When I first started studying magic at the academy, I wanted Limicia to have powers as well.
So I conducted extensive research and asked several professors about it, but none of them gave me an answer.
I then went to the abandoned part of the school, where I discovered something particularly interesting, the witch began.
There’s an abandoned part of the academy?
Why have I never seen it before?
Emilya thought.
—But I quickly realized that it would never be possible.
Do you know how magicians come into existence?
—The elders at the academy always told us that we were chosen by the gods and magical creatures.
Isn’t that true?
Emilya replied innocently.
—Ha ha ha ha!
How ignorant you are, my child!
You’re wrong about a few things.
We are neither chosen by the gods nor magical creatures.
We are born from a mixture of a magical creature and a human, she explained.
—What?
A mixture?
Emilya exclaimed, stunned.
—Yes.
In a sealed-off room in the abandoned part of the school, there are books that talk about everything, especially the origins of magicians.
The first magician in this world was born from a dragon and a human.
All the others were born in the same way, through the union of magical creatures and humans, she explained.
—But then, that means… Emilya stopped, slowly realizing what she had just heard.
—Yes.
Both you and I are a fusion of a magical creature and a human.
Emilya could hardly believe her ears, but only one question came to her mind.
—Is it possible to know which creature we are mixed with?
—Only a being created by that creature or belonging to its species can recognize it.
So I wonder what you’re really made of, the witch replied, amused and intrigued.
Suddenly, the witch realized that time had passed.
She had lost her connection with the monsters she had sent to search for Lucius and, absorbed in her conversation with Emilya, had completely forgotten about the others.
When she realized it, her anger exploded.
She attacked Emilya without mercy.
Emilya endured the attacks as best she could and fought back for a while, launching various magical attacks: stone projectiles, high-pressure streams of water, ice spears, and anything else that could help her keep the witch at bay.
Normally, those who practice magic are not close-range fighters.
But Emilya was, thanks to Melvis.
She also had a magical bow that allowed her to push the witch back whenever she got too close.
Feeling threatened, the witch began taking the fight much more seriously.
Emilya was slowly getting closer to the witch when the latter released a powerful wave of magic that sent her flying through the air.
Thinking she was going to crash into a tree, Emilya was surprised when Melvis caught her in midair.
—Thank you!
Emilya exclaimed.
Taking advantage of this brief moment of respite, the witch began to transform.
The dress she was wearing changed into armor covered in thorns.
She summoned a staff bearing her likeness, while her pupils turned black and tears of the same color ran down her cheeks.
A dark aura now emanated from her body.
It was so oppressive that Emilya and Melvis began to tremble.
The two girls froze for a moment, then immediately regained their composure.
With a single glance, they understood each other.
Melvis would attack from a distance, while Emilya would cast powerful spells to inflict as much damage as possible.
Their tactic might have worked… if their opponent had not been the Thorn Witch.
After casting so many powerful spells, Emilya quickly became exhausted.
Yet she refused to stop.
Melvis’s life depended on it.
She also protected Melvis whenever the witch tried to attack her from her blind spots.
Then, the witch abandoned Melvis and focused entirely on Emilya.
Thorns burst from the ground beneath her feet.
Emilya could only dodge them, with no way to defend herself.
So she began to run, careful not to get too far away from Melvis.
Melvis continued attacking the witch at close range, but the witch blocked her attacks with various spells.
Emilya, meanwhile, took advantage of every opening to protect her.
The attacks were coming from different angles.
That pattern of attacks reminded Emilya of something.
Lucius’s apple training?!
Could this be a coincidence?
she thought in the middle of the battle.
One of the witch’s attacks then came dangerously close to hitting her, but Emilya narrowly dodged it.
—If you get distracted in the middle of a fight, you’ll die like a fool, the witch taunted her.
As she was beginning to grow tired of the fight and wanted to finish it as quickly as possible, the witch sped up her attacks.
They became faster and more powerful with every passing moment.
Emilya and Melvis were quickly overwhelmed and began to suffer injuries.
Emilya then ordered Melvis to come closer to her.
She had a plan to at least injure the witch.
When Melvis was close enough, Emilya asked her to protect her while she prepared one of her forbidden spells.
These spells were reserved for situations of extreme necessity, as they also injured the person who used them.
Emilya had created them to defeat the one she had been searching for over the past three years.
Melvis was against the idea.
If Emilya used that spell, she risked completely draining her magic and losing consciousness.
But they had no other choice.
Either they did nothing and died at the hands of the witch, or they tried something and had a chance of escaping.
Reluctantly, Melvis accepted Emilya’s plan.
She protected her with all her strength, doing everything she could to block the attacks.
She could not always dodge them, because the slightest attack that slipped past her could hit Emilya.
The witch, amused by what Emilya was preparing, prepared herself to withstand the attack.
Emilya realized what she was doing.
She then gathered all the magic she could still use and unleashed her spell.
—Black Lightning!
she screamed.
A massive black bolt of lightning struck the witch, who clearly had not expected magic of such magnitude.
When the smoke cleared, the witch had disappeared.
All that remained was a pile of ashes where she had been standing, along with the mark left by the lightning and faint electrical sparks still crackling in the air.
Seeing this, Emilya let out a sigh of relief.
She thought she had managed to defeat the witch.
But imagine her surprise when the witch appeared behind her.
—Bravo.
Your spell managed to annihilate my clone.
Realistic, isn’t it?
the witch said with a smile.
When Emilya realized she was there, she tried to fight back by turning around.
But at that exact moment, a thorn erupted from the ground and pierced Emilya through the back, emerging from her chest.
Shocked by what had just happened, Emilya looked ahead.
She saw Melvis running toward her, but her voice seemed to grow more distant with every passing second.
Emilya slowly began to fall.
Her eyelids grew heavy.
Then, in the distance, on the branch of a tree, she caught sight of a silhouette Lucius he had his back turned to her.
Damn… bastard.
Those were her last thoughts before she closed her eyes.
Her body collapsed to the ground.
She could still hear Melvis’s voice calling her name, but it slowly faded away completely.
—Emilya!
Melvis screamed repeatedly as she shook her body.
But Emilya did not respond.
The witch, standing directly above Emilya’s motionless body, thought it was a shame that she had died like that.
Then she sensed something that caught her attention.
A faint smile appeared on her face.
She secretly decided to place a seed inside Emilya’s body, without Melvis noticing.
Afterward, she slowly headed in the direction Lucius had gone.
—Take your mistress’s body and get out of my forest.
For your bravery, I won’t kill you.
So you’d better be grateful to her.
I have a filthy little rat to catch, she said furiously.
When Emilya and Lucius had separated, Lucius had gone to search for the Moon Flowers.
Since he had already been there before, he knew exactly where they were.
He was crossing the forest like a shadow when, all of a sudden, the monsters the witch had sent after him attacked.
He fought each of them and defeated them with surprising ease.
—Hasn’t she figured out by now that sending these beasts after me is useless?
he muttered irritably.
He calmly resumed his journey, now that he was rid of the monsters.
Not long afterward, he came across a field of white flowers.
For a moment, he was dazzled by the sight he was seeing for the second time.
But he quickly regained his composure and began picking a few flowers.
That was when something fell from his pocket.
The bracelet Emilya had given him before they left.
Lucius picked it up and put it back in his pocket.
He then stood up, ready to continue on his way.
Yet he stopped.
A strange sense of foreboding had begun to settle inside him.
After a few seconds of hesitation, he turned around.
He headed back toward where Emilya was.
He did not understand why he felt this strange uneasiness, but something was telling him that he had to go back.
When he arrived at the battlefield, the fight was already over.
Emilya had just been pierced.
And for a brief moment, their eyes met.
Lucius’s face revealed nothing.
He looked away and left upon seeing the scene.
But deep down, his heart ached.
As if he were the one who had just been pierced.
I’m sorry.
I’m truly sorry… but I had no choice.
Goodbye, Emilya.
At the edge of the forest, Lucius took an object out of his bag.
It was the map of Kidzuna that Emilya had been carrying.
As he was about to leave the forest, an attack from behind pierced his shoulder.
Lucius turned around.
The witch was standing behind him.
She had come to take her revenge for the time he had escaped from her.