Chapter 142
Chapter 142
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 141
Chapter Title: Musician Hamel - The Witch of Mistheaven
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The territory of the Cardian Republic, located in the central-north of the continent, resembled an hourglass when viewed from above on a map.
The top of the hourglass was an island.
The bottom was the mainland.
And the narrow waist was a blue strait.
There was a somewhat amusing yet tragic story behind how Cardian came to possess such a peculiar shape.
Just a few decades ago, the north and south of Cardian had been entirely separate nations.
The problem was that their leaders were disastrously incompetent.
High taxes. Corruption among the elite. Amid abject poverty and starvation, the north exploded first.
Masses poured into the streets, clamoring for revolution, and the northern royal family failed to respond effectively.
The 47km strait was far too narrow to contain the revolutionary fervor, and seeing the northerners— in similar straits as themselves—overthrow their nation, the southerners could no longer hold back.
Royal heads rolled on the guillotine, and the revolutionaries from both nations declared a new country, proclaiming themselves as one.
With the wicked rulers gone, they believed happiness would follow; they harbored hope and savored their victory.
But the sweet dream ended there.
The revolutionaries, who had been thick as thieves while toppling the royals, began quarreling over the new nation's direction.
Some insisted on spreading the revolutionary flames to other countries, others cried to focus on the people's livelihood, some demanded the slaughter of not just royals but nobles too, and others cautioned that excessive violence would only provoke greater backlash.
Northerners felt they should hold the reins since they had ignited the revolution that spread south, while southerners argued their larger territory and population made them the rightful leaders.
With the government failing and descending into chaos, the provinces were hardly spared.
Crime ran rampant everywhere, and might made right.
This turmoil was gradually stabilizing under the hero 'President' who had comet-like appeared and seized control of the republic, but cities still lingered with the thick remnants of that chaotic era.
Mistheaven was a prime example.
This major city, one of the north's finest, harbored darkness equal to its prosperity and filth as thick as its splendor.
Government influence was feeble, law enforcement weak, and police—who should have maintained order—cowered before underworld syndicates, pretending to be blind and deaf.
Thus, even if screams blatantly echoed from a warehouse in the port district, no suspicious cop would come sniffing around.
Sharp locals dismissed it as a hallucination, and even if the dim-witted reported it, the police would ignore them anyway.
The scene inside the warehouse was brutal.
Men in black suits with vicious faces stood in a threatening line, while between them, two young men bound with rope sweated bullets, begging for mercy with their entire bodies.
"Please, spare us! Spare us!!"
"W-We messed up! Please, just forgive us this once!!"
Despite their desperate pleas, the one listening didn't bat an eye.
No, even if they had blinked, the youths wouldn't have noticed.
The figure before them wore a mask concealing their face.
"Hmmm."
The sound leaking from behind the mask was utterly alien.
Like scraping iron shards across a metal plate—a displeasing, eerie voice.
Even shrouded in a thick robe, the pronounced curves revealed it was a woman, but the voice conjured no image of beauty.
"Wrong, mistaken. What exactly did you do wrong?"
At the woman's question, the youths answered frantically.
"W-We're truly sorry for not paying protection money properly! But business has been terrible lately!!"
"Y-Yes! We wanted to pay, but we just didn't have the money! We never meant to defy you."
"Ah, I see. That's what it was. I understand perfectly."
As if convinced, the woman's head nodded up and down.
The moment hope flickered in the youths' eyes...
Kwachik!
"Aaaargh!!"
The knife she drew stabbed mercilessly into the youth's thigh.
The stabbed youth screamed and thrashed, while the other cried out with a desperate face.
"W-We explained our situation! Please, have mercy...!"
"I said I understand. How ridiculously you view me—and our organization."
The woman drew another knife, twirling it deftly over her hand as she spoke.
"You think I'd come personally over mere protection money? That's not your crime. ...It's selling drugs the organization banned, on your own."
They flinched.
Their poorly concealed agitation betrayed them through their movements.
"Th-There's some misunderstanding! We just...!"
Realizing it themselves, they tried to excuse again, but the woman didn't let them finish.
Another knife plunged ruthlessly into the uninjured youth.
Against a backdrop of spilling blood and screams, she spoke calmly.
"Ever seen butchers slaughter pigs? It's not just brute force or sharp blades slicing meat. They expertly exploit the gaps—between muscles, muscle and bone, bone and bone. Think that works on humans too?"
The youths' pant legs darkened with wetness.
As they froze, the woman signaled her waiting underlings.
The burly men grabbed their heads and stuffed wet cotton-like wads into their ears.
Before their hearing fully cut off, she uttered one short phrase.
"Those who spill useful info are spectators. The useless ones? Pigs. Remember that."
A sickening squelch sealed off the sound.
Then her gaze returned to the knife.
Without needing a cue, the youths spilled everything they knew in unison.
Unable to properly hear each other, they couldn't check glances or align stories.
Worse, the longer the other spoke, the more they had to scrape out to avoid becoming the pig.
How much time passed?
One underling tasked with cleanup shuddered unwittingly.
'Horrible.'
The youths' states were wretched.
One had flesh carved to expose thigh bone, dead from blood loss; the other barely alive, drooling and half-mad from stress and terror.
No wonder.
Even he, just watching, had shaky legs and held his breath—how much worse for them?
He couldn't help recalling a certain rumor drifting through the city's alleys.
「A witch dwells in Mistheaven's shadows.」
Hecate.
The name of the wicked, powerful witch from the island's ancient legends.
Also the moniker of Mistheaven's shadowy overlord.
He'd harbored subtle resentment and doubt over the boss being a woman who rarely showed herself—even to her own men, barring exceptions—but after witnessing this, those feelings vanished.
Harboring defiance after that? Only a true lunatic would.
He didn't want to be butchered alive by the witch.
From some unremembered point in her distant childhood, the woman had loved the rain.
She liked the feel of water on her skin, the patter of droplets, but above all, its purity.
The filthy, the sordid, the tainted, the unwanted sights.
Seeing the rain wash away the world's grime, she deliberately stepped into it, standing still to be cleansed.
And rejoiced when it stopped.
Rain washes away the dirty.
Thus, whatever clung to her after must be pure, she assured herself.
As an adult, her love for showers stemmed from the same.
Rain's whimsy was heaven's domain.
Better a smaller, controllable shower than waiting blindly for unpredictable rain.
-Shwaaaaa.
But why?
Her face now under the shower wasn't bright.
The water's temperature or force was fine.
She simply could no longer ignore the question she'd pretended not to see.
Indeed, flowing water could cleanse the body's filth.
But not the soul's inherent stain.
What use a spotless, beautiful vessel if its contents are foul?
"......"
Kiiik.
Stopping the water and ending her shower, she draped a light robe and sank into a chair.
The master craftsman's top-grade leather sofa cradled her like a cloud.
Not just the sofa.
Wall-hung paintings. Furniture adorning every corner. Lights illuminating a house overly vast for one.
Even yesterday's half-drunk wine abandoned on the table—all top-tier.
Tributes of fear and loyalty to the shadow-ruling witch 'Hecate' of the misty city; desperate attempts to mask her soul's filth with lavish trappings.
In bottomless quagmire lethargy and suffocating stuffiness, her gaze fell on the witch's mask asserting presence at the glass table's edge.
As she reached for it with near-resigned emotion...
- ──────
So faint.
A melody her sharp senses alone could catch halted her hand.
Half-unconsciously, she approached the window.
Heavy curtains draped it, multiple layers of shutters sealing it tight.
Soundproofing, yes—but mainly to block prying eyes or intruders.
No fool would trifle with an underworld boss's home, but few knew she was Hecate.
A wealthy, lone woman without guards or family in a penthouse atop a five-story? Invaders aplenty in this city.
Clunk.
Flinging open long-unopened windows, wind tousled her purple hair.
Eyes piercing the un-fogged night, she sought the now-clearer sound's source.
- ──────
The fountain far below.
A street too distant for ordinary eyes, but hers caught the man playing flute.
A face so young it seemed boyish. Worn yet sturdy traveler's garb. Feathered hat.
Yet what gripped her gaze strongest was the listeners' reactions.
They were smiling.
Worries, anxieties, fears, envies, greeds.
Faces painted with myriad emotions, scraping by day by day—now beaming pure wonder, admiration, joy.
Like heaven-sent rain sweeping filth, his melody cleansed their hearts' grime.
She watched, entranced.