Chapter 110: Points
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 110: Points
BAM—!
Seeing Evangeline suddenly kick the door open, Yohan tilted his head and walked over to her.
"What's wrong, Teacher?"
"Agh—so annoying, so annoying!"
"What is it this time?"
"Here, read this!"
Yohan took the letter thrust before him and began to read its contents. It was a letter from the Emperor of the Empire, and its message was utterly absurd.
A threat… Since Evangeline had fought and killed the Empire's witch, if they didn't take responsibility and protect the Empire, then everyone would just die together.
If they had received such a request back when they were living in hiding at the cabin, she would have ignored it, saying it wasn't her problem. In fact, his teacher might have even taken the initiative to destroy the Empire herself—but not now.
Of all the times...
The timing was perfect. Now, when they had melted into the kindness and service of humans who catered to them for money, spending their days like lazy freeloaders.
Sending such a letter at a time when the witches had, one by one, succumbed to this convenience meant they had no choice but to comply, whether they liked it or not.
"I don't want to... I hate it..."
"If you don't want to... I guess we have no choice. Should we just let the Empire burn?"
"We can't do that... Of course, it's not that I dislike you taking care of me, Yohan, but it's hard on you..."
Evangeline said, looking at Yohan. As she said, he wasn't a professional; there was no way he could provide hotel-level service to seven witches all by himself.
In fact, the witches were even happier about this, because after delegating other chores to different humans, the time they could spend alone with Yohan had increased.
"Maybe we should just protect this hotel and let everything else go..."
"I don't think that will work. A facility like this can't be maintained on its own."
To put it simply, the food and drinks we consume, the various perfumed oils we use every day, the hot bathwater—all of it is produced outside the hotel and brought in.
It wasn't a matter of just the hotel surviving. They had to protect this entire city, and even if they only protected the city, its resources would eventually dry up, and all the conveniences the hotel provided would vanish with them...
After hearing the explanation, Evangeline let out a heavy sigh.
"It's such a hassle... And I don't want to be away from you, Yohan..."
"I don't want to be away from you either, Teacher."
"Mmm...! Ah, no. It would be dangerous to take you all the way to the Northern Defense Line."
Seeing that Evangeline had considered taking him to the Northern Defense Line, Yohan asked about a phrase from the letter as if he had just remembered it.
"That's right. Teacher, it says here that you killed that witch. Did you really kill her?"
"I don't know... I don't remember. Who cares if a witch like that lives or dies?"
Hearing his teacher's words, Yohan realized that Evangeline might not have killed Azmona. But whether she had killed the witch or not, he understood that one of the Empire's witches had undoubtedly disappeared.
And since it wasn't wrong to say Evangeline was the reason, he thought it was only natural that the duties Azmona had borne were now being passed on to her.
"...Well, it is a hassle."
"Right? Right?"
"However, since I'm also part of the reason things turned out this way, I can't be free from responsibility either."
"It's not your fault at all, Yohan!"
"I'm not talking about who's to blame. It's a matter of conscience."
A grin spreading across his face, Yohan thought about the part he could take responsibility for.
Fighting monsters? If it were like near the cabin, where one or two monsters appeared separately, maybe. But he wasn't strong enough to fight in a place where monsters appeared in such numbers that the Empire needed a witch's power.
In a place like that, the Empire's soldiers with their guns would be more helpful than him. A hunter swinging a polearm was bound to be left behind by the times.
So, what could he do? He could boost the witches' motivation.
"First... Ms. Margaret, do you know where the Northern Defense Line is?"
"I do. I glimpsed it once while traveling. It was swarming with monsters, so I left immediately."
"Then transportation is solved. And since that's also imperial territory, we should be able to make a phone call from there to here, right?"
"Probably? And if not, we can just lay down a phone line."
By this point, the other witches seemed to have caught on to what Yohan was planning. Feeling their gazes on him, Yohan opened his mouth.
"Starting today, I am implementing the Yohan Reward System."
"The Yohan Reward System...?"
"What's that?"
"From now on, you will receive 1 point for every deployment to the Northern Defense Line."
And—.
"If you want to be with me, you will need 1 point from now on."
The witches' eyes flashed open.
For better or for worse, his words were like a bolt from the blue.
They shot to their feet as if their bodies were burning up.
Yohan watched them and grinned. It seemed things were going just as he'd planned.
The Northern Defense Line, located in the northernmost part of the territory owned by the Empire.
Atop the great wall built there, soldiers shivered in the cold, their gun barrels pointed out over the ramparts.
Monster activity lessened in the winter compared to the summer, but it didn't stop entirely. The resilience of the monsters was much the same, be it summer or winter.
In fact, monsters that woke up in winter only to find no food became even more ferocious, often descending into the imperial territories where humans lived.
Powerful monsters that couldn't be stopped by mere firearms. A witch was essential to deal with such creatures, so the imperial soldiers always maintained a strict watch.
"Hooo... It's cold."
"Yes, sir."
"Hey, I'm gonna go get some coffee. You keep a sharp lookout."
"Understood."
At his senior's words, the new recruit pressed his eye closer to the mounted gun and focused on his watch. The moment the senior soldier left his post, a blizzard began to rage in the distance.
A blizzard that obscured his vision. He quickly put on his goggles to avoid being completely blinded, but there was nothing he could do about the worsening visibility.
Just as he swallowed hard and stared intently beyond the blizzard—the sun high in the sky seemed to swallow the storm whole, and his vision cleared.
The plain, which had been clean without a single monster, was now filled with hundreds of them.
"C-Corporal!!"
Startled, the new recruit's hands trembled as he desperately called for his senior. But his senior had been gone for a while, getting coffee.
Facing this crisis, the recruit felt his mind go blank. Uncontrollable fear seized him, and just as he was trembling, unsure of what to do—salvation descended.
"Is this the place?"
"Oh, and there are monsters here, too. Perfect timing."
Seven beautiful women appeared in the sky with a pop. The moment he saw their inhuman beauty, the recruit realized they were witches.
Wasn't the commander of his battalion a witch, too? The moment he saw the witches, his tension completely melted away, and he realized what he had to do.
"E-Emergency—! Emergency, emergency!"
WEEEEEE—!
Sounding the siren for a monster appearance, the recruit aimed his gun at the creatures and began to fire.
Bang— Ba-bang—!
With the siren and gunshots as their background music, the witches each used their own magic to target the monsters.
Watching the monsters fight each other, get sliced in half in an instant, get tied up by something and fall, or simply vanish into thin air—the soldier felt like he was in the middle of a legendary battle.
He even started to think that after the fight was over, he might hit it off with one of those witches and something good might come of it—.
"What the! Fuck, why'd you ring the alarm!"
"Ah, m-monsters, sir!"
"Monsters!? Dammit, I told you to keep a sharp lookout!"
Apologizing to his shouting senior, the recruit kept firing his gun. Above their heads, dozens of spells exploded, clearing out the monsters.
Watching the monsters, normally terrifying creatures, get blown to bits by magic, the soldiers began to feel sorry for them for the first time.
As the witches used more magic to clean up the corpses of the monsters they had just dispatched, the soldiers approached and saluted them.
"Sir. Thank you for your help. I am Major Ankei, company commander of the 2nd Battalion, Northern Defense Line."
"Yeah. Got it."
"...If I may ask, what is your affiliation?"
"You don't need to know. More importantly—is there a phone here?"
"Huh? A phone... Yes, of course."
The officer said, ordering his soldiers to attend to the witches. In a place where, aside from the battalion commander, you couldn't even see the shadow of a woman, the witches' popularity was beyond imagination.
And so, attended to by numerous soldiers, Evangeline was handed a phone and immediately called the hotel.
"Ah, Yohan? Can you hear my voice?"
[Yes, Teacher. I can hear you clearly.]
"Hehe, really? Looks like the phone works well. Then I'll leave one here before we go."
As the soldiers grew disappointed at the sound of a man's voice on the other end of the line, Evangeline looked at Beatrice.
Receiving the glance, Beatrice took a doll from her clothes, turned it into a person, and had it stand by for calls.
"Stay here... and call if anything happens."
"Yes."
And with that, the witches vanished.
Leaving behind one person who had become an elf.