Jon Ureña's Blog, page 71

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 25)

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

The previous entry was centered around Crusch's camp's healer, Ferris, and the protagonist dealing with the aftermath of a blast that almost killed them, and that seemed to signal for the Witch's Cult to attack. Ferris has ended up significantly injured to the extent that the protagonist needs to save her ass. We also learned that the half-beast lieutenant of the Iron Fang is an automatic turret.

This entry ended up becoming an almost seven thousand words long beast, and one of my favorite ones in this strange retelling I'm doing.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
-Link for part 12
-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15
-Link for part 16
-Link for part 17
-Link for part 18
-Link for part 19
-Link for part 20
-Link for part 21
-Link for part 22
-Link for part 23
-Link for part 24

You have wandered a couple of streets away from Mimi's kill zone, following the tumult of clashing metal, war cries and pain. They seem to come from the village's plaza. Even though you clutch the dagger you stole from that cultist you killed, you doubt that it will help you at all if you come across anyone who intends to kill you.
You are leaning around a corner of a street that if you follow it to the end, you'll get a glimpse of the fighting at the plaza. You are surrounded by plenty of corpses, of black-robed cultists, of Crusch's crew, a few mercenaries and some villagers. Blood is flowing downhill from numerous puddles. You look around in case you recognize any of the corpses. One of the dead villagers is a meek woman that had asked you a question when you spoke to them; someone had stabbed her in the heart.
After you swallow and try to concentrate on your intention although your fast heartbeats demand that you run away, you choose to exchange your small dagger with one of the dead mercenaries' swords.
As you were shaking the blood from your new weapon, you hear the noise of big mounts pounding the dirt. You attempt to hide, but three half-beast mercenaries riding their big wolves are coming towards you, in the direction of the village center. When the wolves come close enough they snarl at you, blowing saliva. However, the mercenaries tell them to calm down.
"General", says a half-boar mercenary you recognize.
You wouldn't have been surprised if the rank and file of the Iron Fang would have run you over without caring a bit if you survived. You are the person who pushed for this battle to happen, and it has resulted on quite a few of their comrades-in-arms dying.
"Glad to see you well", you say warily. "Have you seen your captain around, or even the couple of high-ranking humans from Crusch's camp? I mean that old man with the white hair, and the purple-haired young guy dressed in white."
The half-boar merc looks towards the center of the village.
"We saw the captain a few minutes ago. He was taking care of some crazies. We can't find the lieutenant anywhere."
"Ah, Mimi and her brother are fine. Unharmed. I just talked to them."
The half-boar's expression brightens, and he grins.
"That's great, general. We'll ride into the fight to see how many we can kill."
"You do that."
After they leave, you stand close to the front of a house, unsure of what to do. You recall that you also don't know if Ram is alive, but you had to focus on recalling the people you know until she popped up in your mind as someone to save. After listening to the horrifying war sounds, you figure that you might as well go where the fight is. At least you will be able to figure out if any of your people are still kicking.
You had forced your trembling legs to lead you towards the plaza when you hear someone approaching from behind. You almost piss yourself. You turn around while wielding your sword, in case you need to thrust it into a body immediately, but a huge, brown and furry hand, half stained with blood, closes around your wrist as if he was grabbing a little branch. You look up towards a big mouth full of teeth, and on top of the wolf head, a dark brown mane that vaguely looks like a mohawk.
"I thought you were food for the scavengers, general!", Ricardo says cheerfully. "You heard the boom some time ago? I went to see whose head I had to chop, and suddenly a lot of those madmen were running through the streets! They didn't come from the forest we swept before, that's for sure."
Ricardo frees your wrist, which hurts as if the wolf man would have had to squeeze a little bit more to break your bones. The guy wasn't even fazed that you almost stabbed him; he stopped you by instinct. For a second you think about asking him for a status report, but one look at his face clarifies that he's happy about being able to kill a new bunch of people.
"Ricardo, have you seen Wilhelm, that old man with the white hair, or Julius, the one with the purple hair?"
"I did see the old man. He was running towards the center of the village, and he asked me for you. I hadn't found you yet, though." A sudden worry narrows his mouth. "General, have you seen Mimi anywhere? She's always running around, and I don't want to imagine what those fiends would do to her."
They all seem to love that little psycho. An appropriate mascot for such a mercenary band, you suppose.
"She's fine! She set up a little kill zone in a dead end street, and she's been exploding pretty much everyone who comes in, as far as I can tell."
"Great! Ah, I'm so happy! When I don't know where people are, it distracts me from fighting."
"Ricardo," you say with a serious voice. "I emphasize that she seems to be exploding anyone who comes in. There were pieces of corpses that clearly didn't belong to cultists."
You have no clue if this wolf man is going to consider his lieutenant's behavior a problem, but he furrows his brow and shakes his head slightly.
"That girl... She needs a serious spanking one of these days."
You take a deep breath.
"Yeah, one of these days. So, where are you going?"
Ricardo perks up and grins. He points with his furry thumb to the enormous blade hung on his back.
"I'll move up to the first line of enemies and kill as many as I can! Follow me! We'll have a great time!"
He is already running off. You sigh, but follow him. Although his legs are longer and more powerful, you are content with remaining at an increasingly greater distance. It's not as if you are going to charge into the line of cultists yourself.
Now that someone else is worrying about the enemies you could run into, not even two minutes after you catch Ricardo cleaving through a fallen cultist's torso. The enormous greatsword, more a huge slab of sharpened iron than a proper weapon, gets stuck in the dirt and whatever rock lies underneath, and Ricardo has to strain his muscles a bit to pull it out. Beyond him, a few mercenaries mounted on wolves, maybe the same ones from before, are picking off cultists that are trying to retreat from their assault on the village's plaza. It seems that you inadvertently flanked the enemy. A few of the cultists are turned away from you as they attempt to stab a line of Crusch's people.
You hear the whoosh of some wind magic coming from further into the plaza. Ram must be alive. You'd say to yourself that such a bitch wouldn't die easily, but you've already known her to die in previous attempts.
A couple of cultists turn the corner, apparently coming from another side of the plaza. When they see Ricardo's two meters tall frame and the weapon nobody should be able to hold, they stop on their tracks for a moment, but you guess that their hexes have programmed them for suicide attacks. They first throw their daggers at him, which Ricardo deflects with his blade effortlessly, making ding noises. Both cultists each draw another dagger and charge at the wolf man. He twists around and chops through them diagonally, which hurls away the top halves of their bodies as they expel a stream of blood.
Ricardo shouts over his sholder.
"Did you see that!? This time they flew farther than usual!"
"Yeah, if I was as strong as you I'd probably run around just chopping people in half as if I were mowing the lawn."
Ricardo laughs loudly.
"Ah, what a great day! But come over here, general! Don't need to stay behind!"
You run up to him. You figure that standing slightly behind Ricardo is the safest place in this battlefield.
The line of Crusch's soldiers got reinforcements from a few half-beast mercenaries that must have dealt with the cultists assaulting the area from another direction. Two cultists nicked and pushed off by the attacking line tried to charge into the defense again, but for the second of those cultists his own line got closed, and he would have had to jump over his mates. He turns around and notices you both. He clutches his dagger at the side and marches towards you.
You were about to take a few steps backwards when Ricardo puts his huge hand on your back. He's moved behind you. You look at him in confusion, and you find him staring back with a smile like a father that wants his son to jump in a pool for the first time.
"Ricardo!", you say with a panicky voice. "This is probably not the time to be fucking around!"
He nods with his head to his sword. He's rested the edge on the dirt, with the blade at an angle, as if it were a platform.
"Stand on it! Quick, the fiend is coming!"
A glance at the cultist clarifies that it will take a few seconds for him to plunge his dagger into your heart, and you aren't sure that Ricardo would prevent it. Also, you realize that you were about to argue with a two meters tall wolf man with an entire average man's weight in muscles alone.
You step back so you stand unsteadily on the blade. When you were about to question Ricardo's intention, he roars and swings the sword quickly so you find yourself launched in the air towards the cultist. You are clutching your sword as if to a climbing hold in a rock wall. The cultist's image, centered on the darkness inside his hood, grows as if you are about to crash headfirst into him.
"Aw, shiiiiiit...!"
You get a glimpse of the nose, the lips and the eyes in that darkness. When you are about to collide, you twist your torso to swing the blade and feel the pressure against your hand when the edge of your sword hacks into something solid. You fall on the dirt and roll a couple of times. You don't wait a second to jump back to your feet, and retreat towards where you must have dropped your weapon.
The cultist lies on his back. The sword's blade is stuck in his head at the height of his eyes, which must have chopped into his brain. In any case, the guy has dropped his dagger, and the dark blood pouring from the wound tells you he's dead. You run up to him and pull the sword out.
Ricardo laughs from behind you and pats you on the shoulder, which almost makes you fall onto the cultist's corpse.
"Your first kill! Our general has grown up! No longer a whelp."
His smile is sincere. You feel weird electrical pangs in your chest as if you are about to have a heart attack. As you breathe out of your mouth, you blow sweat.
"I feel pretty much the same, though. Similarly terrible."
Ricardo laughs loudly.
"That's how it starts. A dozen more and it brings you joy!"
You rest on your knees for a moment, and motion with your head towards the line of cultists attacking your people to overrun the plaza. The backs of your enemies are vulnerable to the merest stabbing, not to mention being cut in half by this barbarian.
"I suppose that as a general I must suggest that you charge at that line's rear and cut them all down in a couple of seconds. Some of our people might get fatally stabbed if we just play around."
Ricardo stares at the enemy as if he needed to consider it.
"They are offering their backs and they haven't noticed me, but I guess that's their fault."
He plants his feet and wields his enormous sword properly. You step out of the way.
"And I'm going to run around town to get a general picture of the situation. Have fun, Ricardo."
"You bet!"
Ricardo roars and charges into the doomed cultists. As you turn and run away from the whole mess, you get a glimpse of startled cultists that a second ago had no clue that such a monster existed in this world.

You are running through streets that you believe will lead you to the area where Crusch had distributed the wounded, before they were evacuated. You feel yourself losing it. You slip on some half-dried blood and roll, getting a mouthful of dirt, before you stand up and run again. You feel as if you took a bath in sweat, you are dirty, your head hurts. As your legs burn, you fantasize that you've returned to Crusch's place and that you have closed the door to your bedroom, where Rem waits for you. Ah, how you wish you were there already. Not pushing your lungs to the limit as you hope to run into Wilhelm or Julius, the only ones who would share your dismay at how this peaceful village has been turned upside down. What kind of life is this? How did you end up having to deal with such madness?
As your thoughts swirled around in your head, you notice some beast running around up ahead, in an area of the village where the gaps between the houses offer you a view of the forest where your crew ambushed through a bunch of crazy people. It's a black ground dragon, that seems to be looking around frantically like a mother who has lost her child. It's Patrasche! You call out to her, and she perks up. When she spots you, she sprints towards you. You stop in case the excited beast ends up charging into you. When she reaches you she whines as she nuzzles your face and your shoulders, breathing quickly against your skin.
You let out a tired laugh as you stroke her rough scales.
"What have I done for you to like me this much, Patrasche?"
The ground dragon lowers herself to the ground and looks over her shoulder at you.
You feel safer already. If a bunch of cultists run into you, your ground dragon can help you flee in a moment. You sit on the saddle and pat Patrasche's neck.
"Can't say no to you when you are offering yourself so openly. Don't worry, I'll be gentle."
Patrasche either doesn't comprehend your tone, or doesn't care, or likes it, because she stands up proudly and then runs in the direction you are suggesting.
Less than a minute later you reach the area where the wounded had rested before, and you see the outside table where Crusch had been enjoying a home-cooked meal. Above the distant racket of battle you hear young people crying and yelling, maybe children. They sound close. You pull on the reins to guide Patrasche towards the source.
You first see two male teenagers, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, who are moving quickly towards the fence that separates the village from the nearby field where the Iron Fang left their mounts. One of those teenagers is naked from the waist up for some reason, and has a bleeding wound on his back, maybe from having gotten stabbed. They are accompanying a bunch of people. Another teenager is a very pretty blonde girl who wears some Victorian-looking long, white underwear, as if she had been pulled from bed, and the rest are either children or tweens. One of them, a skinny tween with reddish-brown hair down to her shoulders, is crying in fear as she flees from a lone cultist who is power walking towards her like a horror movie villain.
A rage swells in your chest. These pieces of garbage, soiling and ruining everything wherever they go, now pursuing unarmed children. No way, bitch. Not on my watch!
You lean forward and point with the end of your sword at the cultist.
"That one, Patrasche! Fuck him up!"
Patrasche bursts straight into a full-on charge. The cultist hears you coming and turns around. He attempts to raise his dagger, but the ground dragon rams him on the side of the torso, making him spin around wildly, and when he hits the ground he keeps rolling while getting covered with dirt. Patrasche drifts as she maneuvers to return to the fallen cultist without slowing down, and then she sprints and leaps onto the bastard as he was attempting to stand up. Patrasche jumps on him twice, caving his torso in with horrible crunches, and as the ground dragon jumps, your ass leaps off the saddle and then you slam down hard on your balls. When Patrasche steps away from the corpse, you are twisting your toes, clenching your teeth. Your sweat has turned cold, and an electric shiver is propagating from your crotch to the rest of your body.
The two male teens run up to you as they cheer. When they see you suffering, they get concerned.
"What happened, sir? Are you injured?"
You groan.
"I hit... my balls... on the way... down..."
The two teens grimace in sympathy.
"We appreciate your sacrifice, sir."
They give you a moment, but then they go on.
"Don't know where that man came from. We were moving from a bad area of the village to a house that we believe is much safer, but we ran into that guy along the way."
"Glad... to help..."
"You work for the lord, right? I recall seeing you come with those pretty servants."
You take a deep breath and try to pretend that your balls haven't been obliterated.
"Yeah, more or less... Listen, are you sure that house you mentioned is safe?"
"It should be", the topless teenager says while looking around nervously. "It seemed like the fighting at the plaza is dying down. Maybe we just need to hide for a while."
The guy is patting absent-mindedly a maybe ten year old kid who is crying and holding on to the teenager for protection. The teenager gives off the vibe that he might sacrifice himself to save these kids. You look at each of them to get a feel of the situation, and your gaze stops on the pretty teenage girl, maybe sixteen years old, who is wearing long underwear under the midday sun. Her long, beautiful hair is sunflower blonde, and she has a beautiful, healthy looking face and kind eyes. You imagine her walking through some field as she crouches occasionally to pick up some pretty flower. She's staring at you expressionless, as if she has no clue how to deal with this situation and is just going through the motions.
Someone approaches you bashfully. It's the skinny tween that the cultist was pursuing. She has dried her tears, and now looks up at you with adoring eyes.
"Thank you for saving me, sir! And sorry about your testicles!"
"Ah, don't mention it." You turn around the sword in your hand so you hold it by the bloodied blade, and you signal the topless teenager. "Use my sword and keep them safe."
The teenager, surprised and thankful, reaches for your sword, but stops as he was about to grab the grip.
"Are you sure? How will you defend yourself?"
You pat Patrasche's neck.
"I have this badass dragon. Don't worry and protect these people."
He grabs the sword and holds it with renewed determination. He looks up at you almost teary eyed.
"Now get going", you say. "I'll run around and figure out if anyone else needs help."
Both male teenagers guide the mostly crying kids towards another street, but after a few steps, one of them stops and looks around confused.
"Where is that girl?"
That pretty teenager hasn't followed them. She's jumped the fence and is walking briskly through the field, amongst the big wolves, who only look at her as a distraction. She seems to be headed to a nearby woods, maybe a hundred meters away from the fence.
"She might think that those woods are safer, but I don't like that she's alone... Don't worry, you go up ahead. I'll talk to her and figure out what we can do."
The topless teenager nods and addresses the kids for them to follow him. You turn towards the fence, and Patrasche jumps it effortlessly. The ground dragon walks at a brisk pace amongst the wolves, some of which have stood up and are retreating calmly, but still surprised that a ground dragon passes through their area.
You contain a couple of shivers as you focus on the blonde teenager. She's halfway across the field. You call out to her, but she doesn't slow down. You order Patrasche to follow her. The girl has probably panicked and thought that the village isn't a safe place to remain in, and you can't blame her. However, you have no clue what's in those woods. Other cultists might be hiding there for all you know.
When the blonde teenager reaches the edge of the woods, she turns around and stands with her arms at her side. You are stricken again by how beautiful she is; in your previous world she would have seemed at home on a billboard, promoting some beauty products.
"Hey," you begin to say tentatively, "are you looking to hide in the woods? I don't live here and I wouldn't know which place is the safest at this moment, but I want to figure out if you'll probably be okay."
You freeze with your mouth open. Your body knows before your mind has realized it. The blonde teenager is smiling at you as if she had never smiled genuinely in her life, and her eyes are dead. You feel like a rat who has figured out way too late that nobody would just leave a piece of cheese on a weird contraption in the middle of the kitchen.
You order Patrasche to turn around and run back towards the fence, but after a moment, the teenager shouts behind you.
"Authority of Sloth, Unseen Hands!"
You hunch over and look over your shoulder, but it feels as if you've merely glanced at the ghostly arms elongating in the air towards you when you are picked up from the saddle by the back of your clothes, and a tremendous force throws you backwards towards the trees. You yell and brace yourself. You hit some branches, which scratch your back and hit you in the head, but as you were falling from that treetop, you manage to hold on to a branch. Although it breaks, you fall to the shaded ground on your feet.
The blonde teenager, that you have to remind yourself is actually Petelgeuse, is still standing on the border of the woods, and is currently focused on the field. Your yells as well as seeing you fly through the air seemingly startled the wolves, some of which are snarling towards the teenager. Patrasche is shaking her head and clawing at the grass. When her reptilian gaze finds yours, she runs towards you, but Petelgeuse sweeps the field backwards with one of his ghostly arms and slaps the ground dragon away as if she were a fly, flinging her towards the village.
"No! Patrasche!", you yell.
You don't even see the ground dragon land, because you notice that the ghostly arms are coordinating towards the source of your voice. You're shaking. Your heart beats rapidly. You turn and run deeper into the forest. You can't think clearly not only because of the headache, but because it's just been too much. You are too tired, you are freaking out, and for a while you have been restraining an urge to find some isolated house in the village and hide in a corner.
You hear the noise of wood splitting, branches breaking, leaves shaking. The ghostly arms must be passing through the treetops.
"Are you running away, blasphemer!?" The teenager's voice is incongruous, as if she had been incompentently cast as the villain in a play. "After you shamefully deceived me back at that clearing so that old lackey could murder me!? How can you stand, how can you breathe, when you can't have any pride!? A lowly thief, stealing the predictions granted by our witch, even though as someone blessed by Her, he should know how important they are for the believer!"
As you hide amongst the trees, avoiding the sound of crunching branches, you shout in a rage.
"Petelgeuse! I swear, if you have killed my ground dragon, I'm going to kick you in the cunt!"
"You will produce my Gospel!", the teenager shouts, sounding closer. "You will bring me the Gospel you stole, or else I will have you witness every person you know getting crushed as they cry for you to obey me! Tell me, show me where my book is, you rotten unbeliever!"
You rush through the forest, running without any regard to stealth. You figure that these woods can't be that large, and it isn't safer to run through whatever field awaits you on the other side, not with Petelgeuse pursuing you. You are breathing hard.
"Every time I meet you I assume you are going to ask for your worthless book. You should assume I won't say shit about it. Let's leave it at that."
You don't hear any movement in the woods anymore. You lean your back against a trunk, and dare look back towards the shaded trees you've left behind. You see the teenager. She's standing plenty of meters behind you, between two trees and with a fern bush hiding the lower half of her body. Her pretty face is just staring at you, her arms limp at her side. You feel a pang in your heart, as if there was someone else inside that body, another consciousness that is witnessing powerless how the madman, whoever or whatever Petelgeuse actually is, puppeteering her.
"Why are you using that body, Petelgeuse? She must have had a life before. How did you end up possessing her?"
Petelgeuse lowers his head slightly. Is he coordinating his ghostly arms above the treetops towards you, so he can pick you up like the claw in an arcade machine?
"But you know already, blasphemer! Before she became a esteemed, useful Finger, she felt abandoned, untouched, unloved, lost in this cold and hollow world! None of the rotten unbelievers that surrounded her could understand her yearning, her knowledge that the world owed her more! True love! An eternal embrace that would repay her faith and never let her go! Satella, our beloved, heard her prayers, and a Gospel found its way to the abandoned believer. This body wasn't lonely anymore! The pain, the tears she had endured had a reason for existing! Her goal, her purpose had been revealed! She made her way, against the wishes of the filthy unbelievers, back to us. She understood then that this world, that offers nothing but pain after pain as the perishable bodies decay towards their inevitable ends, is but an illusion, a blindfold put over her eyes so she couldn't look towards the eternal love that would save her! She had wished for love! She had pleaded for love! Now she had the answer. She merely had to follow what the Gospel predicted, and she found where she belonged. Now she helps us on our way to grant not only believers like her, but the entire world, the love that will free every single being from their loneliness and their pain!"
Some nearby treetops shake, disturbing the leaves. You push yourself off the trunk you were leaning against and run in perpendicular towards another. Along the way you see how Petelgeuse, standing still, follows you with the teenager's eyes. You rest against another tree. What can you do? Petelgeuse isn't that eager to kill you, not when that means losing his book forever. You have knowledge that he needs, but you suppose he won't have issues torturing you again, maybe going as far as tearing limbs off you, as long as you remain alive. What if you lose some piece of yourself? What part of you would you lose and yet decide to continue in this life without resetting? Maybe just a pinky.
"You aren't a human being, are you, Petelgeuse? Not in the same way that I am."
"You believe yourself greater than me even in that regard! You contemptible pissant! I have occupied and experienced the lives of many human bodies! I have seen, heard, felt, breathed through these bodies for hundreds of years, far longer than you have existed or will exist! But that still dwarfs the uncountable span of time I experienced before. Years passed by in impotence, unable to affect the course of lives, shackled by the belief that I wasn't to interfere in the rising and decaying of peoples, of cultures, of civilizations. So much time shackled by such disgraceful, shameful sloth, while yearning to find what I needed and nothing, nobody could provide! But our witch does! Satella always has, always will! And the same way she had embraced in her love half of this rotten world, she would forgive my shameful sloth!"
You keep blinking to keep the sweat from irritating your eyes. Your increasing nervousness is tingling in your legs like white noise.
"Unless every person I've met in this world has lied to me, four hundred years ago that Satella didn't embrace shit. She drowned people in her shadows, as many as half of everybody alive back then. That doesn't sound like love, Petelgeuse! Those people were murdered!"
"Murdered, you unbelievers repeat! Shameless fools! Those people were saved!"
"Ah, of course!"
"You keep mocking Her, who granted your blessing. Half of the world back then never died. They remain inside of our witch, freed from their perishable carcasses, dissolved into their essences, and to this day they experience the Witch of Envy's eternal, loving embrace! Is that death? Murder, you said! That was your choice of words, you hollow unbeliever! You talk to me about murder!? What have you done, what have you savages done to my fellow believers in Her love? You ran them through, mutilated them, exploded them, caused them untold pain, and when they writhed on the ground in agony, unable to defend themselves, did you extend your hand to them? Did you soothe their pain? Where was your mercy as you plunged your swords into their hearts, as you crushed the brains out of their skulls? You speak to me of murder, you question our witch's love, when you do nothing but destroy, when you know nothing but hate!"
You are as tense as a stretched rubber band about to break. Above the birdsongs and the critters and the buzzing insects you imagine the ghostly arms stalking you, waiting for any opening.
"You weave a convenient tale, Petelgeuse. If the armies of this world hadn't acted against you, you and your followers would have murdered countless innocents. Even if you argue that attacking the village was done as a retribution for our ambushes in the forest, that doesn't change that if we weren't here, you would have massacred everybody, killed Emilia and destroyed the world as a consequence. You can and will spin it however you want, but that's evil stuff."
You don't hear a peep from Petelgeuse for a few seconds, and you were about to move to another tree, just in case Petelgeuse is trying to flank you, when he speaks again with the teenager's voice.
"Our witch desires everyone. She wants, She accepts everyone. No matter your sins, no matter your pains, She will embrace you and pour into you Her eternal love. You have received Her blessing, and yet you doubt this!"
"I don't need to doubt what I know is true. She does love unconditionally. I am sure that no matter how much time passed in that darkness, she would never tire of offering her love."
"Then why would you mock and belittle and rebel against Her!?"
"You would feel her love eternally, and yet would be unable to do or be anything else than Satella's beloved ever again."
The teenager's bitter laugh flows between the trees, an aching echo of how she must have sounded before Petelgeuse got anywhere near her.
"What else would you need!? You want despair!? You want pain!? What else awaits you in this world!? Satella's eternal love is the solution! Not only for your lifetime, but preserved inside her shadow, for the rest of time! You, shameless, rotten unbeliever, were blessed by Satella. She must have had a reason! She must have felt you calling Her, yearning for Her love, and She found Her way to you! Beyond that, She gave you one of Her blessings, as if you were special amongst the believers! Maybe at the core of your hollow self remains a sliver that understands. You must have gone astray!"
Although you don't want to consider Petelgeuse's words, you do wonder again, like you have many, many times, and even asked Satella directly, why would she grant you that ability. Why does she care? But maybe you are questioning something that happened by mistake.
"I never received a Gospel. All that stuff about jerking off, I made it up, in case you ended up believing it. So Satella never found her way to me, not how you believe it happens."
Petelgeuse goes quiet again. You attempt to sneak towards another tree that might allow you to figure out where the teenager is standing. Every dry leaf on the ground betrays you as you step on it. While you hide behind a new tree, you lean towards the shadows and you spot the teenager's nose and lips, as well as her white underwear, at an angle of around forty five degrees from your position.
"Unbeliever," Petelgeuse starts with a conciliatory tone. "I need my Gospel back. It contains all the predictions about my role in Her plans. There's no other copy."
You laugh, but you only need to remember the recent events to get enraged again.
"More reason not to give it to you then! Why would you try to appeal to my sympathy? But the funniest thing in all this nonsense is that your book actually doesn't work! I assume that it must have told you you needed to assault the mansion today, and access Roswaal's inner sanctum to perform the ritual, because that'll resurrect our witch in my friend's body! But that doesn't happen! Emilia dies, and as a result, her great spirit destroys the world!"
"Your words are not going to confuse me, unbeliever! What merit would I give such a rotten tale against the predictions She had put on my hands!?"
You were about to retort with something resembling an insult, and yet a genuine laugh pours from your mouth. Is that it, Satella? Was that your intention? You don't know if you even believe it, but you want to push it into Petelgeuse's brain, if only because it will hurt him.
"You know Satella gave me a blessing. That's undeniable, I believe you said. And yet you failed to predict that I would come here to thwart your plans. Your predictions didn't warn you, didn't they? Maybe you aren't as favored by our witch as you think!"
Petelgeuse produces the sound of anguished pain through the stolen body, which would had made you want to hug that girl until she didn't feel it anymore. You leave your hiding spot and stand between two trees. You see the front half of the girl behind a tree, and she's trembling. Petelgeuse turns his head towards you and steps into the narrow corridor of trees, maybe fifteen meters in front of you. From the swollen shadow churning over her shoulders wave arms that lose themselves in the treetops, disturbing the leaves.
"I have done so much for Her, and yet it is as you said! Why would Satella give a blessing to you, even one that allows you to see my Authority!?"
You are pretty sure that being able to see the invisible hands is Beatrice's doing. Not that you want to correct Petelgeuse's self-doubt.
"You are clearly a servant of the Witch of Envy. If you haven't been alerted of my intervention by a book that predicts the future, that means that the presence that writes those predictions, or had written them long ago, doesn't want you to know. Isn't that reasonable?"
The teenager is clenching her teeth as she trembles. Tears are growing in the corners of her eyes.
"It is! You undeserving, rotten unbeliever, it is just as you said! The predictions should have alerted me, and they didn't! Why would that be!?"
"Because you fell out of favor, of course. Satella gave me a blessing that allows me to see your Authority, which is your most powerful weapon. That means that she intended me to stop you. If you don't quit your plans, you would be working against Satella's wishes."
Petelgeuse groans in pain as tears jump from his eyes.
"Damn you, rotten vermin! There's no way that Satella wouldn't want to return, and that's my only goal by performing the ritual!"
"Maybe it's not that she doesn't want to return, but that the ritual performed on Emilia will fail, as I told you, and that will destroy the world. If the world is destroyed, our witch cannot return. Wouldn't it make sense for her to want me, her new champion, to stop you?"
"Stop lying! You're trying to confuse me, unbeliever! I know Satella's will better than anyone else, even if She changed it! You said that you never received your Gospel, that means you couldn't have received that prediction! You shameful, lying refuse of this hollow world...!"
You go quiet for a moment. The teenager has finished talking, and although she's breathing heavily and tears run down through her face, she returns her gaze to your eyes, waiting for you to certify that you were selling nothing but lies, that she doesn't have to doubt herself again.
"Petelgeuse," you begin calmly, "do you want to know what blessing Satella bestowed upon me? Every time I die, I return to the past, which means that I get to relive the same events but with the foreknowledge. I don't need a Gospel, Petelgeuse. I am the Gospel."
The teenager snaps her head back, and she narrows her eyes at you.
"That can't be true! That's the only...!"
"The only explanation." You advance step by step while staring at her. Over her shoulder, the arms are waving nervously, and yet there's fear in her lovely eyes, as if you could crush her in an instant. "I can meet Satella whenever I want and bathe in her endless love. I have done so over and over. Her ghostly presence, with those hazy purple eyes, embraces me as her bell-like voice pledges her love to me. Have you ever seen her ghost, Petelgeuse? Have you heard her beautiful voice?"
You stand a couple of meters from the wide-eyed teenager, whose expression has frozen as her tears drip off her chin.
"I am now Satella's lover", you say, "You have disgraced her with your actions, and she doesn't accept you any longer."
The teenager shakes her head. She lets out an anguished cry as she retreats.
You hear the crunching leaves again, something stalking in the shadows. A deep breathing you recognize.
"You know, Petelgeuse, I might be useless myself beyond the ability to know the future. My witch could have given me some physical ability that would allow me to put you down like she intended, but turns out that in this world there are many powerful people who want to help me. And even the animals around here are more clever, resourceful and stronger than me." You turn your head towards the shaded trees to Petelgeuse's left. "Now!"
Patrasche bursts out of the shadows and charges in a rage against the teenager, crashing into her like a truck. The teenager smashes her shoulder and her head against a tree, imprinting a bloody splodge on the trunk, and bounces to the grass a few meters away. You can see the damage from where you are standing. Half of her face is gone. Her crushed, bloodied eye stares at you as in shock, and her burst head has belched her brain.
You walk towards the teenager and kneel besides her. You tilt your head and shut your eyes, listening to the world as it keeps turning. You stand up and swallow the painful mass that had closed your throat.
Patrasche approaches you and rubs her muzzle against your tears. You stroke her black, rough scales.
"It's okay, girl. It's okay."

Petelgeuse had always been the most difficult character to write in the previous 24 parts, but he flowed perfectly here. This conversation ended up becoming one of my favorites due to its depth, the couple of gotchas that I hadn't even anticipated as I started writing it, and the reversal of power as the conversation deepens.

One of my main interests in spending my time in this retelling of one of my favorite fictional series is that the AI suggesting stuff would end up, I hoped, changing the events to an extent that very few things, beyond the really big plot points you just have to add, would remain of the original. And that has been the case. Very little since the protagonist left Crusch's place in the capital towards Roswaal's domain has happened like in the original novels. Maybe the biggest of those deviations in that stretch is that the White Whale was never killed, while in the originals it's a huge success that reverberates through what I know of the following arcs.

Also, I like to imagine that this video is what Patrasche aspires to become.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 24)

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

Ferris, Crusch Karsten's camp's main healer, had pushed for her lady to evacuate the village along with every wounded soldier, both from her own camp and from the Iron Fang mercenary group. Ferris feared that the Witch's Cult was waiting for a sign to attack, and she makes a move to figure out if they have a man inside. It doesn't end well.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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In the sudden light of the day, the contours of a room come to you as if they were getting drawn slowly. Dried meats, as well as garlic and onions, hang from the ceiling close to a big rack of spices. On a counter rest in disarray a bunch of forks and knives. There are overturned chairs thrown around on the floor, and in the center of the room, a table has broken in half. Someone is lying on it as if that person had broken the table by jumping onto it and then had fallen unconscious.
As you blink, you realize you can hear nothing at all. You are witnessing a silent picture without the hint of any sound coming from it, as if it were happening far away from you. You stand up slowly. Your body is eager to communicate to you that your back hurts as if you've hit something hard with it, and you need to make an extra effort to breathe. When you look back for a moment you realize you were resting against a cauldron. Your head hurts like in the aftermath of a migraine, and your ear ducts burn. When you attempt to figure out if you still have ears, you wet your fingers with something coming out of them. Blood.
As you stagger around confused, you realize that on the opposite wall a window has burst inwards as if something had hit it hard from the street. Your shoes crunch broken glass. You suddenly step on something tender. As you crouch to figure out what it is, you blink a few times until you understand you are staring at a detached leg torn from slightly above a knee. It's still wearing a boot, and it's covered in a black, form-fitting cloth.
How did you come here? You remember light, and a huge noise that enveloped you. Did someone attack you?
There was a person lying on the table, you remember. You push aside the overturned chairs until you can see the person who is lying on their back. It's a cat-girl. Ferris. Her left thigh ends in mangled meat with a cross-cut of bone sticking out of it. You realize that Ferris is awake, and that she's illuminating her maimed limb with a magical light coming out of her palm.
She's staring at you with a pained expression, but her facial muscles twitch as she tries to contain it. She opens her mouth and moves her lips like she was speaking, but you can't hear anything. You open your mouth and order your vocal cords to project sound. You don't hear anything. Ferris motions for you to come over. When she can reach you with her hands, she grabs you by the back of the neck and warms first your right ear with her healing magic, and then your left one. After a couple of seconds, the sounds come back as if you had taken out of your ears a couple of tremendously competent earplugs.
Ferris stares at you in anguish, with sweat dripping on her face.
"Ferris," you say with a raspy voice. "your left leg is missing."
"Thank you for that", Ferris replies with restrained pain. "I would have never figured it out on my own."
"I almost stepped on your detached leg. It's around there, near some broken glass."
"Ah, you found it. Please bring it over, Subaru."
You figure that she might want to keep the torn limb on ice until she can get to a hospital, except that in this fantasy world you'd probably need a magician able to produce ice through spells, and that there's nothing remotely similar to a hospital in this village nor in its surroundings. You return quickly to where you abandoned the detached leg, which is leaking blood. After picking it up you come back to Ferris. Without thinking, you press the torn, bloodied end against the stump until Ferris yells in pain and attempts to push you off.
"Ah... Sorry, Ferris. I don't..."
"Subaru, snap out of it. Look at me."
Ferris is pointing at her anguished face. Despite the pain she must be experiencing, she seems fully lucid.
"See? Not crying", she says.
"Ferris, I'm holding your detached leg. It's as good a moment to cry as any!"
Ferris swallows and cleans her lips with her tongue as she breathes hard.
"Please, Subaru. I need you to help me. Will you?"
"Of course. What can I do?"
Ferris seems surprised, but then points at the detached limb.
"Align it properly against the bone, as if you were to connect both parts. With the foot pointed upwards, obviously."
"Fine, but didn't you just yell at me for doing that?"
"I wasn't ready, nor were you doing it right. Go ahead, Subaru."
As you hunch over to handle the task as if you were dealing with an action figure with detachable parts, you figure out Ferris' intent.
"Wait a second. Can you actually reattach it?"
Ferris nods while biting her lower lip. One of her cheeks is twitching.
She reaches with both of her hands and she envelops the broken off part with her healing magic. Something like less gross scar tissue is growing from the meat and connecting the muscles and tendons and whatever there's actually inside of a leg. The bone has already connected, although it looks like a white branch that had snapped and someone glued together.
"That's not medicine," you mumble. "That's magic."
"Of course it's magic. You seriously need to snap out of it, Subaru. We have no clue what's going on in the village."
You turn your head for a moment towards the broken window. You can see the opposite house across the narrow street. Its front is damaged as if it had suffered some blast. That's right, the carriage exploded. How did you two survive?
Above Ferris' labored breathing you hear faint cries as well as the clashing of metal. Someone must be fighting out there, a bunch of people.
Her leg has been reattached almost entirely, except for a few disgusting holes where filaments are growing like little worms. The band of skin that has connected both sides of her leg barely looks better than smooth scar tissue.
"Is your leg going to work?", you ask.
She shakes her head.
"I will need to keep applying magic continously for a while to regrow and reconnect the nerves. Otherwise I risk losing the ability to feel it and move it properly, forever."
"That means you can't stand on it. But we can't stay here, Ferris. If the cultists took the opportunity to attack as it sounds like, they might come across us at any moment, and you know damn well I can't protect you."
"Yes... You will need to drag me out of here until we find someone who can handle a sword. Hey." She waits until you turn your head to stare at her. There's fear in her eyes, even though she's trying to push it down. "You will try to keep me alive, right?"
"Don't be silly, Ferris. I've known you for a long time, I see you as my half-sister whose father must have been your average housecat, and our mother a shameless freak."
Ferris frowns and twists her mouth.
"As your sister!? For so long!? You get attached to people too quickly! But yeah, as your sister!? You keep staring at my ass!"
You stand up while holding her leg in place. Only a couple of spots keep growing meat and skin under the magic light. You clear your throat and face Ferris' gaze.
"Ah... We must focus on saving your life, Ferris."
When half a minute later Ferris has given you the okay to lower her cat-girl body to the ground while she keeps healing herself, you move around her while trying to figure out how to best approach the maneuver. Your headache makes your brain throb.
Ferris eyes your hands suspiciously.
"I wonder if it would be better to die than to allow you to touch me again."
"It would be a waste to lose our healer."
"I knew you only cared because I can do that much for you lot."
"I'd also mourn that ass of yours."
"Oh, you dickhead."
You also have no choice, or so you say yourself, to grab the cat-girl's ass when lifting her from the broken table and putting her on the ground. After all, it's not as if you can pass your arm under the cat-girl's knees. You try to avoid thinking about that ass' consistency still lingering on your palm and fingers. She's now lying with the back of her head to the exit door, so you can grab the back of her robe with one hand and arduously drag Ferris' ass through the streets' dirt.
You lean through the doorway. The remains of the blown up carriage are two houses away from your current one, and on the opposite side of the street. You must have been expelled at an angle, and the location of the broken window on the front of your current shelter suggests so. The houses surrounding the explosion have mostly collapsed. You hope nobody was hiding inside.
There are no corpses strewn about this street, although the tumult of ongoing killings coming from some nearby streets is now louder.
You have no idea which direction to drag Ferris towards. It sounds like a bad idea to head for the village's plaza. You focus on recalling the route towards a couple of dead end streets you saw back when you visited this place with Roswaal's servants, even though you barely paid any attention.
As you turn a corner and a similarly narrow street opens, which is crossed by a couple of other streets, you see a young, well-built villager struggling with a cultist that is attempting to stab the villager with an usual cross-shaped dagger. The villager is armed with a kitchen knife. Although the villager does stab the cultist in the gut a couple of times, which doesn't bring a cry out of the cultist, the bad guy knocks the villager back by punching him in the mouth with an open palm, and then lunges forward and plunges the dagger into the guy's throat. The cultist twists the blade. After he pulls out the dagger, he lifts his head to look for his next target, and the darkness inside of that hood focuses on you.
"Oh, fuck. A cultist is coming", you mutter loud enough so Ferris hears while she heals herself on the ground behind you.
"What!?"
The cultist is running towards you while holding his dagger upside down, to stab you from above. Your heart is jumping in your chest. You don't have a weapon, you don't have any ability that doesn't involve dying. What would any person who knew how handle an assailant do? And you can't move out of the way, or this guy might murder the cat-girl.
Ferris' last words before the carriage blew up come to your mind.
The blood-dyed knife is glistening in the morning sun. It's closer. No way you'll avoid getting cut, but that's alright. The kingdom's best healer is behind you. Don't let him stab your vital areas. Which areas of your body are vital? You can't remember.
You bend your knees a little and raise your arms, preparing to catch the bad guy's wrist. It's a small target, especially when you are scared and your headache hardly allows you to concentrate. Pretend you are wearing plate gauntlets, like the duchess. The vital veins or arteries or whatever must be on the underside.
As the cultist lunges forward, you move your arms against the fast blade, and you feel it cutting across the side of your forearm. It burns. With your other hand you grasp the cultist's wrist, immobilizing the blade. However, the guy plunges his free thumb against your throat, which almost makes you release him.
"Ia," you yell with a hoarse voice, "burn this fucker's face!"
The minor spirit, a ball of light the size of a finger's phalanx, jumps out of your chest and arcs towards the darkness inside of the hood. When Ia reaches her target, the darkness ignites with the sound of a match lighting. The cultist pulls out the thumb from your throat to hit himself in the face, but you throw yourself to the ground dragging the guy with you. Ferris, who is lying right next, reaches for the guys' hand and after she touches his bare skin, the guy shuts off as if he fell asleep. He lies on the ground while flames grow in his head, melting his hood.
You tear the dagger from his hand to use it yourself, and drag your saviour away from the dying cultist. You keep coughing.
Ferris tells you to get down for a moment. While with one hand she keeps healing her leg, with the other she fills the inside of your forearm as well as your throat with her warm, balm-like magic.
"Did Ia get stuck in that fucker?", you ask while recovering your breath.
"No, I saw her fly inside you from your back. Good job, Subaru."
"The only reason you can judge my performance is because we survived. That's how fucked we are now. I better be more careful."
In the next street you see that around four houses from your corner, a bunch of Crusch's soldiers are cutting down or getting stabbed by quite a few cultists. There are way too many. No way either your ambushes in the forest, or Crusch's team's for that matter, left so many alive. Petelgeuse must have had backup waiting, even though apparently he had brought all of his Fingers with him.
"You better not get killed, Ferris", you say while panting. "It would be a nightmare to repeat everything all over again."
"Hey, don't start losing it now!"
You've reached an area of the village that you consider the outskirts. There's a defensible dead end in which you could hide Ferris if necessary. Near the corner to that street you slip on something sticky and you almost fall, which makes you tremble all over. The dirt is muddied with blood, and there are lumps and bone chunks thrown around as if someone, more than one person, exploded. As you stagger into that dead end street, feeling dizzy and out of breath, you notice that some of the pieces of dead people are covered in shreds of black cloth, but others in different colors.
You lift your head and realize that close to the end of that street, in front of a hut-like building, two tiny half-beast people wearing white, orange-lined robes are staring at you. The orange fur of one of them is begrimed with blood and vomit. Mimi is looking around like an automatic turret, but then she notices you. When you open your mouth to greet Mimi, the lieutenant plants her feet, hunches while keeping her face forward, and her jaw opens wider than it should be naturally possible, sliding her lips beyond the gums.
All the heat in your body escapes as you stare at the lieutenant, but Tivey lunges forward and pushes his sister's head down before she vocalizes her ability.
"M-Mimi, no! That's our general!"
As the life returns to your body with a tingling sensation, you begin to drag Ferris again towards these two mercenaries, although your legs are giving you a hard time. You feel Ferris' body trembling through her robe you are holding on to. When you were passing Mimi by, you feel her moving to get your attention, but you can't look her in the face, nor do you want to.
"Sorree, mister!", Mimi says with a pitiful voice. "Didn't mean to blow you up, honest! Mimi's eyes don't work that well."
"It's okay, Mimi", you mutter.
You do lift your face towards the Iron Fang's quartermaster, who despite tending to remain in the background, his orange fur is spattered with blood. He's wringing his tiny hands while holding your gaze with an apologetic look.
"Tivey," you say, "thank you for literally saving both our lives."
"I-I am glad I was able to. That's the healer, isn't she?"
"Good to see you again, Tivey", Ferris says from behind you.
"She's gotten injured it seems. D-Did you bring her over so we could protect her?"
"That was the plan, yes", you say.
"She's kin, too. We'll take care of you. W-We don't have much of a clue of what's going on nearby, though."
As the quartermaster keeps glancing to his sister, who has returned to her guard post from where she likely blew up anyone indiscriminately, you realize that this tiny man has one of the hardest jobs in the world, making sure that his sister doesn't go on a rampage that'll make every nation around put a million gold coins bounty on their asses.
"Everything is so confusing," Mimi comments, "but explosions make Mimi's head clear!"
You shiver.
"I'll drag Ferris into the hut, Tivey. To make sure that she's comfortable."
"O-Okay!"
You leave the cat-girl, who remains busy healing her leg with both hands, leaning against a cupboard in the darkened hut. Her face is beaded with sweat, and her eyes glisten with a fear that the rest of her expression doesn't let through. She looks up at you pleadingly.
"I don't want you to leave me with that monster."
"There are many things I don't want, Ferris, but this is as far as I can deal with dragging your ass through the dirt while my heart expects anyone to jump in front of me and murder me at any second. You'll be safe here. I can't say the same of anyone, literally anyone who shows his or her face in this street."
As you turn towards the door to leave, she raises her voice.
"Hey, wait!"
You look over your shoulder while standing near the doorway.
"Mimi's mouth is aimed the other way", you say. "That's all you need to think about. You'll stay alive if you stay here, Ferris. I can't do anything for you out there. I'll come back in a second."
You step into the morning light and approach Tivey, who barely keeps his eyes off his sister.
"Hey, neither Julius, the human dressed in white and who has purple hair, nor Wilhelm, another human who is old and has white hair, came through this street in front of Mimi, right?"
Tivey looks at you gravely.
"No, sir. I-I haven't seen them since the explosion."
"Since the carriage's explosion, you mean."
"It was a carriage? T-There was a huge blast in the village. While people were moving around to find the source, a-a lot of cultists started coming down from the road that leads to the lord's mansion. I had been following M-Mimi around that time because she wanted to t-take a walk, and I'm not s-sure if we should risk trying to join our brothers and sisters. Most of those people are m-much taller."
"I can see how that would be scary despite you having the most terrifying sister in the world."
You want to ask about the remains strewn about that are covered in clothes that clearly didn't belong to cultists. You need these two half-beasts to survive, and you don't want under any circumstance to make an enemy out of Mimi. You allow Tivey his plausible deniability.
"Ah... I'll go inside for a moment and check on Ferris again", you say nervously.
"Y-Yes, general."
Ferris turns her head quickly when she hears someone enter. Then she relaxes again.
"You are so dumb, Subaru."
"What does that have to do with anything now!?"
"We are enemies, you and I. We belong to opposite camps. One day it might mean an open war. Don't you know that?"
"It's not so much that I don't know, but that I don't care."
Ferris holds your gaze with her brow slightly furrowed, but stays silent as she breathes through her mouth.
"If I like someone, I like them", you continue. "I couldn't care less about anything else."
"I can tell, and yet you should. That's what adults do."
"Yeah, I don't care about that either."
A pained look comes over Ferris' face. You move to leave, but Ferris attempts to reach your arm. She fails, because she doesn't want to disturb her position and her continuous healing of her recently reattached leg, but you stop.
"What is it?"
"Where are you going, Subaru?", she asks with a lowered voice. "You will die. You can't do anything out there."
"I was out there, and so were you, and we didn't die as far as I can tell. I'll continue walking around and doing nothing. I need to make sure that other people that matter to me are still alive."
You leave the hut and close the door behind you. After you take a deep breath, you tell Tivey that you are going to look around for your pals. You make sure to approach Mimi from an angle, but still glancing at her blood and vomit stained figure as little as possible.
"Mimi, I'll run down the street to figure out what's going on. Please, don't blow me up, okay?"
Mimi giggles.
"I wouldn't blow you up, mister! You are our friend!"
"That's right. We don't blow up our friends! Later, Mimi."
You sprint through the narrow street while avoiding the puddles of blood and the lumps of corpses.

I had expected this entry to contain a couple of scenes more, but the first one ended up being so long that the entire entry would have probably pushed seven thousand words. There's no intrinsic problem with shorter entries if the scenes are mostly self-contained.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 23)

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

In the previous part, plenty of soldiers got injured or killed when Petelgeuse jumped to a new body and he faced duchess Crusch's unsuspecting bunch. Both crews have retreated to the village and regrouped. Everyone is uneasy because they get the sense that the Witch's Cult is not going to pack their things and go home for the day.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

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Even though the duchess belongs amongst the wounded, she had organized which of the hired merchant carriages should park near the entrance of the village to serve in the evacuation, and then she had been directing her men and a few half-beast mercenaries to load up the corpses. You hung out close around that time, although you closed your mouth when it became obvious to everyone that you weren't needed. However, you helped some of the wounded get on the carriages. Afterwards Crusch decided that other merchants should position themselves near the central plaza in a way that doesn't block the defense, so later on the villagers can be carted off quickly if possible.
You walk around the entrance to the village's plaza and point out to a couple of maneuvering carriages where to park, while some villagers standing guard move out of the way. When you turn back and walk away to massage your headache and distract yourself for a while, you find yourself staring at Ram, who was standing a few meters away from you, and then you realize that a mob-like crowd of villagers, some armed with their worn swords or pitchforks, but also unarmed people who were until recently hiding in their houses, is approaching you. Leading them is none other than the village chief, who seems to believe that dressing weird makes him a wizard.
"You!" The village chief points at your face while glaring. "You led the mercenary scum that raided our village! Confess your wrongdoings so that we may judge you accordingly and the spirits may rain their retributive justice upon you."
"The Iron Fang? They didn't raid shit! They even brought their own disgusting rations. What's going on here?"
"What's going on here? Perhaps you're unaware that the village was raided, and all the adults were killed?"
You look behind him at the crowd of adults, who as usual only stare at each other in confusion instead of mutinying against the chief and hanging him by his wizardly balls.
"I never had any intention of going along with your delusions, chief, but today I'm inclined to order some of the half-beast crew to spank some sense into you. What's the real issue here? Why have you gathered these good people?"
The village chief frowns in both disappointment and anger, but he doesn't seem surprised by your lack of willingness to go along with his attempt at making himself seem like a hero.
"We haven't been properly informed of the reason for the impending transfer of our beings to the capital. Don't we, as the lord's subjects, deserve an explanation? Any excuse?"
As you always remember when it's convenient, it comes to your mind that you don't technically belong to Roswaal's camp any longer.
"Why are you asking me? Why do you come to me for explanations?"
The chief shakes his head.
"You went around the village telling people, particularly the children, that you were employed by the lord and that they owed you respect."
You want to sigh. Your own words, coming back to betray you. You look around for support and your gaze falls on the pink-haired senior servant, who is standing a few meters behind you, arms crossed and eyeing you as if you were a stain on her favorite dress.
"Wait for one minute, guys", you ask the mob.
You approach Ram.
"You were in charge of defense as soon as Puck told you what was coming, right? Didn't you tell these people that we were planning on evacuating them?"
Ram's expression clarifies that she doesn't intend to forgive you for wanting to become part of her family.
"I told the chief that the lord intended to evacuate them, and that as his subjects they should obey. That is all they need to know."
"Didn't it cross your mind that they might get mad because they are treated like sheep?"
"I don't have to explain myself to you."
You sigh. You look over your shoulder at the concerned group, led by a lunatic who is waiting for you to come back to them and explain every little detail about why they should abandon their possessions.
"You are welcome to elaborate on the situation for them if you so please", Ram says mockingly. "Doing so you would also be relieving your future sister of a little pebble in her shoe."
Your shoulders slump. You have signed into a lifetime of performing hard work that the senior servant wants to free herself from. You steel yourself and return to the chief.
You take a good look at the crowd. Most of the armed men, and a few women, look rough after years of tending to the fields and livestock, or whatever the fuck these people do. An old woman stares at you with a perverted glint in her eyes. A couple of unsupervised kids look up at you, and one of them has snot hanging out of his nose.
"So, you want an explanation of why you need to be evacuated, right?", you ask slowly.
The people begin to shout inarticulate things at you. The old pervert raises her hand to ask you a question. You notice that she's missing a few teeth, and her breath could kill flies at five meters.
"Are you our new lord?"
You are tempted to say yes.
"No, your beloved clown is fucking around somewhere else. That doesn't answer my question, though."
"We want to know why we're being kicked out of our homes!", a woman holding a baby yells from the back.
"That's a reasonable thing to want to know. Let's put it this way, would you rather be told a comfortable lie, or a horrifying truth?"
The crowd is unsure of how to react. In a couple of seconds, most of them begin to murmur to whoever is standing close.
"I like to feel comfortable!", says a man in his forties with long sideburns and a wart under his nose.
"Me too!", some woman adds.
"My back hurts", the old pervert says.
You take a deep breath.
"Well, the thing is that we spotted quite a few demonic looking dogs in the forest. It's well known that if we didn't handle the infestation quickly, the dogs are bound to multiply in a matter of days, let's say, and we risk them overrunning the village, biting people, stealing children and the like. We asked the duchess of Karsten as well as some nice mercenaries to help us take care of the dogs."
The people are unsure of what to make of your explanation.
"We haven't seen any of these demonic dogs, and we move through the forest fairly often!", says some guy armed with a worn sword.
"Didn't the servants already take care of the demonic dog like a week ago?", a woman asks.
"I saw you sitting on your own pee when the demonic dog attacked!"
You narrow your eyes and clench your fists.
"Who said that? That never happened."
The village chief raises a hand to shut his people up. The sleeve of his ridiculous wizardly robe slides to his elbow, revealing a pale, hairy arm.
"Where did these dangerous demonic dogs infesting the forests come from?"
You want to shake your head and roll your eyes.
"We don't know. Hell, probably."
"Why did the duchess of Karsten and some mercenaries agree to help you without knowing this?"
"Because we asked them politely."
"Did you tell them that the demonic dogs were from hell?"
"No. They just looked like regular demonic dogs to us. Your everyday variety. Pretty much like that puppy we handled, but just the size of a regular grown dog. Very demonic though. Bad stuff if you want to keep your children unstolen."
The chief is silent for a moment.
"Alright. We'll organize a hunting team to go out in the forests and look for these demonic dogs."
You contain yourself from stepping forward and grabbing his robe to yell in his face.
"No! You lot are to grab a few of your vital possessions, get on the carriages when we tell you to, and enjoy a scenic route through Flugel Road that will lead you to the capital. Along the way there's a huge tree that'll blow your minds, even though it plays no role in anything else."
"Why would these dogs come to attack us? We haven't done anything to them!", says a woman in her mid twenties.
"You can't be that naive in this fantasy world", you say with a serious tone. "Anyway, that's why you villagers need to shut up and allow yourselves to be evacuated to safety. You'll return eventually, and your stuff will likely still be there."
"Hey, but what about my....", a young man says before you interrupt.
"There are more important things in life than a small hut and some potatoes, friend. Now, if there are no more questions, we have an evacuation plan to set up. Plenty of Crusch Karsten's soldiers will escort you all safely through the dangerous road."
"I have a question", the chief says as he raises his hand.
"What's the problem now?", you ask without disguising your annoyance.
"You said our stuff will likely still be there. What do you mean by that?"
"I mean, you should expect that large demonic dogs with three heads will probably intrude in your homes when you aren't there to cause chaos and mess. Look, I really can't go into detail right now, I have to organize twenty carriages along with the soldiers..."
"I think you aren't telling us the whole truth here", the village chief says while glaring at you.
While you try to control your breathing, you look around to calm your nerves and your gaze falls on Ram's smug smile. She must be loving to see you struggle with these morons.
"It's not fair to lie to us! I pay my taxes!", the village chief shouts angrily.
You groan and snap at the crowd.
"You bunch of sheep!"
The chief's anger explodes. He tries to grab at you, but his movements are halted by his fellow villagers holding him back.
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You shut the hell up!"
Ram raises her voice.
"If you resort to violence, the lord's employees will handle you, and it won't please you."
You rub your eyes as your heartbeat calms down.
"Listen, folks, I'm going to tell you the whole truth. You won't like it a bit."
Silence takes over the crowd, as everyone is eager to hear what you'll say next. The village chief keeps glaring at you while clenching his teeth.
"The Witch's Cult was camped in that forest over there", you say calmly. "We learned that they were about to massacre everyone in the village and to attack the mansion as well. We relied on the duchess of Karsten's army as well as that friendly bunch of half-beasts in order to destroy the menace."
"The Witch's Cult? Why would they want to kill us? What have we done to them?", says the same young woman who asked a similar question before.
"Because these people are evil and want to destroy the world. That's about as much as you need to know. They might still be hanging around, which is why we need to get you defenseless people out of the area as soon as possible."
The crowd gets restless.
"It's because of that witch, isn't it!?", the man with the wart asks warily.
"Yeah, they worship the Witch of Envy...", you say.
"Lord Roswaal is hosting the Witch of Envy!?", the same man yells.
"What!? The fuck are you on about!? I meant to say that the Witch's Cult worship that dead witch who killed half of the world hundreds of years ago. What does that have to do with Roswaal?"
"You're lying! Our lord would never associate with witches!", the woman holding a baby yells at you while pointing.
Your head is spinning.
"I wasn't the one who suggested that!", you say.
"Why would you protect that witch!? You're a part of the Witch's Cult and working with Satella!", the village chief says.
Ram steps forward until she stands next to you.
"As expected, my fellow employee Mr. Natsuki hasn't explained himself properly. He doesn't belong to the Witch's Cult, and I assure you that lord Roswaal has no relation to the Witch of Envy. You all need to calm down. We will evacuate you to the capital to ensure your safety."
The man with a wart on his face starts laughing bitterly.
"I knew only trouble awaited us when I saw that a silver-haired half-demon was living in Roswaal's mansion. No wonder the Witch's Cult is trying to kill us all!"
"Yeah!", some young guy armed with a sword says. "She's the Witch of Frost, isn't she? And lord Roswaal presented her as a royal candidate!"
"No, she isn't! That's slander!", you yell, but the crowd starts getting unruly.
"Kill the demon!", some voice cries.
The village chief, veins bulging on his temples, points at you with fire in his eyes.
"He's a part of the Witch's Cult and the government! Burn everything down!"
You opened your mouth to speak when you realize, due to the distortions dancing over Ram's palm, that she's ready to hurt some motherfuckers with her wind magic. You raise your hands.
"Please, listen to me. The half-elf living in the mansion is not a witch." You stop for a moment, because you don't actually know what qualifies a magic user to be a witch around these parts. That's beside the point, though. "She's a kind, honorable, generous young woman who has been declared a qualified candidate for the throne by those medallion things. Don't get mad at her, she's not at fault for this situation."
"But the Witch's Cult is attacking us because they want to kill lady Emilia, right?", a meek young woman asks.
"Well, yes."
"So it's her fault that the cultists are attacking us!", the man with the wart yells while spitting.
"I'm not saying it isn't, but-"
"Then, we need to kill her! She's a demon, and will destroy our world!", he continues.
You realize why the notion of having to evacuate these villagers had never popped up in your mind. There's no helping some people.
"Listen, you goat fuckers. I know you'll always hate Emilia because she's a half-elf, and for you that's not normal. Your lord is a clown. What the fuck do you know about normalcy? It boils down to whether you want to stay and possibly get horribly murdered by cultists, or get on a damn carriage when we order you to, and live to waste everybody's time. So what will it be?"
There's a brief silence.
"I'll take that as you all being scared, so you'll be getting on the carriages", you say angrily.
Ram intercedes.
"You heard Mr. Natsuki. Now please return to your posts or to your houses. We'll call you when we ready the evacuation."
The villagers go away. You don't wait around to find out if they are glaring at you or muttering something malicious. You had walked away a few steps when you realize that Ram is following you.
"What do you want?", you ask with a tired voice.
Ram takes something out from the pocket of her servant outfit and pushes it into your mouth. You have already bitten a piece when, surprised, you take a look at what remains. It's a cookie.
"What am I, a child?", you ask.
"I thought you might like it", she says with a deadpan expression.
Ram turns around and walks towards her post in the plaza.

You are walking towards the entrance of the village while trying to push down your sour mood. None of the wounded from both armies, that were either lying around near a fence or eating meals on outside tables, are hanging around anymore. They must be waiting on the queue of carriages ready to leave through the main road. Crusch and Rem are speaking with each other a few meters from the back of the last carriage, and Ferris, who is standing further away from the pair, notices that you are coming and walks up to you quickly. She has looked tense since she returned from the forest.
"Please, convince Rem to leave with my lady. The duchess isn't as healthy as she pretends, and if she stays, she'll run into trouble and possibly get killed. I trust miss Rem. She'll take care of the lady."
Rem is staring at you with concern, but she offers you one of her bewitching smiles. It seems that she has noticed that Ferris would rather speak in private with you for now.
"I don't know, Ferris", you say, your head still spinning from dealing with the villagers.
"You have something going on with that servant, right?"
"Why would you want to know?"
"You'll also feel better if she leaves a battlefield, even though she's actually able to fight."
You shake your head while trying to weave the facts together.
"Wait a second, Ferris. Are you staying?"
She sighs.
"Do I really need to spell it out for you? Crusch likes you, and she's fond of Emilia despite of it all. The only way I convinced her to leave was if you people had the best possible healer in the kingdom in case something went horribly wrong. I assure you, I'd rather leave. The Witch's Cult must be waiting around for a sign to attack."
By instinct, you look towards the forest that borders the road up to the village. Everything seems as quiet as the last time you looked at it.
"We haven't finished, huh, Ferris?"
"Of course we haven't, you dolt."
"Fine. I'll feel better with Rem out of danger."
Ferris nods and walks away towards her duchess. Rem holds his hands in front of her waist and walks at a leisurely step towards you, but you move up to meet her. As you stand close to each other, you can tell that she doesn't want to act like a couple in case that causes trouble of any kind with the onlookers, which include some of Crusch's soldiers and some nasty looking half-beast mercenaries. Maybe Rem also contains herself out of modesty, despite the whole plunging her fangs into you and sucking all of your blood while eagerly fucking you thing.
"I suppose they have already asked you," you say softly, "but what do you think about leaving this dangerous place to accompany the wounded, mainly Crusch, so you can all rest and recover at her place in the capital?"
Rem's head lowers down a bit, perhaps contemplating on her options. She looks back up at you.
"Okay."
"Just that?"
"I will go with them to the capital."
"Really?"
"You want me to. I want to stay and make sure that you are safe, of course, but I know you will return to me. You promised me that we would marry one day and have a huge family."
Every time you look at her beautiful face or speak to her, you are overwhelmed with affection, and you want to hug her tightly and for every other person to go away. If Petelgeuse hasn't given up on performing the ritual tonight, Rem is the main person you'd need to focus on keeping alive, or else you'll kill yourself with the nearest dagger and start all over again. What an annoyance that would be.
"Flugel Road is clear, right? No White Whale nonsense?"
Rem smiles softly.
"That whale always leaves after a couple of hours. She's never been known to stick around for so long that it would cause us trouble now. It will be a somewhat long, yet straight route back to safety."
You caress Rem's beautiful light blue hair, and she lowers her head slightly as she puts her hands on your waist.
"You'll come back soon, won't you?", she asks without disguising her concern.
"I will."
You lift Rem's chin and kiss her in her soft, warm lips. You hear a couple of men comment something about it with a merry tone. You couldn't care less about who is looking.
When Rem opens her eyes again, they are moist.
"When you come back I want a whole day just for the two of us. And plenty of it will involve us holding each other in bed."
Your heart hurts, and not in an entirely good way.
"I wish I was there already."
Shortly after, you bid each other farewell and Rem walks slowly towards the carriage that will take her to the capital. Your gaze waits for hers when she inevitably looks over her shoulder to glance at you.
An uncomfortable warmth rises to your throat, and you feel lonely. When you lift your head again, Ferris is passing you by on the way to the village's plaza, and to your surprise, Crusch is approaching you with a soft smile. She's wearing her breastplate again, and the bandages around her torso show up through the holes in her military uniform.
"Can we speak for a moment, Subaru?", she asks.
You feel honored that someone like her would want to, despite having known her for far longer than she has in her lifetime.
"Of course, m-... We can speak whenever you wish, lady duchess."
She looks down at the dirt for a moment.
"I have no doubt that Emilia is going to embrace you back into her camp after you have risked this much for her."
"I wouldn't be that sure, to be honest..."
"She will. And it's sad for me. I have grown fond of you, in a similar way I'm fond of my Ferris."
"I like you a lot, Crusch, although I suppose that much is obvious, with the whole mother thing."
She lets out air through her nose, but her amusement remains mixed with notorious sadness.
"I don't like that we belong to different camps. Make no mistake, I will push my hardest to become the ruler of this kingdom, as I believe that amongst the candidates I'm the most experienced and suitable. And one of the candidates would be an utter disaster."
"Yeah, you are certainly the most suitable person to sit on that throne."
When you return your gaze from the wolves playing in a nearby field back to Crusch's face, she's stunned, with her mouth open and her eyebrows unevenly arched.
"What's with that face?", you ask, confused.
"Did I hear you say that I'm the most suitable to become the ruler of this kingdom?"
"Of course! You were governing as a duchess even before you became an adult, you come from a long line of competent rulers, you have that cool superpower that cuts into spacetime, you are fair, good, honorable, tough when you need to... Not to mention, a total smokeshow! The kingdom would be in great hands with you."
Crusch blushes, and she makes an effort to hold your gaze while a smile grows on her lips.
"But... you serve lord Roswaal, who backs Emilia."
"Ah, I see. I never said that Emilia would be the greatest ruler, or even a better than average one. As far as I understand she might be gunning for it due to some personal trauma she wants to overcome, and becoming the queen could make her feel that a lifetime of being despised for reasons beyond her control might have been worth it. It would be good for her, you know? It's not like she can go to a therapist. Although if Emilia rules, then probably Roswaal rules, which might be the point for all I know. If somehow Emilia wins, as unlikely as it probably is, I'll try to contain her from going all Satella on everybody. You know, fingers crossed. She's probably not Satella."
Crusch lowers her head and her gaze goes vacant. Then she lifts her head again and stares at you with determination.
"Subaru, after all this is over, why don't you join my household? I'd love to bring you in. I'd gladly smooth things out with Roswaal if you agree."
Your mind goes blank for a second. Warm tingles are building up in your limbs and in your gut. Feeling yourself losing it, you try to imitate Wilhelm's poker face, but the moment you close your eyes, your mind offers you a picture of Crusch touched by lamp light in the dark, wearing only a nightgown and leaning against the headboard of her four-poster bed. Her beautiful green hair falls on the pillows and her right breast bulges in her generous cleavage. She's lifting the sheets and the fluffy comforter to show you the place that awaits you next to her warm body. She's fixing on you her glistening eyes as she tells you to come in. You follow her order and slip under the sheets, and she covers you with them. After she leans over to shut the lamp off, in the darkness she presses her soft, warm bosom against you and entangles your legs with hers, as she caresses your hair.
When you open your eyes, your heart beats so loud and your mouth is so dry that you feel as if you are going to pass out. Your legs are trembling. Oh, no. Calm down.
"I, ah... When I came here, I had nothing at all, duchess. My clothes weren't even from this world. I came across Emilia, who was dealing with a problem that honestly if she were more intelligent she would have prevented, but in any case, I chose to help her." It's not stopping. Please, Crusch, don't look down. "Ah... In the end we didn't have that much trouble solving her problem, and she was so glad that I didn't treat her poorly for being a half-elf, that I was honestly on her side, that she agreed to bring me to Roswaal's place." It shouldn't be able to get that hard. How is this possible? "S-Since then I've realized how much she's hurting, how delicate she is despite her powers, due to having been rejected and forced into isolation for so long, and I just want to be there for her, you know?"
Crusch sighs.
"I can't disagree with your honorable motives. I just wish I had come across you first."
You feel your cheeks getting hotter and hotter.
"If we... get separated like you say, I will miss you. I will miss your bed, I will miss seeing you girls eating breakfast in the morning. I know it was a short time for you, but for me... you became a family."
Everything burns behind your eyes. You want to cry. Oh, no, you are actually tearing up.
Tears leak from Crusch's eyes. She takes a step forward and hugs you, and as she does, your diamond-hard erection bends against the duchess' waist. She freezes, and you stop breathing. Then Crusch leans towards your ear. Her warm breath sounds like wind against your eardrum, and her lips make a wet sound as she separates them to whisper in.
"You naughty boy."
When the whiteness that had overwhelmed you clears up, the line of carriages carrying the wounded is leaving through the road that borders the forest. Your legs wobble, and shivers ripple through you. You fall to your knees and support yourself on the dirt with your fists. Your underwear is as wet as if you had pissed yourself.
As you attempt to control your breathing and produce saliva again, someone pats you on the head.
"What the hell are you doing, Subaru? Stand up", Ferris says.
Before you know it, Ferris is dragging you by the hand towards the village's plaza. You don't recognize what street you are passing through, nor can you focus on anything. You need to sleep.
Ferris stops near a covered carriage parked in front of a two-story house, maybe a couple of minutes away from the plaza. Before the cat-girl turns around, you realize that her literal tail's hairs stick out. She hugs you tightly, pressing her small tits against your chest, and rubs her jaw against your neck.
"W-What is it with you, Ferris?", you ask, confused. "Even if I intended to do something with you, you'd need to let me rest first!"
"Shut up and get on the carriage", she says sharply, straight into your ear.
You barely react, so she pushes you up. Once you are standing in the shadows of the carriage, Ferris jumps in and slides the tarp as if for privacy. When you open your mouth to complain or at least ask her about her actions, she walks up to you and presses herself against your body while crossing her arms over your back. Her flax-colored, perfumed fur tickles your cheek.
For a moment you are tempted to grab her ass.
"H-Hey, if I had known some time ago, I would have loved to bend you over and test drive a half-pussy's pussy while squeezing that bubbly butt, but I'm in love with a demon, and something's going on with my mother..."
Ferris gasps and punches you on the back with one of the hands she's hugging you with.
"Just shut it. Shut your nasty mouth and pretend."
You get the feeling that something weird is going on. You lower your hands to her slim waist. Shortly after, the tarp slides open forcefully, and a tall, rough looking merchant in his forties gets on the back of the carriage. He's frowning, and clenching his right hand.
"Did you take my carriage for a brothel?", the man says with a stern tone. "Get out of here, go screw on the grass."
Ferris lifts her hands and steps back. Then she prances to the merchant's side while narrowing her eyes and deploying a smile in a seductive expression.
"Couldn't help myself!", she says cheerfully, "I'm just a silly cat-girl in heat, tee-hee!"
When the merchant moves his gaze to you and opens his mouth, Ferris drops her fake expression and grabs the bare skin on the back of the merchant's neck. The guy goes unconscious as if a switch had been flipped, and falls forward until he faceplants on the floorboards.
You let out a surprised noise.
"Hey, Ferris, don't go around assaulting random people!"
"He is not a random person. Besides, I've just switched his consciousness off."
"Is that a thing that people do in this fantasy world?"
Ferris frowns and blinks a few times as if wanting to interrogate you about your words, but at the same time not wanting to.
"As long as I have touched them, yes."
"If people knew, they wouldn't let you heal them!"
Ferris smiles on one side of her mouth and takes a step towards you.
"But you will shut up about it, won't you."
"I don't want my blood to boil."
Ferris rolls her eyes and then pushes the unconscious guy's torso with her foot.
"This guy is a cultist spy, you clown."
"What!? How do you figure?"
Ferris crouches and searches through the guy's pockets.
"He has some sort of weird spell embedded in him, I noticed it when I was checking on the merchants as they were hired."
"That's it? Isn't your world filled with spells? What if the spell embedded is related to virtually anything else?"
She glares at you.
"The type of spell checks out! The rank and file of the Witch's Cult are known to have allowed themselves to be hexed with spells that reduce their independent will and their fear. This is well known. Weren't you aware?"
"It didn't come up in conversations, nor did I live through anything that featured that notion."
"Subaru, you need to read up on the subjects you are dealing with."
"I'd like to read anything at all!"
As Ferris shakes her head, she takes out a small trinket that looks like a makeup mirror. The cat-girl is surprised for a moment, then she furrows her brow.
"This bastard. I knew it."
She throws the trinket at you.
"No, don't open it", she says. "It's a metia."
"A makeup term, I'm guessing."
"No! It's a magical artifact that allows long distance communications with whoever has the other half of the pair!"
"How was I to know?"
Ferris shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath.
"Please," she says with a tired voice, "help me turn this guy around."
The supposed spy now lies on his back. His nose is busted, and is leaking blood all over his mouth and cheeks.
"Clearly I cannot leave gathering intelligence to the Iron Fang...", Ferris says.
"C'mon, Ferris. They are pretty cool murderers."
"... And neither can I expect it from you. You didn't even notice Julius messing with you when I was healing you earlier."
"Messing with me? What did he do?"
Ferris blatantly ignores you.
"I'm going to wake this guy up, but just enough so for the most part he'll just be able to talk and speak. If he moves at all, he'll do it slowly. You punch him hard if he attempts something."
You shift your weight. Your heart beats fast. You crouch on the other side of the guy and prepare your fist.
Ferris touches the guy's forehead, and a second later he opens his eyes.
"What are you...?", the guy says with an aggravated tone.
"You will feel your blood warming more and more", Ferris says with a steely voice. "Where is your leader, cultist? Where is Petelgeuse?"
"I don't know any..."
He shuts his eyes. His skin is getting redder, and sweat is beading as if he were in a sauna.
"You either tell us what that madman intends to do, and when, or I'll vaporize your insides", Ferris says.
With a deep grunt, the merchant spits blood. It's dripping from his nose and his mouth. He opens his eyes again, eyes as red as blood. He grins.
"Satella will return and drown the world in eternal love."
The man has extended his hand over a floorboard next to his body, and from his palm glows a yellowish magic. Through the slits in the floorboards you realize that a reddish light is increasing under them, like a growing fire.
Ferris gasps.
Although you punch the merchant in the balls as hard as you can, the man doesn't even flinch. Ferris leaps onto you, and as you fall on your back, she yells.
"Ia, shield us!"
A burst of light and thunder envelops you.

I think I mentioned it in a previous part, but in the original novels, the crew waits around for the White Whale to appear, they fight it, and through plenty of hardship and some bullshit they end up killing it. However, there are plenty of casualties. Rem herself has gotten badly injured. Around half of the entire crew gets on enough carriages, turn around and head back to Crusch's place. Amongst them was the duchess herself, as well as Rem. They never got even close to Roswaal's domains. That's the last we see of them for the remainder of this arc, which in the anime adaptation fills the rest of the first season.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 22)

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

In the most recent parts, the protagonist's crew, composed of a few main people from duchess Crusch Karsten's camp as well as the Iron Fang's mercenaries, intended to decapitate the branch of the Witch's Cult they were attacking, but they end up figuring out that their leader's consciousness can jump from body to body whenever he dies. They decided to regroup with Crusch' team, which was handling the other half of the forest where the fight takes place.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
-Link for part 12
-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15
-Link for part 16
-Link for part 17
-Link for part 18
-Link for part 19
-Link for part 20
-Link for part 21

Your group has run towards the border of the forest with such haste that a few branches and thorny plants have scratched your arms and legs, and the wounds bleed slowly. But eventually your team bursts out of the forest into the open, and you are bathed by the full morning sun again. You appeared on the side of the wide road that leads towards the village.
You force yourself to keep your legs from buckling. You are sweating, your head hurts, your body feels tender like a bruised fruit, and you are running on adrenaline.
Some people are walking as fast as they can through the road towards the village. Someone from your group says something, but your ears are ringing. As you stride towards the strangers, you notice they are wearing the armorial bearings that identify them as belonging to the House of Karsten. Some have bandages around their heads, their legs or their arms, and those who can walk entirely by themselves are carrying fellow soldiers on their shoulders, or hauling them like deadweight between two.
When they realize your group is approaching, a couple of them unsheathe their swords and almost panic, but when they realize you are friendly, they are relieved.
You approach a young guy, maybe twenty two years old, who wears a bandage that covers his right eye. He's carrying an unconscious soldier who has lost half an arm.
"The duchess, is she alive? Have you also seen a blue-haired maid?", you ask with a nervous voice.
"The duchess was covering our retreat, and that blue-haired maid has massacred a good bunch of cultists with an enormous flail! She's a demon!"
"That she is. Where-...?"
A female voice you recognize calls out your name. Your heart jumps, and warmth rises to your throat. Rem is running towards you along the road, while behind her a few other soldiers are exiting the forest. Your beloved demon is holding on to the grip of her flail with her right hand, and to the enormous, blood-dyed spiked ball with her left. Her servant outfit is also heavily stained.
While you run towards her you trip on the uneven stones that pave the road, and when you manage to stand up again with your trembling legs, Rem has already reached you. She smiles widely and her eyes are warm.
"Subaru, you are unharmed!"
You stroke her pretty face.
"I wouldn't go that far, but I'm certainly alive. Rem, my lovely girl, I want to hug you, kiss you, and do other things with you right this instant, but there's also the matter of you holding that enormous spiked ball that is dripping blood and brain matter. That's a good sign in any case. What happened? Is Crusch alive?"
Rem looks behind her towards the spot of the forest's border where the soldiers were coming from.
"Last I saw her. The duchess volunteered to stay and fight against a superpowered cultist. I think he has the Unseen Hands ability we spoke about. We had ambushed two units without issue, but then we came across a third one as they were traversing the forest. It's like someone alerted them that we were coming, even though our ambushes were flawless. And around fifteen minutes ago, a tall man with his hood down, speaking like a madman, appeared out of nowhere and killed a bunch of soldiers. There were plenty of casualties, Subaru..."
"That's around the time we killed our last Petelgeuse", Wilhelm says from some steps behind you.
"Yeah, his consciousness must have transferred to a Finger on that side of the forest", you say with urgency. "We need to help her, Wilhelm!"
"I absolutely agree."
You get close to Rem and put your dirty hand on her mostly clean shoulder.
"Rem, make sure the wounded reach the village, and then protect the place. Your sister must be handling things already, but if some of the cultists have already decided to begin the assault, they might either massacre people at the village or hit straight for the mansion. Someone should probably locate Emilia as well."
Rem's eyes glisten with worry.
"Can't you come with me?"
You open your mouth to speak, but Wilhelm gets ahead.
"Mr. Natsuki has already faced and survived worse threats than what we are going to handle now. Please, miss Rem, hurry. Time is of the essence."
Rem nods and begins to run towards the injured soldiers. You both exchange nods that don't properly communicate how relieved you are that she's doing well.
Your group, including Wilhelm, Julius, Ferris, and a bunch of mercenaries, run towards the spot in the forest that the soldiers had used to leave it. You look over your shoulder at Ferris.
"The apparently numerous wounded soldiers need you more than us, Ferris. You should go to the village."
You hadn't focused on Ferris' expression of distress, nor the fear obvious in her eyes.
"Like hell! I will first make sure that Crusch comes out alive!"
You don't want to argue. You dislike that you've had to shade yourself with the tree tops again when you had just escaped this place, but you can't imagine how you will feel if you find out that Crusch has been killed. Even though the duchess isn't Rem, nor Emilia, you care for her to the extent that you'll want to kill yourself to avoid continuing a life where you have abandoned her to die.
The sounds of crunching leaves, along with a few scattering critters, alert your group that some people are coming in fast. You hide strategically behind some trunks. When three cultists appear with their daggers drawn, Wilhelm lunges forward and decapitates one. Julius impales another cultist's heart with his sword, and Wilhelm murders the last one so fast you can't see where he hit him. You leave the corpses behind and keep running.
Shortly after you hear a crazed, unintelligible male voice with a cadence you recognize
"We're almost there!", you shout almost out of breath.
Your group comes out into a clearing similar to the ones the cultists had cleared in your half of the forest. Closest to you, the duchess of Karsten is standing while wielding her fancy sword. She's facing away from you, and her waving red cape is splashed with darker blood. On the opposite side of the clearing stands a tall man, maybe around a hundred and eighty five centimeters, in his forties, with a full beard, and who in general looks like a lumberjack despite the black robe. Around him there are dead soldiers strewn, most dismembered, some crushed. From the cultist's back, his shadow has swollen into the elongated, ghostly arms that you recognize, but so far he'd need to take a few strides before he could reach Crusch.
This version of Petelgeuse was yelling something likely annoying at the duchess, but when he saw you emerge, he trembled and pointed at you angrily.
"Blasphemer! Rotten, hollow vermin of this broken world! Produce my stolen Gospel before I tear the limbs off everyone you know!"
"Again with that book! Fuck off, Petelgeuse!"
"You are unworthy of Her blessing!"
Crusch looks back just enough to identify those who had come up to her from behind, and then she focuses again on the madman.
"Ferris, Subaru, everyone, I'm so glad you are alive", she says with a tired voice.
You were going to reply that you are also happy that she's unharmed, but that's not the case. Long, half-dried filaments of blood hang from her stained blade, and there are at least two dagger wounds on the side of her torso, under her breastplate. Those areas of her uniform are still wet. You wonder how many of the dead cultists lying around she has killed.
You look for a brief moment at Ferris, who is tightening her lips maybe wanting to avoid distracting her lady. You open your mouth to speak, but the madman's deep voice floods the clearing.
"The duchess of Karsten, a famous unbeliever whose pawns have resisted, have fought, have murdered my fellow believers in Her love. A royal candidate as well, to fulfill your meaningless role in a passing nation which will fall to oblivion like so many have before! In the end, despite how carefully your ancestors have engineered their line to stand against the putrefaction of time, you are merely a perishable human being who takes a few steps in this world and disappears! You are nothing but a dot against the endless book of Her love!"
"Shut it, idiot!", you yell.
That annoys Petelgeuse, who narrows his eyes, but while staring at you he pays attention to your companions.
"Is that you, Wilhelm, the king's dog? Wilhelm van Astrea, another temporarily powerful unbeliever, now ravaged by the unstoppable passage of time! When the worms make a feast out of you, me and my legion of fellow believers will keep fighting to bring Her eternal love back into this world!"
"I have killed you three times," Wilhelm says with a grave voice that betrays his disdain. "If necessary I will kill you a thousand."
"Subaru," Crusch says with a soft voice, barely turning her head. "did you meet my wounded soldiers along the way?"
"Yeah, Rem is escorting them to the village! It seems they are in the clear."
"That friend of yours is something else. I am glad."
Crusch clears her throat, steels herself and takes a few steps forward while wielding her sword with two hands, but holding it at her right side, as at the beginning of a wide swing.
Julius speaks softly to his groupies, who are dancing over his palm. The lights fly in an arc until they hover behind Crusch's head without her noticing.
Petelgeuse advances a little, and his ghostly arms bend in parallel on both sides of the madman, then lock in place like a spider's legs when it's ready to pounce.
"Now witness! I will close my Unseen Hands around your duchess, and then squeeze slowly until this pompous unbeliever pleads for a mercy that won't come."
You clench your fists hard enough to puncture your flesh with your nails. You are so enraged you want to vomit. You son of a bitch, you think, how dare you say that to my mother!? You take a step forward, but Wilhelm grabs your arm. He's staring at the duchess with a serious but otherwise calm expression.
Crusch plants her feet firmly on the grass as she turns her torso to her right.
"I'm going to disappoint you, fiend, because I don't need to get that close to erase your stain from the world."
Crusch shivers for a moment, and a soft blue flame envelops her sword's blade. She swings her sword sharply from the lower right to the upper left, slicing the air, and then holds the pose. Petelgeuse's ghostly arms twitch as if confused. Then you see a slash opened in your view of Petelgeuse as if the blade had cut space itself. In a second, the diagonal break in the view slides towards the madman, entering his torso at the height of his heart, and behind him into the line of trees. Petelgeuse had begun to yell when part of his torso slips off the rest of it while what seems like liters of blood spill out. Behind him, a tree, half chopped, slumps backwards into other trees, but a fully detached trunk falls over the madman's remains, crushing his lower half as well as other strewn corpses.
Nobody says anything as Crusch shakes her sword to remove part of the blood, and then she sheathes it.
The madman's upper half trembles on the ground. He attempts to support himself on the bloody stumps of his arms, and lifts his face towards your group to speak, even though blood keeps leaking from his mouth.
"How many Fingers are you going to ruin!?", he slurs as loud as he can. "No matter, I have some more. I know where you are, unbelievers, and what you are guarding."
Once Petelgeuse lies still, Ferris runs to her lady, holds her waist with one hand and with the other Ferris hangs her healing magic over the wounds on her torso.
"I thank you, Ferris," Crusch says, "but miss Rem provided first aid soon after I got stabbed."
You feel giddy, and you approach the tired looking duchess with a smile on your face.
"What the hell was that awesome thing you just did? A magic spell?"
Crusch drops her war face for a moment to smile back warmly.
"Subaru. Nothing as complicated as magic. The Karsten have passed down this blessing for many generations. Not everybody gets it, but those who do hold the responsibility to use it for good."
Wilhelm looks around for threats.
"We should get back as soon as possible. Petelgeuse is going to possess another body, whose location we have no clue about."
Your team walks briskly towards the road right out of the forest.
"What about the healthy soldiers, Crusch?", you ask. "Nobody stayed behind for you?"
"I ordered them to carry the wounded to safety. Apart from them, when we realized that at least one of the units of cultists was on the move, I split my team into two, so the other half could scout and ambush other possible units in the forest before the cultists joined up and assaulted either the village or the mansion."
"Standing alone in the open in front of that insane... thing", Ferris says, barely disguising her anger. "What if you had fallen? What about your household, or the kingdom?"
"He didn't know what I can do, Ferris. Everything is fine."
"In any case," you say, "the rest of your guys in the forest are likely to run into Ricardo, his supersonic cannibal, and the rest of his half-beasts. I feel a bit sorry about whoever they target."

As you and Rem walk through the dirt path that, once you pass a villager's two-story home, opens up to the village's plaza, you see Ram standing guard with a full view of the surrounding forest, as well as the wider path that goes uphill and eventually reaches Roswaal's mansion. Distributed through the bottlenecks produced by houses or natural rock formations, villagers armed with worn swords and pitchforks pretend like they aren't going to either fall dead or run away the moment a cultist appears. You spot the lunatic that passes for a village chief around these parts, and he's wearing his wizardly robe that actual magicians would rather burn than even look at. That guy also has something going on with ducks, but you never got around to caring about it.
Anyway, Ram spots you two as you approach her. Rem had already greeted her once she came with the wounded, but Rem's bitchy sister hadn't seen you since Emilia exiled you for acting like an idiot. Ram holds your gaze with the dismissive expression that she reserves almost exclusively for you, and you discover that you really hadn't missed this woman at all during the confusingly long succession of two days at the capital that you wasted so many energies in. It's hard to comprehend how this Ram could show to the world such a close copy of your beloved's face, except for Rem's light blue hair on top, and yet use it mostly for souring everyone's mood. You fear you might grow an aversion towards your girlfriend just because she reminds you of the senior servant.
"Ram, I'm so glad to see you again", you say.
"You've disappointed lord Roswaal's camp twice, Mr. Natsuki. Do you know how?"
You take a deep breath.
"By showing my dumb face again?"
"That's one, when Emilia was very clear that you weren't to return. Do you have any idea of how much pain and turmoil you have caused her, when she needs to concentrate on the fight for the throne?"
"I kinda got all that the first time. What is my second failure?"
Ram lowers her head slightly and narrows her eyes, but Rem's presence right next to you softens the senior servant.
"You are so lucky that my sweet sister has taken pity on you. She always cared for broken and useless things. And I suppose that your buffoonery can confuse the feeble-minded into accepting your company, which is why you seem to have earned quite a bit of following in opposite camps."
"You still haven't stated what's the second way I've disappointed you."
She opens her mouth slightly and furrows her brow, while letting a half-vocalized noise escape from her mouth, as if she can't believe you are treating her with such disrespect.
"Mr. Natsuki, once the average citizen of this kingdom learns that duchess Karsten's as well as Anastasia Hoshin's camps have defended lord Roswaal's domain instead of the lord himself, what do you think that will mean for Emilia's prospects as the future ruler?"
"It gives points to them instead of to Emilia's candidacy, you mean?"
"That much you did understand."
Ram was about to continue, but you interrupt her.
"Would you rather let Emilia die?"
Ram snorts, and shifts her weight.
"What would we do if the exiled buffoon weren't here to save us poor defenseless yokels?"
Hey, cool it with the buffoon stuff, you want to say. You work for a clown!
"You would have died, Ram, and so would have pretty much everybody else in Roswaal's camp. I guess that every single person would have eventually."
Ram narrows an eye so much she almost closes it, and advances one step towards you.
"The same way Emilia needed to be defended, protected, at the royal summons? You have some obsession, Mr. Natsuki, that the world won't turn unless you are there to spin it."
Rem speaks up with her sweet voice.
"... What Subaru said is true, sis."
Rem's words stun the senior servant, and her expression takes a few seconds to unthaw. She looks at her sister as if Ram couldn't have heard those words.
"What are you saying, Rem?"
"The Witch's Cult's forces truly would have overwhelmed the village as well as lord Roswaal's mansion, and given that the cultists had learned the means to access Roswaal's inner sanctum, where Emilia was likely told to hide if her life was seriously threatened, the Witch's Cult would have succeded with virtually a hundred percent certainty."
Ram steps back while she shakes her head lightly. She holds her sister's calm gaze with a look of betrayal.
"My own dear sister."
You sigh.
"Ram, if circumstances were different, my nature paired with your constant need to belittle me, humiliate me, question my usefulness and intelligence along with my intrinsic value as a living being, could have turned our relationship into a lifelong love story. I assume that demeaning those in lower positions to yours gets you off, which is fine. God knows there are few things more important in this life than satisfying one's fetishes."
"How... indecent..."
"However, we need to start treating each other better, because if there's such a thing as a sister-in-law in this fantasy world of yours, you are going to be it. You are going to become part of my family, and me of yours. So I look forward to our decades long relationship, sis."
Ram snorts mockingly, but when her gaze slides to her sister, Rem blushes, lowers her head and hugs your arm, cuddling up to you.
"We are in love, Ram! And one day we'll have a huge family of half-demons!"
Ram goes pale as her face freezes. Her legs tremble, and the senior servant staggers away. A few steps later, she crouches as if to hug her knees, her back convulses, she retches and vomits copiously into a growing puddle.
Around fifteen seconds later, the senior servant is still going.
"You never break character, do you", you say with a low voice.

The villagers had set up a zone for the wounded, as well as to line up the sheet covered corpses that are also going to travel to the capital. Ferris and Rem are checking on the progress of the numerous soldiers, and fewer half-beast people, who have found out how it feels to get a cultist dagger stuck in their body, or to be hurled towards trees by an invisible hand, or to have their limbs crushed or torn off by an invisible hand. Whenever the kingdom's best healer finishes her round of checking up of everybody who isn't Crusch, Ferris returns to her lady and concentrates on making sure there's no chance the duchess will die mid-sentence.
Crusch has taken off her breastplate for the treatment, and had sat down on an outside table to eat a home-cooked meal that some impressed family of villagers wanted to serve the duchess of Karsten. Crusch looks tired, and when her mask drops for a couple of seconds, she becomes mournful.
You want to apologize to her the same way you did to Ricardo. Under every sheet from which usually feet stick out, there's a life that was cut short because you wanted to save Emilia, and the entire world for that matter. Despite that likely most inhabitants of this world would have died in the subsequent, cunt-induced Apocalypse, you wait for anyone to come and blame you for every death, because you feel the guilt in your bones.
You were checking the surroundings, the distant figures of Wilhelm and Julius coordinating the defense at the entrance of the village, when you look back at Crusch to find out that she had been staring at you with an inquisitive, concerned expression.
"How are you doing with all of this, Subaru? We are soldiers, but until a few days ago you didn't seem to have picked up a sword in your life."
Thank you for reminding me about that public beating, mom, you think.
"I can't say I like being on the defensive, nor on the offensive for that matter. I had also expected us to come out clean after a series of ambushes."
Crusch glances for a moment at the numerous wounded and the line of corpses.
"It would be so nice if plans could work out without any obstacles, but this is war. Has your camp made sure that Emilia is alright? I haven't been able to move much since I entered the village, but people are quite tight-lipped about it."
"Emilia is alive."
Crusch looks at you with a flash of sadness in her lovely eyes.
"You too, Subaru? How do you know?"
"Because if Emilia had died, an impossible, flesh-freezing winter would have descended upon us."
Crusch looks confused, and seems to wait for you to explain yourself.
"I really cannot say more than that, Crusch, even to you. Puck knows that the inner sanctum isn't safe, so unless he's a complete idiot he wouldn't have hidden her there. They must be holed up in some other place that likely only them both know. I don't mind that they don't show up as long as they remain safe."
"And the lord? It is, after all, his responsibility to defend his own domain."
When you picture Roswall and his fantasy clown makeup, you feel your blood heating up.
"That's what I kept saying. Roswaal should have been here and made sure everyone he supposedly cares about survived. But it seems that he's stuck in some other town to handle some troublemaker, and you can't send the guy an e-mail. Still, that bastard knew that presenting the Witch of Frost to the world meant that the Witch's Cult was going to attempt to kidnap my friend, but the lord concerned himself with other necessarily less urgent matters. I tell you, this long, confusing series of repeating events has made me not want to deal with clowns ever again."
Ferris clears her throat. You are surprised by how tense and angry she looks, as if she's about to berate you. However, she's looking at her lady as well.
"My lady and Subaru, I urge you to speed up the evacuation. I know that we haven't finished the fight, but this is no place to handle the recovery of the fallen. Especially yours, duchess."
"But we haven't finished it, Ferris", Crusch says.
"You have. You will risk your life unnecessarily for other people's sake, when you have the future of many, many citizens to account for."
"They explained Petelgeuse's nature clearly. He must have transferred his consciousness to some other body, and he's unlikely to have given up on performing the ritual today."
Ferris' cat ears twitch, and she rubs one eye. She was about to speak to Crusch again but she looks up at you.
"Please, Subaru, give us some privacy. Camp matters."
You shrug, excuse yourself an wander away. These people are Emilia's opponents no matter how you feel about them.

After Ram found you walking around and staring at how the Iron Fang's big wolves either slept, ate or played around in a nearby field, she urged you to do something useful, and even blackmailed you with the notion that you had to remain in good terms with your future sister-in-law. You took guard duty in a somewhat elevated position, armed with a worn sword and staring constantly at the sea of trees in case some black-robed figure popped out.
You first heard a tumult coming from the entrance of the village, and then a couple of Crusch's soldiers came up to the village's plaza to announce that the half-beast people had returned. Ricardo is walking up the dirt road that leads to the village. He's followed by a good bunch of his white-robed crew, including his monocled quartermaster and Mimi, who is walking briskly with her tiny legs, and who despite having accrued new blood stains in her matted fur and her white, orange-lined robe, she's showing a carefree smile.
You run up to meet the Iron Fang's captain.
"How did it go, Ricardo? Did you kill a new bunch of those creepy bastards?"
Ricardo laughs loudly.
"You know it! We didn't come across that madman either, don't know where he could be. So we didn't lose any people. We swept the area for a while, but the forest is now clear as far as our senses go. And they are pretty good ones!"
You hadn't realized that Wilhelm is standing next to you.
"Mr. Welkin, did you notice by chance if any of the cultist units lacked any of its members?"
Ricardo looks bewildered as if nobody had asked him to count before. He shrugs and scratches the back of his furry head.
"All I can say is that everyone we met we killed. Some we found on the way as they were moving through the trees."
"I see. Thank you for your work, Mr. Welkin."
Ricardo grins.
"Our pleasure. Ah, I forgot! We got a captive!"
You snap back your head in surprise.
"A captive? Why would you want to capture one of those bastards alive?"
Ricardo didn't hear you, because he had turned to address a few of his men. Those half-beast soldiers don't seem to be the right ones. Ricardo walks away for a moment, only to return with a half-boar guy who is carrying a human being whose ankles are bound with a rope.
"It's something of a miracle that this little guy survived", Ricardo says excitedly, "If the lieutenant had aimed a bit to the right, he would have blown up as well. He was in one of the cultist camps, hanging from a spit over a pile of kindling. Didn't know you humans ate each other!"
You don't know why Ricardo is surprised about that, given that his lieutenant is half-human and she still eats people.
"I doubt they were going to burn alive one of their own, for sure...", you say, and wait for the half-boar guy to let the captive down.
The half-boar guy throws the captive on the ground casually, and the bound captive groans. You can't see his face, but the captive seems young, has a messy head of hair and wears a merchant outfit. When he turns to look around, you recognize Otto Suwen, who looks tired and confused and is squinting at the morning light.
Before you know it you have crouched, you are resting your hands on your knees, and have burst out laughing. Ricardo also laughs for some reason.
Otto sits up. As he takes deep breaths, he's looking up at the spectators as if they might decide to hang him over another campfire.
"I-I am grateful that this army of half-beast people rescued me, with such explicit methods, from impending doom, and yet I cannot but feel troubled that their general has burst out laughing upon my misfortune."
You wipe your eyes and contain your laughter. You feel relieved, as if someone had told a very good joke after a tense meeting.
"Sorry, man. I'm just happy that we got you before those cultist fucks did to you whatever crazy shit they were intending. Please, someone free him."
A fox man scout you recognize crouches next to the merchant and cuts his ropes with a dagger. When he's finished, you offer a hand to Otto and haul him to his feet. He brushes himself off. He's frowning and narrowing his eyes as if he has a headache.
"Ah, just my luck", Otto says. "I couldn't get through Flugel Road last night because of some mist, and then the Witch's Cult captures me. I can't even be surprised at this point! But I thank you again, all of you, for allowing me to suffer my misfortune for a while longer."
"How the hell were you captured by the cultists when nobody else was? Didn't you travel along with a group of merchants and travellers?"
"All I remember, sir general, is having drunk too much, getting off my carriage and venturing into the forest."
"Why would you do that?", you ask while chuckling.
"I-I like to talk with the animals and then take a nap in peace, but..."
Talk with the animals, huh, you think. Poor bastard.
You pat Otto on the back, but then grab his opposite shoulder and squeeze the merchant against you. Although you are feeling silly and want to joke around for a while, this guy has also almost died. You lean towards the bunch of half-beast mercenaries behind your group.
"Yo, Tivey!"
The tiny quartermaster leaves his sister's side and comes over to you while adjusting his monocle.
"General!"
"Quartermaster, please seat this guy somewhere comfortable and prepare him a ration of dried slime, will you?"
"Y-Yes, sir." He tugs on the merchant's pants. "Please follow me, mister merchant. You are in good hands."
As Tivey leads him towards the outside tables where some wounded soldiers are eating meals, Otto staggers behind him, but he looks at you over his shoulder as if asking for help.
"Dried slime!? I guess I can't complain under the circumstances, and yet I feel compelled to...!"

As a minor observation, I love how Mimi being a cannibal, at least regarding half of nature, keeps popping up in the narrative, and it's something that the AI came up with entirely by itself. It's just a fun thing for me to throw around, I guess.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 21)

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

After the main team seemingly decapitated the Sloth branch of the Witch's Cult, they move on to ambushing the units hidden in the half of the forest they are covering, while Crusch's crew handles the other half. This ended up being a larger than usual entry, about one and a half.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
-Link for part 12
-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15
-Link for part 16
-Link for part 17
-Link for part 18
-Link for part 19
-Link for part 20

Your team, including plenty of unnamed half-beast mercenaries, is crouched in the shadows behind bushes and tree trunks, as you wait for a couple of scouts to come back. So early in the morning, critters are running around, sometimes between the team members, and the birdsongs cover your breathing no matter how loud.
Silently, the red and white head of a fox appears in front of you, from behind a trunk. You hadn't hear the creature approaching. The fox's head is the size of a human's, and the rest of his anthropomorphic body is clothed in the Iron Fang's white, orange-lined robe.
"Fifteen meters in front, general, in a clearing. Ten cultists. They aren't alarmed."
The fox man is looking at you, but at the mention of a general, you feel the need to look behind you to figure out who he's trying to talk to. Thankfully you contain yourself, so they don't realize you are that much of an idiot.
"Thank you, fox man", you whisper. "Good job and all that."
Ricardo leans towards you. His breath smells of meat.
"Let's move up until we can see them. We need to know how they are located in the clearing, and then we'll retreat and talk tactics."
You are more nervous now than when facing Petelgeuse. You feel as if any small fart is going to end up with ten cultists ganging up on you. You let the mercenaries go ahead, and then you accompany Julius and Wilhelm, who don't seem to have any trouble sneaking around. You realize that some multicolored lights, the size of a finger's phalanx, are dancing around Julius, but before you have time to wonder about it, Ricardo returns with a grin. He motions Mimi to come over. When she's close, thankfully while keeping herself from giggling, the wolf man grabs Mimi by her scruff and lifts her up towards his face as if he were about to bite a chunk out of it. Mimi remains unfazed.
"There is a group on the left and a line of cultists sitting on logs on the right. Those on the right you can blow up if you run towards them at an angle. You get those, I'll cleave through the idiots on the left."
"A few bad guys with the same explosion!", Mimi says excitedly, and way too loudly.
Ricardo smiles and lets Mimi on the ground. He then turns towards the remainder of the team.
"The rest of you lot look for openings, especially when the fiends want to throw those toothpicks they use for swords. Got it? We can kill them hard and fast."
The way your hulking, temporary pal puts it, you'd think this is going to be a fun fair. Still, with his size he can easily go through the enemy ranks. And you don't want to be anywhere near Mimi's mouth when she does that supersonic shit again. Still, you approach the Iron Fang's captain as silently as possible, and you lift your palms towards him and the tiny lieutenant.
"I cannot overstate how little I want to interrupt you terrifying half-beast persons as you plan how to murder a bunch of people," you whisper, "but I don't think you understand how loud you are being right now. They'll end up coming to us."
Ricardo scratches the back of his head and offers an apologetic smile.
"Ah, right. We were doing that whole jumping from the shadows thing. Agh, how annoying. At least we can mow them through once the see us coming."
The guy didn't even lower his voice to respond.
"Yeah, we should probably assume the positions."
You are looking at the clearing from behind a trunk and a thankfully voluminous bush. You had expected to gaze straight into a cultist's eyes, but they are either sitting around on logs or standing in silence. One of the cultists is eating a ration. What a boring bunch for their chosen profession. They should be gutting babies or some shit like that.
You hear Ricardo grunt towards you, and the entire team understands what that means. You get ready, tightening your grasp on the spare sword one of the half-beast people had lent you.
Mimi sprints and leaps into the clearing with her staff ready. The cultists sitting in a couple of logs, in a convenient line from the angle that the half-beast Mimi is coming at them, barely have time to turn their heads when Mimi opens her mouth wide and produces her bone-scratching cone of distortion. As the waves pass through the cultists, their bodies burst apart as if crushed by a hydraulic press, splashing everything around them with blood and guts. Simultaneously, Ricardo surges from the forest while roaring at the scattered group of cultists on his side of the clearing, and he swings his enormous slab of iron, which cuts two of them in half. As Ricardo turns and a cultist attempts to jump out of the way, Ricardo swings vertically towards the ground, which cleaves the cultist in two halves. Another cultist retreats in a silent panic while he clutches his cross-shaped dagger.
Ricardo leaps towards the cultist.
"Where are you going, fiend? I'm bringing you a great death!"
He jumps while twisting around so his sword swings some three hundred sixty degrees, and the impact of the blade not only destroys the cultist's torso, but also tears into the trunk of the tree that the sword had pinned the cultist against. The tree begins to fall backwards into other nearby trees.
As soon as you see Mimi's victims bursting apart and you feel hot drops of blood hitting you, you along with other teammates run from the forest and charge with your swords into whatever cultist remains in the open. You get glimpses of swords plunging into black robes and some cultist's human head falling from his hood. You push your sword into a cultist's back, but when he falls to the ground, his throat had already been torn open by a half-beast mercenary.
In ten seconds, the entire unit of cultists is either dead of mortally wounded. Ricardo walks to a fallen cultist that was gurgling, and the wolf man stomps on his head, crushing it open.
You stand in place while your heartbeat calms down and you can breathe better. You are covered in sweat just from the tension. I'm surrounded by murder machines, you think, and although you can only thank Satella, as your only known higher being in the afterlife, that these monsters are on your side, you also want to piss yourself, hug your knees and cry.
Mimi has lifted her hands while holding someone's intestines.
"They made beautiful red flowers in the air!", she says as she giggles. "Can't wait for more!"
Ferris keeps checking on every teammate's well-being, but nobody seems to have gotten even a scratch.
Julius approaches you as he looks around with a somewhat apologetic look, as if he would have rather stabbed the cultists' hearts and not have made such a mess.
"Are you doing good, Subaru?"
Why does this guy care, you think as you wipe the sweat from your eyes.
"Yeah, I stabbed someone in the back and everything. It doesn't sound very honorable, but still... By the way, that mercenary over there is half-sloth. Isn't this battle a conflict of interests?"
"I didn't mean that. Subaru, it things continue as they are, I might not find an opening to do much of anything. How do you prefer to employ my abilities?"
You glare at him.
"Hell, I don't know, man. Why don't you run around the forest until you come across some deer that you can knock unconscious?"
Julius averts his gaze and sighs slightly.
As you were about to walk away, you stop in your tracks because Wilhelm stands in front, staring you down.
"Mr. Natsuki."
Receiving that look already deflates you and makes you feel foolish.
"Once an operation is underway," Wilhelm says, "focus on putting your teammates abilities to good use. Even if out there you dislike those people, or even if you consider them your enemies, they are now your brothers and sisters in arms."
You want to get annoyed at Wilhelm interceding, and yet only shame rises from your gut. That's not the visage of someone who intends to berate and humiliate you, but that of a mentor who sees promise but knows you are rough around the edges. Like most people in your entire life, Wilhelm could have walked away, or ignored you to your face, considering you a lost cause, but he made the effort to tell you what course he believes you should follow.
"I'm just a little punk, huh... You are right, sir Wilhelm." You swallow and turn towards Julius, who looks at you with a calm demeanour as if he could deal with anything. "Julius."
"Subaru."
"Your spirit arts give you an advantage over the regular swordsmen around, right?"
Julius arches his eyebrows.
"I am indeed a spirit user, although I prefer to call myself a spirit knight. Did you recall that from the royal summons?"
"I noticed the little spirits flying around you before, and then I remembered that decrepit bastard from the council mentioning something like that, yeah. So they can do magic things and stuff?"
"Indeed, when it comes to a battle they can throw low level elemental attacks, but they are mainly focused on shielding from both physical and magic attacks."
"That sounds pretty good. Buff the hitters, particularly those who are most likely to die, and also cut people down if you see an opening."
"I will do just that, Subaru."
You chuckle.
"If I knew you were such a reasonable guy, we could have been friends, Julius."
The spirit knight's eyes widen, and he smiles slightly.
"That's a bold assumption, and yet I suspect you may be right."
Julius had barely stopped speaking when Ferris called you from somewhere behind you. She was standing at the edge of the forest next to the ground dragon Patrasche, who was looking at the carnage without any discernible concern in her dragon face. Ferris puts her hand on the animal's neck, and Patrasche moves her elongated head so she can look at Ferris and then at you as if saying, 'is it okay for this person to touch me?'.
"I didn't want to bring it up before, Subaru, but why did you make your ground dragon follow us?"
You walk towards Ferris, and shrug.
"I didn't make her do anything. She decided to follow me of her own volition."
"Why did you let her then?"
You stand next to Patrasche's head and pet her rough scales. Patrasche closes her eyes and nuzzles your hand.
"For once a female followed me because she wanted to. I didn't want to stop such a magical thing from happening."
Ferris narrows her eyes.
"You aren't funny."
"I'm half serious. Don't put such strain in your cat-face, Ferris. Your ground dragons seem very intelligent, maybe close to actually intelligent. She knows she shouldn't ruin the ambushes nor make any noise. She's a good girl. Aren't you a good girl, Patrasche?"
Ferris rolls her eyes.
"Why are you so mad?", you ask. "Ah, because of the whole Crusch thing. She's fine, you know."
Ferris walks off.
"Leave me alone."
"What? You are the one who bothered me to begin with!"
"I'm sorry, I thought you were someone I wanted to talk with."
You sigh and scratch Patrasche's chin.
"You're probably the only one who listens to me nowadays, along with my girlfriend, and a bunch of other people who consider me in charge of this operation."

Your team repeats the same plan to locate and then ambush the next unit of cultists, and it results in a practically identical bloodbath except that you didn't even attempt to stab anybody, that two of Julius' spirits either burned or froze the hands of a couple of cultists that were trying to throw their daggers, and a cultist managed to wound a half-boar mercenary by sticking a thrown dagger into the guy's abdomen. Ferris is tending to the wound, which doesn't seem serious.
You walk around for a bit trying to avoid stepping on guts, and you end up coming across Wilhelm, who seems to have stood there looking at you.
"Maybe we overprepared for this", you say. "I might end up feeling sorry for these deluded morons."
"I'd say eliminating your targets while keeping all of your people alive is the most optimal of the results, Mr. Natsuki."
"Yeah... Let's not make it easier for the bastards."
While a couple of half-beasts were looting what remained of some corpses, you notice Julius standing near a tree. He's speaking softly to six multicolored lights that dance around over his palm. You approach him if only because the lights look cool.
"Do they follow you because of a contract?", you say.
"You know about that, Subaru", Julius says with some surprise. "That is the case, yes. These are minor spirits. They didn't retain their full consciousness after death. The only one who remains mostly conscious and lucid is that red one. She calls herself Ia, although I have never known the details of her days as living creature."
"Creature? You mean a human or a half-beast, right?"
"I don't know."
"How come you trained to become a knight, and trained really hard for years as you suggested at the royal summons, and then one day you ended up contracting spirits? Is that something that just happens?"
Lucius lets air out through his nose as in a contained laugh, and then he looks grateful that you want to know.
"Knights who can handle spirits are very rare. I was always suited for the spiritual arts, it just happened that I had the means to train to become a knight as well, and as I trained I realized it that I wasn't opposed to the idea of joining the honorable ranks of the Knights of Lugunica."
"Must be nice being talented."
"You don't lack talents yourself, you just don't know how to handle a sword. Neither did I when I started."
"I don't know how to fight with my hands either. I just lifted weights to make myself feel better. I've developed pretty powerful wrists along the way, though."
Julius looks away as in thought.
"In truth, a significant portion of those years I yearned for months of peaceful study in some library. There's a tremendous amount of knowledge to glean in the spiritual arts. You are, or were, very lucky in that regard, having access to the supposedly most impressive library of magical tomes anywhere in the known world."
"The librarian is kind of a nut, though. Also, I can't read."
Julius snaps his head back and stares at you while narrowing his eyes.
"You can't read...?"
You want to reply something clever to balance your illiteracy, but you realize that if Beatrice, a great spirit herself, met this guy, she would probably prefer the continuous visits of someone who wants to study the arts, and who can handle spirits to begin with. That makes you feel down.
"I acted like complete punk back then", you say.
As soon as the words escape your mouth, you wonder why, because you weren't even thinking about that. Julius lowers the hand that his spirits were dancing around, and he turns towards you with a serious expression.
"I can't read, I can't fight", you say. "And yet I wanted to help her, to protect her, even though Emilia can throw ice shards and has a tremendously powerful little cunt of a guy as a personal guardian. If I had thought about what I was doing before I insulted those bastards and stepped into the line of royal candidates, I suppose I would have believed that I could make them understand what a bunch of idiots they were, for dismissing Emilia's entire existence because she was born somewhat related to that deranged ghost, Sat-... Nevermind, I know you people don't like her being mentioned."
"That's fine. I already told you, you did the right thing, with the wrong methods as far as my tastes go. But I didn't beat you up to such an irresponsible extent because of that."
"Because you were ordered to do so as a punishment that would satisfy that decrepit bunch?"
Julius looks down, but then he sighs and stares at you for a few seconds while tightening his lips.
"Because I've had to punish myself every time I wanted to tell anyone ordering me to study, to train, to obey, that they should let me be. I saw you there and I thought, you are just a little boy who can't do what he ought to, what he's supposed to."
You laugh in spite of yourself.
"I am glad that the excruciating physical pain you caused me resulted in an epiphany that contributed to your character development. Ah, whatever. I can't be that mad at you still, not when I've had to fly around as a detached head like a hundred fifty times."
"That's a strange analogy."
You shake your head and put your hand on Julius' shoulder.
"We live in a world filled with spirits, magic, dragons, witches and an impending Apocalypse. You don't have the right to say shit like that."
"It's not like we can compare it with any other."
"Yeah, well. This conversation has gotten too serious for me, and my headache has returned. Talk to you later, Julius."
You turn around and walk away as you narrow your eyes and massage your temple. You hear Julius talking softly to his spirits. After you take a few more steps, you feel more than see a glow out of the corner of your eye, and suddenly a warm sensation swirls inside your body like a liquid. You stop walking and breathing, but a moment later the sensation has gone away, and you feel as normal as you can feel with a terrible headache.

Your team has learned from the first three ambushes when you ground the cultist units to a pulp, and the remains of the fourth unit lie around mostly dismembered and ripped apart in the blood-stained clearing without having wounded any of your people. Mimi complains about a stomach ache after the random, uncooked human meat she's been gulping down, but otherwise the rest of the team chats around casually.
Still, you can't shake off an increasing nervousness. Your guys defeated Petelgeuse almost immediately, and you can believe that the rest of the isolated units could be ambushed to oblivion one after the other if it wasn't for the knowledge that another Petelgeuse with the same peculiar speech patterns had existed elsewhere. You look for Wilhelm, who is standing near Ferris as the cat-girl checks on the recovery of a few previous wounds. Even though the old man's expression rarely betrays his stoicism, you get the feeling that he's thinking something similar. You approach him.
"We haven't learned anything new, Wilhelm."
The old man nods slowly.
"That is correct. In the best possible scenario, these so called Fingers have all died through our precisely executed ambushes, and they never had any chance to reveal themselves. If that's the case, I will be content with letting the matter remain a mystery."
"I have been trying to recall Petelgeuse's exact words, that I suppose I was the only one who could hear clearly. I tried to make him keep blabbing about it. He said that all the positions were filled, that he had reached the limit, that he couldn't hold more than ten. He didn't refer to a limit as something implicit to the organization of this branch he was leading. He referred to the limit as belonging to himself. And that use of the word hold..."
"Interesting. It sounds like an ability, does it not?"
"Some ability linking other people? Linking them to him?"
Wilhelm gazes over the carnage, and a couple of seconds later he furrows his brow and begins to walk around the mangled corpses. After he's glanced at all of them, he lifts his head sharply towards the opposite end of the clearing as if he realized he could have made a mistake.
"All the other units were formed of exactly ten people. There's nine here."
Someone small tugs on your pants. Mimi looks up at you with big teary eyes, watery mucus dripping from her nostrils, and the bare skin around her mouth, as well as some orange fur under her chin, stained with dried blood.
You swallow your sudden fear.
"Oh God... Yes, Mimi?"
"Mimi's tummy hurts!"
"What do you exp-...? You shouldn't go around half-cannibalizing people, Mimi."
She tugs again and stands on her toes.
"Please help me, mister!"
You motion for her to shove her fingers down her throat.
"Make yourself vomit. You'll probably feel better if you get all that random, uncooked human meat out."
Mimi looks at her hands as if she had never seen them before. She sniffles.
"My arms are too stumpy!"
"Yeah, can't argue with you on that one. I can't believe..." You sigh, kneel on the grass and move Mimi around so you can slide your fingers into the lieutenant's horrifying mouth. "Your tongue is so wet. Please don't bite me, nor do that terrible shouting thing. This seems like the back of your tongue. Poke, poke."
Mimi's body convulses as she gags. You take your hand out before a stream of bile and poorly chewed human meat splatters the grass. The half-beast, hunched over, breathes loudly through her mouth.
"You'll feel better in n-...", you begin to say.
You were standing up when you stop and fail to finish your sentence. Four half-beast mercenaries are hanging in the air near the opposite end of the clearing, because a few smoky, elongated arms have grabbed their limbs and torsos. When you open your mouth to shout, the smoky hands twist and pull and crush, tearing apart limbs, bursting torsos open, in a shower of blood.
A chaos of shouting and running around breaks out. You can't tell what your teammates intend to do, except that some are moving way too close to the flailing and swinging ghostly arms they cannot see. A mercenary who had gotten injured before attempts to run, with his sword drawn, against an arm that was swinging his way, and the arm knocks him away into a tree trunk. The arms are coming from someone hidden behind the first line of trees on that border of the clearing.
You run around, while pushing mercenaries out of the way, as you point at the source of the ghostly arms.
"You can't see the arms! Stay out of that area!"
While you try to keep every ghostly arm in sight as their movements disturb the tree tops, you look around for the people you can name. Julius, who is holding his sword, is shielding Ferris while out of danger, because it doesn't seem like the arms reach that far. Patrasche has sneaked behind you and she growls towards the shaking tree tops. Wilhelm has unsheathed his sword as well and is standing closer to the ghostly arms. Ricardo is dragging someone unconscious towards Ferris, while shouting something you can't hear.
One of the mercenaries that got exploded is the half-sloth guy. Not the half-sloth guy, you think. What can you do? You can't guide your teammates to avoid the ghostly arms reaching for targets, there's no way you can describe their movements. You need to attract that cultist's attention.
You run past Wilhelm towards the ghostly arms. He shouts at you.
"Mr. Natsuki, stay behind! You will get killed!"
"I can see the arms, Wilhelm! Look for an opening!" As soon as you get close enough, you yell towards where the elongated arms converge in origin. "Hey, you dickhead! I'm over here!"
The cultist has heard you, because the arms stop for a moment, and then swing and coordinate themselves to reach you with their open hands. A burst of dirt and grass coming from your side rises towards a couple of the arms. Wilhelm seems to have struck the ground at an angle with his sword so the debris would delineate the invisible arms on its path. What a genius!
As you half jump out of the way of a couple of smoky hands, half admire how Wilhelm slices an invisible arm at the wrist, you feel a huge hand grasping your right leg under the knee. Before you know it, the smoky arm is dragging you into the forest. You attempt to shout, but you end up with a mouthful of grass.
When you manage to turn and lie on your shoulder as you get dragged, you realize that the tree tops are shadowing you. This cultist is retreating from the border of the clearing, deeper into the forest. As the smoky arm that grasps you passes by a trunk, you hit it with your ribs, which takes the air out of your lungs and produces a burning pain in your ribcage. Suddenly two other ghostly arms grab yours and they lift you into the air, then push you against a trunk with your back to the tree. Your feet can't touch the ground.
While you cough and try to think what to do, a female cultist approaches you. She's wearing the black robe but with the hood down. She's a redhead in her early thirties, and her face is spattered with freckles. Despite her pleasant appearance, her expression is twisted in mad anger.
"What makes you, a blasphemer, able to see the Unseen Hands, when nobody else should be?" The woman's otherwise pleasant voice is distorted into a piercing tone as if she doesn't quite know how to use it. "You do have a blessing granted by our witch, and yet you mock Her, you defile Her love! Nobody like you should have existed, there's no trace of you in the book!"
As you fight to fill your lungs with air, which fires up pangs of pain across the injury in your torso, you think that this must be it. There's no way you are going to survive getting caught by someone with this ability. At least you can attempt to squeeze out as much information as possible out of this madwoman.
"H-Hey, are you a Finger?"
The cultist yells from up close while showering your face with spit.
"Didn't you hear me, blasphemer? Didn't I ask you to tell me who you are? Natsuki Subaru, you said, but that doesn't mean anything to me! Why would She grant a blessing to someone who wants to deceive and betray those who intend to bring our witch back into the world?"
"Yeah, well... She works in mysterious ways and all that. How do you know my name, by the way?"
A smoky arm punches you in the gut, which makes you convulse against the other hands that hold you in place. Everything inside your abdomen hurts and burns, and you wouldn't be surprised if you end up shitting yourself. Still, that wasn't a punch intended to kill you.
"An idiot as well!", the madwoman yells. "Don't you know who you are speaking to!? You pretended you had been called to offer your body and your soul in service of our witch, but you only intended to make a mockery of Her love and distract me so other unbelievers could murder me! What cowardice! What a shameful display!"
You go cold when you realize that this isn't a new lunatic. You are speaking to the same person you had approached back at that clearing in front of the cave. Petelgeuse, or whatever this consciousness you face actually is, has jumped from the Archbishop's corpse into this one. If not, all the Fingers share the same information as if they see and hear through the same eyes and ears. You don't know which possibility is worse.
"Well, Petelgeuse or whatever your name is," you say with a husky voice, "you want to murder Emilia, who is a friend of mine. That's kind of a shitty move, so I needed to stop you, didn't I?"
"What good will your efforts do? Your resistance will be quelled, and the ritual will come to fruition! But what is your connection to our witch? How have you attained Her favor with a heart so foul?"
"You know, I've wondered that myself. All I know is that Satella did shower me with her endless love. She's kind of a great gal, doing it for someone who doesn't deserve it. I can see her appeal!"
The madwoman shakes her head as she hunches, and then she bites hard on her nails, making them bleed. No, not her nails, but the ends of the fingers themselves, as if they were chicken wings. You feel nauseous. The cultist lifts her face towards you again. Her lips are smeared with blood.
"You don't understand Her love! You couldn't have understood it, having mocked it like you did. Satella wants us, needs us, accepts us, and is eager to embrace us so we will be freed from the nightmare of unending time, even from the short-lived, pitiful bodies that barely begin to bloom when they start to rot!"
You try to move your hands, but this bastard has got you pinned up good.
"I know how much she loves everybody. That's all the witch can do anymore. It has made me sad, to be honest."
The madwoman snorts, and as she tilts her head, the rage that twists her facial features gets mixed with puzzlement.
"As if you would know! You dare claim you have a connection with Her to that degree!? You don't appear in the predictions! You don't have a Gospel!" The cultist must have remembered your tirade regarding how you ravaged your imaginary Gospel, because she roars incoherently, and then pushes you harder against the trunk. You risk peeing yourself. "I can't erase your rotten words out of my soul! Our beloved disgraced to such an extent... Destroying one of our holy books, even in mockery, when they are the path to salvation for all of us... I would have never imagined such evil!"
The madwoman digs in a pocket of her robe, but then her face turns even paler with a sudden terror.
"Oh, no! I had my Gospel in that other body! I can't get to..." Twisting her face in a rage again, the cultist lowers you until your feet touch the ground, and then she leans so close that the tips of your noses almost touch. "What have you done with my Gospel, blasphemer!? A Gospel in your foul hands is unforgivable!"
So the Fingers don't share a consciousness. That's good, a silver lining for your impending death. Petelgeuse existed as himself in that former body, and then jumped, maybe automatically, into this one, to the extent that he had forgotten that his book didn't teleport along with him.
"I'm sorry, you deranged shithead. I already came all over it as soon as your former body hit the ground. You can always order a new one. I'm sure that'll help Satella's Amazon ranking."
The grasp on your right leg gets tighter, and then it twists. The affected soft tissues burn and creak, which makes you groan in pain.
The madwoman grins with her trembling, blood-smeared lips as if she had just found a solution.
"You asked me, didn't you, to make you one of my Fingers? My essence has already seeped into you, you are a suitable vessel. You will host me if not soon, eventually. And if it doesn't come to that, it will be because Sloth will have succeeded in filling the worthless half-demon with our witch. You have taken the Gospel with you, haven't you, blasphemer? You don't keep it in your pitiful body, but you must have stored it somewhere."
You groan, spitting saliva on the madwoman's face.
"Doesn't matter, Petelgeuse, or whatever your name actually is. That so called magical book ain't worth shit. Your ritual won't bring Satella back, but it does cause the destruction of this entire world. Even when drunk out of my mind it made me smile to know that you never reunited with that crazy ghost."
The madwoman steps back, and she drops you with her ghostly arms. You collapse to the ground suddenly. Although you attempt to stand up, your right leg hurts a lot.
"You will believe, blasphemer. Even if your rotten mind will never accept Her love, you will have to witness Her looking through your friend's eyes. And you will be embraced by the resurrected witch, along with the rest of this hollow world, and dissolved for all eternity in Her everlasting love."
Your head hurts, you feel an electric pain running through your ribcage, your leg burns, you feel as if you are going to discharge the contents of your bowels in a spray. While a chain of coughs prevents you from replying, suddenly a red glow comes out of your chest and hovers between you and the madwoman, who flinches and jumps back.
"A minor spirit!? What is a slothful, disgraceful spirit doing here!?"
The madwoman's ghostly arms tremble mindlessly like an anemone's tentacles as she staggers a few steps back. A flash runs through your vision from left to right. The madwoman stares at you surprised, and then from her open mouth pours blood. The cultist's head falls before the rest of her body collapses.
Wilhelm looks around for threats, and then he sheathes his sword and crouches in front of you.
"I still find it hard to believe that the cultist didn't kill you as soon as she grabbed you, but fortunately I found an opening. Your wounds don't look fatal."
You cough as you cry.
"Please, call Ferris over. This really fucking hurts."
The rest of the gang were already waiting out of danger. Ferris runs up to you, crouches and illuminates your torso with her healing magic. A warm sensation, like a balm, begins to soothe you.
"You'll be fine, but cry all you want."
"Again with that..."
Julius stands close to Wilhelm, who is cleaning his blade. The knight looks worried and somewhat ashamed. As he opens his mouth to speak and yet fails to produce words, you speak.
"That was Ia, wasn't it. Your main groupie."
"... Indeed. I asked her to enmesh herself with your soul temporarily to protect you."
"She didn't do much, but she did do enough. Thank you, Julius. I guess I'll stick around for a while longer."
Something cold and damp touches your cheek. You are startled until you feel Patrasche's breath on your face. You lift your tired arm to pat her neck.
"Everything is fine, girl."
Wilhelm sheathes his sword and looks at you with his brow slightly furrowed.
"You can see the invisible arms."
"Yeah, don't know how. Might relate to a blessing I was given. Nevermind that, I figured out something important about these superpowered cultists."
"She was a Finger, was she not?"
"Yes, but more importantly she was Petelgeuse. Or who we know as Petelgeuse, that same consciousness. And due to his or her or whatever words, it's obvious that killing that other Petelgeuse back at that clearing transferred his consciousness to this other body. He likely cannot reside in more than one body at a time. These Fingers must be vessels prepared somehow, ready to be filled by his consciousness. Safeguard measures."
A shiver runs through your body as you remember that this version of Petelgeuse had called you a suitable vessel. It's impossible, right? You don't see how it could come to a point in which your own consciousness would be thrown out of your body, so the madman could control you from inside like a puppet.
Your gaze casually lands on Ferris' concerned one.
"Guys, leave Subaru some space until he can stand up by himself again."
Some minutes later, with only Wilhelm standing guard next to the healer, you feel able to return to work, and Ferris certifies so.
"I still feel bruised all over", you say, stretching your arms.
"You'll need to rest as soon as you can", Ferris says. "So will I, for that matter."
When you return to the clearing, someone has arranged the corpses of the fallen in a row. They are covered by sheets except for the feet that stick out, in the case of those whose legs weren't torn off. You suddenly feel ill, and your throat closes.
Wilhelm seems to have noticed, because he stands next to you and stares as if he knows exactly what you are thinking.
"They gave their lives so we could win. It's our responsibility to push forward and succeed."
"I'm not as strong as you are, Wilhelm."
"And I pray you never will. Ricardo is busy. I'll gather our team so we can figure out how to adapt to this new information."
Ricardo is crouched next to one of the sheet-covered corpses. He has put a hand on the corpse's chest, and the wolf man looks down like deep in thought. His huge mouth isn't smiling nor denotes any feeling, which disturbs you after you have associated this huge guy with a boisterous confidence.
You approach him from the side, and he looks up at you without moving his head.
"I'm sorry they got killed, Ricardo", you say with a hollow voice.
"It's alright."
"But it really isn't. You all came to fight because I made the move. Otherwise they would still be happily alive somewhere else."
"General, I hate to lose brothers and sisters, but they fought to make the world a bit better. Their spirits go in peace."
You don't know how to reply to that, and your throat is closed anyway. You nod and wander away.

After the few injured mercenaries sported bandages, given that Ferris didn't have enough time to heal them entirely, all the survivors gathered near the border of the forest to talk strategy. Wilhelm first explained Petelgeuse's ability to jump from body to body whenever he dies, which caused confusion amongst the mercenaries. Clearly they had never dealt with any similar enemy.
"We can only suppose that Petelgeuse remains alive," Wilhelm continues, "but now in charge of another unit. It might be that some unit remains in our half of the forest, or maybe they camped in the half that the duchess is covering. Petelgeuse already knows we are here and how we have dispatched the fallen units, so he will likely attempt to regroup with the remaining units and begin his assault. I suggest we leave the forest and guard the village as well as speed up the villagers' evacuation."
Ricardo twists his head to crack his neck.
"I want to kill whatever number of cultists remains in this forest. Even if we take care of the crazy guy, I don't want any of them to escape. General, let me take a few of my people to hit them hard while we are this close."
They keep asking for your input or even your permission, when you feel as if a steamroller just ran over you.
"Both of your ideas sound good. I suppose we can split."
Ricardo nods.
"Mimi, do you have any fire left in you this morning?"
Mimi has been moping around since she emptied her stomach, mostly hiding behind her distraught brother. Those sad eyes don't suit her, and along with the dried blood and vomit around her mouth, she looks as if she might collapse at any moment. However, she nods.
"I think some explosions will do Mimi some good...", she says with a pitiful voice.
"Crusch doesn't have a clue about any of this", you state, having just realized it, because you had integrated that the enemies she would face wouldn't present her any danger. "She doesn't know about the number of Fingers, and she certainly won't guess that Petelgeuse can reappear after he's been murdered. Let's regroup with them as soon as possible."

As a minor observation, two of my favorite little moments in this part are due to the AI making up in the previous part that Mimi gobbled down parts of Petelgeuse. I never thought of that, but it contributes to rounding her as a character, along with the great moment of the protagonist causing her to vomit.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 20)

This part covers a bit of the eight volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

Our main characters finally begin the operation to destroy an entire branch of the Witch's Cult before the cultists murder Emilia, which will cause an Apocalypse.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
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-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
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-Link for part 19

The sky keeps brightening, and it's minutes before sunrise. Crusch ordered some of the merchant carriages to gather just before the road that leads straight into the village closest to Roswaal's mansion, just in case there are cultist sentries looking out for intruders. Most of the remaining carriages, especially the ones belonging to Crusch's army, have formed an irregular line near the outskirts of the forest that surrounds the mansion's grounds. A few hundred meters across begins the approximate midpoint of the sea of trees, and if you were able to venture into it in a straight line and you wouldn't get murdered doing so, you would eventually either reach the village or Roswaal's mansion. In a few minutes, both armies are going to separate and cover half of the forest.
One of the scouts sent to figure out if there were cultists checking the forest border comes back running. He surrounds the line of carriages and meets with Crusch. You are nervous, because such a gathering of carriages will look shady as shit if some cultist wanders off to pee.
By now, light is beginning to seep through the horizon, tinging the sky with oranges and yellows, staining the trees that surround you in pastel colors. Crusch dismisses her scout.
"We are in the clear. Ferris, come here for a second."
The cat-girl healer, who had been peering out from between two carriages, walks quickly up to her lady.
"You'll go with Subaru and the Iron Fang to make sure we decapitate this branch first", Crusch says with a hard voice. "We haven't figured out how the distributed units communicate with each other. If we don't take Petelgeuse immediately, all of their units might end up converging upon us."
Ferris' hands are shaking. She hunches over as she stares at her duchess pleadingly.
"But my lady, I want-..."
"I know. And I'm ordering you as your commanding officer. You are the best healer in this kingdom. The people who will execute that half of the operation are the priority."
Ferris nods and steps back. She lowers her head, and her irises move around nervously.
"Don't worry, Ferris, you'll be in good hands", you say.
"Anything that involves being in your hands isn't safe", Ferris shoots back sharply.
"Well..."
"And you, miss Rem," Crusch says, turning towards the demon servant, who was holding her hands in front of her waist. "you'll accompany my side. You don't consider yourself to be that much of a healer, but we have managed to secure the services of very few magic users in such short notice. We'll likely need you to fix up a few people along the way."
"Yes, duchess."
Although Rem had answered in her practiced servile tone, she looks over to you. Her expression shares her worry as clear as any words.
"It's fine, Rem. Look at these guys. Hell, look at this guy", you say, pointing with your thumb at Ricardo, who is towering over you a few steps to your left. "The cultists are going to shit themselves the moment they see him."
Ricardo closes his eyes, grins with his huge mouth full of teeth, and pounds himself on the chest a couple of times.
"We will storm through the units and paint the trees in blood, lady servant", Ricardo says with a boisterous voice. "And I'll take good care of your boy."
As Ricardo's huge hand closes over the back of your head in what he intended to be a reassuring interaction, you realize that the wolf man had seen you almost cuddling with Rem against Patrasche. Not that it was fair on you to have had imposed the title of general, but still you not only don't act as one, but you sneak off to play boyfriend and girlfriend with Rem. They must think you are completely useless.
Crusch puts on a serious face and, as she's resting her hand on the pommel of her fancy sword, she sweeps her soldiers with her gaze.
"This is it. Await in formation for our command."
"You heard the lady, soldiers!", Ricardo says, moving towards his group of white-robed, half-beast mercenaries. "Shortly we will be bathing in cultist blood."
While the soldiers move around and stand in rows close to the carriages, you approach Crusch although you think you have no right to. She shoots you a comforting smile.
"I have a good feeling. We will meet again either in the road to the village or at the village itself, once we work through these cowards."
"Yeah, I don't doubt that you'll come out alive. Any evil you come across will be blinded by the duchess of Karsten's aura of goodness and motherly justice."
She smiles for a moment with one half of her mouth, but she sighs and lowers her head slightly.
"I am not as honorable as you think. I won't face those damnable cultists mainly because I want to secure the peace in the domain of whom I consider will become a vassal of mine. I have personal reasons that drive me to hunt down as many cultists as possible."
You nod.
"Yeah, they murdered your brother."
Crusch snaps her head back in surprise, and then stares at you while arching one eyebrow.
"It seems that nothing gets past you, does it."
"My dear Crusch, you are mistaken if you think that I will think less of you if you want to murder cultists to avenge your family member. I won't think less of you if turns out you want to kill them because they smell bad. Hell, I wouldn't think less of you if you chained me naked in your dungeon and ripped me open slowly and methodically with a scalpel."
The duchess lets out a soft, nervous laugh, but then shoots you a look of concern.
"Subaru, there's hardly a conversation between us that doesn't make me worry about your well-being."
"Ah, it's fine. We better get this thing rolling, right? You be careful, mo-... I mean, I-I wish with the utmost sincerity that you accomplish your task and later join us safely."

The thick tree tops are keeping you in the shadows as you steel yourself to advance the remaining meters to the border of the forest, and then to walk through the clearing until you reach that black maw opened in the cliff wall. With your heartbeat on your neck, you start walking. You listen closely to the birds chirping and the critters running around over the fallen leaves. You've exited to the clearing, and you feel exposed as if a bunch of arrows would fly towards you at any moment.
Your feet crunch some leaves, but then you stop. You only hear silence, as if some kind of spell had isolated a bubble of space from the surroundings. As the hair in your arm stands up, a veil slips and you are suddenly surrounded by black-robed figures that hold cross-shaped daggers.
"Finally I reach you", you say with a surprisingly calm voice. "I am Natsuki Subaru, and I intend to join Sloth to further the cause of the Witch's Cult."
None of the cultists move, not even the idle movements of a regular person standing. You might as well be speaking to mannequins.
"The Archbishop is here, isn't he?", you try. "Call him over. I want to offer my services to Petelgeuse personally. I will wait."
The cultists just stand there.
You shift your weight.
"I will wait some minutes, half an hour, or for however long."
As suddenly as they came, the cultists not so much walk but glide around you towards the darkness inside the cave, and then disappear.
You are clenching your fists in case your hands decide to shake, and yet you don't feel that nervous. You've lived through it. You know where the boundaries you can press with these lunatics are. But you have no clue how you are going to feel if Petelgeuse goes off the rails.
A figure that has intruded on your dreams emerges from the blackness. The man is wearing the same black robe as the other cultists, but he has his hood down. Under his bowl cut of green hair, if the man's facial features didn't tend to twitch, his paleness and boniness would suggest you are looking at an animated corpse.
"It is true. I feel it, I sense the devotion towards our beloved, as well as Her benevolent blessing, emanating from you. What a glorious day! A fellow lover treks through the wilderness, uncalled, unguided, until his faithful steps lead him to his brothers and sisters."
You bow towards Petelgeuse.
"Great Archbishop of Sloth, my name is Natsuki Subaru. I have seen the light, I've heard the love that pours incessantly from our witch's mouth to envelop someone as lowly as myself, and I wish to pledge my body and my soul to bring Satella back to where she belongs."
Petelgeuse trembles as if overcome by a sudden flash of fever. He covers half of his face with his palm, and when he looks up towards you again, his eyes glisten.
"Your soul is already hers, only your body is yours to give, my fellow believer in Her love! You existed out there, you have spent your life until this moment separated from your brothers and sisters, because I had failed to see that a devoted servant like yourself remained abandoned in this rotting world of hollow men who can no longer feel the call of Her love! I am humbled! I am ashamed! How could I, Archbishop of Sloth, have been so slothful as to not scour the land until I came across you!"
"All the pain and disappointment and regret I have endured in this broken world are worth it now that I stand before you, Archbishop Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti." You step forward and get down on one knee. "Please, add me as one of your Fingers. Together we can fulfill our destiny to procure our beloved Satella with a new body, so she can embrace all of humanity in her everlasting love."
Are you laying it too thick? Petelgeuse looks as if you have given him the greatest Christmas gift. Tears jump from his eyes.
"I have failed! I am unworthy of you, my beloved! I abandoned one of your most devoted lovers in the darkened pit of this hollow, painful world!"
Petelgeuse yells incoherently with a teary voice, and then he lunges towards the wall of the cave and hits his head over and over, splashing blood from his forehead and imprinting a stain on the rock.
You raise your arm as if to calm him down, but he's not looking at you. What a lonely, deluded fool. A fool who has likely been responsible for murdering hundreds of innocents, and who will sacrifice Emilia for nothing.
"Hey, nevermind the past, I am here. Don't fall to the sloth of misery, you have a task ahead. You can still perform the ritual and return our beloved back to us."
Petelgeuse lets out a noise of satisfaction, and he turns towards you. Blood is dripping from the open wound in his forehead towards his nose.
"You are absolutely right, my fellow believer! I thank you for not allowing me to be consumed by foul emotions. I am humbled again! But I must address your request, and unfortunately deny it! I cannot add more Fingers to the ranks of Sloth, as all the positions are filled. Though I cannot but thank you for your diligent intention."
"You cannot make me a Finger even to make sure this ritual succeeds?"
"I want to, my fellow believer, but I cannot! I have reached the limit, I can't hold more than ten. Once a position opens, I will promptly use your body and soul for Her cause."
That would suggest there are ten other units hidden throughout the forest, unless for some reason Petelgeuse has grouped more than one of these Fingers, whoever those people are, in the same unit.
While you think, Petelgeuse gets so close that he would just need to stride around three times to reach you. You feel the same weird twitches in your back muscles that you had experienced on your way here.
"Speaking of positions to fill," Petelgeuse continues. "you are special beyond your extraordinary devotion, are you not, fellow believer? I sense a Witch Factor in you."
"That's right. I was blessed by our beloved Satella herself."
Petelgeuse grins as the blood drips from the tip of his nose.
"Our witch blesses us with Her eternal love! Have you been anointed as Pride?"
Again with this Pride business. Is there a Pride branch that doesn't have a leader, and having a blessing given by Satella means you get to fill the position? Are you, according to this cult, obligated to fill the vacant seat?"
"I don't believe I have, Archbishop. My intentions were to contribute to Sloth's blessed goals of returning our Satella."
You want to keep making shit up, but you fear saying something that will enrage the madman without you understanding why.
"How wonderfully diligent. My brain is trembling! I will read, I will learn what position you should fulfill in this operation, and I will promptly employ your eagerness so we can perform the ritual even faster!"
The madman steps back as his hand digs in a pocket of his robe and takes out a book the size of a novella. Petelgeuse flips through the pages until he finds some specific one, and then he follows the lines with his index finger. Suddenly his face changes into one of puzzlement, and he lifts his gaze towards you.
"You don't appear in the Gospel. You must have received yours, have you not?"
You want to swallow, but it seems that you have learned from Wilhelm how to keep a poker face.
"Did you say Gospel?"
The blood dripping from his nose and his chin are staining the pages of the book, but the madman doesn't seem to care. He closes his so called Gospel and stuffs it into the same pocket. He then takes a step forward and extends an arm with his palm up.
"Please, my fellow believer in Her love, produce your Gospel."
Your heart beats louder, and the headache you've endured for a few hours is pulsing in your temples.
"Ah, yeah, you mean that book! I got it, yes. I was abandoned in that hollow world out there, with only my newly received Gospel for company. Ah, those lonely nights in the dark of my tiny, stuffy room! As I read through the Gospel's pages I kept Satella's image burned in my mind. Her pitch black shadow emerging from the dark, those hazy, glowing purple eyes, and especially the way she would hold me in her embrace. For how long I have heard those three words splashing against my lowly commoner's face, until I understood that I am nothing except a servant of our Satella's endless love. Night after night after night after night of visiting our beloved and warming myself in her embrace only for her to eventually pull away from me, returning me to the pain and loneliness of this broken world. I reread every word of the Gospel while Satella's presence lighted my undeserving body, and in the dark her everlasting warmth concentrated in my loins until my devotion herniated into a holy pillar of love. Night after night I rubbed as I prayed to our witch until my devoted love sprayed and spouted all over the Gospel, and in my diligence I couldn't stop myself from repeating it over and over until the remaining drips of love in my undeserving body blanched every printed word. By the end of that period of deep devotion, my Gospel's pages were so soggy and stuck together and illegible that I sold it on the internet. I figured that if people can make a living selling used panties, at least I could get a few bucks out of a cum-ravaged Gospel."
At some point of your tirade, the arm that Petelgeuse had extended went limb. When you finally close your mouth, the madman's face remains locked with a expression of stupefaction, as if he couldn't comprehend that the words that came out of your mouth could have been uttered together and in the order in which you used them. Then suddenly the veins in his face bulge, his facial muscles distort into rage and he shouts his lungs out.
"Authority of Sloth, Unseen Hands!"
The multiple smoky arms explode from Petelgeuse's swollen shadow and they elongate and coordinate in order to crush you, but they aren't that fast, so you evade them either by running or jumping out of the way.
Petelgeuse yells incoherently, surprised.
"It cannot be! Not even other Archbishops should be able to see my Authority! Who are you, blasphemer!?"
You consider that this is as much as you can stomach of Petelgeuse in this lifetime.
"Now!", you shout towards the forest.
From the opposite side of the forest than where you are concentrating Petelgeuse's attention, a child-like, mostly orange and furry creature sprints in an angle towards the cave opening. She moves far faster than her tiny legs should allow her to, and when she still had a few seconds to reach the cave, she leaps, points with her staff towards the cave entrance's roof, and from the tiny half-beast's wide open mouth emerges a sound so loud that your ears cannot register it, beyond a tingling in your bones. Space itself distorts in a wavy cone from her mouth to the cave's roof, along the line that Mimi's staff is pointing at, and when not even a second later the distortions reach the cave's roof, it explodes as if due to a controlled detonation. The cave entrance collapses in a pile of boulders, along with part of the cliff face above the cave.
You are so disturbed that you barely manage to avoid getting hit by one of Petelgeuse's smoky arms. The madman turns around quickly, and his ghostly arms lash around mindlessly as he realizes what happened.
"My fellow believers in Her love, crushed in an instant! What is this madness? What have they done to deserve this fate!? So close to meeting with our beloved, they dreams get cut short!"
As Petelgeuse trembles and claws at his own face, he staggers towards Mimi's tiny figure, but the half-beast giggles and she flees towards the opposite side of the clearing.
With the madman distracted, Wilhelm emerges from the forest and runs so fast that you would have never believed it of an old man. He passes by behind your back, he strides towards Petelgeuse's own back as Wilhelm closes his right hand around the grip of his sheathed sword, and when the old man reaches the right point, he unsheathes his sword at an angle that cuts Petelgeuse's head clean off. While the detached head sails off, Wilhelm swings his sword in an arc that slices Petelgeuse's both arms from his shoulders, and as the arms were falling to the ground, Wilhelm crouches and twists his torso so a horizontal swing with his sword removes the madman's legs. Petelgeuse's cut off limbs, his head and his torso fall to the grass with lifeless thuds.
Your legs wobble while you stare at the remains of the madman leaking blood into puddles. I trained against this old man and survived?, you think. I must be a god!
As you look at Petelgeuse's frozen anguish in his decapitated head, the Iron Fang's quartermaster, Ferris and Julius come out of the forest walking at a leisurely pace. Wilhelm is standing a few meters from the collapsed cliff face, cleaning the blood from his blade.
"It seems that the plan went off without a hitch", Julius says with a serious voice as he observes the corpse from a distance.
Someone's hand touches your arm. It's Ferris, who looks at you with a hint of concern in her cat-girl face.
"That was one scary person to stand in front of. Did he hurt you with his ability?"
"Ah..." You look at your limbs and every part of your body you can see. "Not once, apparently. So, is that it? We have ended Petelgeuse?"
Both Mimi and Tivey have descendend upon the madman's bloody remains like vultures. Mimi is playing around with one of his arms, while the quartermaster loots Petelgeuse's torso. You've wandered towards them without noticing. Mimi lifts her beaming face towards you.
"Mister! Did you see how I exploded all that rock?"
"Yeah... I wouldn't have thought such a noise could come out of something that exists outside of a nightmare."
"And did you like it, mister?"
"It was an awe-inspiring mass murder of a bunch of people who did deserve it. You did good, Mimi."
Mimi giggles and waves her arms around.
You sigh.
"You know, you would be so adorable if reckless homicide wasn't so prevalent in your mind."
Mimi lets out a joyous noise. She blushes and hugs herself.
"Oh, the mister called me adorable! I'm so happy! I'll throw many other explosions, you'll see. So you can praise Mimi a lot more!"
You shake your head.
After Tivey has pocketed a few items, he holds the madman's book with curiosity. He adjusts his monocle.
"What is this, a book...? O-Oh, no! It's a Gospel, is it not? It's the Archbishop's Gospel!"
He throws the book away and then he shivers and rubs his hand on the grass.
You bend down to pick the Gospel up. It's dirty all over with old stains of blood and what you hope are tears. You flip through the pages. You can't read anything in the regular scripts that every other person you've met along the way likely knows how to read, but this is a different script. When you try to focus on the words, they seem to shift around. Are you too tired?
"As far as I know," Julius says near your shoulder, "their Gospels are magical items that only their owner can read. Supposedly it is able to predict the future. I couldn't hear everything the madman was saying, despite how much he was shouting, but he did attempt to find you in the predictions, right?"
"Shit, if the Gospels can predict the future, we might be in a lot of trouble. For all we know these so called Fingers also have Gospels."
"Petelgeuse didn't know in advance we were going to come," Ferris says, "nor that his body would be reduced in a second way beyond any magic's ability to cure him."
"Are you sure the guy is dead, Ferris? He looks the part and all, but this was red-flags-raising easy, wasn't it?"
Ferris sighs, crouches next to the madman's torso and illuminates it with some magical ability coming from her palm.
"I guarantee as the best healer in the kingdom that this Petelgeuse guy is as dead as can be. He won't be able to hurt anybody ever again."
Some seconds later you've wandered away from the corpse while you massage your temples. All the tension that you had contained while facing Petelgeuse was now running through your body, making your hands tremble. You notice that someone is standing right next to you, which startles you.
"I apologize, Mr. Natsuki", Wilhelm says with a serious, but otherwise unemotional voice.
"Apologize? That was one hell of a murder, sir Wilhelm. That crazy guy didn't see it coming."
"Certainly, I don't believe I need to regret my performance despite the years that I have accumulated in this body. No, I mean that I had failed my mission. Back when I received orders from the late king, I did eliminate one Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, who had the same ability you have nearly been killed by, but I should have known that my hunt hadn't ended there."
"I understand that regret, but I don't see how there's any way you could have known. You went to kill a superpowered crazy guy, and you did kill him, I'm guessing as gruesomely as what I've witnessed. Something weird is going on. I understand that more than one person could have that same blessing or whatever it is, the Unseen Hands thing, but calling themselves with the same full name?"
Wilhelm shakes his head slightly.
"It's worse than that, I'm afraid. Both madmen spoke exactly the same way."
A shiver runs through you.
"What the hell is going on then? Were they the same person? Don't tell me that whenever a Petelgeuse dies, a copy of him appears somewhere else! Can that happen in this fantasy world?"
"I don't believe we have the answer at this moment, and yet I suspect that we will understand once we deal with these so called Fingers. We need to prepare those ambushes. Petelgeuse mentioned ten Fingers, did he not?"
"Yeah, so probably like ten units throughout the whole forest. That sounds like a lot."
"We can do it, and we will."
A couple of minutes after, when the half-beast siblings seemed content with how much they had messed with the corpse, you are all leaving the clearing towards the forest, but your nervousness only grows. You keep looking over your shoulder expecting Petelgeuse's head to reanimate itself and grow alien crab-like legs and antennas or something. You approach Mimi, who is humming some song, and you are extending your hand to touch her head when you retract it as if you realized you were about to pet a cobra.
"Ah... Mimi, could you do me a solid?"
The half-beast lieutenant tilts her head in confusion.
"How does Mimi do that?"
"I mean, I need... I want you to explode Petelgeuse's corpse until there's nothing recognizable. That's what I want. I want Mimi to blow that son of a bitch to pieces. Can you do that?"
"I will, mister! I always want to explode anything!"
As someone in the group begins objecting to your request, Mimi walks a bit closer to Petelgeuse's remains and she shouts her horrifying supersonic boom thing. An area of around four meters in diameter, centered on the madman's torso, explodes in a burst of grass, dirt, blood and guts. When the particles settle, a crater has opened where the madman used to remain, and you can't locate any of his parts beyond some fist-sized, bloody lumps of meat. Mimi runs towards one of them.
"Oh, no! One explosion took care of everything!"
"You will be able to explode plenty of people later, Mimi. We have a few cultist units to run through."
Mimi giggles. She picks up one of the lumps, she turns around and throws it at her brother. It hits him on the chest, leaving a bloody imprint on the robe. Tivey stutters and attempts to clean it with his hands, but he only smears it.
"Meat fight, Tivey!", Mimi shouts joyously.
"N-Not now, Mimi, we have a lot of stuff to do. P-Please put that down."
"Eww! It went down my throat! And it smells like grass."
Tivey runs with his tiny legs towards his sister.
"Mimi! Stop that!"
"But it tastes good!"
She points at the bloody globs and swallows another mouthful of flesh. She opens her mouth so the rest can see.
"See! Grass!"
You all stare at her in silence.

Some observations. In the original, Mimi and Tivey have another brother called Hetaro, but he seemed superfluous. You can just assign all of Hetaro's interactions to this Tivey fella. And in the original Mimi wasn't so hardcore psycho, but it does fit her general character, and for me it's always more entertaining when you dial those kinds of traits up to eleven. However, I had intended to end the scene right after Mimi threw that lump of meat at her brother, but the AI came up with most of the remainder.

Petelgeuse, as always, is the hardest character to write. I usually feel the flow of how a character is supposed to talk, and the words come out naturally, but that guy's mind is opaque. Maybe I should be glad about that.

In addition, by this point of the original, Crusch and her crew, most of them anyway, are no longer here. They had taken down the White Whale with a great amount of casualties, and they had decided to organize a new caravan to travel back to the capital and tend to the wounded. Crusch therefore never faced the cultists, but in the original she also wouldn't do it for personal revenge, as her having a brother that the cultists killed was something that the AI came up with many parts ago. I just love having Crusch around. I have always considered her underused in the original and the anime adaptation.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 19)

This part covers the remainder of the seventh volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

This turned out to be a road trip episode. Lots of fun to write. One of my favorite things is tangling characters I like in conversations, and it just happens that I love almost every character in this retelling (as well as most in the original novels).

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
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-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
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-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15
-Link for part 16
-Link for part 17
-Link for part 18

The caravan composed mostly of Crusch's soldiers and supporting staff had reached the beginning of Flugel Road when Rem brought up to you, and then to Crusch, that you should attempt to hire plenty of merchant carriages along the way in order to evacuate the villagers that live close to lord Roswaal's mansion. Rem had already come up with this idea in a previous lifetime, although you had completely forgotten, and you hadn't either considered that the villagers needed to be pushed out of the way of danger. In any case, your beloved Rem as well as Ferris became the liaisons to add a few more carriages to your caravan, and most of the time Rem only had to show the pouch full of Roswaal's money. The merchants then looked at the duchess of Karsten's crew's armorial bearings and they understood that they'd be well protected.
The vast expanse that Flugel Road cuts through was scary enough at night, and yet during this hour of the afternoon you can see monstrous beasts in the distance, roaming through the fields and hunting one another. Most of them don't dare approach the road, you guess after many generations of travellers either killing those monsters or merely riding faster. However, a few spider-like creatures pursue some lagging carriages belonging to hired merchants, and Crusch's crew entertain themselves killing the monsters.
At one point, some of the soldiers announce that you all have company: there is a big group waiting on a nearby promontory. It's a bunch of half-beast people mounted on enormous grey wolves. As soon as your caravan begins to slow down, a big guy from that group of half-beast people shouts something loudly and the entire group rides towards the head of your caravan. The sound of so many enormous wolves pounding the ground as they run, along with the occasional shouting coming from that group, makes the hair on your arms stand up, yet it was nothing in comparison with the sight of the big guy that rides straight towards you. It's a two meters tall wolf man with a big, dark brown mane and a maw full of sharp teeth. He's only wearing a spauldron with a logo you've seen in Anastasia Hoshin's stuff, some worn pants, and a belt to hang on his back a huge slab of sharpened iron that probably passes for a sword.
Your caravan stops immediately. You look around hoping that someone would tell you how to deal with this band of barbarians. The wolf man is shouting something loudly, but along with him approaching you that fast, you are petrified and can't understand what he says. You look at him with your eyes wide open as his followers begin to mingle with Crusch's soldiers. The wolf man stops the less anthropomorphic wolf he's riding right next to your ground dragon Patrasche. As you were about to try a greeting, the terrifying half-beast's huge mouth opens in a wide smile and he pats you so hard on your back that you feel as if you are going to cough out your lungs.
"Hello!", the wolf man says with a loud, friendly voice. "You are the kid general that lady Hoshin told us to follow, right? The one who pushed for an assault on those cultist fiends? Nice to meet you! I'm Ricardo, Ricardo Welkin, captain of the Iron Fang! My people are at your service for some good old killing."
As your heartbeats stabilize, you look over your shoulder and realize that all of this Ricardo guy's half-beast crew are wearing the white, orange-lined robes that identify them as belonging to that mercenary band. Good to know, though, that if this had been an assault by a band of marauders, the people you are supposedly commanding would have been decimated.
Welkin strikes you as a bloodthirsty warrior who gets off on the battle, and killing, and you'll likely just have to tell him the general idea of which group of cultists he should hunt. Then he'll drive his crew on a murderous spree.
"Good to meet you, Ricardo. You are one scary motherfucker."
Ricardo laughs so loud, opening wide that huge mouth full of teeth, that it makes your skin crawl.
"Scary, huh? That's me! But one should always be true to themselves, don't you agree? Wait until those cultist freaks get a load of us, and they'll realize they only stuck their heads out for us to chop 'em off! This will be a fun battle."
You won't disagree with him even if you have a reason to.
"I am looking forward to working with you and your men, or half-beasts, or however you freaks prefer to call yourselves, sir."
"Freaks is fine!"
"Have you guys murdered cultists before?"
"Sure! They have assaulted some places in Kararagi. They come so suddenly, and they attack so cowardly, that they always kill a bunch of people. But that only makes it sweeter when you finally get to them and cut them in half! If there's anything I can't stand is people that don't attack in the open. Just face each other on a field and charge against each other! What is it with all this underhanded crap?"
"I hear you. But then again, the cultists are so crazy that if they operated in the open, people would march with torches to where they lived and they would burn their houses down."
Ricardo laughs again and squeezes your shoulder with his enormous hand. Your shoulder muscles creak with a burning sensation.
"Ah, this will be so much fun! I'll find the duchess so all three can talk strategy. I'm tingling all over!"
When the scary wolf man comes back with your mother, both competent people decide on a plan of action to assault the Witch's Cult units scattered throughout the forest. You only know the location of the unit that Petelgeuse himself leads, which is pretty good to begin with, and the experienced scouts in both armies will need to uncover where the remaining cultists have camped until their own assault starts. Then it's a matter of ambushing the fuckers until everybody falls dead.
When Crusch and Ricardo bring up how to deal with Petelgeuse, you volunteer to speak to him one on one. Both Crusch and Ricardo are surprised, but you argue that you can just pretend that you live in the surroundings and that you want to join their cause to bring forth Satella's resurrection. That you will use your knowledge of the cult's internal workings and some of their concepts so Petelgeuse trusts you enough that he won't expect someone who can actually fight to sneak behind him and tear his heart out. You would have never volunteered if you didn't know from past failures that Petelgeuse is eager to talk to you, and won't attack you until you give him a very good reason, like stabbing him in the heart.
In any case, Crusch and Ricardo are impressed. Crusch decides that you'll go with the wolf man and his freaks to first take down Petelgeuse himself, and then you'll ambush through the remainder of the cultists in that half of the forest, while Crusch and her crew handle the other half. Sounds pretty good, you argue, except that if your caravan doesn't go past whatever stretch of Flugel Road will become the White Whale's hunting grounds, none of this will matter. You figure that it's hard for both of them to realize that the damned whale is going to appear, without a shadow of a doubt. In any case, they agree that you'll need to quicken the pace.
Quite a few minutes have passed. You are exhausted by looking around for threats, and a headache is pulsing in your temples. As you ride along a merchant's carriage, a cheerfully terrifying kid voice calls out your name. The mostly orange half-beast Mimi, along with another one of her kind who for some reason wears a monocle, catch up to you mounted on regular sized wolf-like beasts. When Mimi looks you in the eyes, you flinch.
"Mister! Thank you for praising Mimi before during all that talking! It made Mimi very happy."
"Ah... I'm glad you are. That means that you aren't that likely to blow me up."
She giggles, then waves a hand. However, she's clutching her staff with the other.
"I wouldn't do that, mister! You are our friend! People who ride along the Iron Fang don't need to explode."
Her monocle-wearing companion, who seems to be a male about as orange as the other member of his race, clears his throat against his fist.
"Nice meeting you, sir. My name is Tivey Pearlbaton. I act as the Iron Fang's quartermaster." He hangs his hand towards you, but then realizes that not only Mimi is in the way, but that it would take a few times the span of his entire arm to reach you. He retracts his hand. "I-I am Mimi's older brother. You can count on me with anything related to supplying our soldiers and moving them around. We've brought a big load of dried slime for when we decide to rest."
"Sounds charmingly nauseating."
You had assumed that Mimi was the pattern for her kind, but judging by her brother, that Iron Fang's lieutenant is just a half-retarded psycho.
"Mister! Ricardo said we are going to kill the bad guys together! You can tell me who to explode and I will be happy to! You can count on me, mister. I will make everybody very happy."
Mimi closes her big eyes and smiles sliding her upper lip over the bottom one.
You shiver. "Don't uwu me," you think, "you murderous freak".
Mimi keeps babbling for a while to the extent that even her brother attempts to shut her up. You suddenly feel a weight on your shoulder. It's a smallish white cat that has appeared out of nowhere. You are startled until you realize that you actually know him. You hadn't seen Puck for so long that you forgot he existed.
"I wanted to see how you were innovating in the field of failure and disappointment," Puck says, "and turns out you are riding towards Roswaal's place along with two armies? What are you thinking?"
Without you even willing it, your hand moves by itself and gives Puck a push. He makes an 'eh' noise and falls from your shoulder, but immediately flies right back. Mimi has switched her staff to her other hand so she can aim at the cat sitting on your shoulder.
"Should I kill it, mister?"
Puck turns quickly towards the half-beast girl, and you can't see the expression on his cat face.
"No! That won't be necessary, Mimi", you say. "This guy is a friend of mine. Just wanted to pay me a visit."
The monocled half-beast guy puts a hand on his sister's shoulder and offers an apologetic smile.
"M-Mimi, let's go back to Ricardo and see how we can better plan all this future explodey stuff, okay?"
"Yes! We are going to explode so many!"
After they disappear behind you and you sigh out of relief, you realize that Puck is studying your expression with concern.
"A friend of yours, huh...?"
"And a big ol' cunt. You are just one gigantic little cunt cat, ain't ya?"
"You are acting really weird, Subaru. What is going on? What the hell are you doing?"
"I guess this is going to be the second time when your tendency towards appearing where you aren't expected will do some good. Well, it might become the only time when it's going to work."
Puck frowns.
"Subaru, why are you accompanying two armies towards Roswaal's domain?"
"Well, you see... It's complicated."
"It's gotta be complicated when it seems as if you have allied with two opposing royal candidates to invade Roswaal's domain, after you were told to never show your dumb face again. Should I start flinging ice magic around?"
"Yeah, Emilia is going to be mad and I'll have to somehow play that out all over again, but that's if we even get the chance to meet. Puck, it's the Witch's Cult."
"You are worried because they might plan to hurt Emilia after she showed herself to the world at the royal summons?"
You shake your head. How many times do you need to work through the same conversations? Can't people just do what you want and leave you the fuck alone?
"Look around, Puck. You think if it were mere worry we'd be marching two armies towards Roswaal's domain? All of us have gotten reliable information that there are Witch's Cult's units hiding in the forest that surrounds most of the mansion's grounds. We even know the name of the guy in charge, a certain Petelgeuse. Most importantly, we know that as soon as tomorrow they are going to attempt to kidnap Emilia and perform their ritual in Roswaal's inner sanctum. That will kill our beloved half-elf, of course, which will end up with you turning into a humongous cunt-cat and destroying the world."
Puck is so surprised that he almost falls off your shoulder. He jumps into the air and hovers a meter from your face as if to see your expression clearly.
"How do you know that if Emilia dies I... There's no possible way you could have known."
You cover half of your face with your palm as you feel that the rest of your unnatural life will be a litany of how-do-you-know-thats.
"What, that if Emilia dies you'll become a huger cunt? Would that be a surprise?"
Puck narrows his eyes, but then shakes his head in confusion.
"If the other royal candidates have agreed to mobilize their armies... This isn't one of your delusions."
"One of them?"
He flies a bit higher to get an aerial view of the caravan members, and then he goes back down.
"Crusch is there. I met her a couple of times along with Emilia. She's a cool gal, she wouldn't do something as treacherous as invading an opponent's domain, when the Witch's Cult is moving pieces around no less. This is good then, Subaru."
"That's what I tried to tell you."
"I'll talk to Ram. I can't imagine what she will do if she detects an army coming in, without knowing in advance."
"We might reach the surrounding area of the mansion a couple of hours before sunrise. We hired some merchants so we could evacuate the villagers, because they are bound to get massacred during the assault."
"Good thinking."
"It was Rem's idea, though. I never thought of that, even when I had heard it before. Are you going to tell Emilia?"
Puck opened his mouth, but then he closed it and looked away.
"Not sure. I'll think about it."
"In any case, this might be it, Puck. We might save Emilia this time."
Puck shoots you a puzzled look. He turns around to fly away and then vanishes.

Before you know it, the sun has set and the increasingly darkening sky gets speckled with what seems like a million stars, as well as crossed by a couple of nebula-looking blobs. You keep massaging your temples; one thing is having found the willpower to entangle yourself in such a mess, and the other is convincing your nerves to tolerate it properly. You are getting weird twitches in your back muscles.
Where is Rem? You look around as your newly named ground dragon, Patrasche, keeps running, but you don't see Rem's beautiful light blue hair anywhere. When you look over your shoulder you see something far worse: a young guy, maybe twenty one or twenty two, who has light purple hair down to his shoulders, the face of your average nobleman's son, and the uniform of the Knights of Lugunica. It's that Julius fucker, who probably has a dumb last name. He's speeding up his dragon to catch up with you.
You close your eyes, hoping for a moment that the vision was a headache-induced hallucination. Why would that dickhead be here? You can still see him clearly standing in front of you at the royal summons. You have forgotten his words, but not how he made you feel: as if you had no talents, you had no abilities, and you weren't worthy to stand next to someone you wanted to protect. And afterwards, even though he had trained for his entire life as a swordsman and you mostly knew of swords from manga, he beat you up with a wooden sword without basically any restraint. As you were bleeding from almost every orifice and you felt as if you were going to keel over from a brain aneurysm, you still refused to give up in case Emilia would think you were a pussy, but this Julius shithead kept hitting and hitting. You don't remember the end of it, because the next thing you knew you woke up in what ended up becoming your favorite bed ever, back at Crusch's mansion, as Emilia sat next to you in tears.
"I am glad to see you well, Subaru", Julius says from your right.
As heat rises in your face, you stare at the guy with your best impression of pure anger.
"Why the fuck are you here, you piece of shit?"
Something like sadness flashes in his eyes for a second, which only makes you angrier. The guy is standing with his back straight on his ground dragon as if he had been told since he was a child that only lowly commoners don't take care of their posture.
"The lady told me that you, whom we had met through the events at the royal summons, was spearheading an assault against a branch of the Witch's Cult that would attempt to sacrifice Emilia. I had feared for your mental state after how you exited the palace, and I can only support, with my abilities if possible, any well-organized attack on such troublemakers."
"You feared for my mental state, you say. You have some nerve."
Julius stares forward and sighs slightly.
"I overstepped my boundaries. I shouldn't have beaten you to such an extent. I look back upon my actions on that day and I can only feel shame."
As you shake your head and repeat his words in your head to consider a response beyond incoherent yelling, a pang of headache makes you hunch over. You massage your left temple as if it would help.
"Who is the lady? You mentioned that the lady had told you about this operation."
"Miss Anastasia Hoshin."
"Isn't she like from another country, and you a high-ranking member of the local knights?"
"She's a royal candidate chosen by the royal medallions' enchantment. I've heard others argue that because she was born in Kararagi she shouldn't become Lugunica's ruler, but I don't see why that would be the case as long as the medallion identifies her as a worthy successor."
You have no clue why all the people you've met consider reasonable to choose your rulers according to whether a piece of jewelry glows when you touch it, but you don't really care either.
"I don't understand why Anastasia would be leaking details of an operation this important, which needs to take place in less than twenty four hours, to an outsider. Maybe it was wrong to involve her. Although we do need the Iron Fang..."
He looks at you realizing that you didn't know something important.
"I'm backing Anastasia for the throne. I have pledged as her knight. I decided to join the operation as part of the strength her household can lend."
You stare at him as if he's joking around.
"If I thought about you at all, and let me be explicit that I don't, I wouldn't have guessed that someone like you would have decided to back that Hoshin woman."
"I don't know what you mean by someone like me. Anastasia Hoshin built her commercial empire from the ground up in some of the poorest, least developed regions of Kararagi. She turned deserted areas into oases of prosperity. Where people could barely eat a meal a day and didn't know how to read, Hoshin funded factories and schools, giving people work and allowing them to learn not only in general but specific trades. Wherever she has established her branches, people can dream of a better future. I have no doubt that she would achieve the same result in our kingdom."
"Aren't you like a noble and shit?"
His lips curl into a smile, although it gives you the feeling that he wants to reproach your choice of words but doesn't want to upset you.
"A landed noble fights to increase his domain, to integrate more land into his de jure titles, to change his vassals' contracts so they benefit their liege, often to the severe detriment of those vassals. How does the well-being of your average citizen factor into that? Does turning your economy to support war every few years produce lasting employment or raise literacy levels? Your average person is not fit to govern, that's undeniable, and yet many nobles should never get their hands on power. We should find a system in which only the meritorious lead the future of our nation."
You rub your eyes.
"Uh-huh."
"You back Emilia, Subaru, and you clearly care a lot about her given that you decided to sacrifice your social status to defend your lady against undeserved harassment. What you did is admirable, even though I can't condone many of the terms you used. Your heart was in the right place."
"Why, thank you."
He lowers his head slightly, as if deep in thought.
"Ultimately, I wouldn't mind if Emilia wins, as unlikely as it is. She can hardly be more inexperienced, yet from what I've known of her personally she's kind, honorable and fair. Still, she's advised by someone as mysterious as lord Roswaal. The duchess is a wonderful woman, a safe bet, if a predictable one: she won't shake anything up, but the kingdom would survive the same way it did during the late king's reign. However..." Julius' nostrils flare, and he makes an effort to compose himself. "If baroness Barielle were to sit on the throne, it would spell doom for this nation. Her goals are as naked as they come, she would only..."
When the words 'Barielle' and 'naked' connect in your brain, your mind paints a succession of pictures of Priscilla posing nude, deliciously tanned, on her recliner chair thing back at her mansion, shots imagined as if you were kneeling in front of her and she was resting her ankles on your back. Your crotch tingles. When you come back to your senses, Julius hasn't shut up. What an annoying prick. You say his name.
"Listen, I could tell from the numerous injuries you caused me that you can handle a sword. If you want to use it to murder cultists, that's alright with me. I'm going up ahead to enjoy some silence for a while." You pat your ground dragon's neck. "C'mon, Patrasche."
"Very well, Subaru."
Some more time has passed, but you can't tell what hour it is beyond that for a good while the open grassland has been illuminated by the moonlight and the distant stars. Suddenly Rem's sweet voice calls out your name, and she speeds up her ground dragon to ride next to you.
"We are approaching the Flugel Tree. You have never seen it before, I think. Look to your right. Over there."
Out of the darkness, around two hundred meters to the right of the road, appears a tree so big that initially you believe it to be a mirage, but as the caravan gets closer, there's no doubt that it's a big ass tree as if someone had taken the image of your average tree in Photoshop and scaled it up irresponsibly to the size of a skyscraper. It has a long trunk and a slightly smaller crown. You can't say anything more about it because you don't know shit about trees. One of the most curious things about it, though, is that there's not a single other tree in the vast expanse of grassland.
"That's some legendary monster tree", you say.
"It has been a landmark around here for a long time, hence the name of the road. Apparently some person named Flugel planted it. A great sage of some kind."
"I have the feeling you have already told me this... Nevermind that, I agree that it's big. I don't know what else we can do with it. Is it going to play into this thing we are doing in any way?"
Rem laughs softly.
"Sometimes things just are and that's all they need to be, Subaru."

The further you ride into the night, the more nervous you get. At any point you expect the gigantic body of the whale to cut through the road and clothesline you with its flippers like a wrestler. You can't tell if you've left the future whale's hunting grounds behind, because you didn't pay virtually any attention during your previous trek through this grassland. However, both Crusch and Ricardo approach you to tell you that they've decided to stop the caravan and rest for a while: the ground dragons need to eat and nap for a bit, and you guess that many of the humans, and half-beasts, will want to sleep for as long as they can before they fight. You have been yawning for a while, and you need to take a shit; still, you preferred to just ride it out until you get out of Flugel Road. But you don't want to argue with the people who are actually competent, especially with Ricardo. After all, they do know how to lead an army.
You all leave the carriages near the road. As you are looking out at the sea of grass, the likes of which you had never seen, you hear Crusch and Ricardo ordering a few unlucky soldiers to scout ahead or stand guard.
You get the feeling that neither Crusch nor Ricardo truly expect you to give orders, and they take over your supposed rank in this operation without malice. You can only thank them for it.
After you took a shit and your ground dragon ate some dried meat, you are wandering into the sea of grass while holding on to Patrasche's reins to guide her, although the intelligence you see in her eyes suggests it isn't necessary, when Rem runs up to you and puts her hand on your waist. Looking at her smiling, beautiful face makes you feel warm.
"We can let Patrasche lie down to take a nap, and we will rest against her. And I look forward to sleeping even for a few minutes next to you."
You swallow the warmth that had suddenly risen in your throat, and then hold on to Rem's hand. As you were about to communicate to Patrasche that she can lie down, you are overwhelmed by how giddy it makes you to hold Rem's warm hand and be alone with her. This is a woman who a few times when you were particularly horny had agreed to suck every drop of blood out of your body, which always ended up with her strong jaw crushing your throat. And yet, merely looking at her from this close, while fully clothed, makes you want to swoon. You embrace her and press your lips against hers. She lets out a little moan, closes her eyes and she caresses your tongue with hers for a while. When you both have had enough for now, you keep hugging as you feel your hearts beat against each others' ribcages.
"Look up, Rem. There are so many stars. And despite everything that could happen, it's so peaceful."
Rem looks up, as do you. The sky is dark blue, and the stars fill the entire firmament. It's one of the clearest skies you've ever seen.
A couple of minutes later Patrasche is curled up and breathing deeply, and you and Rem lean against each other as your bodies are lifted rhythmically by the ground dragon's breathing. It feels like leaning against a rough pillow full of muscles, but it's not that bad. You close your eyes while you play with Rem's hand that you are holding.
"What a mess we've gotten into, huh?", you say softly. "Having to stop a bunch of murderous freaks from killing people we care about, and involving armies that belong to Emilia's opponents... I would have never imagined it."
"This is just one of the many prices we pay for being Emilia's allies. Not that I'd change that..."
"Quite a few of these people we are travelling with are going to die. That's inevitable, right? It makes me feel so weird."
"All you can hope is to die for a good cause. And killing as many cultists as possible is one of them."
In the theater of your closed eyes you see Rem standing on the back of the half-destroyed carriage as she were about to leap into the mist, and therefore be erased from everyone's memories, because she wanted to save your life. Your breathing gets denser, and you force yourself to shoo away those memories, which feel distant already, before you tear up.
"But none of that matters right now", Rem says with a sigh. "To be honest, I'm just happy we can be like this, just the two of us."
There goes your effort to avoid tearing up. When you manage to steel yourself, you put on a calm voice.
"You will get used to moments like these."
At some point you opened your eyes without thinking, and you see a familiar figure moving around near some parked carriages. It's Ferris, far enough that you can't hear any words she's exchanging with a tall, rough looking merchant in his forties. You recall that some of Crusch's people stopped this man to hire him around thirty minutes ago. Ferris offers her hand for the guy to shake it, but the man either refuses or he doesn't notice. After a few likely uncomfortable seconds, Ferris retracts her hand and then holds both of her hands behind her waist. Don't look at her ass, think of Rem. Some seconds later, the conversation seems to have finished and the man turns to leave, but Ferris casually touches the merchant on the back of the neck as if sending him off in a familiar way. It bothers the guy, although he ends up walking away.
C'mon, Ferris! You just met this guy. Is Ferris like one of those women who hang around rest areas for trucks, hoping to end up getting rammed in some sleeper cab? What a little minx.
Both you and Rem must have fallen asleep, because you are waken up suddenly by a tumult. When you, half asleep, stand up quickly, you see that Ricardo is running towards you both with a big grin on his terrifying mouth full of teeth, or what you hope is a grin. Even though he looks friendly, he's also a wolf man with arms two times and a half as wide as your thighs, and who clearly doesn't understand how strong he is. He stops near you and points towards the opposite end of the stopped caravan.
"The mist has set in! The duchess told me that you guys could figure out when and where that huge beast would appear, and it seems to be true! That's great!"
Your heartbeat quickens. You look back at Rem, who is still leaning against Patrasche. Rem is rubbing her eyes and yawning. You are about to say something when Ricardo pats your back to make you follow him.
You both stride along the line of parked caravans towards where most soldiers and some of the merchants have gathered. You spot the tiny quartermaster of the Iron Fang, Tivey, and the little guy motions towards his captain.
"Ricardo! I-I want to see too."
"Let's get going then, buddy."
He grabs the tiny half-beast man and lifts him up to his shoulder. Tivey produces a handheld telescope like the ones a pirate would use, and he seems anxious to reach the front line of onlookers. When you finally get there, you approach the side of Crusch's ground dragon. She's mounted on it, and is looking through a telescope herself towards the darkened road that recedes in the distance.
When Crusch notices you, she smiles and passes you the telescope.
"Subaru, take a look."
You swallow. When you put the lense to your eye, it's hard to focus the distant image, but what initially seemed like a blurry background you end up recognizing as a wide wall of mist centered on the road. Exactly how you remembered. You pass the telescope back, and Crusch looks through it again with a smile plastered on her pretty face.
"It would be too much of a coincidence if this were a regular mist. Centered on the road like that, as well. The foul beast must be on the hunt inside."
"Yeah... Has anybody seen it appear before it produced the mist?"
"I've asked around, but no. A soldier on guard duty noticed the situation when the mist had already settled. Nevermind that, we knew we weren't going to hunt it down tonight. This is fantastic, Subaru. We can't end this hundreds of years old menace yet, but with the mostly accurate predictions of where it's going to appear, it's only a matter of time before we rid the world of the White Whale for good."
You feel a pit in your stomach, and you avert your gaze from the duchess. You had lied to her and to everybody else in this operation. You gave Crusch hope only to eventually have to take it away. What will she think the moment she understands that you deceived her, and that she cannot accomplish something as important for the nation she loves as erasing the White Whale from the world? You feel like the biggest piece of shit.
"Subaru, you don't need to worry", Crusch says with a kind voice. "Once the whale has produced its hunting ground, it has never been known to pop out of the mist. In the end the mist dissolves and there's nothing inside, because the whale has left to whatever dimension, or Hell as Wilhelm would put it, it came from."
You cough to clear your throat, but your voice still comes out raspy.
"We are way too close. If we had stopped to rest just half an hour earlier, we might have woken up surrounded by mist."
Crusch nods.
"Seems luck is on our side. But we all knew what we were getting into."
You take a deep breath.
"Ah, well... I guess we'll avoid getting eaten out-... I mean, eaten by that monster tonight. Has... Has Wilhelm seen this?"
Crusch straightens her back and frowns slightly.
"He stood a few meters from me and stared into the distance. I didn't dare offer him the telescope, to be honest... You can hardly read his expression, but I'm sure he isn't happy about his most hated creature in the entire world having appeared so close, and yet himself being unable to kill it."
"I'll try to find him, see if he's doing alright."
Crusch looks into your eyes as if to reassure herself of something.
"Thank you, I'm sure he'll appreciate the company."
As you look around while distancing yourself from the crowd, you spot, around a hundred meters into the grassland, the recognizable silhouette of the old man bathed in moonlight. He's standing still. You quicken your pace as you approach Wilhelm, who is looking in the opposite direction of the mist. When you get close enough, you see he's resting his hand on the pommel of his sword as he stares down at a bloom of bright red flowers that sway in the slight wind.
You know that he's noticed your presence, and you hope that your company is enough. Seconds later, Wilhelm speaks.
"My wife... she loved flowers."
After a while, Wilhelm begins to move in a circle towards the road, walking slowly to step only on grass. You don't move. When Wilhelm has distanced himself a bit, you call out to him.
"Sir Wilhelm, I am sure she knew."
The old man stops. He takes his time to turn until he offers you his profile.
"What?"
"Your wife. She knew."
Wilhelm stares at some point in the distant horizon in front of him. Some seconds later he turns away from you and keeps walking.

So the crew cannot kill the White Whale in this strange AI-fueled roleplaying/retelling I'm doing. The whole thing has gone so much off the rails in general that quite a few of the recent parts couldn't rely on the original setups, which is a good thing. In any case, this linked scene is the moment in the anime adaptation of the original novels when the crew does gather to fight the legendary monster. Unfortunately, Subaru lost his cellphone in the very first part of this retelling.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 18)

This part covers the beginning of the seventh volume of the original Re:Zero novels.

This part kicks off the third arc of the original novels. Two of the major things that happen, hunting the White Whale and later on a major upset, either cannot happen at all or will happen in a different way. We'll see how that goes.

I thought this was going to be a dry entry, mostly because of the meeting, and that dealing with so many characters was going to tax my nerves, but in the end I loved writing it. I was going to leave it after the meeting, but then I came up with a few dialogues for the following scene and I figured that I could just add it to the same entry.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
-Link for part 12
-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15
-Link for part 16
-Link for part 17

You know where to find Old Man Wilhelm. At this hour of the day, Crusch's bodyguard is swinging his sword for practice near the pond where you used to enjoy floating while drunk. Wilhelm is wearing his royal guard uniform, and he performs his swings with the seriousness of someone who expects needing to cut some fool down any day. Recently, at least in the confusing way that two days repeated many, many times can be considered 'recently', you have been that fool, although Wilhelm at least had contained himself to injuring you with a wooden sword.
You know damn well that the old man's senses have picked up you walking towards him from quite a distance away, but you still approach him from an angle where you'll appear fully in his field of view, as Wilhelm doesn't turn while training.
"Sir Wilhelm", you say with the most serious tone you can come up with. "I don't wish to interrupt your training, but we must speak of something of the utmost importance."
By how he glanced at you, you suppose that he was attempting to correlate your sudden demeanour to how idiotically he's known you to act, and maybe to figure out if you were joking around.
"Mr. Natsuki. What is it?"
"I was introduced to you by my actions. I interrupted the royal summons and stepped into the line of royal candidates in order to harass the council members, whether or not those decrepit bastards deserved it. I ran my mouth and ended up getting beaten up by someone for whom beating me up to a pulp was as taxing as eating breakfast."
"You have put it succinctly. I see you have a point to get at."
"Although my fooling around ended up with the royal candidate my side backs exiling me from their camp, I was never booted by my lord himself, lord Roswaal, and I remain privy to information that most outside of his circle don't have access to."
"I see."
You take a pause.
"I need to talk to you about Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti."
Wilhelm, as you expected, furrows his brows. He knows the name, and he's not fond of it.
"I see... and what would you like to speak about? My personal thoughts on him? My views on him are nothing of pleasant nature. I have no love for a man that would throw away his human nature for power, influence, and the favor of a dead witch who almost destroyed the world."
It's uncharted territory from now on. You've never known the old man to be surprised by anything, so you don't know how he will react when you reveal information you shouldn't have.
"You were assigned to assassinate him around a decade ago, weren't you, Wilhelm? There was a peasant uprising, and Petelgeuse managed to destroy half of the rebel's camp with some particularly nasty magic."
Wilhelm stops mid-swing. He sheathes his sword and turns to you. His usual serious, collected expression doesn't betray his thoughts.
"Lord Roswaal's web of connections is more impressive than I would have thought. That was a highly classified operation. But yes, I see there's no point in hiding it anymore. The late king sent a unit of some of his best men to stop the madman."
"And you succeeded?"
"I expected you to know that. We did, although it was a far messier operation than anyone would have expected. He was able to wield some hellish magic we had never witnessed before."
"By succeed, you mean that Petelgeuse is dead?"
"I'd say the measure of success of an assassination would require that outcome."
"Like, you killed him very hard...?"
Wilhelm narrows his eyes and takes a couple of seconds to respond.
"The state of his corpse after our success would suggest so. What are you getting at, Mr. Natsuki?"
"You know the cultist bastards are going to attempt to murder Emilia, but we've gotten data that the situation is far worse than that. We have reliable information that a significant operation of the Witch's Cult is going to hit Roswaal's mansion as soon as tomorrow, with the hope of achieving their final goal of resurrecting Satella in Emilia's body. The man leading that operation is none other than Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti."
"You might imagine that I find that hard to believe. How accurate does Roswaal's camp consider that information?"
"A hundred percent."
Wilhelm shakes his head slightly, and then he glances over the pond.
"The notion of the Witch's Cult assaulting lord Roswaal's mansion is alarming enough, yet I have yet to know a man who can pursue his goals while lacking all of his limbs and his head."
Wilhelm is your kind of guy, although you'd have probably attempted to blow up the Archbishop's corpse as well.
"Wilhelm, is it possible that Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti is a title, not the name of a single individual?"
"Interesting, but not likely. While the Witch's Cult organization is secretive, and many men have lost their lives to glean what we do know, we've gathered that they are divided into branches. Petelgeuse was the head of a branch they call Sloth. It's unlikely that the branch dissolved, but if what you imply is that his successor would take the original Petelgeuse's entire name, maybe as a way to pay homage to the madman's legacy, all I can say is that we haven't known any other cultist to act that way. If anything we know them to behave in the opposite manner: they fight for individuation, and the higher-ups even have to fear losing their seat to up-and-comers."
Your stomach churns. A single branch. So there are potentially many others, that presumably have similarly superpowered madmen leading them.
"Wilhelm, did the Petelgeuse you killed have a bowl cut of dark green hair, and look like an emaciated man, cadaveric even, in his thirties?"
Wilhelm blinks and he furrows his brow for a moment.
"He was a bearded old man with grey hair. If your information is correct, there must truly be some other cultist calling himself Petelgeuse, given how unlikely it is that they happen to have the same name."
"This bowl cut Petelgeuse is known to use an ability, an authority he calls it, named Unseen Hands. Apparently he can use a bunch of invisible, very strong hands with which he can grab people, twist their limbs off, crush their brains in, that sort of thing."
Wilhelm's eyes go wide and his mouth hangs open.
That's it, old man, you think. I have finally disarmed you.
Wilhelm lowers his head as he frowns.
"I'll locate the duchess and we'll organize a meeting in the war room. We'll send one of our staff to pick you up when we are ready."
As he was about to pass you by, he takes one last look at you.
"Thank you. For the information."

Once you've occupied your assigned armchair in the so called war room, you look at every person present: Ferris, who pretends not to be annoyed; Crusch, seated in the armchair opposite you, who looks so unapproachable and so unlike a mother in her military outfit that you want to turn away and cry; and Wilhelm, standing a few steps to your right, who is looking at you intensely as if wanting to talk as soon as possible.
"Mr. Natsuki," Crusch begins, "sir Wilhelm explained to me in general terms that your camp has a serious problem in its hands."
You notice, of course, that she assigned the problem to Roswaal's people and not to everyone here. C'mon, Crush, after I've lived with you for so long?
"That's right. The Witch's Cult is a damnable pest."
Crusch smiles softly, and you can tell that she's containing herself because of the formal setting.
"Couldn't have put it better myself. I'm surprised, though, that the official representative of Roswaal's camp isn't present. Wouldn't you and miss Rem have approached us together in these circumstances?"
"Before I dared interrupt Wilhelm's training, I asked Rem to locate and bring over someone who should attend this meeting as well."
"Ah... Intriguing. Should we wait until they come, then?"
"No, I think we should put everything on the table as soon as possible. To summarize the situation, we have reliable information that several units led by a certain Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti, Archbishop of Sloth, are going to assault Roswaal's mansion and murder everybody in it, particularly Emilia, because she will likely die in the process of them performing their deranged ritual in order to reincarnate their beloved Satella, who doesn't give a shit about them, by the way. That ghost has lost her mind and got stuck in a way worse loop than any I've gone through. It's pitiful, really. In addition, the cultists are also going to assault the village closest to the mansion and murder everyone in it, because as we all know, they're complete cowards who'd rather kill defenseless people than fight fair."
"Do we know how many units?", Wilhelm asks.
"I believe the exact words we must rely on are 'enough, hidden in the forest', the forest being the one that surrounds most of the mansion's grounds. We also know the location of Petelgeuse's unit in particular: they are using a cave opened in a cliff wall somewhat deep into the forest. It takes a bit of walking to reach it, but we can get there."
"That is good," Wilhelm says, lowering his voice and seeming to think. "Very good."
"Sir Wilhelm, have you heard the term Fingers being used by any of the cultists?"
The old man quickly looks at you, and a glint of respect flashes in his eyes. It makes you proud; apparently you seek the admiration of the guy who has little qualms about causing you serious internal bleeding. At least you'd prefer he didn't think of you as a complete idiot.
"Indeed, by Petelgeuse himself. We attempted to figure out the exact meaning, but I didn't receive any news on that front. We thought it was likely the Witch's Cult term for each unit's leader. However, we have never known other branches to refer to them that way. Maybe Sloth uses that term exclusively." You were about to comment on his words when you realized that he was considering whether to continue. "Mr. Natsuki, did Roswaal figure out what category of magic does this so called Unseen Hands belong to? It was a mystery without an answer, one I'm eager to solve."
"I don't think it's magic at all. Petelgeuse... It seems that the madman believed it to be a blessing granted to him by Satella herself. Whether or not that's true..."
Crusch opened her mouth to speak, but someone knocked on the door and announced that Rem had arrived. Your heartbeat quickens. When the door opens, the demon servant enters. She's holding her hands behind her back as she offers you a smile. It seems that everything went fine.
After Rem, Anastasia Hoshin enters the war room. She's wearing her fur coat and fur hat, both white as snow. She's accompanied by the tiny, orange half-beast Mimi, who holds a staff taller than herself.
"My, what a stuffy atmosphere", the royal candidate says in her easygoing way. "This military bent. I'd say I'm mostly used to meetings around round tables."
Without a place to sit, Anastasia and her bodyguard stand close to Ferris, whose face suggests she'd rather be doing her nails or something, and Rem stands by your side.
"You are one of the last people I would have expected to meet today, miss Hoshin", Crusch says with some wariness.
"Well, I made the acquaintance of miss Rem only recently. Lovely girl, very polite manners. I had thought Roswaal's camp would remain unapproachable, hidden in what I imagine to be a wonderland of magic. Best library of magical books in the kingdom, I heard? Things seem to be changing, and both you and I have reasons to approach the matter of this Witch's Cult attack as partners, or at least not as opponents."
Crusch stares at you while trying a smile.
"Mr. Natsuki, you are a man full of surprises. You haven't, however, thought of adding baroness Barielle to our peculiar affairs, right?"
You suddenly want to cross your legs, although you contain yourself by shifting on the armchair.
"I'd prefer to walk on my feet rather than eat them."
Anastasia Hoshin chuckles against her palm, although Crusch doesn't seem to have gotten it.
"Miss Hoshin, are you planning on adding military force against the Witch's Cult?", Crusch asks with disbelief. "I fail to see what benefit you would gain from it."
"I could say that the perspective of wiping out an entire branch of the infamous Witch's Cult, a terrible bunch who have launched terror attacks in my very own native country, would be enough incentive. Would look fantastic for my prospects as a royal candidate, would it not? However, you know me well enough to know that it wouldn't be enough. No, it turns out that Roswaal was seeking to make alliances, and he had juicy trades to offer."
Early on, as you and Rem were arguing about what possibly could you offer Crusch, or whoever else, as incentives for mobilizing some of their forces to defend one of their political opponents, Rem opened up about her main purpose in the capital. After you had told her you loved her, it seems that Rem was eager to reveal any possible secret that you would want to know, whether it belonged to her or anyone else. Clown extraordinaire Roswaal had chosen Rem, of all people, as his emissary for securing alliances that could defend his domain from the inevitable ire that having presented a silver-haired half-elf at the royal summons would provoke. You love Rem as much as any person can love a demon, which turns out is a fuckton, but let's face it, Rem's at her best when she needs to flail through a bunch of enemies, or sacrifice her own life for those, or the single person, she cares about. She's not a negotiator nor does she care about those matters. It's just another in the long series of examples that suggest that the clown bastard has no clue about what he's doing. The guy is probably an incompetent rich boy who inherited his mansion from his father, who maybe was also an idiot and got the mansion from his own father.
"Mining rights", Anastasia says with a smile.
"Are you telling me that lord Roswaal is finally opening that treasure-trove? He's going to allow others to extract from the reserves of magic crystals in his domain?"
"And we are opening them for you as well if you so wish, miss Karsten", Rem says.
Crusch nods as she rubs her chin.
"It seems that the mysterious lord Roswaal has put backing the half-elf candidate above pretty much any other concern."
"You've spoken with the guilds yourself", Anastasia says, "Many suggest we are on the verge of an industrial revolution with crystal-powered machines at the center of it all. If he wanted, Roswaal could have cornered the market thanks to his family's ancestral position. He could make a tremendous fortune. And yet, for some reason, the half-elf is more important."
Yeah, because the guy is a fucking clown, you think.
Crusch turns to you as you were picking lint off your shirt.
"Mr. Natsuki, was your plan then was for me to lend you my military retinue, as well as some of Hoshin's apparently, in order to crush the cultists when they attack some time tomorrow? And you wanted to convince me by granting me mining rights?"
"Yes...?"
"It would have been a hard sell for me even then, given that I'm very wary about marching my forces into an opponent's domain. That doesn't look good at all. However, I assume that Rem's position as emissary will smooth out any possible diplomatic issues?"
"Of course, miss Karsten", Rem says with a pleasant smile.
"Still, Mr. Natsuki, why did you assume that I have my army ready? I don't recall ever mentioning anything in that regard."
"The traffic going in and out of your mansion's grounds and other nearby buildings of yours. You know, hauling metal to blacksmiths, returning weapons and armor, that kinda thing. It doesn't look like the movement for an army that is standing down."
Crusch takes a couple of seconds to disguise her surprise, and then she looks you over as if she had never met you before.
"Mr. Natsuki, with all due respects, who are you?"
You don't like her looking at you like that. It's me, Crusch, you want to tell her. You gave birth to me, I fed from your beautiful breasts for a few years longer than it was reasonable. But Emilia's face flashes in your mind for a moment, from back in the clearing, when she had also asked you who you were as if you had been lying to her all along. Your mood sours.
"Ah... I understand that I was introduced to you lot as the idiot who insulted the council from the crowd, who then stepped forward into the line of royal candidates to piss on your parade, steal the spotlight, that kind of thing. And I did, of course. Plenty of silly shit leaked out of my mouth. I'm young, a bit of a hothead, and a bunch of idiots were insulting someone I'm very fond of. They were also insulting her for reasons she has no control over. I wanted to deflect their attention to someone who can take the abuse. I'm used to pain, and I even derive pleasure from it to a certain extent. My point is that maybe I was never as dumb as I look, and there are advantages in people seeing you that way."
Ferris stifles a laugh, and Wilhelm has closed his eyes and is looking down with a soft smile in his otherwise hard face.
You want to sigh. Seems like the bluff worked. Sorry to all present, you wish you could admit, but in reality you are as dumb as they come. You'll treat Satella extra nice the next time you are forced to pay attention to her unearned love.
You turn to Mimi, who is looking at some debris stuck in her soles.
"What do you say, Mimi? Can we count on the Iron Fang?"
The mostly orange half-beast's big eyes beam, and her ears twitch.
"I met you before, mister? I don't remember!"
"Ah... You are famous for your love of explosions. That tiny girl from the Iron Fang who explodes people, they said."
Mimi giggles, and then throws her hands in the air.
"Yeah! I love it! I shout my booms at the bad guys and they explode. Big splashes on the walls! Then everybody is happy with Mimi."
"Yes, that's right."
You feel a cold sweat on the back of the neck, and you make a note to interact with this creature as little as possible.
"Not to deflate our tiny Mimi," Anastasia says, "but you'll give orders to the Iron Fang's captain, Ricardo Welkin. Quite the character! I look forward to what he'll have to say about your command once that branch of the cult is done and gone."
I'm going to command a mercenary band, you think. Even Crusch's soldiers. You don't have any qualifications. Are these people nuts? Don't they realize who they are lending their power to?
As if sensing your nervousness, you feel Rem's fingers touching yours. Can't puss out at this point, you think. Worst case scenario, you die horribly.
You clear your throat.
"We need to act really quick. The average trip to Roswaal's domains from the capital takes around a day and a half, if you aren't pushing the dragons. Is that right? So we'll either need to move through the slow route or through Flugel Road, the one with the big tree, right?"
"We aren't working with your average ground dragons", Anastasia says, checking something on a map that Ferris is holding for her. "We'll pick tough, fast beasts."
You lower your head as the events you experienced travelling that night through Flugel Road run through your mind. At least those merchants and travellers are alive. Hell, Otto Suwen will be drinking himself into oblivion next to that campfire whether you run into them or not.
"We'll take Flugel Road", Crusch says, and Ferris withdraws the map.
You shiver. You hope that nobody was paying too much attention to you.
"Shit, we better be sure we run ahead of that mist then, or we are whale food."
You suddenly feel most of the eyes on you as if you had just farted, or mentioned Satella in public for that matter. You hear someone's soles creaking as they shift their weight.
"... We'd be tremendously unlucky if this night, of all, the White Whale decided to make an appearance right on our route", Crusch says.
"If I've learned anything, and I haven't learned that much from all I've gone through to be honest, is that the only thing you can be sure of is that life will insist on shitting on you. And unfortunately the White Whale, that god-tier, people-erasing monster, will appear for sure on Flugel Road. Mist will cover a few kilometers, people who enter the mist end up disappearing from others' memories, all that kind of garbage."
Anastasia chuckles nervously, and then she looks at you from above as if you brought up a nasty topic during Christmas dinner.
"Nobody knows when the White Whale appears. That's part of its thing, isn't it? If we did, we could attempt to hunt it properly, which could end up freeing us from such a horrible obstacle for trade."
"And, most importantly," says Crusch, hardening her voice. "avenging the many, many people, citizens of our kingdom or otherwise, that this horrid beast has eaten, erasing them from the world."
"Of course, of course! Hundreds of thousands of lives have been affected for hundreds of years."
"So, Mr. Natsuki," Crusch says, turning her frown towards you, "what is this about the whale appearing for sure on Flugel Road tonight? Why would you be so certain?"
You want to swallow your stale saliva. You hope that nobody that the various gazes fixed on you belong to realizes how much heat is escaping your body. You hadn't predicted this, and you need to make up a lie on the spot. Or you could just run away while shouting incoherently and later on throw yourself off that roof to start all over again.
"It's kind of a new thing. Lord Roswaal somehow managed to figure out the exact dates when the whale was going to appear, and as far as he told us, it has been successful a hundred percent of the times."
"Really?", Crusch says with a neutral tone.
"Must be due to his enormous library of magical books. The guy is one shady fucker. You never know what he knows, and he keeps surprising you with the wildest shit. So that's what he told us, that in this night we shouldn't travel through that area because of the damn whale."
"That's beyond interesting. I wonder if the cultists knew this as well and used it as a cover, because the traffic towards Roswaal's domains would have either slowed down or completely stopped after certain hours of the night. Miss Rem, lord Roswaal told you as well, right? You must have spoken with him more recently, given that Mr. Natsuki has been technically exiled from his camp."
You look up at Rem, who stands by your side, while a bead of hot sweat slides down your temple. I'm sorry, Rem.
The demon servant takes a few seconds to respond.
"That's right." She says calmly. "I was the one who informed Subaru about it."
You want to cry. This girl would deceive the entire world as long as it helped you in any minimal way, or even if you just asked her to. Next time we are alone I'm going to eat you out so hard, you think.
As you were about to verbally support your personal demon, the atmosphere shifts, and it seems as if some dark energy is burning to your right. Everybody's heads turn to Wilhelm, who is staring at both you and Rem as if you've just threatened to murder his parents.
"Wilhelm, w-what's up?", you say with a thin voice.
"Does lord Roswaal's information include the exact time of when the demonic beast is going to appear?"
Rem looks at you, but you've just bitten your lower lip. She gazes back at Wilhelm with a calm expression.
"I'm afraid that the prophetic information that our great spirit librarian has learned only includes both the general area and the general time. Nothing as precise as the specific time, nor the particular stretch of a road."
You close your eyes tight. If Beatrice finds out, she's going to flip out.
"I see. It's not good enough for tonight, given the nefarious operation we need to neutralize. However, I'm sure that lord Roswaal is aware of my need to destroy that demonic beast. Despite us being opponents in the technical sense, it seems to me a human flaw to deprive me of such opportunities."
"That clown just keeps disappointing everybody, I hear you...", you say with a shaky voice.
This is bad. Maybe when all this is over you'll need to travel around the kingdom, venture into any mist you find, get eaten by the whale, and then report back to Wilhelm just to keep your story straight.
"Anyway, Wilhelm, what is your beef with that whale?", you dare ask.
Crusch lets out a noise through her mouth.
"Wilhelm, you don't hav-", Crusch begins to say.
"The White Whale, that witch-created curse that has plagued both our kingdom and our neighbors for hundreds of years, slayed my wife, Thearesia van Astrea, former Sword Saint."
All of you stare at Wilhelm for a few seconds as the man, despite not moving a muscle nor changing his usual serious expression, burns from inside out.
"I see how you'd be pissed", you say, lowering your voice.
"Ever since I've only lived to annihilate that demonic beast."
"So... you figure that you are going to stick around Flugel Road tonight and see where the mist pops up."
Wilhelm lowers his head, and then sighs almost imperceptibly.
"That wouldn't do. There's a very short window of opportunity from the moment the White Whale manifests high in the air from whatever Hell it calls its home, and once the creature descends, it doesn't take it much time to spew mist from the myriad of mouths that open along its foul body until the entire area becomes the whale's hunting ground. Once the mist has set in, anyone who ventures into it will be lucky to escape with his life."
"That's unfo-", you begin to say.
"I'm afraid I'm going to live through another night in which I do nothing but further my shame."
"I get you. I know plenty about that. Sorry to hear that, Wilhelm."
Wilhelm lowers his head and everybody waits in complete silence until he raises it again.
"Excuse my outburst." Wilhelm says with a deep voice that only those who've known him for a while know that it betrays his usual stoicism. "Tomorrow we will erase from this world the stain that an entire branch of the Witch's Cult represents. That is enough."

Thankfully you aren't in charge of the logistics machinery. Anastasia and her scary bodyguard departed to wherever the Iron Fang hang out these days, in order to mobilize them so they would join up with Crusch's people along Flugel Road. After you took a few minutes in the privacy of your assigned bedroom to kneel before Rem and thank her properly for her support, you've been wandering around the yard and looking at the numerous carriages, troops, haulers and ground dragon handlers that move around. Crusch's mansion staff are helping, and you've caught Crusch a couple of times as she supervised everything.
You haven't seen Rem for a while. You were standing near the pond where you've gotten beaten up to a pulp numerous times, when Ferris of all people walks up towards you. She's wearing a travelling robe with her hood down, but underneath she's wearing black tights that accentuate her bubbly cat-girl butt. She reminds you of one of those girl bikers you'd see from time to time having stopped on a traffic light, and upon noticing how her ass rested on the seat, you'd wonder how far her legs could bend. As you think this, you remember that you haven't even brushed your teeth since you met in private with your Rem.
Anyway, this broad is staring at you as if she intends to reproach you something you have no control over.
"Doing good, cat girl?", you ask.
"I hope you know what you are doing, Mr. Natsuki."
"You don't trust me, Ferris?"
"Hard to trust the commanding ability of someone who has cried so much over a few broken bones."
"H-Hey, that Wilhelm is a demon. You would have cried too!"
She looks to the side, as if looking for Crusch amongst the increasing crowd near the gate.
"These are good people. You have your camp and I have mine, but these people have families and dreams. The lady is good person, a fair duchess, and the future ruler of this kingdom, not to mention my best friend since we were children. If you think about giving up in the middle of it, or you fuck up bad because you were never ready for this, I'll have you know that healing someone implies messing with their magic gate. After I touch a person for the first time, whenever I touch them again it's barely an effort to increase the temperature of their blood until it boils. That'd be a justification to cry from pain."
"What the fuck!? What about your Hippocratic Oath!?"
"I never belonged to any order", she says as she turns away. She walks towards the crowd with her hands in the pockets of her robe, and after a few steps she looks over her shoulder. "Quit staring. It's creepy."
Some minutes later you were feeling so useless that you began to wander around the busy haulers as if you were actually contributing. You notice a figure standing near a line of ground dragons that are waiting as in an auction, and in less than a second you feel that the person is one of the coolest in the world. It's none other than the most awesome duchess, who now is wearing a shiny breastplate, pauldrons and gauntlets over her military uniform. A fancy, expensive looking sword hangs from her belt, and a red cape waves in the slight wind. She has also collected her green hair in a ponytail. She's like a fantasy world action hero.
As you approach her, you feel undeserving of doing so.
"You look as if you are going to defeat the Demon King."
Crusch looks over to you and smiles.
"Hopefully this Archbishop of yours won't give us headaches that bad." She puts her hands on her hip and gazes at the formation of troops preparing themselves near the open gates. "We'll head out in no time."
"Listen, Crusch... There's a chance that this all will work and I will never wake up again in one of your beds. I want you to know that you are the best mother I could ever wish for."
The duchess makes a surprised noise. She arches an eyebrow and offers you a smile of disbelief.
"Of all the things that could have come out of your mouth... I guess I did serve that role to a certain extent. I didn't prepare your breakfast, nor your meal, nor clean your clothes, nor make your bed, but my staff did. And I let you stay for free."
"You are also running to become the mother of this entire kingdom."
She looks up at the sky as if thinking about it.
"I'd prefer my subjects to be more independent than that, but I get what you mean. By the way, I didn't want to bring it up in the war room, but your words about your public outburst at the royal summons don't properly explain what happened there, nor the change I see in you from the broken man I found that day in the rain. Was the person that stands before me now underneath all along?"
"My dear duchess, it took gulping down tons of the best wine, and losing my head like a hundred fifty times, for me to finally snap the fuck out of it. But now I know what needs to be done. I don't want to get stuck in a loop anymore."
After she thinks about it, she looks satisfied with whatever conclusion she's reached. She offers you a hand and you are eager to shake it.
"You have been an unruly, unpredictable child, but as your mother, I'll fight the world for you."
Your breath thickens, and you feel tingles all over. You hope your hand that holds Crusch's hasn't begun to sweat.
"Yeah, I've been a bad boy, Crusch. You can say that again..."
Crusch tilts her head as her lips separate slowly. You take your hand back.
"Ah... Well, I hope we meet again, duchess. If we don't, I'll keep you in my thoughts."
"But I'm coming with you! I'm all dressed up and everything."
You avert your gaze.
"This is beyond awkward, then."
Crusch laughs. She puts a hand on your shoulder and then walks away. Her cape hits you in the face.
As you were walking up and down the line of ground dragons and staring them down to the extent that they were probably questioning what the fuck you were doing, someone hugs you from the side. You can tell it's Rem by her smell.
"How's my lovely man doing?", she asks with a sweet voice. "Here, for your breath."
She stuffs a couple of mints in your damn mouth. Then she grabs your arm and as she rests her head on your shoulder she makes you walk towards the first ground dragon of the line.
"Have you decided on one? You can pick whichever."
"I don't know shit about ground dragons. They look terrifying."
"Oh come on. I'm not asking you to fondle them", she says playfully. "Just choose whichever feels right."
As you were walking down the line, a ground dragon leans forward and licks the side of your face. The long tongue is so rough that for a moment you feel as if your cheek has been flayed. You stare at the dragon, that has black scales except for its brown chest and belly. Its bright orange eyes look at you with a fondness you've done nothing to earn.
"Yeah, this one", you say. "Any stranger that licks me without my consent is good enough for me."
"What will you name her?"
"A female? And she licks me first? She must be crazy then. I love it! You are henceforth named Patrasche."
"How come?"
"No clue."

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 17)

This part, like the previous one, covers a small portion of the sixth volume of the original Re:Zero series, but this part finishes covering that volume.

This entry continues the protagonist's downward spiral as he's attempting to integrate his horrifying past failures, as well as all the hurt that's going around. I thought this was going to become a hard one to write, but I ended up having a tremendous amount of fun, and in the end it's one of my favorite parts of this strange AI-fueled roleplaying/retelling thing.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
-Link for part 12
-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15
-Link for part 16

You know at what moment of that first morning Rem comes. And you've learned that for the two days you can avoid meeting her, even when someone from Crusch's camp attempts to send a message for you because the demon servant keeps asking. If you wanted, you could keep repeating these two days indefinitely and never have to face her again.
How could you face Rem, someone who truly matters to you? You feel locked inside yourself, detached from the course of your emotions as if the nerves that kept you connected to some vital core had been severed. You aren't a person anymore. How could you face Rem, when you failed, when you have failed every day of your life? How could you feel like you deserve to be looked at by someone who loves you, who gave her life for you? She should forget you. In truth, she should have never met you. She should find someone else who could measure up to her.
And yet, you are sick of asphyxiating that part of yourself. Even if you don't deserve Rem for a second, you want little else than to grab her in your arms and keep her tightly attached to you forever.
You've been standing outside of Crusch's mansion, next to the path to the front gate, for so long, and looking so shady and nervous, that Ferris has attempted to interrogate you twice about what the hell you were doing. And then, Rem appears. She asks the guard to open the gate, and begins to walk up towards the entrance. She has locked her gaze on you from the moment she saw you. She's her usual pretty faced, blue-haired maid self, wielding a sweet smile that in truth hides how little she cares for her own self, how eager she is to find meaning in sacrificing her existence for someone she cares about.
"Wha-?"
Her voice quivers in surprise when she finds that she is suddenly pulled into a tight embrace by you. She's taken aback by this sudden act of aggression, but soon she returns your hug.
You feel excited and joyous like a little kid in Christmas. For a second you fear hugging her too tightly, but then again she's far stronger than you.
"You are needed and wanted," you say, almost breathless, "and there's nobody who can occupy your space. I'm glad you exist."
She stares at you with her mouth open, her eyes moistening. You smooch her all over, which makes her shiver. She makes a show of touching you lightly in the back as if to tell you that's enough, but without any effort.
"N-N-Natsuki Subaru, did you wake up that warm? Not that I'm complaining", Rem says.
"I couldn't wait anymore to see you."
"Oh." Rem's face turns very red. "... For some special reason?"
You nod. Then you take her head in your hands and kiss her deeply. Her tongue reacts to yours before the rest of her body does. Her eyes widen, and she plunges her hands into your hair. After a moment you break the kiss, leaving her mouth slightly open and her head tilted upwards.
"Rem, let's make love right here, now, in front of Crusch's mansion. I'll kiss and lick all over that beautiful body of yours, I'll eat you out until you come in my mouth, and then I'll get into that pussy of yours and shoot so far inside of you that it will come out of your mouth and into my own."
Rem's face is so red you can barely tell her original skin color. She's trembling, breathing heavy, her eyes are sparkling, and from her wavering lips escapes something like 'ooouoooouoh'.
"Hey!", a female voice shouts from the door. Must be Ferris. "Don't sully our lady's yard with your animalistic impulses!"
You move your head to the side so the cat girl can hear you properly.
"I'll sully anywhere I damn well please. You can stay and look, Ferris, while you play with yourself. And Crusch can oversee our performance while she sips on her wine."
Crusch's voice sounds from right beside Ferris.
"I don't drink wine this early in the morning. Besides, you do have a bedroom assigned. Go inside, then. The neighbors shouldn't pry into affairs like these."
You grab Rem's warm hand and guide her inside. As Ferris and the duchess move aside, you thank the lady of the house.
"H-Hey!", Ferris complains.
Crusch shakes her head slightly, with an amused smile on her lips.
"I'll tell the staff not to approach that area of the mansion for a while."
"You are the queen of this kingdom, as far as I'm concerned", you say.
Ferris is hunched over, clenching her fists at her sides and glaring at you with indignation as her fur bristles.
"But lady, this is too much!"
Crusch shrugs, and then she moves towards another room.
"It's nice to see people in a good mood these days."
"Alright, cat girl, I expect you to pay attention", you state as you lead Rem to your bedroom.
Once you've entered and closed the door behind you both, you move to the space in front of the foot of the bed and turn to Rem. The demon servant is hunched over, her eyes are glazed, she's grinning and breathing hard through her mouth. You open your mouth to speak and step forward only for Rem to leap onto you, which makes you lose the air in your lungs, and you land on your back in the bed with the demon servant over you. One of the bed's legs has broken. Rem rips your shirt apart while her warm tongue invades your mouth. You wrap your arms around her, pulling her into you, then you try to tear her maid outfit off, but find that the demon servant's clothing has magically sealed itself back together. Must be part of the bullshit that makes it so she can hide a gigantic flail in some pocket. You groan and continue to kiss Rem, as she begins to fondle you with passionate desperation and rubs her crotch against your painful erection. You grab her ass under the skirt of her maid outfit. You find out that you can lower her panties. She doesn't take her tongue out of your mouth as she maneuvers quickly so she gets a leg out of her underwear. When her pussy hair presses against the head of your dick, you feel as if you are going to come right then and there.
Along with the sound of Rem breathing hard, you realize that the weird mouth noises escape from yourself.
Someone knocks on a wall close to your room.
"Hey!", the irate tone of the resident cat-girl reaches you muffled. "At least keep it down!"
Rem separates her mouth from yours as she sits on your crotch, drenching it with her juices. You keep her in place holding her tight ass. In Rem's eyes flashes a hunger, a need to possess you whole, and in her open mouth, from her glistening Oni fangs hang growing drops of something like saliva.
Your dick gets even harder.
"Oh, man... Fuck yeah, Rem! Suck me dry! Turn my veins inside out!"
Rem embraces you tight and licks your neck up and down with most of the surface of her warm tongue. You tremble.
"Tell me what you want and I'll do it", you think it's what she murmurs.
She embraces you harder, she slides your dick inside of her drenched pussy, and almost at the same time her jaw tightens around your throat and her fangs punch through. After the initial shiver of pain, you taste your own blood and you feel that whatever amount of it hasn't gone down to your dick is surging to the holes in your neck due to Rem's rhythmic sucking. Along with the feeling of her vaginal muscles milking you, a whiteness overwhelms your vision. You drive the tip of your nails into Rem's ass cheeks. This must be heaven. The angels are coming.
Your throat hurts more and more as Rem's jaw closes tighter, like a vice. Something creaks for a few seconds, and then, with a sharp pain, it cracks. Blood rushes down your throat and into your lungs. The area behind your nose burns, and you cough and cough. Rem sucks deeper, and then everything goes white and you cum so hard inside of Rem that you feel as if your entire self has burst through your dick. When you finish you can only see white, and you can't feel anything under your waist.
"Oh no! No, no, no!", Rem's voice comes as if you were submerged in water.
Her weight shifts over you. You feel her palms and her fingers touching your throat and pushing against areas that produce a burning pain. Something warm is dripping on your face. Her weight leaves the bed and you hear her fast steps towards the door, then the door opening. Rem's distant voice calls out for Ferris.
Your body is tingling all over. Your lungs are full of blood, and you don't try to breathe anymore. You move your fingers in the blinding whiteness as if your beloved Rem had remained in the room, to calm her and tell her, if you could still speak, to stay with you in the happiest moment of your life.

After Satella pushes you out of her warm oven, you return to the same bed, where you were lying on your back almost in the same position you had been around three or four minutes ago. The moonlight bathes you from the half-closed window, and the mansion is quiet. Hell, you actually fucking died.
You breathe deeply while your body keeps tingling. You need Rem's everything in and on and around you. You just lay there as the echoes of what you've just experienced swirl in you. Before you know it, your erection is pulsating, and you feel as if the skin of your dick is going to rip open. As you slide your right hand under the sheets, you figure that technically in this lifetime you haven't taken care of yourself in a while.

You are staring at how the few clouds drift in the wide open sky, and you enjoy the lightness that both the alcohol and the water provide for you. As you take another gulp of wine, forcing it to pass through your mostly horizontal digestive system, someone's head appears upside down in your field of view. It's Wilhelm's old, white-haired and mustachioed face.
"What's up, man?", you say.
He takes a couple of seconds to open his mouth.
"The lady asked me to speak to you. She fears that we are witnessing a mental break of some sort."
"Oh, c'mon."
Wilhelm looks you over. He arches an eyebrow, which wrinkles half of his forehead.
"Mr. Natsuki, you have stolen one of the most valuable wine bottles in the duchess' personal wine cellar, and while fully dressed you are lying up to your chest in filthy pond water. A duck keeps biting the soles of your shoes. I hope that verbalizing your current actions and situation contributes to bringing you back to your senses."
"This is fine. Sir Wilhelm, what would you say is the quickest and most painless way to kill oneself?"
Wilhelm narrows his eyes, and his voice gets stern.
"That's a... troubling line of questioning, Mr. Natsuki."
"Some time ago I found a public building a few streets from here. They built the fence that surrounds it with a fancy design on top added to its anti-tresspass measures. It makes it so when you jump from the roof as if you were falling onto a bed, with your arms at your sides, it's easy to pass your head through a part of the fence's design, which locks your head in place as if going on rails. Then the anti-tresspass measure, sharp metallic stuff, along with the wonderful power of gravity, slices your head clean off. And turns out your consciousness survives for some seconds! You can play at how far you land, or if you even hit someone. But you gotta do it right, you know? You don't want to end up a vegetable, that'd fuck everything up."

You rest on your elbow while with your free hand you slide your fingers over the toned abdomen, beaded with sweat, of the demon servant lying next to you in bed. She's been out for a couple of minutes. You listen to her soft breathing until she comes to her senses.
"I think I passed out, I..." When she notices you are lying next to her, the recent memories must have come in a flood, because she smiles warmly and then she hugs you tight, pressing her sweet demon breasts against your torso.
"Subaru, that was my first time, you know that?"
"Hmm."
Technically yes. And she has never failed once to say a variation of the same fact.
"Everywhere and everywhen you touched me, Subaru," she says with a soft, warm voice, "you knew how to make me shiver and twist from pleasure to pleasure. I had no idea my body could produce such happiness. How is it possible that anyone else has this control over me?"
"It's rarely like that, though. Don't go thinking that all the other men out there would perform that well."
"You don't have to worry about that." She stares into your eyes as if she dared not to blink while doing so. "You're so kind to me. You make me feel safe. You make me feel happy. It's like... I don't know... It's like we're one person rather than two."
Pretty generic stuff, but it still makes a fire burn in your heart. You understand what you never had before. When you are with Rem, the rest of the world doesn't matter. You might as well travel to the uncharted wilderness on the hunt for some fantasy world monster or some similar garbage; as long as Rem is right next to you, you are always home. It's like a turtle, you have transformed into a turtle.
Rem is making purring sounds while she smears your own liquids on your thigh with her wet pussy hair.
"It makes me so happy...", she keeps saying. "But in turn I felt clumsy when touching you. I wasn't quite sure what to do."
"Doesn't matter, Rem. I came really hard as usual, and now we are cuddling in bed. I have all I need in this world, or in any other."
"As usual...?", she asks.
"Ah... From the many times I've thought about cuddling this way with you, ever since we met in the mansion."
Your clumsy lie satisfies her, because she caresses your chest and you feel her warm breath in your ear. She licks it as in a trance.
One of the things you love the most about Rem's contact it's that it erases your brain. It prevents you from having to think, having to remember. Alcohol helps too. And yet some images you don't want to see now intrude in your thoughts, as if your brain is insisting that you pay attention to them.
"Rem... Do you know what I used to dread the most in my previous world?"
"You can tell me anything and I'll do it", Rem whispers.
"It was something as insignificant as a clock. In particular the clock that hung back at my parent's place, in my room, on the wall opposite to my bed. One of those classical round clocks, the cheap ones probably made in China. Every morning I used to wake up at seven in the morning. I was supposed to take a shower, dress myself, grab my backpack and leave for school. But every morning, every morning of my entire life as it felt back then, I sat on the floor near my bed and stared at the hands of the clock move from seven and a half forwards, second by second, minute by minute, as it approached eight, the moment I needed to be in class. My heart beat so loud, I felt it in my throat. Got dizzy at times. Every day I thought, is today going to be it? Would I find the strength that morning to leave the house, walk for fifteen minutes to my high school, and face the retribution and shame and the mockery that awaited me because I had failed at life for so long? The churning in my stomach, the nausea, the pain... It killed me. But I let it pass. I witnessed the hands move until I only had around ten minutes to grab my stuff and run like a madman to the school grounds. I could still make it if I had the strength. But every day I witnessed the hands move past eight. Then came relief. I could no longer appear in class after a long absence. Coming late on your first day back? That's ridiculous. So it couldn't be helped! Then I dressed myself and walked slowly down the steps with my head down. I sat down to eat breakfast in front of my parents, who did their best effort to pretend they weren't disappointed. I guess they expected me to come back to my senses and live like a normal human being. They weren't in my head... They didn't know how impossible that was for me. I couldn't face it. There was a whole world out there I wasn't born to face. These days I've thought of that clock a whole lot."
You hadn't realized that Rem was no longer lying with her mouth on your ear. She was resting on an elbow while looking at you with understanding eyes. You feel your heart beat louder, and you swallow to clear your throat.
"That's... a whole lot", Rem says.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to confuse you."
Your heart pounds louder and louder against your ribcage. Sweat drips down your back as Rem looks at you with those glistening eyes.
"After I ate breakfast, I hurried up to my room, locked myself up, and then read manga, listened to music, watched videos. I can't think of any day when I didn't entertain myself the same way. There was no end to those days, they seemed as if they were going to continue for the rest of my life. But they would have continued up to a point when I wouldn't be prepared to deal with what life would throw at me. And if these two days had continued, each of those times, the least troublesome thing that would have happened is that I would have ended up siring a classroom full of children. A few, really. It's so comfortable lying like this with you, Rem. I don't have to go to school, I don't have to work. I can enjoy myself during the same two days forever. What do the few seconds of excruciating pain at the end of the period matter, when I realize again, and again, that I have failed one more time to reach the mansion and do what I was not born to do?"
Your breathing gets dense, and something burns behind your eyes. Rem looks at you as if she's trying to understand but she doesn't know how to, and when you avert your gaze, she rests her forehead on yours. Her light blue hair smells good.
"Why do I need to keep thinking about that? What am I to do? I am useless. I can't make anyone understand. Nobody wants to listen to me. It was a mistake for me to come here... Or to even have existed at all."
"I am glad that you exist, Subaru."
You sniffle, and make your best effort to prevent your voice from breaking.
"When I close my eyes I keep seeing her... face. The shock, the regret, the disappointment of having given her trust to someone who had never deserved it. For her entire life she had closed herself off to a world that would never accept her, but she had opened up to me. She had believed that I was the one who would stay by her side, even if nobody else would in this whole wide world. She believed I was worth it, but I-..."
Your voice breaks into sobbing, and although you force your throat to close, you keep letting sounds out while your chest convulses. You cross your forearm over your eyes.
"There's nothing out there but pain", you say as you fight to keep your breath in. "Everything hurts, everything bleeds, all the time. But her pain... That's my fault."

You wait for Rem in front of Crusch's mansion's gate. You never found out where she comes from that morning, but it doesn't matter when you know that she arrives when you expect her to. As she approaches you, wearing the same maid outfit and the same warm smile you've stared at so many times, this time she doesn't cross the mansion's ground's threshold.
"Good morning, Natsuki Subaru!", Rem says. "You have a curious fire in your eyes. I gather the treatment is going well?"
You grab her hand, which surprises her and makes it harder for her to hold your gaze.
"Rem, we are going to take a walk and speak about something important. I'm sorry this comes out of nowhere for you."
She doesn't answer. You start to drag her along with you, and she follows. You both march in silence for a while, but after almost ten minutes of this, Rem speaks with some concern.
"Subaru, were you thinking of some particular place? I don't have issues talking with you in private anywhere."
"Gotta be the right place."
"Was it some place you've been in before? You'll probably have a hard time finding it, given that you can't read directions..."
"It needs to be some place new. I'll know it when I see it."
Maybe thirty five minutes after you left Crusch's place, you both follow some stairs up to an elevated plaza near the ruins of some old important looking building made out of stone, maybe belonging to a past civilization. It offers a beautiful view of the surrounding streets of Lugunica, including a panorama of the nearby mountain, which is also half covered in streets. You had thought that maybe there would be some citizens walking their dogs on this quiet plaza, but you recall that you now live in a world where if you attempted to put a leash on a dog, he or she would yell at you, beat you up and then call the authorities.
You turn to Rem and take a deep breath of the morning's fresh air.
"This looks pretty good."
"Sure! What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?"
You step forward and put your hands on her shoulders. She looks up at you and blushes.
"Rem, I've called myself useless for my entire life. And you know what? It was true."
"It was...?"
"Yes. But then I thought... I helped someone recover their medallion, a medallion so important that they'd have to be retarded not to guard it with their lives. I befriended some of the coolest people in this fantasy world. I found out that a puppy was a demon. I broke into the royal summons and insulted a bunch of idiots. I met an awesome duchess. I got hit by an old man to the extent that I needed to be cured of serious internal bleeding. I froze to death in a rocky corridor. I called a magical flying cat a cunt a bunch of times. I got my brains crushed in by an invisible hand. I lost my oral virginity to a slave."
"What was that? What did you say...?"
"I sucked on a terrifying baroness' toes. I almost got blown up by a tiny cat girl who loves hamburgers. I avoided getting eaten by a flying whale. I stabbed an Archbishop in the heart, which technically killed him. I died in an Apocalypse. I drank through a whole wine cellar's worth of wine several times. I made love to the loveliest girl in the world like a hundred times."
"What!? Who is that!?"
"My point is that I've developed into, like, a cool dude, you know?"
Rem snaps out of her confusion. As she nods a few times, she grins and pumps her fists.
"Yes! The best!"
You grab Rem by her waist and lower your head to kiss her lips. Her eyes go all sparkly.
"Rem, I love you. Let's get married some day."
Her mouth produces an adorable noise.
"Aaah!?"
"I want to have your... I mean, you'll have my babies. Wait, can we even procreate to begin with?"
"We'll have half-demons!"
"Great! I've thought about everything. You’ll abandon your job as a servant, and with my pay as someone who doesn’t have any skills nor wants to work really, we’ll rent some small cabin to pass our days, where you’ll spend your fertile years barefoot and pregnant, pumping out half-demon babies like an assembly line, in a succession of getting your abdomen hideously deformed and then your vagina distended to such an excruciatingly painful, horrifying extent that it proves without a doubt that the nature that spat us out despises us and wants us to suffer. We’ll have so many children that they’ll literally need to sleep standing up, and everyone who knows us will think we are deranged and will work behind our backs for the authorities to take away our progeny and distribute them to numerous orphanages."
"Yes!"
As hot tears run down your cheeks, you hug Rem tightly.
"Oh, Rem... Don't ever leave me, nor slip into a magically induced coma forever."
"Never!"
You don't know for how long you both kiss while you feel on top of the world. After you both separate, you remain tethered by a viscous catenary of saliva to each other's lips.
"Rem! Let's just fu-... Nevermind, we gotta get back to Crusch's place."

Some observations on this deranged part. In the original novels, Rem is described as an Oni, which roughly translates as demon. It's a Japanese thing. As far back as the second part of this thing I'm writing, the artificial intelligence started explaining that she had fangs. As far as I recall she doesn't in the original Re:Zero. That sounded cool, so I made it canon. If it weren't for the AI, the above scene wouldn't have happened, so I have to thank the cold, unfeeling corresponding neural network for giving me that opportunity.

Most of the general idea of the protagonist's regrets about his high school years comes from the fantastic fourth arc of the original novels, which corresponds to the second season of the anime adaptation. I'd like to have come up with that, given how well it ties to the protagonist's current situation, stuck in an "Endless Eight"-like (that's an obscure reference) loop of his own choice.

Initially I had intended the protagonist to go from his failure at the mansion to what's going to begin happening in the following part. However, it didn't feel psychologically right for him. A main deal for Re:Zero has always been that despite him having the power to return back in time, he remains a guy who has to deal with the emotional and mental consequences of failing and dying so many times, and of being unable to fully communicate to others (if at all) the pains he's going through and what's to come. Close to absolute isolation. So many things have already gone a different way in this strange retelling that the protagonist's "Dark Night of the Soul" moment is completely different. In the original it's a huge deal for his development, and happens in a virtually identical setting as that last scene above (which was part of the point), and it ran in the eighteenth episode of the first season. Also, no "I love Emilia". No way I'm doing that.

Roleplaying through "Re:Zero" with the GPT-3 story generator (Part 16)

This part, like the previous one, covers a small portion of the sixth volume of the original Re:Zero series, although this is all material that doesn't appear in the original; the story has diverted quite a bit already in this strange AI-fueled roleplaying/retelling thing.

By the end of the previous part, the protagonist had experienced his biggest failure yet. He had never struggled as hard before, but everything came crashing down as if nothing he did mattered at all. Now he'll need to deal with the mental consequences of his continuous failures and the hurt he keeps causing to others, deliberately or not. I had intended for this part and the following to belong in the same entry, but I think they would grow past eight thousand words together.

GPT-3 is a cutting-edge language processing algorithm used in the premium version of the online site AI Dungeon.

-Link for part 1
-Link for part 2
-Link for part 3
-Link for part 4
-Link for part 5
-Link for part 6
-Link for part 7
-Link for part 8
-Link for part 9
-Link for part 10
-Link for part 11
-Link for part 12
-Link for part 13
-Link for part 14
-Link for part 15

You are immersed in an opaque blackness. You try to test if closing your eyes changes anything, but you can't find your eyelids. You try to move, but nothing happens, and it's not that you can't move: you can't feel your body at all. It should suck, but along with not being burdened with commanding a mecha made of a skeleton and muscles, you also seem to lack emotions like fear or pain. And the warmth that overwhelms you feels like returning to your early days of being embraced by an unconditionally loving mother. As warm as a womb. You want to stay here forever. You want to sink into the blackness and let the world turn without you.
There's a presence some distance in front of you. You feel it to be a female presence, yet you don't know how you know it. As you are thinking about her, trying to find details in the uniform blackness, two smoky hands form from nowhere. They extend towards your sides, followed by slender arms. While you feel as if you are floating closer to the source of the arms, they close around you. The tips of its smoky hands touch a back that you lack. As the presence embraces you, you distinguish the silhouette of a head with long hair, and on its upper half two hazy purple lights glow like distant lighthouses through the mist.
Despite the love that this presence exudes, you don't understand. You feel as if you are peering into a vast darkness that you will never comprehend. The child-like face of Beatrice comes to your mind, and you want to apologize. If you could feel fear at this moment, you would have discharged the contents of your bowels into the void.
You hear something. Some words emerge from the presence as in a constant prayer.
"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I-"
"Do you hear me?", you say, or think.
The flood of her words keeps breaking all over you.
"Is this really you, Satella...? The Witch of Envy?"
"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I lo-"
"This is all you say, I guess. All that remains of you. How much time has it been since apparently you engulfed half of the world in shadows? Four hundred years? What sanity can remain of a ghost after so much time in this darkness? Or of any living person, for that matter?"
"I love you I love you I-"
"How long do you think will it take for me to go insane? I mean if I just stick around here with you, in your loving, ghostly arms, you mass murderer."
"I love you I lov-"
"Are you something to worship? People might as well worship the sun. Heard they did that for a while."
"I love you-"
"Enough! No more! Please, just leave me be. I don't want your love. You know how much trouble you've caused? You know the lives and futures of people that you destroyed, so many stories that will never get told because of... what? And what about Emilia? Everybody who remotely resembles you will keep being hated for hundreds and hundreds of years because you ruined everything!"
"I love you I love you I love-"
As the voice continues, you try to block it out. You want to listen, but at the same time you just can't stand it. Why? Why is Satella doing this to you? But most importantly, why do you feel this unconditional love towards her despite everything you know, despite this unearned love she keeps bathing you in?
You feel that she's holding back, that she needs to embrace you further, to press your consciousness into her and integrate you, dissolve you in her. She wants everything of you, she loves everything of you. Everything you've felt, thought, she needs it inside of herself. And four hundred years ago she wouldn't have stopped if it weren't because, like the story books said, the heroes of the day put her to an end.
"You are an echo in the dark. And yet, you gave me a gift. I wonder if you even know you did. Nevertheless, I will put it to good use. You want to spread your love. I might have some of mine to spread as well."
"I love you I love you I love you I l-"
"So thank you, Witch of Envy."
A sudden silence overwhelms you. The presence has gone quiet. Although the properties of the bath of love haven't changed, if you still had a body you would feel a chill running through it.
"Natsuki Subaru", the presence says with a soft, bell-like voice.
"Ah... Yes, I am Subaru. Please tell me your name."
You wait in silence for what your consciousness interprets as a few seconds, and then...
"I love you I love you I love you I love you I l-"
"We circle back to that, huh?"
"I love you I love you I love you I love you I lo-"
"Are you a NPC? Is this fantasy world also a videogame?"
As her words keep washing over you, you feel a pull back that you recognize. As her still extended arms distance themselves from you, you feel a sudden panic that you shouldn't have been able to experience. You want to remain here. You don't want to endure pain, nor regret, nor disappointment, and there's little else waiting for you outside of this dark. But as the presence merges back into the blackness, it seems you have no choice.
"See you soon, Satella. Keep the oven warm. Not like in a sexual way."
It's like the feeling of falling while you sleep. Something solid awaits you on the other side.

You grasp at something. Sheets. You are covered by soft, warm cloth, and your head rests on a pillow. Coming like a wave splashing on the shore, you feel everything else. Pain from the bruises of some training you can't remember. Further bruises and maybe some half-broken bone from that worse beating that the captain of the Knights of Lugunica gave you because you ran your mouth. Without much effort, you can locate every part of your body. You are alive. It makes you sick.
Before you know it, you are sitting on the edge of your bed, feeling every nighttime noise from outside, as well as the moonlight that comes through the window, as intrusions. You are back at Crusch's. The last hours of your life haven't happened, and yet that's not true, is it? You retain everything in your mind. You remember pushing a dagger through Petelgeuse's ribcage. You remember your leg crumbling into bits. You remember...
Barely dressed and barefoot, you step into the darkened corridor. After you stand in place for a few seconds, your mind blank, you head to Crusch's bedroom. You open the door and in the little moonlight that pours in you distinguish the duchess sleeping comfortably in her four-poster bed.
"Hey, Crusch. You awake?", you say.
After you repeat it for the third time, Crusch wakes up confused. She rubs her eyes and lights a lamp.
"Mr. Natsuki, what hour... This is a troublesome way to approach a lady, barging in when she is sleeping", she says with a calm voice, but somewhat weirded out.
She's resting on an elbow as her long, soft green hair falls on the pillow. Her right breast is bulging in the cleavage of her nightgown. She looks so gorgeous you just want to go over, get in her sheets and cuddle with her all night. She has that sort of motherly vibe going on with her, despite that she must be twenty two tops. God, I wish she were my mother, you think. You'd do little else than accumulate shame every night.
"I need to apologize to you, Crusch. You've been hosting me here, you picked me up when I was all wounded, and still I chose to hurt you."
Crusch narrows her eyes slightly, and moves her sheets aside so she sits on the edge of her bed.
"What are you talking about, Subaru? Hurt me how?"
"I sold you out for a fast carriage. I told Hoshin everything you were doing."
"Fast carriage? I haven't... You haven't even left this house since you wandered outside in the rain."
"It's something that happened in another life."
She lowers her head, and then stands up and walks slowly towards you.
"It's alright. No harm done. I trust you, Subaru."
She puts a hand on your shoulder and stares into your eyes.
"Bad night, huh?"
"Bad everything. You look great, though."
She tilts her head and raises one side of her lips.
"Was that why you opened the door to a lady's bedroom in the middle of the night? Were you attempting to court me?", she says with soft but playful tone.
"I've gotten somewhat used to attempting nightmare level endeavours, and yet I wouldn't try courting you, duchess. It would be absurd to attempt something with a zero percent success chance. Even I'm not as dumb as that. There must be a line of landed nobles out there who are waiting for your hand, and you are for sure going to choose one amongst them."
"Well, I'm not opposed to getting to know you better. You're showing the right attitude for a change."
She looks at you in a slightly different way than she usually does, but it isn't any kind of look that makes you uncomfortable.
"That'll run through my mind in future lives, I'm sure."
She doesn't know how to answer to that except smiling and slowly shaking her head. She begins to turn towards her bed.
"The nobility are for marriage, Subaru. Love... That is something else. Now, go to bed, you big weirdo."
As she makes her way back to her sheets and she slowly bends over to arrange them, you wish to tell her that you'd rather stay for a bit longer and talk to her. Then again, you do love when Crusch walks away from you. That militarily raised, firm ass.
After you close her bedroom door, you head straight to her wine cellar while touching the walls to guide yourself in the dark. You ransack the wine bottles until you find the one that seems like the most expensive, although you can't quite tell because you can't read for shit. You move through the halls until you reach the shaded patio at the edge of the manor. You sit in the same chair you sat that one time, during this same night, when Crusch spoke to you about the Witch's Cult's purpose. A night that never happened. You hear the wind blow, as well as a couple of owls hooting. When you concentrate more, you distinguish some dragon carriages moving slowly through streets illuminated by magical streetlights.
You pop open the bottle and you drink it all in four or five gulps. You wait for a while, feeling yourself getting light-headed and woozy, occasionally containing some burps in case you end up vomiting the contents of your stomach. Then you move the chair backwards a bit. When you hit the bottle against the table, the bottle crashes loudly, breaking in half. You observe the sharp edges of the half you are holding. As you slide a finger through them, it leaves a cut. You take a deep breath, aim the sharp edges towards yourself, and plunge the bottle into your carotid artery.
The shock of pain, as well as the warm blood that pours down your throat and that makes you cough, makes you want to cry out, but you clench your teeth. The carotid is pumping through the bottle, which pours from the neck onto your lap. It won't take much longer.
You don't even blink as you lose vision. You just continue holding the bottle in place, despite it being slippery from blood. Suddenly someone grabs you from the side and attempts at the same time to make you stand up from the chair, as well as remove the bottle from the mangled wound in your throat.
"What are you doing!? Why did you do this!?"
You don't want to look at Crusch's face. You would probably see it double and blurry anyway. You rest a hand on her forearm to calm her.
"Don't worry". You are surprised that your vocal cords still work, although your voice sounds as if you've smoked for decades. "I meant to do it."
"I can tell you meant to do it. I can't believe... I should have paid attention. This isn't... Oh no. Ferr-!"
In a swift movement you turn the duchess around, then you hold her head against your clavicle while pressing down on her mouth with your bloodied palm. She lets out a muffled yelp. The open wound is pumping blood all over her nightgown. You have to cough a few times before you can speak again.
"Sorry for bothering you, Crusch. I didn't meant for you to find me until it was done."
Crusch struggles to free herself, but she's in an awkward pose to gain some leverage. However, she's stronger than you, and you are getting weaker by the second.
"Just stay with me a while longer", you ask with a thin voice. "The pain never gets better, you know? You just learn that it doesn't matter."
You must have lost grip on your consciousness for a moment, because next thing you know, Crusch is standing up in front of you, somewhat hunched over, and she's tearing a piece of her nightgown. Her face, her beautiful hair, her cleavage, her nightgown are splattered and stained in blood. What a waste. She makes a ball with the torn piece of cloth, she puts it forcefully in your open hand, and guides your hand to the mangled wound so you press the cloth against it. Then she lowers her face to your level. She's attempting to remain determined above the horror she must be feeling, and tears are jumping from the corners of her eyes.
You've done this to her, you think. You weren't careful, didn't wander away to do it alone. You've hurt someone else.
"Press it", she says with a shaky voice. "Keep pressing it. That's it. Wait right here for a moment, I'll go grab Ferris. Don't go to sleep."
Before you know it she's ran out of the patio. You shake your bloodied hand until the ball of cloth gets unstuck and flies out. Ah, what a mess. You grab the bottle with your shaky hand and then you stab yourself again, this time in the other side of your throat, and then in the previous one, and then in the other for good measure. You twist the bottle, tearing apart muscles, tendons and whatever there is inside.
You've lost plenty of blood already and you can't tell exactly where the pain is coming from. Beyond the burning sensation behind your nose, that along with your mouth keep leaking blood, you feel colder and colder. You support yourself on the table to stand up, and then you stagger to the railing.
You had wanted to at least take a good look of the nighttime view, but no luck. Everything is blurry, just hazy points of light here and there. You attempt to lean on the metal that you can barely feel, but then the view swings and you feel weightless. Something stops you suddenly, a pain that reverberates through your back. You know better than to move your limbs at this point. Every breath spits blood that drips down all over your nose and mouth.
The noises you hear get further and further away. Everything would be so peaceful if it wasn't for the pain that you feel right now.
Two figures are leaning on the railing above. You can distinguish enough to see the duchess; it doesn't take her even a second for her to run back towards the interior of the mansion again. Ferris, however, stares at you with a mixture of horror and anger in her cat-girl face, as if you've imposed on her a terrible task.
Your arm weights ten, twenty times more than it should, but you manage to wave her goodbye.

You focus on the presence's hazy purple lights that you imagine this mindless ghost is staring at you through. Her loving embrace is like being picked up from an injury to reassure you that everything is going to be alright. Her words keep pouring incessantly out of her mouth.
"Tell me something else, Satella", you say, or think. "You managed to say my name. I want you to tell me anything else than those three words over and over. Do me a solid here. I need to know you are really there."
"I love you I love you I love you I-"
"Try something else", you plead. "If you are really there, tell me something about yourself, I don't care what it is."
"I love you I love you I lov-"
"We are going to spend a lot of time together, witch. You better get interesting quick."

In your next life you come out of your bedroom at around eleven in the morning. You feel like avoiding Crusch, although she might get weird if you did, but she seems to have left the mansion. As you wander into the kitchen area you see that Ferris has just returned from some client. She's left her bag on a table and, while she eats an apple, is leaning over to observe the view of the yard through the window, abstracted. She's wearing a red and black dress that hugs her slender frame and her small tits, and her waist keeps moving slightly.
"Heya, Ferris", you say, which makes her turn around a bit startled.
"Our wounded guest. What's up?"
"If I were to pet you all over, would that be considered sexual harrassment in this fantasy world?"
She almost chokes on a piece of apple. She leaves the fruit on the table, and then, despite her bewilderment, she attempts a smirk and strikes a 'look how hot I am' pose.
"I'm not the kind of girl that gives herself that easily. Besides, it would probably be considered sexual assault, not harassment, and it wouldn't do you any good, being a guest of someone as important as the lady and all. Could get really serious."
"Where I come from, most of the cats love getting scratched and caressed. They get all purry and usually come back for more."
"Then I'm ashamed that some out there have lowered themselves to such standards. That kind of deal won't work in Lugunica. We are more civilized."
"It's that bubbly cat-girl tush of yours, Ferris. I know I made a bit deal out of it, but truth is, I wouldn't mind even if you had male parts."
A noise escapes from Ferris mouth, and then she throws her hands in the air. She walks away while shaking her head.
"I can't deal with this right now!", she says.

You don't know the street you are walking through, except that it generally falls on the downtown area. Quite a few fancy restaurants. Noble-like couples taking walks, sometimes with their children. The dragon carriages have gotten more expensive. The more downtown you get, the fewer demi-humans you see.
You wonder when you are going to attempt to return to Crusch's place this time; you can hardly orient yourself, as you can't read any sign, and you don't feel as if you can approach anybody. Everyone you see feels as if they belong to a movie playing on a screen. It would make as much sense to communicate with Lugunica's denizens as with the actors in the movie.
A parked dragon carriage attracts your gaze, as well as that of most people passing by. What isn't black is gilded, displaying curved, ribbon-like motifs you can't even describe, to an extent that it seems like it could be displayed in some museum. As you walk around towards it, standing on the other side of the carriage is none other than the baroness Priscilla Barielle, who is wearing a black party dress that shows plenty of her impossibly hot figure. Her orange hair, done up in a hairstyle that must have required a few servants, glistens in the sun. She's absent-mindedly fanning herself as she seems to wait for someone.
Before you know it you've appeared in her line of view, and caught her eye.
"What's up, your highness?", you say.
"Is this what people do now, approach those way above their station while greeting them without the appropriate respect?", she says with a sharp tone.
"You mean like calling you 'your highness'?"
"It would be acceptable if that was your form of address, but don't think I haven't caught the inappropriate tone."
"I was just being a bit casual with a past playmate."
She lowers her fan and slowly narrows her eyes while glaring at you.
"You must believe that I'm a girl you can just hit on. You better convince me that I'm mistaken."
You can't help but smile, even though that will probably fuel her murderous instincts.
"We met before even in this life. Back at the royal summons. Recall the guy who stepped into the line of candidates and started insulting those decrepit fools of the council, as you put it...?"
Her brow softens a bit, and she looks you over.
"Now I recall. It did entertain me, which granted you a little space in my memory. You should be grateful for that."
"I'm surprised your highness would deign to keep the memory of a commoner, no matter his deeds."
"Anyone can gain points with me as long as they entertain me. I'm good like that. Now, did you approach me as a social occasion?"
"Well, I thought your highness might be bored. But now that I have your attention... How is Mimi doing? Fingers still good?"
A smile grows on her mouth, and as she keeps it fixed in place, she walks around you while eyeing you over as if studying you. When she stops, she walks a step towards you. Although you are a bit taller than her, in her presence you feel as if she can crush you like a can whenever she pleases, which is likely true.
"You belong to lord Roswaal's camp. I remember correctly, right? What did Roswaal intend with this message?"
"You would never know what that clown intended if he had actually sent me. But that's not the case, though. I'm just interested in whether Mimi is still around, doing good. Maybe an old flame sort of thing, you know?"
"Except that nobody outside of my household knows about the slave girl's existence. Perhaps I should work through my staff to see who has been spilling to the enemy."
You show your palms, although you are surprised by how little you care about the implications of Priscilla's icy words.
"Don't go around torturing people or burying them in some corner of your yard because I just asked for the well-being one of your girls. She's just cool and all, she did me a solid during a hard time. It's a human interest kind of thing. I suppose that you do the same from time to time."
Priscilla snorts, which somehow looks hot when she does it.
"That girl is not a person. She's part of what happens when one army wins over another. Nevermind that, don't attempt to distract me from your clumsy attempt at espionage."
"I'd like to think that nobody is so stupid to approach someone as terrifying as Priscilla Barielle and reveal that there are traitors amongst her staff, who are supposed to be working for the person revealing the information no less. You need to look on the bright side of life, Priscilla. I told you, you seemed bored and I thought you would want to reminisce about good times, whether they happened in this lifetime or not."
Facing Priscilla is so far, in capital at least, the only instance during which your heart races like when you look down from that roof to the quick, safe death waiting for you below. It's intoxicating. You maintain a composed, detached exterior that perhaps only you know hides a racing heart and cold sweat.
Priscilla chuckles, which is more of an evil sound than a pleasant one. Then she stares at you unblinkingly with warm eyes and rubs the cloth of your shirt as if valuing its quality.
"You are an amusing, odd little man. Maybe I should send a messenger to lord Roswaal and negotiate a price for you to join my household, along with that Mimi of yours."
You shiver. Most of the blood in your body flows down to your crotch, and your pants get dangerously tight. However, you doubt Priscilla's intentions are as savory as quote unquote forcing you to eat her out like four times a day.
"That's something to consider, for sure. It's been good seeing you again, Priscilla. Would never get tired of it. Now, I will excuse myself and flee as fast as humanly possible."