A long, large wooden dining table that looked spacious enough to seat a dozen or more people.
On one side sat four people, including Cassian, and on the other sat the witch they had been fighting only moments ago.
Their battle had been forcibly stopped by a boy who had come running in midway, and then they had been brought into the house under the guidance of a girl who had followed him out.
They had taken their seats as instructed, but neither side opened their mouths, and silence continued to stretch on.
A brown-haired girl who looked about fourteen came in carrying a tray with five teacups and a small teapot.
With soft clinks, she placed a teacup in front of each of them, then poured a faintly bluish tea from the teapot.
“……Please drink.”
When Cassian looked down at his teacup, steam was rising gently from the warmed tea.
What was unusual was its color.
It seemed like a tea brewed from flowers, yet the deep blue hue was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
“It isn’t poison, is it?”
Draut said, lifting the teacup slightly and staring at it.
At that, the witch, who had remained silent until then, glared fiercely at Draut and said,
“If I was going to k-kill you like this, I would’ve killed you earlier…….”
There should not have been any mana in it, and yet Draut flinched under the witch’s gaze.
Just then, the girl holding the tray walked up behind the witch, placed a hand firmly on her shoulder, and spoke softly with a smile.
“Um, Lady Edel? Please keep it moderate, all right? Sven is crying right now.”
“U-uh-huh…….”
“Then I’ll be going.”
The girl lowered her head slightly, then this time turned toward Cassian’s side.
“I hope our guests will also rest comfortably before you leave.”
After the girl quietly left, silence settled over them again, just as before.
In a situation where no one said even a single word, only the occasional sound of sipping tea could be heard.
Draut and Heiken did not touch theirs; the sounds came alternately from Cassian, Illiana, and the witch named Edel.
When the tea in front of Cassian had dwindled by about half, Edel, who had been fidgeting for a while, finally broke the silence.
“Y-you people……. What exactly are you? Is it really another Great Subjugation……?”
Heiken and Draut looked at each other as if asking whether the other knew anything, then shrugged to show they did not.
“What is the Great Subjugation?”
“You know, that priest. The one lying in the room over there…….”
Bella had lost consciousness while healing Heiken’s wounds, so she was currently lying on a bed in the witch’s house.
According to Draut, when she collapsed after using up all her strength like this, she would remain down for about half a day.
“……I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I-if not, then that’s good…….”
Edel let out a sigh with a slightly relieved expression, then narrowed her eyes somewhat frighteningly again and said,
“Th-then if it isn’t that, why exactly did you come h-here? No, b-before that. How on earth……?”
Though she was trying to look frightening, her voice was trembling from the start, so Cassian did not find her frightening in the slightest.
Perhaps it was because he could not help comparing her to his master when she was putting him through the wringer as much as she pleased.
“If you mean the barrier, I broke it.”
“Wh-what……? N-no way. You’re lying, right……?”
Edel’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Cassian with a deeply flustered gaze.
“H-how old are you……? How……?”
“That isn’t what matters right now.”
Just as Cassian was about to speak, Heiken cut in and interrupted.
“From what I hear, the ten straight years of bountiful harvests in this area seem to be your doing.”
“A-and so……?”
“Because of that, a public request was issued from the Guild headquarters.”
“Huh……?”
Heiken paused briefly, then spoke again.
“Since it was not a natural phenomenon, and judging by the pattern, they could not rule out the work of the ‘Witch of Bountiful Harvests’ who was active some hundred and fifty years ago, so we were told to investigate.”
At the words Witch of Bountiful Harvests, Edel seemed startled and drew in a small breath.
“H-how, how, how do you know that name?”
“Is it you?”
Edel could not properly answer Heiken’s question. She avoided his gaze, a line of cold sweat trickling down her face.
Cassian lightly touched Draut’s hand and asked,
“The Witch of Bountiful Harvests?”
“Ah, she’s not famous, so you might not know. The Witch of Bountiful Harvests was a witch who was active in regions farther south than here about a hundred and fifty years ago.”
Draut glanced at Edel, then continued explaining.
“To put it simply, they say she went around causing bountiful harvests here and there, stirred up people’s greed, and then vanished without a trace when war broke out.”
At those words, Edel slammed both hands down on the dining table and rose from her seat, crying out as if wronged.
“Wh-what, wh-what did I even do wrong!!”
The table shook, causing the teacup in front of her to topple and spill the little tea left inside, but Edel paid it no mind and poured out words like a waterfall.
“They said they were h-hungry, so I helped them, and then when I helped this place, o-over there asked me to help too. S-so I helped them, but the ones who fought as they pleased were the s-stupid humans……. And yet people said I was w-wrong and tried to kill me…….”
Edel’s voice gradually trailed off, and she sat back down in her chair, muttering quietly.
“I thought they would have f-forgotten by now…….”
When Edel finished speaking, the room fell silent for a short while.
Then Heiken broke the stillness once more.
“How absurd. To take offerings and still have the nerve to say you did nothing wrong.”
“Wh-what are you talking about……? Offerings?”
“Don’t play dumb. I heard you told the village to offer you one child every three years.”
“Wh-when did I ever……!!”
If one judged by her expression alone, she truly did look wronged, but this was something Cassian had heard for himself just earlier.
“Then what are those children?”
“Wh-what do you mean? They’re vagrants, or children who lost their parents…….”
“Lost their parents? We just met a mother not long ago who was weeping because her child had been taken by the witch. It was thanks to her that we learned there really was a witch.”
“W-wait. What are you talking about……?”
At Heiken’s words, Edel rapidly looked back and forth at Cassian and the others, as if she had truly heard something she had never heard before.
If that was not an act, then it was hard to imagine anyone being more flustered than this.
“I-I definitely said that if there were children without parents, I could take them in……?”
“What?”
“L-look. I-if I had done that, there’s no way the children would follow me so well.”
“……That’s not something we can know.”
Cassian also thought it was true that they could not know for certain. How could they tell whether the children were acting that way because they were forced?
However, more than that, Cassian did not think Edel was lying.
The girl just now, and the boy named Sven.
The way those two treated Edel did not seem like the attitude of people who had been dragged here by force.
It was not a master-servant relationship either. Rather, when he thought of the way the girl had treated Edel just now,
it felt almost as if they were even closer than Cassian and his own master.
Perhaps because of that, Heiken’s voice as he spoke also lacked conviction and carried almost no force.
Just then, along with the sound of footsteps, he saw three people approaching from the corridor on the opposite side at the edge of his vision.
When he turned his gaze that way, the ones who appeared were the girl from earlier, the boy holding her hand, Sven, and Bella.
Bella was not wearing the priest’s robe she had been wearing earlier, but ordinary clothes that looked slightly ill-fitting, perhaps because they were borrowed.
“Bella!”
“Are you all right?”
Draut and Heiken reacted first, rising from their chairs and going over to Bella.
“Yes. I’m perfectly fine.”
“But it hasn’t been that long yet…….”
At this, the girl who had come along beside her answered.
“Among the medicines Lady Edel makes, there is one that rapidly restores mana. We used that.”
At that, Edel rose from her seat again and spoke to the girl.
“L-Lea? Don’t tell me, the one made from Azure Sky Grass…….”
“Yes. That one.”
“A-ahh……!! Th-that, you used t-that……? Really?”
The girl called Lea smiled brightly in response to Edel’s questioning and answered,
“It’s fine, isn’t it?”
Unable to look that smile straight in the face, Edel quietly shifted her eyes to the side.
“U-uh-huh…….”
She answered reluctantly.
◇
After they shared, for a short while, their joy over Bella’s recovery—though she had in fact been safe from the beginning—
the conversation returned to its original topic.
“……So you really didn’t know?”
“Mm-mm……. I-I really didn’t know. I-if I had known, I wouldn’t have brought him here…….”
Edel spoke while stroking the head of Sven, who sat in the chair right beside her.
For some reason, Sven’s eyes looked somewhat anxious.
However, it did not seem to be because Edel was stroking his head.
“And that three years…… too, probably came up when I said I couldn’t take in many, but that I could take in one about once every three years…….”
At this, Bella thought for a moment before opening her mouth.
“Lady Edel, you are also an extremely powerful mage, aren’t you? So perhaps the villagers thought you were indirectly telling them to offer a child once every three years.”
Hearing those words, Edel looked at Bella with a shocked expression, as if the thought had never occurred to her.
“And that is why a child ended up separated from his mother. They must have thought the abundance would continue only if they offered a child.”
“Th-then…….”
“Yes. Judging by his age, that child is probably her child.”
“B-but Sven didn’t say anything…….”
Edel looked down at Sven with trembling hands and stroked his head again and again.
Her gaze was like that of a mother looking at a child she would never see again.
Then, after swallowing hard, she seemed to make up her mind and changed her expression as she said,
“……Th-then. Since I know now, even now I should send him ba……”
At that moment, Sven, who had been listening anxiously all this time, grabbed Edel’s arm with both hands and cried out as if pleading.
“No!! You can’t!! That’s not it!! I won’t go back!!”
“S-Sven?”
“That weird lady hits me every single day!!”