Chapter 49 – What Is Magic.
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“It’s no use pretending. I’ve confirmed now that you’re the one who made the child do that, as well as the traces left on this body.”
It took a while for Pan to keep his mouth shut at her words. He started laughing at what was so fun.
Haha! Yes, witch magic can do that too?
Write, he swallowed the saliva leaking out while laughing. I’ve heard that it has excellent versatility, but I never thought it would be this much. I was more coveted. To the point where I want to have that girl right now. A strong impulse shook the plate. Did he think he could intimidate himself with something like that? Then it was really funny and cute.
“So what can you do with knowing that?”
If you say such a thing without any basis, you may be suspected of being crazy, or you may be pointed at as if you were enjoying yourself while pretending to be asleep.
“Are you going to tell me that you are a witch?”
If you reveal and prove that you are a witch, it will be a big deal for the girl as you prove. There are sure to be people who want to sell the girl to a higher-ranking person. Humans are such creatures by nature.
“You can’t do anything.”
How much more is that all?
“At this point, let’s decide. Whether or not to devote oneself to it.”
In his hands is the boy whom the girl cherishes so much.
“Leave this! Let go!”
“Shut up!”
“Ugh!”
The girl struggles and kicks him, and when he uses magic again, the girl is in trouble again. He had long since figured out how to deal with these two.
“You don’t want to make Belka suffer more, do you?”
Pan’s words forced Usher to stop struggling and gnashing his teeth. Whatever her girl decides, she’ll take it into her own hands, but it’s best if she surrenders to him on her own. It would be annoying if the boy who came in a while ago suddenly disappeared. Of course, it only bothered him, but as a wizard, he had the strength to endure it. But he knew it wouldn’t work out that way. Because the girl will never be able to turn away from the boy.
“…Yes, that’s right. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
The girl couldn’t deny his words. Her magic was only to block his magic. However, he is a professionally trained knight before being a wizard. There was no way that she, who had severe restrictions on using magic with a country boy, could defeat him.
“I won’t let things go the way you think, though.”
“What?”
Feeling strange about the girl’s words, Pan finally noticed the sound of cutting the wind coming from behind him. He immediately tried to get out of his body, but by then it was too late. The first thing he heard was the dull sound of his arm holding Usher.
“Keep!”
Pan screamed and let Usher out of his hands. And a familiar voice.
“Are you okay, guys?”
He looked back, holding back the pain from his broken arm, and let out a drool.
“Donar!”
There, Donar was looking down at him, wearing thick padding to keep the sand from sounding as he stepped on it. In one hand was a piece of iron that appeared to have just struck his arm. It was a simple stick and not a weapon with relatively strong power. It was not an item that was used very often by knights who deal with monsters or dragons. Donnar was looking down coldly at the plate calling his name.
“You’ve run amok so far. You bastard.”
He couldn’t understand the situation. It was because Pan aimed at the time when everyone was asleep, even in preparation for an unexpected situation, and first used the sleeping incense that the coachmen stole from each carriage to prevent them from waking up on the way.
“Kkeuh, how did it happen?! I must have been sleeping…!”
“Are you talking about this?”
In Donard’s hand was a bundle of sleeping incense that he had placed on the coachman’s carriage.
“Did you think I wouldn’t know? Even now, I tend to go to Truss’ carriage often, so I know what the scent of sleep smells like.”
And no matter how odorless the sleeping incense was, he said that it was more strange not to be able to smell it in a closed carriage due to the burning smell. However, the fact that Pan couldn’t understand more than anything was that he was obviously protecting his own body with protective magic. But why
“No way!”
Witches had the power to cancel magic from wizards. Could it be that instead of responding to each spell one by one, was it to cancel all spells in use at once? He hurriedly looked at the place where the girl had been. But no one was there. As he looked around in bewilderment, Usher and Belka could be seen watching him from afar, along with another knight. No matter how distracted he was, it was too fast. What he remembered was an article about running.
“Shalby…!”
“Where are you selling your mind?”
“Gagging?!”
The plate fell over from the blow felt in the lower back. It seemed that his ribs had been broken. He gritted his teeth and glared at Donnar. Originally, he always protected himself with protective magic, so no matter how beaten he was, his body never hurt. So he threatened Truth to deceive people and pretended to be a patient and took off his armor and lived a life, but that turned out to be the worst choice. But now was an opportunity. Shalby was away with the boy and girl, and Donar blocked them as if to protect them.
If so, the girl couldn’t even confirm that he was using magic. You’d only get one chance to use it, but that once was enough. Because he had the confidence to subdue all the knights with that one spell. When Donard kicked him. Seeing it as an opportunity, he put up with his pain and raised his finger to draw a rune.
“Aaaaagh!”
However, an incomparable pang of pain came from the fingers that were drawing the runes, and Pan screamed. He tried to hold on to his fingers, trying to hold back the pain, but all he could feel was the eerie feeling of his fingers bent the way they shouldn’t. Upon realizing that fact, the actions he took to endure the pain conveyed the pain more vividly. In that terrible pain, he forgot that this place was a wilderness, and the fact that he realized while rolling on the dirt floor was the existence of another knight.
A knight who took a different position from Shalby, inserted a bullet into a sling made of string and leather, and swung it around. It was evident that he made his fingers this way. Odur was the only one with this terrifying accuracy, aiming and breaking as if he had been waiting to raise his finger. He was already under siege. Pan wanted to swear at them, but Donar, who approached him, knocked him out first.
Donnar thought as he tied the stunned plate tight. It was no mere coincidence that he rescued the children from Pan. Before the trial, he had visited the old man.
“Senior, is the story Shalby told you true?
The story he had heard from Shalby was something that could greatly change the outcome of the upcoming trial.
“Yes, it seems that Shalby conveyed it well.”
I was relieved by the old man’s positivity. It was because if Shalby’s words were true, the now-captured Truss was not the culprit.
“Then who is the real culprit?”
Then he questioned a fact that was still undisclosed. If Truth wasn’t the culprit, then who was the real culprit who did that to the girl? It was clear that there was no such thing at all, but what I witnessed with Sif were traces of an affair. At his question, the old man sighed.
“It’s a plate.”
“That bastard…!”
“Can’t you stop right now?!”
As soon as he heard that, the old man, who had expected Donard to rush out to grab the plate, stopped him with a scream.
“Didn’t I always tell you? You always have a problem with that quick temper!”
Knowing this, the old man scolded him for first telling Shalby not to talk about her culprit.
“But didn’t you say Pan was the culprit? Then you should catch him right now.”
“Whoa, yes. It’s not wrong. But now people believe that Truss is the culprit. If Pan is the real culprit for no reason, people’s suspicions will only grow.”
Then he tried to ask why he was blocking him, but the old man was already anticipating his thoughts and continuing.
“In the worst case, even after punishing Pan, you might think that Truss was the culprit and blamed Pan.”
“That.”
That was really the worst. Then he realized something strange.
“How did you know the culprit was Pan?”
“There was a person who witnessed the incident. He came to tell us about it.”
The old man had a bitter but proud expression.
“Come on out.”
“You?”
And he was surprised by the appearance of this person. And I could understand why the old man hadn’t recklessly used an eyewitness to put the plate on trial, even though there were eyewitnesses. Since then, they have set up a strategy to capture the plate directly on the spot. At the trial later in the evening, ostensibly, Truth would be sentenced, and Donnar, Shalby, and others would hold the plate that night. Although the unexpected happened.
“…”
A small girl with red hair that is softly reflected in a small candle lit to light the inside of the carriage, a little girl wearing a white mask who doesn’t know what she’s thinking, and a blonde boy who looks at them nervously. After Donard stunned Pan, the crowd gathered in the old man’s carriage, glancing at the children who weren’t supposed to be there. Shalby brought her children with her, as if it was a bit like holding onto the board and leaving it there. Even though there were only four people, including the elderly, they were listening to all the conversations between the children and Pan.
“Oh, so you’re a real witch?”
Donar asked, feeling awkward about not saying anything. He was waiting for the old man to open his mouth first, but he spoke first to the old man who closed his eyes and showed no sign of opening his mouth. Then the girl, who had been fixated on the candle until now, raised her head to look at him.
“I don’t care what you call me. You guys are already convinced.”
“Muff, is that so?”
It was a very unique way of speaking, but maybe it was because of the girl’s atmosphere that didn’t look like a child at all. It didn’t feel awkward or strange. Are you thinking you’re going to sell yourself out? When I thought it would be difficult to continue a conversation with a girl who rarely shows her emotions and Usher who notices them.
“Kuhm!”
The old man sighed and looked up.
“Let’s keep quiet about this.”
The children looked at him in amazement. The old man’s words were certainly surprising given his perception of witches. Since ancient times, saints have been praised, and on the contrary, witches are treated as sinister and evil, so people turn on the lights in their eyes to find witches and report them to higher authorities or threaten them and use their power. Even so, there was nothing to shy away from. Witches weren’t even allowed to feel bad about something like that. However, those gathered here did not dispute the old man’s words.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about? I’ve only seen Pan, that bastard try to attack this kid and get caught by Donnar?”
The first to speak was Odur, who had been with them at night thanks to someone else standing guard over them.
“Uhm, I went out for a walk with these guys and heard a strange sound, so I checked it out and let’s say I found out that it was like that.”
Even to Shalby, Donard had nothing to say.
“Hey, if you guys do that, then I’ll be a ignorant guy.”
“You weren’t aware at first.”
“You bastard!”
Donnar rushed at Shalby, who dissed him. Could he not be able to keep up with the sudden buzz of the situation? Usher watched them blankly.
“We’ll talk about Truss and Pan at the trial tomorrow. Then, it’s getting late, so go to sleep.”
The old man gave up and told his children to go to bed. They leave the wagon like that.
“I’m taking the kids.”
“Okay, don’t run over.”
“Don’t you think I’m a fan!?”
Donar, exchanging jokes with them, walked the other way with his children. As we were walking silently between the wagons, the Hildisbinies heard footsteps and looked up midway through, but they did not warn us. Every time I passed by, it seemed funny to me. Usher asked, following him with the girl.
“Hey… Don’t you ask anything?”
“I’m not curious.”
Donnar did not deny Usher’s words.
“Because being a witch isn’t such a good feeling.”
“Then why?”
“Aren’t you guys our benefactors before that?”
It was an incomprehensible word. Why on earth did they become their benefactor?
“We never dreamed that Pan was a wizard. Maybe if we didn’t know that fact and rushed, we would have been killed?”
It wasn’t really their fault. Because magic was a very rare thing to use. By what criteria and why? Especially since no one knows how to use magic. In addition, if you can use magic, the benefits of revealing that you are a wizard are so vast that they usually do not even try to hide it. Therefore, if a wizard hid the fact that he could use magic, no one would know that he was a wizard like Pan.
“So it’s thanks to you.”
They eventually arrived in front of the wagon.
“Have a nice dream.”
It was when Donard turned around after checking that the children were entering the carriage.
“Excuse me.”
He heard a small voice calling him from behind. When he turned around, the girl he thought he had entered was watching him at the border between the carriage and the wilderness.
“Do you have anything left to do?”
Belka’s body trembled slightly at his question. When Donard wondered if the girl had said something frightening at that tender gesture.
“I have something I want to say…”
It was a voice that I couldn’t hear unless I listened closely, but was it because it was quiet everywhere? Even the girl’s soft voice reached his ears. Then, with her little hand, the girl groped for the mask that was covering her own face, and she took it off. And Donnar could only stare blankly at Belka’s exposed face.
“Thank you.”
A plain word without any rhetoric. That’s all she was, but the girl who said that was smiling like a child receiving an unexpected gift. It was as if the golden light of the girl’s gentle smile and kindness, shining in her moonlight, was engraved in Donar’s mind. A shock came as if a fist had hit her heart. The sight was an illusion, she said. The girl who had put on her mask again, as if in her shame, turned hastily and shut the door of her carriage. He watched blankly, not even thinking of grabbing her girl.
‘Up, it was dangerous.’
If he hadn’t had someone he cared about, he might have fallen in love with a young girl who was not worth his age. On the way to his wagon, that smile never faded, and he almost bumped into the wagon a few times and received strange stares from the Hildisbinies, but he didn’t care because they were animals anyway. Then Donnar remembered the witch again. She said that being a witch was an ominous and despised existence even in their hometown. It was even one of the many, many duties of the knights to be ordered to capture it unconditionally if the existence was discovered.
Even so, he had no intention of selling the girl to the higher ups. They were no longer citizens of Pasifenia, they were no longer knights. Also, for that reason, the irrationality and oppression they suffered had a strong affinity for those called witches. Above all, the person he had in mind was also a witch after all. There’s no way she could be sold just because she’s a witch. He just did what he took for granted. Even the provisions protecting women in their homeland were merciless to witches. It was truly unreasonable and selfish.
But this is probably the same story wherever you go. The thoughts and orders of the higher up were the justice and everything they followed. A long time ago, I didn’t even think it was wrong. At that time, he was just a machine that carried out the orders of the higher up. His own thoughts and judgments were just luxury. That’s what being a knight in Paciphenia meant. However, no matter how much he considers himself a machine, he is ultimately human, so he has a limit. He had realized
Rather, if he hadn’t known about it, he wouldn’t have bothered. And what he came for was not pride in his work, but a terrible sense of skepticism about his life. What remained in his memory the most was not the honor that could not be shown, but only the words of resentment and curses from people in a similar situation. The girl’s shy thanks became more special to him. I liked the sense of pride that emanated from the depths of my heart, not just the empty, obligatory correctness and congratulations from high-ranking people.
“Would he feel this way too?”
He remembered the benefactor left behind in his hometown.
“Donard, why do you think winning a war is all it takes?”
That day, as always, was the day when blood was washed away with blood.
“Isn’t everything obtained only by winning the war?”
Conversely, if you lose the war, you will lose everything.
“You’re not wrong. But…”
Then he collapsed and sat down in front of the corpse of the knight. It was the corpse of an enemy.
“Bleeding alone isn’t the answer. We shouldn’t be asking how much more blood we make someone bleed, it’s about how much less blood we can bleed.”
He touched the helmet of the coldly cold man.
“Think about it. We’re definitely fighting to bring down the humans from above. But who are the people we’ve been fighting bone and flesh so far?”
The enemy was wearing the same armor as us. So he must have decided to build this guild. He had so many graces from him that it is difficult to remember them one by one, but he remembered his determination to live his life so that his sacrifice would not be in vain.
