The Saint's Corpse was brought back to Witch Island by Shin. Heaven DIO did not pursue them.
Which made sense, when you thought about it. Traversing the boundless expanse between worlds was nothing like crossing between parallel timelines — if Heaven DIO truly had the ability to cross the dimensional boundary and give chase, the Great Witch's barrage of hellfire would never have been enough to drive him back on the defensive.
Judging by how furious he'd looked, losing a piece of the Saint's Corpse had clearly cut deep. Whether Eyes of Heaven's story could still unfold normally with one piece missing was anyone's guess.
As for the elder Giorno — Shin wasn't particularly worried about his safety. Heaven DIO still needed the JoJos to collect the rest of the Corpse parts for him. He wasn't going to throw a tantrum and quit just because Shin had taken one piece off the board.
So despite the bumps along the way, Shin was fairly satisfied with how the mission had turned out. Or rather — he would have been, if not for what happened immediately afterward.
He was put under house arrest.
As sudden as it was, that was the reality.
The day they returned from completing the mission, the Great Witch fussed over his condition, confirmed he was in one piece — and then, without a word of negotiation, confined both him and Meruru to the manor. Neither of them was to go anywhere.
Shin had protested. He and Meruru had even protested together. But the Great Witch overruled them both with a single vote.
Something was clearly wrong here — that much was beyond question. And so Shin, who had been quietly piecing together something wasn't right, made his first truly defiant move in his sixteen years of life.
In the dead of night, somewhere between two and three in the morning, while Meruru — who had her arms wrapped around him and was sleeping soundly, even murmuring something along the lines of "Ohh, big brother is so amazing, I think I'm going to break~" — he carefully extracted himself, slipped out of bed, and decided to go out and see for himself what was happening on Witch Island.
He had a suspicion. A suspicion tied to the reason why the Great Witch never left Witch Island — and possibly connected to her desperate insistence that he get married and have children.
As luck would have it, the moment Shin pushed open the bedroom window and prepared to climb out, he was greeted by the sight of the Great Witch in white, floating in the darkness outside like a ghost, staring directly at him.
The Great Witch told him to go back to sleep immediately. But Shin — whose other senses had already painted him a fairly clear picture of something deeply wrong with the island even without using his eyes — was in no condition to sleep.
The eerie emptiness from earlier in the day had disappeared by night, but that only made the wrongness more unsettling, not less. It was like stage props stuffed onto a stage in place of real, living actors.
And so the two of them had their first genuine, head-to-head disagreement in sixteen years.
Shin stubbornly refused to back down — he needed to know the truth about Witch Island, needed to confirm his suspicions — and his emotions, just barely, got the better of him. The Great Witch, thoroughly provoked, sealed the manor shut with a binding spell on the spot.
Great. Now he was going nowhere. All he could do was lie in his room and scroll through the group chat.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: Everyone, I'm a little upset right now. Please overlook whatever rudeness comes out of me next — consider it my venting.]
[Spreading Witch Factors]: @System Message
[Spreading Witch Factors]: I forgot to bring this up yesterday, but come out right now. You promised a C-rank mission — do you have any idea you almost got my Shaya killed?
[Spreading Witch Factors: %#¥## (witch profanity) You useless piece of garbage. If you ever take physical form in front of me, I will dismantle you with my own magic. Every. Last. Piece. …
The Great Witch's ranting in the group chat was a stark contrast to the perpetually serene smile she wore in real life.
Shin, operating his account, opened his mouth to say something — typed out a message — deleted it — typed again — deleted it again. In the end, he couldn't bring himself to send a single word.
But wasn't he just as unsettled as she was, deep down?
Every time his mind drifted back to it — the growing, impossible-yet-increasingly-possible reality that the home he had lived in for sixteen years was an illusion held together by magic, that the clan known as the witches had already been wiped out to the last —
[Moon Princess]: Great Witch, dear, please calm down. That System Message isn't the real core of this chat — yelling at it won't accomplish anything.
[Moon Princess]: Yesterday's situation was genuinely dangerous. If my read is correct, whatever blocked your path to your child possessed the combat power of at least a B-rank mission target.
[Moon Princess]: Thank goodness nothing worse happened. Otherwise, what Marika said before really would have come true — and I'd rather not have another fellow member of this chat join the ranks of those who've lost someone at home.
[Spreading Witch Factors: …Mm.
The Great Witch let out a long breath and said nothing more.
[Moon Princess]: Come to think of it, I believe Morgan has quite a number of capable subordinates, doesn't she? Perhaps when a fellow member completes a mission in the future, they could spend some points requesting Morgan to dispatch an escort. Does anyone think that's feasible?
[Spreading Witch Factors]: That does seem doable…
[Moon Princess]: @Queen of Britain — Morgan, what's your take?
[Queen of Britain]: Hm, I have no objections to that.
[Queen of Britain]: That said, Great Witch — yesterday, you intervened personally to save your child, did you not? Why not simply accompany your child on missions together?
[Queen of Britain]: Your strength speaks for itself. Why waste points on an escort when you yourself are more than enough?
[Moon Princess]: That's what I was wondering too.
[Moon Princess]: Something feels different about you lately, Great Witch. Like you have something weighing on your mind. Why not share it with us? Your child can't see this conversation right now — and speaking your worries aloud is always better than keeping them buried.
Morgan had asked the exact question Shin had been silently asking himself. And Kaguya had followed it up with the perfect nudge. Shin's full attention snapped to the screen.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: …This is how it is.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: The reason I don't go outside — it's because I'm maintaining a boundary spell of my own design. It's been running for sixteen years.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: This spell governs the life my children and I live on this island. My original plan was to dispel it once he turned 18… or perhaps 22. Or maybe after he found a partner and had children of his own.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: After that, I planned to leave. He's already grown up. And I have a mission of my own I have to carry out.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: But because of what happened yesterday, my brief absence caused the spell to lose its anchor for a moment — enough of a gap for my child to notice something was off and start suspecting the truth.
[Spreading Witch Factors]: I just had a fight with him. …For the first time in sixteen years, my Shaya is angry with me.
The messages in the chat contained nothing unusual on their surface. Yet Shin, whose senses blanketed the entire manor within the binding spell, caught — barely, impossibly quietly — the sound of muffled crying drifting down from the second floor.
…It hadn't really been a fight. Shin's emotions had just run a little hot.
But regardless — having seen those words in the chat log, the boy's heart had turned into something of a storm.
Everything cascaded into place at once. After witnessing the truth the Great Witch had just laid out with her own words, every question that had been haunting him suddenly made sense.
He had to do something.
Just as the Great Witch had always, quietly, done everything for him — over all sixteen years —
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: @Spreading Witch Factors
[Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]: Great Witch, I wanted to ask you —
[System Message: [Acting Sovereign of Entropy] and [Definitely Not a God] have joined the chat.
Due to a prior error in mission difficulty assessment, two new member slots have been issued as compensation.
Detected: group member count ≥ 7. Daily sign-in point rewards increased by +100%. AI Assistant feature has been unlocked.]
To be continued…
Advance 25 Chapters are now up on my Patreon!
Remaining 25 Chapters will be posted tomorrow! Do support me there as it is a paid fic guys!
pat reon.com/AlphaSenatus