Chapter 100: Running Away
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 100: Running Away
“Yohan─ Do this for me～.”
“Ah, yes. Just a moment.”
“Disciple～ Can you bring this to me?”
“…Can’t you do that yourself?”
“…Yohan, I want pancakes.”
“Can you wait just a little?”
“Hey—Bug. Make fried chicken for dinner tonight.”
“Am I your maid?”
“Um… are we not doing anything again today?”
“Don’t. Don’t do anything.”
Attending to the seven witches, Yohan let out a deep sigh and wondered how he had ended up in this situation.
He wasn’t Snow White with her seven dwarfs; trying to look after seven witches all by himself was an unbelievable ordeal.
As he made pancakes while simultaneously starting to marinate the chicken for dinner, Yohan realized he didn’t have to put up with this.
He abruptly dropped everything and went straight to find Evangeline.
“Teacher!”
“Oh, uh—yes. What is it?”
“I’d like to request a vacation.”
“…A va-vacation?”
Yohan boldly demanded a vacation.
The first isekai labor union had just been born.
Evangeline had little experience with society. As a witch who had always been despised by humans, it was only natural that she couldn’t participate in it.
On 21st-century Earth, someone hated by others might have holed up on the internet and become a keyboard warrior, but a medieval fantasy witch built a cabin in the woods and shut herself away, shunning the rest of the world.
So, it was perhaps understandable that she didn’t immediately grasp the meaning of the “vacation” Yohan was requesting.
“O-Okay! Of course! As much as you want!”
Saying this was also her way of expressing that she would give Yohan anything, whether it was a vast fortune or the rarest jewel in the world.
It was absolutely, definitely not said with the hope that Yohan would go far away from her.
“Thank you. I’ll just take a short break then. Please don’t look for me, okay?”
“Huh? Wha-what?”
With those words, Yohan pulled a Teleportation Scroll from his clothes—an item he had received from Margaret and was still frugally using without having returned it.
In the next moment, Yohan’s form vanished. Evangeline stared at the spot where he had completely disappeared and tilted her head in confusion.
“Y-Yohan? You’re joking, right? Where… where did you….”
She spoke while fumbling at the air where he had stood. Only the lingering scent of his body and the residue of his magic power remained; Yohan himself was nowhere to be seen.
After fumbling at the empty air for a moment, Evangeline rushed out of her room to find Margaret, who was relaxing in the living room.
“Ri-Ritz─! It’s an emergency! Riiitz—!”
“Wha-what!? What’s wrong!?”
Margaret, who had been relaxing comfortably on the sofa in nothing but a negligee, shot up in surprise at the sudden call and looked around.
Her breasts bouncing as she stood, Margaret spotted Evangeline, who was trembling and on the verge of tears, and went over to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Yohan, Yohan— Yohan….”
“Disciple? What about Disciple?”
“He-he’s gone… He left me… he abandoned me and disappeared….”
Flustered by the news that Disciple had disappeared, Margaret remembered the item she had given him and immediately entered Evangeline’s room.
As it was the room she usually stayed in, Evangeline’s scent and magic power lingered thickly in the air. But amidst it all, there was a single, foreign trace of magic that seemed to have just appeared.
Tracking that magic power, Margaret frowned slightly.
“…This… I can’t follow it.”
Normally, if someone left such a blatant trail of magic power, she could have pursued them. In her case, as the Witch of Space, she could have teleported directly to their location.
However, this magical trace, which seemed to have been left by Yohan, was impossible to track, no matter what method she tried. She searched for other magical traces, wondering if perhaps Yohan hadn’t left it, but she couldn’t find anything besides Evangeline’s.
Hearing that she couldn’t find where Yohan had gone, Evangeline collapsed to the floor and looked up at Margaret from her feet.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“It’s just my guess… but I think Yohan erased it.”
“Yohan… erased it?”
Looking into Evangeline’s trembling eyes, Margaret explained her theory.
“His magic is nullification… so he must have cast a nullification spell on the trail to hide its destination. It cuts off the tracking partway through.”
“Th-then what do we do!?”
“What do you mean, ‘what do we do’? We can’t find him.”
Margaret was nonchalant. Teenage boys are all like that, she thought. He'll come back on his own after a day or two.
Margaret’s opinion changed that evening, when a lone bottle filled with semen teleported into the cabin.
“That’ll be one thousand Eril.”
“That’s fucking expensive.”
“It just means the clothes are of that high quality.”
The clothes shop owner smiled, urging me to pay. My expression stiffened slightly as I handed her the bills. It was the Empire’s common currency, Eril.
It was what was left over from what I’d received from Makina, the witch from the Empire. I never imagined I’d be using it like this.
As I spent it, I realized just what an absurd amount of money that witch had given me.
‘I mean… a custom suit is a thousand Eril, so just how much did she give me?’
I recalled the bundle of bills I’d received from Makina. Ten bundles of one hundred 1,000-Eril bills, each worth more than a silver coin.
Considering that ten silver coins are equal to one gold coin, this had a value similar to one hundred gold coins.
Given that a single gold coin could cover a month’s living expenses for a family of four, it was enough money to last half a lifetime if I was frugal.
‘If I get robbed, it’ll be a total disaster.’
Tucking the bills into the inner pocket of my suit, I vowed never to let them be stolen. Then I wandered the streets, looking for something to do.
There wasn’t much to do in this city, which felt like it was from around the 19th century. There were no computers, no arcades. There was something like a newspaper, but it didn’t have any comics.
There was little entertainment. That fact depressed me. But I didn’t despair or get frustrated. I found an answer right away.
What of it? Humans are creatures who built things like the Colosseum for entertainment even before the common era. Culture is a blessing for the soul; I figured there was no way it wouldn’t exist, even in an isekai.
And indeed, there was a form of entertainment that one could likely only enjoy in another world.
“Looking for something fun? Then hunting is the best!”
“…Hunting?”
“Yes. Hunting with a gun! In the past, it was a sport only nobles could enjoy, but not anymore. Now, anyone can do it as long as they have the money! …Speaking of which, do you have some money on you, sir?”
I took the wad of bills from my pocket and showed it to him. He replied that it was more than enough, that it was overflowing. He said with that much money, I could probably find someone willing to be shot at, let alone just go hunting.
He was such a smooth talker that before I knew it, I was already riding in a carriage he was leading. It looked like a total rip-off, and if I was unlucky, maybe even a front for human trafficking… but I wasn’t too concerned.
‘Well, it should be fine….’
I was confident I could dodge even if they shot at me. With that thought, I quietly passed the time watching the scenery.
Fortunately, while the price was a rip-off, it wasn’t a scam. It wasn’t my money anyway. Feeling like a member of the bourgeoisie, I hunted the beasts the staff here released.
To be honest, it was fucking fun.
-
Looking down at the single glass bottle filled with semen, the witches began their meeting.
“What… is this?”
“…It just appeared.”
“It’s space magic. Sending an object to a desired location.”
And space magic was solely Margaret’s. There were only two people in this world who could use space magic. One was Margaret, and the other was Yohan, who had taken the scroll imbued with her magic.
Having deduced that the bottle of semen was from Yohan, that it was fresh judging by the vitality they could feel from it, and that this meant he had no intention of returning anytime soon, the witches put their heads together to devise a way to find him.
“Hey, didn’t you say he’d come back on his own if we just left him alone? Do we really have to go find him?”
“You shut up, Hekaterina.”
“Isn’t it because of your shitty attitude that he ran away? If I were him, I’d bolt—”
“I told you to shut up. You god-damn-bitch!”
As Evangeline grabbed Hekaterina by the collar and slammed her against the wall, Hekaterina choked but still glared back at her.
“Go on and try, khk—.”
“That mouth of yours, if you make even a peep, I’ll smash it to—”
“Peep.”
“…You damn bitch.”
As Evangeline tightened her grip, the other five witches immediately started to hold her back.
Even the strongest witch couldn’t fight and win against six others at once, so Evangeline obediently backed down and slumped into a chair.
“Yohan, hic— Teacher was wrong. I was wrong, so please come back now….”
Ignoring Evangeline, who was crying nonstop as if she’d gone mad, the other witches looked at the bottle of semen with expressions that weren’t particularly serious.
“Can’t you reverse-track this one either?”
“Nope. It’s blocked.”
“Hmm… where could he be….”
“U-ummm—.”
Just then, Linne, who had been sitting quietly, slowly raised her hand. The moment all eyes focused on her, Linne flinched with a small “Eek!” and quietly tapped her chest a couple of times.
“I can… do….”
“What? What are you saying? Speak properly.”
“She says she can find him. Yohan.”
“—What!? You can find him!?”
Linna finished Linne’s sentence, and the other witches, finally understanding what she was trying to say, all stood up at once to look at Linne.
Even the weeping Evangeline stood and rushed over to her as Linne carefully began to speak.
“W-when we came here….”
“When we came here, Yohan made a machine to track that guy. We can find him.”
“Then hurry up and make it—!”
As Evangeline shrieked, Linna just shrugged. Belatedly realizing that the twins’ magic was sealed, Evangeline ran to her room and brought back the antidote.
After gulping down the antidote and regaining her magic, Linne created the machine they had used to find Yohan before.
Beep— Beep—
“…What is this?”
“A tracker. It was hard to find him since it only shows the direction, but well….”
“How are we supposed to find Yohan with a thing like this—!”
“That’s why it took us several months.”
“S-several months!? How can we wait that long!”
As the others fell into despair despite having found the tracker, Beatrice, who had been silently toying with the glass bottle, called out to them.
“…We can find him.”
“Huh? What?”
“This.”
Beatrice said, holding out the glass bottle. The glass bottle itself was a rare item, but more importantly, its surface was incredibly smooth.
And there was only one place in this world that could produce such a glass bottle.
“A manufactured product of the Empire….”
Only the Empire.
Yohan is there.
Having figured that out, the witches immediately set off for the Empire.