Worry

I spun my pen as I was forced to listen to the teacher rambling about the devil's safety measures in everyday life. The entire class made bored and irritated faces just as they always do every time the teacher gave this same speech, and I was the same, though this time it was my fault.

No, as a matter of fact, it was always my fault.

While devil's corpses do have some utilities even for me, I didn't have the means to take advantage of them, and leaving them as they were would slowly spread life-threatening curses—So every time I killed a devil, I dumped them in front of the police station for them to take care of. However, since the police filed out public reports and made community announcements every time this happened, the interested adults always found out quickly about the presence of devils hunted by me.

Among them was the teacher known for her cute appearance and extreme fixation on safety—Oka Nozomi, my homeroom teacher who always began her class with a short sermon about safety, and would give sermons of up to 30 minutes when she heard of a devil appearing at the police station. She was small and cute for an adult, like a small animal. Though she was still taller than most female students in the lower years, she was also smaller than many of the students in the higher years.

She is the same height as me, 155 cm.

Despite her fixation on safety being despised by the students who had to hear her sermons almost every day, she was loved by everyone when she wasn't giving them, and for a good reason—She is a genuinely good person, an outstanding adult who would advise, protect and cheer her students no matter the problem or situation, she was also one of the few people who would talk with me and even initiate conversation since my classmates were scared of me.

By all definitions, she is an upstanding adult, far better than I or anyone I knew before I died.

And that was the reason that she worried me so much, though she was not the only one who made me worry.

Ever since I started hunting the newborn Frogmen about 4 days ago, they have been becoming more and more active in the area. They probably hatched one or two days before that according to Mary, and now they were actively hunting to satiate the princess and allow her to grow, so far I have managed to avoid human casualties because the Frogmen mainly dwell and hunt in dark alleyways and sewers, places in which I have scattered lots of mirrors which I use as a security system, but if they grow more impatient and begin hunting on the open, not only will I not be able to avoid casualties, but I probably wouldn't be able to stop them no matter what I did—So, I've been searching for their nest.

The problem is that I'm not the only one; Oka-sensei was doing the same. Despite always preaching about safety to her students, she would never follow her own advice if it meant her students being safer instead. Apparently, she became suspicious of the frequency of corpses appearing in front of the police station, and she deduced that a nest was nearby and started searching for it.

It made sense why she deduced it; she has a post-grad in devil studies. With such knowledge, one would think that she would report it to the authorities for them to investigate, but the police would be massacred if they encountered a single Frogman, and as someone who always preached about safety, she wouldn't allow it, so instead she decided to search for it herself.

I wanted to keep the number of people who have seen me as a witch as low as possible; that appearance is too embarrassing, but I couldn't leave Oka-sensei to her own and most likely be killed, so I made an effort to keep her safe without her seeing me.

But protecting two separate persons at the same time without being seen is really hard. Who is that other person who was wandering around like Oka-sensei, you ask?

The student council president, Fujimoto Sayuri.

I never interacted with her before, not even once, since I enrolled in this school, but after a certain incident, she became infatuated with two people: the witch who saved her, and me.

...Yeah, she is just infatuated with me, but she doesn't know that.

Understanding why she would be infatuated with the witch who saved her life is easy; that's how many witches gained great popularity, but I really couldn't understand why she was infatuated with me. At the very least, she didn't know it was me who saved her.

"Ugh, what should I do?"

"Blue-sama, do you really have the time to worry about that?"

I murmured, but a voice murmured back from inside my pencil case, or more exactly, from the small mirror that was inside.

"What do you mean? If I don't worry about it, those idiots will get themselves killed."

As much as I would love to just ignore them, I couldn't possibly do that; they are good people and young ones at that. I may be 14 now, but I was an adult before, and mentally I'm even older now. Leaving them alone is not an option for me.

It would be a different matter if I were powerless, but that is not the case now.

"If you don't find the nest soon, it will turn into a disaster. There are ranked and even council witches in Japan, so it won't escalate out of measure, but many will die regardless."

Council Witches—The fifteen witches who have been given the title of strongest by the one who gave humanity the power of magic, the god Aldwyn. He is the entity that gives young girls the ability to become witches and the one who created familiars to aid those witches, such as Mary. The council of witches is the epitome of mankind, who stand even above entire nations in terms of power and in some cases, influence.

In Japan, there are two council witches, though depending on how you want to see it, there are three. Any of them could destroy thousands of Frogmen with a flick of a finger, but none of them are omnipresent; they can't save everyone if the situation comes to worst.

Ranked witches on the other side is the term used to describe the witches in the 200 rankings made by the ONU a few years ago. Both the council and the ranking list positions are determined based on power and merits, so discerning who is really stronger is somewhat hard, since there are witches who are stronger but don't have as many merits, but the least reliable one is the ranking made by the ONU.

Despite their ranking not always reflecting their power, ranked witches are powerful, much more than I. Japan doesn't have many witches, but the ones it has are strong. There are 18 ranked witches currently operating in Japan. If something were to happen, at least one of them should react in time.

"Even if you tell me to focus on finding the nest and let them die, I wouldn't be able to kill all the frogmen. I'm not strong enough, and my magic is not good at fighting too many enemies."

"Green or Yellow-sama could help."

"They're both crazy, I pass."

"If you don't divide the workload, someone will die."

I looked at Mary, who had a reprimanding look on her face, before glancing at Oka-sensei, who kept on giving her sermon before sighing internally.

"Fine, can you contact the Caterpillar and the March Hare? I don't want to disturb those girls if they're busy on their territory."

"You got it, boss!"

I watched as Mary smiled brightly before disappearing from the mirror. Dealing with the other Alice's is uncomfortable, but it seems like I've got no other choice.