Chapter 77: Omen (14)

The Great War overturned the fates of the two entirely.

Hitler, crying out for a great cause, volunteered for the Bavarian army, and thereafter, his once firm values and beliefs began to waver significantly.

Shells rained down every single day.

Trenches filled with muddy water, reeking of rot.

Countless lives lost meaninglessly, futilely.

The human body was nothing more than a fragile piece of meat.

Shredded flesh, indiscriminate of friend or foe, piled up everywhere.

Mountains of corpses reaching for the sky.

An immense number of people died.

Hitler volunteered as a runner, shuttling messages to the front lines.

It was the most dangerous post, but also, by that token, an honourable one.

It didn’t take long for him to realize there was no honour whatsoever on the battlefield.

War machines capable of killing people more efficiently began to appear one by one.

From tanks that literally tore through trench lines to poison gas that rotted lungs from the inside out.

The death of one is a tragedy, but the deaths of tens, hundreds of thousands, are merely statistics.

Hitler realized this far too late.

The battlefield, lined with trenches, was a hell on earth.

There was no great cause in such a place.

In a place where swarms of flies festered in dried pools of blood, and crows performed bizarre acrobatics with birds made of steel, there was no great cause.

Who, and for what desire, had started this war?

Misaligned greed intertwined, setting in motion the unstoppable cogwheels of disaster.

Hitler no longer thought of great causes or nations.

His benevolent and upright nature gradually twisted.

When the mustard gas that blanketed the sky killed his comrades in horrific ways.

Hitler finally re-established his values.

Humans are endlessly weak.

And endlessly evil.

Hitler’s eyes gradually became clouded with a murky color.

Muttering endless curses and hatred.

He began to rage against the world.

By the time Hitler no longer aimed to be a painter.

It was the moment the white snow, falling for the third time on the battlefield, piled up softly.

Hitler cast the noble ideals he had cherished until now onto the ground.

The endless ugliness of humanity consumed Hitler.

Shells fired from howitzers and mortars directly hit the trench where Hitler was located.

When the shelling ceased.

Hitler looked around with empty eyes.

Few had survived.

Among the faces of the corpses, torn  effect, influence by shells, were a few acquaintances from his orphanage days.

Erik.

Erik, who had been particularly fond of him, also met his death with young eyes.

Hitler quietly retrieved Erik’s remains, of which only the neck was left.

And, he gently closed his eyes.

Erik’s unfocused eyes were simply vacant.

Just like Hitler’s.

Even after a week, a month, the empty spaces in the trench were not filled.

The places of the dead comrades were filled by young, fresh-faced boys, just like Erik.

They were the first to die in enemy trench assaults.

At some point, Hitler had become the most senior member of his unit.

No death could affect Hitler anymore.

‘…Eva.’

Hitler, having inhaled poison gas, felt a burning sensation in his throat and recalled his lover’s face one last time.

A sense of relief that he was finally liberated from this wretched war sent shivers through Hitler’s body.

Whether fortunate or unfortunate, he did not die but was merely transported to the rear.

***

Simultaneously with the unprecedented Great War engulfing the world, the Witch Coven also commenced its activities.

However.

“…Strange! Why on earth isn’t the number of angels decreasing at all!?”

As the war continued.

As more people died, as more corpses piled up on the battlefield, as more enemies were killed with more efficient war machines.

The number of monsters called ‘angels’ gradually increased.

Luise, growing impatient, clenched her teeth and ordered her agents, operating covertly in various countries, to drive more soldiers to their deaths.

She speculated that because many soldiers were gathered in the limited space of the front lines at once, the appearance of unidentified monsters had increased further.

“…Gallipoli?”

“It is a place where at least half a million can be killed. Please trust this Winston Churchill.”

They infiltrated the leadership of various countries, doing their best each day to kill even one more soldier.

However.

“The Witch of Flame is dead…?”

“Angels never heard of or seen before have appeared in large numbers. They cooperated organically like hunting dogs driving their prey…”

By the time they realized it had all been a miscalculation, too many people had already died.

Though not officially acknowledged, when a person dies, a very fine particle energy is generated.

What the witches called ‘Aether.’

In other words, what is called ‘soul.’

The unidentified entities began to gradually evolve by absorbing the Aether generated from human deaths.

First, their forms changed.

Wings and eyes disappeared one by one, and their bodies transformed to resemble humans.

Respiratory organs unnecessary to them, like noses or mouths, were deleted, and they took on the most efficient and stable forms for hunting humans.

This was a natural course for the unidentified entities, which had mimicked the forms of countless species they had devoured until now.

To evoke awe and fear in the target species.

To completely subjugate them and stuff them all into their maws.

They gradually began to awaken their intellect.

Just as animals hunt in packs, they lured their enemies, the witches, one by one and slaughtered them, beginning to absorb their abilities and intellect.

As battles repeated, they began to overwhelm the witches.

“No! I, I……!!!”

The Iron-Blooded Witch, Luise, met the most miserable fate she had ever imagined.

‘Not yet.’

It was an end she herself had brought about.

With the death of the supreme witch who would determine the course of the war, the direction of the Great War became even more uncertain.

The agents, having lost their controller, began to run rampant like unbridled colts.

Around the time far more, an immense number of people died than Luise had initially planned, and the shadow of defeat loomed heavily over Germany and its allies.

The war between humanity and the unidentified entities was also nearing its end.

All rifts converged on the European continent.

Unidentified entities poured out across Europe like a flood, engaging in chaotic battles with the armies stationed in various places.

Situations where an entire company was annihilated by the ‘unidentified’ overnight occurred frequently.

At some point, only empty trench lines faced each other.

Strange rumors circulated on all fronts, and soldiers reached the point of refusing combat and deserting.

And.

Looking at the black and white photos taken together at the orphanage, she steeled her resolve not to run away, no matter what happened.

It wasn’t just Eva; other witches felt the same.

Because they had things to take responsibility for.

If they unleashed their power and fully deployed their Aether energy, the attacks of ‘early-type’ unidentified entities wouldn’t work at all.

They gained power at the cost of their lives and sanity and went forth to protect humanity.

1918.

The year Germany, in its last desperate struggle, prepared for its final and worst major offensive.

And the year of the Witch Coven’s counterattack against the unrecorded unidentified entities, Walpurgisnacht, unfolded.

Eva did not spare her life.

She hunted tens, hundreds of unidentified entities a day and moved forward.

Into the madness filled only with darkness.

She continued to walk.

“……Lightning, what on earth are you doing!”

“Ah, want to join?”

The sight of Eva having a tea party with the corpses of boys and girls, rotten and teeming with maggots and fruit flies.

It made onlookers instinctively wet themselves.

The two met again.

The first reports of a witch’s madness came after Walpurgisnacht had all ended.

Around the time the last rift in Romania was sealed, and the appearance of unidentified entities began to subside.

Around the time Eva suffered grievous injuries in the final battle, losing an arm and an eye.

No longer.

It was around the time the world no longer needed the witches’ power, for a while.