novelraw Chapter 27 : Accomplices
Chapter 27 : Accomplices
Chapter 27: Accomplices
At this moment, Leon truly wanted to slap himself hard.
After all, he was still a novice when it came to killing.
After smashing Hannah Weisland down, he had focused entirely on the follow-up handling and had actually made a mistake at the most crucial step—confirming death—simply checking her breath and concluding she was already dead!
The possibility of someone reviving after suffering a severe blow and stopping breathing was very small, but it was not nonexistent!
“Mm… mm… help…” After Hannah, who had rolled to the bottom of the pool, regained consciousness, all she felt was splitting pain in her head.
Her face was covered, and she could not see anything.
She struggled to crawl up, but her hands and feet refused to obey her.
Rena trembled as she stepped forward.
After taking a glance at the situation at the bottom of the pool, she was so frightened that she staggered backward.
She looked at Leon in terror and asked in a shaking voice, “Th-then what should we do now?”
“Save me… Rena, save me…” Hearing Rena’s voice, Hannah called out unconsciously, her awareness hazy.
“Tch!” Leon frowned, shut the barred gate again and locked it, stepped back from the pool, then turned toward Rena.
“Do it!”
“Eh?” Rena looked as if she could not understand what Leon was saying at all.
“Do it. Let the Magical Beasts finish her off!” Leon said in a low, steady voice.
In this situation, letting the Magical Beasts deliver the fatal blow to Hannah was undoubtedly the simplest solution.
But Rena only looked back at Leon in a complete daze.
Leon meant for her to personally control the Magical Beasts to kill Hannah—how could she possibly make up her mind on the spot and carry out murder with her own hands?
At this moment, Hannah finally used her trembling hand to tear off the clothes wrapped around her head.
What entered her field of vision were countless Head-Hunting Rabbits with red-glowing eyes and Slimes continuously making squelching sounds—she had fallen into the breeding pool, with the Magical Beasts encircling her layer by layer, all poised to strike.
All Magical Beasts possessed extremely strong hostility toward humans, not to mention that these Magical Beasts also had predatory instincts.
The Church’s doctrines claimed that the Primordial Witch Moilai detested humans, and one piece of evidence was the inexplicable hostility her created Magical Beasts showed toward humanity.
The only reason they had not attacked Hannah yet was because Rena’s ability was suppressing their instincts.
“Ah! Ahhhhh!!” Realizing her situation, Hannah lay prone on the ground and screamed in terror.
“No! Don’t! I was wrong, I was wrong! Please spare me!”
“Stop hesitating and do it!” Leon urged Rena.
The longer Hannah was allowed to keep talking, the harder it would become to act.
“I… I…” Rena was at a complete loss.
“Let me go! I swear I absolutely won’t say anything about what happened today! Wuwu… I did it all for my family… I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!!” Hannah begged in tears.
“Shut up!” Leon roared irritably toward the bottom of the breeding pool.
“So in order for you and your family to live well, Rena deserved to die? You clearly knew what would happen to Rena if she was caught by the Church, yet you still sold her out. People like you deserve to die the most!!”
Then Leon turned and shouted at Rena, “Rena!”
Rena’s shoulders jolted in fright.
“It’s either her death or ours!! No matter what, she cannot be allowed to live today. Give her a quick end!!” Leon said resolutely, staring into Rena’s eyes.
“Either her death or ours…”
Rena subconsciously repeated it softly.
After clearly realizing their current situation, her delayed survival instinct finally began to drive her body.
That’s right—she did not want to be caught by the Church! She did not want to die either!!
When she came back to her senses, Rena realized that she had already placed her right thumb and index finger into her mouth, pressing against her tongue and forming the posture for a whistled signal—this was the signal she habitually used to command Magical Beasts to attack.
As long as she produced this sharp sound with attacking intent, all the Magical Beasts under her control would become frenzied.
“Stop… don’t!”
“Do it, Rena!!”
Leon’s roar drowned out Hannah’s sobbing.
In the end, Rena steeled her heart, closed her eyes, and blew the whistle.
The Head-Hunting Rabbits in the breeding pool finally received permission from their master’s will and shot forward like arrows loosed from a bow, cold light flashing at the joints of their hind legs.
“No—” Hannah’s final cry was cut short.
The first Head-Hunting Rabbit that pounced brushed past her neck; with a light slash of the blade on its hind leg, her throat was cut open.
Leon and Rena saw blood spray between the bars, and Hannah made no further sound.
After that, rustling noises rose from the bottom of the pool, exactly like the sounds the Magical Beasts made when feeding after they were usually given food.
The two stood there motionless, like two statues, neither of them stepping forward immediately to confirm the situation.
Rena felt her mind go completely blank.
After a long while, her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the ground.
Hearing the noise, Leon turned around to look at Rena.
Rena looked up at him, then suddenly recoiled backward in terror.
“Can you not look at me with that kind of gaze?” Leon said with dissatisfaction, his heart aching sharply.
Killing Hannah had been for self-preservation, but also to protect Rena.
Yet now Rena was looking at him in such terror, as if she were sizing up a pure murderer.
Rena gradually came back to her senses, and a chill rapidly tightened its grip around her.
Although Leon had been urging her to act the entire time, in the end she had still ordered the Magical Beasts to attack of her own will.
She was the one who killed Hannah.
She was the murderer.
How could she possibly remain uninvolved?
“I killed someone…” Rena’s whole body began to tremble.
She hugged her head in terror and sobbed softly.
“I killed someone! I killed someone!”
Sensing that Rena’s mental state was on the verge of collapse, Leon’s expression turned grave.
He quickly stepped forward, squatted down in front of her, reached out to grab her wrist, and soothed her in a low voice:
“Rena, Rena! Calm down! You didn’t kill her. After I smashed her like that, she was already beyond saving—you just gave her a quick end! And get this straight: she wanted to kill you. For a little money, she wanted to send you to the stake. She deserved to die! You were just protecting yourself! Do you understand? We just wanted to live. What did we do wrong?”
Rena sobbed a few more times and finally stopped trembling.
After quite a while, she raised her tear-streaked face and stared blankly at Leon as she asked:
“Then next time, if we’re discovered by someone else, do we still have to do this? Are we… going to keep using this excuse to kill people and silence them?”
Leon was rendered speechless on the spot.
Rena was unexpectedly seeing this matter more clearly than he had anticipated.
Indeed, this time it could be said that Hannah deserved to die—but what about the next time?
If some innocent person discovered their secret and, purely out of the common sense of justice in this world, reported them to the Church, would they also have to keep killing to silence them, again using the excuse that they wanted to live?
“When you first became a Witch, did you think about what you’d do if you were discovered?” Leon asked in return.
Rena thought for a moment and shook her head in confusion.
“I don’t know. I was just thinking about saving people…”
“I was just thinking about making money too,” Leon sighed.
The two fell into silence.
In truth, they were the same—both engaging in forbidden acts for their own purposes, without seriously considering what they would do if they were discovered.
Anyone who did such things more or less harbored the lucky thought of “as long as I’m not found out.”
Now, they were already thorough accomplices, whether in producing and selling Mana or in killing to silence others.
“No one knows what the future will be like. What’s done is done, and there’s no point in overthinking things you can’t figure out!” After a long while, Leon stood up first, his face expressionless.
“Let’s deal with the problem in front of us first!”
With that, he walked over, picked up the wooden bucket that had fallen to the ground, scooped some water from the trough, carried it to the edge of the breeding pool, and began washing the bloodstains off the bars.