"After that, he joined forces with Roswaal and brought the ntally shattered Blue Magician Ferris to heel."

"Roasted the Sin Archbishop of Greed alive. Engineered the death of the Finest Knight Julius. Eliminated the majority of the royal candidacy contenders —"

"And then annihilated every Sin Archbishop of the Deadly Sins — every last one, save himself."

At those words, the color drained from Subaru's face.

His instincts seized on the implication buried inside Elsa's phrasing.

What did she an, he had annihilated every Sin Archbishop except himself?

"Could it be…"

Subaru murmured in a daze, and Elsa's next words confird exactly what he feared.

"Burned the Royal Capital to ash. Killed the Sword Saint Reinhard — not with a blade, but by destroying his reputation utterly."

"Turned the world of n into a living hell. Waged a war of revenge against everything and everyone he despised."

Elsa's bewitching eyes reflected a kind of fervor that Subaru could not begin to understand.

Then she raised her voice and proclaid the identity of the man from her mories — as though announcing to all the world the return of "Natsuki Subaru."

"And the one who did all of this — is you."

"The one and only Sin Archbishop of the Witch's Cult."

"Holding the seat of Pride — Natsuki Subaru!"

The words fell away, and the scene plunged into a silence like death.

All four people present — struck with shock, or lost in mory and thought — stood rooted to the spot. Not one of them moved.

But then, quickly, Emilia stumbled forward several steps, driven by thoughts rising unbidden and unstoppable in her mind, a terror seizing her.

Suddenly, her knees gave out beneath her, and she collapsed, kneeling on the cold ground.

"No… this isn't right. This can't be right. Sin Archbishop of Pride — what does that an?"

"Sothing's wrong… Subaru, what am I even supposed to do?"

She was afraid. Afraid that the Subaru standing before her no longer belonged to her.

Would he beco the Archbishop of Pride that Elsa described?

Would he… abandon her again?

Emilia's gaze was like a candle on the verge of going out — a tiny, trembling fla guttering in the depths of her eyes, growing dimr by the second.

Her slender shoulders shook beyond her control, and the knees she had pressed against the frozen floor seed to have lost all feeling.

Subaru noticed it imdiately, and sothing invisible seized his heart and squeezed it without rcy.

"Emilia —!"

The cry tore out of him on instinct — his voice raw with a panic and a heartache he hadn't even known he was carrying.

And yet, in the very mont that shout was about to escape his lips —

Elsa's words echoed through his churning mind once more.

That stranger's identity. Those monstrous cris. Was that really another version of him?

Revenge. Burning the Royal Capital. Killing Julius?

His mouth opened — but sothing jamd hard in his throat, and the words turned to ash before they could reach his voice.

And at the sa mont, on the other side of the battlefield —

The mories that Elsa's words had conjured in Reinhard's eyes abruptly shattered.

He snapped back to himself and turned, fixing his gaze on Natsuki Subaru with iron finality.

The imnse magical energy radiating off him had not diminished in the slightest when his sword broke — if anything, it had condensed further, grown sharper, more lethal. The air around him groaned under the weight of it.

"Witch's Cult Sin Archbishop of Pride, Mister Natsuki Subaru — even now, even after all of this —"

Reinhard's voice was low and precise, and every single word it carried pressed down like an invisible iron weight.

"Are you still planning to keep up the act?!"

...

...

PS: The movie-watching arc is about to begin — just as the title suggests. But I won't be rushing through every storyline all at once; read on and you'll see what I an. (laughs)