Part 147: Tea Party

October 5th, 1986, 11:50 PM



BGM: Voiceless

Please, someone explain in a way even I can understand... what happened yesterday.

I was in the kitchen of the mansion, grabbing some food without permission. If you open up that massive business-class refrigerator, you can find anything. You can eat and drink as much as you like. Even if the typhoon didn't clear up for a week, I'd have more than enough to eat. With wine in one hand, I was helping myself to some dry-cured ham. I wonder just how expensive this wine and ham are. You ingredients are out of luck too. If only you'd had Gohda-san to cook you, you could've been reborn as much more incredible food...

I looked at the clock. Very soon, it would be 24:00. October 5, the second day, would end. The insane October 4, yesterday, seemed like a lie. That's how much... nothing had happened after that test thing.

Nothing happened.



Nothing happened at all.

I wanna start demanding a refund on all the time and energy that tension stole from me, because after that, for an entire day, a full 24 hours... Nooothing happened. So surely, nothing's gonna happen now.



There, I was given a strange test to determine the Successor to the Headship or whatever. I gave a serious answer in my own way, but it somehow hadn't meshed with the other side. Beatrice got pissed for no reason and fell silent. I yelled at her to try and say something, but she gave no answer. When I asked where Maria was, she just told me to go to the chapel and left.

To tell the truth, it was an anticlimax. No matter what kind of weird test you give, at least tell me whether I've passed or failed. Are you trying to say 'Thanks for coming, your results will be mailed to you later' or something? Quit messing with me.

Anyway, I then headed to the chapel. After failing their tests, both George-aniki and Jessica were killed. I couldn't let Maria get killed too. Also, I might get a chance to catch some person trying to kill her. As a little kid, I often heard from Jessica that you'd get in trouble if you went near the chapel, so I'd never been there, but I at least knew where it was.



I thought this might be someone telling me to open the door, but after trying all the keys, I found that none of them fit. I also called Maria's name, but there was no answer whatsoever. I searched around the chapel, but there was a limit to what I could do in the pitch black with just a flashlight.

I realized that this key bundle might be a set of master keys, which could make it possible to open the door to the mansion. I found no sign of Maria, so I returned to the mansion.



However, it's amazing how good humans are at adapting. The inside of the mansion must still be wrapped up in that smell. However, I grew completely used to it and stopped minding it. It didn't seem any worse than any old house where someone had burnt some meat.

At first, I was bewildered by the stench, but I decided to head to the dining hall for the time being...



It was the remains of Aunt Natsuhi and the others who'd become the first victims. Half of each head had been completely split open, and it was so gruesome that even without knowing a thing about examining corpses, I could say that they were 100% dead... And on top of that, the remaining halves of their faces were left like normal, so it was even easy to identify them. Really convenient corpses, these were.

And in addition to those six bodies... was one more.



She lay next to Aunt Rosa, as though sleeping alongside her. I cried. At the death of an innocent young girl. And at the cruel way my dad and the rest had died. I raced through the mansion swinging the hat-stand spear, yelling 'Come out here, bastard'. But I couldn't find any trace of anyone else.

Thinking they might be planning to hide somewhere and attack me from behind, I went around searching for hiding places, sometimes growing more cautious, and sometimes intentionally letting my guard down in various ways, but in the end, not even a kitten appeared... Then, morning came. My tension and fatigue combined with my drowsiness, making for the worst kind of dawn.

Humans are pretty incredible. Even when a murderer might been hiding somewhere, we prioritize drowsiness and fatigue over our own lives. By that time, I was starting to feel pretty ridiculous. After all, for a full six hours before dawn, I'd walked around the mansion, yelling at the culprits to show themselves. My search had been a careful one, and I'd tired myself out and let my guard down. Even so, no one came to attack me.

Basically, I lost patience with them and figured they could do whatever the hell they wanted...

The boat won't come until the typhoon passes. They said on TV that it won't pass until tomorrow, so I've got another full day today. Lazing about lost its interest, and even though I knew it would probably make the police mad, I decided to play detective a bit.



BGM: At Death's Door

The six who had been killed in the beginning really were pitiful. The weapon used was probably a gun. Maybe their heads were split by something powerful, like a magnum bullet or a shotgun. It was a reasonable theory to hold.

Compared to that, the seventh corpse, Maria, had died in a much better and cleaner way. At a glance, I could see no external wounds and didn't understand how she'd been killed. But by her mouth were traces of bubbles that she might've spat out, and it looked like a typical death by poisoning that you might see in a TV drama.

Wasn't Maria called out to the chapel and given a test...? So why was she in the corpse-filled dining hall, lying next to her mother, dead...? Even if the cause of death was poison, who gave it to her? Her clothes weren't disturbed at all. It's hard to imagine that she was forcibly pushed down and given an injection of poison. It's probably better to assume that she was given a capsule of poison or something and made to swallow it.

But compared to the scattered and violently mutilated corpses in this room, Maria's corpse was too clean. If they had a gun, they only needed to pull the trigger. But poisoning, whether by having her drink it or by an injection, would take a lot more effort. Considering the culprit's brutal nature, you'd think Maria's death alone was given special treatment. Why was only Maria given a sleep-like death? True, being killed is always a pitiful thing, but for some reason, Maria's death alone seemed very courteous to me...

Both of Maria's hands were joined on her chest, as though the dead person had put them there herself. Did Maria do that herself before dying...? Isn't this usually something done by someone else after the person dies...?

As though sleeping with her mother, whose head was half crushed, Maria dozed in peace. For some reason, that contrast really bugged me. Including the direct cause, it's probably safe to say that Maria's death is shrouded in mystery...

And more than anything else...



After the first six were killed, five more fell through 'pitfalls' and were captured. What are pitfalls? Those things that suddenly open and you fall through them, right...?

The room had a solid floor with a carpet that looked dignified, if a bit worn out. No matter how you looked at it, it was single piece. If a pitfall had opened up, there would have to be a seam just in that place. And, if there had been some trick like a pitfall, wouldn't it creak when you walked on it?? No matter how much I walked around, feeling the carpet, I just couldn't imagine that a pitfall was hidden here.

Anyway, it'd be one thing if a single person fell, but a full five people did. By putting together everyone's stories, each one of them had fallen from a different location, so at the very least, there had to be five separate places with pitfalls. So what does this mean? Was this room actually made with pitfalls across the entire floor, so by pushing a button, you could open up a pitfall in the location of your choice, some kind of contraption like that?? That kind of ridiculous mechanism would be surprising even in a ninja mansion. But if Dad and the rest had heard about this, I wonder if they'd say 'I wouldn't put it past Grandfather to do it, to make it'.

...At any rate, I didn't learn anything more from the dining hall. Do the pitfalls not exist? Or do they exist, but I just can't find them, amateur that I am? I can't say for sure. Since they claimed that the pitfalls were there, I can't ignore them, even if I can't find them...



BGM: Witch of the Painting

He had been called out to the arbor in the rose garden... and, probably, shot in the forehead with a gun. Jessica had been called to her own room on the second floor of the mansion. The door to her room was locked. But that wasn't a problem at all, since I had a master key.



...But after the dining hall, I was used to corpses, so I'd built up a bit of an immunity. The phone receiver was loose and dangling. Had she been killed while still on the phone with me? Jessica was leaning against the wall right next to it, with half of her head split open. As far as I could tell by glancing at the scene, it looked as though she'd been killed while on the phone. In that case, had the culprit been right there before her eyes?

I hadn't gotten that impression when listening to Jessica's voice over the phone. I'm pretty sure Jessica said... 'They got me'. It's probably best to assume that she'd already received a fatal wound at the time of the phone call. That's right, and she also said this.



...From what I could tell by looking at Jessica's corpse, there were no wounds on her other than the damage to her head. Could she have had an injury serious enough to make her prepared for death, and then died halfway through the phone call?

But the way she'd talked on the phone made me think that she'd escaped harm for the time being. You shouldn't be able to have a casual conversation over a phone if the culprit's right before your eyes. So, did the culprit come in partway through the phone call and kill Jessica...? No, that can't be right. After all, this room was locked.

...Wait, that doesn't tell me anything. If the culprit stole a master key from one of the victims, locking the door would be meaningless. But she had no external wounds other than her head. In that case, should I assume that the fatal wound she was prepared to die from and the actual external wound that damaged her head were two different things, and that both of them were made to the same part of the body?

In other words, Jessica was struck severely to the head... and received an incredibly bad wound. Then she called me... and either lost consciousness or died while on the phone. Then, the culprit came and damaged her head again, something like that. After being called to this room, Jessica was attacked by the culprit and received a serious injury. Then, the culprit thought she'd been killed... and went away for the time being. But Jessica miraculously started breathing again... and called me with what would become her dying message. Then, the culprit realized that they'd failed to kill her... and rushed back to deliver the final blow after Jessica fell unconscious from massive blood loss...

...That seems to add up, more or less. Except for how Jessica was able to accurately predict the nature of that final blow. And, there was one more thing that bugged me about the phone call from Jessica. Jessica had said this...



...She said it almost as though she'd witnessed George-aniki being killed. But while you certainly could see the rose garden from the window in Jessica's room, and you could even see the roof of the arbor where George-aniki had been summoned, it was very far away. Add on the fact that it was the night of a typhoon, and it's very hard to imagine that she was able to witness everything that happened by the arbor from this window. And more than anything else. Jessica left before George-aniki. So she shouldn't have known that George-aniki's test took place by the arbor.

Why did Jessica know... that George-aniki had been killed...?



BGM: Stupefaction

It was in one of the old guest rooms, at the back of the first floor. In the past, before the construction of the guesthouse, the relatives had spent the night in these.

Kyrie-san's situation matched Jessica's perfectly. She'd probably been killed during her phone call with me. The receiver was hanging untidily, and Kyrie-san lay crumpled in that corner. But the way she had been killed was very different from Jessica. Her head wasn't smashed. Instead, a stake with an occult design was buried into her forehead. It was so gruesome, so I pulled it out.

After pulling it, I realized that this might get me into trouble with the police later. So, a little too late, I set it down by Kyrie-san's side. Its tip was sharp and stained with enough blood that it must have penetrated fully to the brain. I didn't know what kind of metal it was made of, but it was about as heavy as a paperweight. Certainly, if you were stabbed all-out with something like this, it might cause a terrible wound.

...I... probably knew what that stake meant. It's one of those. The style of killing from the fourth twilight onwards in the witch's epitaph. It's probably that 'gouge with a stake and kill' thing. However, a human skull is very firm. No matter how much someone mustered their strength, could it really have been pierced so neatly...?

No. By my reasoning, this stake wasn't the cause of death, but had just been used to damage the corpse after death. She was probably killed with a gun or something, like George-aniki, and the stake had been stuck into the hole left by the gun. Thinking of it that way makes it easier to accept.



As she said on the phone, even though she was holed up inside a locked room, Kyrie-san was being attacked. In fact, this room had been locked. Also, she mentioned a golden thread or something flying in and attacking her. In fact, there were four places around Kyrie-san's corpse with holes that could have been caused by some kind of attack. But... a golden thread attacked her... through the keyhole...?

I looked at the door from Kyrie-san's perspective. If it had been one of those old keyholes you see in old mystery movies, where you can peek through to the other side, then it would've clearly been possible to stick something through it. But even though the doors in this mansion were old-fashioned, the locks were the familiar, average cylinder style that you could find in any normal house. In other words, they weren't constructed in a way that would let you penetrate through them. So no matter how thin an object you might try to stick through the keyhole, it's unthinkable that something penetrated through from the outside and attacked.

...A cylinder lock. And a keyhole...? But despite that, Kyrie-san definitely said that something like a golden thread had flown in through the keyhole, spun around while aiming for her, and attacked her...

'A golden thread attacking through a keyhole'. I couldn't understand what it meant at all. But, even so... Kyrie-san probably predicted that I wouldn't be able to understand all this. And it wasn't just Kyrie-san. Jessica said it over the phone too. No, since the very beginning, from the time we talked with Gohda-san and Kumasawa-san and got the phone call from Uncle Krauss's group, everyone has said the same, consistent thing.



They'd been shown that right before their eyes. These weren't tricks or fakes. There was no choice but to believe it. With one voice, they had all said that. When the mystery woman calling herself Beatrice appeared, even I had pretty much believed that she was a real witch and might start summoning goat monsters right and left. However, after being left alone for a whole day, my feeling of tension had faded completely. I was now able to think that something so stupid definitely couldn't be true. Did they lose their heads a little in an extraordinary situation where their lives were exposed to danger... and mistakenly think that a witch was attacking them with magic?

...But multiple people gave the same kind of testimony, and on top of that, none of their opinions conflicted each other. If it had just been a single statement, I'd be able to suspect that they just didn't see what they thought they saw, but doing that now is pretty... difficult...



...Even though he'd escaped the dungeon of Kuwadorian... and somehow made it this far by a secret underground passage, he had been killed. Buried into the gruesome cross-section of his half-crushed head... was a stake with an occult design, like the one that had been buried into Kyrie-san's forehead. And in this situation, it was very hard to imagine that this stake was the weapon used. He had been killed with a powerful gun like the six in the dining hall, and after death, had been jabbed with a stake like Kyrie-san.

I wonder if the golden threads that Kyrie-san spoke of attacked Uncle Krauss too. Does there exist some kind of tool, like an endoscope, that's very thin but can be moved about at will...? And that can also attack people...? No way. I've never heard of anything like that. But even so, if this fact had been revealed to one of the relatives, maybe they'd say 'I wouldn't put it past Grandfather to make it'... Since I can't deny the existence of golden thread X that can be moved at will and attack people, I can either accept that this mysterious weapon exists, or else... I'll have to accept that this was a murder committed with magic.

To find the next corpse, I had to go out through the back door and search around outside a bit. Behind the mansion, in the wild-grown bushes that were almost swallowed up by the forest, there was something like an old well...



BGM: Dead Angle

Both corpses had their heads smashed. And, though they weren't stuck in, there were stakes lying right next to each damaged head. Each corpse was atrocious, but having to look directly at Shannon-chan's lovely face, which had been half blown away, was very painful...

Then, there was the well. I'd heard that inside it was a secret underground passage to the mysterious mansion, Kuwadorian. By this time, I'd begun to think that Beatrice and her accomplices might've used this underground passage... and left for Kuwadorian. Even though there had apparently been at least ten of them, I hadn't seen a trace of anyone. It seemed very likely that they'd already escaped to a different location. There's the typhoon. They can't go out to sea. It goes the same for the forest. There's no way they could traverse such a deep, uncultivated forest on foot.

In that case, they had only one place to go. The mysterious hidden mansion, Kuwadorian. Through the secret underground passage at the bottom of the well...! By this time, I had entirely lost my fear of being killed if I happened to come across the enemy. Don't fuck with me...! This time I'll storm into your mansion...!



The old well had a firm cover on it. The cover was an iron grill. The gaps between the bars were perhaps 20 centimeters across. You could peer inside, but it really wasn't something a human could pass through. If I hadn't known better, I wouldn't have thought it anything more than a simple cover to prevent falls. But from what Kyrie-san had told me, I knew that its purpose was to prevent intruders from entering the secret underground passage in its depths...!

But the cover was extremely firm and rigid, and no matter how much I pushed or pulled, I couldn't even get close to opening it. I couldn't find any obvious lock. It might be sealed by some mechanism. But no matter how much I investigated it, I couldn't find anything to release it. The biggest piece of information Kyrie-san had tried to give me, gambling her final moments, was the underground passage in this well...!



I had an idea. After all, I'd seen the various tools in the gardening shed when we'd locked Gohda-san and Kumasawa-san in there. But the shutter to the gardening shed was locked. On top of that, the key was with Gohda-san, who was dead on the inside. In other words, this gardening shed was a closed room. There's no way to open it from the outside.

In that case, I've got to break the shutter. There has to be a tool for that somewhere. Kinda feels like I'm going in circles here.



BGM: Corridor in the Sands of Purgatory

The boiler room was dimly lit, humid, smelled horrible, and on top of all that, was incredibly creepy. But there were several large tools there, and I managed to find a fire hatchet and some massive wire cutters. And... Grandfather's corpse.

No, strictly speaking, I should probably say that I found a burnt corpse of a person who was probably Grandfather. Someone's corpse had been stuffed into the blazing fires of the boiler... However, by coincidence, I was able to notice the number of toes on the corpse. Both feet had six toes. That's right, I think I heard it from Dad some time long ago. Something about Grandfather having polydactyly, with extra toes. According to old Ushiromiya family tradition, it seems that those with extra fingers or toes had some kind of good fortune and were treated as a good omen.

...And because of that, Grandfather was selected to be the Successor or something... But I wonder if I can be certain this is Grandfather's body just from the number of toes. After all, Grandfather was supposed to be the leader of the group of culprits. I didn't have a clue why he'd get stuffed into a boiler in a place like this and die.



...If it really was Grandfather, did that mean that the leader of the group of culprits wasn't Grandfather, but that Beatrice after all...? Grandfather was used because he was convenient... and was then thrown away? Unfortunately, it didn't look like I'd be given a chance to hear Grandfather's side of the story...

Now that I had obtained a tool, I thought about rushing to take on the cover to the well, but I decided to break the shutter to the gardening shed first. I had plenty of time to kill anyway. I figured I should check on the condition of Gohda-san's and Kumasawa-san's corpses. I hit the shutter with the hatchet, breaking into it, stuck the wire cutter into the crack, and scissored it around, opening up a hole. Then, I faced Gohda-san and Kumasawa-san's corpses once more...

As a result, I learned a new fact.



BGM: Lure

...And on both of their foreheads were signs that they'd been shot with a gun.

The loop seemed longer than a normal noose. On top of that, the length was different on each to match the height of each person. In other words, the lengths had been adjusted so that both Gohda-san, who was tall, and Kumasawa-san, who was short, had their feet solidly but barely on the ground.

Also, while the ropes carried both of their weights as their heads lolled, both of them had some slack below their knees. This meant that if they'd stood up with these loops around their necks, there would've been some extra length. In other words, these loops wouldn't have been that great for hanging people. The direct cause of death was probably a shot to the head. It was gruesome. Their insides were still dripping out from those gaping holes, staining their faces a deep red.

It's probably best to assume that they were then hung, pulled up, and left exposed like that. If they'd been shot with a gun, they would probably have been lying down on the floor. If that had been the case, you wouldn't have been able to tell they were dead even if you peeked through the window. The mountain of stuff would've gotten in the way, so if they'd been lying down, they would've been hidden. To make the deaths of these two known to the rest of us who couldn't go inside, they would've had to hang them like this, making it visible from the outside.

...Was this... done to get back at us for thinking that those two would surely be safe if we left the key with them...? I wonder where the shutter key we gave Gohda-san, which should've ensured their safety, is now...



In other words, the gardening shed had been a closed room after all. And that gave rise to another question. Because this can't be explained by a hanging. If they didn't commit suicide, then those nooses were set up by the culprit.

...It might have been possible to shoot them through the window, but it's really unthinkable that someone could've tied two loops to the beam from the outside. And furthermore, there's no way they could've lifted up the heavy corpses. In other words, to do all of this, they would've had to go inside. But the key was in Gohda-san's pocket, and the shutter had been locked. In other words, the gardening shed had been a closed room.

Gohda-san had said that there was only one key to this shutter. But is it possible that there was a copy... and that the culprit was in possession of it...? If we're allowed to theorize that there actually was a duplicate of the gardening storehouse key... and that Gohda-san just didn't know about it, then this isn't even close to a closed room. But why is it that, despite the fact that almost all of the other corpses were shot to death and left almost completely alone, just these two corpses were intentionally hoisted up? I couldn't help but feel something a bit odd about that...



There were 18 people on this island. I'm here, and there are 16 corpses. Kanon-kun's corpse is the only one I haven't been able to confirm. According to Kyrie-san, he had been killed while climbing out of the well... and had fallen down into it. So with the well closed up like this, it's impossible to check. I tried shining a flashlight through the bars, down into the darkness in the depths of the well. But it seemed that the jet-black darkness had no intention of showing me its depths with a light of that level... It looked like I'd have to break the bars after all.

Using the hatchets and things I'd dragged from the boiler room and the gardening shed, I tried breaking the cover of the well. But the metal bars were extraordinarily sturdy, and breaking them wasn't easy. I hit them with the hatchet over and over, until my hands started feeling weird, and eventually gave up on breaking them... It's impossible. If they were at least wood, I might've been able to break them. But this metal... That's right, there's no way you can slice through metal bars like butter with a human's strength.

...I can't even begin to understand... that story about how Kanon-kun cut through metal bars. I heard that a light like a red laser beam grew out of his arm... and that he sliced through the metal bars like he was cutting through butter. Cutting through metal bars like butter...? And what's with the red laser beam? Does that mean he secretly had a burner on him or something... and used that to burn through the bars...? Still, just what kind of laser... could cut through metal bars like butter? It almost sounds like the kind of laser beam you'd find in those robot anime I'd loved as a kid, doesn't it? Does something like that actually exist...? And how did Kanon-kun get that laser beam...?

No matter how much I want to ask him, he's already been killed. Plus, even his corpse is now in the depths of the well, beyond this cover. If Kanon-kun could slice through metal bars, I'm sure he could handle this metal cover in a single swing. It... feels just like the closed room Gohda-san was locked in while holding the key. Only one person can open the door, but they're locked inside... If only I had that power of Kanon-kun's, I'd be able to do something about this cover myself...



BGM: Minute Darkness

Kyrie-san told me to believe in witches, and I even met an insane woman calling herself one. Could Kanon-kun possibly be... a human on the witch's side...? Or else... the culprit?

...What the heck. Am I gonna start treating him like the culprit... just because I can't find his corpse?



...Very well, I couldn't bear having you push all the crimes on Kanon and building a human culprit theory that way. I will guarantee it with the red...





So, my whispering in red does not reach the piece you... But it did reach you, right...?



...Golden threads that attacked through key holes. No, we even have testimony that something gold flew around the dining hall when the first six died. The two might've been the same weapon. Then there was the closed room murder of the garden shed, and the laser beam that could cut metal bars. And that wasn't all. There was much, much more... like the group of goat monsters, the story of a witch who could create pitfalls just by snapping her fingers, the rabbit-like demons who had fired golden threads... I think there was more, but each part was all screwed up. I couldn't possibly accept it... and was forced to suspect that it was some kind of trick or mistake.

...But why in the world had everyone spoken with one voice, saying the same thing without contradictions in their testimony...? It's not only the magic. There's Maria's mysterious death. Why Jessica knew that George-aniki had been killed. The mysterious burnt corpse that I couldn't confirm really belonged to that damn geezer. And more, and more. All stuff I don't get...!

I tilted the wine bottle up and gulped. I don't have a clue what's going on. After dinner last night, the kids were chased out and told to go back to the guesthouse, and then there was a massacre in the dining hall. Kyrie-san and the rest were dropped through pitfalls and captured. Then, Jessica and George-aniki were called out to take a test or whatever and killed. Even though Kyrie-san's group was able to escape the dungeon somehow, all of them got killed in the end. And at the very, very end, even Maria was killed, leaving me all alone. In short, I did nothing except stay locked up in the guesthouse. During that time, a huge incident occurred and ended.

What can I call it except incomprehensible? I don't have a clue anymore!



BGM: Dead Angle

"You show me your true form yourself...! I won't run or hide, so come at me with arrows or bullets or whatever...!"

I haven't gotten any sleep since yesterday, so I'm incredibly sleepy. You wanna kill me, go ahead.

I decided to return to the guesthouse and boldly rest in a bed.



The big clock did too. It was almost exactly 24:00. Then, the sound of the bell rang out, proclaiming that 24:00 had arrived...

As I listened, I looked up at Beatrice's portrait. Exactly 24 hours ago, I met you. What were you trying to say...? And where did you go? Just who in the world are you...?

Golden Witch, Beatrice. I haven't solved a single one of the riddles surrounding you...! Show yourself... And fight me...!!



BGM: Dir

Like a guest of honor finally appearing, she showed herself on the landing at the top of the big staircase...

"So, you finally show yourself... I've been kept bored for a whole day."



"Yeah. I was bored, after all. I did a heck of a lot of it."
"...Ange... was a good piece."
"Don't you... speak Ange's name."
"...She appeared through a miracle, sacrificed herself, and gave you the tenacity required for certain victory."
"Don't you...speak Ange's name."
"...That brutal death was something you needed. If you hadn't seen that death, you wouldn't have grown serious. Without the wake-up call of Ange's ill-fated future, your tenacity for victory would not have been born."
"I told you not to speak Ange's name...!!"
"...In short, she was a necessary sacrifice. Otherwise, an anger great enough to kill me would not have been born in you. The rivalry between us cannot be destroyed."
"Damn you, Lady Bernkastel, it's more fitting to call that a trump card than a piece. No matter how much a piece acts, it does not stray from the board. But no matter how much power a trump card wields, it is always thrown away after it is used."
"Ange was truly a good trump card for you."



At Battler's angry roar, Beato finally stopped talking.

"...You know, I don't have time to play around in a place like this anymore. Even a tie will keep Ange waiting."
"So, I'll break through you, take my family, and go back home!! I won't waste a second playing witch games with you!!"
"In that case, what should you do? You know, don't you?"
"Yeah! I'll beat you down!! I'll blast away all witches, magic, illusions and delusions!! Come on, let's get started!!! I won't let you trick me again!! Resume the game, okay? I'll tear apart the witch's veil concealing the outright lie you are!!!"
"You talk too much. All you have to do is honestly say 'I'll kill you'."
"Yeah. If those are the words you want, I'll say them. This is the first and last wish of yours that I'll lend an ear to."
"...I thank you."
"I'll..."
"..."