Chapter 11: Witches of Regret
Chapter 11: Witches of Regret
IN the wastelands to the far south of the Accursed Lands, a lone girl appeared before the main defense outpost controlled by Lady Wind of the Demon Lord’s Four Generals.
Half of the girl’s small body was covered in burn-like, puckered scars, and she wore an outfit that seemed purposely designed to show off those startling wounds. If that wasn’t striking enough, a magic circle loomed in one of her eyes, visible even with her head turned down. More than anything else, the dense, unconcealed presence of darkness exuding from her screamed that she was no ordinary girl.
Although the area was illuminated by moonlight, the hour was already past midnight. General Lady Wind gawked for a moment when this girl, who clearly shouldn’t be there, just seemed to appear in her territory like a ghost, but she immediately switched gears to defend her position.
Adorned in a light-green dancer’s outfit, the pale-skinned Tempest General Lady Wind was the only female general with the Demon Lord’s Army. She naturally possessed a level of intelligence that set her apart from the rest of the demons, so she promptly gave orders to the more intelligent monsters under her command and had the girl surrounded in no time.
The girl’s name was Caria Elfuur.
“My oh my, what a naughty little girl you are! Are you here knowing this is the Demon Lord’s turf, protected by Tempest General Lady Wind? Hmm?”
The girl didn’t respond. She seemed to be muttering something under her breath, but Lady Wind was too far away to make it out. Skeptical as she was, Lady Wind sauntered right over to Caria until she stood before her.
Lady Wind’s monsters with excellent night vision were already in battle position, and not even the tiniest mouse could find an opening to escape from the circle they’d formed around the girl. They had only summoned the best of the best monsters to advance their goal of world conquest. Her superiority complex gave her such confidence that every organism outside her people was lesser than a gnat, it left no room for her to feel wary or alarmed by potential threats.
“Haahh,” she sighed. “What woodwork did you come crawling out of, hmm? Are you from that village? My, my, what a courageous little mouse you are, coming here all on your lonesome.”
“Why do Cary and Big Sista have to go through these things? Why do bad things always happen? Why is the world so very painful? Why?”
Instead of an answer, Caria merely muttered words filled with bitter regret and hatred.
Lady Wind didn’t know what had transpired in the child’s life, but she could easily guess that she was lamenting that their actions had made her into a victim of one sort or another.
“What are you mumbling about, hmm? Were you brought here against your will? My, my! You poor, poor thing! I feel so sorry for you, I’ll put you through some extra special torture before I end your pitiful life!”
Did Lady Wind’s words spark a reaction in her? Or was it just because her voice was too loud? Caria slowly raised her head and closely scrutinized Lady Wind’s face as if she’d only just now noticed she was standing in the middle of the Demon Lord’s Army.
“You…have a very animated face,” Caria finally said. “The face of somebody who’s overly confident in themselves. The face of somebody who doesn’t doubt themselves for one second. The face of somebody who prides themselves on being superior to everybody else.”
Lady Wind finally realized a little too late that she couldn’t hold a conversation with the girl…and that nothing but madness gleamed from the eye where the distorted letters of a magic circle glowed. In that moment, she also realized she was standing across from a foe who required the highest level of wariness.
“…Keep your guard up,” Lady Wind ordered her troops. “There’s something rabid about this little mouse.”
Lady Wind snapped her whip and prepared for battle; her monsters roared around her.
She’d indeed underestimated her opponent, thinking she was just one little girl, but even if the girl was more than what she appeared, there was still only one of her. What could she possibly do, surrounded by an army of monsters?
Creeped out for inexplicable reasons, Lady Wind scowled.
“It throbs…” the girl kept talking to herself. “My scars…my past self who innocently believed everything would work out…are screaming.”
The one thing that had changed was that now the girl was slowly moving toward Lady Wind.
“You’re one noisy little mouse, aren’t you?!” Lady Wind shouted despite herself, disturbed by the girl’s utter lack of fear and apprehension. “How about I sew that trap of yours shut for good, hmm? Get her!”
The monsters charged Caria at Lady Wind’s command. She didn’t do the deed herself because the wariness she never knew she had was on high alert. Her opponent was too much of an enigma. This was also her survival technique as the physically weakest of the Four Generals.
As many monsters as the system allowed joined in the rush, burying that little body under them. The sound of dull strikes and chewing echoed from the fray…convincing Lady Wind she had won.
“Ahhh, Mama. I’m so sorry, Mommy. It’s all because Cary was powerless…because Cary became hopeful again…”
But…Lady Wind could still hear the girl’s crazed ramblings.
“Wh-What the demi-hell…?”
A shocked voice slipped from Lady Wind when she saw the girl.
The girl’s body was undeniably…injured from the monsters’ attacks. Bright red blood spilled from the injuries caused by the claws, fangs, spears, and clubs used to try and kill her. But it was the very monsters that had attacked her who started to rot away on the spot. Everything from Orcs to Goblins to Hill Giants and even the demons who stood at the top of the monster hierarchy suffered the same fate…
Black boils oozing blood and pus covered them from head to toe as if an indiscriminately contagious plague had infected them. By the time the putrid smell of their rotting bodies and their agonized screams reached Lady Wind, her pitiful subordinates had collapsed into a heap of gold coins.
“I knew… I knew that I’d only be met with hurt if I relied on the world…on others. I knew I shouldn’t get my hopes up. The world hates Cary. The world absolutely despises Cary…”
The girl continued talking as if she were confessing her sins. Nothing reflected in her glassy eyes, and she seemed to be directing her conversation toward herself and someone who wasn’t present.
Before she knew it…the girl’s wounds had all sealed.
What’s going on?! Lady Wind thought. All my monsters were killed?! Blast it all! How’d she do it? Poison magic? No…I’ve never heard of such powerful and effective magic before! And…how is she healing herself?!
Lady Wind instinctively put distance between them and tried to gather more information. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, except for the fact that it was a fatal counterattack.
Less than a second… It took less than a second for Lady Wind’s pride and joy—her army—to be felled like dust before the wind. The girl’s strength was unfathomable.
“You… Why’ve you been staring at Cary?”
Lady Wind realized the girl’s gaze had landed on her. Caria’s blazing eye gave even the demon general the chills and made her feel eerily like she was looking at hell-incarnate wearing human skin.
Lady Wind didn’t answer her and instead brandished her weapon. Just as she was about to whip the demented girl—
“Swell up like the rest of them…”
“Ah! Huh?”
Her vision warped.
“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! MY FAAAAAAAAAACE!!! MY BEAUTIFUL FACE!!!” Lady Wind shrieked. She knew without looking. She knew her face was swelling up like a blighted balloon. Knew that the face she secretly took pride in was being defiled to look the same as the girl’s did.
An invisible attack with no build-up or signs of being activated struck her out of the blue.
“You little shit! Blow her away: Cursed Black Winds!!”
Lady Wind wasn’t so foolish as to let herself go down like this. With one hand covering her inflamed face, she unleashed her Ultimate Attack. This was the ace up her sleeve and the deadly skill only she could use.
Cursed Black Winds is a powerful and merciless Damage over Time spell that she’d created by weaving together dark magic and curses to half all her opponent’s stats during battle. Since it affects all stats, it has the unfair propensity to reduce her opponent’s strength exponentially, and because her game system programmed it to be so, it’s an inimitable skill that can’t be escaped or dodged once used.
But this Ultimate Attack comes with one downside. The existence of this downside was why she’d always accepted her position as the weakest of the Demon Lord’s Four Generals.
That downside was none other than—
〈！〉The Light of Divine Protection envelops the Hero.
Caria nullifies the curse!
“…Huh? Is this some kinda bad joke or what?”
—that it doesn’t work on the awakened Hero.
The truth that became apparent at the same time as Lady Wind’s hysteric shout was the greatest and only drawback to her spell.
Brave Questers’ Hero receives a unique blessing after a certain event in the game. That divine blessing negates any curses cast upon him and nullifies all negative status effects that will prevent him from using his full strength. It’s one thing for his party members to fall victim to such a spell, but the Hero should never have all his stats halved for the duration of a boss battle.
The Hero is an absolute being in their world, after all.
I’m screwed! I’m screwed! I’m so totally screwed!
When Lady Wind looked around them, she saw a healthy army of monsters fall to the plague. The higher level the monster, the slower the infection spread, but their fate was the same. And so was the inevitable fact that she would soon follow them if she couldn’t come up with a solution. Fast.
It’s at this late juncture that Lady Wind finally realized the eerie feeling she had was a warning bell sounded by her instincts. She didn’t have any memories from multiple game playthroughs. Thus, this was her first time experiencing her Ultimate Attack getting nullified. Her only knowledge of the Hero was vague hearsay, but even then, there shouldn’t have been anything linking him to the girl before her.
Besides, as someone who’d always reigned as an absolute force of nature, she’d never experienced being on the side of the hunted…until now.
What the gale is going on?! What hell did this abomination crawl out of?! No one told me anything! No one told me that such a MONSTER exists!
That’s why the whole situation shook her to the core. By all rights, Lady Wind, a proud member of the Demon Lord’s Four Generals, should have been a symbol of fear.
“AaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
〈！〉Lady Wind has fled.
Together with a hysterical scream, she used wind magic and flew away like a mighty gale. The move she made was the most foolish and unsalvageable.
Did she not know the way it worked? Did she not know that all Boss Monsters, including the Demon Lord’s Four Generals, were locked out of fleeing once they’d initiated battle? Perhaps she didn’t know such a mechanic existed because she’d never fled before now. Or perhaps she was so scared she chose to flee despite knowing it was hopeless?
Either way, the game system is merciless. It runs the world according to prescripted rules.
〈！〉Boss Monsters can’t flee.
No one can flee from the Hero.
No one can flee from a Witch.
Lady Wind failed to escape!
Lady Wind’s body was fixed in place as if an invisible rope had wrapped around her and pulled her crashing back down to earth. Stunned by the impact of hitting the ground, she lifted her face with a moan, and her eyes met with the girl staring at her with one blazing eye.
Tempest General Lady Wind…saw memories of things she’d never experienced herself as she was filled with despair before this being that couldn’t be categorized under Light or Dark.
“Agh! W-Wait… GAK! Koff, urk…”
Her body oozed puss from its inflamed boils as she rotted away.
The girl quietly stared at Lady Wind—so quietly, with an eye that reminded her of the pits of hell.
“H-Help me…”
Before long, Lady Wind begged quietly for her life before being reduced to a gold coin.
──The moon illuminated the scene with its beautiful, silver light.
◇◇◇
NOT far from the hellish scene where the forces of darkness were reduced to nothingness by rot and festering boils, a different kind of hell was unfolding. An enormous magic circle was in the process of being set up at this other outpost belonging to the Demon Lord’s Army. The circle pulsed with a reddish-black light and seemed to be powered by the huge crystal-shaped items arranged at set intervals around it.
The magic circle appeared to be the size of a city square. The equipment and spell-type were clearly not of this world, but it also didn’t seem like it was meant to bring about the thick stench of death hovering in the air around it.
Only elite monsters were assigned to it. The area teemed with even more powerful demons and monsters than the last outpost, giving away at a glance that this was a critical facility to the Demon Lord’s Army.
The scene there was even more bizarre than the outpost wiped out by the plague.
“……”
“……”
“……”
“……”
“……”
“……”
Silence reigned.
Every monster and demon stood in complete silence, staring into space with no life to be found in their glassy eyes.
“Ahahahahahaha! AHA! AHA! AaaHAHAHAHA!!”
A lone girl frolicked around between the monsters, spinning and twirling about like she was playing in the rain.
This Dark Elf girl with a mesmerizing magic circle brightly glowing in one eye was Maria Elfuur. Madness gleamed in her eyes as she cackled and danced away, making it hard to believe she was once a child known for her unreadable expression.
In this place where silence and stillness reigned, the girl stood out like a torch lit in the black of night, but the monsters made no move despite seeing her. She spun and twirled to the rhythm of her laughter, enjoying every moment of her little dance.
One person kept their sights set on her. Old Mechanic, the general who handled the construction of facilities for the Demon Lord’s Army and fought with a variety of lethal mechanical weapons at his disposal, glared at the girl with hatred burning in his eyes.
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten how to attack!
He didn’t even know what hit him.
Construction of the magic circle had been going well. The facility had reached 90 percent completion, and it was already at the point where it could be used once they started it up. Satisfied with their progress, Old Mechanic was about to give the order to activate it to his subordinate, Stone Knight, when…all the monsters who’d been diligently going about their work suddenly stopped moving and started staring off into space as if they’d forgotten what they were supposed to do.
“The world hates us! It hates us to death!”
The girl appeared after that.
Old Mechanic could tell she wasn’t an ally. He also comprehended that she was an enemy he needed to eliminate. No rules of war applied to the Demon Lord’s Army—they could kill their enemies however they liked without reproach.
The problem was…they couldn’t remember HOW to kill.
Probability of this being some kind of attack…high, he thought. Defense necessary. But the attack type is…unknown!
Naturally, as one of the Demon Lord’s Four Generals, Old Mechanic had resistance to a variety of mental status effects. He had complete resistance against simple spells, such as Sleep and Confusion, and even the more advanced spells like Dazzle and Enrage. However, whatever was inflicting him now didn’t fall under any of those spells.
He didn’t know what spell or attack his enemy was using, but he couldn’t just keep standing around in a stupor. Because if he did…
“The world hates us, so we need love!”
The girl opened her mouth wide, snapped it shut, and started chewing. A fraction of a second later, the top half of the monster nearest to her was bit off by the void. The monsters disappeared one by one into the girl’s stomach as if they were food offered on a plate for her to eat.
“We’re alive. Eat, eat, eat—we survive by eating our loved ones!”
The monsters rapidly disappeared into her belly.
Old Mechanic tried to think of a way to stop her, but he came up empty, as if the very knowledge he needed had been plucked from his mind. He couldn’t flee. And there wasn’t enough time for him to get…help. He couldn’t rely on the monsters and demons serving him. He had to do something about this himself.
But…he’d already lost the ability to do so.
“Can you hear it?! Everybody’s whispering to me. Every bite of meat! Every drop of blood! They’re whispering to me to live! Everybody’s inside me! Mama and Mommy are inside me! I’m not lonely anymore! I’m not scared anymore!”
CHOMP. With another big bite, yet another demon disappeared into the void.
“Thanks a bunch, guys! Thanks a bunch, Mama! I’m happy! I’m oh so very happy!”
CHOMP. Like a child who only bites off the gingerbread man’s head, the monsters lost only their heads to the void.
“Everything’s so shiny! Love exists because the world’s so darn cruel!”
All emotions are born the moment a person acknowledges their existence. Emotions have no shape, they are merely a concept intelligent beings use to define their reaction to internal or external stimuli.
So, what was the meaning behind the contradiction that led to this girl casting Forgetfulness on everyone while she preached about the existence of love? Old Mechanic no longer had the ability to think about such things as his cognitive functions were in a state of rapid decline. All ability to think was escaping him like air let out of a balloon.
But what if he didn’t have to think to eradicate his enemies? What if he just so happened to possess the ability to do just that?
Emergency situation: confirmed. Engaging priority measures. Switching Mechanical Armor to Automatic Attack.
Change appeared in Old Mechanic with a small click.
Earth General Old Mechanic looked like someone had combined a tiny old man’s body with steam-powered machine parts. The steel armor that served as his exoskeleton of sorts had a built-in component that used Magic Power and could be set to auto-attack enemies. Old Mechanic’s Ultimate Attack consisted of him leaving the fighting to his Mechanical Armor while he buffed and healed himself.
Even if he was rendered incapable of moving, his Mechanical Armor should be capable of eradicating the girl with its overwhelming strength. Switching settings didn’t count as an attack. Without knowing what would happen next, the Mechanical Armor’s giant arm attacked the girl with a jarring motorized sound.
“That’s a no-no.”
〈！〉Mechanical Armor has forgotten how to operate.
But Old Mechanic’s expectations were shattered just like his armor, which fell apart and vanished as if it had forgotten how to exist. It’s only now that Old Mechanic realized the child’s invisible attacks worked against inorganic objects just as well as they did on the organic.
Threat level: Max. Life forfeiture allowed to stop threat here. Please forgive me, Demon Lord. EXPLODE: MAGIC CIRCLE!
“An even bigger no-no.”
〈！〉Magic Circle has forgotten how to operate.
The magic circle forgot how to operate while it was in the middle of letting its Magic Power run amok to cause a massive explosion. Its operation ended without explanation or any build-up.
Every single strategy Old Mechanic came up with using his limited thought process was nullified with a single word from the girl. It was such an utterly pathetic and quick end.
The magic circle’s purpose was a mystery. The girl didn’t know when she showed up, and Old Mechanic had already forgotten about it. But thinking about it wouldn’t change anything. After all, the magic circle had already forgotten what it was meant to do and ceased functioning.
Old Mechanic made eye contact with the girl.
“Do you…believe in love?” she asked. “Love exists, y’know?”
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten Attack.
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten Agility.
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten Courage.
Out of nowhere, a tremendous sense of emptiness filled Old Mechanic. He was losing his mind in a way that felt like it was being slowly devoured. He’d long since forgotten how to fight and even how to flee. Now he could only display the emotions he was left with.
“E-Eeek…!”
Here was a man who was said to be as robotic and unfeeling as the many mechanical weapons he created…and the first emotion he ever showed was fear. A pathetic voice squeezed passed his lips. His knees clattered against each other as they shook. No one would look upon him now and think that he was once the sinister Earth General who’d terrified the world and brought an end to a great many people and their kingdoms.
The girl’s eyes twinkled as she ate up his reaction.
“Is it scary? Are you scared? Hey, aren’t you scared?! Ahaha! See, you are scared! Soooooooooooooooo SCARED!!”
The girl frolicked up to him, grabbed his head in both hands, and stared into his eyes. It was as if she was drinking in every ounce of the fear he felt, making her scarier than anything else. Old Mechanic was finally reduced to abandoning all his pride to scream like a baby.
“U-UWAAAAAAAAAAAH!! Demon Lord! Please save me, Demon Lord!”
Correction, he’d already lost his pride to the void.
“Don’t worry. You can just forget if you’re scared.”
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten Fear.
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten the Demon Lord.
〈！〉Old Mechanic has forgotten who he is.
Old Mechanic convulsed once before standing there in a stupor. His eyes had glassed over, mirroring what remained of his subordinates. He looked like a man who’d completely forgotten who and what he was.
The girl—Maria—stared at him with a deranged form of compassion.
“Forget. Forget everything. The good, the bad, the world, everything… I’ll erase it all for you.”
“Ah, um… What? Huh?”
“All that will be left is love.”
Old Mechanic had already been stripped of everything. If the mind makes the man, then he’d even lost his mind. All that was left was an empty shell of a man. And yet, his heart was filled with a mysterious warmth. Perhaps that was the feeling given by this so-called love he was left with.
Unfortunately, without ever learning if that was true, Earth General Old Mechanic even forgot that he was alive.
──The moon illuminated the scene with its beautiful, silver light.
