After Verner and the others entered the basement, I put up a gigantic barrier around the academy and sucked out all of the mana contained within it. Now, no one inside the academy would be able to regenerate their MP. Then, I waited for Verner and the others to do their part before I could join them underground. I was just starting to think it was about time to head down when the ground shook. It felt like an earthquake.
Profeta, who was next to me, exclaimed, "Now is the time, Ellize! The plan is going well. Eterna and Alfrea just attacked Alexia together. She used a ton of mana to block their spells, so she should be almost out of it! You can finish things now!"
YES!
I was glad to hear that Verner and the others had managed to deliver results without getting hurt. This story was finally coming to an end—I simply needed to head down and keep the witch in check so that Alfrea could focus on the seal. We'd won.
I'm off to the basement!
I took Layla, the headmaster, and a few knights with me and headed down to the underground arena. We proceeded to go down the hidden stairway to reach the floor on which the witch had been staying all this time. We came across a barrier. I assumed Alexia had put it up to stop the students from running away, but I quickly destroyed it and kept moving. Finally, I saw Verner and the others.
Sorry for the wait! I'll treat you all to some good food after this to make it up to you!
I carefully examined each of the students. Thankfully, none of them had been hurt. Ah, wait. One of them—Crunchy Doggybag, no surprise there—was lying down on the floor. Well, they were all alive, so good enough.
Huh? Who the hell is that lady in the back? That's not Alexia, is it? She was a pale woman who looked like your textbook witch. I knew the characters' appearances were bound to change to some extent because of the switch from 2D to 3D, but this was definitely a whole other person. Her route was hidden, but Alexia was technically a dateable heroine—she was supposed to look young and beautiful. Okay, sure, she was a little older than most of the cast, and some players treated her as an old hag because of it, but she was only supposed to appear in her twenties.
I took a better look at the woman who'd started cowering the second I'd walked in. Yeah, I guess she does seem to be in her twenties... Her dark circles and sunken cheeks make her look much older, though. Was she really the witch, or had I—the fake saint—started a battle against a fake witch? Nah, there's no way...right?
"Are you Alexia, the witch?" I asked just in case.
The woman took a step back as though to distance herself from me. Sadly for her, we were in an underground chamber—there was nowhere for her to run.
Wanna try to sneak out? I'll give you a three minute head start. Actually, nah, I lied—I'm not waiting.
"Y-You're Ellize, the saint...right?" the witch asked. As the realization that I was here dawned upon her, the look in her eyes changed. She seemed to want to do something, but soon noticed that she couldn't. Her features twisted into a look of astonishment. "What? How can there be no mana?"
"I absorbed all of the mana in the area," I answered calmly. "There is no way for anyone to regenerate it here."
I knew it. She'd tried to teleport as soon as she saw me! Sorry to disappoint, but this area is on lockdown!
The witch was seething. "Curse you!" she cried, firing a black bullet at me.
I caught it with my bare-but-covered-by-a-barrier hands and crushed it to powder. Darkness attribute spells were pretty much unrivaled, but when they were hundreds of times weaker than my defenses, they were no big deal for me.
The witch seemed surprised.
With the witch constantly protecting herself with dark magic, normal attacks wouldn't work on her. However, I'd borrowed some of Verner's powers a while back. It was a tiny amount compared to that of the witch, sure. I estimated not even a tenth of the damage I dealt could reach her. If I attacked her with a hundred MP, she'd only feel an attack around ten MP. It was all good, though—all I had to do was use a thousand MP from the get-go! By the way, I had more than five hundred thousand MP. That was enough to perform at least a hundred attacks that could override witch's maximum mana output, even if she were in top condition.
Anyway, all that meant I could default to my go-to solution: spam light magic all over the place! I splurged a little and poured around five thousand MP into my spell before chanting, "Aurea Libertas."
I usually fired that spell toward the sky and let it disperse into countless beams of light that'd chase enemies for me, but I only had one opponent this time. I fired it directly at the witch. A large golden beam flew out of my hand and crashed into the witch, slamming her into the wall which exploded under the impact. Eventually, the noise calmed down, the dust settled, and we discovered a brand new tunnel.
Behind me, Alfrea was shivering and whimpering dramatically.
As always, our first saint has no dignity.
I walked into the tunnel. At the very end of it, I found Alexia lying on the ground. I'd held back so that she wouldn't fly too far—I wasn't in the mood to go searching for her body for ages, and I definitely didn't want her to end up outside of my barrier's range.
"You...monster..." she struggled to speak as she used the wall for support to slowly get back on her feet.
Layla and the headmaster—who'd followed right behind me—drew their swords, but I stopped them by raising a hand. There was no point in these two getting involved. They wouldn't be able to touch the witch... Then again, I supposed they could hurt her if I gave them magical swords.
"This is the end, Witch Alexia," I said.
The witch looked up at me in despair. She realized that there was no coming back from this. I was more than strong enough to deal with her myself, and I even had a bunch of allies here—including an impossible duo of saints. Even if I left on a whim, Alfrea and Eterna could still finish her off.
I was starting to feel like we were a group of bullies ganging up on a pitiful kid.
Alexia started crying. "No..." she sobbed, her face warped by fear. "No... Don't! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!!!"
She put up a barrier in front of her. She'd probably poured her last drops of mana into this final act of resistance. Considering she couldn't teleport, it most likely wasn't all that sturdy.
I used thirty thousand MP to create a blade of light and cut through the barrier. Unlike laser beams, swords stayed neatly inside your hand, which meant you could use them several times. In the long run, that could save you a lot of mana. If I took the witch's resistance into consideration, my blade could deal around three thousand MP worth of damage to the witch. I estimated that, at best, she had two thousand MP—she'd never have been able to counter my blows.
"Whoa! That barrier was pretty sturdy, but she destroyed it like it was nothing... I'm gonna need to keep buttering her up," Alfrea muttered not-so-quietly.
As always, she'd forsaken her dignity entirely. Can you stop doing stuff like that? Look at the poor knights! They're on the verge of having a seizure.
I could just picture Profeta's face if she'd been here. Speaking of Profeta, she hadn't accompanied us because she was a little too big to get into the basement. In fact, she couldn't even enter the school building.
"This makes no sense... Why...?" Alexia asked, looking at us.
The least I could do was let her get her anger off her chest. I didn't intend to show mercy, but I could listen to her final words—the last things she'd say before getting sealed. She was a villain who'd hurt countless people, but normally she would've been a cool and charismatic final boss. It was probably my fault if her beauty had withered ahead of time.
"Why?! Someone tell me why there are three saints! This is strange, right? There's supposed to be one saint! Only one! Don't mess with me! Why is it always me?! Why...?"
Alexia's confusion was justified. Leaving Verner aside, only saints could hurt the witch as far as she knew. She'd naturally concluded that there were three saints. In reality, there were only two—the first saint, Alfrea, and the current one, Eterna. The last one was a fraud. Then again, I guess even two saints existing at the same time is already a huge deal.
"This is unfair!" she continued. "This is seriously too unfair! Why do I always get the short end of the stick?! Everyone keeps yapping that they love you, and that you're the best saint ever, but it wasn't like that in my time! The saint before me was so damn useless that everyone just kept pushing their expectations onto me! They kept pressuring me to kill the witch as quickly as possible...and when I finally did, they all turned on me!"
In passing, I'd told the knights I'd taken with me the truth about the witches and saints. Everyone was already aware that this Alexia was the Alexia they'd known or had heard of. I could tell from their eyes that Layla and the others pitied her somehow.
"Since everyone had betrayed me anyway, I decided to destroy everything as the witch! I wanted you all to suffer and die! That's what you deserve! You got your five years of peace because I killed Griselda. Shouldn't you be thankful?! I went through hell to give you that peace! How dare you betray me?! How dare you curse me? As fleeting as it may have been, who do you think earned that peace for you?! Me! It was all me! Don't I deserve to be thanked?! Don't I deserve to finally do what I want?! I gave everything to humanity, so I deserve to reap the benefits!"
Well... She's not exactly wrong.
She'd been taken from her parents at birth and raised for the sole purpose of defeating the witch. She'd lived through that constant pressure until she'd finally headed out and defeated Griselda. She probably thought she'd finally be free to live her life as she wanted, only to be betrayed instead. Besides, her predecessor had messed up so badly that everyone was at their wit's end. She'd been forced to carry the hopes and expectations of two generations. Alexia had most likely had it the hardest out of all the saints.
On the other hand, the people who were in charge of raising the saint had mellowed out a lot for the next generation. Now that I thought about it, the original Ellize had grown into a spoiled brat. Alexia's achievements and pain had paved the way for Ellize's laziness and entitlement.
That's what created the worst (fake) saint in history in the game.
Alexia had said she deserved to reap the benefits for the work she'd done. It was definitely a natural sentiment—humans expected rewards for their hard work. Doing good deeds without expecting anything in return sounded good on paper, but in reality, it just meant you were being exploited. It was exactly the sort of excuse exploitative businesses used to get their employees to do overtime for free.
I only agreed with about half of what Alexia had said, though. Having suffered didn't give you the right to inflict the same on others. We all would've felt sympathy for her if she hadn't said that bit, but she'd just dug her own grave. I didn't even need to turn around to know that Verner and the others were looking down at her coldly.
"You're all the same! You've been enjoying this fake peace without a second thought for my agony! You left me to suffer alone! You didn't care that I was never rewarded for my efforts! You're so lucky, Ellize—everyone fawns over you and tells you how perfect you are! I'm sure you find it easy to do your best for them when they butter you up so much! The greatest saint in history, huh? Don't make me laugh! You're just a piece of trash who's forgotten her place! You're drunk on your own sense of superiority!"
I was genuinely impressed. I never would've thought Alexia was such a great judge of character. I was fully aware of my nature, so I didn't really mind Alexia pointing it out. Why get mad when she was just dropping facts? She was absolutely right—I was exactly the kind of conceited bastard who loved feeling superior compared to everybody else. I wanted others to see me in a good light, to have them praise and revere me. Sure, I did a few good deeds here and there to fulfill my agenda, but at my core, I totally operated on this twisted mindset.
Scotterbrain didn't take it the same way, though. She pulled out her sword.
"You were blessed with incredible powers, trustworthy allies...and even two other saints! How can you not see how unfair this all is, Ellize?! You're a coward, a damn coward! If I were as powerful as you... If I had as many knights..." she trailed off before suddenly remembering something. "That's right, Dias! Where is he?! Dias! Save me! You have to save me!"
"Headmaster Dias has long since been arrested. You've been exchanging messages with someone else for a while now...and it was me, Supple!"
Alexia understood that she was truly and utterly alone now. It was checkmate. She tried to crawl away from us, but she was already backed up against the wall. There was nowhere for her to run. All she could do was push against the wall in vain.
"What?! Damn! He's a knight but he can't even protect his master?! He's so useless!"
Layla's grasp on her sword tightened at Alexia's words.
The witch didn't notice. "O-Oct! Where are you, Oct?! How long do you intend to leave me alone, huh? And you, Pochi?! Even a useless dog like you finally has a chance to be helpful, so get here right this instant!"
Oct was already gone, and so was Pochi—Verner had defeated him during the first martial tournament. Verner seemed to have understood which monster Pochi was, because he glared at the witch in rage.
"I can't bear to listen to her anymore," Supple said with a sigh. "Lady Alfrea, please seal her at once—before she disgraces herself any further..."
Supple's zealous adoration for the saint had started with Alexia. Seeing her like this must've been a shock for him.
"Okay," Alfrea replied in a carefree tone, then began preparing her spell.
If nothing unexpected happened, it would finally be the end. The thing was, these sorts of cool sealing spells usually failed big time in stories.
Is it gonna work? I really hope it does...
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