A Witch That Is Good at Hunting

Chapter 25: Final Test (8)

Crack!

The obsidian blade split Nike’s flesh and bone and at last pierced his heart.

His body jolted as if it was struck by lightning. Violet light burst out, and blood erupted from the torn flesh like a geyser.

The very space of the dark forest cracked, and a massive spiritual wave swept across the land.

It was a rare spiritual phenomenon.

The revival of the dead.

“Agagagagk!”

Blood poured from Nike’s chest as it swelled with air. He exhaled heavily and rose.

Nike finally opened his eyes. When he did, he saw that Rowen was clutching his hand, gasping for air.

“…Nike. You… got up. Thank… goodness. Ugh!”

Rowen looked gravely injured. It was because she was exposed to the powerful surge of mana. Her right arm was consumed in violet and was rotting away as if it was cursed. It felt more right to say that she was dying.

“Vice-boss!”

Rowen collapsed, and Nike caught her.

Her consciousness was fading away.

“Nike… listen. The Witch of Distortion attacked.”

“The witch.”

Nike raised his head. The woman radiating killing intent colder than ice glared at him.

“The hunters of the Silver Blades… they are all gone. Only you are left.”

“Only me?”

Rowen gave a weak nod.

“Mhm, only you...”

Clinging to her last hope, she asked,

“Nike… think you can win?”

Nike turned his head and looked around.

Instructor Carlton and the veterans lay bleeding. The Captain’s prisoner body was ripped apart. Rowen herself had reached her limit in order to save him.

Nike was able to realize that all of them had sacrificed themselves to protect him.

‘All of this… for me?’

He opened his eyes wide, blazing with fury.

If he did not kill the witch here, everyone would die. To protect his friends, he had to fight and win.

He would hunt the witch.

The history of witch hunts were towers built on human blood.

That great will now passed to him.

“I will win.”

Rowen, already unconscious, couldn't hear him.

But Nike, who had chosen at last to become a true witch hunter, embraced that noble resolve.

* * *

From afar, Sestria watched the gray haired boy rise after ruining the prisoner’s body.  

In the end, Morgana had successfully bought time and broken her seal.

But that was not the problem.

Annoyance at the traitor aside, that boy…

‘I clearly killed him, didn’t I…?’

Yet the boy lived again.

Sestria had slain him and sealed his heart to preserve it intact. A sealed heart couldn't restore life once lost.

“...”

But he revived. The hole in his forehead had healed completely clean.

This was not simply a strange constitution that held mana. It meant that he was truly like her, a being close to immortality.

That boy…

Was a witch.

As she accepted the impossible, the forest filled with a strange stillness.

Even witches feared stepping into Silver Blades territory. Yet the offer she had accepted had led her here to this boy.

At first, he was only annoying. But the more she saw him, the more he fascinated her. Now she even hungered for him. It was worth accepting the deal with the benefit of the doubt.

‘No, it’s more than worth it.’

Sestria’s body trembled with delight.

Fear, shock, wonder, joy, all tangled together.

How much more would this human boy astonish her?

This was a chance to seize a being that had never existed in centuries of magical history.

‘I can’t afford to let him go.’

This child was the most valuable test subject ever since the Malefic Star bestowed its blessing.

If she captured and studied him, she could reach the truth itself.

She could ascend to a higher being.  

In the end, Sestria’s face started to distort in a grotesque way. Her lips twisted in a mad smile. Her pupils glimmered with insanity.

The only one that remained standing, the gray-haired boy glared at her like a wounded beast.

“Alright, boy. Come here and amuse me more.”

Nike charged like a beast. Sestria quickly swept her arm, raising a vast distortion field.

In a blink, Nike’s fist smashed forward, but the blow twisted aside and shattered a boulder.

“Hah!?”

Even after experiencing it once, this distortion was confusing.

“Grrr…”

Nike dropped low on all fours, glaring at her. She smiled silently.

What trick would he show her?

How many more wonders would he display?

Her chest pounded with excitement. She pictured making him her loyal hound.

Boom!

Nike struck the ground, breaking it to raise dust. It was a tactic to blind her.

‘How adorable.’

But witches did not see as humans did. Sight was only one crude channel.

Sestria saw his mana clearly. The air he split, his scent, his steps, all her senses marked him.

Small, but burning like molten rock, he rushed toward her.

She bent the field again, aiming to scar his handsome face this time.

“Gyah!”

The sound came from behind her. From seven o’clock, Nike drove a stronger punch than last time.

“Do you never learn? Such obvious tricks won’t work.”

His fist tore the air. She sneered and warped space.

“—?”

However, her mocking sneer twisted.

No longer being able to smile, half her face was blown away.

“…Ah… Huh?”

Twice.

Twice in one day, her beauty was ruined. For a witch who prized it preciously, there was no greater humiliation.

The first time happened due to her ignorance. But the second? She was truly shaken. Rage flared as well.

She had even warped her own spell so he couldn't read the distortion. Yet he broke through.

Thud!

His kick flung her into a tree right after.  

It was so powerful she couldn't even groan.

Holding her shattered ribs, she gasped,

“You… how?”

Pain and disgrace honestly meant little to her right now.

Her mind echoed only one question.

How had this fledgling smashed my distortion that was perfected over a century…?

It was a plain strike.

No mana, no tool, no trick. Only a fist.

He had interfered with distortion barehanded and even physically struck her…

‘Impossible. That’s impossible.’

The only guess was that he had read the structure of her magic and broken it. But even that was absurd.

A tower of wisdom built on a century of sacrifice, mastered by watching only a few times?

Even the First Three Witches might not be able to do such a thing. How could a child who barely managed mana do that?

‘Nonsense…’

Her face healed, but her expression twisted.

Coincidence?

A witch wasn’t foolish enough to believe in such nonsense.

Whatever it was, the boy was somehow breaking through her magic.

She couldn't treat him as a toy or a dog anymore.

The air grew heavy. Sestria’s hand shook when she gazed at Nike. Stress even drew blood from her nose.

‘I’m… trembling?’

No…

She was shaking from joy. She was born to explore mystery and truth, blessed with eternal life.

As the Witch of Distortion, her hunger for knowledge was unmatched.

So the joy Nike gave her was overwhelming. His existence was pure possibility.

‘I will rip his heart out alive. I am dying to know. I’m seriously shaking so much right now!’

Her eyes twitched. The beastly boy was already gone from sight. His speed grew as the fight went on.

She gave up trying to see the boy’s true limit at this point. A limitless potential was what made that child look so delicious after all.

In a rare battle against a formidable foe, her emotions and mind surged to their peak.

Magic coursed swiftly through her.

Her thoughts accelerated.

Her senses were honed sharp.

‘Here!’

—!

Nike’s fist broke through the distortion once more. She thrust her arm towards it.

Swoosh! A sound echoed like a fist hitting a wall made of water. This time her counter worked.

His punch pierced right through the empty space, and ended up smashing his own skull.

Sestria had held out until just before Nike’s strike reached her, then twisted the spell. Nike had smashed his own skull.

“Khek.”

Bone and face broke as his eye bulged with his own fist.

“Ehe.”

She smiled as she seized the upper hand.

“Whatever trick that was, do you think it’ll keep working? Enough games.”

She was a witch that lived for centuries. She wasn’t going to be beaten so easily.

“Heehee.”

But before her laugh ended…

Crack. The sound of flesh and bones cracking echoed.

Nike, paying no mind to his already shattered head, he reached his arm more, further and further.

Even ignoring the twisted distortion once more, he pressed on. More, more, more.

Crack, grind, snap.

His brain burst, blood sprayed, and bones splintered.

“Kihehehe!”

More more more.

Nike thrust his arm forward, joints twisting as it emerged not from the front but from the distorted space behind.

His grasp drew close to the witch’s neck, ready to seize it.

She tried to break free, but before she knew it, Nike’s legs had already wrapped tightly around her waist, holding her fast.

Dread surged.

She felt despair that she might actually die at this rate.

“Heeheeheehehehehe!”

“S-Stop it! You lunatic!”

Thunk!

At the witch’s frantic gesture, a blade dropped from the air.

Nike was stabbed in the throat, but he only gagged and choked without stopping.

“Kyahahaha!”

“Die! Die! Screw of alreadyyyyy!!!!”

He stretched his hand out again and again. Even on the verge of losing consciousness from pain, he grinned like a mad clown and kept reaching forward.

Like a deranged killer twisting corpses into grotesque sculptures, Nike’s joints bent at impossible angles.

His arm finally broke through the distortion barrier and emerged from the air behind his head. If he reached further, his shoulder would push through as well, passing right through his own skull.

His arm that pierced his own head through the distortion barrier finally wrapped around the witch’s neck.

Her final line of defense, the fortress she had trusted, collapsed.

The moment the magic she believed in was broken, the witch fell into panic.

“Ah?”

Her breath was cut off. When she realized what was happening, her neck bones were being crushed and her head was being torn off whole.

Snap. Crack.

The sensation of bones breaking apart came vividly.

This… isn’t right.

‘I the great Witch of Distortion.’

‘I who had lived for two hundred and thirty-eight years, slaughtered countless humans, and received the favor of the Crimson Three-Legged Crow… is going to die to a brat like this…?’

The witch clenched her fists and trembled, resisting with every ounce of strength left in her.

“A-Aagh! Die! Die already-!”

At the final moment, Sestria opened her true eye.

It was the secret weapon that every witch possessed.

It was the most sacred blessing of the greatest star.

It was the miracle that turned mortality into immortality.

It was the distilled essence of a witch’s wisdom.

It was the gathering of all mysteries.

The demonic eye.

「Twist of the Dying Agony.」

Crunch-!

In an instant, Nike’s head burst.

His arm was severed.

His body was crushed into pulp.

Nike was dead.

All of it happened in the tenth of a second span of a manipulated reality.

Sestria’s demonic eye, the Twist of the Dying Agony, was a powerful artifact that bent and twisted the causal fabric of time and space itself to her will.

“Haa… hah, hah.”

Blood dripped.

The price was as great as the power.

The moment she forced reality to change, her eye ruptured and bled.

Now she would need to find a new eye, graft it in, and spend long years reforging it into another demonic eye.

It felt wasteful, but it was worth it because it had saved her life.

“Whew…”

It had been truly dangerous.

She really had wanted to keep him alive for experiments, but there had been no other choice.

To kill a witch, the head and the heart had to be utterly destroyed.

“Huff, huff.”

The Witch of Distortion sat heavily on the ground, gasping for breath.

“Ha! Hahahaha! You filthy creature… How dare you!”

The thought of survival filled her, and she burst into mad laughter, celebrating her own victory.

In the abyss-like forest of darkness, thick with black magic, the survivor once again was not human, but a witch.

“A lowly beast dared to challenge me…?”

All of a sudden, she froze, sensing something. She turned her head and looked at the boy’s corpse.

The boy lay face down on the ground, with his head blown apart.

“…”

At the sight of that pitiful and graceless corpse, the smile vanished from Sestria’s beautiful face.

Her expression hardened, and the twisted grin she had worn until the brink of death returned to normal for the first time.

Gush—!

From the torn neck, an impossible flood of black blood poured out.

Gush, gush.

She stared at the scene in trembling fear, but then sudden rapture rose on her face.

“Oooh—”

She sprang to her feet and stretched both arms to the sky, her clouded pupils fixed on the darkness.

Staring into the abyss-like forest, black blood poured from all seven orifices of her body.

Her body stiffened, the hair on her skin stood on end, and she trembled as pure joy overwhelmed her. She praised the untainted wisdom of the stars that filled her mind.

“■, ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■!”

An unknown tongue spilled from her lips.

It was not a human language.

It was a speech the human brain could not even perceive.

“■, ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■!”

Blood of a cursed hue gushed from the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears of the madwoman, pooling on the ground.

“■, ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■!”

The black blood reflected Sestria. When she stopped chanting and lowered her head, she saw a gaze staring back at her from the pool.

Her once-clouded pupils turned pitch black as if it was drenched in ink.

Sestria, overjoyed, sank deep into the abyss.