Subject 17
Coming to the Demon World Forest through Adrina's ring had been, to put it bluntly, little more than a gamble.
I'd heard from the weirdo that warp markers couldn't be planted in too many places to begin with, and the bastards had already said they planned to assault the Demon World Forest.
I'd wondered whether the warp might not even lead straight there. The result was a jackpot.
The Great Witch had sensed someone warping into the Demon World Forest; once I got the direction from her, I headed straight over.
"How the hell is that guy here?"
"Kill him first! We can't let him know we're here!"
A few members who'd never faced me before charged straight in. The woman named Horan hurriedly stretched out a hand to stop them, but it was already too late.
"Giant Golem and Yaksha Boar, huh?"
They came at me bearing the traits of the magic beasts that lived in the Demon World Forest, but it was like solving an exam with the answer key already in hand. I drove my sword into their throats with ease.
"......!"
Silence.
Watching two of their own die in an instant, they wore expressions of pure shock.
In outfits like this, the ones who charge first are usually the ones confident in their own skill. Those two had died without even managing a single act of resistance.
I swung my blade to fling off their blood and advanced on the rest.
"Everyone, run!"
The leader's shout. Horan hoisted him onto her back and twisted away at once, but the other members were still reeling in confusion.
"Don't take your eyes off me."
In the middle of it, another one. I leapt onto the back of a woman with magic-beast legs who looked like she'd be a real nuisance if she got away, and drove my blade home.
Only then did the Dogfight members grasp the situation and start fleeing blindly.
I drew a deep breath.
The thick, sticky air of the Demon World Forest filled my nose. Someone once said that no matter how long you stayed here, you could never get used to this unique atmosphere.
But to me, this place was more familiar than anywhere else.
In a forest—especially if that forest was the most infamous on the continent, the one they called hell itself, the Demon World Forest—there was no one who could escape me here.
"Leader......"
Horan bit her lip hard and called out to him in a crushed voice. Even at her call, the leader couldn't manage a single word.
In the ears of the two who had fled first, the screams of countless members kept echoing at intervals, carried through the trees.
He was killing off the members he had so painstakingly gathered, toppling them like dominos.
"Moving like that even in the Demon World Forest..."
A hollow laugh now slipped from the leader's lips.
Choosing to flee despite their numerical advantage had been the obvious call. This was the Demon World Forest—a bizarre maze of a place that completely disregarded individual strength.
They were only at the entrance, but he'd thought their side was more familiar with the forest. So he'd judged escape would be easy.
"A miscalculation."
Completely wrong. That boy was somehow flying around even more freely in the Demon World Forest, slaughtering them.
It felt like becoming a beast hunted by a hunter.
Death roaming hell at will.
Thinking that, the leader let out a hollow laugh and asked Horan to set him down.
"Horan, you run."
"Leader?"
"Even without Dogfight, you have somewhere to go. Head there."
"B-but Leader!"
Horan called out as if pleading, but the leader spoke firmly.
"You've done well all this time."
He knew she had followed him purely out of affection. He had easily used that affection to manipulate Horan.
"To be honest, I've never loved you even once."
"......!"
"I was born in a place like that, you see."
The leader spoke emptily. Even after saying this, when Horan refused to leave, he pushed her away with magic.
With Horan's physical abilities, she should be able to escape easily while he bought time.
Gathering his mana and waiting for death, the leader saw a girl fall from a tree as she approached this way.
"Ghk, ghhh!"
Hare, who had infiltrated Aeos Academy. If only he'd known a little earlier that her best friend, the girl named Rin, was the Earliest Apocalypse...
Would this tragedy have been avoided?
Regretting this and that was useless now.
The moment Hare saw the leader, she reached out begging to be saved, but already a sword was plunging into her back; she coughed blood and shed tears.
But contrary to her moistening eyes, her pupils were losing their light.
"Forty-two."
The number who had warped this time totaled forty-four.
In other words, except for the leader and Horan, everyone was now dead.
Daniel McLane, his entire body painted in bright red blood, stared at the leader with an expressionless face.
Faced with his cruel, merciless methods that one never saw at the academy, the leader couldn't help but tense up again.
Was there anyone who wouldn't tremble seeing him like this now?
"Missed one."
"Hah."
Wondering if Horan had already left the forest, yet baffled at how a swordsman like him could sense even that.
"But it's fine since I have the most important one—you."
"I won't beg for my life or anything."
"Even if you begged, I wouldn't spare you."
At the firm answer, the leader's mana began to surge. Seeing that Daniel McLane wasn't using mana, he must not be able to handle it properly.
He tried to find the key to victory there, but suddenly the mana was surging uncontrollably.
"What... is this..."
He couldn't exert such fierce force alone. Nor was the boy in front causing this.
Feeling all the nearby mana departing as if not allowing even a handful, the leader could only laugh hollowly.
"Those damn witch bitches."
True to the name of witches, the witches appeared one after another riding their staffs, surrounding the leader in a circle.
And walking out from behind Daniel came the Great Witch and Adrina, who had given him the ring that called him here.
"Heh heh, so you've come to kill me, you wretched worm bitches living so pitifully."
"Witches of the forest, punish that man who has insulted us."
At the Great Witch's single word, the witches immediately began gathering mana. They tried to fire magic to kill the leader as quickly as possible, but—
"If you cast magic right now, that bitch dies."
My voice rang through the forest. The witches flinched in surprise and glared at me.
Among them, one witch who didn't believe my words and hurriedly tried to shoot magic at the leader—
"Kyaaaaah!"
She shed tears looking at the tree branch that had pierced through her palm and lodged there.
Some of the trees in the Demon World Forest boasted strength similar to steel, so they could be used this way.
"I told you—move even a little without my permission here and you die. That was a warning just now."
I tapped my temple with a finger as I spoke.
"Next time, it's here."
The crying witch. Since I'd forbidden the use of magic itself, she couldn't even use healing magic; she just bit her lip hard and sat down staring at me.
"Dogfight, you clearly told me. That you'd seen the scene created by the 'Earliest Apocalypse'."
At my words, the leader slowly nodded.
"Yeah, I saw it clearly with these two eyes."
Something was off. How on earth had he been able to see that?
I'd wondered if he too was a regressor like me, but the possibility seemed slim.
He said he 'saw' it.
Not that he'd 'experienced' it like me, but 'saw'. The chance he was a regressor was none; rather, the thought that he'd seen the 'future' was correct.
And there was only one group I knew who could see the future.
The witches of the Black Forest.
"What relation do you have with the witches?"
At my words, the surrounding witches flinched in surprise. Only Adrina and the still-young witches wore expressions of not understanding what I meant.
The leader seemed pleased with the witches' reaction, chuckling as he spoke the truth.
"Subject 17. That was the name those witches called me by."
"......"
"The reason I couldn't become their breeding stock even as a man was because if someone of the same blood gave birth, there was a chance of deformity."
Adrina had once told me how the witches' village was maintained.
They brought a man once every half-century so the village could continue.
Then what happened to the man after his use was done?
And if a boy was born among the children conceived?
All those answers were right there in that man.
"I heard he was the Great Witch's son. That damn bitch gave birth even at that age."
"......"
The Great Witch stared at the man without any change in expression.
"You let your guard down because men can't handle your magic, right? You damn bitches. But what to do? I must have been a deformity. Seeing as I could use your magic even as a man."
The leader snickered as he mocked the witches.
"That night I fled from you bitches wearing human skins. As I escaped the forest, I saw the future. It was the foresight that was a characteristic of witches, as you said."
This time even the witches couldn't help but be surprised. It was like the atmosphere of raised livestock seeing the foresight that only a tiny minority of witches could see.
"The world will be destroyed! In ten years, countless deaths will cover the earth! It was unfair! Unfair and so unfair!"
The man poured out his feelings as if coughing blood.
"I finally survived! I escaped from those crazy bitches! But the time left to me was only ten years!"
And so the man struggled, and struggled again.
He used every means to survive.
The conclusion of all those acts was now.
The man slowly looked over his hands dirtied from thrashing through the forest, and the witches, then wore a self-deprecating smile.
He already knew, but as if confirming the truth once more, despair mixed into one side of his smile.
"In the end, I too became the same kind of person as those bitches."
The leader—no.
From Subject 17's eyes, thick teardrops rolled down his cheeks.