Ep.5 - Infiltrating Laptel (2)
Ep.5 - Infiltrating Laptel (2)
If it were up to me, I wanted to just shout, "Can we please skip deciding all this and just hurry to God's Garden already?", but,
having fallen into this other world alone with no abilities whatsoever, if I couldn't manage to mediate properly among these women, it would only end in catastrophe.
"What do I do...?"
Delin agonized, very very carefully, for a split second.
If he started playing politics now, trying to protect his pride or whatever after coming this far, wouldn't things just go to shit beyond all hope?
These were women whom even Save&Load followed around, and all of them were already drooling, having tasted his body...
"Uh... um..."
If he said something here like "I just want to travel quietly!" or "I don't like either option!", he wouldn't be able to handle the aftermath.
But if he agreed with the archbishop, it felt like he'd incur the wrath of the other four women...
"That's... I mean, so..."
A dilemma.
How the hell was he supposed to get out of this predicament...!
While he was agonizing over it,
Helen opened her mouth first and ended the situation.
"I must apologize. I had no idea you'd all refuse so strongly. Would you please accept my apology?"
Huh?
Wait, she's ending it like this?
"Eh...??"
"It seems I've been far too meddlesome. I shall sit quietly and wait until you all resolve your dispute."
At the incredibly anticlimactic conclusion of the proposal, Delin stared blankly at Helen, dumbfounded. She was smiling again, enjoying her cigar, wasn't she.
She'd spoken as if she'd solve everything herself, but the archbishop who apologized and tucked tail only brought the fight right back to square one,
and over the still-unresolved issue of [Philmark's payment], the women started bickering again.
Like that, for over ten minutes...
Son of a bitch, you bastard — high-intensity verbal abuse flew back and forth without end,
and finally, only when Delin wept bitterly, knelt down, and groveled before the women, begging "please stop fighting and let's just go quickly", were they able to pause the fight for a moment.
"Hic, sniff... let's just hurry up and gooo...!"
Of course, even though the fight stopped,
Chichi and Philmark simply stood their ground with arms crossed like five-year-olds who refuse to listen.
From their perspective, they had absolutely no intention of helping Neva, who was practically a complete stranger. Now even Chichi had joined the strike to solidify her own position!
"Please, I'm begging you...! I'll kneel like this, so please..."
Neva and Delin clung to their legs and pleaded, but all that returned to them was a cold reaction...
"Fuck off."
"I'll refuse as well. I don't live my life taking losses."
Neva grew increasingly anxious, on the verge of tears.
As long as the queen remembered Neva's face, if they didn't bring her along by joining the party...
she would certainly meet a very ugly fate.
Of course, she wasn't the only one growing impatient in the ever-lengthening squabble.
From Delin's perspective,
if they didn't resolve this and leave as soon as possible, the queen's fierce pursuit would catch up to them,
and with that pursuit looming, there was no time for this kind of fighting!
And so, to break through this hardship and adversity, he played his trump card.
"A-alright...! Then we can just do this, right? Since you two are going to the trouble, I'll grant each of you one thing when we get back...!"
Only then did Philmark and Chichi sit up straight, as if they were finally being spoken to in a language they understood, and faced Delin.
"Anything?"
The thief asked, gazing at him deeply with one eye. Irrepressible excitement seeped from the corners of her mouth.
"A-anything... yes... I'll do anything, so let's just go now... hic..."
Delin realized it then.
The thief and the witch had been holding out as a thoroughly calculated move to gain the upper hand in negotiations,
and what they wanted was solely him.
"H-Husband! What kind of nonsense is that!"
Kaede hastily jumped into the conversation and tried to stop Delin,
but with no more leeway, Delin ignored the wolf's words instead and swore to Philmark and Chichi right then and there.
That when this was over and they returned,
he would grant them one wish each.
---------------------------------------
A short while later,
in front of Raftel's main gate...
"Huff..."
Chichi cooled her burning face for a moment, squeezed her eyes shut, and screamed with all her might in front of the magically enforced iron bars.
"E-Elders! Please open the gate. Please...!"
It was an excruciatingly awkward performance, but she was doing her best in her own way.
With one hand gripping Delin tightly, and the other shaking the firmly locked gate with all her strength!
And in that state, she kept causing a commotion!
"I have nowhere else to live except Raftel, you know? Please..."
The commotion she caused began to stir the interior of Raftel. Witches gathered one by one on the other side.
Among the witches who gathered, one old woman, quite advanced in years, opened her mouth and spoke on behalf of Raftel.
"Chichi, there will be no reversal. You have been expelled. Leave with that boy and live quietly."
"Elder-nim, please no...! Please, please just give me one more chance. I merely saw a new path. I merely saw talent in this child!"
Another young witch cut into the conversation. She denounced Chichi in a sneering voice.
"Not only did you arbitrarily use the boy you brought in as teaching material for your own private use, you forced disgusting acts upon students, and constantly committed sexual harassment, and yet you have the nerve to crawl back here!"
The witches who had always regarded Chichi as a thorn in their side snickered and savored Chichi's reaction. Since they had already pinned all sorts of charges on Chichi and turned her into garbage, not a single witch was willing to listen to the words of this disgusting sinner.
"Haah..."
Chichi hung her head low and gritted her teeth fiercely, swallowing her rage. At that angle, hidden from the witches and visible only to Delin, she desperately suppressed the emotions boiling up inside her.
This was all for Delin. Because Delin had promised to grant her wish if she finished this well.
"...Please just let me in. I have no confidence that I can survive outside of Raftel."
Her acting had become even more awkward, now taking on a rather mechanical tone, but the witches were too busy enjoying this delightful [ugly struggle of a dropout] to notice the dissonance.
They simply jeered and chattered, pointedly cursing just loud enough for Chichi to hear.
"Pfft! Can't she just live with the cock she loves so much? I heard, you know, that she got pinned under a man and whimpered all day long~"
"I heard that too! She kept throwing tantrums saying homosexuality is incomplete or whatever, but turns out she was just a lowly bitch who can't live without cock after all, pfft~"
In this witch society that actively encouraged homosexuality and considered men inferior beings, the criticism and mockery toward Chichi continued without pause.
"That bitch though, I knew she'd turn out like that from the very first time I saw her! Ohohot! Great witch my ass, you know those papers and new spells she made? Rumor is she secretly stole them from other people's research!"
"I knew it! What great witch could a thing like her possibly be?"
A dark shadow fell over Chichi's face.
The women's jealousy and envy, things she had brushed off as trivial until now—
but having gradually awakened to human emotions after meeting Delin, she now felt an almost unbearable level of [humiliation].
However...
The warm heat of Delin's hand, squeezing hers tightly and telling her to hold on just a little longer, calmed her immature feelings.
"..."
Feeling Delin's worry and concern transmitted through his hand, Chichi pulled herself together again and resumed causing the commotion.
Making an even louder commotion so that the witches' attention wouldn't be drawn inside Raftel!
"Please open up, please! I'll beg like this...!"
Chichi knelt before the main gate.
She, who had spent her entire life receiving the envy, admiration, jealousy, and spite of everyone,
had thrown away all of her past for love with a man—and ended up on her very knees.
"Kyahahaat! Look at the state of that bitch!"
Just as Chichi intended, more witches gathered.
Now even the students she had once taught gathered, sending looks of contempt sharp enough to sting.
"Eww, disgusting."
"So utterly pathetic."
Chichi endured on her knees like that for a long while...
until she received a signal through the communication magic connected to Philmark.
Philmark's voice rang inside her head.
[It's done, so slip out quietly to the back.]
"..."
Having received the signal, Chichi slowly rose to her feet.
Her eyes swept over the witches who had gathered near the main gate and were pelting her with condemnation...
then turned to Delin, who had crept quietly to her side and was holding her hand.
"Yeah. Let's go back. Now."
With a faintly sorrowful smile that looked somewhere between empty and wistful,
Chichi seated Delin on the broom again.
Behind her, the witches' mockery still carried on without end,
but now, those words no longer mattered to Chichi.
The great witch said to single-handedly propel the witch society forward left Raftel completely, just like that.
Not only in body,
she also left behind the small, lingering attachment she had kept, quietly buried among the condemnation and insults of her colleagues.
Even as she felt her own weakened mental state,
the warmth of that small hand filling the weakened corners,
she left Raftel completely like that.
Two brooms and four humans flew beneath the sorrowful moonlit night.
The chilly night air, blending with the blue moonlight, seeped into the witch's heart as it always did.
Witches who cleave through the sky beneath the moon are accustomed to the cold.
But, unlike usual, Chichi could not easily endure the chill that soaked into her chest.
"You did well. Thank you..."
However, she didn't need to cast a separate spell to warm her cold body.
Because the one little man nestled in her embrace,
giving warmth warmer than any of the hundreds of spells she had ever created,
was the great witch's... most precious magic.