A new era of reconstruction began in the city of Priestella. After gruesome attack by the Witch Cult once shining Watergate City was in ruins. The battle was hard fought, but with combined effort of all five candidates for the throne of Lugunica and their attendants forces of Priestella managed to liberate the city. Two Archbishops of the Witch Cult were beaten: Regulus Corneas was reported slain by Reinhard van Astrea, with assistance from Natsuki Subaru and his liege Lady Emilia, and Sirius Romanee-Conti was captured by Priscilla Barielle and Songstress Liliana.

To celebrate the occasion one of the candidates – Anastasia Hoshin – organized the party in the now somewhat fixed town hall. Not many people were allowed in of course. Attending the party were all five Royal Candidates as well as any other attendants with them, important members of the city's hierarchy (that only included Kiritaka Muse, the last member of the Council of Ten and Liliana Masquarade, the famous Songstress of the city), as well as couple other wealthy citizens not worthy of the further description.

For Anastasia, or more specifically for Great Spirit Echidna that currently possessed body of her master, it was opportunity to make the amends since she was the person that dragged them here in the first place. There was the second reason, of course, that being the discussion about expedition to Pleiades Watchtower. She suspected that she could acquire some help amongst the party.

Priscilla and her camp was not an option – she would never help her out without any personal benefit. Crusch and her camp could be acquired with some concessions, as their alliance still technically remained, but they held little value for their price since Crusch and Felix are unable to leave the city. That left only the Sword Demon as potential recruitment option and only after he will make peace with his wife. So, only two options remained – Emilia Camp and Felt Camp. The spirit was too cautious to ask help from Felt Camp, Sword Saint was a very strong asset, yes, but the slum princess was too shrewd as to not use this debt against her later down the line. Emilia Camp was a better option, they could follow the idea of using Sage's knowledge to threat the victims of Authorities of Lust and Gluttony. Echidna knew that the most important member in that camp (in her own opinion) – Natsuki Subaru – held personal reason to seek the cure for these conditions.

Anastasia had always been the type of person that valued information, especially information about her competition:

Even before arriving here she knew that Lady Emilia's spirit "The Beast of the End" Puck was currently out of commission (there were no witnesses of the spirit appearance in the past year, not to mention her rival's search for specific kind of mana crystal).

Priscilla Barielle was likely a Prisca Benedict, a presumed dead member of Vollachian Royal Family that fell during ascension of current Emperor Vincent Vollachia nine years ago. She did a poor job at hiding this secret (if she did at all, it might be her way to promote herself), since similar name, appearance resembling dead princess of Vollachia and, more importantly, the Yang Sword that she wielded gave it away.

Crush camp was currently crumbling due to the rumors of Crusch Karsten "turning from the proud Matriarch of Karsten family to completely different woman". She was not sure what was going on there exactly, but sudden personality change could not occur without any reason.

Felt held strong connection to the criminal underground of Lugunica, something that had not changed since her becoming the candidate for the throne. Anastasia heard about some shady dealings going on between her and local gangs.

The merchant princess held decent amount of private information as well as a fair amount of dirt on every candidate as well as their knights. There was but only one exception – the famed Lolimancer Natsuki Subaru. No dirty secrets, no known bad habits, absolutely nothing. In fact despite him being the kind of person that could not keep his mouth shut, there were still no reliable information about him prior to the day when he encountered the Sword Saint and saved his future liege (Anastasia managed to snag a copy of the Reinhard's report of the event).

The knight's origin was unknown as well – his appearance and talents suggested either Gusteko (he possessed incredibly high spiritual affinity, common to the north) or Vollachia (there was some resemblance to the ruling emperor, suggesting him being a potential lost relative, a brother or a cousin, perhaps?), however his tastes suggested he was from Kararagi. He seemed to be born in a rich family, had rather weird mannerisms and wore an outfit neither Anastasia nor Echidna have ever seen.

Subaru also clearly held some form of connection to the Witch Cult, being the one who acted first against both the Sloth, Wrath and Greed, his hatred for the Cult was well known. The members of her Iron Fang that helped him kill Sloth figured he was likely a surviving victim of the Cult, given he knew the nature of abilities that Archbishops possessed. The wildest theory that Echidna suggested her partner was that he might be a former Archbishop himself, who for some reason chose to kill his colleagues in the name of a woman that resembled the Witch that the Cult supposed to worship. That would make him even more dangerous to her than he already was. Worse yet was the sheer influence he held, both in his home camp and outside of it, events in Priestella solidifying his place in Lugunica even further.

So there was a third reason for this party – to get the half-elf's knight sufficiently drunk to get to know as much as possible about his origins. Fortunately for her, it seemed as if quite a lot of other people wanted to see how the famed knight would look and act in a drunk state as well.

"No, I won't."

Subaru repeated those words for the twelfth time this evening. He had constantly been bombarded by requests from people about taking a drink or two to celebrate their victory. Unlike everyone else, since the party had begun, he managed to completely avoid alcohol. All candidates had at least one glass of wine – that included Felt and Emilia. First somewhat recently turned fifteen and thus was allowed to by her knight. The second politely took only one glass of wine, refusing to drink more since she remembered rather embarrassing drunk incident that happened a year ago. Crusch drank a glass despite Felix's concerns for her health. Anastasia drank two glaces mostly to keep appearances, and Priscilla finished two thirds of her bottle, surprisingly showing zero signs of inebriation. Al, Ricardo and Otto already emptied a bottle each, while Heinkel drank one and a half and already was in the familiar state of drunken stupor. Garfiel was also drunk already, he clearly developed a taste for it during his first drinking session. The Shield of Sanctuary was a lot more lose, especially with an orange ball of fluff clinging to his shoulder – he was way more receptive to the advances of Mimi Pearlbaton, who was equally drunk despite her brothers' Hetaro and Tivey wishes, the former two only drinking for a bit. The brothers wanted to use their Divine Protection of Trisection again but were convinced by others to let go. Julius and Reinhard in a knightly fashion emptied one glass each. Felix in an unknightly fashion almost finished his bottle. Wilhelm drank quite a lot too – he had a wife to mourn. Rachins, Camberley and Gaston drank surprisingly little sharing only a single bottle together (maybe they just did not like the wine?). Kiritaka and Liliana shared their bottle as well, although the Songstress drank way more and was currently drooling on his shoulder (something he did not mind at all).

There were only three people who had not touched alcohol thus far – Schult was too young to drink, Beatrice, despite her being the eldest person in the room, said her Mother forbade her from drinking (that was a lie, of course, she just preferred to respect her contractor opinion about it). The last person was Subaru.

"Come on bro, you had your 18th birthday already, and we haven't even properly celebrated it!"

"It's 20 normally, is it not?"

"It's 18 or 16 in most countries of Earth, besides, we in Lugunica, 15 is normal drinking age here."

"Natsuki-san, just have one drink with us, that's all we ask."

Al was simply looking forward to having a drink with his bro, he knew situation was quite stressful for him and probably took him a couple of loops (it certainly did for himself, anyway). Otto, however, had an incredibly malicious intent. That intent being to fulfill his personal vendetta for making him a butt of the jokes of the entirety of Emilia Camp. He thought that events of today would give him grounds to tease him back for about a month at least. Unfortunately for him, the Fate thought differently.

Most people noticed how worried Subaru was since the start of the party, certainly assuming they knew the reason behind it. After all, this was the second time that the one he loves the most was threatened by the Witch Cult, so it made sense why he was so uneasy about this.

First attack happened one year ago, and it took efforts of more than half White Whale subjugation force including renowned Sword Demon and Blue to be there with him to prevent the tragedy. Back then Emilia had been specifically targeted by the Sin Archbishop of Sloth Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti in his mad efforts to revive the Witch of Envy. Not only that, Subaru was also forced to slay one of the three great calamities on the way there: the dreaded White Whale. Something, that at that time was believed have been impossible by everyone in this ballroom, especially since that happened just days after Subaru's embarrassing debut in the Capital.

And a second time was just a few days ago, Emilia was once again targeted by the Witch Cult, this time being abducted by the one who seemed to be invincible, the one who destroyed entire fortress city of Gural alongside its inhabitants all by himself — the Sin Archbishop of Greed Regulus Corneas.

The actual reason Subaru was refusing the offers was rather obvious – Return by Death or, more specifically, the taboo that was associated with it. Getting drunk was a great way to lose control of yourself, and make a nasty slip of the tongue. He really did not want to accidentally commit a massacre. Normally Subaru would not be too worried about maybe saying something mean to Otto or make a fool off himself (again), but the images of consequences of his own hubris still remained quite fresh in his mind.

The memory of Emilia's gorgeous face sullied with blood, her amethyst eyes turning empty and lifeless, the beginning of necrosis, and her last living expression of not even understanding what's going on... all of it was incredibly painful, one of the worst memories he had thus far, on par with Great Rabbit, on par with his first return to Arlam during first days of Royal Selection, on par with crazed Emilia giving him a Kiss of Death, on par with Rem chasing him, on par with Unthinkable Presents, on par with unleashing the Witch upon Sanctuary, on par…

His memories of the false pasts began to overwhelm him causing him instinctively to reach for his shoulder. Thankfully there were two reasons he did not have a self-harm episode in front of all the party attendants. First was that he wore a long sleeved outfit, and second was a small hand of Great Spirit of Yin holding his own. Gradually he calmed down but continued to refuse any offers to drink.

"Stop pressuring Betty's contractor! If not indulging himself today is Subaru's choice, then you should stop pestering him about it, in fact."

Through their contact Beatrice noticed his sudden and very strong emotional distress and chose to show him her unwavering support.

Subaru silently thanked Beako for that, she did not know how much her words and just her mere presence helped him. Thus far she was only person on his side.

The thing is, deep inside he wanted to drink, in fact, he wanted to be blackout drunk right about now. If he did not have to worry about it, he might have resorted to alcohol sooner. Or maybe some illicit substances, Lugunica laws were rather loose about them. He already encountered a few: Rem wanted to feed him a Fannel fruit so he would be more loose, Emilia and later on children of Arlam village gave him a Boko fruit to keep his mana reserves up, there was also the tea that Ram made for herself. Come to think of it, control on these was almost nonexistent. Subaru, being Japanese, was rather traditional on the matter, especially on hard drugs. "Maybe that is something I can push for Emilia to implement once she becomes queen?"

As he considered nature of narcotics legislation in Lugunica the final and greatest blow to his confidence was dealt:

"Don't worry Subaru, I promise everything will be alright, you worked reeeally hard so I want my knight to relax and have fun."

Emilia too wondered how Subaru would look when wasted. After all, last time he was inebriated, she already went way over-board, drinking herself to the point of drunken amnesia. Also, from her perspective, Subaru always pushed himself way too hard and he definitely needed some rest.

Subaru looked at his liege with half-worried half-betrayed expression. For him, she was someone who he thought would be on his side as well. As it turns out he was completely wrong. Worse yet, Emilia was the person who held the most sway on his decision. Dejected, his expression asked, no begged for her to reconsider, however the half-elf did not relent and continued to smile at him, reassuring him that everything would be alright.

After another deep breath, Subaru finally surrendered. "I just can't refuse any request from Emilia, can I?"

"Well alright, fine, I'll have one drink."

Subaru angrily emphasized the word "one" as much as possible. More than one person in the room grinned at his declaration.

That was a mistake.

Meanwhile, far away from Priestella, hidden deep underneath the Pleiades Watchtower, behind the black door a person imprisoned in her own dimension – Shadow Garden the one that everyone feared, the one whom people called Witch of Envy, Satella observed Subaru with great interest.

Things were happier now all things considered, and so Satella was happier as well: Envy inside her was mostly calm, at least compared to the usual – taboo had not been violated in almost a year now. Her beloved looked really cool in the events Priestella, especially while facing that nasty Regulus. She was saddened a bit by his deaths by the hands of Sirius, but it seemed like, he was doing rather well despite them. There were quite a few deep-seated problems buried in her lover's mind, but so far he held just fine, even his smiles were quite genuine. It was not exactly good enough, in Satella's opinion, but it was way better than during the early Royal Selection or during events of Sanctuary.

Like Beatrice, she too was on her lover's side when it came to the matter of drinking (Satella was always on his side in all matters, but that was besides the point), so, even though he eventually reconsidered, she decided to do something nice for him. After some negotiation she managed to convince the nasty part of herself – the Witch, to temporarily stop enforcing the taboo. Instead, she will do that herself, stopping him from saying something that will cause him harm, but not hurting him as usual, just giving him a gentle warning. In hindsight, she should have probably tried that sooner, but still she thought that might help in his current situation. After all it was a brief moment of peace for him. Let him have a bit of fun.

That too was a mistake.