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“My Witch. The preparations are complete.”
“I see… We barely made it in time.”
“There are few who can understand your words, my Witch.”
“True enough. In fact, even you likely have no idea what I’m about to do, do you?”

Wearing a black pointed hat and a black robe embroidered with gold, the woman, who looked no older than twenty and was called a witch, smiled at the elderly man waiting respectfully beside her. The man shook his head at her question and answered in a stiff tone, “Only a fragment of it.” He then glanced around them, letting a dark smile rise to his lips.

“All I understand is that you are the one who will bring an end to this hateful world. That you’ve granted me the chance to avenge myself upon the nobles who stole my daughter and bled this land dry. That alone is enough.”

Until only a few years ago, even as great disasters ravaged the land, nations across the world had still flourished. But everything had changed. Towns once built in neat order now had no place left intact, and even the castles that symbolized each kingdom had given in.

Grass and flowers grew only in a few scattered places. The dry earth was cracked with countless fissures, falls from which meant certain death.

Most countries had lost all vigor, barely managing to maintain the shape of a nation at all. Some had already fallen entirely and turned into lawless ruins. To the man, witnessing this decline was… irresistible, yet unbearably sad. People who felt the same as him had gathered under the witch.

“True, I did steal this world’s remaining lifespan and hasten its collapse,” she said. “But even if I had left it alone, the world would have ended soon enough. It wouldn’t have lasted ten more years. I simply used all of you for my own purpose.”
“We do not mind. Just as you have your purpose, we wished to destroy our nations with our own hands. They had rotted that deeply.”
“And as the nations grew poorer, the ones crushed first were the common citizens, weren’t they?”
“If only that were the extent of it. But the nobles saved only themselves and used those beneath them as toys.”

The cause of the world’s ruin lay in the jewels, said to be essential to forming a nation. These jewels had originally been powered by human Mana, but the amount required was enormous, and royalty and nobles charged with their upkeep often died young. Because of that sacrifice, the jewels were revered, and the royal and noble classes, who paid with their lives, had been granted their privileges. Kingdoms rose and fell many times, but the number of jewels never increased, and therefore neither did the number of nations.

That remained unchanged to this day, but their nature had changed drastically. Someone had discovered a method to draw mana from the world itself for the jewels. Many had feared this technology at first, but after a certain royal, who lamented his short lifespan, accepted a small amount of that borrowed power, other nations soon followed. At first, nothing seemed wrong. Even if many species in the world relied on magic for survival, drawing a little from them wouldn’t destroy anything.

But people gradually grew indulgent. They demanded more jewels, more magic, and more extravagant lives. In the end, they exceeded the world’s capacity. By the time they realized it, humans could no longer abandon their lifestyle. As the available magic dwindled, settlements were abandoned, first hamlets, then villages, then towns, and finally even the capital’s residents began to be discarded.

Had they merely been cut off, it might still have been forgivable. But the rotted nobles began using the abandoned people to sate their own desires. Slaughtering them with increasing cruelty, torturing them for greater suffering. Treated as toys, the people died. As the world descended into madness, many people prayed for a great king of terror to come. But some wanted to take revenge into their own hands.

Those people were the ones who called me My Witch.

“Well then,” I said, looking down at the followers gathered below the hill. “Let’s begin. The end of this world.”

When I raised both hands, the believers cheered and lifted their arms to mimic me. Below them lay an enormous magic circle. One that did not exist in this world, nor in any world of my many experiences. A certain wizard had taught it to me. It wasn’t actually meant to be used in this way, but by combining his knowledge with my own, I had forced it into shape.

It was not something to boast about, but I possessed a great deal of knowledge. I had crossed countless worlds, died countless times, and learned within each of them. But every time I reincarnated, my power reset. No matter how strong I grew in a past life, no matter what magnificent magic I mastered, reincarnation returned me to zero.

So I didn’t have time to do what I wanted. I couldn’t even live past thirty.

The magic circle glowed faintly, ominously. One after another, the believers collapsed within it. They no longer breathed. No heartbeat stirred. I knew I was the one killing them, yet felt no pain in my heart. They had chosen this end themselves, and my heart had long since broken before it could hurt. Something flowed into me, and what welled up inside was relief.

Then cracks spread through the ground around the circle, as if water were rapidly draining from the land. Plants withered, and the earth transformed into a barren wasteland in moments. When all within sight had died, one-third of the believers had been sacrificed to sustain the spell and become part of me.

By now, the royal capital should have been in chaos. Noble or commoner, all would be swallowed equally by this magic. No matter how many commoners were sacrificed, the splitting earth would not halt, and the buildings would continue to fall. Perhaps the believers understood this. Even as they marched toward death, they wore expressions of pure ecstasy.

I didn’t know how much time had passed. When the last believer fell, the magic finally reached the world’s core. After devouring the world, the spell vanished along with it. And I, too, again dissolved into nothing.