Chapter 71 71: I am the 【Melancholy Witch】, Petra Leyte!

Zarestia reached out and lunged for Natsuki Subaru's face.

She was a heartbeat away from seizing him, and the grin of triumph was already curling at the corners of her mouth.

But in the very next instant, her outstretched hand closed on nothing.

Zarestia blinked, opened and shut her fingers in bewilderment, then raised her head — and found that the man who had been standing right in front of her had vanished, reappearing out of nowhere a hundred metres away.

No. That wasn't right. He hadn't moved at all.

Zarestia stared, and realised with a jolt of shock that judging by everything around him, the man had not budged a single inch.

Which meant that the person who had just been transported a hundred metres away — was her.

What on earth had just happened —

The question wasn't Zarestia's alone. Every single person on that battlefield was asking themselves the very same thing.

"O Lord Above, O Buddha, O Od Lagna — I swear I will never touch alcohol for as long as I live."

"O Lord Above, O Buddha, O Od Lagna — I swear I will never write another letter for as long as I live."

Out of nowhere, a quiet, murmured chant broke across the stillness of the battlefield.

A small figure stepped unhurriedly into the open ground before Natsuki Subaru, appearing without any warning.

The girl planted herself in front of him with an air of absolute, unshakeable presence.

"…Petra?"

Natsuki Subaru stared at the little girl standing before him, head held high, showing him nothing but her back — and the word escaped him in disbelief.

Petra, who should have been evacuated along with the other children under Ram's care, was here on the battlefield, murmuring some strange litany under her breath.

"Did you — did you save me? Petra?"

Subaru asked, barely able to believe it — though somewhere inside him, he already knew the answer.

"Shh!"

Petra turned her face sideways and flashed him a wide, sunny smile.

Then she turned back to face Zarestia, who was still standing there in a daze, and her eyes went sharp and resolute.

"I don't know where this is or what's going on — but anyone who tries to hurt Subaru is going to have to deal with me!"

Petra's words hit like a challenge thrown down, and Zarestia's temper ignited on the spot.

She didn't understand exactly what the little girl across from her had done.

But the reek of witch factors saturating her right now — that was real, and it couldn't lie.

"A Witch Cultist — no, a Sin Archbishop! You should be dead!"

Zarestia's rage surged and overflowed. The pale blue light blazing from her eyes flared wild and brilliant, and the look in them turned feral.

The wind howled around her as she launched herself forward again from a hundred metres away — but this time, her target had shifted from Natsuki Subaru to the tea-haired little girl.

"Hmph. Don't call me something so ugly."

Petra stuck out her tongue, then placed her hand over her chest.

"Call me this instead."

A smile played at Petra's lips. She seemed to be imitating someone she held in her memory — someone confident and proud — and she declared it to the world with a boldness that brooked no argument.

"I am the [Witch of Melancholy] — Petra Leyte!"

The declaration sent a ripple of shock through everyone present.

And no one was more stunned than Natsuki Subaru, standing not far behind her.

The… Witch of Melancholy?

A witch he had never once heard of. One who didn't belong to any of the Seven Witches.

Subaru's mind reeled. He had already met all Seven Witches at the Sanctuary's witch tea party — he couldn't begin to fathom where a Witch of Melancholy had come from.

And what shook him even more deeply was that Petra — an ordinary girl he knew inside and out — had somehow transformed herself into the [Witch of Melancholy].

Why? How?

Betty, standing to one side, was reacting differently. A sharp glint of recognition crossed her eyes at the words.

Melancholy… could it be that she had inherited the witch factors of that demon?

Everyone's thoughts were racing in different directions — but all of it happened in a single instant.

The raving Zarestia in the distance cared nothing whether it was a Witch of Melancholy or a Sin Archbishop.

Anyone who carried witch factors was her blood enemy — drenched in her hatred, deserving only annihilation.

She rode the howling wind and charged forward again, looking straight past Elsa on the path between them as though she weren't even there.

After all — if she'd managed to slip past Elsa's attack once, she was confident she could do it a second time, a third time, as many times as she needed.

But that confidence shattered almost immediately.

Without any warning, Elsa — who had been a clear distance away — had somehow teleported directly in front of her.

"Shink!"

In an instant, the kukri in Elsa's hand traced a razor arc, clean and precise as an antelope leaping a cliff, and opened a long gash across Zarestia's unguarded abdomen.

After delivering that single cut, it wasn't only the enemy Zarestia who was baffled — Elsa herself couldn't understand how she had suddenly teleported.

All she had felt was a strange force working itself into her body.

And in the moment she'd appeared before Zarestia, her mind had seemed to accelerate — to sharpen to an almost impossible clarity.

In that instant, multiple optimal angles of attack had bloomed fully formed in her mind, and her body had responded at the fastest possible speed.

At that thought, she glanced instinctively over her shoulder at the tea-haired little girl with the big bow perched on her head.

The [Witch of Melancholy], was it. What a formidable ability.

"O Lord Above, O Buddha, O Od Lagna — I swear I will never sleep hugging a stuffed animal ever again."

While everyone else was caught up in their astonishment, Petra was quietly making her vow to the Witch of Melancholy's witch factors that had taken up residence in her consciousness.

The whole "Witch of Melancholy" business was, of course, a bluff as much as anything.

The truth was she had nowhere near the talent or the aptitude to wield the melancholy factor properly.

So in order to draw on even a fragment of that power, she was paying for it with pieces of her own precious life.

— Well, they were only stuffed animals. As a mature young woman, she had long since outgrown sleeping with them cuddled in her arms anyway.

Petra laughed quietly to herself. Whatever the price, it didn't matter — not when weighed against Subaru's safety.

Meanwhile.

Against all expectation, the long gash Elsa had carved across Zarestia's abdomen produced not a single drop of blood. Instead, the wound sealed itself shut almost immediately — as though she weren't made of flesh and blood at all.

"You dare let your attention wander while you're fighting me?"

Zarestia gave a cold laugh. In the blink of an eye, more than a dozen wind blades materialised around her and went screaming toward Elsa.

But it was for nothing.

In an instant, Elsa vanished from before her eyes — teleporting away to a spot far out of reach of the wind blades.

"Tch. Annoying as rats. Fine — I'll hack the lot of you to pieces!"

Even through the chaos in her mind, Zarestia's battle-hardened instincts remained intact. As a Great Spirit of slaughter, she knew exactly how to adapt.

She moved to blanket the area around herself with a dense curtain of wind blades for defence, then began launching them at range toward Elsa and Petra and the others.

But the moment she finished setting her wind blades in place, Petra had already read her intent.

Just as Zarestia was moving to press her ranged attack, magical beasts with eyes blazing red began surging up around her on all sides, one after another.

"Arooo!"

The beast-hounds — by far the most numerous among them — were teleported into position right alongside Zarestia, and in the very first moment they arrived they lunged for her, snapping without a thought.

"Shink — shink!"

But the wind blades ringing Zarestia were no mere decoration. The instant they sensed a hostile target they fired automatically, one after the next in rapid succession.

Yet the wind blades were finite in number — and the magical beasts kept coming, wave after wave without end.

Bit by bit, Zarestia was swamped. Buried. Crushed beneath a surging mass of magical beasts pressing her down from every direction.

From where Natsuki Subaru and the others stood, all that was visible was a vast, roiling black tide, heaving and churning without cease.

____

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