A Witch That Is Good at Hunting

Chapter 2: Male Witch (2)

Nike kept repeating the same words.

An emotionless expression.

A flat, toneless voice.

Gwyn began to truly fear this silver-haired boy.

At the same time, his patience reached its limit.

“…Y-You little bastard!”

Gwyn picked up the axe that had fallen to the ground.

The sharp blade gleamed coldly.

“Hey. You are the child of a witch? Huh? Stop spouting nonsense! What is so scary about a stupid retard like you!”

Lifting the axe high above his head, Gwyn mocked Nike.

“Witch? What a joke. So what if you are a witch’s brat! Are you gonna cast magic? Do it. Try it! You are just a dumb brute with strength. One swing of this axe and you are-  ”

It was the moment Gwyn was about to bring the axe down on Nike’s head.

“Death.”

One of Nike’s gray eyes turned crimson.

His once round pupil split into the shape of a cross, shining with a strange light.

And then.

Craaaaack!

As soon as that crimson gaze landed on him, Gwyn’s index and middle fingers twisted grotesquely and broke.

“G…Gaaahhh!”

The situation unfolded in an instant. Gwyn convulsed, then gripped the axe in his left hand and tried to swing it down again.

“Ghhkk….”

But faster than the axe, Nike’s hand slapped his cheek.

Gwyn collapsed to the ground unconscious. He was still breathing. But it looked as if Nike had killed him.

“Kyaaahhh!”

A village woman passing by happened to witness it. She dropped her laundry and ran back toward the village.

…He had tried to hold back his strength, but it was never easy.

Until now he had scared off many who came near, but this was the first time someone clung to him, lied to him, and still attacked. So Nike was rather surprised by it too.  

“…Rain.”

Nike frowned.

Dark clouds loomed in the distance.

Rain made hunting troublesome. That was the only thing that filled his mind. He needed to finish today’s hunt before it was too late.

The ash-haired boy left the unconscious swindler behind and leapt into the forest, disappearing.

* * *

Raindrops poured down in torrents.

The sky was dim and heavy.

Everywhere in the Empire this season was the monsoon, so rain was natural.

Through the downpour, two figures dressed in black entered the village.

The villagers bowed deeply as if they were saviors, guiding them into the village hall.

The village chief trembled as he spoke.

“W-We kiss the ground beneath the Lord’s feet… Great witch hunters… please, kill the witch in the mountain and save us from this hell.”

His hands and voice shook. The two witch hunters looked around the hall. The other villagers were no different from the chief.

They were afraid.

Afraid of what though?

“I-In the mountain lives the witch’s child. At night it comes down, rips out the livers of our livestock and drinks their blood. It bathes in rivers dyed with human blood….”

More villagers gathered in the hall as the rain grew fiercer.

With only a few candles for light, the chief’s story only grew darker.

“That boy… no, that creature eats people.”

It was that moment.

The middle-aged hunter with graying hair, a messy beard, and a face more scarred than bare skin cut him off.

“Wait. What did you just say?”

“Yes…?”

“You called it a boy.”

The chief looked puzzled, not understanding why the word was an issue. Seeing this, the hunter’s assistant spoke instead.

“He means, you used a word for male. You said ‘witch’s child,’ meaning a young witch. But by calling it a boy, you implied it was male.”

Still, the chief did not answer.

His eyes wavered, sweat dripped cold, his breathing was uneasy.

The other hunter, a woman with her golden hair neatly braided, noticed something was wrong and kindly explained.

“In the doctrine of the Order, a ‘witch’ is defined as a woman who has conceived the evil god’s corrupt power, who kills and sacrifices with that power to pursue immortality.”

In other words, a witch was female.

Calling it a boy was wrong.

“Ah, Ahhh… I see.”

The chief wiped sweat from his chin and frowned.

“But… that thing really is a boy. It’s the child of a witch!”

“Hmm.”

The candlelight flickered. Shadows deepened across the middle-aged hunter’s face.

‘It’s nonsense as I expected.’

He had come just in case, but it was only the mindless babbling of ignorant peasants.

The hunter lit a cigarette, leaning back in his chair.

His gesture showed he wanted no part of this anymore. Sensing it, his assistant began to investigate in his place.

Clearly there was no witch here, only rumors blown out of proportion, but since they had accepted the request, they had to see it through.

She opened her notebook and gathered the villagers’ testimonies.

“Let’s first start with what happened yesterday.”

Soon, a woman of about forty came forward dragging her son and cried out.

“L…Look at this! That monster did this to my boy’s hand! Gwyn! Show them!”

Gwyn, his face bruised purple, kept his head down as his mother pulled him forward. He held out his hand.

His index and middle fingers were twisted unnaturally. The injury looked impossible to heal. Rowen frowned at the sight.

“Are you sure he didn’t fall or hit something?”

“Of course not!”

“N-No… It was, clearly that bastard Nike….”

Gwyn trembled, his voice crawling. The memory of Nike was like a nightmare, choking him even to recall it.

“The one you call the witch’s child is named Nike? Tell us clearly what happened.”

“That bastard… he looked at my fingers and then suddenly they just… bent like this…”

It was an absurd story. Fingers breaking just from being looked at? Only a witch could do such a thing.

But again, the child they spoke of, Nike, was male.

“Explain carefully how it all happened.”

Gwyn hesitated until his mother slapped his back. Then he confessed.

His first meeting with Nike, how he used him for money, and the quarrel that followed.

“T-That reckless brat!”

“He is crazy, truly crazy!”

“He tried to exploit a witch and got cursed...”

The villagers pointed accusing fingers at Gwyn.

Nike’s cruelty aside, this had been Gwyn’s own fault. He had ignored the warnings.

Rowen summarized the testimony in her notebook and said,

“We briefly understand the incident. Now tell us from when the child was born.”

Led by the chief, the villagers described in detail the strange events of the past fifteen years.

“Fifteen years ago, a young woman with a child came to this village. She asked for a place to stay.”

“We had no empty houses, but there was an abandoned hut in the mountain. We cleaned it enough for her to live there.”

Everything began fifteen years ago with the arrival of a beautiful woman in Sinain village.

For a woman to wander alone in such a dangerous world was reason enough to suspect her of being a witch. Rowen listened carefully, taking notes.

The woman lived quietly in the mountains. Sometimes she collected herbs and shared them with villagers, even providing medical knowledge.

“She was truly graceful, like she had noble blood.”

Her beauty won her the favor of the young men in the village.

But thanks to the chief’s strict oversight, nothing untoward happened.

He alone sensed something ominous from her.

Months later she was full term, and the day of birth came.

“It was a stormy day like today.”

“Thunder struck, the wind howled. It felt like the end times.”

“The village women stayed by her side to help with the birth.”

At dawn, the newborn’s cry pierced the thunder, echoing all the way to the village below.

“It was so loud… I immediately led the young men up the mountain as soon as I heard it.”

The chief began wiping sweat from his forehead, as if dredging up a terrifying memory.

“And what we saw there…”

Rumble!

Thunder boomed outside. The chief lowered his voice.

“It was not human. The newborn devoured human entrails, so how could that be a human child!”

The testimony was so vivid that Rowen, writing in her notebook, paused and swallowed.

“The mother of that demon, vanished without even leaving a corpse. And the women who helped deliver the baby were all dead by the time we got there. It’s… a memory I never wish to recall.”

The chief finished his tale. Only the heavy rain beating the hall could be heard.

After a moment, Rowen spoke again.

“So… what happened afterward?”

“We fled back to the village. Terrified, we avoided that place for nearly a year.”

The chief rubbed his face with trembling hands.

“Then we saw it. The shadow of that demon child wandering the mountain.”

The villagers shuddered.

“Since then, we have lived uneasily with it. We tried a few times to drive it out with weapons… but each time, dreadful things happened.”

Streams or wells filled with blood, livestock dead overnight.

With such unexplainable events, the villagers gave up resisting.

“Did you never think of leaving the village?”

The chief slammed the table.

“This is my birthplace! I have protected it for sixty years! And you… expect me to abandon it to some demon!? Impossible.”

“I see….”

His feelings were understandable.

Even if they left, where could they settle? Anywhere else they would be treated as outsiders.

“Before I die, I will drive that demon out.”

Rowen nodded slowly. She glanced at her master, but Vigo sat with eyes closed, saying nothing. He still did not believe their words.

‘Honestly… stories like this are everywhere. Witch rumors are very common no matter where you go.’

Small incidents spiced up into terrifying tales.

People convinced themselves such stories were true, trapped in their own imagined fear.

To witch hunters, it was nothing but foolishness.

‘But one thing bothers me… is that they never found the mother’s body.’

Rowen cautiously asked,

“Since then, the mother never appeared again?”

“That is right. Likely the demon child ate even its mother. A demon born of a witch… truly dreadful.”

Rowen nodded, seemingly convinced.

Every region had such stories. A mysterious woman, then her sudden disappearance. Always the same.

‘Nothing more to hear from them.’

It was fiction. At most, the deeds of some monster hidden in the mountains.

If it truly were a witch’s child, at least it should have been a girl for the claim to hold weight.

If they said the child used magic but the subject was male, then their claim was worthless.

Rowen closed her notebook, ready to end the matter.

But then, the chief spoke.

“But great witch hunters… Do you know what still terrifies me most?”

“…What is it?”

The chief frowned and spoke.

“Not one villager from this village… remembers that woman’s face in detail.”

* * *

The investigation was finished.

Vigo and Rowen stepped outside and spoke.

“What shall we do?”

“Hmm. There are a few details that’s hard to ignore.”

“The twisted shape of the injured boy’s fingers… and the fact no one recalls the mother’s face.”

Vigo nodded in agreement.

“Could it truly be… a witch? A witch’s child?”

“Heh. Rowen, you are too naive.”

“Huh?”

“Even if something seems off, a witch is always female. No matter how strange the story is, the subject they speak of is a boy.”

Vigo put out his cigarette and said,

“There are no male witches in this world.”

“That is true… Then what now?”

“We were paid, so we must at least check. It is probably some illusion-type monster or a bandit. Gather the villagers.”

“Understood.”