Chapter 128: Thus Spoke Elsa Granhiert

"So then, Elsa, what about you? Haven't you always been looking forward to how you'd get to kill me?"

"So by being in such a rush to let me kill you, maybe you'll lose your chance to cut open my belly ever again?"

Natsuki Subaru spread his hands, speaking in a joking tone.

"Ah, that's right, that part really is a pity."

Elsa first revealed a regretful smile, but then gave a serene little laugh.

"Still, to me, the temptation of being killed by you and the temptation of examining your intestines after killing you with my own hands are one and the same."

"Then why? In that case, wouldn't it be more convenient to just do the deed directly?"

Natsuki Subaru thought it over, then a wicked curve tugged at the corner of his mouth as he leaned in a little closer to ask.

"Or is it that you're no longer curious about what my intestines look like?"

In response, Elsa simply bent down, pressed her warm palm against Natsuki Subaru's abdomen, and stared straight into his eyes.

The two of them locked gazes for a moment, and then, as if she had confirmed something, Elsa smiled faintly, straightened up, and answered.

"No, it's not that I have no curiosity about what's inside your belly. It's simply that the value of doing so isn't great enough to make me break the tranquility of this moment."

"Ha, Elsa, that's not right!"

Beside them, Meili planted her hands on her hips and teased.

"Didn't you just say the two temptations were one and the same? So how come now they're not the same anymore?"

"Oh my, you'll understand once you grow up, Meili."

Elsa shot Meili a chiding, exasperated look, then kept up her calm, gentle smile.

The memory ended...

It was as if she had just awakened from a long, long dream.

In fact, even as she recalled that scene, Elsa's body moved a step ahead of her consciousness, the curved blade in her hand hurtling swiftly toward where Rem and Ram stood.

And yet, at this moment her strength had not recovered the way Ram's and Puck's had.

So, in Ram's eyes, the movements of a power-restricted Elsa were in truth riddled with openings.

"El Fura!"

Facing the Elsa charging straight at her, Ram did not hesitate for even an instant, and directly unleashed the Wind-blade magic she had been charging for so long.

Its overwhelming power was enough to sever the trees of an entire forest clean through the middle—let alone Elsa, whose physical constitution had been suppressed to the level of an ordinary person.

"Shk—shk—shk—!"

Accompanied by a violent droning buzz, the invisible wind blades slashed across Elsa's body in the blink of an eye, carving out one appalling wound after another.

The most severe of the wounds was at her waist, which was very nearly sliced through entirely across, leaving only a sliver of flesh and blood clinging together by inertia.

At the same time, great torrents of blood gushed out in an instant from Elsa's face, her neck, her arms... a terrifying sight beyond description.

Yet she herself seemed not to mind in the least at this moment, wiping the blood from her face with a finger, bringing it to her lips, and licking it with an outstretched tongue.

Even here at the very end of her life, she maintained that elegant, alluring style of hers.

After all, it was a habit of hers~

"So this is the true taste of death? Nothing more than this, after all. What a pity—that in the end, it wasn't while being fawned over by that man that I died..."

"Still so full of words on the verge of death—who cares what you think?!"

The string of Ram's reason had already been stretched to its limit by the barrage of blows she'd witnessed during the viewing, and by the relentless pressure from Rem and Emilia.

And now Elsa's utterly unforeseen attack against her had become the final straw that broke the camel's back.

So, with a ferocious expression, Ram shouted at the swaying, teetering Elsa across from her, driven by an ugly desire that was half wrath, half exhilaration.

"Drop dead!"

Once again a faint light gathered across Ram's whole body, but just as she was about to unleash a second wind blade, she was suddenly tackled from behind by a small, dainty black shadow that pounced on her, and the attacker clamped down fiercely on her neck.

In an instant, the artery burst, and Ram's whole body convulsed.

Yet the small, dainty figure sprawled atop her seemed utterly oblivious to all this, only tearing and biting in a mad frenzy without pause.

From the look of it, she seemed sworn to leave her enemy no possibility of survival whatsoever.

All of this happened in the space of a single spark, and once everyone came to their senses they also saw clearly the face of the one who had attacked Ram.

"Meili, you child..."

Elsa, who had already reached her dying moments, noticed Meili's act of biting through Ram's neck to avenge her—but she only had time to sigh out this one line.

The final moments of her life, she wanted to leave to that man.

She had once heard Subaru say that when a person hovers between life and death, their life flashes before their eyes, and in that brief instant they finish recalling their entire life.

But right now she did not want to recall her own worthless life—she only wanted, in the final moment of her existence, to take one more look at that man—

No—since it was already the end, surely she ought to switch to a different way of addressing him?

In the past, it was because she didn't know how to define the relationship between the two of them that she had grown accustomed to using "that man" to refer to him.

But now, thinking about it—

Between her and Subaru, they were colleagues who carried out missions together, they were teammates, they were partners; and of course, he was also her employer.

They were accomplices! But of course, they also understood one another.

But beyond that?

She, Meili, and Subaru—of course, they were also people who had lived together for a long time... family!

Elsa lifted her head and looked upward, silent for a long while.

There was nothing there, and yet it seemed to hold her true heart.

All of her actions all this time seemed to have found their answer.

Clashing with Emilia in the Slums (cortiços) out of jealousy; fighting to the bitter end against the Sword Saint, sparing nothing, all to save Subaru; disguising herself to come to the village for Subaru's sake; waiting together with Meili, full of anticipation, for a second meeting with Subaru...

Subaru, Subaru, Subaru...

Elsa seemed to see it.

Her eyes, steeped in the blood that flowed ceaselessly down, seemed able to see that empty place clearly written with the words—

"Subaru is my beloved."

What a pity—that it was only in the final moment of her life that she came to understand this.

"Elsa."

Suddenly, a familiar voice rang out beside her ear.

It was Subaru's voice—the voice she would absolutely never forget, the voice of her own beloved!

A blush surged onto Elsa's face; in this moment her heart was as bashful as a maiden in the first flush of love, and at the same time brimming over with a sweet, sweet flavor.

Was that... happiness?

Elsa did not know. She only knew that her beloved, perhaps unable to bear parting with her, had come to see her one last time.

And so, supported by strength welling up from who knows where, Elsa turned around to look behind her.

At the very same moment she turned her head, the environment around her seemed to turn utterly upside down, transforming into a pure white space.

A black-haired man in a long robe stood with his back to her, not far from where she was.

As if sensing her arrival, the black-haired man slowly turned around, gazing at her with a calm look.

"Ah, darling~"

Elsa clamped her legs together, her face flushed with a rosy glow; with one arm she held her magnificent bosom across her chest, squeezing out a deep, deep cleavage.

At this end of her life, she only wanted to express what was in her heart, boldly and ardently.

Even if the Subaru before her was perhaps nothing more than a figment she had conjured up in her dying moments.

"Darling, I think... I love you."

So said Elsa.

____

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