“I’m glad. My proposal is simple. 30 seconds is all I need. I’ll go with you without fighting back if you are able to stand in front of me for 30 seconds without anything happening to you. Since it seems interesting too.”
“Ha. What’s up with that? Do you think something like that will be enough to scare us…?”
“—Well then, the 30 second countdown begins now.”
The moment she perceived that they had accepted her terms, Echidna stroked her long-white hair, narrowed her dark eyes, and glared at the men.
“───”
All of the men looked like they had no idea what had just happened. In their eyes, it must have looked like the child in front of them who looked to be around 10 years old had suddenly turned into a beautiful girl with white hair. However, before the men could get an answer to their question, they started succumbing to the abnormality that assaulted them one after another.
“Kah…ku.”
The man holding the machete fell to his knees. His eyes darted around all over the place, not focusing on any one thing, and then began foaming at the mouth. A similar phenomenon occurred not only to him, but to all the men surrounding her as well. The eighteen men in Echidna’s line of sight were unable to resist her Witch’s Miasma and thus in great agony.
The men scratched and tore at their necks, rolled their eyes back into their heads, blew foam out of their mouths, convulsed, choked on their tongues, split their own heads open with their weapons, buried their heads in the snow, and died in agony in various other ways.
“—Exactly thirty seconds.”
Having finished counting the 30 seconds she’d promised them, Echidna looked around. There was nothing but men lying motionless in their own blood and vomit. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been any among them who could endure the thirty seconds of hell and qualify to be the Sage that could reign over the six Witches.
Echidna looked back at the fallen men, then closed her eyes and thought of the boy with black hair, of the boy who remained unaffected while being surrounded by the Witches covered in miasma—though he probably didn’t even realize how abnormal it was to be able to do that. - The Witches After Tea Party