The war was over.

With the death of Lotbart, the head of the Tower of Control, the tower itself ceasing to function, and even Mombi, who could have been their trump card, meeting her end, there was no chance of victory left for the Control faction.

Managing those who surrendered, collecting the remains of the dead, healing the wounded, informing each force that had been in a standoff in other regions about the situation, coordinating with other powers that were poking their heads in, and so on.

As the scale of the battle had been so enormous, a considerable amount of effort and time was consumed just in the aftermath.

Normally, the Tin Knight’s party would have left such troublesome tasks to the local people and moved on to their next destination, but this time they couldn’t do that.

There were several matters that the party had to handle directly.

Negotiations with the Rognir survivors was one of the most representative of these.

The Tower of Control formally acknowledges that they bear all responsibility for this civil war situation, and publicly declares that all the content they have revealed so far was fabricated.

They will explain the unjust deaths of the late Friedel Lord August von Lennart and the soldiers who fought with him, and actively cooperate when the Lennart Ducal family pursues the case in the future.

The Tower of Control will pay massive compensation to the Friedel domain and the bereaved families of those who fell victim to the conspiracy.

There were many other demands as well, but the above three were directly related to the Tin Knight’s party.

Each demand was enough to bring the prestige of Control crashing to the ground, but they accepted them.

More precisely, they had no choice but to accept.

The state of Control could only be described as miserable.

First, most of the Rognir bloodline had been annihilated, and those remaining were far from the ruling powers of the tower, such as retired elderly and young children who had not yet risen to the core of the tower.

Among the power holders bearing the Rognir name, only Valdeus and Teur survived, but of these, Valdeus had suffered serious injuries during the battle and showed signs of mental instability, essentially judged as unable to recover.

“I’m truly sorry. If mere words of apology are not enough, I’ll offer my head. However, please, just don’t exterminate our entire clan.”

Teur was essentially the only adult who could take responsibility as the representative of the bloodline, and he bowed his head without hesitation at the negotiation table.

Adelaide silently accepted his apology.

***

“…I see. Well, I suppose it’s fortunate that the one with at least a bit of sense properly installed seems to have survived.”

“Wouldn’t anyone have their wits about them in such a situation? There’s nothing to gain by putting on airs unnecessarily.”

“Gale, you don’t know because you’re inexperienced. There are truly many stupid people in the world. They might have tried to shift all blame onto the dead Lotbart and insist they had nothing to do with it, or threaten that if one tower falls, the others won’t be safe either, or cling to sympathy without any basis. The fact that they didn’t do any of that nonsense puts them in the upper ranks in my view. Ah, could you pass me that apple? As you can see, my hands are like this.”

Saying this, the head of the Tower of Protection showed her fluttering sleeves, and Gale, with an expression as if she couldn’t believe it, brought a peeled apple to her mouth.

“Mm, delicious.”

“Don’t others peel apples for you too? There’s no way people who think so terribly of the Tower Head’s work wouldn’t do that?”

“It’s a problem because they think too terribly of it. When I ask for something, they show signs of distress while staring at my limbs, and it’s unbearably uncomfortable. I somehow survived from that wicked witch’s hands, but if I were to waste away because of my disciples’ pitying gazes, that would truly be something to go down in history.”

Being able to rescue Hermina, the head of the Tower of Protection, was truly a stroke of heavenly luck.

During the process of restoring the tower that Adelaide had smashed, there was a large-scale internal inspection, and during that process, a secret room that only the tower head knew about was revealed. Hermina was confined inside that room, and below her elbows and knees had been transformed into bizarre plants, perhaps to prevent escape.

People speculated that they probably intended to use her to absorb the Tower of Protection forces after winning the war.

When they heard the news, the Protection side mages were shocked and came to attend to their leader, and since then she had been receiving care so thorough, to the point of being extreme, that the tower head herself was getting irritated and telling them to tone it down a bit.

It was no wonder Hermina was glad to see Gale. This bold girl’s attitude hadn’t changed much from before to now.

Hermina thought to herself that she wasn’t just indifferent to others, but probably wouldn’t have cared much even if she had experienced something similar herself.

“That, they said holy magic couldn’t heal it either, right?”

“Since it’s the result of ‘transformation’, it’s different from a wound. Well, since the one who cast the magic is dead, I plan to try healing slowly. If that doesn’t work, using prosthetic limbs might be an option. Interest in magic dolls has suddenly surged within the tower, so if we apply that technology, we might get quite a good product.”

“Come to think of it, there have been a lot of people suddenly asking me various things. I wonder why they’re all doing that?”

“…Are you really asking because you don’t know?”

This time, it was Hermina’s turn to make an expression of disbelief.

The story of the Tin Knight’s party, Gale, and the White Knight was currently spreading almost like a legend within the Magic State.

Since this civil war itself progressed relatively quickly, there hadn’t been time for their achievements to be properly known until now, but when their feats were listed after the war ended, it was truly a series of shocks.

— Two magic dolls broke through a castle full of elites head-on?

— No, they didn’t even charge in together, they just each took on one castle and smashed it.

— They… crushed the enemy’s old capital by summoning undead from thin air and pressing down on it? Was there such a thing in necromancy?

— And what about controlling tens of thousands of undead all at once at the end?

— The girl of the Lion Duke’s bloodline, I hear she not only subjugated the enemy tower head alone but even half-destroyed the tower.

— Some say they saw the green-haired woman using holy power…

— So what exactly is that immortal pirate crew? There’s talk that it’s a special escort the Queen of the Dead gave to her apprentice?

As rumors usually went, there was some exaggeration and distortion, or conversely, some denied them as groundless rumors, but even with just the cross-verified content, there was no doubt that it was an achievement worthy of going down in history.

“Not a few mages lost their familiars in this civil war. Since you’ve proven how strong magic dolls can be, there will probably be a trend in that direction for a while.”

“I don’t think it’s right to put the Tin Knight and Sig in the category of ‘ordinary magic dolls’. Well, it’s good to have competitors, so we should cooperate.”

“Why is it good to have competitors?”

“Because it makes it easier to prove how amazing our Sig is, doesn’t it?”

At Gale’s words, as if asking what was so obvious about it, Hermina was at a loss for words.

They say there were many eccentrics among geniuses. The girl before her truly fit that saying.

“Oh, by the way, please advise people that it’s better not to talk much to Dorothea. She’s been clutching her head recently, saying she went too far in becoming known as a necromancer. If someone touches her the wrong way, she might have a fit.”

“…Now of all times?”

“Yes, now of all times.”

After chatting about various things for a while, Hermina subtly changed the subject.

“So, about that work Dorothea is doing… is it going well?”

While pretending to be nonchalant, there was a subtle earnestness in her words.

Knowing this, Gale spoke the conclusion instead of beating around the bush, “If you’re asking about the resurrection of Mentor, it’s not going very well.”

***

When they first resolved to fight the Wicked Witch of the North.

Dorothea clearly declared to Gale and the head of the Tower of Protection:

“Let me tell you in advance, if what you want is the ‘rescue’ of the Witch of the North Orin, we can’t go along with that.”

After grasping that the dominance between Orin and Mombi had been exchanged through the Tin Knight’s intuition—or something too reckless to be called intuition—the party realized that the past scene shown by the Chalice of Tuberose might have been wrong and repeatedly reconfirmed several times.

As a result, the party was able to understand how Lotbart had betrayed Orin, and at the same time, they clicked their tongues.

Lotbart’s actions, betraying his teacher’s trust and affection towards him in the worst possible way, were truly unparalleled in ugliness, but in the end, it was clearly Orin’s mistake to have been caught off guard and used.

Moreover, the enemy was the vicious wicked witch Mombi.

Not only was she herself skilled, but she also didn’t hesitate to use cowardly methods. If one showed hesitation to harm her body in front of such a witch, they would be used 100 times out of 100.

Therefore, Dorothea’s conclusion was clear.

“We’ll kill her first. Then we’ll take care of Orin’s soul.”

Whether a person’s soul remained after death or not depended on various factors such as their mental state and the mana concentration of the surroundings.

Conversely, if an appropriate environment could be provided, the soul could be left in this world for a relatively long time.

A power like the Tower of Protection should have sufficient wealth and technology, so her plan was to secure just the soul and hand it over, and they would figure out whether to make a new body or install a dedicated magic circle.

But when they actually secured the soul after the battle ended, its condition was severely poor.

Looking at something like a cracked and crumbled bead, the Tin Knight asked.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if perhaps the extraction failed!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shows understanding, saying everyone can make mistakes!]

“What failure! It was like this originally!?”

Dorothea roared with a, “Kyaak!”

But that strong reaction itself was proof that Dorothea had something she felt guilty about inside.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that even if there was no problem with the extraction itself, there must have been a problem with something else for her to have such an uneasy expression!]

“You’re reading my expression now?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ evaluates that honestly, Dorothea is easier to read than Adel!]

“There’s no way I could be worse than that puppy-eyed one, let alone Sophia who lives with suspicion.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ corrects Dorothea, saying that lions are not canines but felines!]

The two of them were having a conversation that would have made the other two make subtle expressions if they had heard.

Dorothea heaved a deep sigh, “…When I poured curses to stop Mombi from escaping at the end, that bastard tried to avoid the attack by burrowing into Orin’s soul. It was possible because the two souls were connected. And Orin cut off the connected part entirely and threw it away to prevent Mombi from invading her.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if it’s like a lizard’s tail!]

“Rather than that, it’s more like when a snake bites your right arm and you cut off the arm before the poison spreads, or judging by the damage state, it’s like blowing away about a third of the upper body. It seems the soul itself wasn’t very intact to begin with, perhaps due to the aftereffects of the seal, and on top of that, she did such an unreasonable thing, so it’s completely ruined.”

Currently, she was forcibly protecting Orin’s soul using the power of the cage returned from Trot, but this was ultimately just a stopgap measure.

Without a clear solution, Orin’s soul would eventually disappear.

It was quite a troublesome situation for Dorothea, who had intended to at least allow for a final conversation with her mentees, if not a complete resurrection.

“It might be an option to just cleanly give up on what can’t be helped. Tsk.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that if it’s Dorothea’s teacher, shouldn’t she be able to do something somehow!]

“If we’re talking about whether it’s possible or not, it seems like it might be, but I don’t think Teacher would kindly help anyone.”

At that moment, someone rang the doorbell of the mansion where the two were.

Dorothea thought that if it was people spouting nonsense about the Tin Knight’s power or the transmission of necromancy secrets again, she would beat them up and drive them out, but when she confirmed the identity of the visitor, she couldn’t help but make a dumbfounded face.

“It’s been a while, Dorothea Aschengard. Can we talk for a moment? It’s about the Witch of the North, and your future.”

Algind Goodwitch.

The Witch of the South’s top protégé had come to visit the party.

***

https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken