21) The Most Perfect Existence in the World, Regulus Corneas

…

{3rd POV}

After thoroughly confirming the defeat of the White Whale and making sure there were no remaining anomalies, Crusch Karsten and Anastasia Hoshin decided to return to the Royal Capital.

Mounted atop their ground dragons, the group proceeded along the main road, maintaining a cautious formation.

Even though the White Whale had been dealt with, none of them were relaxed.

The aftermath of such a calamity meant uncertainty, and uncertainty bred danger.

Partway through their journey, the group suddenly encountered two figures standing ahead on the road.

Crusch raised her hand immediately, signaling everyone to stop.

The ground dragons slowed to a halt as they tensed up, hands instinctively moving toward their weapons.

Right now, every unfamiliar face was either a potential threat or the mysterious hero who slew the White Whale in her eyes.

“Halt,” Crusch commanded calmly, her sharp gaze fixed on the pair. “May I ask who you two might be?”

Her voice carried authority and caution in equal measure.

She needed to know their identities—and more importantly, whether they had any connection to the White Whale or the chaos surrounding it.

As it turned out, they were connected to the White Whale.

Just not in the way she expected.

“This was definetly not written in the book, tsu~ Who killed Whaley, tsu~?” the shorter of the two spoke in an oddly playful tone.

As he spoke, he reached behind his back and pulled out an object.

The moment Crusch caught sight of it, her eyes widened in alarm.

Her body stiffened, and her expression shifted instantly from suspicion to full alert.

She stared at the object in his hands, her mind racing as she recognized its significance.

Without a doubt, whatever he was holding made the situation far more dangerous than she had initially assumed.

“They are Witch Cultists!” Crusch declared sharply, her voice cutting through the air and immediately putting everyone on high alert.

The reaction from the group was instant.

Wilhelm and Julius leapt off their ground dragons without hesitation, landing firmly on the road with weapons ready.

Every trace of shock and doubt vanished as combat instincts took over.

Crusch didn’t waste a second.

She unsheathed her sword in one smooth motion, and the blade immediately began glowing with a vivid green light as mana surged through it.

Her killing intent was clear and absolute as she raised the sword and aimed directly at the two suspicious figures.

“Are you all imbeciles?!” the shorter man snapped loudly.

“Trying to attack us like this?! Don’t you realize this is a violation of my rights?!” He continued ranting, clearly offended, but Crusch paid him no attention whatsoever to his yapping.

With a decisive swing of her blade, she unleashed a powerful strike.

A sharp blade of compressed wind tore through the air, racing straight toward the two cultists with lethal force.

“Nothing here~ tsu!” Lye said casually, finishing his quick inspection of the book in his hands.

Without even looking particularly concerned, he twisted his body aside with incredible speed, narrowly slipping past the wind blade as it sliced through the space he had occupied only a moment earlier.

The attack missed him completely, carving a deep gouge into the ground behind him instead.

The ease with which he dodged the strike made it clear—this was not going to be a simple encounter.

Wilhelm didn’t even bother asking for surrender as he charged straight toward Regulus.

As a seasoned soldier and veteran warrior, he understood better than anyone that demanding surrender from Witch Cultists was not only pointless but dangerously foolish.

Hesitation only meant death when dealing with monsters like them.

“Are you ignoring me?!” Regulus screamed, his voice sharp and filled with outrage.

“How dare you ignore me?! This is a clear violation of my rights!” He glared at the people rushing past him and attacking without even acknowledging his presence.

If there was one thing Regulus despised above all else, it was having his so-called rights trampled on.

Wilhelm didn’t slow down.

He leapt forward with terrifying force, his movement breaking through the sound barrier as he drove his sword straight toward Regulus, who remained standing completely still.

At the same time, Crusch began channeling mana for another attack, her blade glowing brighter as she prepared to strike again.

Julius, meanwhile, shifted his focus and moved toward Lye, intending to engage and eliminate him before he could cause further chaos.

For a brief moment, it looked like a full-scale battle was about to erupt—

When Regulus casually reached out and grabbed Wilhelm’s sword.

The impact stopped the blade dead in its tracks, as if it had struck an immovable wall.

Then, with a simple motion, Regulus pushed the sword back with overwhelming force.

Before Wilhelm could even comprehend what had happened—before shock could fully register—the upper half of his body was obliterated by a violent shockwave.

The sword continued traveling upward, ripping through the air and vanishing beyond the horizon, leaving nothing behind but destruction and stunned silence.

Before the battle had even properly begun, the strongest warrior of the Karsten Camp was erased from existence as if he were nothing more than an insect swatted out of the air.

Wilhelm’s upper body had exploded so violently, that blood and torn flesh burst outward in every direction.

The force of it was so sudden and overwhelming that no one had time to react.

Warm blood sprayed across Crusch, Felix, Julius, and even Anastasia, who had been positioned at the very back of their formation.

For several seconds, no one moved.

Their minds struggled to catch up with what their eyes were seeing.

Then Wilhelm’s lower half dropped to the grass with a heavy, lifeless thud, blood immediately pooling around the remains of his body and soaking into the ground beneath him.

“Sir Wilhelm!” Julius shouted, his voice cracking with shock and disbelief as he stared at the corpse of the man he deeply respected and admired.

Crusch’s eyes widened in pure horror at the sight, but she forced herself to regain control almost instantly.

Pushing down the shock and grief, she swung her sword once more, channeling her mana and unleashing another blade of compressed wind directly toward Regulus.

Regulus didn’t even bother to dodge.

The blood splattered across his body slid off him effortlessly, as if he were coated in something invisible.

The wind blade struck him head-on, slicing through the ground beneath his feet and tearing apart the air above him in a violent arc.

However, despite the sheer power of the attack, it failed to make him move even an inch.

The earth was carved apart, the air screamed from the force—but Regulus remained perfectly still, untouched, with not even a speck of dirt clinging to his clothes.

Crusch froze where she stood, shock gripping her entire body.

Even if her attack had barely scratched him, even if it had only torn his clothes or left a shallow wound, she knew she would have continued fighting without hesitation.

She would have pushed forward no matter the odds.

But seeing her strongest attack fail to even wrinkle the fabric of her opponent’s clothes shattered something inside her. Doubt crept in—deep, heavy, and suffocating.

'What kind of monsters are we dealing with?' she wondered grimly.

Before anyone could recover from the overwhelming display, Regulus scoffed loudly, clearly irritated rather than impressed.

“Is that still not enough for you to understand?” he snapped.

“Are you all deaf? Or are you simply too stupid to listen?” His voice rose with every word.

“Do you still choose to ignore my rights? Do you still insist on troubling my perfect self? What kind of imbeciles are you supposed to be, attacking me without even allowing me to properly introduce myself?!”

He straightened his posture and ran a hand through his hair in a deliberately theatrical manner, as if presenting himself to an audience that was unworthy of his presence.

“Listen carefully, every last one of you, and burn this into your minds,” he declared arrogantly.

“I am Regulus Corneas—the Sin Archbishop of Greed!”

The way he said it was filled with absolute confidence, as though the title itself made him the most flawless, divine, and superior existence in the entire world.

Crusch and the others were still struggling to process the sheer absurdity of what they had just witnessed when, almost as if on cue, the shorter man decided to introduce himself as well.

The timing was so perfect it felt deliberate.

“Representing myself, I am a Sin Cardinal of the Witch Cult—Lye Batenkaitos~tsu!” Lye announced cheerfully, a twisted, hungry grin spreading across his face as he spoke.

The moment he finished his introduction, he lunged forward, charging straight toward Julius with frightening speed and excitement, as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.

“Sin Archbishops!” Ferris shouted in disbelief, his voice shaking.

“They’re Sin Archbishops of the Witch Cult!”

The words hit everyone like a hammer.

Until now, the Sin Archbishops had been nothing more than rumors, whispered names attached to distant massacres and horrifying events.

Stories used to scare people, legends soaked in blood and destruction—but rarely something you expected to face directly.

Among them, the Sin Archbishop of Greed was especially infamous.

Years ago, he was said to have completely destroyed an entire city in Vollachia, wiping it off the map without mercy.

Based on those accounts, he should have been at least in his thirties by now—if not already approaching his fifties.

And yet, the bastard standing in front of them looked no older than a sweet sixteen-year-old.

That disconnect between the legends and reality only made the situation feel more terrifying.

Crusch and Anastasia immediately understood the depth of the danger they were facing.

This was no longer a skirmish or an unexpected clash—they were dealing with two monsters who were fully capable of destroying entire fortified cities on their own.

The chances of winning a direct confrontation in their current state were not just low; they were practically nonexistent.

“Fallback! We need to retreat!” Crusch roared, her commanding voice snapping everyone out of their stunned silence.

The hesitation vanished as her order echoed across the field.

Anastasia’s mind raced instantly.

She quickly analyzed their position, their remaining manpower, and their available options, then clicked her tongue in frustration.

In their rush to confirm the White Whale’s defeat, they hadn’t brought any additional forces. Worse, she had even left Ricardo behind.

Right now, that oversight felt painfully costly.

One could easily call it a stupid mistake—and under different circumstances, it would have been.

However, the situation leading up to this encounter had justified their decisions.

The only report they had received was that the White Whale was already dead.

They also knew that the White Whale’s operational range was limited to the Dragon Mist.

With fewer people, retreating should have been easier.

As long as they avoided venturing too deep into the Dragon Mist, escape was supposed to be simple.

On top of that, the mist itself normally only manifested during the night.

Which meant that, based on all available information at the time, the overall danger level had been extremely low.

If they had arrived and found no trace of the White Whale’s corpse, they could have easily concluded that the report was either a lie or an exaggerated rumor.

In that scenario, they would have simply withdrawn, regrouped, and planned their next course of action with proper preparation and reinforcements.

Nothing about the situation had suggested immediate, overwhelming danger.

However, reality had turned out to be far worse than expected.

The White Whale was truly dead.

That fact alone was shocking enough to leave even seasoned leaders like Crusch and Anastasia momentarily stunned.

As they stood there, trying to process the implications, countless questions flooded their minds—Who killed it? How was it done? What kind of force was capable of accomplishing something that had failed for centuries?

They were still in the middle of coming to terms with those thoughts when disaster struck.

They were completely unprepared for what followed.

An ambush by the Sin Archbishops was not something anyone could reasonably anticipate, especially not immediately after confirming the death of one of the Three Great Mabeasts.

The Sin Archbishops were not merely dangerous individuals or powerful enemies—they were walking calamities.

Monsters whose very existence inspired fear across nations, spoken of in the same breath as mass destruction and annihilation.

In fact, the Sin Archbishops were feared just as much as the Three Great Mabeasts themselves.

Entire regions had been erased because of their actions.

Cities had fallen.

Armies had vanished.

And among all the horrors the world knew, there was only one existence that inspired greater terror than them—the Witch of Envy.

That comparison alone said everything.

The fact that the Sin Archbishops were even associated with the Witch of Envy, let alone acting under the banner of the Witch Cult, was proof of just how terrifying that organization truly was.

The Witch Cult was not just a dangerous group of fanatics; it was an existential threat, one capable of shaking the entire world without warning.

And right now, Crusch Karsten and Anastasia Hoshin had walked straight into it—unprepared, understaffed, and at the worst possible time.

Anastasia quickly grabbed the reins of her ground dragon.

Even though she wasn’t a warrior by any standard, she knew how to ride well enough to escape when necessary.

Crusch immediately took command of the situation, her voice firm and decisive.

“Felix, assist Lady Anastasia! Sir Julius, prepare to push them back!”

Crusch made the decision without hesitation.

Felix and Anastasia were the weakest among them in direct combat, and keeping them on the battlefield any longer would only increase the risk of casualties.

Her plan was simple but dangerous—Felix and Anastasia would retreat first, while she and Julius, who were stronger and more combat-capable, would remain behind to delay the Sin Archbishops and cover their escape.

Felix opened his mouth as if to argue, but the words never came out.

The image of Wilhelm’s death was still burned into his mind.

The Sword Demon—someone he had always believed to be invincible—had been killed casually, as if his life meant nothing at all.

Worse, Regulus had done it without effort, without emotion, as though swatting away an annoying insect.

Fear clawed at Felix’s chest, and his survival instincts screamed at him to move.

In the end, he obeyed Crusch’s orders.

He quickly grabbed onto Anastasia’s mount, urging the ground dragon forward.

With a sharp command and a kick to its sides, the beast began to run, rapidly putting distance between them and the battlefield as Felix focused solely on getting Anastasia to safety.

Meanwhile, Julius had already taken his stance.

“Al Clauzeria!” he chanted loudly, his voice cutting through the chaos.

His sword instantly became engulfed in a radiant, rainbow-colored light as the magic of his six Quasi-Spirits flowed into it.

The different elemental energies mixed together seamlessly, amplifying each other as Julius swung his blade forward and released a concentrated beam of pure magic aimed straight at Lye Batenkaitos.

The attack screamed through the air with devastating force.

However, Lye reacted almost lazily.

Using one of his many strange abilities—Leaper—his body flickered unnaturally, and he vanished from the beam’s path as if he had teleported.

The magic tore through the space where he had been standing moments earlier, leaving destruction in its wake but hitting nothing.

Lye reappeared a short distance away, completely unharmed.

With an unsettling grin, he casually lifted his left hand and licked it, as if savoring the moment rather than taking the attack seriously.

“Damn, you taste good~ tsu!” Lye grinned widely, his expression twisted with delight.

At the same moment, Julius’s body suddenly went rigid, freezing in place as if something invisible had seized control of him.

His sword slipped from his grip, and before anyone could react, he collapsed heavily onto the ground, completely unresponsive.

“Julius!” Anastasia cried out in disbelief, her voice filled with panic.

By that point, her ground dragon had already managed to pass Regulus safely, putting some distance between them.

Regulus turned his head slowly, clearly noticing that they were retreating, and his expression twisted with pure outrage.

“Ignoring my perfect self?! Unforgivable!” Regulus shouted furiously as he raised his leg, preparing to strike and obliterate everything in front of him.

Crusch reacted instantly.

Without wasting even a fraction of a second, she slammed her sword down and released a powerful wind strike directly into the ground.

The impact was immediate—earth and debris exploded upward as a massive cloud of dust erupted, completely obscuring the battlefield and blocking the Sin Archbishops’ line of sight.

By the time Regulus and Lye regained their vision and the dust finally began to settle, it was already too late.

The four of them were gone.

Far in the distance, Crusch could be seen retreating at full speed, gripping Julius tightly as she carried him away from the battlefield.

The escape had been narrow, desperate, and fueled by pure instinct—but it had worked.

“Tsk,” Regulus clicked his tongue in annoyance, clearly unwilling to lower himself to the level of chasing what he considered lesser beings.

“Hmph! Consider yourselves lucky. My generous self is willing to forgive your pathetic, low-life disrespect toward my perfect self.”

His posture relaxed as if the matter were already beneath him, his arrogance on full display.

Lye’s eyebrow twitched at that.

He knew Regulus well enough to understand what that really meant—this was just Regulus’s roundabout way of saying that he was too lazy to chase them down.

Not that it actually mattered.

If Regulus genuinely felt like it, he could have slaughtered all of them within a few seconds with his absurd speed and overwhelming power.

The fact that he didn’t was purely a matter of convenience.

“Whatever! Tsu~ I wanna eat more memories,” Lye said carelessly, glancing sideways at Regulus.

Regulus responded by shooting him an irritated glare, clearly displeased by the comment.

To be honest, calling whatever existed between the Sin Archbishops camaraderie would have been a bad joke.

There was no trust, no loyalty, and certainly no friendship between them.

The only real reason they didn’t constantly tear each other apart was because of Pandora.

Even Regulus, who spent all day flaunting his arrogance and preaching about his own perfection, was deeply afraid of the so-called Loli Witch of Vainglory.

Capella, despite her sadism and cruelty, was also terrified of her own “Mommy.”

As for Lye and Roy, they had no desire to get on Pandora’s bad side either—mainly because she had the power to erase their meals, their pleasures, and even their very existence as if they had never been born.

And Wrath?

She followed her own path, much like Sloth had.

Sloth, in turn, blindly obeyed the gospel in the name of the Witch of Envy—his beloved Witch, who had already utterly humiliated him without even sparing him a thought, cuckholding his delusions in 4k.

With nothing left to say to each other and no real reason to stay together, the two Sin Archbishops went their separate ways.

…

After Crusch and Anastasia returned to the Capital, the situation immediately descended into full-blown chaos.

Their report shook the Kingdom to its core.

Not only had they confirmed that the White Whale—one of the Three Great Mabeasts—had finally been slain by a mysterious and unknown hero, but they also brought devastating news that overshadowed even that historic victory.

Wilhelm van Astrea was dead.

The Sword Demon, a legendary warrior whose name alone inspired confidence and fear, had been killed in a sudden ambush by the Sin Archbishops of Greed and Gluttony.

The fact that someone like Wilhelm had been erased so effortlessly sent shockwaves throughout the Capital.

If a man of his caliber could be killed so easily, then no one could pretend to be safe anymore.

As if that tragedy wasn’t enough, another disaster soon became apparent.

It was discovered that the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony had devoured Julius’s memories.

Julius Juukulius—one of the Kingdom’s strongest and most reliable Knights—had completely lost all recollection of who he was.

He didn’t remember his past, his duties, his bonds, or even his own identity.

The realization struck the Kingdom hard, adding yet another irreplaceable loss to an already unbearable situation.

Julius’s title, “The Finest of Knights,” had never been empty praise.

It was earned through discipline, talent, and countless battles.

But now, with his memories erased, he had also lost the mastery of his skills, his control over Spirit Arts, and the refined combat techniques that made him a pillar of Lugunica’s military strength.

In practical terms, it was no different from him being dead.

The Kingdom had lost one of its greatest swords and another of its sharpest shields in a single encounter—and the fear of what the Witch Cult could still do spread like wildfire.

Anastasia Hoshin took full responsibility for Julius’s care after the incident.

From that point onward, her paranoia reached an all-time high.

She refused to take unnecessary risks, especially after witnessing firsthand what the Sin Archbishops were capable of.

Ricardo was almost always by her side, along with the triplets—Tivey, Mimi, and Hetaro—and several other trusted members of her mercenary group.

She made sure she was never unguarded, even within the Capital itself.

The news they brought back created a strange mixture of emotions throughout the Kingdom—unexpected joy tangled with overwhelming horror.

On one hand, the White Whale, a calamity that had haunted the world for four hundred years, was finally dead.

A monster responsible for countless deaths, erased at last.

It marked the first time a Great Mabeast had ever been successfully slain, an achievement that should have been celebrated across the land.

However, that sense of triumph was quickly overshadowed by uncertainty and fear.

The truth soon spread that the White Whale had not been killed by any known force of the Kingdom, but by a mysterious and unidentified hero.

No one knew who had done it, how it had been accomplished, or what kind of power was involved.

That revelation sparked endless speculation and suspicion.

Questions piled up with no answers in sight.

The confusion grew so intense that even the Council of Wise Men took action.

Reinhardt was summoned back and questioned directly, suspected of being the one who might have slaughtered the White Whale.

After all, if anyone in the Kingdom was capable of such a feat, it would have been him.

The fact that even Reinhardt was under scrutiny only emphasized how deeply unsettled the Kingdom had become.

Reinhardt was genuinely shocked when he first heard the report that the White Whale had been slain.

He immediately denied any involvement in the act, making it clear that he had not participated in the battle nor delivered the killing blow.

Even so, the sheer fact that the White Whale was dead left him unsettled.

Something on that scale was supposed to be impossible, or at the very least require an overwhelming force that could not go unnoticed.

However, that shock paled in comparison to what came next.

When the news of his grandfather’s death finally reached him, Reinhardt was devastated.

No one had informed him while he was on his way to the Royal Castle.

There had been no warning, no preparation—just the sudden revelation that the man he respected above all others alongside his dead Grandmother was gone.

The Sword Demon, Wilhelm van Astrea, was dead marking the end of the older generation of Astrea family.

As if that wasn’t enough, Reinhardt soon learned the details surrounding his grandfather’s death.

Wilhelm had fallen in battle against the Sin Archbishop of Greed—a being who had already been verified to possess eternal youth and monstrous strength.

A monster capable of casually erasing the famed Sword Demon as if his life held no value at all.

The realization hit Reinhardt hard, shaking his understanding of what kind of enemies now walked the world.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

Alongside Greed, there was also the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony—an existence capable of devouring a person’s memories, identity, and very sense of self.

Julius’s condition stood as living proof of that horror.

Until recently, only the Sin Archbishop of Sloth had been widely known, largely because of how active and destructive he had been.

The others remained shrouded in rumor and speculation.

Now, those rumors had become reality.

With the confirmation of Greed and Gluttony’s existence—and their terrifying abilities—the higher-ups of the Kingdom were gripped by fear.

There was a deep sense of irony in how the Kingdom viewed its greatest powers.

While many considered the Sword Saint to be a monster in human form, they also knew something crucial—he was still human.

That meant he could be reasoned with, restrained, commanded, and if necessary, politically leashed.

As terrifying as Reinhardt van Astrea was, he still existed within the framework of humanity and law.

The Sin Archbishops, on the other hand, were viewed very differently.

They weren’t even considered human anymore.

To the Kingdom’s leadership, they were nothing but incomprehensible monsters—existences so far removed from reason that treating them as people was laughable.

In their minds, the Sin Archbishops were not enemies to be defeated by armies or strategy. They were calamities, on the same level as natural disasters, if not worse.

The general belief was that only the legendary Three Great Heroes of the past could possibly kill such beings.

Some of the Wise Men did argue otherwise.

A few insisted that Reinhardt could slay the Sin Archbishops if ordered to do so. After all, he was the strongest Sword Saint since the very first one, blessed beyond logic, a walking embodiment of victory.

However, the majority refused to take that risk.

They knew all too well that even Sword Saints were not invincible.

Wilhelm’s and Theresia's death stood as grim proof of that reality.

And thus came the greatest irony of all.

No one—not the Wise Men, not the nobles, not even Reinhardt himself—truly understood the full extent of his power.

None of them realized that if Reinhardt ever stopped caring about consequences, politics, collateral damage, or moral restraint, he could kill anyone in the world… except the Witch of Envy herself.

Perhaps only the Warlock of Envy could stand against him.

Ahem.

In the end, after endless debates, circular arguments, and cowardly hesitation, the Wise Men reached a conclusion that suited them best.

They chose to do nothing.

It was, after all, what they were best at.

They had long since mastered the art of prostration—bowing before danger while pretending it was wisdom.

Arrogance blinded them, corruption rotted their judgment, and fear sealed their inaction.

Faced with threats they didn’t understand and couldn’t control, they retreated into stagnation, hoping the problem would resolve itself.

History, as always, would not be so kind.

But that still wasn’t the end of the chaos shaking the Kingdom.

Two weeks after those disastrous events, Roswaal L. Mathers appeared before the authorities, bringing with him the bodies of dead Witch Cultists.

Along with the corpses came news that was even more shocking than the sight itself—the Sin Archbishop of Sloth had been slaughtered.

The announcement was so explosive that it immediately threw the Capital into turmoil.

The claim alone was unbelievable.

Sloth was one of the most active and notorious Sin Archbishops, responsible for countless deaths and atrocities.

To say that such a being had been killed was not something the Kingdom could accept at face value.

Because of that, Reinhardt and Crusch Karsten were summoned to personally verify the truth.

They were called not as warriors, but as living lie detectors.

Reinhardt’s Divine Protections made deception almost impossible in his presence, while Crusch’s Blessing allowed her to sense falsehoods with near-perfect accuracy.

If anyone could confirm whether Roswaal was lying or not, it was them.

Reinhardt arrived with a calm and neutral expression.

By this point, he had barely begun to come to terms with his grandfather’s death.

On top of that, his already strained relationship with his abusive father had worsened significantly, leaving him emotionally exhausted.

Despite everything weighing on him, he showed no outward signs of turmoil, presenting the same composed demeanor he always did.

Crusch Karsten entered soon after, accompanied by Felix and more than a dozen Karsten Knights.

The escort was unusually heavy, but no one questioned it.

After what she had witnessed—the effortless slaughter of Wilhelm and the overwhelming power of the Sin Archbishops—she had been deeply traumatized.

It had reached the point where she refused to step outside her own mansion unless surrounded by what were, in all honesty, expendable guards.

Not because they would actually protect her—but because their presence gave her just enough reassurance to keep moving forward.

The room grew tense as everyone waited for the verification to begin.

“Tell us, Roswaal,” Miklotov demanded, his voice firm and carrying the weight of authority.

“Is it true that the Sin Archbishop of Sloth has been slain?”

Roswaal’s lips curled upward into an exaggerated grin, his expression as unsettling as ever. “Yesssssss,” he drawled out slowly, clearly enjoying the tension in the room.

“And the persoooon who killed himmm… is the sameeee persoooon who slew the White Whaleeeeee.”

The words landed like a thunderbolt.

Reinhardt and Crusch both stiffened instantly, their eyes widening as they processed the statement.

In the same moment, both of them realized the same thing—the Court Jester was not lying.

Not even slightly.

The Wise Men exchanged uneasy glances before shifting their attention toward the two individuals whose judgments mattered most in that moment.

Reinhardt was the first to respond.

He gave a slow, firm nod.

“He is speaking the truth,” he said calmly, his voice leaving no room for doubt.

Crusch didn’t wait a second longer.

She stepped forward sharply, her posture rigid and her expression intense.

“Then who is this mysterious individual?” she demanded.

Though she didn’t explicitly state it, her urgency made it clear to everyone present that she, too, had confirmed the truth of Roswaal’s words.

Roswaal’s grin widened even further, bordering on grotesque, as he slowly turned his gaze toward the two figures standing quietly behind him.

Rem and Emilia had remained silent throughout the entire exchange, drawing little attention to themselves until now.

“I-It’s Natsuki Subaru,” Rem finally said, her voice trembling slightly as she delivered the revelation.

The effect was immediate.

Silence descended upon the room like a crushing weight. No one spoke. No one moved. Every pair of eyes widened in disbelief as the name echoed through their minds.

To be continued...