A combat test?
Subaru had fought three times since coming to this world.
Both fights against the Bowel Hunter, Elsa, had been completely stress-free.
He had easily coasted through using his sheer physical stats alone.
But when facing Puck’s extreme absolute zero temperatures, he had possessed almost no power to fight back at the time.
Subaru had absolutely no idea where he stood in this world’s power hierarchy, and he desperately hoped to put on a good showing in this combat test.
Even if his opponent was the strongest mage in the entire Kingdom of Lugunica.
The twins quietly led Subaru out of the dining hall, while Emilia waved goodbye to him.
They walked in front of him, then grabbed the hems of their skirts to curtsy in perfect unison.
“Allow me to introduce myself again.
I am Rem, the head maid of this mansion.”
“To introduce myself once more, I am Ram, a humble maid of Lord Roswaal’s mansion.”
In a mansion with only two maids, is there really a need to distinguish a ‘head maid’?
“Then I’ll re-introduce myself too!
Hello, twin sisters.” Subaru pointed his right index finger at the sky and rested his left hand on his hip.
“My name is Subaru Natsuki, Emilia-tan’s newly hired enforcer, an unbridled rogue aiming to become the ultimate number one brawler!”
Hearing Subaru’s declaration, the twins held hands and looked at him.
“Our guest…
no, Subaru says the strangest things.”
“Our guest…
no, Barusu says the weirdest things.
He’s also a very weird person.”
“Hey, older sister!
You just turned my name into a blinding spell!”
Ram ignored Subaru’s complaints about her intentionally butchering his name to reference a movie spell and spoke to Rem.
“Rem, please take Barusu to his room.
Ram will go find Barusu after clearing the dining table.”
“Yes, dear sister.”
“Subaru, this is your room.”
Rem pushed open the door, revealing a single room of about thirty square meters to Subaru.
Next to a large, soft bed was a nightstand with a warm-looking lamp.
A desk, a wardrobe, and all other necessary furniture were readily available.
The decor matched the rest of the Roswaal mansion, displaying sheer luxury.
“Whoa!
This is a perfect room for a shut-in!” Subaru still hadn’t forgotten his shut-in lifestyle on Earth.
“Thanks for showing me the way, Rem.”
“You are welcome.” Rem bowed her head politely and formally.
“This is merely Rem’s duty.
Please do your best in the combat test, Subaru.”
After saying her piece, the maid left the room, leaving Subaru inside by himself.
Subaru collapsed onto the large, soft bed, half his body sinking into the mattress.
Oh right, I forgot to ask Rem if there were any toiletries or anything like that.
Figuring Rem probably hadn’t gone far yet, Subaru dragged himself out of bed with great difficulty and pushed the room door open.
“Hey, Rem, um…
why is there a drill-loli here?”
—Behind the door was not the mansion’s corridor, but a room that was highly fitting of the title “Library.”
The room was more than ten times the size of Subaru’s own room.
Bookshelves reaching all the way to the ceiling buried the entire space.
The books on the shelves were neatly arranged, the sheer volume of the collection unimaginable.
“…Where did this deeply infuriating guy come from, I wonder?”
A girl holding Puck sat on a chair directly facing the library entrance, glaring indignantly at Subaru.
In her arms, Puck gave Subaru a little wave with his paw.
It was a beautiful, pitifully cute girl with peculiar twin-tail hair.
She looked even younger than Felt, whom he’d met in the slums—probably only around eleven or twelve years old.
The luxurious dress heavily adorned with frills suited her endearing appearance exceptionally well.
Her long, pale cream-colored hair, styled into European-style curled twin drills, was her most striking visual feature.
If she were willing to smile, anyone’s heart would melt at her cuteness.
“Putting on such grand airs is going to ruin your cute face, you know.” Subaru walked into the library, looking around.
“Come on, give us a smile, just one.”
“A sneer is more than enough of a smile for the likes of you, I suppose,” the girl retorted crossly.
“Why did I end up here when I opened the door to my own room?”
“This is the Forbidden Library.”
Puck introduced the room to Subaru, while the girl’s hands continued to roam affectionately all over Puck’s fur.
“Opening any random door in the mansion might lead you here.”
“Whoa, that’s amazing.”
Subaru grabbed a book off the shelf and casually flipped it open.
“Can’t read a word of it…
I’ll have to get them to teach me how to read later.
Can’t exactly go around being illiterate.”
Even scanning the shelves, he didn’t see any book covers with Japanese text, nor any phonetic alphabets like romaji.
They were all written in the hieroglyph-like characters he had seen in the Royal Capital—the common language of this world, arranged across the covers.
“…You’re here to pick a fight, aren’t you?
If so, Betty accepts, in fact.”
The girl’s cute face darkened.
“Barging suddenly into Betty’s library, which doubles as her bedroom and private chambers, casually rummaging through the books on her shelves, and even interrupting Betty’s time with Bubby…”
“‘Bubby’?
Are you Puck’s little sister?”
“Betty’s patience has reached its absolute limit!”
Pushed beyond her tolerance for Subaru, the girl placed Puck on a nearby table and raised a single hand, aiming it right at him.
“Huh?
Whoosh!
A Category 8 gale swept through.
A wind force strong enough to send a compact car flying into the sky violently shoved against Subaru, attempting to force him out of the library.
Subaru didn’t budge a single inch.
“Huh?
You…”
Seeing her magic completely fail to take effect, a look of sheer surprise washed over the girl’s face.
“Alright, alright, I get it.” Realizing the girl in front of him was probably genuinely angry, Subaru raised his hands in surrender.
“I’m leaving right now, leaving right now.”
While the girl was still stunned and before she could launch another magical attack, Subaru hurriedly pulled open the library door and slipped out.
“…Could you be Betty’s ‘that person’, I wonder?”
The girl stared blankly at the closed library doors, murmuring to herself.
Puck didn’t speak.
He simply pressed his paw pads against the girl’s cheek, his eyes holding an expression no one could decipher.
After leaving the library, Subaru found himself back in his luxurious thirty-square-meter room.
Pushing the door open once again, he didn’t see the girl this time.
Instead, it was the normal mansion corridor.
“Thank goodness this is an alternate world with magic.
If this was Earth, I definitely would have thought I ran into a ghost…”
Subaru rubbed his eyes, taking a mere 0.01 seconds to accept the spatial anomaly he had just encountered.
“A ghost?”
Sure enough, Rem hadn’t gone far.
She was still in the corridor, and hearing Subaru muttering to himself, she immediately cast her gaze his way.
“Uh, Rem, um, do you have any toiletries?”
Subaru asked the question he had originally intended to ask.
“The toiletries will be brought by my sister a little later.” Rem’s pale blue pupils reflected Subaru’s figure, but they entirely failed to reflect any of her own emotions.
“Please do your best during the combat test.
Rem will not hold back.”
“Oh, alright, thanks for letting Ram know…
wait, wait, wait!” Subaru realized something massive.
“You’re fighting me…
you’re doing the combat test?
Isn’t Roswaal supposed to do it?”
“Yes, Subaru.”
Rem nodded and immediately turned to leave, not giving Subaru a chance to press further.
“After you tour the mansion, my sister will take you out to the courtyard.”
Her pale blue eyes still revealed absolutely no emotion.
“Is she supposed to be like the ‘Sweeping Monk’ hidden master trope or something?”
Watching her pale blue silhouette retreat, Subaru scratched his head in confusion.
“Maybe Rem is some peerless master, which is why she’s testing me…
Or wait, is Roswaal worried I’m too weak and that he’d accidentally kill me if he went too hard?
So he’s having the maid do it instead?”