Survival of the Fittest (4)
A month had already passed since she'd started traveling with the child she'd found in the no-man's-land between the trenches of Verdun.
She'd learned quite a lot in that time. Where the child came from, how old she was, where her family was, how she'd ended up enlisting in the army at such a young age — all of it.
The most interesting stories had been about her family, of course. People always envied what they themselves lacked, and craved it too.
'Crave... is that the right word?'
Envy was accurate enough. She had no reason or need to deny that much.
But whether she craved it to the point of obsession... well, she wasn't sure about that yet. She'd managed to live quite well without others up until now.
Just then, a man collapsed weakly before Elze's eyes. A human who, on the brink of death, had his soul drained by the witch and finally met his end.
Elze silently looked at the child standing beside her. She wondered what the girl thought of her.
"Um... is there something on my face...?"
The witch slowly shook her head.
"...Nothing. Let's keep moving."
"Yes, ma'am. Another day begins, I suppose."
The girl had no real choice in the matter. Elze held the power of life and death over her, so the only thing she could do was go when told to go and stop when told to stop.
From Elze's perspective, she couldn't help but think this was a strange child.
Even if she was on a leash, you'd think she might resist being dragged through the trenches for a whole month against her will.
But contrary to Elze's initial expectations, the girl had approached her with surprising friendliness — a truly incomprehensible child.
Not that the girl could escape anywhere at this point, of course.
She might be able to figure out which direction was west, where the French forces had regrouped, by watching the sun rise and set—
'With a single Berthier rifle that's almost out of bullets, she's going to break through this no-man's-land alone?'
—She wasn't a mage. For an ordinary human, it was impossible. She'd be far more likely to step on a landmine and die halfway through.
So Elze asked casually.
"Are you not afraid of me?"
"I'd be lying if I said no, but it's not like I can do anything about it, right? So I might as well focus on staying on the witch's good side."
"..."
The girl had a good head on her shoulders. And since she wasn't wrong, Elze couldn't really argue.
Elze Constanze harvested the souls of soldiers while the child clung to her like a burr, and inwardly, she let out a sigh.
'I need to decide what to do with her soon...'
Whether you called it a deviation, entertainment, or amusement, the time for playing around was just about over.
The soldiers that had been everywhere in Verdun now seemed to be quietly withdrawing to their respective camps.
The proof was that the number of souls harvested had noticeably decreased since last week, compared to the time invested.
And now the year had changed to 1917. It was about time she started thinking about going back.
So it was time to decide on the disposition. The girl had witnessed the reality of magic up close without being a mage herself, so there were only two options:
Kill her to seal her mouth, or dip her feet deeper into magic so she couldn't pull them out.
The former was simpler. If she became just another cog in the machine of human madness that had poured out of Verdun, who would ever know?
The current of history was so fierce that a single private who died in Verdun would be quickly forgotten.
'But still...'
The witch felt an inexplicable hesitation. It was the simplest method, but killing a human who had approached her so harmlessly and without reserve... that felt a bit wrong somehow.
This was truly a concern she had never once had before.
That made sense — aside from her younger sister, who carried the same blood curse, not a single person had ever crossed into her territory before.
Elze Constanze instinctively felt fear. Because the speed at which the girl was harmlessly breaking down the barriers she had built up was far too fast.
'I should have just ground up her soul when we first met...'
Nothing would change if she changed her mind now, but the witch found herself losing sleep over this dilemma every day.
She had even considered bringing the girl all the way to Königsberg. If she used the Charm granted by the curse bound to her bloodline, bringing her along wouldn't be difficult.
These past few weeks, filled with such worries, had been surprising even for Elze Constanze herself.
While carrying around the child who clung to her like that every day, she'd suddenly wonder if she had always been this sentimental.
Sometimes, she thought she half-understood — not fully, just half — what the elders of her clan felt when they gambled on a fifty-fifty chance.
***
While Elze was agonizing like this, fate created an event that would put an end to her worries.
"Germans ahead. About... ten of them, I'd say."
Had there been German soldiers left in Verdun who hadn't retreated yet? The souls she'd been encountering lately were mostly French.
They were probably stragglers. Elze confirmed through a pair of binoculars she'd taken from a corpse that the German soldiers' gear was shabby.
Ten souls would be enough to feast on. Elze slowly approached them with the child.
As they walked, the child whispered.
"Um... Miss Witch? I think those people have carrier pigeons. And I think they've already spotted us too."
"Carrier pigeons? Are there German troops gathered nearby?"
That was strange. The ten-month-long battle had ended with Germany's defeat, and France had managed to hold Verdun.
"Shouldn't we be careful? I don't know all of your magic, but... couldn't you shoot that pigeon down from this distance?"
"A kilometer or more? I could do it, but it would take some effort."
"What if the message tied to that pigeon's leg says something like 'French stragglers spotted. Requesting artillery fire'?"
"Nothing to worry about. I'm here."
Despite the child's concerns, Elze didn't particularly care if artillery fire came raining down.
The margin of error for shells was still large, so she could easily avoid them by slightly twisting their trajectories with telekinesis.
How many times had Elze experienced such situations while wandering through Verdun?
If that happened again, Elze would simply block the shells gracefully and then harvest the souls of the German soldiers who dared to attack her without hesitation.
"Such confidence! Or no... is it that your skills back it up, Miss Witch?"
"You probably don't know because I'm the only mage you've ever seen, but someone of my caliber would rank in the top ten in all of Europe."
"Really? Top ten?"
"Mages don't all know each other, but I'd say about that. The distant East and African colonies are too primitive, so I'm excluding them, and the New World is busy playing among themselves, so I'm excluding them too."
She had casually disparaged Asia and Africa, but neither of them pointed it out. This was normal in the early 20th century.
The encounter with the German soldiers came soon enough. Not right in front of them, but a few hundred meters away.
"...Frog?"
"Frog" was one of the slurs Germans used for the French. Since Elze nominally held German citizenship and spoke German as her mother tongue, she couldn't possibly miss it.
They were running toward her, each clutching their rifles. Given the relationship between the Entente and the Central Powers, there was no mistaking their purpose.
Hah. She had thought she'd just be harvesting souls unilaterally, but now she'd have to use more power.
Elze spoke in a dry, commanding tone.
"Hide behind me for a moment."
She didn't wait for an answer. The child was good at following orders, so she'd hide on her own.
The witch immediately released part of the seals she had placed on her heart. The seals that divided her powers, including Charm, into eight parts.
Elze's unique magic tended to manifest through chains as a medium.
The silver chains she conjured in her mindscape took on a semi-physical form and materialized in reality.
Each chain contained a variety of different spells. Telekinesis, flames that burned souls, crackling lightning strikes.
The number and types of usable spells were many, and Elze faithfully assigned the role of medium to these chains, imbuing each with her powers.
Chains surged up from the deeply dug ground of the Western Front in Verdun.
Originally silver, the chains had absorbed human blood and been frozen solid by the winter weather, so they were covered in blackened soil, making them appear pitch black.
If they had only contained magical power, they would have shone brilliantly silver regardless of Verdun's soil quality, but being semi-physical meant exactly this.
Of course, there were advantages too. Even without imbuing the chains with additional magic, the fact that the manifested mindscape itself possessed some physical force was an advantage.
She could simply use the chains as mass projectiles. As long as they were within the range of Elze's magic, they became long-range weapons that could extend to any desired thickness and length.
The German soldiers who had charged out upon seeing the French tricolor patch on the child's uniform were pierced by the chains one by one.
The thickness and length of the chains were more than enough to shatter a human's chest cavity and impale them like skewers.
Humans dangled from the chains suspended in the sky. As Elze's mindscape partially merged with reality, the winter sky of Verdun began to turn gray.
That wasn't all. The ice that had been frozen solid in the trenches began to melt on its own, and water started to pool, just deep enough to barely cover the ankles.
As if evoking the River Styx, the water was so black it looked like a viscous slime rather than water.
As the seals on Elze Constanze's powers — normally divided into eight parts with only two in use — were released, the chains hanging in the sky began to change one by one.
The chains that had pierced the German soldiers were directly connected to their owner, serving as channels for manifesting magic. In other words, souls could also travel through the chains.
The change occurred in the leftover corpses after the souls had been absorbed. As if gas were being pumped in, the corpses began to expand and ball up into spheres.
To someone without knowledge of magic, these spherical objects skewered on the chains would surely be called "eyes."
But the reality was that through the corpses, Elze was gradually releasing the powers she had sealed away.
The reason Elze was preparing for battle even after killing all the German soldiers who had been running toward her and absorbing their souls was that various small fry, having heard the sounds of combat, were starting to emerge from all directions.
They were nowhere to be seen when she was looking for them, but they'd been hiding deep in the trenches all along?
Not that they were anything but defeated soldiers, but there were quite a few of them.
Perfect timing. There hadn't been much magical stimulation lately, so she might as well warm up, feast on souls one last time, and return to Königsberg.
Come at me all at once. I'll take your lives and your souls all at once.
Elze conjured a scythe before her eyes, manifesting her mindscape. This too was half-physical and half-magical in nature.
Having thus finished her preparations for warming up, Elze Constanze looked like a figure deserving of the title "Grim Reaper."
Only in the eyes of humans who had souls, that is. If viewed through mechanical devices like cameras, today's Verdun looked exactly the same as yesterday's or tomorrow's.