Chapter 206: Why Are You There? (4)
「Humans rule over humans.
Humans even rule over themselves, so wouldn’t it be even easier to rule over a race called witches?
They are overflowing with uses.
If you pluck out their eyes and make ‘Witch’s Eyes,’ you can predict the future, and if you crush their fingers, you can manufacture the scent of lush freedom.
From head to toe.
Witches, with not a single part to discard, should naturally be used for our freedom.
Just as the sun rises and sets, and autumn gives way to winter, this world is trapped in an eternal cycle. What’s so wrong with using ‘witches,’ who are arranged for a peaceful ‘end’ within that cycle, as our firewood!
Hunt the witches.
Capture them.
Pluck out their eyes and cut off their noses.
After all, if their very existence is a sacrifice for the ‘end,’ how glorious would it be to use them as firewood to renew the world with our flame?
━An Argument from a Witch Hunter」
🔹🔹🔹
Lourens slowly turned his head and examined the surroundings.
Anje, guarding his back, muttered.
“This isn’t the work of just one.”
This wasn’t the body of just one witch.
At least seven, from what they could see now.
If they had already used some, there was no telling how many had been torn apart here.
Gulp━.
“……Bastards.”
Lourens bit his lower lip.
The Empire was also a place where people lived, so how clean could it be?
Living in the darkness of such an empire, Lourens wouldn’t bat an eye at most things.
But this place was different.
Even wizards would offer prayers and prepare with respect when turning their opponents into undead.
There was no respect for life here.
They thoroughly dismantled their opponents.
Lourens couldn’t figure out the purpose, but one thing was clear: they didn’t see witches as living beings.
Just as they would replace a flickering magic streetlight’s mana battery, they saw witches as nothing more than batteries.
There was no other way they could tear them apart and use them like this.
Lourens and Anje began to navigate through the space, which resembled a forest formed by a gruesomely large number of floating witch parts.
Then, gradually.
Thump━.
The witch parts moved.
He hadn’t noticed it at first, but the fragments within Lourens’s sight slowly pointed somewhere.
As if they were going there.
As if they were asking something to be seen..
“…….”
Lourens looked back.
Anje also seemed to have noticed.
Nod━.
They exchanged a brief signal and silently headed deeper into the darkness.
A zone of darkness untouched even by the bluish light.
A place hidden deep inside, so well concealed by darkness that they would never have found it if they had just walked by.
Tap, tap━.
At the very end, a single finger of a witch, submerged in a water tank, tapped on the transparent wall.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
There was a pattern.
Lourens and Anje understood immediately.
“Three steps to the left, seven steps to the right, ten steps forward.”
It was the same code the Special Intelligence Division had developed in the past and was now used for long-distance secure communication within the Empire.
“Not many people know the Empire’s dot-dash code……”
Anje stared at the long, white finger with a gaze that was partly sympathetic and partly curious.
Who was this witch?
Who was she to know the Empire’s dot-dash code and tell them how to pass through the darkness?
“Who she is doesn’t matter.”
Lourens replied firmly and started walking.
“Because there’s no ‘who’ here anymore.”
“……Yes.”
Anje followed behind him, her tone devoid of her usual playfulness.
Leaving behind the bluish forest of witches, where the question of ‘what’ preceded the question of ‘who,’ the two walked into the darkness.
Whooooosh━.
The space of darkness seemed to be influenced by some magic or spell, as a cold wind blew and a new place appeared.
“It’s not magic, do you know what kind of technique this is?”
Lourens looked back once more. If they walked according to the designated steps, they could easily escape, but otherwise, they would probably be lost forever in the darkness that filled his vision.
Anje stretched out her hand and poked the realm of darkness, but shook her head.
“I’m not sure.”
“If you don’t know, then it must be one of the techniques that flowed in from the East when it fell into ruin.”
The Seven Wise Men.
Feeling the immensity of the Commons, which was anything but common, Lourens moved forward.
He had a hunch that the place these fragmented beings desired lay within.
As they descended the leftward-curving passage, they finally saw it.
Whooooosh━.
A chilly wind blew, like skin as pale as ice.
Gurgling━.
Inside, there was something like the water tanks outside.
There were three differences.
First, unlike the bluish ones outside, this one had a strange golden hue.
Second, unlike the outside tanks containing fragments of witches, this one held a whole witch.
And third.
《A human here. The worldline has shifted.》
The woman suddenly opened her eyes and conveyed her will to them.
Her lips didn’t move.
Her thoughts simply flowed into their minds with a strange sensation.
Lourens stood before her and met her gaze.
“Who are you?”
The fragments outside were no longer ‘who,’ but this woman was. At least he hoped she was someone.
She smiled bitterly and slowly shook her head.
《I might have been someone once, but now I am nothing more than a tool.》
“…….”
Clench━.
Lourens clenched his fists.
《Just a single trumpet, observing this worldline and calling for the fiery ruin from a step away.》
“The trumpets of the Seven Angels.”
Anje murmured, and Lourens looked back at her.
“It’s an old legend from the eastern part of the continent. This world will be engulfed in flames and ruined, but before that, seven angels will descend and blow their trumpets.”
“I think I’ve heard of it. The trumpets sound one after another, and when the seventh trumpet sounds, the ruin begins.”
“Yes. Unlike the story, it seems there aren’t actually seven.”
Anje stepped forward and brushed her hand against the dust-covered ground beneath the woman’s tank.
Engraved letters were revealed.
[64th]
[Witch of the Far-Seeing Seagull]
“Numbers……”
There were two types of witches.
Ordinary witches who inherited witch’s power and acted as witches, but were not recognized by the ancient witch, Primundi, and were not given a number.
And the ‘Numbers,’ who officially awakened as witches and were tracked in real-time by the Holy See’s surveillance network.
The number of witches who could receive that number was only ninety-nine.
The reason why the number of imperial princesses was fixed stemmed from this, so both of them knew this well.
《The world I saw didn’t have this. It’s fascinating. Someone is changing the worldline that was like a perfectly shaped garden.》
Wooooong━.
The woman raised her arms.
Only then could Lourens and Anje see.
Why she called herself ‘what’ instead of ‘who.’
Imagine a doll.
Worn and torn, its cloth patched up with needle and thread.
If you keep patching and patching until all the original parts of the doll are replaced, is it still the same doll?
The woman was the same.
《If I still had tear ducts, I would have cried.》
The woman’s bare skin, which had been hidden by white cloth, was revealed.
What they saw were countless stitch marks, like worms crawling all over her body.
Her skin, a patchwork of various colors, looked like a worn-out doll sewn together from scraps.
《Perhaps the great one who is twisting the worldline is near you.》
Whooooosh━.
A refreshing breeze, unusual for an underground space, blew.
She slowly lowered her arms.
Flash━.
A lump of golden light began to fall into Lourens’s hand.
《I can no longer be saved, but please save the little goblin. And furthermore, may they be remembered as ‘who’ they are, not ‘what’ they are.》
“This is……”
Where the light had disappeared.
In Lourens’s hand was a single hair tie, its color constantly shifting and impossible to define.
《Please, give this to the one you believe to be that person.》
Lourens gripped the hair tie.
He exchanged glances with Anje, and they both naturally thought of the same person.
The one who bravely overcame the devil’s nightmare that had filled Academy City Märchen and shone brilliantly alone.
The hero they hoped would unravel the Empire’s predicament.
Anje stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the five-colored hair tie as if it were a sacred treasure.
“Understood━.”
Before Lourens could finish his sentence.
Whoosh.
They vanished.
As if it were a lie that someone had been standing there, they were scattered by a spatial movement, a taboo in this era.
Swoosh━.
The dust that had been pushed aside by their footsteps and Anje’s hand returned to its original place.
Following the direction of the woman in the tank’s gaze.
《…….》
And what she saw again was darkness.
Gazing at the ordinary people who had made her this way, capturing innocent witches and using them as mere ‘tools,’ she moved her lips.
《This time, I pray the world will be set right.》
🔹🔹🔹
The long story of Olivia, who was once the princess of Airian but was now delving into the darkness of the Commons, came to an end.
She shrugged.
She pointed out the window of the restaurant towards the colossal auction house Coliseum.
“And I hear they’re planning to spread the fragrance made with ‘pureum’ throughout the entire event at this auction.”
Thump━.
Administrative Duke Morning tapped the table irritably. Her forehead was furrowed in displeasure, as though she strongly disapproved.
“It’s not as potent as a drug, just a feeling, so it shouldn’t be a problem……”
But it still bothered her.
The concept of freedom was inherently difficult to explain.
No matter how much you told a frog that had lived its whole life in a well that the outside world was free, and no matter how much you made it imagine, it would never grasp the true essence of freedom.
It was difficult to judge whether it was right to give people a taste of freedom through this fragrance, bit by bit, instead of conveying the concept of ‘freedom,’ which had to be communicated through language and time.
“Is it dangerous, or not……”
“You can’t stop someone who doesn’t know freedom from developing a belief in it.”
It was Aurelia.
As a cardinal of the Holy See, a system strictly bound by rules unlike the Empire, which had become slightly freer with the emergence of the new aristocracy, the Red Hands, she spoke up.
“However, the problem is that this freedom is not earned, but forcefully given through a strange drug from an unknown source.”
“…….”
“Moreover, we know they wouldn’t hesitate to sell a devil’s heart and kill hundreds of thousands for their own goals.”
Magic Marquis Wiseman nodded heavily.
It was her greed.
She was the one who desired the item and activated her signature magic, ‘night.’
She believed that all the blame lay with her, but it was the Seven Wise Men who had subtly exploited that greed and sold Procell’s heart.
“If Märchen had been annihilated like that, the Empire would be in turmoil right now. Perhaps I wouldn’t be sitting here so comfortably either.”
The more one considers the Empire’s management from the perspective of a major power, the more impressive their strategies seem.
A completely natural infiltration.
A natural transfer.
The collapse of the Empire would be brought about by a series of ordinary, everyday events.
“The problem is, it’s been difficult to find fault with them……”
Morning smiled at Olivia.
The final piece she had been waiting for had rolled in on its own.
“Good.”
At that moment.
Scoot.
Lesbos, who had been listening quietly, raised his hand. As everyone turned to look at him, he looked at Cain with bright, innocent eyes and spoke.
“And I think we can use this to our advantage.”
“……?”
As Cain tilted his head, covering his face with his hand, Lesbos smiled brightly.
“Because we have a hero here.”
In that smile, the golden rule that Lesbos possessed glimmered.
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