Er Mu - Release that Witch

By the time the sun was completely hanging over the sky, Nightingale finally came into the office, “Oh? You were actually able to rise so early today? Don’t tell me that it’s really as Lily like said, were you really so impatient for the new witches to arrive that you couldn’t wait?”

“What kind of nonsense are you talking about?” Roland smiled as he asked, then put a bag of dried fish on the table, “How did you get along with your new sister last night?

“Sister?” Nightingale curled her lips, “You can’t trust them too much.”

“What happened?”

Nightingale reached out with her hand to grab the bag and then turned around to sit on the couch, “The witch named Sylvie, out of the ten sentences she’d spoken, half had been lies. Although they haven’t been so grave as to mean that she has some evil intentions towards us there are certainly still a lot of thoughts she is trying to hide.”

“Well… that’s somewhat understandable,” Roland seemed to not care about it, “She probably wanted to see if I was the real Roland Wimbledon or not.”

“What?” Nightingale blanked slightly.

“In case one of your close relatives were to suddenly change by a great deal, you would certainly also come to think that they had been replaced or was being controlled.”

He smiled, “I guess Tilly thinks that one of those possibilities might have happened to me. In King’s City, I was well known for always idling away my days, and being without any learning or skills. I was someone who bullied the weak and feared the strong. How could such a person so suddenly change as to straighten his back and start sheltering witches?”

In fact, any bad comments that were used to describe the 4th Prince weren’t exaggerations. One of his still existent childhood memories went like this: One time the 4th Prince was playing in the palace, and he ended up accidentally breaking a few crystal-glass jars.

However, to avoid punishment not only did he push all of the blame on Tilly Wimbledon. No, to complete his forgery of the scene, he even pushed the six or seven year old girl onto the broken shards of crystal-glass. Having this kind of dark history, wouldn’t it be a wonder instead if the other party’s impression of him was good? It was reasonable that there would be doubt when the older brother’s nature showed such a dramatic change that he no longer appeared to be himself, in fact everyone would have liked to go and investigate these changes.

“Hearing you speak like this, I also want to know,” Nightingale asked curiously, “Are you really Roland Wimbledon after all, or not?”

“I’m both, so yes and no,” Roland answered, and spread out his arms.

Nightingale was shocked, “Why does my ability tell me that your sentence is true?”

“Because that’s how it is.” Nightingale’s ability could only detect deliberately told lies, and he didn’t think he was telling her a lie.

“…” Holding her forehead and frowning for a long time, Nightingale finally decided to give up thinking about it, “Well, I will just ask Anna about it later. No matter what, as long as I am familiar with the Roland in front of me, everything is good.”

“Of course, from the moment you knew me, I’ve always been myself.” Roland smiled.

After breakfast, Wendy brought the five witches from Sleeping Island over to his office.

“Good morning, Your Highness.” The five bowed in salute.

“Relax, I am not a person that is very particular about etiquette, you can address me the same way as you talk with Tilly,” Roland said as he waved his hand.

“During the first week I won’t arrange any work for you. Instead, you should use this time to become familiar with the town’s environment and lifestyle. You can freely visit Border Town, nobody will discriminate against you for being witches. They also won’t attempt to capture you in exchange for money — I have completely eradicated the Church’s force across the whole Western Territory, so this place and Sleeping Island are the same, they are both places of freedom.

“I think that all of you already know of the cause for magic devouring your bodies, so by necessity your practice cannot be abandoned. During the day there are no restrictions, everything will be alright as long as you do not forget to come back and eat lunch. After dinner, you have primary education classes, which including learning how to read and write, there will be simple math, and natural knowledge. Tilly may have already told you this, but apart from crossing the day of adulthood, the ability of a witch can be strengthened even further. To do so it is necessary that you master this knowledge, every one of you that are interested can come and attend the classes together with the rest of Border Town’s witches.

“Furthermore, each month you will receive one gold royal as remunerations, as well as have the weekends off and you will also be given paid leave — if you don’t understand what this means, you can go and ask Wendy. In short, everyone’s daily life will be the same as that of the Witch Union’s. Sleeping Island is a home for witches, and the same is true for Border Town.” Roland paused, “Our next task will be to test your abilities, Tilly’s description in her letter wasn’t very clear. But displaying you abilities here will be too much of an inconvenience, so let’s first change to a more spacious location.”

“Please wait a moment, Your Royal Highness, there is something I have to give you first,” Sylvie spoke.

“What is it?”

She untied the package in her hands, and placed several yellow parchments together with a letter on to the table, “Lady Tilly discovered these documents within ruins in the Fjord, she wants to ask if you’re able to understand the letters that the text is written in.”

Puzzled, Roland opened the envelope, it didn’t contain a long letter, so he quickly reached its end, yet the content inside set off monstrous, sky shaking waves within his heart.

A man-made island, set at the bottom of the ocean, after hundreds of years of unpredictable changes due to the rising and falling tides, had an observation mirror that was operable inside, as well as a stone gate constructed within a cliff… all this was simply unfathomable. Why would there exist such an unimaginable remnant in the Fjord? Moreover, the inquiries Tilly made at the end of the letter sent a tingling feeling all over his body — glancing at the parchment, he was indeed a bit familiar with these words.

“Quickly go and bring Scroll over,” Roland instructed Nightingale.

Not much later, Scroll arrived at the castle after rushing over from City Hall. After summoning her magic book, the Prince read it couldn’t help but frown.

When looking at the “Holy Book” Cara had brought back from the ruins in the eastern forest, and the documents found in ruins in the Fjord, he found out that the characters used were exactly the same! This way confirming Tilly’s guess to the letter, these ancient ruins had been built by the hands of the very same group of people.

If it was the Church that built all these, why did they abandon them? Moreover, it wasn’t only those magnificent buildings, even the records from four hundred and fifty years ago have been left behind but weren’t erased. What was it they’d wanted to hide?

Even the burning hot sun of the final month of summer was powerful enough to let Roland feel even the smallest bit of warmth, but he now only felt an indistinct cold, both gloomy and chilly, come rising from the soles of the feet.

Is the stone tower discovered by Lighting in the Concealing Forest also related to those ruins? And the demonic beasts, the Devils, and the Holy City of Taqulia … In the end, just what kind of accident happened four hundred and fifty years ago?

At the bottom of Roland’s heart, an unease was welling up.

The letter also mentioned that Tilly was trying to translate the words and would like to know whether the Witch Union could provide her with any clue.

Roland decided that he would include the news about the Devils and the Holy City of Taquila in his next reply to her. Furthermore, he also wanted to add Soraya’s picture of the previous events. Maybe that information might somehow help her with her translation. This information wasn’t suitable to be hidden away, as long as he could understand what kind of unforeseen event had happened more than four hundred years ago, it would help him prepare a response ahead of time. They might be even able to discover the weak point of the Church — if there hadn’t been something they needed to worry over, then there was no reason to go so far to bury the past in the soil.

It was evident that there were some things that they wanted to keep from being discovered at any cost.

In addition, it would be beneficial for them to send someone to explore the stone tower in the Concealing Forest. The access to the ruins in the Eastern Regions Sea Wind Region was blocked by the Church, while the ruins in the Fjords had been buried beneath the ocean’s surface for longer period of the year. And beside the pile of books in the secret chamber, almost nothing else was left there. But seeing men’s footprints within the depths of the Concealing Forest were rare, even the Church was unable to reach it so easily. So it was perhaps the place where they could go in order to find some useful clues.

But the report about the Devil that Lightning had encountered also caused fear to arise in Roland. Such an exploration couldn’t be done without the witches, but if he was to dispatch the witches and they suffered some losses, he would be unable to bear the guilt. After considering it over and over, Roland ultimately decided to wait until the First Army had been completely equipped with the newest generation of firearms. He would then let them embark together with the witches into the forest and he was sure they could then deal with every possible Devil they might encounter.

Suppressing the seething unrest within his heart, Roland revealed a forced smile, “I understand what Tilly’s is trying to do. So I will write a reply to her with a good descriptions of the situation, but nevertheless it is still better if we first proceed with your capability tests.”

After all, developing one’s strength as far as possible during peacetime was the right choice of action. That way, when war inevitably arrived, they would at least have the ability to keep on fighting.

…

A test site was selected that was once more outside of the city walls. In order to prevent any people from entering the testing ground, Roland had also mobilized the First Army to enclose the surroundings and also hinder anyone who tried to enter or leave.

The first one who went through the testing was Lotus.

Her age was similar to Nightingale’s, she had short voluminous black hair, and a “pretty daughter from a humble family” type of face. Her overall appearance looked quite lovely. With a small size of around one meter fifty and a skinny body, when comparing to the tall Nightingale, she looked like a little girl who has yet to fully grow up, giving off a sense of weakness. But if there was one thing that couldn’t be called weak it would be her abilities. Within a five-meter area, she could easily change the topography of the land beneath her feet.

The description of the letter was far from the shock he felt when seeing it. During the test, Lotus let the earth beside her rise up vertically, like an “earth pillar” which was growing into the sky. It was only when the “earth pillar” reached a height of seven to eight meters that it finally collapsed because of the structural destabilization.

According to Lotus, the more loose the ground was, the less magic it took to transform, but at the same time, the quality would also become inferior. Houses and walls built this way would also be of lower standard. If the main component of the ground was gravel, it also became difficult to create something decent — apparently, she could only change the terrain, not modify the material of the earth itself. Of course, this problem could be solved by simply expanding the scope and thickness of the growth.

Roland let her demonstrate her power once more by asking her to build a house, but the soil of the Western Territory was clearly not as packed as the soil found on Sleeping Island. The earthen house which directly rose out of the ground pressed together several times before it finally formed a building with spaces for a window and an archway, but to make this possible the final walls’ thickness needed to reach half a meter. After the completion of the house, it looked like a simple and crude cave and could only fulfill the most fundamental demands for a living place. Compared with the arrangement according to the compact architecture of a brick house, it fell short by a lot.