Chapter 305: The Tin Knight and The Invitation of Memories (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 305: The Tin Knight and The Invitation of Memories (5)
“Hoh. Well, it suits you well enough.”
That was my master’s reaction when she saw Dorothea, who had returned triumphantly in her new gothic attire.
Dorothea, who had expected to be chided for wearing something so frilly and messy, brightened at the unexpectedly positive review.
She had secretly been fond of her new clothes but worried about her master’s reaction, and now that concern had vanished completely.
“Ahem, w-well, that’s a relief. Should I buy you something next time? Don’t you get tired of wearing those baggy things every day?”
“I don’t need any, so you just enjoy them. While you still can, that is.”
As she spoke, my master’s lips curled into a smile.
It was an obviously suspicious smile, but an elated Dorothea failed to realize its true meaning.
She had carelessly let her guard down before a fearsome witch.
And the price for her carelessness was brutal.
“Huh? Wh-what’s happening to this?”
As lacking in common sense as Dorothea was, she wasn’t stupid.
Since it was a common occurrence for her clothes to become tattered after a single one of her master’s ‘errands,’ Dorothea had classified her garments into two types according to their use.
When she had to run and jump through the wilderness, she wore the everyday clothes she had stored at home.
She only wore her newly bought clothes for ‘quiet’ (?) tasks, like maintaining the barrier that held the dead, or boiling all sorts of ingredients in a giant cauldron.
She had thought this would keep her clothes from being easily ruined.
However, Dorothea didn’t know.
She didn’t know that the negative energy of necromancy had an adverse effect on all sorts of objects, and that clothing was no exception.
It was a fact she had failed to realize until now, simply because her clothes had always been physically destroyed before the necromancy could finish them off.
After all, it was faster and more intuitive to beat something to death physically than to let it wither away from poison damage.
At first, she could brush it off, thinking, ‘Did the texture of my clothes get a little worse? Is it just my imagination?’ But after about two weeks, when black flakes started to crumble off the fabric, Dorothea realized the problem was serious.
“M-Master. What’s wrong with this? Did I get scammed?”
“That in itself would be quite an amusing situation, but unfortunately, that’s not it. It’s merely one of the characteristics of necromancy. That’s why I told you, didn’t I? That it would be better to just make clothes with necromancy. Or to stock up on them like they’re consumables.”
“Why are you telling me this only now!?”
“You didn’t ask.”
At her master’s perfectly matter-of-fact reply, Dorothea’s body trembled.
She wanted to march over and slap the mouth of her master, who was yawning while half-reclined on a sofa made of bones. But if she actually tried such a thing, she’d end up taking a dive into the mouth of a giant carnivorous plant, so all she could do was suppress her anger.
This was why Dorothea had to clutch the money left over from her last shopping trip and scurry back to Glückstadt.
“I-I see. You’ve had it rough.”
Tip wore a complex expression, half-joyful at seeing Dorothea again, half-bewildered.
Dorothea hadn’t told Tip that she was the Witch of the East’s apprentice, but she had already revealed that she was a mage’s apprentice and could use simple magic herself.
It was the result of her thinking that as long as he didn’t find out she was a necromancer, it would be fine.
“So, should I guide you again this time?”
“Well, I pretty much memorized the way last time, so you don’t have to. I was just passing by and happened to spot you, so I came to say hi.”
Dorothea shrugged as if the timing was good, but Tip flinched inwardly.
Ever since he and Dorothea had parted ways, he had been loitering near the city entrance every day, nursing a sliver of hope.
It was certainly luck that Dorothea had spotted him while he was there, but it was hard to call it pure luck.
Of course, Tip didn’t bother to reveal this fact. He was afraid Dorothea would be repulsed by him being so clingy after they had only met once.
And so, the two of them visited the seamstress’s shop again.
“Wh-what? What happened? My creation, how did it become like this!?”
They were able to witness firsthand the seamstress’s reaction, who looked so shocked she seemed about to foam at the mouth.
“Little miss. What in the world happened? No, even if you’d left it out in the wind and rain for a whole month, it wouldn’t have ended up like this…?”
“Ahem.”
Dorothea cleared her throat, looking embarrassed.
“The air where I live is a bit bad, so things like clothes wear out quickly. So, do you have any clothes that are sturdier, but still nice?”
“The air is bad? This isn’t a problem that can be explained away by that.”
“It’s the truth, so what can I do?”
Dorothea wasn’t lying.
There was no way the air could be good in a forest that had graves (where unclaimed corpses walk over on their own, dig a hole, and bury themselves), ghost prisons (which attract and trap evil spirits like a Venus flytrap), and colonies of poisonous plants (farmed by skeletons).
The seamstress squinted her eyes and then spoke.
“It got like this just from wearing it, without any particularly strenuous movement, right?”
“Yeah.”
“This may not look like it, but it’s made from very fine fabric. If it’s an extreme environment where this can’t even last a month, then whatever clothes you buy will probably end up in the same state just as quickly.”
“I see…”
Dorothea’s shoulders slumped.
Just as she was about to give up, thinking that unless she reached a state where she could breathe necromancy 24/7 like her master, she was doomed to wear rags forever, Tip cut in, flustered.
“W-wait, couldn’t Dorothy learn the skills to make or mend clothes? If she knew how to fix them herself, it wouldn’t matter if they got ruined.”
Dorothea blinked.
Her reaction showed she hadn’t even considered such a thing.
The seamstress nodded.
“Well, if you’re asking if it’s possible or not, I suppose it is. It held up for a month, or at least a few weeks, anyway. If we assume she does repairs on a weekly basis, it should be fine. If that’s too much of a hassle, making clothes using materials from that forest would probably make them last longer.”
“However,” the seamstress added.
“Why should I teach you such a skill? It’s my life’s work, my livelihood. And it’s not like this little miss here is going to serve as my apprentice, is it?”
It was an era where the value of a skill was precious.
Especially since sewing was a skill that the women of the house learned as a side job and a necessity for life, a technique for making ‘high-end clothing’ like the seamstress’s, good enough to be sold to nobles, was absolutely not something one could learn easily.
It wasn’t that the woman was particularly selfish; it was that if she carelessly spread her techniques, she would increase her competition and end up cutting off her own livelihood with her own hands.
Dorothea crossed her arms for a moment in thought, then took out her money pouch and held it out. It was the money left over from buying the clothes last time. In terms of amount, it was double what she’d paid before.
“What if I offer this as a tuition fee?”
The woman checked the contents of the pouch, then shook her head.
“I could make you two, no, three more outfits like the last one for this price, but the skill itself is a different matter. If you want to buy my skill with pure money, even ten times this amount wouldn’t be enough.”
“Then, how can I learn it?”
“You either serve under me for several years as an apprentice, or you bring me a skill worthy of the one I’d be giving you.”
Although she mentioned two methods, the woman seemed to have almost no expectation for the latter.
The girl before her was quite mature and clever for her age, but she was still too young to have acquired any special skills.
Just as Dorothea was frowning in thought, Tip spoke up.
“Hey, Dorothy. You know that ointment you gave me last time? Can’t you teach her how to make that? A skill like that seems incredibly valuable. If you have other skills, those would be fine too.”
“Would that work?”
“Ointment? You know how to make medicine, too?”
At Tip’s words, the seamstress showed interest.
Dorothea took an ointment and a knife from her pocket.
The woman was startled when a little kid suddenly pulled out a blade, but for Dorothea, who spent much of her time in the wild, this was an everyday item.
Dorothea made a small cut on her finger with the knife, then immediately applied the ointment to the spot.
As the wound, which had been bleeding just a moment ago, healed at a rapid pace, the seamstress’s eyes widened in interest.
“That medicine, did you really make it? Can you teach me how?”
“I can give you the medicine. However, the method requires a special environment that we have, so you wouldn’t be able to do it even if I told you. If you’re okay with a medicine that’s slightly less effective than this, I could teach you that.”
“Hmm. If it’s less effective, how much of a difference is there?”
“About fifty percent?”
“That’s quite a drop. Do you have anything else useful?”
Dorothea thought of spells that might be helpful for clothing maintenance.
Most of them required mana to be used properly, but some could be replicated without mana as long as one knew the right ingredients and formula.
After all, there were quite a few cases where the ingredients themselves contained a specific kind of mana.
“A powder that, when burned, creates a scent that keeps small insects from coming anywhere near. Or a paste that absorbs surrounding moisture. How about those?”
“I look forward to working with you starting today, little miss.”
The seamstress suddenly grabbed Dorothea’s hand and declared as much. Her eyes were blazing, giving off an aura that said she wouldn’t take no for an answer even if Dorothea tried to back out now.
Dorothea, just in case, said she would get permission from the guardian she lived with. She told her master about the arrangement, and her master gave her permission, saying she didn’t care what Dorothea did in her free time as long as she did the work she was told to do.
And so, Dorothea’s busy days began.
Normally, she would hone her magical skills or do chores under the Witch of the East, and whenever she had some free time, she would learn to make clothes from the seamstress.
The one who was thrilled by this was Tip.
He could see her face every time Dorothea came to Glückstadt.
Even for a city as large as Glückstadt, she didn’t need a guide that many times, but Dorothea didn’t coldly push Tip away either.
Due to her unique position as a witch’s apprentice, it wasn’t easy for Dorothea to make friends her own age, either.
“…What happened to your face?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s nothing. You don’t have to worry about it.”
But at some point, the increasing number of cuts and bruises on Tip’s face and body began to weigh on Dorothea’s mind.
At first, because Tip repeatedly insisted he was fine, Dorothea didn’t press any further. But when it continued for days on end, she finally had him confess, half-forcefully.
This was the situation.
Tip was an orphan.
To be precise, he was an orphan in a relatively decent situation.
He had lost his parents when he was young and was left in the care of a relative, but when that relative’s whereabouts also became unknown one day, he was left to live alone in the house.
He didn’t have to worry about a place to sleep since he had the house his relative left behind, but he had to earn money to live.
Until now, he had been getting by on the pay he received for helping the townspeople with odd jobs, but a problem had arisen with the house he was staying in.
A nasty group, having noticed that the original owner hadn’t shown up for a long time and that only a little kid was living there, had begun to strong-arm Tip, demanding he hand over the house.
As he told his story, Tip seemed to be furtively gauging Dorothea’s reaction.
His eyes showed that while he was worried she might get hurt if she got involved, he was also hoping for something from her.
Dorothea was lost in thought.
A witch must be strict about contracts.
An unbalanced scale leads to ruin.
It’s fine if someone happens to benefit while you’re doing something for your own gain, but if you’re acting to help someone, you must receive a suitable price in return.
Her master’s advice echoed in her head.
But Dorothea was still young.
She was not yet mature enough as a witch to coldly ask a friend asking for help, “So, what’s the payment?”
And so, she offered her help unconditionally.
“The ones who are hurting you, where are they?”