Chapter 34: Chapter 33: Anta’s Unshakable Ambition

 

On the morning of the day of the festival, three adventurers sitting together at the guild’s cozy bar simultaneously sipped from their teacups.

Bear and wolf furs were decorating the walls of the spacious room. The most impressive of all was the huge deer head with its massive antlers that were almost the size of a man. Several torches were still burning despite the light of day already coming through the tall windows.

Not far from the gentlemen, Leyla was trying to keep the new little girl focused on a children’s book.

“So, the day has come.” Shigeru, the paragon of laziness and lack of self-respect, decided to speak first. He was a man that didn’t care about the way he appeared in public. He had messy, sticky hair, a few missing teeth, month-old clothes stained with coffee and food, and a particular smell that kept ladies at a safe distance.

“What’s with the silence, pals? Come on.” The talkative man tried again to make a conversation.

“Do you guys not have a bad feeling about today’s festival?” The taller one with shorter hair, Justav, one of the men who attacked Saori when she first came to Shields of Honor, answered with a discreet voice.

Shigeru smashed the wooden table with the heel, then positioned his other leg on top. He smiled and raised an eyebrow, “A bad feeling about me stealing your lady?”

“Fuck off, dude.”

After watching the other two conversing for a while, Maron decided to speak up.

“Look, since the new girl came into the village, things took a turn for the worse. It was bound to happen eventually anyway.” He leaned onto the table to get closer to his pals and lowered his voice, “We need to do something about this. I think we should all go together to hunt the witch. Let’s organize this properly.”

“What?” Justav asked shocked, “You know what happened to all the amazing warriors that challenged her in a one-to-one battle, right? Even legends from around the world came to our village to fight her. They all died!”

Eager to find out what this conversation would lead to, Shigeru intervened:

“Ha, ha. That’s only because it was a fair dispute. We are many, if we fight her we’ll take the whole guild, and bring the beast girl as well.”

Maron looked both men in the eyes and agreed with Shigeru.

“That’s beyond reckless.”

“So what? We stay here doing safe missions from the panel and pretend the witch that’s butchering us doesn’t exist?! Just because we are afraid?” Maron attempted to impose his point of view by raising his tone.

“We already asked for help from Riveria. They have Ashura, probably the strongest man that ever existed, and they still refused to help. Our master keeps on saying that we should avoid upsetting the witch, but he is not here now, so this is our chance. We don’t know how long he will be gone. Better make our move one of these days.” Shigeru backed his friend up.

Justav sighed and took another sip from his tea before talking.

“Let’s say we all agree and we manage to convince the rest of the adventurers to go on a witch hunt. Then what? How do we find her? Her cave is almost impossible to find.”

The other two men leaned back and sighed in unison.

Maron felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I might just be able to help with that.” An old woman with a senile smile appeared out of nowhere.

“Fuck!” Shigeru exclaimed. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you? A witch?”

“It’s not the first time people have called me that.”

Maron laughed, “Don’t worry, she’s a lovely old woman.”

“She might be a witch, but she’s on our side. Try not to spread the word too much. To avoid unnecessary panic and conflict, only the guild’s members should know.” Justav whispered in his ear.

They were slowly reaching a mutual understanding.

“Great. Now we have almost everything we need. All that’s left to do is to convince the remaining forty adventurers to join our party. Something that will never happen.”

“Unless…” The witch had a plan.

 

*

 

It was the night of the festival.

Anta walked away from the story-sharing stand where she left Saori. Leaving the festival behind, the woman spoke to herself:

“In order for good to triumph, sacrifices must be made. It’s been like that since I can remember and it will always be this way. Heaven has no place on this planet.”

The noisy sandals she was wearing resounded throughout the dark alleys of Bird Valley at every step. Most people had already fallen asleep thinking that they would wake up to live another prosperous day, but many were wrong.

“Evil lurks in the shadows. At nights like this, when things are darker than usual, evil comes out of its lair. It wakes up and devours. It’s incredibly sad how true this is.” The woman said to herself.

Turning around the corner, the woman met with Justav and Shigeru. Next to them, ten people were blindfolded and chained next to each other, sitting on their knees in a circle. In the center of it was a skull that they found on the ground a couple of days ago. It belonged to Ashura.

“I can’t believe we are working with a witch,” Shigeru mentioned.

“Is everything ready?” the woman asked in a calm voice, ignoring his remark. She didn’t look like she was going to have any remorse for the sins she was about to commit, or so it seemed from the outside.

“Yes, Mrs. Anta,” Justav replied promptly.

Once again, the woman reminded them that what they were about to do was for the greater good. In order to save the population, some had to die and it was sad but necessary. It did take a bit of work, but in the end, they all hardened their hearts.

The three of them did a prayer for the chained people that were about to become human sacrifices.

Without further ado, the old witch gave the order.

“Cut their throats.”

“Wait, wha—” Blood gushed from the startled man’s throat like an artesian fountain.

“Aaaaaaa!” A woman screamed when she heard the man next to her get killed, but her mouth was shut immediately.

One by one, they fell to the ground in the rapidly growing crimson pool. As the blood level rose and entered the skull’s mouth, Anta pulled her magic wand out and began to recite a dark spell. This time, the words were in a different language than the one she used since she met Saori.

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Neither Justav nor Shigeru understood one word.

The witch’s body was getting weaker and weaker by the second. She felt pain in her joints, but continued to recite the spell and didn’t stop until it was complete.

“Come, youngsters! Have a look. She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? I created her to combat the witch apocalypse. A project I started working on ever since I got imprisoned in the secluded village. The result of six years of witchcraft work.”

The two adventurers followed Anta to the main path from where they had a slightly better view of the distant mountain surrounded by a rare fog.

“I kept Shina sleeping under the cursed mountain all this time. Honestly, I did not think that I would use her this way. But desperate situations ask for desperate measures, and I will do anything to crush my sisters.” She squeezed her shaking fist in determination.

Two blue eyes, big enough to look like they belonged to the mountain itself, appeared at the top. On the sides of the peak, several monstrously large, beige, and thin arms that hugged the forest came into view.

Raising her body above the peak of the mountain, the scorpion-like trunk was illuminated by the moonlight, which offered a clearer view of Anta’s creation. The monster’s extremely long neck resembled a snake with fish gills on its skin. The face had human facial features.

“No! What is this?” Justav was already regretting his decision of helping with this inhuman plan.

“Go! Gather adventurers to fight her. Remember that this needs to be done perfectly if we wish the plan to succeed.” The old woman sent the two away.

Only Justav left, as Shigeru was too fascinated to take his eyes off the creature.

Shina flexed her limbs to a certain degree, lowering her enormous body.

“Get ready, she will jump,” Anta warned.

“Say what again?” He chose not to wait for an answer. The man turned on the spot and headed toward the guild.

Shigeru wished to look back, but he was too scared to do so, and the sooner he blew the guild’s horn, the faster people would realize the danger coming their way.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha! This is batshit crazy.” The unkempt man was laughing and running. Not even he knew whether he liked the plan anymore or not.

Ten minutes later the horn resounded throughout the village, signaling that a great catastrophe was approaching and there was a high chance of people losing their lives. Something that those living in the settlement knew very well.

The sound of the blown horn in the middle of the night instilled great fear. Most people turned their lights on and went to the windows to check what was going on, others packed their things up and got ready to run, while most children started to scream and cry.

"A second ago it was nice and quiet. Now it’s chaos. I guess this is what we witches do whether we want to or not. People were right to be afraid of our witchcraft from the start.”

“I am sorry.” A tear fell from the corner of the woman’s blind eye.

A short earthquake shook the population as the huge Shina fell from the infinitely dark sky right in front of Anta. Her hair was straight, her eyes had no eyelids, and she was smiling.

The monstrosity lowered its head to the witch’s level and listened.

“Go on a rampage. You may destroy about a quarter of the village. Avoid killing too many.”

Shina lifted her head. Using one of her many limbs, she grabbed a half-naked woman from inside a house and threw her into her mouth. The inhuman creature started chewing her, tearing her flesh apart, and cracking her bones between the sharp teeth. Once done with the snack, Anta’s creation began its advancement through the settlement.

“WHAT IS THAT THING?!” A man that left his house screamed in fear when he saw the anomaly.

The creature was advancing, looking only ahead with a big bloody smile and a man’s foot stuck between its teeth, pulling people off their houses with its multiple limbs, eating them, and destroying any houses in the way.

“What are you spacing out for, geezer? Get the hell out of here!” A few guards from the guild arrived to intercept the invader and guide the population to safety.

“I-I-I’ll take them to s-safety! You hold the monster!” Shigeru suggested as he took the man with him and ran away without waiting for a response, “What the hell is a plan for if you end up dead? And come on, there is no way I’m fighting that thing.”

“HEEEEEEY! Who said you could decide that on your own? Coward!”

Another couple of desperate villagers ran past the guards, mercilessly pushing them out of the way.

“Dude! Look at it. Why is it smiling?! And why is it bending forward and arching its trunk?” Another guard intervened and pointed with her finger toward Shina.

Worried, the man turned his head to check what his buddy said.

“Y-You’re right. This is probably the creepiest thing I’ve seen my whole life as an adventurer.”

Bent forward with her huge palms on the ground, the fingers spread wide, and her scorpion trunk lifted upward, Shina had a plan.

Suddenly, people could not move anymore, and that included most of those that were on the run as well. Their feet got stuck into a viscous thick web, forcing them to fall to the ground and get trapped.

“Shit!”

“Someone, please help meeeeee!” A woman started to cry seeing that she couldn’t get out.

“I GOT STUCK, SOMEONE, PLEASE!”

As fear took over the incapacitated prey, the monstrosity’s anus opened and spit a green substance several times into the sky that fell all over the place. Anything it touched melted instantly, including the human body.

Every person dying led to a tear rolling down the old witch’s cheek. She could feel the pain they were going through and hear the fearful screams, but refused to give up on her plan.

“I told her not to kill so many, yet Shina exterminates everyone on sight… I guess expecting such a devilish creature to listen to everything I say was a foolish mistake.”

While most had met their ends, Shigeru was one of the few lucky enough not to get caught in the web, managing to regroup with the rest of the party further toward the center. That’s where the plan will be put into action.

Hiding between the houses with a special long chain in their hands and on opposite sides of the road, ready to pull together, all they had to do now was to wait for the monster to get closer. They’ve been guaranteed by Anta that her magic will prevent the chain from breaking.

Dozens of fighters gathered on roofs hiding on the lower sides or behind chimneys so that Shina would not spot them, all armed to the teeth.

“I doubt this plan will work. I doubt it so much! But we have to believe and fight. This had better be worth it, Anta!” Justav squeezed the chain firmly in his hands.

The next few moments felt like an eternity. Some fighters were sweating more and more with every second. Their instincts were telling them to run away, but they believed in each other and in the old woman, the witch that helped the Shields of Honor in the past more times than they could remember.

The moment to face their fears and fight this devil with honor has come, and there was no going back now.

 

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