City ​​of Witches 72

## Chapter 72 – #17_Change(1)

#71
1.
Amelia wandered alone through the quiet academy.
While Trinity Academy was usually quiet, the silence was especially profound at night.
If the weather were just a bit warmer, she might have heard the insects chirping.
That was the only thing she found a little disappointing.

“Why do I keep doing this…”

It was supposed to be a walk to clear her head.
Yet, Amelia bit her lip, her thoughts constantly returning to one man.

It wasn’t as if nothing had happened.
Their unique meeting and connection were enough to make her think of him from time to time.
When she was stuck researching magic and reached for a cigarette, she would think of him for a moment, and when she was organizing materials for class, she would think of him for a moment…
So, each time, she would go to him and give him various instructions.

She wasn’t sure how to lead a conversation outside of work.
Looking back, she couldn’t deny that she wanted to keep talking to him.

Why was that?
Why was it like that?
Was it just because he was a diligent person that she wanted to be close to him?

Even when she subtly asked Sophia for the reason, she would only give an ambiguous smile.
She never told her anything truly important.

“Pathetic.”

What a sorry state she was in.
She could solve any question about magic, but relationships with people were full of unknowns.
She wondered if there was even a set answer.

Her steps were aimless.
The main reason for the turmoil in her head was Shin Siwoo, and as she walked, thinking of him, she found herself quite far away.

The landscape painted by moonlight was different from that painted by sunlight, so it felt a little unfamiliar, but it was a familiar, low hill.
This was where the barn he had been living in was located.
For five whole years.

“………”

Suddenly, she felt bitter.
What would happen if he found out that the cause was Amelia’s bad temper?
He would probably be very angry, right?
Amelia walked along the winding path of the hill toward the barn.

-Creak!

The old, almost useless wooden door opened, revealing the wide, dilapidated barn.

“Ouch…!”

Suddenly, her chest stung.
As if a blunt needle was poking her heart.
It was the feeling of regret.
And then, a chain of thoughts followed.

“Could other things be like this too?”

This was just what she had confirmed with her own eyes.
Perhaps the many instructions she had thrown at him as a way of venting were more harsh than Amelia had imagined?
Had she made things too difficult for him?
That became her fear.

Now she seemed to understand.
Why Siwoo had kept his distance.
Why he had always shown an ambiguous reaction even when she gave him gifts and consideration.
Perhaps Amelia had been subtly avoiding him while being close to the twins.

She had been too complacent.
She had only been thinking of herself, acting like a spoiled child.
It was not the right thing to do.
If something was wrong, she had to fix it.

As Amelia wandered, reflecting on her past mistakes, something caught her eye.
Next to the ditch that ran through the center of the barn was a pile of straw that he used as a bed.
It seemed he had gotten the hay for the horses from somewhere.

“Here for five years…”

Amelia slowly bent down and sat on the straw pile.
She couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable it would be just by looking at it.

“…..!”

And she was immediately surprised.
Unlike its fluffy appearance, several sharp pieces of straw had slipped through the gaps in her clothes and were poking her bottom.
While Amelia had been closing her eyes on a soft bed, he had been tossing and turning in a place like this.

Finally, Amelia lay down completely on the straw and looked at the ceiling.
The ceiling, which was broken in places, was full of traces of clumsy nailing.
The hard wooden box she felt under her back.
The hay that stung her whole body as soon as she lay down, just as she had felt when she sat down.

Amelia couldn’t say anything.
It was too much.
The sleeping arrangement was unbelievably uncomfortable.

“…….”

Apologize.
Tell him everything and honestly say she was sorry.
It might be ridiculous for Amelia, a witch, to apologize to Siwoo, a slave.
That was why Amelia had been keeping her mouth shut all this time.

Because that’s how she had learned.
Because that’s how she had come to know.
Because she didn’t know it would come to this.
She didn’t want to admit it, and she didn’t want to be honest.

She thought that if she just stayed quiet, if she covered it up in another way, it would be resolved.
Just like when she had barely buried her longing for her teacher.

But not anymore.
The outcry of her conscience had even suppressed the vain sense of authority that Amelia had been trying to uphold.
If something was wrong, she would fix it and provide him with the compensation he deserved.
With a gloomy heart, Amelia turned her body.

At that moment.

-Thud!
“Ugh…!”

As she turned to get up, Amelia flinched at the hard, sharp sensation that poked her tailbone.
It seemed there was a box that had been misplaced under the straw pile.
Feeling the tingling in her tailbone, Amelia rummaged through the straw to find out what had done this to her.

“This is…”

What came out of it was a neatly designed wooden box.
It didn’t look particularly expensive.
Still, it was a box that was luxurious enough for a mere slave to have.
It was quite heavy, and she wondered what was inside.

She knew that snooping through other people’s belongings was not a noble thing to do.
Still, she was curious about what he was keeping so preciously.
He must have forgotten it, she thought.
What could it be?

She shook it slightly, and the sound of coins clinking inside could be heard.
She also heard the sound of bottles clinking and paper rustling.
She should just return it.
Amelia left the barn with the box tucked under her arm.
Then, a thought suddenly occurred to her.

“I need to give him a gift of apology… I’m worried about what to give him.”

Amelia, who had started talking to herself when no one was around, looked around awkwardly.

“This is a research process for a gift that he will like.”

After a quick rationalization, Amelia opened the wooden box slightly.
And she froze.

Gold coins filling a leather pouch.
A bundle of magic paper.
A bottle of top-grade mana potion with the certification seal of the Emerald Tablet.
And Siwoo’s magic circle designs, spanning hundreds of pages.

2.
Amelia put the items down.
Her head felt empty.
It had been a long time since she had felt such confusion.
If she had to describe the degree of this confusion, it would be similar to when she first learned how sexual intercourse between men and women was done?

She could understand the gold coins.
If he had been diligently saving his salary, it was an amount he could have accumulated.
Besides, Siwoo, who was so diligent, wouldn’t have stolen it from anywhere.

She could also understand the mana potion and the magic paper.
She didn’t know why, but Siwoo had been seen getting close to the twins lately.
If they were apprentice witches from the Gemini family, famous for their magical tools, it wouldn’t be strange for them to give him such things as a token of goodwill.

However, what confused Amelia was the blueprint of the magic formula.
And not just a simple life magic like a decorative light, but a blueprint for a large-scale magic formula.

Since she had recently assigned him to ghostwrite or create indexes when organizing documents, Amelia remembered Siwoo’s handwriting exactly.
It was a bold, sweeping scrawl, befitting a man.
His handwriting covered more than 200 pages of paper.

“How…?”

That was the first thing Amelia said after looking through it for a long time.

A magic formula is a very complex and high-level fusion discipline.
One could not be proficient in just one area.
One had to be versed in various fields of talent.

In the grammar using 128 rune characters, linguistic sense was required,
In the formulas for calculating the mana flowing through the magic circuits, mathematical talent was required,
In the image geometry that shaped the images to be manifested, even artistic talent was required.

Finally, the instinctive talent to harmonize everything, apply it, and come up with inspiration that no one had ever thought of.
This was the basis of all magic.

Generally, it took at least 10 years for apprentice witches who had inherited the ‘witch’s bloodline’ and were born with genius talent to master all of this.

“What the heck…”

And it had been five years since Siwoo had been captured in Gehenna.
If Siwoo had been able to control these basics skillfully, Amelia would have been somewhat convinced.
She would have thought, ‘He was a mathematician in the outside world, so if he had stayed in the present world, he would have become the greatest mathematician in the world…’ and moved on.

But what was drawn on the paper was not basic skills.
It was a bizarre method that even Amelia was encountering for the first time, forming a rule and taking on its own consistent grammar.

A unique method and calculation formula that she had never encountered before.
It was like a person who only knew English reading a poem in Latin.

She could see how he had calculated it in some places, but she couldn’t understand what the whole formula meant, what the nuance was, or what it was made for.

It would have been different if Siwoo had told her, but the fact that Amelia, who was in the 22nd rank, couldn’t understand it at a glance meant…
That this was ‘self-made magic’.
A realm where one masters all the basics and pioneers one’s own ‘Ain’.

Who would believe that a mere slave who had not inherited even a single rank had achieved all of this?

The world is seen as much as one knows.
What Siwoo had achieved was far, far greater than what the apprentice witches, the twins, could know.

Amelia used telekinesis.
From page 1 to the 228th page, which was not yet fully completed.
As she connected them all like a puzzle, the image of the magic circle that had been vaguely emerging became one.
Looking at it this way, she could guess what he wanted more easily.
It was only a faint prediction, like looking at a picture from a great distance.

“Absorption and self-transformation of external mana, control of subordinate variables, and this is…”

A door.
An attempt to directly interfere with the dimension and open a door could be seen.
The identity of Siwoo’s self-made magic was the ‘dimensional magic formula’ that no one had dared to attempt since Keter Duke had created it.

Amelia could pinpoint what Siwoo wanted.
He was trying to leave Gehenna.

-Rustle!

The unfolded papers gathered in order and became a bundle again.
Amelia pushed it back into the original box.

Her head was spinning.
She felt dizzy.
It wasn’t because of fatigue.

“Are you… trying to escape?”

It might be a common reaction.
It was not strange for slaves who had been captured in Gehenna without knowing why to yearn for freedom.

If he were to go to the present world…
Amelia shook her head.
She couldn’t give a rational reason, nor did she understand why she felt this way, but she suddenly felt afraid.

She had to meet him.
Mana swirled beneath Amelia’s feet.
Her body bounced like a ball, and she began to cross the academy.