"What did you do? This is so gross!"
The frogs had grown so dense that the visible ground was completely blanketed. Compared with the White Whale, its fellow among the Three Great Mabeasts, the Great Rabbit had no especially formidable raw power—but its horror and sheer tenacity were, on another axis entirely, no less than the Whale's.
The swarm surged up, chewing and biting one mouthful at a time, a genuine death by a thousand cuts. Then again, no matter how you looked at it, it was far too hard for frogs to actually bite a person a hundred times their size to death.
Even so, ground blanketed with a creature that wasn't very likable to begin with was more than enough to magnify its revolting quality countless times over. The one small comfort was that they really were just frogs, not some lumpy, wart-covered horror.
Because the misfortune Yimi had transferred landed on the point of 'becoming plural frogs,' and the Great Rabbit already came with the trait of infinite division—while its offensive power was cut to the absolute minimum, the original act of 'splitting one rabbit' had become 'splitting several frogs.' This multiplying overflow, in a sense, actually made it even more dangerous.
"I was under the impression the Great Rabbit was a rabbit~. Did the two of you do something in advance?" Roswaal looked at Yimi. From beginning to end, this girl had never once appeared in the Book of Wisdom.
A Great Rabbit like this clearly didn't have the lethality he'd anticipated.
"Agh! One got inside my clothes—do something, Doraemimon!"
Natsuki Subaru pounded at his own clothes, choking down his disgust, and in a spare second twisted his face toward Yimi. Only to find a twitching frog leg poking out of her little mouth. When their eyes met, her ears even gave a twitch.
"Gulp—" A chew, a chew, and down it went.
"..." Natsuki Subaru covered his eyes.
Stop that. Any more and I won't be able to think you're cute anymore. Beako, hurry up and rein her in.
Having swallowed the frog, Yimi immediately raised her Spear, reaching for her optimal solution. "Squish Diego dead!"
"That won't do either, Yimi-sama." Ram quickly used her own body to block Yimi's line of sight. "Die—Roswaal-sama is not the culprit who called them here. These are mabeasts drawn by Ram's mana; even striking at Roswaal wouldn't dispel their hostility."
She kicked one away. Without any venom, ordinary frogs stood no chance of killing any of them—but a Great Rabbit that multiplied without end and attacked living things was still a nuisance impossible to ignore.
Roswaal watched Natsuki Subaru quietly. "I see. So a mere degree of trouble like this still isn't enough to meet your threshold for a redo?"
"How many times did you walk your way to my side, I wonder? Ten? A hundred? No—by the look of you, it can't be more than five, or you'd have grown at least a little more like me~."
That was what he claimed, but the increasingly crazed look on Subaru's face left Roswaal somewhat uncertain.
"So you really do know..." Natsuki Subaru edged closer to Yimi.
This guy—did he not actually know the trigger for his redo? Roswaal had clearly killed him once already, yet unlike Yimi, he didn't seem to carry the memory of it.
And was Diego forcing him to loop back, to prevent such a mortifying situation from arising?
Subaru couldn't see the point, because even if he started over, it would only make things turn out more in Diego's favor.
But in that instant he suddenly understood: carelessly letting others know he could Return by Death would only get him used by them.
"You're not the mastermind behind the Witch Cult, are you?"
"Regrettably, even I have no direct partnership with them~."
Shooting him a furious glare, Natsuki Subaru looked outside. "Right—Meili's out there. Can't we have her take control of these things? At this rate we might actually get buried alive!"
"Roswaal just said 'Great Rabbit,' didn't he? This thing splits without end. That girl already strains to control a hundred mabeasts at once. How could she possibly control one of the Three Great Mabeasts?"
Beatrice pried open Yimi's hand as she was about to grab a frog to eat, chopped a hand-blade down onto her head, then crystallized and shattered several frogs that had crept close.
Rem nodded and added, "Ever since the Sin Archbishops' invasion, that child feels terrified at the mere sight of a frog illustration in a storybook. Right about now she must be trembling on the dragon-carriage."
"I'd be trembling too. Is there a way to deal with them all at once?"
"Gather them together with a large amount of mana, then wipe them all out in one go. Mm—there's another way, too. The stench on you seems able to draw them in."
Almost every frog that had leapt into the hut was coming straight for Natsuki Subaru.
"Do I really smell that bad?" Subaru sniffed himself, doubtful.
Rem nodded. "Very bad. The Witch Cult's scent is extremely obvious."
If not for the fact that this man had once shoved her out of the way—and for Yimi-sama's sake—she'd have taken a morning-star to his skull on some dark and windy night long ago.
"The Witch Cult? So that's the smell?"
It seemed that every time he came back to life, some woman would touch him and add a line: 'I love you.'
Yimi immediately grasped Rem's meaning. "Throw 486 out, then wipe out 486 and the frogs together. Problem solved."
"As expected of Yimi-sama. So clever." Rem gave her little hand a squeeze.
"Please spare a thought for my life, Rem-chan!" Subaru pressed his two fists together and shot an annoyed look at Roswaal, lying there with an utterly harmless expression on his face.
By now, apart from the child Yimi, anyone with eyes could see Ram wanted to keep Roswaal alive.
"Fine, I get it. I've got thirteen seconds of invincibility anyway. I should get to play the hero once in a while. But after that, the first punch on this guy goes to me. That much is fine, right?"
Ram gave a light nod. "He may be Roswaal-sama, but anyone who does wrong should be taught a lesson—and that applies to everyone alike."
If he didn't take a beating, none of them would feel the slightest sense of closure.
"That's all well and good, but throwing myself headfirst into a pile of frogs really does take a lot of courage. And if I'm too close, won't a powerful spell catch me in the blast?"
"No help for it, then—let me give you a hand." Ram clapped her hands and stepped toward Natsuki Subaru.
Subaru took a step back. "Onee-sama, what are you about to do?"
"Hah—ha!"
Ram kicked the door open, seized Natsuki Subaru by the collar, and flung him out.
"I'm not ready yet!"
As if there were time to let him get ready.
The still-hopping frogs visibly froze for an instant, then turned their eyes as one to the airborne Natsuki Subaru.
"Not enough yet? At this distance, I should already be outside the sensing range of 'Yimi energy,' right?" Subaru took a deep breath. "I can Return by Dea—"
The Witch's hand brushed gently over him, moving to his heart in a suffocating threat, and in that instant the Witch's scent on him erupted several times over, sending every Great Rabbit that had been turned into a frog leaping unhesitatingly in his direction.
But...
"Did I throw him too far?" Ram reached a hand toward the sky, watching Natsuki Subaru sail farther and farther away.
Because she'd needed to throw him some distance, she'd used magic, but she clearly wasn't used to the strength she'd lost for so many years.
"I can't, fly." Yimi pawed at the air in that direction, then looked expectantly at Ram.
She wanted to fly high too.
"No help for it. Betty will take you over."
Beatrice tore a rift open in the air, gripped Yimi's hand, and slipped through—incidentally giving Roswaal and Ram their chance to settle their grudge.
Following the direction the Great Rabbit had chased, the open ground for a thousand meters around was almost entirely frogs, with nowhere for a person to set foot. Luckily, no one had gathered in this special region just now.
The two little girls landed on a stone step, and only then did Beatrice faintly sense something was wrong.
"Wait—"
"Now, little Yimi—while I can still hold on!" Subaru's shouted cue cut her off.
Yimi aimed the Spear at the earth and, with a discharge of mana like an Anti-Fortress Noble Phantasm, sent it radiating outward from herself in all directions.
That much should have been enough to annihilate every Great Rabbit at once. But Beatrice couldn't feel the slightest joy, because the place they now stood on was the Sanctuary's Trial Grounds.
In other words, they were standing atop the grave of her mother—the Witch of Greed.