Chapter 240: The Tin Knight and the Conclusion in the North
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 240: The Tin Knight and the Conclusion in the North
The war was over.
With the death of Lotbart, the Tower Head of Control, the shutdown of the Tower itself, and the final demise of Mombi, who could have been their trump card, the forces of Control had no chance of victory left.
Managing those who surrendered, collecting the remains of the dead, healing the wounded, informing the various forces still in standoffs in other regions, and coordinating with other factions who were cautiously watching…
As the scale of the battle had been immense, the cleanup alone consumed a considerable amount of time and effort.
Normally, the Tin Knight's party would have left such tedious work to the locals and quietly moved on to their next destination, but this time, they couldn't.
There were several matters the party had to handle themselves.
Negotiations with the survivors of the Rognir family were a prime example.
-The Tower of Control will formally admit full responsibility for the civil war and publicly announce that all information they had previously released was fabricated.
-They will clear the name of the late Lord of Friedel, August von Lennart, and the soldiers who fought alongside him, acknowledging their wrongful deaths. Furthermore, they will cooperate fully when the Lennart Ducal House investigates the incident.
-The Tower of Control will pay massive reparations to the Friedel domain and the families of those victimized by the conspiracy.
There were several other demands, but these three were the ones directly related to the Tin Knight's party.
Each demand was enough to shatter the prestige of Control to the ground, but they accepted them.
To be precise, they had no choice but to accept.
The state of Control could only be described as disastrous.
First, the majority of the Rognir bloodline had been annihilated. The only ones left were retired elders and young children who had not yet reached the Tower's core, individuals far removed from the ruling faction.
Among the influential figures bearing the Rognir name, only Valdeus and Teur Rognir survived. Of the two, Valdeus's injuries from the battle were severe, and his mind was no longer sound, rendering him effectively incapacitated.
“I am truly sorry. If a mere apology is not enough, I will offer my own life. But please, I beg you, do not wipe out our entire bloodline.”
Teur was effectively the only adult capable of taking responsibility as the representative of the bloodline, and he bowed his head without hesitation at the negotiation table.
Adelaide accepted his apology in silence.
*
“…Is that so. Well, it’s a relief that one of them with a properly screwed-on head managed to survive.”
“Wouldn’t anyone get their act together in a situation like that? Stubbornly holding onto their pride would only hurt them.”
“Gale, you say that because you don’t know. The world is full of genuine fools. They could have shifted all the blame to the dead Lotbart and insisted they had nothing to do with it, or threatened us by saying that if one Magic Tower falls, the others won’t be safe either, or even just baselessly appealed for pity. The fact that they didn’t resort to such antics already puts them in the upper tier, in my opinion. Ah, could you pass me an apple? As you can see, my hands are…”
As she spoke, the Tower Head of Protection lifted her fluttering sleeve. With a look of disbelief, Gale brought a peeled apple to her mouth.
“Mm, delicious.”
“Don’t the others peel apples for you? I can’t imagine they wouldn’t, considering how devoted they are to you.”
“The problem is that they’re too devoted. Whenever I ask for the smallest thing, they make it painfully obvious how much they pity me, their eyes always drifting to my limbs. It’s incredibly uncomfortable. I managed to survive the clutches of that wicked witch, only to wither away from the pitiful gazes of my own disciples? Now that would be one for the history books.”
Rescuing Hermina, the Tower Head of Protection, had been a stroke of sheer luck.
During the extensive internal inspection while repairing the tower Adelaide had wrecked, a secret room known only to the Tower Head was discovered. Hermina was found restrained inside. Perhaps to prevent her escape, her limbs below the elbows and knees had been transformed into bizarre plants.
People speculated that the plan was likely to use her to absorb the forces of the Tower of Protection after winning the war.
Upon hearing the news, the mages of Protection had rushed over in a panic to attend to their leader. Since then, she had been receiving care so devoted, so dedicated, so excessive, that she had to snap at them to tone it down.
It was no wonder Hermina was happy to see Gale. The audacious girl’s attitude toward her hadn’t changed one bit, then or now.
It wasn't just that she was indifferent to others; Hermina privately thought that Gale probably wouldn't have cared much even if she had suffered a similar fate herself.
“That thing… you said it can’t be healed with holy magic?”
“It’s the result of a ‘transformation,’ so it’s different from a wound. Well, since the one who cast the spell is dead, I plan to take my time attempting to dispel it. If that doesn’t work, using prosthetic arms and legs is an option. Interest in magic dolls has exploded within the Tower, so applying that technology could yield some rather fine results.”
“Come to think of it, a lot more people have been asking me about this and that lately. Why is that?”
“…Are you really asking because you don’t know?”
In a reversal of before, it was now Hermina’s turn to look dumbfounded.
The stories of the Tin Knight's party, Gale, and the White Knight were currently spreading throughout the Magic State like a legend.
Because the civil war itself had been a relatively swift affair, there hadn't been time for their exploits to become widely known. But now that the war was over, listing their achievements was a series of pure astonishment.
-Two magic dolls broke through the front of a castle packed with elite soldiers?
-No, they didn't even attack together. I heard they each took on a castle by themselves and smashed them to pieces.
-They crushed the enemy's old capital... by summoning undead from thin air? Was that even possible with necromancy?
-And what about at the end, when she commanded tens of thousands of undead all at once?
-That girl from the Lion Duke's bloodline, I heard she not only subjugated the enemy Tower Head by herself but also half-destroyed the Tower.
-Some people said they saw the green-haired woman using holy power...
-So what’s the deal with that immortal pirate crew? There’s a rumor they’re a special guard assigned to the disciple by the Queen of the Dead.
As is the nature of rumors, some were exaggerated or distorted, and some people dismissed them as baseless tales. However, even the cross-verified facts alone were undeniably exploits worthy of being recorded in history.
“Quite a few mages lost their familiars in this civil war. Now that you’ve proven how powerful magic dolls can be, there’s bound to be a craze for them for a while.”
“I don’t think Sir Tin Knight and Sig should be put in the category of ‘ordinary magic dolls,’ though. Still, having competitors is a good thing, so I should cooperate.”
“Why is it good to have competitors?”
“It makes it easier to prove just how amazing our Sig is, doesn’t it?”
At Gale’s words, which seemed to ask why she was stating the obvious, Hermina was left speechless.
They say many geniuses are eccentrics. The girl before her was a perfect embodiment of that saying.
“Oh, by the way, please advise people that it’s probably best not to talk to Dorothea much. She’s been tearing her hair out lately, thinking she went too far and made a name for herself as a necromancer. If you poke her the wrong way, she’ll probably have a fit.”
“…Now, of all times?”
“Yes, now, of all times.”
After chatting about this and that for a while, Hermina stealthily changed the subject.
“So, that business Dorothea is handling… is it going well?”
She feigned nonchalance, but her words were tinged with a subtle desperation.
Knowing this, Gale didn’t beat around the bush and stated the conclusion plainly.
“If you’re asking about my mentor’s resurrection, it’s not going very well.”
*
Back when they first decided to fight the Witch of the North.
Dorothea had made a clear declaration to Gale and the Tower Head of Protection.
“Let me make this clear beforehand. If what you want is to ‘rescue’ Orin, the Witch of the North, we can’t help you with that.”
After grasping that the dominant consciousness had switched from Orin to Mombi—thanks to the Tin Knight’s intuition (though it was more like stubborn insistence)—the party realized the vision of the past shown by the Chalice of Tuberose might have been wrong and re-verified it several times.
As a result, the party figured out how Lotbart had betrayed Orin, and they clicked their tongues in disapproval.
Lotbart’s actions, betraying his teacher’s trust and affection in the worst way imaginable, were truly despicable. But in the end, being caught off guard and used was undeniably Orin’s own mistake.
Moreover, their enemy was the vile witch Mombi. She was not only highly skilled but also never hesitated to use cowardly tactics. Showing any hesitation to harm her body in front of such a witch would be exploited, one hundred times out of one hundred.
Therefore, Dorothea’s conclusion was clear.
“First, we kill her. I’ll take care of Orin’s soul afterward, though.”
Whether a person’s soul lingered after death depended on various factors, such as their mental state and the ambient mana density.
Conversely, this meant that if the right environment could be provided, a soul could be kept in the mortal plane for a relatively long time.
Her plan was that a power like the Tower of Protection would have sufficient wealth and technical skill, so if she just secured the soul and handed it over, they could figure out the rest, whether that meant creating a new body or setting up a dedicated magic circle.
However, when she actually secured the soul after the battle, its condition was terrible.
Gazing at something that resembled a cracked and crumbling orb, the Tin Knight asked.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if you perhaps failed the extraction!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ shows his understanding, saying that anyone can make a mistake!]
“What do you mean, failed?! It was like this from the start!”
Dorothea roared.
But that strong reaction was proof that Dorothea felt guilty about something.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that even if there was no problem with the extraction itself, you’re making that uneasy face because something else went wrong!]
“You can read my expression now?”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ assesses that you are, frankly, easier to read than Adelaide!]
“Maybe if it were Sophia, who lives and breathes suspicion, but there’s no way I’m easier to read than that dog-type girl.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ corrects her, stating that lions are felines!]
The two of them were having a conversation that would have earned them strange looks from the other two, had they heard it.
Dorothea let out a deep sigh.
“…At the end, when I unleashed a torrent of curses to stop the fleeing Mombi, she tried to evade the attack by burrowing into Orin’s soul. It was possible because their two souls were linked. And Orin, to stop Mombi from invading her, severed that connection entirely and cast it away.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if it was like a lizard’s tail!]
“It was more like cutting off your own arm after a snake bite before the venom could spread. No, looking at the damage, it’s more like she blew off the top third of her torso. Her soul wasn’t in great shape to begin with, probably from the aftereffects of the seal, and pushing it that hard on top of everything else completely wrecked it.”
For now, she was using the power of the birdcage she got back from Trot to forcibly protect Orin’s soul, but this was nothing more than a stopgap measure.
Without a clear solution, Orin’s soul would eventually perish.
For Dorothea, who had intended to at least let Orin have a final conversation with her disciples, even if a full resurrection was impossible, this was quite a predicament.
“Giving up cleanly and accepting that some things can’t be helped is one option. Haaa.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that if it’s Dorothea’s teacher, she should be able to do something about it!]
“If we’re talking about whether it’s possible or not, she probably could, but I doubt that teacher of mine would kindly help anyone.”
Just then, someone rang the doorbell of the mansion where the two were staying.
Dorothea was ready to beat up and throw out whoever it was, assuming it was another fool spouting nonsense about the Tin Knight’s power or the secrets of necromancy. However, when she saw the visitor’s identity, she could only stare, dumbfounded.
“It’s been a while, Dorothea Aschengard. May I have a moment of your time? I’d like to talk about the Witch of the North, and about your future.”
Algind Goodwitch.
The star pupil of the Witch of the South had come to find them.