Not long after leaving the Tower of Foresight.

Dorothea announced…

“It would be better if you don’t continue traveling with us from now on.”

…Rapunzel’s sudden notice of expulsion.

Faced with this terrifying act that ignored the affection built up and achievements accumulated together, Rapunzel firmly said, “Okay.”

There was no plea of injustice, no venting of resentment like telling them to live well on their own.

This was because she knew that this expulsion was for her own sake.

The catalyst was a conversation with Tower Head Medir before leaving the tower.

“By the way, do you plan to keep that blonde girl with you from now on?”

“That’s up to her. As long as she doesn’t decline, I plan to stay together within the Magic Country.”

“Don’t. This is advice from your elder.”

He spoke in a serious tone, “You are all extraordinary. Your personalities, abilities, nothing about you is ordinary. But Rapunzel is different. She’s undoubtedly talented, but not enough to match you. If she continues to travel with you, dealing with the aftermath will surely become troublesome.”

Dorothea didn’t deny it.

Considering the adventures the party had experienced so far, Medir’s words hit the nail on the head.

“Can’t you just take her as your disciple?”

“I believe I said I would take responsibility for letting you go and step down.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. People who go on about tradition like that couldn’t possibly replace their leader so easily.”

“You seem surprisingly savvy about politics for someone who doesn’t seem to care for it. Well, I did tell her to come back if she has thoughts later. It’s impossible right now, but after things have calmed down a bit. If we give it about half a year, the commotion should die down.”

Returning to the present.

“If you stay with us like this, there will be more disadvantages than advantages for you. As Medir said, you can go to the Tower of Foresight after some time has passed, or you can go to another tower if you like. Of course, because of our original contract, I won’t stop you if you want to continue staying with us, but…”

To the witch’s gaze that seemed to ask, “What will you do?” Rapunzel quietly shook her head.

“No, helping me this far is enough. You’ve done so much for me in many ways.”

“I see. I’ve added the amount for the reduced escort period to your parting gift, so use it well.”

“Miss Rapunzel! Take care of yourself!”

“If fate allows, we’ll meet again. May you be well.”

After receiving farewells from Dorothea, Adelaide, Sophia, and the Tin Knight in order, Rapunzel parted ways with the party.

In the Tin Knight’s case, since his voice couldn’t be heard, she could only guess from his gestures.

After waving her hand for a long time towards the departing carriage, once it was out of sight, she muttered, “Maybe I did something a bit regrettable.”

To be honest, Rapunzel also had some desire to continue traveling with the party.

She had to leave her original domain after being accused of being a witch, her only relative, her brother, had died, and she was in a situation where she had to live alone from now on.

Continuing to travel with the Tin Knight’s party, who were strong, wealthy, and had some connections, was definitely not a bad choice.

However, Rapunzel knew.

That she was far too lacking to keep up with that chaotic party until the end.

It wasn’t just a matter of ability.

Hard as it was to believe, Adelaide was said to have been so weak when they started their journey that she couldn’t even compare to Rapunzel.

She had reached her current level thanks to enduring the Tin Knight’s harsh training, and if Rapunzel received the same training, there was every possibility she could grow too.

However.

…Honestly, doing that training together is a bit…

The training Adelaide did was overwhelming in both quality and quantity, surpassing not just soldiers but even decent knights in knight orders.

The person herself seemed to have already adapted, carrying it out without particular complaint, but for Rapunzel watching from the side, it was hair-raising even though she wasn’t doing it herself.

While she wasn’t without desire to stay with the party, it wasn’t a strong enough motivation to endure such things and keep up with them.

Even if she stayed with them vaguely like this, she could probably stay with them until the party left the Magic Country, but rather than getting attached ambiguously like that, it was better to separate quickly.

Especially since she had already achieved at least minimal results.

Fiddling with the letter of introduction received from Medir and the pouch of gold coins received from Dorothea, Rapunzel pondered her next move.

She had secured a guarantee to enter the Tower of Foresight, but that didn’t mean she absolutely had to enter there.

Since Medir also said time was needed for the commotion to die down, there was also the option of looking around other towers in the meantime.

The party said they would move in the order of Annihilation, Control, and Protection, so to avoid overlapping routes, it seemed best to go to the Tower of Protection.

It was a bit concerning that she had to use sea routes on the way, but Rapunzel wasn’t too worried.

Surely I won’t meet pirates again like last time?

After making her decision, her actions were quick, and Rapunzel quickly headed to the nearest port city and boarded a ship bound for the Tower of Protection.

“Yes, please sign here.”

As Rapunzel was about to write her name on the list handed by the receptionist without much thought, she paused for a moment.

She remembered that both Medir, the Tower Head of Foresight, and Dorothea had advised her to change her identity from now on.

In Dorothea’s case, she even provided a potion to change hair color.

She was a witch who tended to be endlessly prickly towards others, but soft towards those who got close to her.

Twirling her slightly reddish-brown hair while pondering, she eventually wrote a suitable name on the list.1

Trot.

***

“You don’t have a way to contact your mentor?”

Dorothea’s voice was full of dissatisfaction.

It was a reaction as if she had heard that the guide she had finally caught, the Witch of the North’s top mentee, was useless.

But Gale was calm.

“More precisely, there is a way to contact her, but it doesn’t connect well. She’s a very free-spirited person. However, the guess that she’s somewhere among the four towers is probably not wrong.”

“Then go find her quickly. You can easily look around using the power of those shoes, can’t you?”

“Please don’t say such unreasonable things. The distance the ‘Shoes of Borealis’ can move is at most limited to places you can see with your own eyes.”

“Can’t you just use them consecutively? It would be much faster than walking.”

“The mana consumption would be unbearable. Maybe Dorothea could do it, but even if I go alone, there’s no way to find my mentor, right?”

Saying this might make it seem like Gale’s mana quantity was small, but that would be a misunderstanding.

Knights pursued mana quality, so they emphasized enhancement efficiency and delicate control, but mages tended to increase mana quantity itself first to handle consumption.

The total mana possessed by a respectable mage was roughly enough to fill the Tin Knight twice.

In the same context, Sophia was about half a Tin Knight, Adelaide was about 1.4 Tin Knights, but Gale was simply 500 Tin Knights.

A talent counted among the historical talents of the tower.

The White Knight was quite terrible in terms of efficiency as it pursued only the highest performance, but the fact that she could handle it comfortably and casually fire off magic without any issue showed her enormous mana quantity.

Yet compared to Dorothea, there was a gap like that between an adult and a child, but the very fact that she could be “compared” to Dorothea in terms of mana meant she was far from ordinary.

“Well, don’t worry too much. I can tell if my mentor is nearby, so we won’t need to rummage through each tower one by one like we did at the Tower of Foresight.”

Gale’s explanation was that they could approach near each tower to check for her mentor’s presence, move on to the next tower immediately if not there, and climb the tower if she was there.

Only then did Dorothea regain some composure.

If they proceeded in that way, even accounting for travel time, it would be possible to look around all the towers in about a week.

There were still more than twenty days left in the grace period given by the Witch of the East, so unless they wasted time in some unusually strange place, there was plenty of leeway in the plan.

“Then, well… It would be okay to stay in the same place for a few days.”

The one who reacted to Dorothea’s words was Adelaide.

“If you’re saying that because of me, you don’t need to worry. We can always come back later.”

“It’s fine, there’s no need to complicate our route unnecessarily. There are only two tokens left anyway, so we should collect them all before returning to your domain.”

The City of Annihilation, Trudvangar.

True to its other name, this city where the Tower of Annihilation stood had several other peculiar characteristics.

One was that while the other towers were relatively biased towards the north, Trudvangar, where the Tower of Annihilation stood, existed at the southernmost point within the Magic Country, that was, at the place bordering the Lydian Empire.

The second was that it had a system similar to guilds, almost unique within the Magic Country, and the last was that the fourth Lennart dojo was located here.

Dorothea blurted out as if dumbfounded, “The more I look at it, the stranger the arrangement seems.”

Sophia agreed, “If you think of it as a normal country, it’s like having the royal castle’s location overlap with a frontline city on the border. Strategically, it’s the very definition of unreasonable.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says building a structure right in front of the enemy base and producing combat units is also a tactic!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says it’s even more effective if you suck up the resources the enemy should be consuming!]

“Where in the world is there such a crazy strategy?”

Dorothea shook her head and continued her complaints, “To begin with, isn’t the Tower of Annihilation the core combat force of the Magic Country? So, they’re the ones clashing most fiercely with the Empire. But what kind of mindset is it to build a Lennart dojo in a place where such people are?”

“I know, I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard about the location as well.”

Adelaide also nodded in agreement.

Gale chimed in, “Ah, that’s probably the result of my mentor saying something. She said that when countries try to become friendly, the war hawks usually interfere, and since fires tend to spread and grow bigger, if you’re going to burn anyway, it’s better to gather the war hawks in one place so it ends as a small fire before becoming a big conflagration.”

There was a moment of silence.

The Tin Knight spoke.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ wonders if there’s a personality criterion in selecting the Four Great Witches!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ praises that if it’s meant to give a lesson to the world as a negative example, it’s an excellent achievement!]

Footnotes

1. 1. Ed Note: Believe itor not, but Trot is actually a character in Wizard of Oz, she's the protagonist of SKy Island where she went to an island in the sky (shocker!) with Cap'n Bill.

***

https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken