Boom—
Gauss slammed his fist into the stone slab. The magic sealing the cellar entrance flickered wildly, then finally shattered with a deafening crack.
A thicker, fouler stench rolled up from below.
"Light."
Gauss conjured a small, floating globe of light.
The passage lit up at once.
"Cough… ugh."
"So miserable… she's been locked in here all this time?"
Alia fanned the air in front of her nose.
Once they stepped into the cellar, they finally saw the full setup.
Cloudy glass jars filled with murky liquid and floating organs. Surgical tools like forceps, saws and clamps. A stained operating table. A workbench. And in the corner…
A black cloth thrown over an iron cage.
Gauss strode over and lifted the cloth.
"Ff–shh!"
Abby flinched where she lay huddled in the corner, unable to move. The black covering pulled away, and blinding light suddenly flooded her vision.
The abrupt brightness made her squint.
Ever since she'd been locked in here, it had been half a month since she'd seen light this bright, this warm.
"What is…?"
Before her vision fully cleared, a gentle male voice reached her ears—one of those voices that, for some reason, made a person feel safe just hearing it.
"It's over. You're safe now."
Her pupils slowly adjusted, and the shapes in front of her came into focus.
Bathed in light, a figure cloaked in pure white slowly appeared in front of her.
The handsome man looked a little awkward, a hint of pity and quiet sorrow hidden deep in his eyes.
"Crack—crack—"
He set his hand on the cage bars and gave the thick iron a little twist.
Bars thicker than his wrist bent as if they were made of soft tin.
He gently lifted the missing girl out of the cage and wrapped a black cloak around her dirty, freezing body.
Held in those strong arms, Abby tilted her head back and stared at that flawless face.
Is this… an angel?
…
After rescuing Abby, Gauss didn't linger.
Shadow did a careful sweep of the surroundings first, confirming there were no other survivors. Then the group quickly stripped the place of any useful loot.
The truly vile things—specimens, organs, notes, experiment logs—were destroyed on the spot.
Finally, Gauss raised his staff and hurled a thunderous Fireball.
The explosion swallowed the entire site. The stone house, furnishings, and all the instruments melted and crumbled under the roaring heat.
He razed everything to make sure there would never be a second witch like Megan born here.
But before that, he had used a recording orb to capture key evidence—so that later, he wouldn't be relying on just his word.
He'd bought that orb in Fisher's Song Town. It was a little magic device, basically the fantasy-world version of a video camera. The images it captured could be preserved for a very long time.
Behind them, Village Chief Hodel and a few elders followed step by heavy step. On the way back, Gauss used his so-called "Friends Spell"—which was really more of a "Truth Serum Spell"—to question them.
Combined with what he'd read in the cellar notes, he finally pieced together the full story.
When they returned, he had all the villagers called to the central clearing.
Then he laid everything bare in front of them—the truth about the stone house, and the existence of Megan the witch.
Strictly speaking, Megan was the "ancestor" of Herb Village—born here several centuries ago, a rare magic prodigy.
In pursuit of greater power, she'd left home as an adventurer and eventually, by sheer chance, obtained a rare witch's inheritance and stepped onto the path of a "brain-thief witch," an easymind sorcerer.
Because the surgeries needed compatible bodies to minimize rejection, she turned her gaze back toward those who shared her blood: the people of her home village.
Thus began a "breeding" and "experimenting" process that had lasted for hundreds of years.
To keep everything under control, every so often she would choose a pliable villager to promote as village chief. Any who disobeyed or showed thoughts of rebellion were quietly poisoned, then replaced with a more obedient manager.
She also culled monsters in the surrounding forest, occasionally provided resources or magical support, and made sure her "incubator" didn't run into accidents.
Under that mix of threat and favor, Herb Village became what it was now.
The cost was that people "went missing" every so often.
Some became new bodies for her surgeries. Others were used as experimental materials.
Sometimes it looked like a girl "got lost while gathering herbs," like Abby. Sometimes someone left a letter saying they'd gone off to find work in a town. Sometimes it was a vague, incurable "strange illness"…
Some villagers had grown suspicious over the years. But their doubts were always soothed away.
And this was not a safe era.
Even in "normal" villages, a child making it to adulthood was never guaranteed. Illness, accidents, hunger, monsters… any of those could cut a short life even shorter. A certain number always die young.
Compared to those unknown risks, Herb Village—peaceful, supplied with food and medicine—really was a good place to live.
So families who lost children could only swallow their grief, tell themselves they had been unlucky, and keep living.
The dead were gone. The living still had to eat tomorrow.
And now, in front of everyone, Gauss peeled back the scab and showed them the rot underneath.
The plaza erupted.
Some people simply couldn't accept it. They thought Gauss was spouting nonsense.
They'd lived here for generations. How could they be some witch's "livestock"?
Others' faces went pale in a heartbeat.
Especially those who'd lost children before. Their pupils shrank, all those unsolved questions from years ago suddenly clicking into a hideous pattern.
To prove it wasn't just talk, Gauss used the recording orb to project the images he'd captured.
Jars of preserved organs. Stacks of experiment logs.
Pages recording names, ages, procedures.
The witch had kept meticulous notes. To her, it was pure experimental data—but now those records were evidence.
"That's Fann! Fann…!"
"I thought he went to Barry Town to be a blacksmith's apprentice…"
"And Cera…"
People began recognizing names they knew.
And that wasn't even counting the older entries—victims from generations ago—whose relatives had long since grown old and died. Those names meant nothing anymore to the people present.
The most direct, living evidence, though, was Abby herself.
Unlike the past cases, she had vanished only half a month ago, supposedly "lost while gathering herbs."
With the notes and Abby's return, even the villagers who'd been clinging to denial had to face reality.
Their home—this "pure land"—had never been pure. It was a carefully managed laboratory.
The ones reacting the hardest were those who'd lost family.
The witch was dead, but there was still someone left to blame.
They turned on Village Chief Hodel and the elders who had known and kept silent, surrounding them in raw fury.
"Hodel! How could you help that witch?!"
"Give me back my Georgina, you bastard!"
"…"
Gauss watched the chaos from the edge of the crowd and shook his head.
Rage. Confusion. Fear.
And beneath it, a gnawing question—what now?
Witch Megan had not been "kind"—but she had maintained a perverse sort of balance. A twisted stability.
Herb Village was heading into its "post-witch era."
From now on they would have to defend themselves against monsters, or choose to move to a poorer but safer region.
He looked around slowly.
He was an outsider. An adventurer just passing through.
All he could really do was what lay within his ability.
His gaze fell on the man in his thirties, the village's sole mage.
When Gauss and the others had returned, the man had stood in silence not far away, watching everything unfold.
"Your name is… David, right?"
Gauss had already asked about him on the way back, checking with Hodel whether this mage had any direct ties to Megan.
To his surprise, Hodel had sworn repeatedly that no, David had never dealt with her directly. His spells and meditation methods all came to him secondhand, obtained through the elders as "gifts" from Megan in exchange for the village's submission.
"Yes, sir Gauss," David said stiffly.
"On the way back, Hodel swore you'd never worked with Megan," Gauss said quietly. "But I'm guessing you sensed something was wrong in the village long ago, didn't you?"
Faced with that calm question, David fell silent for a long time.
Eventually, he let out a bitter breath and nodded.
"Yes."
He had once tried to investigate the vanishings.
Hodel had stopped him.
The old man was just an ordinary villager, but he was also David's foster father—the one who'd raised an orphan and sponsored his training as a mage.
So even when he realized "missing villagers" were probably more than accidents, he hadn't dug deeper.
He'd chosen to look away.
He spent his days teaching the youngsters, leading hunting parties to kill nearby beasts, but never once set foot in the "forbidden" part of the forest.
He'd known, more or less, that all those disappearances, all that steady stream of scrolls and resources, had to be connected to that forbidden place.
But he'd never had the courage to break it all open… not until Gauss arrived.
Under Gauss' steady gaze, he lowered his head.
That gaze felt like it could see straight through his bones.
"I'll be reporting all of this to the Adventurer's Guild," Gauss sighed. "What happens to Hodel and the others… isn't really my business."
"But I hope that as this village's only professional, you'll protect it now."
Without the witch's "protection," it would be rougher for them—but theoretically, a mage plus a band of capable hunters was enough to survive in a forest like this.
As for the report, Gauss had already written up a concise account of what had happened. Raven Echo had carried it off toward Fisher's Song Town.
Given Gauss' reputation there now, he was sure investigators would be dispatched quickly.
In the eyes of some people in Fisher's Song, he wasn't just an adventurer anymore. He was the Lake God's "chosen agent."
"Let's go."
Gauss cast one last look at the village.
Serandur had already fetched York and their things.
Abby and her father both needed proper treatment.
After asking Abby's opinion, Gauss had decided not to leave them in Herb Village. They would travel with his party to the next town.
Night fell.
On a small clearing outside the village, the folded house unfolded once more.
"How's Abby?" Gauss asked.
The house had six rooms.
Alia had decided to share with Shadow and leave one room for Abby. The other spare room was for her father, York.
"She can stand and walk now." Serandur turned to Gauss, voice soft.
He'd unraveled the magic seals Megan had placed on Abby's body. For now she was sleeping—deeply, properly, for the first time in weeks.
"But she'll need time to recover fully."
Gauss nodded.
"And York? Can he get his mind back?"
York wasn't actually insane. He'd been drugged into that state.
He'd always doubted how his wife died after childbirth—but with Abby still at his side, he hadn't dared push too hard.
When Abby vanished too, the last bit of fear in him snapped.
He'd followed Hodel out of the village at night and discovered the secret in the woods.
They'd caught him.
Hodel hadn't had the heart to kill him.
He'd ordered his men to drug York instead—to turn him into a harmless madman who would never again be taken seriously.
This world wasn't black and white. Most people weren't saints or devils; they were just… people.
Hodel had sanctioned Megan's abductions and experiments, supplied her with food and supplies…
But he had also used her resources to strengthen the village, teach skills, and improve everyone's life.
He had not killed York to protect the secret.
Not a good man—but not purely evil either.
So Gauss would leave Hodel to his own people and the officials soon to arrive from Fisher's Song.
"It should be fine," Serandur said. "Now that he's off the drugs, and I'm slowly purging the residual toxins, his mind should clear. Then we just take it one step at a time."
Gauss couldn't help feeling a twist of pity.
If they hadn't happened to pass Herb Village when they did… the man's whole life would have remained a nightmare.
A wife taken as a vessel for a monster. Years later, a daughter taken the same way.
This is what power is, he thought.
Power can create tragedies, drag people into hell.
But it can also rescue them.
His hand closed into a fist, then relaxed.
Power has no inherent good or evil.
It depends entirely on who wields it—and what they choose to do.
~~~
Patreon.com/NotEvenMyFinalForm
– Check out my Page for More Advanced Chapters! Thank you!