You couldn’t even talk to a demon, but in the case you could, you weren’t sure if the meaning was being carried across. Well, yeah, that was risky. However, people still became witches despite those risks. I wondered why.
“Once someone has overcome those dangers and successfully forged a pact, then a stigma appears on their body. That is the sign that a witch has finally been born,” Leen continued.
“Yeah... Stigmas are key in witch trials, right?”
A stigma was an implicit mark that someone was a witch. Without it, you were in the clear. A witch trial mostly rested upon the presence of one. That meant you needed the know-how and ability to identify them. However, this wasn’t all that easy. Wizards and the like engraved runes on their bodies to fortify their magic, and certain cultures utilized tattoos. This made identifying a stigma a difficult task. These people had been falsely accused of being witches and subsequently executed due to such misunderstandings. Wizards would naturally try and fight back, but resistance would invite retaliation and result in one or both parties being injured.
There were many valuable runes that had been lost due to this back in the era where it was difficult to identify specialist magic and witches’ curses. Lixeel, the wizard in my former party, had complained about this. Due to this history, the relationship between Saphirism and wizards was terrible. But this was all beside the point.
“By the way, if you try to burn or cut it off, it will move to another part of the body, so you can’t get rid of it via physical means,” Leen said.
“I see, that makes sense.”
I supposed if you could get rid of the evidence, then witch trials wouldn’t even function.
“All right, now we’ve finally hit the main part of the lecture where we discuss more about the history of witches and how they came about. So, demons have a rank and their own lineage.”
“We weren’t in the main part before?”
“Everything I just told you was preliminary stuff. But don’t worry, we’re almost done.”
Leen pointed at the circle at the top of the napkin and drew her finger down the pyramid.
“Demons cannot defy any demon that exists on a higher level than them. This is known as their rank.” Leen next pointed at the lines underneath the row of circles. “The line of demons born from each of the Seven Great Demons is known as their lineage. A demon’s rank and lineage will allow you to identify what powers it has and what level it is.”
“For such a lengthy explanation, I’m surprised that it has such a basic system.”
“They simply multiply individually, you see. The living dead in Leston were similar, right? The one from which the others spawned has authority. It’s a common system.”
“This isn’t a topic meant for lunchtime.”
However, Leen didn’t pay any heed. She put her napkin down and wiped up what remained of her gratin with her bread.
“I explained before that living dead were fungus-based monsters, right? The demon that’s most adept at controlling plants is the one of second rank—in other words, the third of the Hepta Maligna: Beelbel and that lineage. Do you want me to go through the other demons one by one?”
“No thanks. It sounds like a pain, and I doubt I’ll be able to remember them all.”
She’d apparently expected this response, for she didn’t seem dissatisfied. In return, I felt her gaze on my hand—like a cat eyeing its prey.
My food had gotten a bit cold and what little appetite that I had had run dry; I pushed my plate over to Leen. She made an excited sound and stuck her fork in without hesitation.
“Judging by the scale of the destruction in Leston and Erifell’s condition, I think that the witch in question made a pact with a demon on the thirty-fourth rank or thereabouts,” Leen said in between chews.
“R-Right, thirty-four, huh...”
She only had space to draw five levels on her napkin. I didn’t think that there were so many levels below that, so I let out a weirdly high-pitched response again.
“Is that high? Or low?” I asked.
“On the lower end. A witch’s powers get stronger the higher the class of demon they’re forming a pact with, but...”
Leen made a slightly troubled expression as she continued to chow down on my gratin.
“But?”
“The witches born after the War of the Witches have only been able to form pacts with lower rank demons.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because the demons learned how pacts with humans work. The Lingreen family bears some responsibility in this.”
Despite said responsibility, Leen didn’t look all too apologetic.
“My ancestor Lingreen, the first witch who made the first ever pact with a demon, made a terribly unfair contract.”
“Which means?”
“It had an absolutely ridiculous term that the contracted demon would share all their abilities and that the contract could be succeeded. It’s something unfathomable in the eyes of all the witches who came after. This was the first time a demon had made a pact with a human, so it ended up signing without knowing anything and agreeing to such preposterous terms.”
“That’s textbook scam work!”
“If we compare it to my nine-to-one offer to you, Hakura, it was way worse. What the first Lingreen gave up as payment was the honor of being the one to sign a pact with the demon.”
I felt like I’d gotten a glimpse into the roots of Leen’s insolent and heartless nature. Actually, wait—so she did realize that she’d tried to give me a bum deal! She’d better watch out...
“Back then, our world was an unknown frontier to the demons. They, too, had a desire to form pacts with humans, so they chose the demon with the highest rank of all. However!” Leen said, turning her hand over so the palm faced up. “After the first boom of contracts, they began to realize that they weren’t getting much in return. And so they began to scrutinize the details of the pacts they were being given. It was from this point that the scales tipped, and it was people here who wanted the powers of a witch to themselves. The demons of higher ranks soon realized that they could just let the demons below them form pacts and provide something in return.”
This took a sad turn all of a sudden.
“The result of all this was the War of the Witches. The world was saturated with witches who had successfully formed their pacts. That leads us to today where witches are still the ones who want to form contracts with the demons.”
“Are there any decent demons left to form pacts with?”
“There are. People now have to form pacts with super bottom-of-the-barrel demons, which was unthinkable if you lived centuries ago. Even if you got a manual from a thousand years ago which told you how to contact a high-ranking demon, you wouldn’t be able to form a pact based on the same terms of the time.”
Leen paused her meal, took a sip of water, then heaved a deep sigh.
“That’s why...I thought it was unlikely a witch was involved.”
“If you ask me, witches can be found everywhere.”
That was the difference between my estimation and Leen’s on this affair. It was true that I was far less knowledgeable about witches than her, but I was the one who’d suspected a witch at the start whereas she didn’t even consider it probable.
“I’ve encountered one or two incidents a year where a witch was involved. Each had a high number of casualties to boot,” I went on.
Without a witch, there would be no one to hunt and I wouldn’t have gotten the title of “witch hunter.” Leen, on the other hand, folded her arms, cocked her head, and kept up her skeptical expression.
“Hmm... The main reason I thought there wasn’t a witch behind what happened in Leston was because the cleanup was so sloppy.”
If the witch in question heard this, they would probably be fuming. The way Leen phrased it made her seem like a teacher asking a student how they failed something so simple.
“If she had made a pact with a mid-rank Beelbel lineage demon, then the power to control the living dead would never have remained with Krauna. Those living dead weren’t controlled by the witch—no, they were abandoned because she couldn’t control them. If the witch were a bit higher, then no one would have realized anything was wrong in Leston.”
“So you’re saying because it came to light, a witch couldn’t have been behind it.”
“I admit my terrible failings now that all is said and done. I’d like to rescind what I said, but...”
“But?”
Leen turned over the napkin with the pyramid on it and began scribbling something. I was surprised at the speed at which she was writing, but I didn’t recognize the alphabet she was using so I couldn’t even read any of it.
“There are three chief ways of removing a demon’s curse. The first is to get the witch who cast the curse to remove it. The second is to kill said witch. The third is to find out the true name of the demon, which the witch formed a pact with.”
“The demon’s name?”
“Indeed. But it must be its full name. For example, the true name of Beelbel, one of the Hepta Maligna I mentioned, is Beelbel Swiswoswiswaswoswuswo.”
“Repeat that?”
I thought Leen had said a tongue twister with that Lucilfer, but I was amazed she could say this name with such ease.