Re:Zero: Wrath Route Yandere Emilia Watches the Projection

”Sorry to say it, Reinhard, but you’re pretty thoroughly dead by any measure.”

Natsuki Subaru clenched his fist, the words heavy on his tongue.

He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but Reinhard hadn’t triggered his phoenix blessing to resurrect. Still, Subaru had his suspicions.

The Envy — no, this new power radiating from Emilia — must have been suppressing Reinhard’s blessings, preventing them from activating at all.

Because if his blessings had been working properly, that ice blade should never have landed on Reinhard in the first place.

As for Emilia, she had simply tuned Elsa out entirely, writing her off as some bizarre stranger who wouldn’t stop talking in riddles.

And yet —

The very instant those words left Subaru’s mouth, something impossible happened.

Reinhard — still coiled in shadow, still bound — defied those chains with an eerie, mechanical surety, his body straightening as though some invisible hand had seized his spine and pulled him upright.

Subaru’s jaw dropped open.

He knew this better than anyone. There was a time he would have pumped his fist and cheered — invincible teammate, let’s go. Now, all he could manage was a bitter smile, because the boss had just entered Phase Two.

With all three of them watching, a crimson radiance flooded over Reinhard’s body. In the span of a few heartbeats, the wound in his chest knit itself shut and vanished.

Reinhard shuddered — and in that instant, an invisible gale detonated outward, sweeping the entire Loot House clean off its feet.

His presence, his aura — it had climbed a full tier above what it was before he took the fatal blow.

The moment Reinhard came back to himself, he didn’t waste a single second standing dazed.

His whole body was still bound in shadow — but using his phoenix blessing, he wrenched one arm free of the dark mist.

He scooped up the longsword lying on the floor, channeled a pulse of magical energy through it, and brought it down in a single sweep — and every trace of shadow surrounding him was shattered and erased.

”As I suspected.”

Reinhard’s eyes flickered with a light of quiet comprehension. He spoke almost to himself, though the words seemed meant for the other three as well.

”This so-called [Shadow of ’Wrath’] has no real strength to speak of. It couldn’t even hold up against a single ordinary slash from me.”

If he hadn’t mistaken Emilia for the Witch of Envy — if that shock hadn’t rocked his composure to its foundations — the shadow would never have held him at all. It would never have had time to do anything.

After all, even at the moment of first contact, he’d still been able to use his blessings to read its properties.

”What’s the matter? Surprised I’m alive?”

Reinhard regarded all three of them with an easy smile, his voice unhurried and warm.

”Lady Emilia’s ability functions by sending my blessings into a kind of slumber — severing the link between them and me so they cannot activate.”

”The vast majority of my blessings did indeed stop working. But the phoenix blessing is different.”

Reinhard’s expression turned earnest as he explained.

”It seems this contingency was accounted for. The phoenix blessing is unique among my blessings in that it already exists in a dormant state. Something that is already asleep cannot be put to sleep a second time.”

”And so, the instant I died, the phoenix blessing woke — activated — and I was restored along with it.”

”...Hah?”

Subaru nearly lost his jaw entirely. What was there even to say.

Leave it to Reinhard. Even if the Witch of Envy herself showed up in person, she might not be able to do a thing to the Sword Saint.

But — that meant the situation was looking pretty grim, wasn’t it?

The thought had barely finished forming in Subaru’s head when Reinhard spoke again from across the room.

”Explanation concluded. Shall we continue where we left off?”

”I’m still uncertain whether Lady Emilia is the legendary figure in question, but she’ll need to be restrained first regardless.”

”Though I suppose that was already on the agenda — consider it a two-for-one.”

Reinhard said it all in a mild, offhand tone — and then he vanished, exploding toward Natsuki Subaru in a single flash.

”Subaru!”

Emilia screamed his name, raw and desperate. She threw her hand up to unleash the shadow and stop him — and realized instantly it would never be fast enough.

”Puck!”

She reached for Puck on reflex — and then remembered. The sun had set. Puck had gone offline when his magical energy ran dry.

She was about to have no choice but to watch Natsuki Subaru die right in front of her.

But in the split second before Reinhard’s sword tip reached Subaru — two kukris crossed in its path, clashing against the longsword and throwing a shower of violent sparks.

Clang!

With a sharp, ringing cry of metal, Elsa poured every ounce of her strength into wrenching the longsword off to the side.

Reinhard’s sharp gaze snapped to her. He moved to pull the sword back and press his pursuit — only to be forced to retreat by a volley of ice blades hurtling in from behind him.

Elsa saw Emilia falling into step beside her, working in tandem — and she couldn’t help herself. She burst into delighted, lilting laughter.

”Ha ha ha… Little sister, you understand now, don’t you?”

”Neither of us has any prayer of matching the Sword Saint alone.”

”Only together do we have any chance of protecting that man — and then finding our moment to run.”

”Hmph. For Subaru’s sake — I’ll work with you, you wretched woman.”

Emilia’s voice was flat and cold, not a ripple of warmth in it. She didn’t spare Elsa a second glance, but ice-blue magical energy was already surging and roiling around her entire body.

For pure suppression and disruption, shadow was slower and less direct than ice blades — so Emilia had already made her decision and switched tactics without hesitation.

”But I’m warning you — Subaru is not someone you get to covet!”

Emilia flung the words out like a blade of her own, ice-cold and absolute.

A barrage of ice blades — sharper and more condensed than anything before, their edges glinting with a vicious, killing chill — screamed through the air in a relentless stream toward Reinhard as he reset his footing.

”Heh heh… who knows about that…”

Elsa’s crimson tongue slid once more across the corner of her mouth, and her silhouette dissolved into the shadows like a wraith.

Almost before the words had finished leaving her lips she vanished from where she’d stood. Both kukris swept lethal arcs through the air, hooking in from left and right toward Reinhard’s flanks and ribs.

The angle was devious and vicious — a perfect seal across any path that might let him chase Natsuki Subaru.

In Reinhard’s sapphire eyes, a cold fire burned hotter and brighter.

Facing this sudden coordinated assault from two sides, he didn’t so much as furrow his brow.

He simply gave his wrist a flick. The longsword traced a flawless semicircle in front of him at a speed that barely registered to the naked eye.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The ring of steel on steel from their exchange came so fast the sounds nearly blurred into one continuous shriek.

Elsa’s kukri slashes — strong enough to shear through iron — were every single one of them turned aside by those seemingly effortless consecutive cuts.

The force of the rebound was staggering. Both of Elsa’s arms went numb. The webbing between her thumbs and forefingers split open in an instant, blood running freely down the hilts of her blades.

She swallowed a grunt and was forced to fall back, bleeding off the impact.

Simultaneously, Reinhard registered the ice blades slicing in from his flank — and ignored them completely.

This had dragged on long enough. If he wanted to reach Natsuki Subaru, he had to deal with both of these two first.

Reinhard charged straight into the incoming ice blades, weaving and shifting at maximum speed — but even so, several shallow cuts opened across his face and body, unavoidable.

Elsa barely managed to heave her blades up to block, but in the space of a single instant one of the kukris was sheared clean through. A massive, diagonal gash ripped open across her body.

Reinhard drove a full-force kick into her abdomen — and Elsa was launched like a ragdoll, a crumpled sack of cloth hurled through the air.

”Now —!”

Reinhard’s gaze sharpened. He moved to press his advantage — and then the shallow cuts on his body erupted in sudden, savage pain.

He looked down — and found that what had been small nicks were cracking open wider, forced apart by ice flowers growing in the wounds themselves.

And at the same moment, the shadow that had spread across the cuts around those wounds stirred, as though it had come alive.

It began seeping steadily inward through the lacerations, attempting to devour his magical energy from the inside and seize control of him.

Cold sweat broke out across Reinhard’s forehead. He flooded his body with magical energy and worked furiously to expel the shadow invading from within — but the results were meager at best.

And yet — the agonizing pain and the split in his focus that came with it were precisely the opening Elsa had been waiting for.

She dug into that inhuman resilience and regeneration of hers, brutally overriding the churning of her pulverized organs and the agony of the enormous wound, forcing it all down by sheer will.

Like a viper dissolving back into darkness, she slipped out of the shadows cast by the scattered wreckage behind Reinhard without a sound.

The one kukri still in her hand was perfectly silent — every last drop of her strength and lethality poured into its edge.

It drove straight for the most vulnerable point on Reinhard’s body — the fragile joint at the back of his neck.

This strike was the most killing backstab she had.

But in the very instant Elsa launched her attack — a cold gleam flashed through Reinhard’s lowered eyes.

He had seemed entirely focused on purging the cold from his body. In truth, he had been channeling a far more violent, compression-pushed-to-its-limit surge of magical energy silently into the longsword clutched in his hand.

Under the relentless pressure of such terrifying power, the ordinary regulation blade had long since been groaning beneath the strain — hairline fractures creeping through the metal, the sword itself crying out for mercy under the weight of what it was being asked to hold.

”Hmph!”

Reinhard let out one short, sharp breath — and moved like a thunderclap.

He didn’t turn around. Using only the slight sideways tilt of his healing body as cover, his wrist rotated at an angle that should not have been physically possible.

The longsword tore through the air, carrying every last ounce of the devastating power he had been building — moving faster than the strike she’d launched at him.

First-after, yet there before: it became a pure white streak of absolute destruction, whipping back with flawless precision in a reverse horizontal slash aimed squarely at Elsa’s waist and midsection.

Splllk——!

The sound of flesh being savagely torn open rang out faster than Elsa’s own attack could land.

The smile on Elsa’s face froze in an instant. All that remained in her eyes was raw, disbelieving horror.

She barely managed to wrench her body sideways in time to keep the blow off her vitals — but Reinhard’s long-premeditated, magic-saturated slash still carved open a tremendous, gaping wound along her side. Another inch and she would have been cut clean in two.

Blood erupted in a geyser, mixed with fragments of organs shattered by the force of the magical energy.

Elsa choked out a grunt — no time for a scream — and was hurled away once more like a kite with its string cut, slamming into the far wall and sliding down in a boneless heap, all capacity for movement gone.

With the greatest obstacle dealt with, some small measure of calm returned to Reinhard’s chest.

The purging of the cold from his body was nearing its end as well. He needed only a moment more of concentration to completely eliminate the final obstacle before him — Emilia.

His cold gaze locked onto that silver-haired half-elf once more. The longsword rose again in his hand.

The tip pulsed with a terrifying, devouring brilliance — poised to deliver the decisive blow.

But in that very moment — the defining instant —

Crk… crack crack crack...

A faint but unmistakable sound of fracturing — delicate yet utterly clear — transmitted itself from the sword in his grip.

Reinhard’s sapphire pupils contracted sharply.

The blade in his hand — the one that had weathered a brutal head-on exchange with Elsa, had been flooded with his immense magical energy, and had finally been pushed to its absolute limit unleashing that all-out strike —

The hairline fractures that had threaded through the metal like cobwebs exploded outward in an instant, spreading and branching in every direction at once.

And then — as everyone watched in stunned silence — the longsword that had been the symbol of the Sword Saint’s authority, the same blade that had just sent the Bowel Hunter hurtling across the room — shattered.

Inch by inch. Piece by piece.

Crash——!

The shards of broken metal fell like spent snowflakes, scattering across the floor in front of Reinhard in a slow, silent flurry.

They struck the cold ground and rang out — bright, brittle notes, each one like a small, hopeless cry.

And in the end, all that remained was a bare, unremarkable hilt — still clutched in Reinhard’s frozen hand.