Chapter 225: The Witch’s Song (1)
「“Atillina, the Seagull Witch of Farsight.”
Men clad in jet-black robes, layered with leather armor underneath.
Witch Hunters.
Their faces hidden behind raven masks, armed with chains and guns, they surrounded a woman.
The woman, with her faded silver hair, sat slumped on the ground, her messy hair, pulled and tugged by them, falling over her face.
“Choose.”
Thump.
The Witch Hunters stomped their feet in unison.
The simultaneous rhythm and force pressured the gaunt Atillina.
“Will you come with us quietly, or will you resist and get everyone around here killed?”
Click.
Dozens of gun barrels pointed at Atillina as he spoke.
The smell of gunpowder was so thick it tickled her nose.
Her body was already riddled with bullet wounds, and her clothes, once bright, were now dyed crimson with blood.
“…….”
Atillina remained silent.
The Witch who had roamed the Southern Empire.
A land where the Holy See’s heresy inquisitors dared not tread, where old nobles held sway, a relic of the Empire’s past.
She clutched the ground with her hands, fingernails cracked and broken.
Black soil.
The fertile soil, still damp from the recent rain, emitted a musty scent.
“I saw the future, yet I couldn’t change it.”
She stared at the soil.
Her father, her father’s father, they had all been free farmers in the Southern Empire.
She was meant to live a simple life, the ordinary daughter of ordinary farmers, marrying a healthy young man from the village, bearing his children, and dying peacefully.
But everything changed overnight.
“Are you the tax collectors from Viscount Dimitri’s estate?”
Atillina lifted her head.
The chilly rain brushed against her face. The raindrops rolling down her cheeks felt like tears shed on her behalf.
Although hidden behind masks, she could sense the Witch Hunters’ smirks.
“Seems you didn’t see that ‘far’ ahead.”
“That’s not seeing far, it’s seeing deep.”
But she couldn’t be ordinary.
Not after she secretly met the Witch Primundi, endured her trials, and became the 64th Witch.
Still, she yearned for normalcy.
She suppressed her boiling Witch’s ‘origin,’ refrained from using her ‘miracles,’ and lived as a daughter, a wife, a mother.
However.
Everything changed when the tax collectors burned down her entire village, captured her people, and sold them into slavery.
“But I saw many other things.”
With her farsight, like a seagull soaring above, she had seen countless futures, including her own demise.
Yet, she had to raise her staff.
The Witch of the South, Atillina.
Over the years, she hunted down and killed the corrupt old nobles of the South, desperately trying to save the people.
She didn’t need recognition.
It was her own private mourning, for the family she had lost.
Ten years passed, then twenty.
When the flames of grief that had burned within her finally died down, she settled in this village.
She settled as a nameless wanderer, savoring the ordinary life she had lost.
“Seeing deep, huh? Seize her.”
Clank! Clank! Clank!
The Witch Hunters bound her tightly with their prepared chains. Six of them pulled from a distance, lifting and moving her.
“Now, whether you ‘see far’ or ‘see deep’ about what happens to the village you were in is up to you.”
Slide.
The Witch Hunter who had been speaking in front took off his mask. Beneath it was a young-looking Nicholas.
Nicholas grabbed Atillina’s chin, forcing her to look at him.
“What do you think we did?”
“……!”
Atillina’s eyes widened.
She had foreseen this moment, but as a Witch of Farsight, she couldn’t see the future of a place where she wasn’t present.
But she could guess.
From Nicholas’s strange smile, she found her answer.
“You devil.”
“My apologies.”
Nicholas wagged his finger, covered by a black leather glove.
“Those outdated devils are nothing but tools to us now. Take her away.”
An airship approached from the distance.
Behind it, she could see crimson flames engulfing the night sky, consuming the very spot where her peaceful village once stood.
Atillina could only close her eyes.
She didn’t want to see.
But even with her eyes closed, one thing remained vividly clear.
The future where she was torn apart and killed.
And the future where a being with violet eyes and black hair appeared, overlapping her own.
Until now, she had always seen one clear future, but not anymore.
Now, she saw two.
She didn’t know which future was real, but she prayed.
Knowing that her sins were too deep to be redeemed, she prayed for a hero, a hero who would burn her to ashes if it meant destroying these men.
🔹🔹🔹
Crash!
Before Nicholas and his men could react, Cain kicked down the door, his finger pointing ahead.
“T, There she is!”
“A woman?”
“A… Witch?”
The reporters who had followed Cain like a cloud gasped in shock.
While the tanks outside were filled with a bluish liquid, the solitary tank inside emitted a strange golden glow.
And floating within it, a woman.
A Witch with pale silver hair fanning out around her, her hands clasped tightly together.
And below the tank, a stone slab with an inscription, clearly carved by someone’s hand.
[64th]
[The Seagull Witch of Farsight]
“Atillina!”
The reporters knew.
They had to. With Atillina’s staff appearing in Mytilene’s Summer Auction, they had no choice but to investigate and write an article about it.
No one had imagined that Atillina, the Red Flame of the Southern Empire, would be here, in the depths of Mytilene.
The white cloth that enveloped her in the water stirred.
What lay beneath were countless stitch marks, like worms crawling over her skin.
Patches of skin, in all sorts of colors, were sewn together, resembling a worn-out doll patched up with scraps of fabric.
‘It’s exactly as Lourens described.’
Cain slowly lowered his head.
This was wrong.
This couldn’t be tolerated.
“This is the true face of the Seven Wise Men.”
With that, Cain turned and pointed a finger at Nicholas, whose face had turned pale.
The middle-aged man looked flustered and quickly turned to the side, demanding,
“Why is that still there!”
“We need a mithril blade to dissect her, and it’s not here yet……”
“We could’ve just fed her to them whole!”
“We didn’t know what would happen if we took her out of the binding spell……”
Nicholas flinched.
The casual confidence he had felt, knowing that Lesbos Island was his domain, acknowledged by the Seven Wise Men themselves, was gone.
The Summer Auction, which had been falling apart from the start.
The pressure that had been mounting with the appearance of Purple.
The panic of realizing that the prey he had hunted in the past had become a trap to ensnare him.
All the circumstances surrounding him had narrowed his vision, leading to this very outcome.
“…….”
A heavy silence fell over them.
The reporters, eyes wide with shock, Cain with his strange smile, and the black priests of the Holy See slowly approaching.
“Hero.”
Nicholas called out to Cain.
Everything started to unravel after he encountered this boy.
Cain raised his finger.
Nicholas, in response, pulled out an ornately engraved pistol from his coat and aimed it at Cain.
“Do you think you’ve won?”
“Once these people get out there and publish articles about this, your position will become quite precarious, wouldn’t you say?”
Suspicions alone were damaging enough, but with concrete evidence like this, the situation would be beyond salvageable.
“How naive.”
Nicholas scoffed, brushing his hair back. He then glanced at the reporters with a disgusted look.
“Public opinion is trash. Especially when it comes from these so-called reporters.”
“Oh?”
Cain chuckled softly.
As the reporters bristled at the insult and the priests remained indifferent, Nicholas turned the gun towards Atillina.
“Newspapers? They rely on our advertisements and funding to survive. Cut off their lifeline, and no decent articles will ever see the light of day.”
“…….”
To the Seven Wise Men, who even controlled the world’s currency, the press was nothing more than a noisy loudspeaker.
“This negative public sentiment is temporary. We just need to create a more stimulating and novel issue, rebrand our image, and they’ll come crawling back.”
Nicholas was a man of the Seven Wise Men to his core, a being enthralled by the allure of money.
“Of course, we tried to avoid this because of the potential losses…… but it seems we have no other choice.”
The reporters were speechless.
Even if they were driven by a sense of justice and duty to report the truth, their superiors could easily bury their stories.
And there was more to it than that.
Behind the façade of the Age of Reason and Logic lurked the threat of magic and technology.
Nicholas’s words made them acutely aware that they could become victims themselves at any moment, rendering them utterly powerless.
Swish.
To stand firm against such pressure, one needed unwavering conviction.
The priests of the Holy See, unfazed, moved to subdue the men, but they stopped in their tracks.
The men accompanying Nicholas had each pulled out a bulky bomb from their coats.
“This place will probably collapse if even one of these goes off. You’ll all be buried alive.”
Nicholas smirked.
He hadn’t wanted to resort to such extreme measures, but Cain’s actions had forced his hand.
“And now, I have nothing left to lose.”
It had taken Nicholas a lifetime to climb out of the gutter and reach his current position, but it only took a moment to fall.
He was only clinging on thanks to Purple’s direct intervention and promises.
But whether Purple’s plan succeeded or not, Nicholas knew that once some time passed and the dust settled, he would be the one to take the fall.
“With our flame, we shall remake the world!”
Nicholas chanted the creed etched deep within his heart.
Bang!
He pulled the trigger.
A crimson flame erupted from the muzzle.
It hurtled towards Atillina’s forehead.
Crackle!
At that moment, a bolt of pure white lightning crackled around Cain’s right hand.
Dark Sky.
Original Style.
Kyrie.
Shing!
The holy sword, ‘Summer,’ drew an arc of moonlight, bisecting the bullet fired from Nicholas’s gun.
Nicholas hadn’t anticipated that his bullet would be deflected at such close range.
But…
Bang! Bang! Bang!
His training had not been in vain. He rapidly fired the remaining six shots from his pistol.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Cain’s holy sword flashed six times, like moonlight reflecting off its surface.
The split bullets clattered on the ground.
The reporters who captured that moment were all stunned.
They knew the Hero was strong, but they never expected him to deflect bullets at point-blank range.
“Sword Master……”
They had thought the rumors were exaggerated, but after witnessing this scene, they realized that Cain was indeed a true Sword Master.
“With our flame!”
Nicholas screamed, pulling out a bomb from his coat.
He gripped the detonator with a crazed look in his eyes, staring at Cain and Atillina.
“We shall renew the━━”
And then came the seventh flash of moonlight, followed by a burst of sunlight that illuminated the entire underground chamber.
Cross Strike.
Kyrie Eleison.
The cross-shaped sword strike cut off both of Nicholas’s wrists, which were holding the bomb.
His wrists and the bomb rolled on the floor like bullets, and Cain looked at him with an indifferent expression.
“Such fiery words. Is it over?”
This was no mere boy.
This was no Hero of Hope.
Nicholas realized with a jolt that the person standing before him, seemingly unconcerned, was a warrior far more seasoned and hardened than he could ever hope to be.
《Not yet.》
And with that, Atillina slowly opened her eyes.
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