Editing Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode3 (section)

===10===

A massive tremor ran through the building. Standing more than 4m tall, the red-hot bronze statue’s head scraped against the ceiling as it turned to face Yagoro.

Embers flew from its mouth.

It didn’t just have powerful jaws. Its entire torso opened up like a pair of double doors. And it would do more than ''just'' bite its victims and trap them inside its belly. The color red expanded explosively the instant it contacted oxygen and was released into the outside world.

Instead of a pot used to cook flesh and bone, this may have been more like a furnace used to melt metal for smithing. It went without saying what would happen to any living creature that came into contact with that.

[[Image:Failing_Witch_v01_BW06.jpg|thumb]]

A single hit would mean instant death. Yagoro kept that in mind as he nonchalantly checked the condition of the floor with the soles of his shoes to ensure he could dodge to the side quick if necessary.

And he produced a result that was plain as day.

He only gave a quick wave of his baton. That was enough for great roaring flames to burst forth.

A low tremor followed.

But this time, it wasn’t to advance. The giant bronze bull staggered backwards.

The pure flames pushed back an invisible explosion.

“Moloch, your greatest attack is all the energy contained within you and the pressure it creates. You possess enough destructive power to engulf everything with your explosions and shockwaves, but that simplicity makes composing a countermeasure a lot easier.”

With the wall and the window broken, the room was a lot like a horizontal chimney.

“I just need a greater force.” Yagoro gave a belligerent grin, squeezed his baton, and raised his voice to a shout. “A force far stronger than yours!! You can’t scare me as long as I can repel your attacks with that force!!”

He was answered by an explosion. And not just one. Moloch produced tremor after tremor, creating cracks in the ceiling, but he still failed to destroy Yagoro. Because an even thicker shockwave wall obliterated the invisible pressure producing the explosions.

The flames died and sputtered like a steam engine.

The bronze giant charged in but only passed right by Yagoro.

The bronze weapon tore apart the smoke and air filling the room and plowed through like a solid mass.

The boy turned around and swung his baton sideways to launch a giant ball of flames into Moloch’s back. The bronze statue roared, launched a flamethrower in the wrong direction, and tried to correct its misguided course.

The tutor’s fire was different from fire created with simple petroleum or explosives. It burned the copper in the bronze, but it didn’t shine blue in a flame reaction.

He had produced magic that burned the ugliness of the target’s past deeds.

“''You see, Moloch, this is magic. Study enough and you can find the answer.''”

Moloch breathed fire, grabbed every target within reach, and threw them into its internal furnace. It had even been targeting Viocia, Dorothea, and Melehe here. The ugliness of its deeds were a fearsome fuel that struck the bronze statue with the greatest possible force. Enough that its metal would eventually melt, destroying the monster.

But while waving his baton to manipulate the scarlet flames, Yagoro creased his brow.

Something wasn’t right.

(This thing…?)

“Teacher!!”

The girl’s cry stayed the tutor’s hand.

Their powers were about equal. Stopping could have let Moloch’s explosion crush him with twice the force. The slightest opening could have allowed an ultra-heavyweight tackle.

But none of that happened.

A low tremor shook the room. That was the sound of scorched Moloch falling to its knees. Its orange glow was gone and the embers in its mouth were fading fast.

“It can still move. You aren’t going to find any numbers in here, don’tcha think? So stay away from it, Viocia.”

“Y-you don’t have to kill him now. You don’t have to go that far. Ms. Schanze has been carried away and Melehe is awake and back on her feet!”

So she considered it killing. This was a killer pot that captured people and cooked them with great temperature and pressure. It was unclear if it was even technically alive.

(Ignoring her and delivering the finishing blow would be easier and it would keep that idiot safe.)

“Uh, uhhh.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t cry, Viocia! I’m here to protect you, not to destroy Moloch!! So I’ll take the option that doesn’t make my student cry, don’tcha think? Did I risk my life here for nothing!?”

“Heh heh☆ Really? Now we can be friends with Moloch!”

The scariest part was that none of that had been an act. The tears and the immediate joy were both heartfelt.

She had said Melehe was back on her feet, but what had become of Schanze? Yagoro was curious about that, so the two of them turned around and left the exploded room.

The heavy creaking of metal came from behind them.

“Viocia!!”

Yagoro immediately tackled the girl to the floor to protect her, but her attention was somewhere else entirely. Her surprised eyes watched as Moloch resumed moving.

“Something isn’t right. This isn’t like before. He was scary at first, but he didn’t force himself to stand up even if it meant destroying himself. Something’s happening inside him!”

The ceiling swelled out.

It burst and crumbled away to reveal a trio of girls.

They wore red, blue, and green waitress outfits with puffy miniskirts and suspenders.

“Sassafras Cfa,” muttered Yagoro.

(They’re guiding Moloch with some kind of magic, aren’t they?)

Arbamini, Holibre, and Lampans were all smirking.

“Hee hee. It’s not like we hold a grudge or anything.”

“Right? We knew all the prep schools would be here for the official practice exam, so we knew exactly what to do. We’ve already given up on this year’s entrance exam.”

“We need to earn plenty of money so we can live a worthwhile life once we do get into Maleficium. And we get paid for finding likely candidates and threatening them into increasing our prep school’s pass rate. Or if that doesn’t work, we can crush them to get rid of another rival. Simple, right?”

Moloch couldn’t move.

He was trembling, almost like he was struggling against something.

Meanwhile…

“Right? If this thing isn’t going to help us, I won’t be satisfied until I’ve blown off some steam punishing it.”

“My, my. What might this be? Something came out of it.”

It was a piece of parchment. Something had been scrawled onto on it, perhaps by Moloch’s red-hot fingertip. Moloch had changed shape and function by the area’s labyrinthine transformation, but this may have depicted some inner part of him he would not let be altered.

For example, in the Earth legend of the Minotaur, the queen hid in a fake cow.

In Egyptian mythology, Isis wore cow horns.

So Moloch’s bull-like appearance wasn’t what truly mattered – what he was on the inside was.

In that case, it didn’t matter if he wasn’t strictly alive. Just like a love letter someone had worked up the courage to write, this wasn’t something a third party should reveal without permission.

Arbamini lightly waved the parchment in her hand.

It was written in human language, which meant he had a mind just like humans did.

But she still read out the text burned into the parchment.

Ruthlessly.

“ ‘I want to eat tasty food with everyone again.’ Ah ha ha!!”

This was a defunct meal center.

This monster had likely started out as a pressure cooker the size of a bath and capable of containing a human.

Moloch had indeed been a fearsome being. He was a deadly pot that would cook people’s flesh and bones away with his great heat and pressure. He was undoubtedly one of the monsters wandering the practice exam site’s halls.

But what was his original purpose?

What had he been used for before being so cruelly abandoned?

Witch cauldrons sometimes manipulated the weather and sometimes cooked food for great numbers.

That had to be all he was meant to be.

People could be so irresponsible. They would make a cooker in the shape of a doll to delight the people eating the food it cooked, but once the limbs and head started to crack, they would find it creepy and stop using it. Moloch might be an extreme form of that.

This killer pot was rumored to have caused a gruesome accident where a worker fell inside when the facility was on the verge of shutting down.

But was that really true?

''Pressure cooker lids had to be locked to use them,'' so there was no way for someone to accidentally fall in when it was in use.

“This is so stupid. Why should we care? Stop sobbing and get to work, you killer pot. C’mon, we’ve got you under our control!”

“Right? Because you ate it. Doesn’t matter if it was a trap or a trick. You still ate the fruit we left for you!”

(Eating the food of the underworld binds you. Is this based on Persephone and the pomegranate from Greek mythology?)

The other world of Earth told of a rule where someone who temporarily fell into the underworld by mistake would belong to the underworld and lose their right to leave if they ate the food there.

Moloch was a large pot that trapped his targets inside the red-hot bronze statue and killed them with his heat. He would test strange objects or enemies by biting them. A trap that activated by eating it was about the worst possible thing for him.

Green Lampans chuckled and tossed over what she held in her hand.

“Was one not enough? Then here’s your seconds. Open your mouth, you oversized trashcan!!”

Something splatted wetly against Moloch. It was a rotten fruit. How humiliating did that have to be for a cooking tool that needed to remain clean?

“You can have it. There’s plenty more where that came from. Pff, ah ha ha! You’re bound by strict rules here. Don’t think you can escape with vague feelings or emotions!!”

Yes, rules were rules.

After unwittingly eating one, Moloch’s rejection and resistance would be gradually torn down. He roared. The abandoned space shook with the resentment of the hunk of metal that no one would treat like a cooking tool.

What little pride he had left was defiled and sealed away.

A loud creaking rang out. The pomegranate’s smashed flesh and seeds may have fallen into a joint. But still Moloch could not resist. Embers spilled from his battered face and he was forced against his will to rampage as a killer pot.

“Pff. Tasty food? Face the truth. You were thrown out. No one wants you! Bwa ha ha!! Act like the monster you are and focus on killing people!!”

“Right? Talk about an unwanted favor. I’d puke if I had to eat food boiling away in this gross garbage can. Gya ha ha. Eating that’d be torture!”

“Hee hee. You mustn’t spill garbage everywhere. If you aren’t kind to the environment, the so-called experts won’t be happy with you. Hee hee. Someone shove that rotting garbage in the garbage can where it belongs.”

“No, wait…” said Viocia.

That she tried to stop them may have meant she had already guessed what was about to happen.

An earsplitting metallic creaking filled the space.

Eerily and disconcertingly.

It was like the wail of a being who couldn’t speak.

“Wait!! Don’t bully Moloch!!”

“Why shouldn’t we? What’s wrong with destroying a monster?”

Something audibly broke.

Forcing the metal joint to operate with the foreign object caught within caused the bipedal bronze bull to shatter on the inside and collapse.

Yes, he was a monster who suddenly attacked them in the old meal center.

Yes, he was a lifeless piece of metal.

But that bronze bull had still wordlessly told them he didn’t want to fight any more and had tried his best to resist.

He kept breaking, but he didn’t know how to make his dream come true and ended up wandering the halls all alone.

It happened far too easily.

Bending sounds came from the bipedal bull.

The door on his torso bent terribly. His right leg broke off at the base, he lost balance, and the impact of the fall broke off his arm. His two-horned head was bent at an odd angle.

If he were human, he would be beyond saving.

“Ahhhhh!! Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

Viocia’s tears and shouts did nothing to change the reality before her eyes.

The cruelly destroyed piece of metal lay unmoving on the floor.

''I want to eat tasty food with everyone again.

That cooking tool had helped make the students’ food for so long.

And his feelings had simply been trampled on.

“Ee hee ha ha ha!! Pathetic. This piece of junk fell apart before it could even kill anyone!!”

“Right? We actually beat one of the bosses. Too bad we don’t get extra credit for that.”

“Pff. Stop it, you two. She’s already crying, so you don’t have to rub it in.”

Viocia had lost even ordinary anger.

She was slumped on the floor and not even Dorothea or Melehe could find anything to say to her.

Myousou Yagoro calmly focused on his thoughts in that hellish scene that echoed with mocking laughter.

Feeling sorrow was fine. That was an extremely human emotion. But the very real threat was not gone. So she didn’t have time to spend on the utterly destroyed Moloch. If he didn’t rebuke his student, snap her out of it even it meant slapping her, and drag her to her feet, she would be killed.

That course of action would not be wrong.

But was it really the right thing to do?

“…yet.”

That question led the boy to his answer.

He didn’t care one whit if it was inefficient or unrealistic.

What kind of tutor did he want to be?

That line of thinking produced only one answer. So he was through hesitating.

He would say it out loud and make it a reality with his willpower.

“''This isn’t over yet!! Viocia, it’s too soon to give up on Moloch''!!!”