The Witch Hunt had begun.
Don't misunderstand—this "Witch Hunt" wasn't a metaphor. It was, quite literally, the act of hunting down a witch.
As for the reason...
"You want a way to deepen our Covenant that's a little different from the 'usual,' don't you?"
Though Lloyd was often surrounded by many and appeared rather eccentric at times, he always remembered the preferences and tendencies of those around him, making an effort to fulfill them whenever possible.
Like finding Nito a replacement. Like the Melina journey before that. And now—this one, with Ranni.
And why was it a Witch Hunt, of all things? How could that possibly deepen a Covenant?
"To put it simply," Lloyd said, "I'll open a separate timeline just for you. In it, you'll be free to play the role of an 'evil witch,' acting as you please without worrying about affecting the real world."
"But I imagine playing alone would get dull quickly. Competition and opposition make things much more fun."
"So, I'll enter that instance with you—not as an ally, but as a 'warrior sent to hunt the wicked witch,' standing against you."
"For fairness and enjoyment, I'll restrain my strength to a level fitting for the role. In return, you'll need to follow certain rules too."
"Otherwise, if the game ends the moment it begins, that would be far too boring..."
That was Lloyd's general idea.
There were additional details, of course—memory restrictions to enhance immersion, and some fine-tuned rules to balance both sides of the game.
The witch would play the villain. And since her power wouldn't be limited at the start, Ranni would completely overpower him. She could use the opportunity to do as she pleased, to get back at him for all the grievances she'd suffered—repaying them in full, and then some...
Ranni couldn't find a single reason to refuse.
"Then I hope our brave hero doesn't throw a tantrum after losing," she said lightly.
The blue witch pressed her fingertips together, her confident smile glowing with anticipation.
She knew, of course, that in terms of pure power, she was nowhere near Lloyd's level.
But under his own rules, within that realm, he wouldn't be able to wield that absurdly overwhelming power of his. Even if he'd gain strength as things progressed, his starting point would be laughably weak—and until the very end, he wouldn't surpass her.
In such conditions, if Lloyd wanted to win, he'd have to rely on something other than strength—plans, tactics, perhaps even trickery.
But Lloyd's intellect... well...
Ranni couldn't imagine herself losing. She figured this "plan" of his wasn't truly meant as a challenge, but as an elaborate excuse to entertain her—to indulge her, really—and give her a small chance at payback.
Lloyd didn't correct her. Just before entering, he said, "I'll take winning a bit more seriously this time," then opened the portal and led her into the instance.
After a brief wave of disorientation, Lloyd found himself in a small village.
His immense strength was sealed away, many of his memories suppressed, leaving him as a true "novice warrior."
According to their agreed progression, he would level up in the village, prepare himself, and once strong enough to leave, set out on his journey to "hunt the witch."
Everything went as planned—at first.
Until something unexpected happened.
One day, after training, he returned home to rest. Before he had even left the beginner's village, the young warrior found a blue silhouette waiting in his room.
It was a witch.
The most powerful, most wicked witch in the world—the Moon Witch.
As the stunned warrior stood frozen, the Moon Witch, seated on a chair, closed her book and raised her head, her eyes glinting with amusement.
"Don't worry," she said. "I'm not here to break the rules. I won't block your path or harm you in any way."
"But..."
She stood up, her form slowly expanding until she loomed over him.
With one hand, she cast a spell, freezing him in place. Then, the towering witch reached out, lifted him effortlessly, and drew him close—her hands beginning to wander.
Time passed—how long, it was hard to say.
When her playful vengeance was finally satisfied, the witch pressed his head against her chest and murmured,
"You never said I couldn't come and 'mess with you.'"
"For example, wearing you out, draining your strength, breaking your focus..."
And that wasn't all.
By nature, Ranni hated being passive or in a weaker position—especially when it came to matters of the heart.
But Lloyd was simply too strong. No matter how much she tried, she could never truly turn the tables. Even when he pretended to let her win, it felt like pity—a gesture from a superior to a lesser—and that only made it worse. That was why, despite knowing each other for so long, their relationship had progressed so slowly.
But now...
Looking down at the man struggling in her grasp, the giant witch smiled—genuinely.
Then she took out a ring and slipped it onto his finger.
It was a cold, glimmering ring that radiated frost.
"This is the Witch's curse. If you don't break it, it'll follow you for the rest of your life."
With that, she pinned the Warrior to the bed. Taking advantage of his exhaustion after training, she drained his strength in every way imaginable, leaving him completely spent. The next day, he couldn't even get up to practice, forced to rest in bed for the entire day.
Then, on the third day, just as the Warrior had recovered and was preparing to train again...
A towering blue silhouette appeared in front of the door. When she opened her robe, she revealed a set of delicate, lace-trimmed lingerie beneath.
By the rules, the Witch couldn't use force to prevent the Warrior's growth. In fact, she was even required to offer assistance when necessary.
But the rules didn't say she couldn't wear such things to block his way.
And...
"I asked Alice before I came. She told me you like this sort of thing."
"So now, make your choice."
"Will you go out and continue your training... or stay here..."
"...and have tea with me?"
As she spoke, the Witch stepped closer.
A faint, cool fragrance drifted from her body.
And so, on the third day, the Warrior still didn't leave.
Then came the fourth day. The fifth. The sixth...
The Warrior never left.
At some point, the Witch stopped merely dropping by and decided to stay permanently. During the day, she found endless ways to tease and exhaust him, making it impossible for him to train. At night, she curled around him as they slept. And whenever she awoke before him, she had her own... particular methods of "waking him up."
"Don't even think about leaving," she murmured one morning, holding him close, her fingers tracing idle patterns across his skin.
"Just stay here with me. If you agree, I'll stay with you like this forever. We could do... even more, if you're willing to nod your head."
But the Warrior didn't answer.
The Witch didn't seem to mind.
After all, even without his consent, if things continued this way, victory would come to her soon enough.
Because in time, the beginner's village would face a minor trial—a simple transitional challenge before the next stage. Not particularly dangerous, but without any training, the outcome was obvious.
So even if he didn't surrender outright, just keeping him here long enough would guarantee her win...
Or so she thought.
Some time later...
Staring at the colossal beast the Warrior had just slain in an instant, the Witch stood frozen in disbelief.
"...You cheated?"
He'd been with her this entire time—no training, no practice—so how could he have grown this strong?
The Warrior gave her a puzzled look.
"You're the highest-level boss in the entire dungeon. You came to 'spar' with me every day. And now you're asking where my strength came from?"
The Witch blinked.
"....?!"
There was a way to level up like that?
She hadn't seen that coming. Flipping through the rulebook in a hurry, she confirmed that, somehow, his method technically didn't violate any rules.
But even if it was legal, being outplayed like that still irritated her. So, she grabbed the Warrior by the arm, dragged him back to the room, and gave him a very thorough "punishment" for making a fool of her.
Even so, after the punishment was done, the Witch didn't seem particularly worried.
True, the Warrior had survived that trial—and even gained considerable power thanks to her "interference."
But the beginner's village was just a starting zone. The real battles, the true challenges, still lay ahead.
And while she had once thought he'd never leave the village, the Witch wasn't the type to underestimate anyone. During this time, she'd been quietly making her own preparations beyond the village—laying traps, crafting kill zones, setting up countless ambushes that would await him.
Incidentally, though the rules prevented her from attacking him directly, she did have one advantage: she commanded an entire kingdom of her own.
It was that very power that had earned her the title of the "Most Wicked Witch." She had conquered the kingdom through sheer might, and in her pursuit of the stars, she'd poured untold resources into constructing a massive tower that reached toward the heavens at its center.
That tower—was the Warrior's final destination.
But...
"Let's see if you can even get close first."
No sooner had the Warrior stepped out of the beginner's village than the Witch's pursuers appeared.
Knowing the rules well, she didn't bother sending weaklings he could easily farm for experience. Instead, she dispatched elite knights right from the start—foes completely beyond his current level to handle.
Though bound by restrictions—she couldn't directly guide the knights to his location or completely block his leveling routes—under their constant pursuit, the Warrior could only train in secret. It was slow, dangerous, and inefficient, while on her side, the Witch steadily unlocked more abilities with each passing moment.
As long as she could stall his growth—keeping his pace slower than hers—victory would come naturally when the time ran out.
From her perspective, every path of escape had been accounted for. Every option sealed. She couldn't imagine any possible comeback for him.
"If you surrender now," she teased, "I'll only count it as half a loss."
The Warrior didn't answer.
Then, just as she waited confidently for her inevitable victory...
He made his move.
He lured the elite knights into the beginner's village—and poisoned the water supply. Villagers and knights alike fell together.
"In the wild, they'd be on guard. Poison might not work," he said.
"But in a village? When even the villagers don't know their food or water's tainted, and they share it with the knights... the odds of success skyrocket."
Hearing that, the Witch glanced at him, then at the scene around them—the village where he had once lived, now covered in corpses, plague spreading through the air. She opened her mouth, but no words came.
Wait, this is just a game. That was your home...
"...Don't you think that's a bit extreme?"
The Warrior shook his head.
"I told you. I intend to win seriously."
But it wasn't over yet.
Because the knights were so powerful, the poison that killed the villagers wasn't enough to finish them. It wounded them—crippled a few—but most were still capable of fighting.
After some deliberation, the elite knights split their forces.
Half stayed behind to guard the wounded. The rest set off to the nearest town to fetch priests for healing.
Once the group for priests departed, the Warrior ambushed the remaining guards, killing one knight who had been too poisoned to resist.
But ambushes only work once. When the others realized what happened, he had to retreat—outnumbered, outmatched, and with his element of surprise lost, he couldn't take another.
He didn't need to. His goal was already achieved.
He dragged the slain knight's corpse away, peeled the skin from his body, and used it as a disguise. Then he lay in wait along the returning party's path. When they came back, he struck, killing them before they could react.
Then, wearing their skin, he turned back and ambushed the wounded knights still at the camp.
By the end, the elite knights were wiped out.
The Witch stood speechless, staring at the Warrior, his clothes still slick with torn flesh and blood.
Her expression wavered. Something inside her shifted.
"...Was that really necessary?"
She had always known he wasn't a good man. But after spending so much time together in the Lands Between, seeing his relaxed, almost kind demeanor, it had become difficult—even knowing better—to truly associate him with the word evil.
But now...
"When I have the strength to help others, I'll help them," the Warrior said quietly. He glanced at the skinned corpses, then shook his head.
"But when I don't, I'll protect myself—and those close to me—first."
"But this is just a game..."
"I told you," he said, meeting her gaze, "I'll win seriously."
The seriousness in his voice made her breath catch.
Only now, surrounded by corpses, did she understand what he meant by "seriously."
It wasn't just playing along. It wasn't bravado.
It was literal—absolute, ruthless determination to win.
"...You're filthy. I'm leaving."
With that, the Witch vanished.
The Warrior remained there for a long time.
When he was sure she was truly gone, he crouched down beside one of the blood-soaked bodies.
From it, a faint, translucent soul drifted upward, blinking at him before sighing in mild frustration.
"That time in the jungle earlier—I almost found you."
"You're overthinking it. That was a deliberate misdirection. If you'd gone there, you'd have walked straight into a trap."
"Ah… right."
The soul hesitated, glancing around.
"What about these villagers…?"
"When they're revived, give them an extra chicken leg in their boxed meals."
Lloyd felt no guilt playing with the timeline like this. He had plenty of old friends among the souls, and many of them enjoyed sparring with him—so he simply pulled them into this dungeon as background actors.
As for the pain of dying?
In the Dark Souls world, death was a luxury.
Even without the chicken leg, just the chance to die once was enough to draw crowds of souls eager to join in.
"Oh, right. That lady from before…"
The soul remembered Ranni, who had just been there.
"She said she's a Witch. And a really, really bad one."
"…Huh?!"
The soul blinked, then recalled its time in the kingdom, expression growing awkward.
"She's… really that kind of Witch? Somehow, I don't feel…"
"She believes she is."
"…I see."
The exchange ended there. Since Lloyd still had work to do, the soul returned to its body and slipped back into eternal rest.
Time passed.
After wiping out the elite knights, Lloyd resumed his journey to level up.
Not long after, Ranni returned as well. She didn't say much about what he had done.
She thought he had gone too far—but since she wasn't exactly virtuous herself, once she calmed down, she had to admit it was a masterful victory of the weak over the strong. She didn't blame him.
Still, while she tolerated his previous actions, it didn't take long for Lloyd to start again.
He slaughtered entire towns just to gain experience points.
He piled corpses into mounds, let them fester into plagues, and hurled them into cities with catapults—spreading death by hand.
Massacres. Manipulation. Madness.
To strengthen himself, to weaken the kingdom, he used every twisted, extreme method imaginable.
Again and again.
Wave after wave.
Once-living people died screaming as the plague devoured them. Once-thriving streets became graveyards of bone and decay.
Heretical faiths spread, turning neighbors into enemies. Blood rituals seeped through the land, staining the kingdom with torment.
The blue Witch saw it all with her own eyes.
She watched lives vanish. She watched suffering spread. She saw those who once smiled at her die one by one in terror. She saw the little girl who once offered her flowers, who dreamed of becoming a Witch someday, lying lifeless in a pool of blood.
At first, she didn't react.
After all, she had always believed herself to be a wicked Witch. This wasn't the Lands Between, and these people had nothing to do with her.
Besides, she had once caused similar devastation herself—and even now, she felt no remorse for that.
But what she didn't realize was that, though similar on the surface, this was something entirely different.
The Shattering had indeed been her doing—but whether or not that outcome had been what she intended, it was born from the conflict between the Fingers and The Law.
Even if she hadn't acted, others would have. The scale might have been smaller, the destruction less severe, but war between them was inevitable.
That wasn't the point, though.
The real point was this: despite her noble birth and self-proclaimed wickedness, before the Night of the Black Knives, Ranni had never truly done anything outrageous herself.
And after that night—after she struck herself down and turned against the Two Fingers—she rarely left her tower. Apart from sending the bell to Lloyd, she hardly stepped outside. She didn't witness suffering firsthand, not even in Caria Manor, which she scarcely visited. She left such things to others.
To put it bluntly, while she called herself a Witch and had caused terrible consequences, to her, evil was something that existed only in words.
It was like reading a war report after a battle—no matter how gruesome the description or how staggering the death toll, it was still just ink on a page.
A report carries only so much weight. Unless you stand on the frontlines, see it with your own eyes, feel the screams and the blood, the numbers remain just numbers. Even a thousand deaths cannot move the heart as much as watching one person die by your own hand.
And if she thought back carefully—even Godwyn's death hadn't been by her own doing.
Before meeting Lloyd, the only person she had ever killed with her own hands was herself.
Her so-called rebellion, her renunciation of all things, had been nothing more than her way of escaping the Lands Between. She had never hidden that fact—she even reminded others of it, sometimes with pride. Yet if the moment had truly come, she would have felt sorrow.
She wasn't a good person, but she wasn't nearly as wicked or as resolute as she claimed to be.
Only her sharp tongue—so very Carian—remained as firm as ever.
But now, confronted with real evil, watching tragedy unfold again and again, all for the sake of a "game"…
Ranni began to change.
Her indifference gave way to discomfort, then to unease, and finally—to genuine revulsion.
The flower who had called herself wicked, yet had bloomed in a sheltered greenhouse, now witnessed firsthand what it meant to crawl and survive in the filth of true evil.
And she was shaken to her core.
"Honestly," Lloyd remarked casually, "I'm already holding back. When I used to play with my old friends, the standards were much lower than this."
The Dark Souls world had always been twisted. Morality there was thin at best. When the players really cut loose, it got far worse than this. Lloyd was one of the more restrained ones—he was even the kind to stop others when they went too far, like flooding a city with soul-corrupting toxic sludge.
But Ranni had never seen that world. She didn't know what those people were capable of.
All she knew was that she hated it—and the more she saw, the stronger that hatred grew.
Until, at last, when the disgust became too much to bear...
She decided to act.
"I'm getting serious too."
She had no intention of breaking the rules, nor did she plan to persuade Lloyd otherwise.
Instead, she resolved to fight back in her own way—through actions that remained entirely within the boundaries of the rules.
And to justify it, she gave herself a reason: "The kingdom is part of my power. I can't let Lloyd keep destroying it."
Then came their first true confrontation.
No more jokes. No teasing. No holding back.
The Witch of the Dark Moon stood tall, taking up her rightful place as queen. She seized command of her kingdom and rose to confront the calamity that was Lloyd.
And so, without realizing it, the two of them had traded roles.
The hero became the scourge all feared, while the witch became the ruler who fought for her people.
...
Time passed.
How much, she could no longer remember.
She only recalled that through endless battles, the Chaos Warrior grew ever stronger—his actions growing more unpredictable, his methods more twisted.
Meanwhile, more and more gathered around her. The blue figure of the Witch became a symbol of hope for the people of this world.
The sun fell, and the shadows deepened.
The Dark Moon rose, casting its cold light through the night.
And in the end, they met atop the highest tower.
The dying sun and the frozen moon collided.
Then—the moon shattered.
It was inevitable. The sun's early weakness had been the price for its later strength.
And throughout that time, he had committed countless unimaginable acts, drawing on madness itself to seize immense power.
But just as the Dark Moon broke and the Witch bowed her head in defeat...
Light appeared.
First a faint glimmer. Then two, three, four...
Then came footsteps—soft at first, then louder, until they filled the air like thunder, shaking the very earth.
They were the people she had protected. Those who had believed in her.
Even after the Dark Moon's fall, they rose on their own—knowing they stood no chance, yet still choosing to stand beside her, to face the dying sun together.
What followed seemed like the perfect ending.
Spurred by emotion—or perhaps the gathering of light—the Dark Moon rose again. Empowered by the faith of her people, it shone brighter and stronger than ever before. Together, they hurled their strength at the darkened sun.
And in any other tale, the united light of the Dark Moon would have triumphed.
But this wasn't that story.
The Dark Moon was shattered once more—utterly obliterated by the sun's overwhelming power. And when the sun's fury subsided, it devoured everything behind her as well.
The kingdom was gone.
"I told you."
Upon the ruins of the broken tower, Lloyd looked down at Ranni and said quietly,
"I said I'd win seriously."
Silence.
The blue Witch stared at the fragments of the Dark Moon fading into the wind, then turned to the kingdom swallowed by the darkened sun.
She seemed to understand something… yet also understood nothing at all.
"...If you just wanted to show me that I'm not as bad as I thought, shouldn't you have let me win?"
"I never intended that."
Lloyd's gaze remained steady, his tone calm but firm.
"I only gave you a stage. How you act on it, how you see it—that's entirely your choice."
"There's no good or evil here. No victory or defeat. You are simply you—nothing else."
After a long silence, the blue Witch sank down to the ground, wrapped her arms around her knees, and buried her face.
Her voice trembled—quiet, small, and achingly human.
"I understand."
"Take me out of here."
"I'm tired."