Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

Page 71

But she was always unlucky.

The really bad kind.

Click.

Miao Meng was cut in half at the waist by the meat grinder-like hole. Xiangzi, who was clinging to Miao Meng's thigh, naturally could no longer get out. The severed lower half of her body even kicked Xiangzi hard out of reflex, hitting him squarely on the nose.

"Uh!"

Xiangzi covered his face and curled up on the sticky ground.

"You guys ran really fast; even so many familiars couldn't stop you."

The high heels landed on the fleshy ground with a soft thud, and Mary's figure gradually emerged from the depths.

Xiangzi released Miaomeng's lower body, covered his nose, and got up.

The exit was completely closed, leaving Xiangzi with only a wall of flesh behind him—a dead end.

Mary and her familiar blocked the other end of the passage, slowly approaching Xiangzi and compressing the space he had.

"I won't even mention Hai Ling; I know her strength very well. That blonde girl is actually that strong too."

Mary raised her hand and stroked the fleshy wall.

“It’s so narrow here, she seems to need space to perform her magic. What I just saw wasn’t even her full power.”

"And the owner of this half of the body on the ground."

She lowered her head again, looking at the mangled body at Xiangzi's feet. With graceful cat-like steps, she slowly approached Xiangzi, her legs moving in a straight line.

“Her head was clearly cleaved in two by the greatsword, yet she regained consciousness in less than two seconds.” Mary tapped her cheek with her index finger. “Being cut in half at the waist shouldn’t be a big problem for her.”

at last.

Mary squeezed all of Xiangzi's room for maneuver.

She stood in front of Xiangzi.

With her slender figure, nearly 1.7 meters tall and 1.6 meters high, plus sky-high heels of 10 centimeters, she had an absolute height advantage over Xiangzi.

Mary looked down at Xiangzi.

"What intrigues me most is you. I never expected you to be just an ordinary person."

Mary slightly opened her eyes, her gaze sweeping over Xiangzi's entire body.

"Why would an ordinary person want to get involved in the world of magical girls?"

"I have no obligation to answer you."

brush.

The sword was held to Xiangzi's neck, its sharp edge slicing through his skin.

“If you don’t answer, you’ll die.” Mary smiled.

“If you wanted to kill me, I would have been as bloated as this lump over there by now.” Xiangzi kicked Miaomeng in the groin. “You’re keeping me as a hostage so that Hailing can come back, right?”

“Hailin, she actually let you call her by her name.” Mary sneered.

"Are you jealous?"

His smile grew even colder.

Mary's gaze slithered across Xiangzi's face like a venomous snake.

"I'm warning you, I'm the one who holds the initiative now."

"You can kill me all you want," Xiangzi said with an expression of utter indifference.

At this point, it was just like when she faced Yukina, no, it was even better; she was already used to it.

what.

got used to.

How could I possibly get used to having a knife held to my neck?

With a resolute yet hysterical look in his eyes, Xiangzi took a step forward, his eyes fixed on Mary's blade.

The blade cut deeper into her skin, and blood flowed into the bleeding groove along the slit. The two were now almost face to face. Xiangzi looked up and stared directly into Mary's slightly open eyes. Her emerald eyes were devoid of any luster, like the eyes of a dead person.

Their golden eyes and dull, emerald-colored eyes stared at each other for more than ten seconds.

"You don't have to tell me." Mary sheathed her greatsword, turned around, and sheathed it again.

The soldier ants swarmed around him, chasing Xiangzi forward.

She was, after all, a prisoner.

......

After walking with Mary through the gloomy, sticky passage for about ten minutes, downhill, Xiangzi arrived at the open space again, where the altar they had seen from above was located.

Worker ants come and go, their paths occasionally intersecting, but there is never a traffic jam. The entire anthill is orderly, like a huge factory that produces seeds of lamentation.

"Where are you taking me?"

Mary stopped and glanced back at Xiangzi.

“The church,” she said.

"Are there other exits here?"

“Of course.” Mary continued walking forward. “With only one entrance and exit, the throughput can’t keep up.”

"Throughput refers to..."

"Ha, what else could it be? It's the throughput of familiars that go out hunting, of course," Mary scoffed. "Do you know how many Lament Seeds can be produced here in a day at most?"

Without waiting for Xiangzi's reply, Mary continued talking to herself.

"Ten, ten a day."

"Ten?!"

Xiangzi looked up in disbelief.

A familiar needs to devour more than four people and completely absorb their extreme negative emotions in order to transform into a witch. Ten seeds of lamentation are equivalent to forty or fifty human lives.

this......

"I knew you would react this way."

Mary smiled and turned her head to the side.

"But there aren't as many victims as you think. Specially bred familiars only need to eat one or two people—most often just one—to enter the transformation process. Of course, normally the more people they eat during this process, the stronger the witch will be after transformation."

As Mary stepped onto the stone altar, her high heels echoed loudly in the empty anthill.

Hey.

Hey.

She continued to introduce things to Xiangzi at her own unhurried pace.

"But what I need is quantity, not quality. Once they enter the metamorphosis stage, they will come back and sacrifice themselves."

She shrugged.

"In some ways, targeted training reduces sacrifices."

"absurd."

“Is it absurd?” Mary sighed. “But the world has always been absurd, and to survive, you have to adapt to it.”

An ant's antennae touched Xiangzi's cheek. Xiangzi subconsciously looked over and saw the dense array of human eyes on his compound eyes and the neat teeth under his jaw, which sent chills down his spine.

Xiangzi swatted away the curious worker ant that was clinging to her.

After passing through the altar, we entered another passage and walked a short distance.

Mary stopped and looked up.

Xiangzi followed her gaze and looked up.

“‘Ave Maria’ was originally my colleague. We worked together in the church and together we were magical girls who defeated witches.”

"Five years ago she turned into a witch, and I didn't mistreat her. I raised her and nurtured her for a year, through three generations, until she finally became the way you see her."

The first thing that catches the eye is the compound eye, which is several meters in diameter. Each eyeball is clearly visible. The previously scattered gazes immediately focus on one point after Mary arrives, with thousands of eyes staring at Xiangzi behind Mary.

In the center of the compound eyes was a mask of the Virgin Mary, enlarged four or five times the size of the sacrificed witch, and the teeth under the jaws were humming an inaudible song.

Looking back, six fair and delicate arms hung limply at the bottom, clearly having been inactive for a long time.

Fifty meters long, its large, white belly was fixed in mid-air by flesh and blood. Every ten seconds, a familiar would crawl out of the cavity at the tail end of the maggot-like belly, roll twice on the ground covered in slime, and then crawl along the route left by the residual magic power (pheromones) on the ceiling to Xiangzi's back, joining the ant army of the barrier.

Ave Maria.

The queen ant of the ant colony, the master of the barrier, and the witch who produces witches.

Domesticated livestock.

The Tale of Nirvana: Keeping Your True Self: Chapter 92 The Mystery

"Five years ago she turned into a witch, and I didn't mistreat her. I raised her and nurtured her for a year, through three generations, until she finally became the way you see her."

Looking up at the Ave Maria, Mary's tone was filled with deep regret.

The person who used to laugh and joke with her has become a witch who is unable to move and spends her whole life producing familiars.

This was also something that was very difficult for her to accept.

However, to survive, one must adapt to the world.

After the focus of Ave Maria lingered on Xiangzi for a moment, it shifted to Mary. Thousands of eyes simultaneously shifted a few degrees, and the subtle sounds of flesh rubbing together accumulated into an echoing writhing sound.

The magical girl and the witch stared at each other for a long time.

Mary mouthed something to Xiangzi and continued forward with him.

Xiangzi saw it clearly; it probably meant "I'm sorry."

"Back then, it was the very end of what you now call the 'Witch's Night Era.' Everyone either became a witch or died. The Reed Plains were taken over by new people who formed a council to organize the extermination of the captive witches and the magical girls who nurtured them."

Xiangzi listened quietly to her story, following in her footsteps as he continued walking forward.

Walk under the witch's plump belly and enter a hidden passage behind her.

"At the time, I was one of the few who didn't go along with the corrupt practices, while she, a newcomer, somehow learned the skills of our generation. Because of this, we parted ways."

“When I was questioned, she hadn’t gotten into trouble yet, so I was listed as a trustworthy person by the rally.”

"She got into trouble not long after. She was raising witches, but she didn't know that witches were magical girls in disguise." Mary sighed. "She probably witnessed something and learned the truth. You can probably guess what happened next."

Xiangzi nodded.

"The owner of the pigsty one day discovers that he and the pigs in the pen are actually the same kind of thing," Xiangzi said in a low voice. "Just thinking about it makes you realize how things will turn out."

"Pigsty, humph, that word was popular for a while when raising witches was all the rage. Back then, witches had become extinct, and someone found a way to raise witches and shared it. For a while afterward, everyone talked about 'I raised a witch that looked like this and that,' and 'pigsty' was just another name for the hunting ground."

"The hunting grounds?" Xiangzi looked up, puzzled.

"Not everyone likes to reap the rewards without sowing, or to complete the cycle of self-sufficiency like Ave Maria; they prefer to hunt down witches themselves."

"..."

The further you go in, the narrower the passage becomes.

Eventually, it became so narrow that only one person could pass through at a time, even narrower than the entrance to a nightclub.

Mary stopped at the end of the passage.

"Before she was completely desperate, she handed me a notebook containing the techniques for cultivating witches. On the last line of that notebook, she wrote the words 'Live on.'"

Mary turned slightly to the side and looked at Xiangzi with a smile.

“‘To survive’ was the wish I made during the earthquake.”

"So whether for her sake or for my own, I've decided to continue this."

"After I started cultivating Ave Maria, I negotiated with the assembly to allocate Kabukicho to me separately, so that the barrier of Ave Maria could be protected from being discovered to the greatest extent."

"After that, five years passed uneventfully."