Editing Failing Witch:Volume3 Episode1 (section)

===Part 12===

Back to square one.

Several figures raced through Temple School City as if tearing through the shadows of the night.

They were back to square one.

An explosion roared in the distance. From an aerial bombing. A hideout for wicked witches was directly blown away within the city. Several witches zoomed by overhead. Those were the Benandanti of Maleficium. They would immediately detect and pursue anyone who took flight now. But that was all they could do. As long as the figures in the city’s labyrinth of narrow alleys stayed there, they would remain unseen.

Chloe Sharprain, the test subject for their remote cheating plan, had failed. Brewery Establish, the Limit Breaker who had directly supported the girl from a distance, had also been defeated. The incident may have seemed resolved, but it was not.

This was a group crime in which several witches indirectly supported a single exam student.

And those witch''es'' had in fact been in Carraway Cs’s library.

Those several witch''es'' had slipped away while Brewery Establish was being dealt with.

They could find another student to act as their sacrificial pawn. And there were so many self-taught witches stewing in the city it wouldn’t be hard to find one willing to take the risk of providing direct support. So the wicked witches’ scheme was not ended. Not until they had cheated someone through the entrance exam and used their remote control magic to shred Maleficium from within.

Or so they thought.

“My, my.”

They heard something from the shadows.

Their shoes skidded along the ground as they came to a rapid stop. With the moon hidden behind the clouds, they couldn’t see this newcomer’s face.

“Neither the stars nor the moon are out. You really shouldn’t be out and about on a night as dark as tonight. Especially in a dangerous back alley far from the shine of the sunlight seals within the pumpkin streetlights.”

Whoever this was, she wasn’t with the Maleficium Benandanti. They wouldn’t act alone like this.

If this mystery enemy was alone, they only had to silence her by smashing her bones and shredding her blood vessels. The witches readied their Formula Brooms.

The lone figure kept her calm.

“This isn’t a fight you can win through brute force. Did you learn nothing from your failure?” she said with a smile. “Maenads.”

Silently, the shadowy figure grew more than 20 extra arms.

No, that wasn’t accurate.

Countless figures who had been waiting behind her spread out to the sides. They were all dark shadows with a solid form. The unidentified shadows had no eyes or mouths and only the claws on their fingers glowed a deep red. They raced through the dark night, using their bare hands to rip and tear through human and beast alike, paving a path of death and slaughter across the land. This witch’s magic gave that legend a concrete form.

The clouds cleared away.

The great moon swept away the shadows.

The gentle bookseller spoke with a smile on her face.

Only her eyes betrayed her identity as the commander of Private Striga, greatest coven in the north.

“I hear you had a run-in with my oh-so-adorable daughter.”