Dining with a Witch
Lucia tilted her head at the boy with the grave expression.
Witch. Penalty points. Oath. Forbidden arts.
She knew every one of those words, yet she still found it hard to follow the thread of the conversation. Penalty points she could let slide, but the other three were hardly the kind of vocabulary you used every day.
Shiron had said the woman in the armor was a witch. That much she understood. Talk of binding an oath to one's heart wasn't something you bandied about in front of strangers, after all.
But penalty points? That part felt oddly out of place.
"Did I do something wrong? What's this about penalty points?"
Lucia asked Shiron in a small voice.
"Remember what I told you last time? That if you want to meet an angel, you have to live a good life."
"...I think so."
Lucia gave a slight nod.
Watching her, Shiron pressed a finger firmly against his lips. From here on, he needed to choose his words carefully.
Lucia was wary of the Holy Sword and had no desire to become a hero. That fact made it hard for Shiron to bring Latera's existence to the forefront.
He rubbed his slightly warm forehead and lifted his gaze.
"The angel said that if you do bad things and rack up penalty points, you can't meet her."
"...So talking a little with that witch person got me penalty points?"
Lucia muttered, a touch of complaint in her voice.
When you said "bad things," didn't that mean hitting kids, or stealing someone else's things?
"Of course you didn't do anything wrong yourself. But the act of talking with a witch is never going to look good, no matter how you spin it."
There were people in the world who, even when you hadn't done anything wrong, started with suspicion and shot you hostile looks.
And now that the game had become reality and so many restrictions had come off, you couldn't ignore the way NPC interactions could ripple outward just as they did in real life.
"He's right."
Yohan, who had been listening quietly, nodded.
"If the woman you two met truly is a witch, and that fact spreads through the public, then one day, young miss, you may find yourself facing the Holy Mace Knights under unfortunate circumstances."
The Holy Mace Knights were the Holy See's armed force, roaming the continent to stamp out anything unholy.
"Were they here?"
"Yes. Men in white heavy armor who carry maces instead of swords are easy to spot even from a distance."
"...Am I in serious trouble?"
Lucia thought of the man who had been at the lookout a short while ago.
The man in white heavy armor had been staring at her quite openly.
"Don't worry too much. Fortunately, the place where they're lodging is quite far from the hut we've taken."
Seeing the unease on Lucia's face, Yohan put on a deliberately hearty laugh to reassure her.
"Besides, that's why the knights and I came along, isn't it? If anyone picks a fight, I'll step in myself and drive them off."
"...Thank you."
Lucia dipped her head slightly toward Yohan.
His scarred, resolute face looked a little frightening in the firelight rising from below.
In her past life, Lucia had met countless witches.
As allies, and as enemies—but Kylie had always felt that the people called witches shared almost nothing in common, nothing you could gather under a single name.
They defied any clean definition.
Demons meant intelligent beings who possessed demonic energy.
But witches? Some of them carried demonic energy, and some of them didn't.
In the end, there was only one way to tell them apart.
Forbidden arts.
Seira had said that magic was taking the laws of the world in hand and shaking them, with mana as the price. Forbidden arts, by contrast, did not use mana at all.
They were not magic wreathed in sinister energy, nor were they curses or shamanism.
Even if you cursed someone or killed them, so long as you used only mana, it was classified, plain and simple, as magic.
If you had to burn a human life just to produce a single handful of light—that was a forbidden art.
Offering someone's life or body as a sacrifice to get what you wanted: that was a forbidden art.
For that reason, people had hated and feared those who practiced forbidden arts since ancient times.
It had been no different five hundred years ago.
Even when practitioners of forbidden arts stood on their side, the looks of loathing and contempt never left them.
Wasn't that only natural?
Witness a witch use a forbidden art even once, and the thought would take root that you yourself could become a sacrifice at any moment.
"..."
Kylie had been no exception.
"..."
But that woman told me it was dangerous for kids to be left alone.
"..."
Then who put Shiron to sleep? She said she was trying to protect us from that person...
"Lucia."
Was even that a lie?
"Lucia."
It's unsettling.
"Hey!"
"...Huh? Yeah?"
Startled out of her thoughts, Lucia jerked her head up.
Shiron stood there with a ladle and a wooden bowl in his hands, looking at her. His face as he watched her was blank.
"What are you doing? Hurry up and take the bowl."
"Th-thanks."
Lucia hastily accepted the wooden bowl.
It was still early for dinner, but Shiron had taken it on himself to set a pot over the firewood.
Lucia stared absently at the white stew ladled into the wooden bowl.
Perhaps because the place was different, the contents weren't the same as the stew she'd eaten at the annex.
Carrot, potato, okra, onion.
With nothing but vegetables in it, Lucia found she had no appetite today.
"If you're not feeling well, eat quick and go to sleep. Registration for the event starts tomorrow, so we have to get up early."
Shiron came over to her side as he spoke.
He began shredding jerky into fine pieces with the dagger in his hand.
"Got it?"
"Shiron."
".....What."
He answered without pausing his spoon.
"That woman we saw earlier—Ailey. If she's a witch, then she was trying to hurt us. But she talked like she was worried about us because we were still little kids. What is that supposed to mean?"
"You've been stuck on that this whole time."
Shiron reached for the ladle again.
"If it's the penalty points I mentioned that are bothering you, then don't think of her as a witch. Just think of her as a weird woman. That'll make it easier, right?"
"It wasn't just her."
Lucia spoke without taking her eyes off the stew.
"You were asleep, so you wouldn't know... but there was a man with a mustache, and a man in white armor watching us too. That one was definitely one of the Holy Mace Knights Sir Yohan mentioned."
Here, now—in the tent where only Lucia and Shiron were staying—Yohan was nowhere to be found.
Saying it would be awkward for an outsider to stay in a space meant for family, he had left fully armed, leaving the escort force behind, and gone somewhere.
"You're going on. What are you actually trying to say?"
"...I think it would be better if we don't enter the festival and just stay put here. No—forget the subjugation festival or whatever. Let's just go home like this."
Lucia's instincts were warning her that this place was dangerous.
Shiron, so oddly calm about everything since earlier, was the strange one. Witch, Holy Mace Knights—she wished it would all just get out of her head.
"You're pretty cowardly, huh."
"..."
"Is it the witch you're scared of? Or the Holy Mace Knights? Stop talking nonsense and eat your stew."
Shiron was strange too.
At the lookout, he had clearly found it odd that he had fallen asleep so suddenly. He had recognized it himself—and yet right now he looked far too composed.
Almost no change of expression, and his tone was level, without rise or fall.
She had never seen him like this.
The usual Shiron laughed, or got angry—anyway, he was a kid full of emotion.
Even Lucia thought her own attitude right now was a little stifling; how much more so for Shiron, who was still a child?
But the boy across from her—Shiron—neither laughed nor got angry. In a situation where he could have sneered at her for being a coward, a slightly more unpleasant look would have suited him better.
"..."
Somehow the situation felt familiar.
She had faced this kind of thing more than once.
In her past life, Kylie had often watched her companions' emotions dry up and go flat.
What is this...
Lucia stared hard into Shiron's eyes.
His pupils held no light now.
The firelight should have been catching the surrounding scenery in his eyes—but his eyes were a little hazy.
"Forbidden arts..."
"Hm?"
Shiron regarded Lucia calmly.
Those still, expressionless eyes felt a little chilling.
Crrrk—
"Shit."
The spoon in Lucia's hand screamed.
She had just arrived at a certain truth.
"Who are you. Who the hell are you, wearing Shiron's face right now."
"...What are you talking about."
"Don't play dumb."
Lucia shoved the wooden bowl she hadn't taken a single bite from far away.
"Yeah, I thought it was weird. The stew Shiron makes always has meat in it, and it's never white... I was way too slow to notice."
She couldn't bring herself to say it out loud—it was too embarrassing—but even though they were alone in a sealed space, she couldn't smell Shiron either.
The red-haired girl rose from her seat, seething with anger.
And then Lucia strode straight toward the thing that was not Shiron.
Blood boiled through her whole body; her mana surged and writhed.
It had been a very long time since she had been this furious.
Fwoosh—
White flame leapt from Lucia's hand.
Pure, high-grade Aura burst from her tightly clenched fist.
"Get out here, you fucking bastard."
Lucia drove her fist into the enemy's face.