"Ara, ara, that won't do—Natsuki-kun." Upon hearing him, Roswaal lightly shook his head, his tone airy and light, like that of someone indulging a petulant child.
"While I do admire your candid personality, it is a shame. I cannot grant your wish just yet, you know. My body still has a more important mission to comple~te."
"So, you're going to resist, are you, Roswaal? Suits me just fine!" Natsuki Subaru grinned, baring his teeth.
He wasn't the least bit surprised by Roswaal's choice. He knew this man would never admit defeat until every last one of his paranoid schemes was crushed and every prophecy in that damn book of his was torn to shreds.
"For everything you've done up until now—for overturning my expectations time and time again, bringing forth so many wonderful possibilities—"
Roswaal bowed slightly, offering a formal gesture, his words laced with a sincerity twisted to its absolute extreme. "I offer my most heartfelt gratitude, and with it, my guarantee that you are indee~d the most important person I have waited four hundred years for!"
"Who the hell wants your thanks! Stop getting off on your own self-righteous delusions!" Natsuki Subaru spat contemptuously, his voice filled with utter disgust.
"Heh heh, this resistance, this rage, this intense emotional fluctuation all because of me—this is likely what you would call... fa~te."
Roswaal's mismatched eyes glinted with an inscrutable, almost ecstatic light as he spoke slowly.
"We have been bound tightly together by the invisible threads of destiny, haven't we, Natsuki-kun?"
"More like a fatal bond! A disgusting fate!" Natsuki Subaru roared at the mid-air Roswaal.
"Looking at that pretentious, paint-smeared clown face of yours just makes me want to smash it to a pulp, Roswaal!"
"Rage all you want, blossom forth! These intense emotions born from me are the very catalyst for transformation! How truly—exci~ting." Roswaal's tone rose distinctly, carrying a hint of mad provocation and pleasure.
"Is that so... Then as you wish!"
Before the words had even faded, Natsuki Subaru's figure vanished from the spot like a phantom, reappearing before Roswaal with a piercing shriek of wind. His speed was almost too fast for the eye to follow.
—Here it comes!
A fist brimming with fury swung out, only to tear through the air and hit nothing. The violent impact was unleashed entirely upon the ground, instantly blasting a shallow crater, sending rubble flying and kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Oh, my—a truly predictable attack. Both its speed and angle are filled with your unique style—Natsuki Suba~ru." A voice with a strange, drawn-out cadence echoed from the sky.
Roswaal was already elegantly levitating in mid-air, empowered by wind magic. His wide magus robes swayed gently in the breeze, his posture perfectly composed. He had just dodged Natsuki Subaru's lightning-fast strike.
"Tch, you react pretty damn fast," Natsuki Subaru muttered, looking up at the floating Roswaal and clicking his tongue.
He had to admit, as the foremost mage in the Kingdom of Lugunica, Roswaal's power was indeed unfathomable. With such precise prediction and extraordinary reflexes, it was no wonder that in the original timeline, he could fight the High Spirit Puck head-on without being at a disadvantage.
"For one who possesses an aptitude for all magical attributes and has studied the pinnacle of magic for over four hundred years, seeing through and evading such a simple physical blow is only natural, wouldn't you say~?"
Roswaal floated in the air, looking down from above. The playful smile on his face receded slightly, replaced by a rare, serious expression that revealed absolute confidence.
He declared to Natsuki Subaru, "Now then, it's time for me to demonstrate just a little of what the apex of magic truly mea~ns."
"Is that so..." Natsuki Subaru stared intently at Roswaal, taking a fighting stance. "Then let me see it with my own eyes."
Nearby, the girls each had different expressions.
"Subaru..." Emilia couldn't help but whisper, her hands unconsciously clasped at her chest as a trace of worry flickered in her amethyst eyes. "Be careful..."
"Subaru! Give that bastard Roswaal who tricked Betty for over four hundred years a good beating!" Beatrice, on the other hand, puffed out her cheeks, clenched her small fists, and shouted angrily at Natsuki Subaru.
She was clearly still resentful of Roswaal's long-standing deception.
Ram remained silent, the emotions in her wine-red eyes complex and unreadable as she quietly watched the man in the air she had served for so many years.
"You all stay back, let me handle this." Natsuki Subaru didn't turn his head, merely waving a hand in their direction.
"This is between me and Roswaal... a duel between men."
Then, locking his gaze back onto his airborne opponent, he shouted, "Roswaal! Whatever you've got, bring it on!"
"A rather courageous declaration. Then—as you wish—Goa!" Roswaal's short chant produced a clear and scorching result. A searing fireball materialized in his palm.
The fireball, initially only the size of a fist, expanded rapidly, becoming as large as a basketball in a single breath before shooting out like an arrow from a bow!
—BOOM!!
The scorching fireball smashed into the ground where Natsuki Subaru stood. Instead of exploding on impact, it instantly burst apart and surged upward, transforming into countless nimble fire-serpents that wove themselves into a deadly binding net, trapping Natsuki Subaru in place.
"Is this all you've got?" Surrounded by the inferno, Natsuki Subaru looked at Roswaal with a placid expression, as if the searing heat around him was a mere illusion.
With a soft pop!, a profound shadow energy erupted from Natsuki Subaru's body, instantly devouring and dispelling the entwined fire-serpents without leaving a single trace.
"It seems, Natsuki-kun—you've been hiding a considerable amount of strength as well, haven't you?" Roswaal seemed unsurprised by this, as if this probing attack was well within his expectations.
However, what he found a little strange was how Natsuki Subaru's strength had risen to such a level in such a short amount of time.
Considering Natsuki Subaru's past feats—subjugating the White Whale, defeating the Sin Archbishop of Greed, killing the Sin Archbishop of Sloth... even though Roswaal hadn't witnessed them himself, he knew how difficult those achievements were. Not even he could accomplish them easily.
And yet, Natsuki Subaru had done it.
It seemed absurd at first glance, but upon further reflection, it was exceptionally absurd.
"How could someone accomplish in less than two months what others couldn't in several hundred years?"
With such doubts, an even more preposterous idea had once flashed through Roswaal's mind: that in just two months, Natsuki Subaru had grown from an ordinary person to a level where his strength was on par with his own.
But the moment this thought emerged, he immediately dismissed it.
Impossible! Absolutely impossible!
Therefore, Roswaal had already reached another, more realistic conclusion in his heart: Natsuki Subaru must have been hiding his strength, deceiving everyone from the very moment he first entered the mansion.
As expected of the key individual recorded in the Book of Wisdom, capable of 'restarting the world.' Possessing such strength didn't seem so strange after all.
"You guess," Natsuki Subaru said, looking up at the floating Roswaal with an unreadable, half-smiling expression.
"What an unpleasant answer—Natsuki-kun." Roswaal slightly narrowed his mismatched eyes, looking down at the seemingly tiny Natsuki Subaru on the ground.
"Compared to a guy who's been role-playing for four hundred years, I'm still far behind," Natsuki Subaru scoffed.
"What, you've lived this long and you've lost even that little bit of patience?"
Speaking of which, Roswaal had been a world-class genius four hundred years ago; otherwise, he wouldn't have been noticed and taken as a disciple by the Witch of Greed, Echidna.
Although he was later crushingly defeated in his battle with the Warlock of Melancholy, Hector, and even later inhabited the body of the previous female Roswaal—a body that couldn't adapt to the flow of magical elements, preventing him from manipulating magic as freely as before.
Instead, he was forced to turn his focus to martial arts, and through daily training, he developed extremely potent physical combat skills.
It could be said that the current Roswaal L. Mathers was perhaps in the 'strongest form' of his long life!
He was not just an ultimate genius in the field of magic, able to fluently control multiple attributes, but also a warrior with rich combat experience and formidable martial prowess.
He could fight on equal footing with Puck in his full form, their offense and defense evenly matched, and he could also use a surprise physical attack to instantly defeat Garfiel before he could even react.
And Garfiel's physical strength was considered top-tier within the kingdom.
Despite lacking more widely celebrated glorious achievements, Roswaal's raw power unquestionably stood at the pinnacle of the kingdom.
"How could my four hundred years of accumulation be so easily overturned by an ordinary human like you!" Roswaal's mismatched eyes surged with his obsession for the past, his tone carrying an unshakeable conviction.
"...Is it because your feelings will not change?" Natsuki Subaru looked directly at Roswaal, accurately pointing out the core of the issue.
"That's right—inde~ed." Roswaal nodded heavily, a barely perceptible tremor in his voice.
"These feelings—they have not wavered for even a moment in four hundred years!"
"Is it because that's the one belief you've held onto across all this time? Even after countless failures, you never gave up?" Natsuki Subaru pressed on.
"Yes, that's exactly it!" Roswaal's voice suddenly rose, his mismatched eyes radiating a terrifying spirit.
"For four hundred years, I have longed for that woman. Even though the days I could not see her have long surpassed the time we spent together, her image remains deeply seared into my heart, never to fade."
"My soul still burns for her. On the day we parted, my heart was shattered to pieces, and it has not healed to this day."
"I have never changed these feelings, and no one can make me give up!"
Roswaal's feelings would not be overturned by anyone. His convictions would never be twisted or warped. This was the sole anchor in his four-hundred-year life.
"What you think is unchanging might have been wrong from the very beginning, Roswaal!" Natsuki Subaru mercilessly interrogated Roswaal's soul.
"You've been someone's guard dog for four hundred years, sacrificed everything—do you really think that Witch of Greed, Echidna, would even remember you?"
It was worth noting that as the Witch of Greed, Echidna possessed the ability to know the past and future. All of Roswaal's actions were likely within her predictions, even her schemes. She influenced Roswaal through the nature of Greed, and had even shown anguish when he was gravely injured.
In a sense, Roswaal's four hundred years of obsession and madness might have been nothing more than a single move on a board set long ago by the Witch of Greed, Echidna.
"Further words are useless, Natsuki-kun." Roswaal did not directly respond to Natsuki Subaru's sharp taunt, instead changing the subject, his voice returning to its characteristic, drawn-out cadence. "In the current age, I could be called—the strongest mage, you know."
He specifically added the 'in the current age' caveat, yet his face showed no trace of regret or hesitation. Instead, his mismatched eyes revealed a loneliness that was almost a craving, and a love as deep as an abyss. It was an illusory yearning for someone he could never reach.
Behind this seemingly simple declaration about magic lay the indelible obsession in Roswaal's heart. Other than Natsuki Subaru, no one present knew the truth or the weight of these emotions. Perhaps not even Roswaal himself fully realized that this yearning had long since transcended admiration and become the sole reason for his existence.
"Stop being so full of yourself, Roswaal!" Natsuki Subaru shot back bluntly at the man in the air, but his body had already entered a state of high alert, his muscles tensed as shadow energy flowed silently around him.
"The strongest mage? Talk is cheap. Let me see it with my own eyes!"
"As you wish. I will let you witness firsthand the finest firepower of fire mana—Al Goa!"
As he spoke, the space above Roswaal was instantly dyed crimson, as dozens of massive explosions bloomed like flowers of death. The one who released this terrifying torrent of flame was Roswaal, and the power that transformed it into devastating explosions also originated from him.
"Hey, Roswaal, is this all you've got?" Standing on the ground, Natsuki Subaru looked up at Roswaal in the air and deliberately mocked him in a loud voice.
"You've lived for over four hundred years, and all you can do is set off some flashy, useless fireworks?"
"Be patient, Natsuki-kun." Roswaal's usual strange cadence floated down from high above. "The show—has only just begun."
Before his words faded, the situation changed abruptly. A surging torrent of mana erupted from around Roswaal, and countless scorching fireballs condensed in an instant, filling the entire sky like a dense barrage and dyeing the horizon a terrifying orange-red.
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