The Witch's Buried Past
60. The Great Witch of the Forest, Liselotte, had once been an ordinary village woman living on this land. Then one day, a great war broke out. It was a massive conflict that claimed hundreds, even thousands of lives every single day. Men were conscripted, while women had their hard-earned harvests seized daily. When children began starving to death and parents were driven to the brink of devouring their own offspring, that incident occurred.
“This spot will do.”
“Understood.”
Soldiers and black mages who appeared out of nowhere began digging up the barren ground near the village. Forcing prisoners to excavate a pit several meters deep, they buried the captives alive right there. After the shocking event passed—leaving the villagers too horrified to even scream—the black mage singled out Liselotte, who lived in the village, and gave his order.
“You’ll do. Guard this place.”
“H-Huh? What do you mean—Kyaaaaah!”
That was how Liselotte became cursed. She was turned into a sentinel meant to prevent the powerful vengeful spirits—born from hundreds of thousands of prisoners buried alive—from escaping the land. From that day on, Liselotte became a cursed witch. As a witch, she had protected this land for hundreds of years.
But she could not continue living that way forever.
I have to free them…
With that thought, Liselotte began her research. She sought to release all the vengeful spirits bound to this land and lift the curse upon it. However, it was no simple curse that an uneducated village woman with no formal learning could unravel on her own. As time passed, her knowledge grew, but so did the resentment of the spirits. She no longer had many moments of clear sanity. Tormented by evil spirits every hour, every minute, every second, she was slowly going mad. If things continued this way, she would lose her mind completely, and even her spirit would become bound to the curse. Realizing this, she wrote her will and pushed her research forward as quickly as possible, praying that someone who found this place after she had gone completely insane might fulfill her long-cherished wish.
“—That’s what it says.”
Sera, who had recited Liselotte’s will, waved the document in front of her and stared intently, as if asking whether it was true. But Liselotte, already seeming somewhat unhinged, gave no reaction and simply met Sera’s gaze in silence. When Sera shuddered slightly at the sight, the Great Witch quietly spoke.
“Release me.”
“Kyle, let her go.”
“Hmm. If she attacks from this distance, I won’t be able to block it.”
“It’s fine. She must know by now that we’re not her enemies. Besides, didn’t you hear? This place is filled with things she’s researched her entire life. No matter how insane she is, she wouldn’t use magic in here.”
Nodding at Sera’s words, Kyle carefully withdrew the aura he had embedded in the Great Witch’s body. Once the aura blocking her mana flow was removed, Liselotte sensed her magic circulating as before and let out a sigh of relief.
“—That’s right.”
The two of them, who had tilted their heads in confusion at the sudden remark, blinked as they realized it was an answer to the will Sera had just recited. If what was written in the will was true, she was no villainous Great Witch. The true villains were the black mages who had bound her to this land hundreds of years ago—she bore no sin. But even if they revealed this fact now, who would believe it?
The Great Witch spoke as if she did not care whether her name was cleared.
“I simply want to free the people buried in this land.”
“Is a curse such an incomprehensible thing?”
“I spent hundreds of years studying curses. All I gained from it was the curse itself, not a way to break it.”
Liselotte had been nothing more than an ignorant village woman who had barely escaped illiteracy. There was no way she could unravel a curse crafted from the arcane black magic theories of that era by studying alone. Just as the saying goes—if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back—she had obtained not a method to dispel curses, but curses and black magic themselves.
……This is going to take a while.
Sensing that the conversation would drag on, Kyle glanced cautiously at Sera. The two of them seemed to be enjoying tending to each other’s wounds, continuing to chat away. When it became clear the talk would not end soon, Kyle quietly slipped out of the cabin. He had worried at first that leaving them alone might be dangerous, but watching them talk dispelled that concern entirely.
Hoo—
Exhaling as he gazed at the forest, Kyle realized that within a several-hundred-meter radius of the cabin was a safe zone where evil spirits could not intrude.
So there are corpses buried here?
And apparently, tens or hundreds of thousands of prisoners had been buried alive. Though the existence of black mages had suppressed that culture, the people who committed this atrocity seemed to have paid it no mind. Or perhaps they had deliberately bound the corpses and ghosts to this land through the curse precisely because they cared.
“Hmm…… Is it this?”
As Kyle wandered through the forest, he sensed an ominous energy swirling beneath the ground. Frowning slightly at the sinister force rotating underground, he thrust a tree branch deep into the soil. When he drove the branch into the earth infused with aura, the energy flowing below began to falter, blocked by the single branch. Amused, he stuck in a few more branches before returning to the cabin. As he flung open the door, he saw the Great Witch burst out.
“You, youuu—!”
“What is it? All of a sudden.”
“Youuuu! What did you do!?”
Kyle scratched his cheek awkwardly as he watched the Great Witch grab his shoulders and shake him back and forth like a madwoman.
“What do you mean, what did I do?”
“The curse suddenly snapped! What the hell!?”
“The curse did?”
When he shrugged as if he had no idea why, the Great Witch realized Kyle truly knew nothing and began to panic. If the two of them were not the culprits, then why had the curse—which had been perfectly intact until they arrived—suddenly shattered? Blinking in confusion, the Great Witch soon realized there was something far more important than the broken curse.
“Oh no……!”
“What? If the curse is broken, isn’t that a good thing?”
“If it were just a matter of breaking it, I would have done so long ago! But if you break it like this……”
Rumble—
The ground began to tremble lightly. Kyle, caught off guard by the sudden earthquake, tilted his head in bewilderment. This was no earthquake. It was the very thing the Great Witch had feared coming to pass.
“They’re awakening.”
Hundreds of thousands of corpses buried beneath the ground for over a century. Their bones had long since turned to dust, but the vengeful spirits trapped below remained very much alive. The hundreds of thousands of spirits buried underground had devoured one another within the curse, evolving into a single evil entity.
—Uwooooooooh!
Having lost all reason, only hatred and curses remained. A colossal evil spirit, formed from millions of malevolent entities merged together, revealed itself. Staring at the tree branch embedded in the spirit’s thigh, Kyle groaned inwardly.
Ah.
That’s the branch I stuck in earlier.
“Return, this is not your land!”
Upon seeing the colossal evil spirit towering dozens of meters high, the Great Witch immediately began chanting a spell, desperately trying to drive it away. But the spirit ignored her magic as if it were beneath its notice and began marching toward the edge of the forest.
“Kyle!”
Hearing the commotion, Sera rushed out of the cabin and ran toward him, shouting.
“Let’s run!”
“—No.”
“What? What are you saying! If we stay here, we’ll be crushed to death! Can’t you see!?”
Sera pointed at the evil spirit as she spoke. The other spirits in the forest were being drawn one by one into the colossal entity. Like a massive star pulling in its satellites with gravity, the souls were being absorbed into the evil spirit, compelled by its overwhelming resentment. Watching the spirit grow larger with each soul it absorbed, Kyle shook his head.
“Still, we can’t.”
“Why are you suddenly acting so righteous! I said let’s run!?”
“It looks like I’m the one who woke it up.”
“……What?”
Leaving Sera glaring at him as if he had caused some massive disaster, Kyle added defensively.
“And there’s one more reason we can’t run.”
“……What now.”
“Where do you think that evil spirit is headed?”
“Where else would it—.”
Sera glanced at the direction of the spirit’s footsteps and her expression hardened. The evil spirit was marching straight toward the Dairos Empire, the land the two of them had come from. Realizing this, Sera looked at Kyle with a disbelieving expression. Guessing her thoughts, Kyle nodded quietly.
“The ones who created that evil spirit perished hundreds of years ago, and the empire now stands in their place. But—do you think that thing has the sanity to tell the difference?”
Faced with his perfectly reasonable argument, Sera had no choice but to agree. They needed to drive the evil spirit out of this forest.