Ominous Traces and the Witch's Miracle
I couldn't stay slumped there, lost in endless delusion. I had to bring Pirel back. The dead sailors too.
A sticky, wet slapping sound came from behind me. The noise of something viscous and squishy pressing against the hard wooden planks, sticking and peeling away. Probably…
“Mom.”
I turned my head slightly. There stood Rin, disguised in the form of my younger self. Her body was much smaller than the imitation I remembered—perhaps around seven or eight years old.
Reading the slight surprise on my face, Rin gave a bitter smile and explained.
“…The magic I used earlier took a heavy toll. Most of my split bodies were annihilated… so I couldn't make myself any bigger.”
“I'm sorry, Rin. Because of my stubbornness, you lost your split bodies.”
“It's okay. Helping you, Mom, is one of the two reasons I exist.”
The other reason must be to live for her creator, Naixon.
“Then… huh? What is this…?”
Rin's slender finger pointed at the deck in front of my knees—toward where Pirel lay. I turned my head in that direction.
“Ah……”
Pirel's corpse was vibrating faintly. From inside her slashed abdomen, cut open from sternum to pelvis, from her ears, from the holes riddling her crushed organs, from her ravaged groin…
Shadows were writhing. Black tentacles, as if woven from the night sky itself, slowly sprouted from various parts of the dead girl's body.
“As expected… some of it remained inside Lady Pirel's body. I don't know how it endured the rewound time, but it survived.”
Corruption that could not be purified even after twisting the flow of time. Just what were those gods beyond the veil… and what exactly was the power they wielded?
“May I cautiously share what I'm thinking?”
“Wait. Not now. I have to rewind Mother… no, Pirel's time first. Before those tentacles swallow us all.”
The memory of what happened in that forest flashed through my mind, along with the recollection of unconsciously succumbing to the corrupting energy in the Drankafen inn. My body trembled as I reached out.
Come to think of it, even after drinking alcohol afterward, the corruption hadn't awakened again. Maybe it was a one-time occurrence.
Please, let this free Pirel… Mother… from that darkness that twists the soul.
‘Rewind.’
Time twisted, and the tentacles vanished as if they had never existed.
“Haa……”
I let out a long sigh, staring blankly at Pirel's white fingertips as they slowly began to move again.
“Ah… ngh… k-kh… ugh… u-uu… k-ah… uu… ugh……”
Pirel convulsed, letting out strangled moans, until her eyes suddenly flew open. Her face was a pitiful mask of terror, pain, shock, and despair. She blinked a few times, then bolted upright.
“……!!! U-ugh… k-kh… haa, haa……”
Still wide-eyed with fear, her expression shattered by lingering agony and dread, Pirel turned toward me. Our two red eyes met.
“K… Kaira…? Why… how……”
Pirel barely managed to speak, her words stumbling out. The desperate, accusatory fragments tore into my heart.
“Why… why… why did you… leave my memories… why… Kaira…? Why… why……”
Then, as if collapsing, she threw herself into my arms.
“Hwaaaaaaaaang!!!”
Bursting into tears.
“It hurt… it hurt so much, I was so scared, Kaira!! Being treated like that… tormented like a toy… dying like that… it hurt too much, it hurt… I'm telling you it hurt!! Why, why the hell did you give me those memories back!!!”
Her small hands clutched my back tightly, then pounded against it with raw resentment.
“I'm sorry, Pirel.”
“Uwaaaaaang… Kaira, Kaira… I was scared, so scared… Kaira… scared… hic… scared… even now, even now……”
I wrapped my arms around the naked girl squirming in my embrace. Our bare skin pressed together. …After all, I wasn't wearing anything under my robe either. Pirel's body, now regaining its color, felt warm.
“It's experience, Pirel. No matter how horrific the memory, experience is still experience……”
As I spoke, I tightened my arms around her. The pain and fear tormenting her soul seemed to ease little by little; her sobs and thrashing gradually subsided.
“This… this kind of thing… how can it… sob… how can it be experience… I hate it, erase it… erase it for me… okay? Kaira, please erase it… I'm begging you……”
I smiled faintly. I knew that from this angle, neither Pirel nor Rin could see my face. Using the excuse of “experience” to break an innocent girl… how satisfying.
‘Hic……’
Only then did I realize what I had been thinking and flinched in shock. I forced my face—twisted into a chilling smile—back into a solemn expression.
…What the hell was I just thinking?
Had I truly wished for Pirel to break? Why was I trying to inflict on her the same shock of memory I had endured—the kind of pain that chipped away at the mind every time the past resurfaced?
I shook my head violently. I had to shake off the wicked thoughts swirling in my mind, trying to seep into me. Yes, this must be the work of those cultists. My heart could never have changed like this.
I released my arms from around Pirel and gripped her shoulders with both hands.
“Eep……!”
“You saw it when I gave you the memories, didn't you? The experiences I left behind. You remember what happened to me, right, Pirel? …That is me. I survived by overcoming that horror… no, because of it. Cutting through castle walls, turning an autumn forest back into spring—if not for that day, I might never have been able to do those things.”
Pirel seemed a little intimidated by my firm tone. The girl spoke through tears.
“B-but… I don't have power like you, Kaira… I don't even know magic……”
“It doesn't have to be fighting or magic. Whatever you do later, wherever you go, the memory of enduring such things without your mind collapsing will help you grow. Believe me, Pirel… please believe me… Mother.”
Pirel dropped her head limply and answered in a weak voice. A few teardrops fell onto the deck.
“…Okay.”
As I finally convinced her, cold lips brushed against my ear. A girl who looked no taller than a meter whispered.
“…It wasn’t a lie.”
A mocking whisper was her reply. Since she shared my mind, my slime daughter must have clearly sensed how my psyche was trying to collapse in strange directions.
“Mom, and Lady Pirel.”
Rin lifted her head and called to us.
“I’m going to transform into a flock of birds and visit the capital for a while. I need to share memories with my main body, and after using that magic earlier, my body has shrunk too much… I want to absorb various things in the capital and increase my split bodies again.”
“Alright. Safe travels.”
It felt a little lonely and bittersweet to see the slime who claimed to be my daughter leaving my side. It was surprising. Had I already surrendered to maternal instincts?
A hint of regret also appeared on Pirel's face.
“You’ll head straight to the Holy City of the Light Denomination… to Poscotia, right?”
“Yes. See you there.”
“Understood, Mom. And……”
Rin hesitated, as if unsure whether to speak.
“It’s okay. You can say it.”
“Yes. Um… about what you and Lady Pirel went through… that thing. Would it be alright if I discussed it with Lord Naixon? It might be difficult to create a medicine that can free you from those writhing shadows, but since my creator is a wise man, he might at least be able to identify the cause……”
If it was him, I could trust him. Especially since I wouldn’t be turned into a test subject this time. I gave permission.
“Yes. I’ll leave it to you.”
“Understood. Then I’ll be going.”
Before our eyes, Rin's body transformed into a flock of pigeons. The pigeons she had imitated quickly flew high into the sky and vanished from sight. …It must mean she had eaten a pigeon at some point.
“Then… Pirel.”
Pirel was already picking up her gun. Perhaps this incident had made her value it even more. Well, since all her clothes had been torn off, there wasn’t much else to retrieve anyway.
“Yeah?”
“It’s horrible, but… could you help me a little? I used too much magic and power… I’m exhausted……”
The girl, standing naked against the cold river wind of the late autumn dawn without showing much sign of chill, tilted her head.
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to gather the scattered corpses on the deck. The sailors… I need to bring them back.”
“Ah……”
Pirel pouted her lips slightly as if a frightening thought had occurred to her, but after a brief hesitation, she agreed.
“Okay. I will.”
As expected, she was a thoughtful and decisive child.
For nearly an hour after that, we grunted and struggled, gathering the bodies that had been ripped open, decapitated or dismembered, with guts spilling out or chests pierced through, all in one place. So I could revive them all at once.
Since each had died at a different time, I placed my hand on the deck and fiddled with the flow of time for a long while, adjusting the rewind point. I had to return each of them separately to the moment just before their deaths.
While doing so, I made excuses to myself. That my power had grown this precise entirely because of those experiences. That without those horrifying memories, I could never have grown like this. That returning even the memory of dying to Pirel had been absolutely necessary for her growth.
…And before reviving the sailors, I first restored Pirel's torn clothes and shoes.
“What about your clothes, Kaira?”
Pirel asked while putting on the restored garments, but I only gave her a bitter smile. My clothes were safely stored in the lower cabin below… and besides, I had already shown my naked body to the sailors plenty of times. I wasn’t embarrassed anymore.
“Then I’ll revive them.”
I can do this much now. I couldn’t before, but now I can… ‘Rewind.’
When I opened my eyes, the corpses lined up on the deck had all returned to being living sailors.
The dead sailors had returned to life. Their wounds were gone. Their severed limbs and spilled organs were whole once more.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing even after witnessing it with my own eyes.”
From the captain to the lowest deckhand, their reactions were all the same.
“You burned all those bastards to death by yourself, miss, and healed every last one of us?”
The captain asked, but it was only a question in form. He had seen the dozens of charred, shriveled corpses scattered across the deck with his own eyes, and the fact that he was alive and moving was undeniable. There was no need for questions.
The captain clicked his tongue, looking at me with a deeply thoughtful expression, and spoke quietly.
“But neither I nor the crew were merely injured. Your younger sister also seemed quite used to shooting people dead. Just who are you two……?”
I simply tilted my head in response.
After that, the captain and sailors treated us with great caution. During meals, we were allowed to eat the soft food reserved for the captain and officers instead of the hard preserved rations.
…However, the drinks still contained alcohol, so Pirel and I had to create our own drinking water with magic.
Our treatment had improved, but the excessive caution left a bitter taste. The stares that treated us like beautiful monsters were painful. Pirel seemed to feel the same.
…Come to think of it, tentacles had also sprouted from Pirel's corpse. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who had a strange seed planted in my heart after experiencing that corruption. The fact that she had fired her gun at people without hesitation in the forest and on the deck might be indirect proof of that.
For the next two days, I voluntarily went down to the lower crew quarters every night, intending to ask them to use my body. But both times I was refused, and I never went back. It was obvious that if I visited again, they would reject me with openly terrified expressions.
Instead…
“It’s done……”
The faint magical light illuminated Pirel's sleeping face on the hammock. No matter how many times I saw it, her lovely, heart-warming appearance as a beautiful young girl never failed to soothe me.
Pirel was under Nemeros's Deep Sleep. The same spell Zophy had used when she kidnapped me. I hadn’t made it last for days like when I had been subjected to it—I had simplified it to last only a few hours.
In front of Pirel, who could not wake no matter what was done to her, I……
“Ah… ngh… mm, ugh… hu, ngh… ahah, ah♡ S-so good… Pirel, too… good……♡”
I masturbated every single day.
While gazing at my mother’s form, imagining myself intertwining with the adorable girl before me whom I could do anything I wanted to if I just reached out. I held myself back from actually touching her. Because I felt that if I did, there would truly be no turning back.
…Every time, guilt writhed in my heart, but even that guilt had become a tool to heighten my pleasure.
Whether my memories had been tainted by what happened in the forest, the daily urge to be sexually trampled by someone or to trample someone else had become almost unbearable. This had never happened when I worked at the brothel.
Little by little, I was allowing the corruption that had seeped deep into my soul.