The Witch's Last Breath
I approached the hut where the witch lived. I walked with a swagger, my stride intentionally unrefined and barbaric. By now, the disciplined, measured gait ingrained in me as the son of a Margrave had become so second-nature that forcing myself to walk like a savage felt like a chore. But it wasn't impossible; I hunched my shoulders and trudged forward.
I arrived at the door. Perhaps because it was a witch’s hut, it gave off an unnecessarily damp and gloomy vibe. Mimicking the impatient nature of a barbarian, I raised my foot and kicked the door with all my might.
BOOM! A dull, heavy thud echoed out, but the wooden door—likely crafted from a giant tree saturated with mana—remained completely unscathed. "Sturdy thing." I felt a hard, heavy recoil vibrating up from the tip of my toe. Since this forest had a significantly higher concentration of mana than other regions, it seemed even the trees had grown abnormally dense. On top of that, the air here was thick with mana tainted by the witch's curse; the entire ecosystem was likely grotesquely polluted.
"It’s like nuclear waste." The witch's mana was that unpleasant and sticky. If normal mana was like clear spring water, the air here felt like dipping my feet into a sewer pit clogged with grease.
Feeling the murky energy stinging my nose, I channeled mana into my foot once more. Just as I was about to kick the door again, it slowly creaked open. The witch who revealed herself was unexpectedly normal. No, "normal" was an understatement—she was a beauty.
Seeing her face, a thought suddenly struck me. "The webtoon comments were full of people complaining about why the author drew the witch so pretty." It was as if the readers, overly immersed in the protagonist, were throwing jealous tantrums. But among those comments, there was a thick layer of malice that went beyond simple matters of taste. It was a strange, petty jealousy, as if they were attacking her all the more relentlessly precisely because she was a "pretty character."
"They're huge..." They were the size of two watermelons. I hadn't paid much attention when watching the webtoon, but seeing them in person, my eyes were inevitably drawn to them. Only after facing the real thing did I somewhat understand why those comments were written. The female readers hated a female character who possessed a charm different from the protagonist. To those who had come imagining the form of an old hag casting curses, her unnaturally radiant appearance felt like a deception in itself.
But I knew the essence of the "nuclear waste" mana hidden beneath that shell. No matter how beautiful her exterior, the malice she spewed was never beautiful. Besides, that was just youth maintained through Black Magic. She had uglily refused to age. I wasn't sure exactly what kind of black magic it was, but following the clichés of various novels, I suspected she had been sacrificing young women.
"Even if I'm wrong, she's likely worse, not better." I wasn't so obsessed with women that I’d forget my duty just because I saw something as big as a watermelon. Besides, it was a poisoned apple. "I'd have to be insane to..."
The witch parted her red lips and began to scold me. Her shrill voice shattered the silence of the hut, and I pulled my fur hat low, meeting her gaze head-on.
"Why are you so late! You people, really. You never keep your word!"
The witch was pretending to be a young woman despite being well over a hundred years old. If I hadn't known her true nature, it would have been a performance convincing enough to fool anyone. "Is it even a performance?" How could I understand the thoughts of a lunatic? I simply stared at her.
'Should I attack now?' No, not yet. We were face-to-face, and she hadn't completely let her guard down. It was the nature of barbarians. They just charged in when they were angry. That was why the witch was speaking sharply while remaining vigilant.
"Hmph, we are not your servants, woman." I replied in the barbarian tongue, just as she had.
"Such attitude. This is why barbarians are a problem. Though, the goods are quite good." The witch licked her lips as she said that. 'Barbarian goods?' Was there something so valuable that even a witch would covet it? Was that why she continued to trade with the barbarians? I just gave a small nod.
"Come in." The witch guided me inside. I decided to follow. In the webtoon, the inside hadn't been a threat. It was just like a workshop for researching black magic or curses. That was why I had followed her into a place that looked dangerous.
Unlike the exterior, the inside of the hut was cozier than I expected. The witch stopped, and I stood behind her.
"You only sent one today?" At her low words, I hesitated for a split second. 'Is she suspicious?' I kept my composure and opened my mouth.
"So what?" I spat out, deepening my voice to sound like a foul-tempered barbarian who didn't care what she thought.
"How cute." It felt like our conversation wasn't clicking. I must have looked every bit the barbarian, so what on earth was cute about me? I couldn't understand it at all. 'Is the witch a fanatical lover of atrocious barbarians? That doesn't make sense, she used them as test subjects.'
I stopped trying to understand the lunatic's way of thinking and prepared myself silently. Now seemed perfect. Since we were inside the hut—her own domain—her wariness had visibly softened. Most importantly, the decisive opportunity was the fact that she had her back turned to me. It was the perfect time for a surprise attack.
I let my gaze, hidden beneath the fur hat, sharpen and clenched my fist. My sword was obviously a high-quality item, so I had left it with Kalia to avoid drawing attention. I approached the witch cautiously, suppressing my presence. I focused all my attention on my stealthy footwork so the old wooden floor wouldn't scream under my weight. I locked my very breath deep in my lungs, one step, then another.
Just as I drew near, the witch's clothes fell limply to the floor.
"???" I was stunned by the sudden sight, my mind freezing as I stared blankly at the clothes falling through the air. It was an absurd situation that made my resolve to risk a surprise attack feel pointless. There was nothing inside the clothes. It was literal. While the outer garments fell miserably to the floor, there wasn't a trace of underwear to be found. The witch wasn't wearing any.
Only then did I recall the fundamental reason why our conversation had felt so strangely disconnected. "You only sent one today?" That thing the witch had said. I had only thought she was suspicious... I hadn't realized it had that kind of meaning. No, that wasn't it. I had been dumbfounded by the unexpected situation, but thinking about it again, this was the golden opportunity.
The sight of her naked back, shed like a molted skin, burned into my vision. I had hesitated in my bewilderment, but I stopped trying to make sense of this insane situation. Whether the sight before me was a temptation or a bizarre trick didn't matter. The only certainty was that this moment was her most defenseless opening.
I channeled mana into my fist and thrust it straight toward her chest area.
THUD!
I gathered mana at the tip of my punch and struck her back directly. The sensation against her skin was unpleasantly cold. It felt like hitting a well-made doll rather than a human, an eerie sensation that traveled up the back of my hand.
"Gah...!" A short-lived scream tore through the hut.
"Wh, at..." The witch turned her head toward me. Her eyes were filled with shock. Instead of speaking, I took off my hat with a relaxed hand and revealed my face.
"Not a barbarian...? How..."
I grabbed the witch's heart and squeezed. I crushed the bizarre beating and the slimy resistance of her mana with brute force. With a sickening crunch, her heart burst, and a mouthful of dark red blood erupted from her lips.
"Ca... ssian... Valenvalt!!"
The witch spat out my name. And in a voice filled with deep resentment and shock. I didn't withdraw the hand that had crushed her heart, looking down at her with coldly sunken eyes.
"Do you know me?"
The witch didn't answer. No, she wasn't in a state to answer. Her life force was rapidly draining away through her mangled heart. Clearly, at this point in time, Cassian was merely the heir to the Valenvalt Estate; it wasn't a time when I would have been widely known to the public. Yet, this witch acted as if she had known me for a long time.
'Is she more deeply entangled than the webtoon setting?' I hadn't expected an answer, but I had no choice but to ask. "Was the Wyvern also the work of your Order of Order?"
The witch didn't answer. She only laughed like a lunatic with a tearing sound.
"Hahahahaha!"
The laughter, filled with madness, echoed grotesquely inside the narrow hut. Thinking she might have completely lost her mind, I pulled my hand out of her torso to deliver a finishing blow. A thick liquid, a mixture of blood and mana, soaked the floor. I raised my hand high to end her life completely.
"Un, finished... curse... move... Yura-yura."
The witch muttered, gasping for her final breath. 'What is this? A spell?' Instinctively sensing danger, I braced myself with mana, preparing for something to explode. But to my surprise, the witch vomited one more mouthful of blood and collapsed to the floor.
"Ugh..."
Silence fell. I slowly lowered my raised hand and approached the witch, who had collapsed without a twitch. 'Is she dead?' I didn't know what she intended with that bizarre spell she had whispered at the end, but her life force was already gone. Purple mana, like nuclear waste, scattered like mist around her cooling corpse. But a corner of my heart felt uneasy.
'Yura-yura,' she had said. At first glance, it sounded like the babbling of a senile old woman, but for a witch facing death, it was no different from a last will and testament, squeezed out with her final drop of life force.
'A curse? What on earth is it?' Just as I felt doubt about the identity of that strange spell—
RUMBLE—!
The floor beneath the hut began to shake violently. It wasn't a simple earthquake. 'A cry?' The vibration transmitted through the soles of my feet was a turbulence, as if some massive living creature was waking from its slumber and writhing.