"Shall we begin?"

Julius was the very image of a true knight.

He understood that now.

It wasn't that the spirit knight was strong or smart or even brave.

He was kind.

So kind that even now, after God knows how many loops Subaru still felt his sword grow heavy.

His own sword was modeled after Julius' own. He had since perfected his copy, his farce of Julius' swordsmanship in the many loops he'd been forced into.

There goes his false modesty again. In truth, he had spent so much time in this loop because he couldn't find it in himself to defeat Julius.

He spent considerable time learning to match Julius' style of swordsmanship. Enough that he could emulate it beyond anyone else. But that wasn't the skill that allowed him to defeat Julius. The consequences of each loop left him unable to strengthen his body at all and Julius was far above him at this point in disciplining his own body.

So Subaru adapted. He suffered and suffered finding true counters to each and every move that Julius would make. Until he learned that his skill had grown to the point where he could defeat this foe without having been marked from his blade.

That said, it wasn't as simple as that.

The Subaru of now, within the arena was no longer the Subaru of a week ago, a few days ago, yesterday or even a few minutes ago. Of course he had already explored the other options. He couldn't be defeated, flee, fake insanity or even an injury to avoid winning this match.

He had to win.

And he knew that was wrong. That was what Julius had shown him after all. That shining rainbow knight had instilled in him the virtues of a knight so strongly and persistently over his loops that he knew exactly his sins and shame.

He had even admitted to them and pleaded his newfound stance to Julius futilely. The hand would come for him either way.

His only recourse was to win this match, prove he was a knight to match Emilia-sama's grace and to somehow earn Julius' forgiveness for this farce and appease the knights who were even now looking on eagerly for his beatdown.

Disgraceful.

Why should they even care for his opinion? If he was so much weaker than them, so plagued with hubris and envy why should they even take umbrage at his words.

Maybe that was Subaru's downfall.

He couldn't understand pride. It was useless, worth less than trash in this world. The only beings with pride were those who couldn't see themselves clearly. He was sure of it.

Nonetheless, he had a task. Even if his sword was heavy, even if his heart wailed at the prospect of harming even a hair on Julius' head he had to complete this endeavor. Who knew when he could next turn to madness again? He could even harm his opponent and slaughter the opposition. He couldn't carry that guilt during his loops. He would never be the same.

"Let's."

Felix, ever smiling but ever worrying announced the count in his custom. "One. Mew. Three!"

He knew Julius would wait so it was left to Subaru to graciously accept his invitation.

"Thank you."

Author's Note: I have a shit ton of content just lying around on this site and I decided to just put some of it out there. Even if I never finish any of it or people hate it, I'd rather someone see it besides me. For anyone who actually follows me and didn't just randomly click on this fic, I apologize for not following through on my stories, I know that's pretty worthless but I mainly write based on my motivation and that has been severely lacking. Honestly most of that stems from the fact that I enjoy reading much more than I do writing. I'll keep trying to actually update my stories but I'm not promising anything, I'm not that shameless. On that note, I hope you enjoyed this little one-shot. I've been enjoying re;zero despite the fact that I get crazy second-hand embarrassment by watching him.