The man's handsome face distorted at Ais's question, and he snarled in a near-furious low voice:
"One of my kind was killed by a Witch. I would never cooperate with them."
Is your brain still a mass of flesh? Ais looked at him in silence, then slowly backed out of the shadow patch, letting herself step into the last glow of the setting sun. Evidently, the man's undeniably genuine expression and tone hadn't dispelled her wariness.
The man, watching Ais's clear retreat, let out a frustrated groan and pressed his fist to his temple before forcing his voice to something more controlled:
"Witches can divine. Divine it and you'll know I'm not lying."
As he spoke, he flicked a finger — which separated cleanly from his hand and dropped near Ais.
Just a slow reaction time, apparently. Ais looked at what was clearly a divination medium, then first launched a black flame at it out of caution.
Pop.
The man's detached finger ignited under the black flame and, with a faint expansion, burst apart. The scattered flesh fell to the nearby ground — the "explosive yield" was underwhelming, to say the least.
Ais looked back at the man and saw that the previously detached finger had already regrown.
"The Witch's curse hurts — though I suppose it's tolerable," the man said with unchanged expression, then muttered:
"Devious Witch."
I call that caution. Ais looked at the faint pitting where the flesh had corroded the ground, saw the man making no move to throw another finger, and pointed at the residual flesh:
"You want me to use this slop for divination?"
The man gave Ais a you-must-be-an-idiot look:
"Obviously."
Fine, no point arguing with someone this unhinged. If not for the man being transparently difficult to kill, Ais felt she might have already attacked again by now.
She kept her attention on him while half-crouching and using ice to freeze some of the flesh — lifting it indirectly. Then she stepped backward while silently repeating:
"The owner of this flesh told a deliberate lie just now."
After the seventh repetition, Ais caught the tossed coin with peripheral vision while facing the border between light and shadow.
"Quickly!" The man urged impatiently.
The two of you must have been genuinely close. Ais glanced at the tails-facing coin and said simply:
"I'm a Church of the Evernight Goddess informant. How did you identify me as a Witch?"
The man studied her carefully for a moment, then let his expression go neutral and answered flatly:
"Only a suspicion. At the gathering, I noticed your blood and skin tone didn't match. But since you'd already made me, I had no choice but to test it directly."
That's why I had no reaction the first time I attended — this time I wandered closer to you a few times, didn't I. Ais looked at the man with his now-neutral composure, and couldn't quite keep her own voice neutral:
"Just because of that one anomaly, you were prepared to make me wish I'd never been born?"
The man shook his head:
"If you weren't a Witch, I would have expelled you."
Compared to them, I'm clearly still too subtle. Ais imagined being enclosed in this man's flesh and shuddered. She immediately used ice to freeze the divination-medium flesh she'd been holding — and then invoked the Curse again.
In fact, a Witch's Curse didn't have to deliver the black flame exclusively through a medium — it was simply more effective because black flame was difficult for external forces to extinguish. The point was the transmission.
Because the amount of flesh used as a medium this time was small, the delivered force was weak. The man's expression didn't shift even fractionally. He simply controlled the flesh to crush and dissolve the ice as he asked:
"Since you know my organization's name — would you consider joining us and sharing devotion to our great creator?"
This time Ais couldn't maintain even her expression:
"Is this how you usually recruit?"
The man looked at Ais's genuine shock and explained with serene sincerity:
"This very morning, through hearkening to our creator's voice, I learned that the Witch's invisibility spell requires 'light-drawing dust.' And you appeared again this afternoon. I had assumed this was our creator's sign that my moment for vengeance had come. But since you're not from the Witch Cult, clearly I've misread the message. Perhaps our creator's indication is that you can help me take revenge more effectively."
So you're interpreting divine guidance through gut feeling and guesswork. Ais could not begin to grasp what was happening in this man's head. After a deep breath, she kept her voice as steady as she could manage:
"And if I decline?"
The man considered, then made a genuine effort at sincerity:
"Then when you encounter information about the Witch Cult, you could write to me at Number 23, Halton Street in the West District. I'd pay for that."
You've decided I have nothing to do with the Witch Cult based on the divination — but I don't see you divining that. How are you this trusting? Ais didn't bring it up — she was afraid that if she did, the man would realize the oversight and start fighting again.
So she only asked:
"Why do you stay in Beklund? With the current church crackdown, finding a Witch here should be nearly impossible."
"Because our creator has instructed it! We've kept a portion here to seek out and strike down the servants of those evil entities. This is more important than personal grievance." The man's tone shifted to zealous, then to contemptuous:
"Even though the Seven Churches' efforts have made a real impact, they alone aren't enough. Even here in their capital, there must be remnants of those filthy rats — otherwise I wouldn't remain."
I'm starting not to understand this world. Ais couldn't help rubbing her temples. This was profoundly strange.
Is this why the church treats the Shadow Amalgamation differently? Ais looked at this man — who by any visual standard looked like a villain — and decided to offer one piece of advice:
"I'd suggest you exercise more caution when you do encounter a Witch. Within the Witch Cult, I'd only be the weakest of new recruits. And from what I can observe, you don't seem to have any particularly good method for dealing with me."
But the man clearly wasn't taking her words seriously:
"With our creator guiding the way, I fear nothing. Danger and hardship are only tests from our creator. As long as I remain sufficiently devoted, I will ultimately come through."
Absolute fanatic. Time to go. Ais gave him a flat look:
"I have your address. If I do encounter anything, I'll write."
Without another word, she turned and walked away quickly, unwilling to spend another second in this man's company.
The man shook his head, his expression broadcasting "the hopeless young." Then he dissolved back into shadow and disappeared.
About ten minutes later, the shadow in a corner re-formed the man's silhouette. Still in that flesh-colored robe, he glanced around, then walked to where his clothes had fallen.
The man crouched and simply removed his own head, placing it upright on the ground. His body — robe and all — then quickly dissolved into viscous flesh that sank into the clothing. The pile of fabric swelled as it absorbed the mass.
This was how he rapidly dressed himself. He then picked up his head from the ground, brushed off the dust, and placed it back on his neck. Within a few breaths, head and neck had reconnected, indistinguishable from normal.
The man smoothed out his clothes with a satisfied pat and departed for good.
On the other side, Ais — having confirmed the man wasn't following again — turned over what he'd said, and the more she thought about it, the more unusual his behavior seemed to her. Something behind those strange choices felt significant.
What kind of evil presence could drive an organization like this — that by any measure shouldn't fit the description of a good actor — to abandon tolerance for its servants?
The fact that something was clearly off here made Ais wonder: could the primary target of the church's intensive crackdown also be the evil entities this man kept mentioning?
Author's Note (this chapter):The man crouched and simply removed his own head, placing it upright on the ground. His body — robe and all — then quickly dissolved into viscous flesh that sank into the clothing. The pile of fabric swelled as it absorbed the mass. This was how he rapidly dressed himself. He then picked up his head from the ground, brushed off the dust, and placed it back on his neck.
The Shadow Amalgamation is still poor. ·