“A witch is born out of a desire. A contract with a demon is not the goal. It is merely the means to an end,” Leen said as if singing, tapping out a rhythm with her staff. “People crave the power of a witch when they have a goal they cannot attain by themselves and wish for a method to achieve it that goes beyond a normal person’s potential. You are a pragmatic adventurer. I doubt revenge was the first thought that sprang to mind.”
Revenge against Allen for not picking her; revenge against Krauna for stealing Allen. This was the assumption we had made because it was such an obvious motive and made sense when looking at the results.
“You became a witch in order to win Allen over. You wanted to overwrite his heart and make Allen yours, not Krauna’s. In other words,” Leen said, her spinning finger finally stopping as it pointed at Cormeca, “you tried to steal Allen’s heart, didn’t you, Cormeca?”
As everyone stood speechless, a memory came back to me. After our battle when we laid him to rest, I couldn’t help but notice: Allen’s chest had a huge hole where his heart should have been.
“Wait, no way... You’re kidding...”
I couldn’t stop the words from slipping out. Leen couldn’t be serious. This must’ve been a joke!
Leen had said this about demons: They were from a different world, so their value and moral system was fundamentally different from ours. It was extremely difficult to communicate with them; until you broke the taboo and offered up your purity to a demon, getting them to bond with you, it was difficult to tell a demon what you wanted.
When Cormeca told the demon that she wanted Allen’s heart, had they not stolen it in a metaphorical sense, but a literal one? Could something so ridiculous really happen...?
I heard the grating sound of Cormeca grinding her teeth. That was our answer.
“Having killed Allen, you realized that you had done something irreversible. With a hole in the chest, his corpse would have drawn suspicion. The destination was Leston, so if Allen never arrived, then someone from the village would have noticed something was wrong. That was when you came up with an idea.”
The power that had caused Allen’s heart to rot and could control fungi was the power to control the living dead.
“The target of Allen’s obsession was Krauna,” Leen went on. “Even as a living dead, you wouldn’t be able to control him. In that case...”
Cormeca had killed the one she loved more than anything and couldn’t turn the clock back. Even his corpse wouldn’t look back at her. At that point, she might as well kill them all. Allen was gone, so why not Krauna, everyone in Leston? She knew that there was already a quest to deal with a living dead. If she made it look like an accident, then no one would find out what she’d done. It was a truly pragmatic, adventurer-like decision.
“How long are you going to allow this slander?!” Cormeca yelled, cutting Leen off. Her words were directed at Ruvy. “My innocence has been proven. There was no stigma on me. That’s all you need! This witch trial is over.”
The special-class knight kept her hand on her sword as she appraised Cormeca with her ruby eyes. Cormeca flinched under her wilting gaze. After a few seconds, Ruvy shook her head, then turned her focus to Leen.
“What was your name?” Ruvy asked.
“Leen. Leen Stonabel.”
“Right...”
Ruvy unsheathed her slender sword and pointed it at Leen. If she wanted, she could slice off Leen’s head before she even had time to blink.
“If she is a witch...there should be a stigma...somewhere. I looked...and found...nothing,” Ruvy said.
“Are you confident that you didn’t overlook anything? You do realize she is an alchemist. She could have covered it up with an irremovable paint.”
Leen suggested the exact same possibility that I’d had and she’d denied. What a frustrating person she was.
Ruvy answered Leen’s question with an action. She snapped the fingers on her left hand and a ball of flame suddenly poofed into existence by her face.
“My Flarelifa can burn away...all impurities from the skin. You cannot game a witch trial...with such tricks.”
Flarelifa was a fire-based purification magic that could return an object to its natural state. Ruvy was a professional when it came to witch trials, so she would burn away any attempts to hide the truth.
“You’re saying you did a thorough check and concluded that there was no stigma, correct?” Leen asked.
“That’s...what I’m saying,” Ruvy replied.
The glaring match between the two of them continued. I couldn’t get involved or even put my own hand on my sword out of fear of sparking an altercation, so I stood frozen.
“However,” Ruvy continued, looking past her sword, “I haven’t yet heard...your answer. Why do you say...the glove was the victim’s?”
“Lady knight!” Cormeca yelled.
She wasn’t as relaxed as earlier. She was panicking, worried. Ruvy ignored her.
“Hakura Istilla,” she said.
“What.”
“You placed your life...on the scales. You gave up everything...for this girl’s answer. Am I...correct?”
If I were to choose whether this situation was good or bad, I’d pick the latter with no hesitation. But I was too deep in now, so I needed to see this through.
“Yeah. My life is in her hands,” I said, clarifying my position.
“Good. Then...Leen Stonabel,” the Scarlet Star said, looking at Leen. “Why do you say...that Mister Allen made that glove?”
“I told you! Because she’s been telling me!” Leen shouted.
Leen hit the carpet with her staff again with a loud thud. In the next instant, the gemstone of the staff emitted green particles that spread throughout the room.
“Cormeca, your biggest mistake was not finishing the job,” Leen said.
Suddenly a rattling sound filled the room as the old candlesticks, tables, and chairs started to shake.
“If you’d been able to form a pact with a higher rank demon...”
None of the windows were open, but a tepid wind started to blow through the chapel.
“...then you would have been able to capture a person’s soul.”
Leen struck her staff to the ground once more and the rattling suddenly stopped.
“Give it back...”
All of a sudden, another woman appeared in the air between Leen and Cormeca.
“That should have been given to me.”
Yes, she was floating. Her feet weren’t touching the floor...not that they would if she had any.
“Allen showed me so many times. He measured my hands, my fingers, and said that they would be ready soon...”
She glowed with a pale light, and I could see right through her. She didn’t have a physical body.
“You stole it. From Allen’s inner pocket. I saw you!”
Despite that, her face, expression, and emotion were evidently there.
Cormeca swallowed. Ruvy, too, was staring with wide eyes.
“Krau...na...?” Erifell said.
“Exactly. This is Krauna,” Leen explained, most likely for Ruvy’s benefit, as she didn’t know what Krauna looked like.
“Give it back! Give them back! Allen... Everyone in Leston... You killed them all, Cormeca!”
“She is the victim who lost her life at the hands of this witch.”
○
There is a creature known as a wraith.
While a living dead is naught but a moving corpse, a wraith is a corpse without a body. When a creature passes away and still harbors strong emotions, it bonds with the mana around it to form this type of evil spirit.
Normally, a wraith does not possess clear memories of when they were alive. In almost all cases, they don’t even retain the form they once had and instead appear as a pallid, glowing, human-shaped specter. Their regrets, lingering emotions, vengeance, or anger from their previous life spur them to indiscriminately attack people.
They are weak to sunlight, holy water, and hymns, and it is one job of the church to exorcise them. Without a solid form, neither swords nor magic are effective against them.
They can be categorized as monsters but also as a natural phenomenon. Where people died, wraiths would emerge. This was an unavoidable part of the natural cycle.
The fact that my lady could tame this wraith indicated that she still maintained a singular sense of self. One benefit, or perhaps one spark of hope, among the tragedy of Leston was the fact that despite turning into a living dead, Miss Krauna had still possessed her reason. Though she had accepted her death, the powerful regret and anger she still bore had turned her into a wraith.
Of course, the soul of a deceased person cannot linger in the world of the living without cost. I imagined that was why Miss Krauna had been floating around attached to my lady, haunting her, without any sense of who she actually was. It was thanks to the confrontation with her sworn enemy, the indictment, and my lady’s abilities that allowed her to temporarily bring her consciousness and memories back into this world.
In other words, this was an indictment from the deceased victim herself.
Miss Krauna slowly opened her eyes. Her gaze was strong, containing her sense of reason. Her denunciation was about to begin.