Chapter: 86
I dashed through the streets, following a faint energy that I could barely perceive.
Beyond the pouring rain, I saw a woman trying to flee from a man swinging a blunt object, her eyes blank and startled.
“Nonononono!!! Please, someone help me!”
The woman, desperately crawling away on the squishy ground, screamed as she saw the man with the weapon approaching her.
I rushed towards them, striking the man’s neck and shouted, “It’s dangerous outside, please take shelter somewhere safe!”
“Yes… yes! Ugh… Aah! My ankle…”
Relieved by my shout, the woman quickly got to her feet, but suddenly cried out in pain.
Looking at her ankle, it seemed she had twisted it while falling, and it was starting to swell.
She couldn’t make it to safety on her own.
Not only her, but I also couldn’t leave the man I had just knocked out lying in the street.
Just then, as I was about to carry them to a shelter, the scene around me caught my eye.
“Ahhh! Save me!!”
“No… I don’t want to die…”
The whole city was filled with the screams of people in distress and the moans of pain.
Heroes and students were rushing in from somewhere, subduing the controlled individuals while saving citizens, yet there were still far too many people in need of help.
As time passed, the destruction would only grow uncontrollably worse.
A girl had vanished, saying we should play hide and seek.
She mentioned that if I followed her, she would show me the way to stop what was happening.
It could have been a lie, but for some reason, I knew she wasn’t lying.
If that were true, finding that method and ending the situation quickly could prevent greater harm.
For that, it was impossible to help everyone I saw.
I clenched my fist and spoke up.
“I’ll call for someone to help, so please stay here for a moment.”
I told the injured woman and then dashed off, shouting to a student nearby who was running.
“Please help the injured and the unconscious over there!”
The student looked momentarily taken aback but then sprinted in the direction I pointed.
I watched the student run off before turning back toward where I had been going to help the woman.
The screams of those needing assistance pierced my ears.
Suddenly, I recalled a famous ethical dilemma my teacher had shared during moral class.
When there are five people tied to one track and one person tied to another, you must decide which way the train should go.
The question was whether it is morally right to sacrifice fewer individuals to save more.
There was no correct answer, but most people would choose to save the larger group.
I was the same.
But trying to apply that in reality made me feel like I would go mad.
As time went on, more and more people would be sacrificed, and choosing the smaller group meant the city’s doom, yet making that choice was incredibly difficult.
Still, I had to make a decision.
A metallic taste filled my mouth from biting my lip too hard.
I tried to ignore the cries, tightly closing my eyes.
Focusing on helping the woman, I lost track of the energy I was following.
But I knew how to feel it again.
I closed my eyes and listened not to the screams but to other sounds.
Burn it.
Burn everything.
As the witch’s voice grew louder in my head, I began to sense the energy I had lost again.
Focusing intensely not to lose it again, I ran towards the direction where the energy was coming from.
Burn it, kill it.
Listening to the voice, guilt and hesitation seemed to be fading away.
Only rage filled my mind.
I couldn’t tell if that was good or bad.
At some point, the screams ceased to reach my ears.
*
The place where I stopped wasn’t too far from the point our class had been responsible for.
The energy I felt was leading me to the park in Zone 15, a place I often visited.
Was it just a coincidence?
It was also the place where I had first encountered the girl with the dark violet hair.
Standing still and looking around, I heard soft applause coming from the front.
The girl appeared unexpectedly, smiling and clapping at me.
“Hehe, the hide-and-seek is over. Even if you’ve changed a bit, you’re still Eva. Of course, you would follow me without fail, just like before.”
Burn everything.
As I faced the girl, the witch’s voice echoed loudly in my head.
The impulse to incinerate her at that moment surged within me, but something more important loomed, so I bit my tongue and asked her.
“…I’ve followed you as you said, so tell me. How to stop this? If you’re lying, I won’t let you get away with it.”
At my words, the girl raised the corners of her mouth in a sly smile.
“You’re still as hot-tempered as ever. Don’t worry, I won’t break my word once it’s out. Since you’ve won at hide-and-seek, I’ll tell you.”
The girl slowly lifted her arm and pointed with her finger.
In the direction she indicated, there was a flowerbed in the park, where controlled people were loitering nearby.
The girl murmured.
“Do you see that over there, between the bushes? It’s hidden reasonably well, and hard to spot, but you can see it if you look closely.”
I slowly examined inside the flowerbed.
Bushes, flowers, small saplings.
And among those rain-soaked plants, something grotesque stood out ominously.
“…What is that…?”
What was hidden among the bushes looked like both an egg and a cocoon.
But its size was anything but ordinary.
It was so large that it wouldn’t be strange to find an average adult man inside it, glistening in the rain and throbbing unpleasantly.
Whatever its identity was, it was far from normal.
When I asked the girl about what it was, she replied.
“Inside it, a monstrous creature is locked away. From what I’ve heard, it serves as a transmitter to send signals controlling humans. If you break that, the people will stop moving.”
Taking a deep breath at her words, I glared at that thing that resembled either an egg or a cocoon.
If I could just break that, everything could stop.
Just as I clenched my fist and was about to charge at it,
The eyes of the controlled individuals surrounding the park all focused on me in unison.
Women, children, men, old people.
Dozens of people, dozens of pairs of eyes flickering unblinkingly at me.
It was a horrific sight that sent chills down anyone’s spine.
At that moment, I realized how many people were in proximity to the park and felt something was off.
The other controlled individuals seemed to wander aimlessly with a purpose to cause harm to others, like zombies.
But why were so many people lingering around this park?
There was only one reasonable explanation.
They were guarding something.
Perhaps they were waiting to respond to any issues arising with that cocoon-like entity.
However, even if there were dozens of them, if they were all civilians, I could subdue them without causing harm.
After all, I had trained to tackle 17 low-level monsters on my own.
I steadied my breath and plunged toward the cocoon, readying myself to slice through the wave of bodies rushing toward me.
Simultaneously, the people who had been staring at me like mannequins suddenly began to move all at once.
Several nearby individuals jumped toward me.
It didn’t take even a few seconds to subdue them.
But during those few seconds, I sensed that something was wrong.
“This… is crazy…”
Another cocoon was forming around the one at the spot, made from the bodies of the people.
I dashed toward it, but the dozens of individuals already near the cocoon encircled it, entangling their limbs with one another.
“Get the hell off that!”
I tried to forcefully tear them away, but it wasn’t easy.
They were clinging to one another with all their strength, refusing to separate.
As I attempted to pull away the man on the outer edge, I heard a sickening crack, causing me to gasp and let go.
Yet the man remained unmoving, frozen in place, like a puppet unconcerned about his broken arm.
These individuals had become puppets executing their orders, with broken fingers and limbs showing no signs of pain.
It felt like I would not be able to dislodge them unless they died.
“Let go of this… please… just please…!”
Even as I yelled and shook, my voice reached no one.
It was maddening.
The wicked malice of the witch, manipulating people so horrifically.
I took a step back, afraid the flames would erupt and hurt the people.
At that moment, the girl watching the scene leaned over and whispered beside me.
“Don’t you want to stop this? Well then, just destroy the humans inside this thing.”
In a tone that seemed to advise a clueless child.
“It’s just a matter of killing a few humans, then it’s all over.”
At the girl’s words, I looked at the people in front of me.
Burn it.
After all, it was just a few dozen people.
If one had to sacrifice one person to save five, isn’t it the right choice to save the majority?
The girl climbed ontop the cocoon made of humans and looked down at me with a smile.
“You’re good at burning things, right? You want to kill me, don’t you? I’ll just stay up here, so go ahead and burn it all. Just like how you burned the village and the forest before.”
Burn it, kill it.
As her words echoed in my head, the voice rang out loudly as I gazed at the girl’s smile.
The deep rage bubbling inside me swallowed my reason whole.
Calmly, I pressed the button on my left prosthetic arm.
Memories flooded back.
—Evangeline, from this day forward, you are a member of our village.
People are selfish.
—That girl was a witch! It’s because of her that our children died!
For the happiness of the majority, people sacrifice the few without a second thought.
—Revenge! Burn the wicked witch to death!
Then, is it not natural for them to die?
If a few dozen sacrifices could save thousands or tens of thousands in the future, wouldn’t that be the right thing to do?
In truth, none of that mattered.
—Oh my, poor Evangeline. You’ve had it tough. It’s not your fault the children died. Those bad people don’t even know. Oh? Wow, what a big fire. Playing with fire sounds fun.
Burn it. Burn it. Burn it. Make them suffer just as I have suffered.
I just wanted revenge.
How people got caught up in the process wasn’t something I was concerned with.
That was their karma.
The jewel in my palm absorbed the flames, turning red.
Red, with blazing flames.
The fierce flames from my left arm started to burn the sleeve of my uniform.
While watching that, the girl laughed and clapped her hands.
“As expected, don’t stay among humans; let’s play hide-and-seek and mess around with fire once again. Okay? Evangeline.”
I stretched my fiery arm towards her, the one who granted me that cursed name, Evangeline.
The girl’s eyes sparkled with flames as she sat atop the cocoon encompassing people.
Just as I was about to release the gathered flames,
I noticed the characters inscribed with fire on my prosthetic arm.
Flames erupted from the prosthetic.
Not forward, but upward.
The flames shot upward lit the rainy sky before disappearing.
“Hmm? Evangeline?”
The girl, puzzled, as I muttered the words I had just seen.
“… My name isn’t Evangeline.”
Scarlet.
“… It’s Scarlet Evande.”
That was the name I had vowed to protect the people with.
The girl, who had been seated atop the people, stared at me for a moment before speaking.
“How do you intend to stop them without killing by shooting upward like that?”
I looked up at the sky.
Rain fell heavily, and dark clouds filled the sky.
No matter how blurry my vision may be, if something suddenly sparkled in such a sky, it was bound to catch distant attention.
Just a moment ago, my head was so cluttered with the witch’s voice that I couldn’t think straight, but now it was simply a matter of clarity.
I responded to her question.
“… If I can’t stop this without killing, I’ll call someone who can.”
The flames launched upwards served as a signal for someone working nearby to save the people.
Someone who would worry greatly for me.
She would see my flames and rush over faster than anyone else.
And that thought was indeed correct.
I smiled gently at the twinkling light in the distance.
“Oh, this is fun.”
The girl smiled back slightly as she noticed the light.
Slowly rising from the people, she spoke.
“You said your name is Scarlet Evande. I am Beatrice, the witch of sloth as your people call me.”
Introducing herself, Beatrice, the witch of sloth, jumped down from atop the people, widening her smile.
“I’m excited to see who you’ll become next time.”
With those words, the witch vanished instantly.
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