After choosing to leave, they regretted it.

"Of course it's to save you. The move you were hit with before requires you to die once to remove it. So I'll put you into a state of suspended animation first, and then bring you back to life. Problem solved~"

Are all witches so hardcore when it comes to healing?

But since I have recovered, this should be true.

"You said you didn't want to kill me, but you clearly... uh?"

Aize was stunned because he realized a problem.

From the moment he was blocked by Vivian in the alley, except for the last solicitation which seemed more like a joke in retrospect, this guy seemed to have never mentioned the purpose of coming to find him.

He never mentioned killing himself.

However, when she wanted to die at the last moment, she was not sure at all, and just let herself make guesses based on common sense.

So, the conclusion is that I was fooled.

"...Did you do this on purpose? To scare me?"

"It's not good to wrongly accuse someone of being innocent, my hero. I didn't say a word. It's you who misunderstood me."

Villian smiled and shook her head, then stood up, crossed her arms, and walked in front of Aize, suddenly changing the subject:

"But, I am one of the leaders of the demon clan, right? I am also a person that humans are afraid of. What happened?"

"Some brave man from somewhere completely ignored me. He showed up with just a few men and then actually beat me up."

"I finally managed to save my life. I thought, if I suddenly appeared in front of that guy now, he would be scared to death, right? But guess what happened?"

As she said this, Villian pressed forward with an inexplicable sense of oppression, and Aize was trapped in a corner without realizing it.

There was no way. I just realized that I had been fooled and felt a little discouraged. I lost my momentum and could only go along with what the other person said.

"…What's going on?"

"That girl, surprisingly, didn't even look surprised. She even looked like she was going to kill or chop me up. That's too much, right? Right? Right? I'm a great witch, how could I not have any dignity?"

"Uh……"

To put it bluntly, he felt that Aize was too calm and that made him lose face, so he deliberately teased him.

One of the thirteen leaders, is so petty?

thump—

Aize was still in a daze when Villian's hand slammed heavily on the wall beside him, which turned into a wall-dong.

"Well, what on earth are you..."

After several unexpected rounds, Aize was exhausted in every aspect, his expression could no longer be maintained, his lips trembled, and cold sweat flowed down his face.

Seeing her like this, Miss Witch nodded with satisfaction and stroked Aize's pale face a few times with her free hand.

"Yeah, that's the right expression~ I wanted to see that kind of expression~ Your face is quite cute, so why is it that you're always so cold? Your reaction to falling off the bed just now was pretty good too."

After she was satisfied, she finally let go of Aize and sat back on the bed in the back.

And Aize simply collapsed along the wall into the corner.

I feel so sleepy, so tired, and I want to die.

"...So, what do you want to do with me?"

"Well, I should be the one asking you, what are you going to do next?"

Aize, who couldn't remember how many times he was confused, raised his head and what caught his eye was Villian, who had put away her smile and was extremely serious.

"...What does this mean?"

"My situation right now is similar to yours, a lost dog. This is all your fault, isn't it? It's not too much to ask you to take responsibility, right?"

Chapter 15: The Great Witch (?) Tool Man (?)

The name of a stray dog doesn't sound very nice, but it aptly describes Aize's current embarrassing situation. There's nothing much to say.

But how could Villian end up in the same situation as me?

Ai Ze slowly stood up, holding onto the wall. His brain, which had been almost exhausted, started working again, and then he shook his head.

"You're not going to say that you were driven out by other witches, are you? That's not funny."

As mentioned before, Villian, who is an outlier among witches, relied on violence to defeat all opponents and then rose to power. There are indeed many people who are dissatisfied with her.

However, the huge gap in strength forced them to give in and appear obedient in order to find opportunities.

The result was that in the battle of Anlin Plain, at the last and most critical moment, the other witches did not help the besieged Villian and wanted to use Aize's knife to kill her.

The result was counterproductive. Not only did Vivian not die, she was even alive and well.

Instead, the witches who betrayed Villian were killed to pieces by the knights under Aize in the subsequent pursuit.

In this situation, as long as the intact Villian returns as the king, she can not only regain the position of the Great Witch, but also take advantage of this rebellion to carry out a large-scale purge and firmly sit on the throne.

How could I be like myself, with nowhere to go?

In response, Villian smiled contemptuously:

"Of course not. If those losers had the guts to chase me away, I would have killed their entire family a few years ago. As for the truth, why don't you take a guess, brave man?"

"Tsk."

Aize clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction because he had to ask himself questions without making things clear.

Besides, this question is not difficult.

"Do you think I'm a fool? No one in the witch clan can touch you. Who else but the Demon King can target you, both within the witch clan and within the demon clan? You... huh?"

Aize noticed something strange.

In traditional RPG games, the Demon King always gives people the feeling of being supreme, and his subordinates obey his orders at will, with tremendous power.

But in this world, things are much more complicated.

Here, the demon race is a pseudo-concept, and its essence is a loose union of various strange races east of the central mountains.

The thirteen leaders are the leaders of the strongest tribes.

The tribes differ greatly in appearance, strength, behavior style, and ideology, and their attitudes towards demons and humans are also different.

In name, they all pledge allegiance to the Demon King, but in reality, each has their own agenda, which is very similar to the human aristocratic feudal system.

Just as the human king cannot directly interfere in the internal affairs of the great nobles, the Demon King cannot directly interfere in the identities of the thirteen leaders.

Therefore, in theory, the Demon King should not be able to pose a threat to Villian's position.

unless--

Aize's eyes slowly raised and fell on Villian again with a scrutinizing look.

"...Are you really a witch?"

"Um?"

"What's your connection to the Demon King? Or...what did the Demon King do to you?"

Before the war, Aize collected as much information as possible about Villian through his informants on the demon side, hoping to learn more about this future opponent.

Part of it struck him as a bit odd.

This great witch appeared out of nowhere five years ago, and no one knows her life or past.

Just two weeks after her appearance, she defeated the then Great Witch with overwhelming strength and took her place.

The problem comes after that.

The witches, who were originally autistic and had no interest in humans, began to appear frequently on the battlefield and attack human territory under the leadership of Villian.

This coincides with the previous Demon King's policy of completely wiping out humanity.

At that time, Aize suspected that this so-called Villian might actually be a tool used by the devil to control the witch clan in order to better eliminate humans.

Of course, this was just a flash of inspiration and there was no evidence. It was of no value to subsequent actions, so Aize didn't think about it too much.

However, if we consider the current situation, this speculation becomes interesting.

Villian was stunned for a moment when she was questioned, then she smiled bitterly and shook her head.

"Really? You've actually thought of this. Doesn't it make me seem a bit foolish for testing you?"

"so?"

"so……"

The purple-haired girl stood up, walked in front of Aize, and suddenly stuck close to him.

One hand was placed on her chest, grabbing the edge of the black dress and slowly pulling it down.

The scenery of the deep valley suddenly appeared in front of Aize. Coupled with the current posture, the soft touch was transmitted to Aize's mind without reservation.

But Aize ignored them all.

His attention was drawn to some strange patterns.

Like a spider web, it spread out from the center of the valley - probably the heart, and spread out to the surroundings, emitting a faint red light.

After confirming the situation, Aize politely looked away and asked:

"Is this a magic technique of the demon tribe?"

The demon race, that is, the race to which the Demon King belongs, practices both physical and magical skills and is immortal. They are ancient, powerful but extremely rare. In the two years that he has been a hero, Aize has never actually encountered one.

I saw the style of this coat of arms in a book that had been gathering dust for who knows how many years, hidden in a corner of the Holy City Library.

Villian nodded.

"Yes, this is the spell the previous Demon King carved for me. Would you like to hear my side of the story?"

------

Five years ago, the largest human-demon war in history was at a stalemate.

The humans and demons in this world have been conducting friendly exchanges for thousands of years. Their martial virtues are overflowing, and the demon coalition is powerful, but their results are very limited and their losses are heavy.

This is of course unacceptable to the Demon King, whose mission is to completely destroy humanity.

So, he set his sights on the witch clan.

These powerful self-propelled humanoid nuclear bombs are the best choice to break the deadlock.

However, the witch clan was both introverted and xenophobic. No matter how the Demon King ordered them to go to war, they were decisively rejected by the Great Witch at that time.

It’s not that witches love peace, but rather than fighting, they would rather focus their energy on academic research, and they also look down on other demons from the bottom of their hearts.

Anyway, after several unsuccessful requests, the devil lost his patience and decided to try a different approach.

As a result, Violet was born.

Villian only has five years of memory of this world, and the earlier part is almost blank.

The moment she opened her eyes, she was in the secret workshop of the demon tribe.

The craftsmen and alchemists of the Demon Tribe engraved an ancient spell into her, a spell that could ignore Villian's own thoughts and force her to complete the mission she was given.

And she has only one mission - to become the great witch and lead them to join this war.

Relying on the strength she was given, Villian easily defeated the great witch of the time and ascended to the throne.

The subsequent developments were exactly as the Demon King had expected. The witches who joined the battle broke the balance of power, and the battle lines of the human countries collapsed in an instant.

The most interesting thing about this technique is that it does not completely take away the host's personal consciousness. It will only take effect when the host's behavior conflicts with the mission, forcing the other party to do or not do certain things.

The devil probably thought that a big witch with flesh and blood and emotions would be more convenient for him to act and less likely to be exposed.

But for Villian, this was a complete disaster.

The witch clan values family and inheritance. They look down on Villian, a little girl who came from nowhere, from the bottom of their hearts, even though she has risen to the top through her own strength.

Not to mention that Villian brought them to the battlefield, which made them hate her even more.

Villian also tried to improve her relationship with them.

Relying on her own talent, she carried out a large number of technical iterations on her own, and many difficulties that the witches had been unable to overcome for hundreds of years were solved by her in just a few days.