Chapter 104: Awakening
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 104: Awakening
“Teacher—! Wh-what…?”
Yohan stared at the thing that had flown into his stomach and embedded itself there. It was a cookie. The source of the smell that had wafted through the city since he’d arrived. A pastry the size of a human arm had just pierced his abdomen.
It was obviously a magical creation, but just as he'd failed to nullify Hekaterina's magic before, Yohan's power couldn't just erase everything as if it never happened.
Even if he could nullify the magic, he couldn't erase the wound it had inflicted.
‘Ah, fuck…’
Yohan's gaze turned to Evangeline. Her face was contorting in horror. It meant she was the one who had blocked the attack, and he could easily predict the crushing guilt she would suffer.
She was already emotionally unstable from not being able to see him. If she realized she had just put a hole in her own disciple's stomach with her own hands—Evangeline might truly lose her mind.
‘No, not that…’
No one could stop his teacher if she went mad. She would become an incarnation of irreversible destruction, and the world would turn into a sea of fire and ruin.
Someone had to stop her. As he fell, Yohan looked at Beatrice, who was beside him. He hoped that she, at least, could stop Evangeline.
But Beatrice's face was also filled with shock and horror.
‘Ah, she’s no good either.’
With that thought, Yohan closed his eyes, praying he wouldn't wake up on a ruined planet.
“Y-Yohan?”
Evangeline began to tremble as she saw Yohan, who had been walking toward her from a distance, get hit by the ricochet. Her mind couldn't properly process what she had just done.
The witch before her had launched an attack. Not wanting to waste her strength, she had simply deflected it. And the witch's magic she’d deflected had flown straight to Yohan…
“N-No, right? Yohan? C-Come on, stop joking and get up…”
Clutching her trembling legs, Evangeline slowly made her way toward Yohan. The witch watching her, Azmona, immediately stepped in to block her path.
“Wait, where do you think you’re going? You’re fighting me right now—.”
“Move.”
“Kyaaah—!?”
Azmona, who had blocked the way, felt an unknown force drag her away and throw her into a distant building.
She had survived without serious injury by momentarily transforming the building into a very weak cookie, but—being ignored like this didn't feel good at all.
“She hurts countless people herself, but she’s making such a fuss over a single human getting injured?”
With that thought, Azmona climbed onto the rubble of the collapsed cookie-building. From up there, she could see more clearly who Evangeline was heading toward.
An ordinary-looking man. His stomach had been pierced by the cookie she had fired. To be precise, Evangeline had deflected the cookie she’d launched, so she hadn't shot him directly, but…
“This wouldn't have happened if you'd just let yourself get hit.”
Azmona’s eyes glanced into the distance. The police should have been controlling the area to keep people away, but onlookers were slowly starting to gather, one by one.
They were holding cameras. She scowled and glared at the spectators.
“What are the police doing?”
Glancing at Evangeline, Azmona realized this was her chance. A moment when her guard was down.
Like the skilled witch she was, she did not miss the opportunity. Using the onlookers who had drawn near as sacrifices, she created dozens, hundreds of human cookies.
“Sorry, but it’s your fault for coming here.”
If left alone, that witch was a being who would destroy the Empire. For the sake of the Empire, which could be home to tens of millions, perhaps billions in the future, the sacrifice of a few dozen or a few hundred was something she could overlook.
The cookie people she created targeted Evangeline and those near her.
It was her ultimate secret technique, turning everything it touched into the same kind of cookie. But the cookie people never reached Evangeline or the others.
“…What?”
The movements of all the cookie people in the vicinity stopped. Azmona sensed something was wrong and tried to leave.
But her body, too, was suddenly immobile. Only her eyes, having lost none of their control, darted around. Azmona’s gaze fell upon a red-haired girl.
From the girl’s body, tens of thousands of threads were bursting forth.
When Yohan collapsed with a hole in his stomach—the despair felt not only by Evangeline, the one who caused it, but also by Beatrice, who stood beside him, was beyond words.
It would have been better if it were like that time he was kidnapped by the unknown monster. He was covered in blood then, but he hadn't been seriously hurt.
This was different.
“Y-Yohan—Yohan…?”
Blood was flowing. Drip, drip. The cookie piercing Yohan’s stomach continued to absorb his blood. The blood it couldn't absorb spilled onto the ground as if it were being vomited up.
Watching Yohan’s face turn pale in an instant, the first word that came to mind was death. She could feel death.
To her, Yohan was more than just a friend. He was more than the family that had given birth to her. He was her only confidant in the entire world.
“Get, up. Please…? I-I won’t be a picky eater anymore… hic, I won’t bother you, asking for hugs….”
The bond connecting her to the world snapped.
Evangeline arrived a moment later, but Beatrice didn't even see her.
In that moment, a barrier was rising in Beatrice's mind, cutting her off from the world.
The one person who had broken through her curse of only being able to talk to dolls, her only confidant, had fallen. In that instant, everything in the world became nothing more than a doll to Beatrice.
‘Ah, I see—.’
Her despair, reaching its peak, dragged her down to the very bottom of the world. There, Beatrice realized one thing.
Everyone except for me and Yohan is no different from a doll—.
So there's no reason I can't control them.
Immediately, thin threads of magic power shot out from the Doll Witch’s body. The threads shot toward Evangeline, toward Linne, toward the nameless witch, and toward countless other people.
Awakening.
Emotions pushed to their limit can elevate a witch to a higher state.
Beatrice had awakened. Her red eyes blazed.
“Ghh, ghk—guuuh—!”
In the distance, the witch who had hurt Yohan was groaning, struggling to break free from her restraints. But it was useless.
That witch was a doll, and a doll could not escape her grasp.
Whoosh—With a light wave of her hand, Azmona’s body began to twist haphazardly, like a ballerina doll.
“Guaaah—ghk—guuk, gack—!”
Crack, snap—crunch—!
Her joints bent at impossible angles, and in an instant, Azmona's body became like that of a mollusk before she passed out from the pain.
After tossing the unconscious Azmona aside, Beatrice looked at the people who had been turned into cookies.
The cookie people, turned into pastries by Azmona’s magic. No, dolls.
She overlaid her magic onto the dolls. Then, in the reverse order of the senses she used to turn dolls into living things, she turned the cookie dolls back into humans.
“Wh-what!? Just now!”
“What is this… I thought I was dead…”
As the magic on the people was released and the cookie people returned to their original forms one by one, Beatrice lost focus and collapsed.
Thud—Linne caught her as she fell, trembling as she looked back and forth between Beatrice, Evangeline, and the fallen Yohan.
“…You.”
“Y-Yeees…!”
“Get over here and fix this. You can fix it, right? You regenerated his nose just fine last time.”
“I’ll, I’ll try…”
Following Evangeline’s command, Linne rushed over and looked at Yohan’s stomach. A giant cookie of a difficult-to-remove size was lodged there, but Evangeline pulled it out in an instant.
As the cookie came out of Yohan’s abdomen, Linne’s magic power poured into the empty space. First the organs, then the blood…
The things most essential for a human to sustain life were generated by Linne’s magic, and the color began to return to Yohan’s face.
“Yohan…!”
Seeing this, Evangeline let out a sigh of relief. She decided not to ask why the two of them had come with Yohan.
That wasn't what was important right now.
Glancing up, Evangeline noticed the citizens of the Empire staring at them, and the cameras filming the scene.
‘Hiding this is going to be a headache.’
Offering a silent prayer for the soul of the Empire's emperor, who would have to deal with the aftermath, Evangeline took Yohan, Beatrice, and Linne and flew up into the sky.
The image of them ascending into the air adorned the front page of the Imperial newspaper that day.