Cap’n Bill’s caretaker.

That was the position Trot currently held.

The situation was simple.

To keep Dorothea’s “cage” in an active state, the owner needed to possess considerable mana, and Trot was the only one who had such mana and was free enough to always carry the cage around, as well as being trustworthy.

It seemed questionable whether it was really okay to entrust the management of a former kidnapper to a former kidnapping victim, but when Trot subtly asked Dorothea about this, she replied, “Huh? Oh, if it’s revenge, do as you like. As long as the cage isn’t damaged. Poking with a twig is fine.”

As expected of a witch. Her standards were different from ordinary people.

In fact, the management wasn’t anything special.

It was quite inconvenient to have to keep carrying the cage to maintain the mana flow, but once she learned that she could just connect it somewhere on her body using her hair as a string, even that difficulty dropped significantly.

So, while chatting about various things with Cap’n Bill or offering seeds or small insects only to hear, “Does me look like a real bird to ya just because me be in a cage! Ya cocoon-like girl!” or attempting to use the cage like a cocktail shaker to make a “Cap’n Bill shake” in response to his insults, one day.

Trot and Cap’n Bill were summoned by Dorothea, and the situation came to this point.

“—Let’s make a deal. Skull, I’ll set you and your subordinates free. In return, I’d like you to fight on our side.”

“Nay.”

It was an immediate answer without any hesitation.

Cap’n Bill, trapped in the cage, sneered at Dorothea with a bored expression, “’Cause of you lot who got rid of the Witch of the West, all me 99 years o’ effort have gone to waste. Do ya even know how much me suffered to end this damn curse and return to being human? With that grudge not even properly settled, yer saying ya will just set me free so work like a dog for you? Does me appear to be such an easy mark to ya? Huh?”

“You do realize you’re captured along with your subordinates, right? Is your life as a prisoner comfortable?”

“Oh ho, are ya going to try torture? Go ahead if ya want! Not a single one of us sea men fears such things!”

Trot involuntarily interjected, “No, pirates were more cowardly than I thought… They sold out their pride and comrades quite easily…”

“…That just be the riffraff! Real sea men are different!”

“Isn’t it just that you don’t feel much pain because your body is in that state?”

Cap’n Bill glared at Trot with terrifying eyes, and Trot stared back as if to say, “What’s your problem?”

Watching the two bickering, Dorothea was slightly surprised inwardly.

Cap’n Bill was nothing short of excellent.

His individual combat power was enough to match the Tin Knight for a while—this might sound trivial, but opponents who could face the Tin Knight one-on-one were rare to begin with—the ability to control a magic ship at will, the leadership to skillfully command several crew members, and the curse of immortality that allowed him to revive over and over no matter how miserably he was defeated.

Despite being someone who would undoubtedly be classified as “vicious” by normal sensibilities, Trot was treating Cap’n Bill like some neighborhood thug. It seemed to be because of the long time they spent together while he was in a helpless state with only his head remaining.

“No, wouldn’t it be good if you just cooperate once and then you’ll be free too? Then I won’t have to carry your head around all the time.”

“This ain’t be such a simple matter! How could ya know the emptiness of having everything turn to nothing when yer just one step away from returning to being human!?”

“About that contract with the witch, was it even proper to begin with?”

“What?” Trot shrugged her shoulders. “I know because I’ve been traveling around since I was young and got involved with many merchants, but there are really a lot of scammers in the world, you know? If I were in your position and someone like that Witch of the West made a proposal like ‘If you work under me for 100 years, I’ll grant your wish,’ I would never have accepted that offer.”

“Why?”

“There’s no guarantee at all, is there?” Trot counted on her fingers as she spoke. “When the other party handed you fake documents saying the research was progressing well, did you have the ability to discern that? If after finishing the work, the other party pretended nothing happened and said the deal was void, do you have the power to forcibly overturn that? Or is there a guarantor or mediator who can penalize the other party? There’s nothing, right?”

“…”

“Think about it from the other perspective. You made a contract with someone, but carrying out that contract is quite troublesome from your standpoint. But even if you ignore the contract and wash your hands of it, the other party has no way to harm you. Would you faithfully keep the contract? Please don’t say you would. If you did, you’d be a navy sailor, not a pirate.”

“…”

“Promises that are just words are empty. If I were you, instead of believing in such nonsense as ‘solving everything at once after a hundred years’, I would have set conditions like ‘freeing one person from the curse every year’ or ‘learning techniques related to curse removal while working as a subordinate’. The former would let you know if the other party really has the will and ability to do it, and with the latter, at least the learned skills would remain.”

“…”

“Of course, this is just speculation. There’s a possibility that the Witch of the West might have faithfully fulfilled the contract. But what good does that do now? She’s already dead. Clinging to benefits that can’t be recovered anymore is below third-rate as a merchant. Wouldn’t it be better to look for new methods from now on? Hey, are you listening?”

“Hey.”

“Yes? Oh, s-sorry, Dorothea. Watching from the side, this guy was so frustrating that I couldn’t help it. I interrupted your negotiation, didn’t I?”

“No, that guy’s mental seems to have broken down already.”

“Huh? What?”

“I was originally going to try persuading him in various ways, but it seems faster to just leave it to you. Try convincing him. If you succeed, I’ll reward you handsomely.”

Saying it was an advance payment, Dorothea lightly waved her right hand wearing a glove.

Then, gold bars and gold coins poured down from thin air.

Trot stared blankly for a moment at the mountain of gold that she could barely see the top of even when craning her neck, then spoke with a serious face, “I’ll make this deal happen even if I have to grind this golden skull into gold dust.”

“Y-yeah. Do it moderately.”

Exactly 12 hours later.

On the condition of releasing the captured Bill pirates and Trot cooperating with curse removal research as a “temporary crew member” of the Bill pirates, the Bill pirates crew joined as allies.

***

Tower of Protection, public workshop.

Looking at the ship with a black hull and golden sails, a mage belonging to the Tower of Protection said, “Modification work is complete. It’s not at the level of freely flying through the air, but we’ve secured enough floating performance for ground navigation without problems.”

Looking at the golden ship modified for amphibious use, the head of the Tower of Protection nodded.

“It was faster than I expected.”

“The ship itself already had a power close to psychokinesis to some extent. It was easy because we just had to enhance the existing effects.”

The technique the Tower of Protection prided itself on was Enchantment.

Their specialty was “enhancing the power of something that already exists or adding functions”, such as turning a simple sword into a flame sword or enabling an ordinary person to exert bear-like strength, and this ability was demonstrated without fail this time as well.

However, the tower mages who achieved this result looked quite uneasy.

“But will this really be enough? An immortal pirate crew certainly sounds terrifying, but they’re still just a handful.”

The battle between Protection and Control was clearly disadvantageous for Protection, and the enemies even had the additional force of a great witch on their side.

The idea of supplementing insufficient forces from outside wasn’t bad in itself, but it didn’t seem to have much meaning to add just a few dozen people.

To such opinions from the mages, the tower head showed a bitter smile.

It was easy to say everything was fine with words, but honestly, even she was at a loss as to how to overcome this situation.

However.

“There are those who are burning with fighting spirit even in this situation. If they say they need pirates and a pirate ship for this operation, we have no choice but to believe in them for now.”

***

Swoosh.

Spreading a map widely on the desk, Sophia said, “Our original plan of ‘revealing the crimes of the Tower of Control and having them judged by the hands of other towers’ has essentially failed. If the Tower of Protection is crushed by the Tower of Control at this rate, all the crimes they committed will either be erased as if they never happened, or will be revised according to their tastes and spread as different content.”

“Along with that, our heads will probably roll too. There’s no way they’ll let us live.”

Adelaide’s expression darkened.

After all, the party’s involvement in this incident was because of her.

Although the party had experienced numerous incidents and defeated many enemies so far, this time the scale and strength of the enemy were on a different level.

The Tower of Control itself was already a powerful enemy, and on top of that, one of the Four Great Witches.

Thinking logically, it was a timing to aim for escape rather than facing them head-on.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that the stage has been set neatly, anyway!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that since the other side tried a power struggle first, we don’t need to worry about politics or anything complicated, we just need to crush our enemies!]

But the Tin Knight didn’t express any negative emotions about it.

Rather, he showed cheerfulness as if he finally felt relieved.

The other companions were the same.

“Well, I guess it’s different to hit the Magic State as outsiders versus getting involved in a civil war between towers.”

“They probably tried to attack first with the intention of swallowing the Tower of Protection, but thanks to that, we’ve gained a strong backing too.”

They laughed, saying that although they were at a disadvantage in terms of forces, that was always the case.

So, Adelaide could laugh too.

She asked, “What should I—no, we do?”

“Guerrilla warfare,” Dorothea answered. “In Tin Can terms, it would be more accurate to call it gerilra warfare. We’ll ride the pirate ship and stir up various parts of Control’s territory, grinding down their most important forces, the 3rd rank and above mages.”1

“The participants will be the Bill pirates, the four of us, and Gale and the White Knight. The Tower of Protection people will keep pressuring from the outside to prevent the enemies from forming large-scale encirclements.”

To take down the enemy’s main forces with barely a few dozen people.

It was an absurd operation and an unrealistic goal.

But they were serious.

“We’ll use the lower half of the body that old man left behind last time as a catalyst for magic. They’ve probably taken countermeasures already, so directly cursing and killing them is impossible, but we should be able to at least figure out where the person and their blood relatives are.”

“The Tin Knight and White Knight can keep moving as long as they have mana, and if Gale receives mana from Dorothea and delivers it to the site, the Tin Knight won’t need to come back in between. However, since the Tin Knight and Dorothea will inevitably be far apart, the pirates and Adelaide will have to protect Dorothea during that time.”

We had obtained a compass.

We had secured transportation.

So, the rest was…

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shouts that it’s time for hack and slash!]

Just to rampage to our heart’s content.

Footnotes

1. 1. TL Note: This doesn't translate well so I'll add an explanation. Dorothea initially uses "유격전" which is the Korean term of guerilla warfare while she says the Tin Knight would use something like "게릴라전" which combines "게릴라" which is phonetically "gerilra" — so Konglish for guerilla — with 전 which means war. In case your curious, phonetically "유격전" would be "Yugyeokjeon"

***

https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken