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“Subaru,” Julius said. “Anastasia did want to ask-- how did you know everything you did about the Witch Cult? And their plans to attack Emilia-sama? No one previously has managed to discover Witch Cult plans beforehand, so if you would be willing, it may be beneficial to learn how you managed to do it.”
The two were riding next to each other on their ground dragons, approaching the battle against Betelgeuse.
“Hmmm…” Subaru seemed to be deep in thought. “I’m not sure how much I can tell you about that…”
“I understand,” Julius said.
“But infiltrating the Witch’s Cult would be super easy actually,” Subaru said, sounding as if he was just thinking aloud. “Yeah, kinda trivial, if you got the equipment right.”
“--What?” Julius said, baffled.
“To my knowledge, there’s basically two things that witch cultists use to identify each other,” Subaru said. “Their Gospels, and the ‘scent of the witch’, pretty much. That's miasma”
“That second feature would explain why our spies are never approached by the cult,” Julius said. “They lack miasma to identify them as cult members.”
“Yeah, exactly. So, for the first part, the fake Gospel is pretty easy, just steal one,” Subaru said.
“Just steal one,” Julius said flatly. “Simple.”
“I know, right?! Anyway, if you suck at that step though, you could just make your own black book, but you really should have a reference for how it looks so you don’t screw up, and at that point it comes back to stealing one, right!?”
“Right.”
“Oh, by the way, if you ever do this and are pretending to be one, remember to call them ‘believers in love’ and not witch cultists,” Subaru said.
“--I doubt I’ll ever be doing this, but sure,” Julius said.
“Okay. So then you just need the miasma. So if you were a spy you would just need those miasma rock things that give off a ton of miasma.”
“Miasma stones are highly illegal,” Julius said.
“Well just imagine, that a person hypothetically managed to attain several miasma stones through no fault of their own,” Subaru said. “Hypothetically.”
“I’m imagining,” Julius said.
“They just have to keep them on their person for a little while and wander around until they find witch cultists, and then the cultists would totally trust them, right?”
“Subaru,” Julius said, a bit distressed. “Excessive contact with miasma stones will drive someone mad. That plan is extremely dangerous.”
Subaru shrugged casually.
“Subaru.”
“No pain, no gain!”
“Please tell me you didn’t walk around with miasma stones in your pocket until you found witch cultists in the woods, just hoping you wouldn’t be driven insane, and that the cultists wouldn’t kill you on sight.”
“You just said that miasma stones were illegal. Why would anybody admit to having them now that you said that?” Subaru said.
“Subaru!”
“I plead the fifth!” Subaru crowed, riding faster on his ground dragon, and pulling ahead.
Julius put his face in his hand.
Subaru really was mad. A mad genius, but mad all the same.