Chapter 3 — Dry scrape, burn and perforate! • Episode 3–Rest — The Sleeping Witch
Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV
In a dimly lit room with a large screen monitor covering the entire room, a girl was sitting in an easy chair, looking bored and absentminded. Ahead of her gaze was a monitor showing a room in the Magic Bureau, with a floating globe and a green-haired girl in the room.
The easy chair was making a creaking sound and shaking regularly.
「Yo, I’ve kept you waiting.」
「You’re late, Earth. I thought I was going to fall asleep this time.」
At the same time as the green-haired girl leaves the room in the video, the globe suddenly appears in front of the girl, as if interrupting her line of sight. The girl, however, didn’t seem particularly surprised by the appearance and returned it lightly.
「You saw it too, didn’t you? You’re gonna have to complain to that sleepyhead.」
「She did her best, so it’s okay! I don’t know, was it really a good idea to give it to her?」
One moment, the girl puffs out her cheeks in a deliberate display of anger, and the next, she changes her expression and asks a question as if nothing had happened.
「Yeah, like I told him, he can’t use it until he defeated the King of Distortion. And after defeating the King of Distortion——」
「Mizukami Ryōichi will be gone.」
The girl muttered in an emotionless, inorganic voice, as if to cover Earth’s words.
「That’s what I mean. It’s pathetic, isn’t it, that things can never go back to the way they were?」
「…」
The girl keeps her mouth shut, feeling that she is not qualified to denounce it, although she wonders which mouth is saying it.
The Wind Witch Tyrant Sylph, in her true form, is an adult male whose real name is Mizukami Ryōichi. He is a male with unparalleled Magical Girl talent, and has the misfortune of being discovered by Jack, a scout fairy in Sakira Town, and forced to become a Magical Girl halfway through his life.
The girl knew it. The identity of Tyrant Sylph, the misfortune that befell him, and the fact that he was made to follow the plot and become a Magical Girl as if by accident.
Whether he really wished to return to his original form from the very beginning is no longer known now.
「Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, now we are finally on track to activate world magic. I’m relieved that we managed to get it up and running in time.」
The true purpose of the Witch Cup was to develop his dormant talent. However, the true intention was not to strengthen the Magical Girl called Tyrant Sylph, but to open the final gate itself. And that goal was achieved when he opened the last gate, albeit temporarily. The girl is sure of this, because she sees it right in front of her.
His obsession with victory made him open the last gate. The hope is that he will win and obtain a sex change drug and return to his original form. But that wish wasn’t what he sincerely desired. To keep him from losing his obsession with winning, his wish was twisted by Earth.
Then how can they be sure that this wasn’t a distorted wish from the beginning?
Was it really his wish to become a Magical Girl in order to return to his original form?
The girl has no way of knowing that, but even if she did, there is nothing she could do about it now. She was prepared for such a thing from the moment it was decided that he could no longer open the last gate with his own hands and that she would use a spare named Mizukami Ryōichi. So the girl, even though she is aware of her complicity in the atrocity, will not stop. She can no longer stop.
「I wonder if you would really choose him. I’m willing to sacrifice myself.」
「I would choose him, no doubt about it. An irregularity that was not part of my plan, and one that caused me a lot of headaches, but that’s why I couldn’t have asked for a better wedge against Tyrant Sylph.」
The girl’s gaze shifted again to a different monitor after Earth’s words. There she saw a group of Magical Girls preparing for a party in a large room somewhere.
While a deep part of her heart longed to be loved, reason would have cut her off from the Magical Girls, and Tyrant Sylph would have been consumed by loneliness. And so, wounded and pushed to the very limit, he reaches his goal by showing him a ray of hope. That was the original plot.
But that script was overturned by a single girl. A girl who was completely unexpected, an ordinary girl with a bit of goodness that could be found anywhere.
And that girl is,
「…Elephant. She really is the kind of girl who was meant to be a Magical Girl.」
No matter how kind or good a person was, there was no way that Tyrant Sylph could ever be completely open-minded. As long as Mizukami Ryōichi had to deal with the guilt of hiding the fact that he was a man who had already reached adulthood, there was no way he could be friends with a Magical Girl.
「I really didn’t know what to expect. I was starting to think that Tyrant Sylph was just fine the way it was because of this girl. That scoundrel Jack also left behind a bunch of unnecessary techniques, so I guess everything can’t be going according to plan.」
Jack, the scout fairy, was unaware of it, but he was just a puppet dancing on the palm of Earth’s hand. He placed an individual who was prone to acting arbitrarily and out of control among fairies in charge of the town where he lived, and when the time was right, he invited Mizukami Ryōichi into the Deception World and had him discovered. The mechanical apple fairy’s point of view was generally true.
However, Jack was in the dark to keep him as a Magical Girl because he was unaware of Earth’s plan, and he was guiding his thoughts to gradually become comfortable with the girl’s appearance. Combined with the presence of Elephant, he gradually began to question whether he really wanted to be a man again. This was a major miscalculation for Earth.
「Tyrant Sylph needs to suffer more.」
No peace of mind for him is allowed.
He was not allowed to accept the present.
He must suffer on behalf of the girl.
「I don’t care about that girl anymore. More importantly, have you found Chrono-senpai yet?」
「I’ve told you repeatedly. She probably won’t show up until the day of the event. If Law had woken up, she might have had some idea of what was going on, but she’s still the same.」
All the monitors in the room switched at once to show a girl sleeping on the rubble, wrapped in a fuzzy nightgown and holding a stuffed animal in her arms.
This strange video is constantly broadcast live on a Magical Girl’s video site 24 hours a day, and can be viewed by anyone at any time. And no matter when or who watches, the girl in the video is always asleep.
「Compared to this girl, Elephant was cute, even if she was irregular. Tch, she’s sleeping like a blissful person.」
Seeing the girl sleeping comfortably, Earth spits in frustration.
Her name is Lazy Lady. Known as the Sleeping Witch, she is one of the most powerful member of the Witch Party, boasting top-class combat power. She is a Magical Girl who stands at the top of all Magical Girls.
That’s what she’s generally supposed to be, an unidentified singularity.
「I wonder what this girl is.」
「If I knew that, I wouldn’t have a hard time. At least we know she’s not a Magical Girl.」
At the dawn of the Magical Girl system, when only the beginning Magical Girls and a few girls following them were still fighting, she had somehow fallen asleep in the Deception World of Okinawa, putting one of the highest ranking fairies who went to investigate into a still-unawakened sleep, and annihilating without question the Diests who appeared in the Deception World.
The Magic Bureau has stopped bothering her since it became clear that she is a Magical Girl who, if left alone, will sleep and, incidentally, defeat the Diests, and she has been touted as a Magical Girl as a way to avoid placing Magical Girls in Okinawa, but nothing is known about who she is.
「If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t need you neither Tyrant Sylph. Law would be… No, the nightmare began when that person's Master was put to sleep. Sublime is the destination of the highest magician. She is an existence free from the fetters of sleep, food, and other human needs. It is impossible. It is impossible to be put to sleep.」
「I’ve heard that complaint enough times.」
Once upon a time, when the number of Diests was not so large and the areas where they occurred were limited, there were four Magical Girls who were discovered by the highest ranking fairy of the four systems. They were the first warriors who would later be called the Magical Girls of the Beginning.
Flame Frame, the Flame Witch who manipulates explosive flames to extinguish Diests in the blink of an eye.
Chrono Keeper, the Time Witch who only continues to move in stopped time.
Grasshopper, the Witch Of Flying Locusts, who can annihilate even high-ranking Diests with a single blow using her strong legs.
Round Knight, a Knight Witch with the power to overcome the fragility of Magical Girls and support the front line alone.
It is said that each of them had very high qualities and it didn’t take them long to reach witchhood.
However, these women also lost their lives in the battle against the Diests. One day, like water overflowing from a cesspool, a great number of Diests. By that time, there were not only the Magical Girls of the Beginning, but also the next generation of Magical Girls to follow. The girl was also one of them. However, at that time, she hadn’t been a Magical Girl for very long and were so weak that she couldn’t be compared to the Magical Girls Of The Beginning. The girl could do nothing in the fierce battle, and could only watch as the Magical Girls of the Beginning were wounded and fell, one by one.
Only one person survived after the battle was over, Chrono Keeper, and even that Time Witch disappeared not long after the battle.
The Magical Girl system was forced to make major policy changes after that time.
Originally planned to be operated by a small elite group, it was unable to stop the overflowing Diests because one of the demigods malfunctioned, necessitating a manpower response.
The Magical Girls Of The Beginning who lost their lives in an unexpected onslaught, the countless numbers of girls who became embroiled in the fate of the battle, and the need for a human pillar to save the world at the end of their suffering were all caused by the Sleeping Witch.
The girl stares at the Sleeping Witch with eyes that are a jumbled mixture of resignation, resentment, anger, hatred, and various negative emotions, but there is nothing she can do about it. Rather, there is no point in defeating her now. Magical Girls who have died will not come back. Even if the Demigod of Reason wakes up, once the dam is broken, it cannot be fixed so easily. The need for many Magical Girls will not change.
The enemy of the girl and the Magic Bureau is only a distortion of the world, and the Sleeping Witch is merely a plague that just happens to be there. So the best she could do was to spew out her bitterness like Earth and glare at her like a little girl.
