Release that Witch

...

”How is she?” Roland asked. Roland put down the pen, looking up at Nightingale who had just quietly appeared in his office.

”She’s fallen asleep. Before that, she had a bowl of oatmeal. It seems that she had a good appetite.” Nightingale went to the table and sat back in her old place. ”Now it’s Silvio’s turn to guard her.”

”Well, that’s not bad.”

”Do you believe what she said?” Nightingale asked.

”With the God’s Stone of Retaliation being removed, you can easily judge if she is lying when you question her tomorrow, but...” Roland paused for a moment, ”I think most of what she said is true.”

”Why do you think so?” she asked curiously.

”Have you noticed that as a person from 400 years ago, she’s using the same diction and language as us?” the prince said with his hands propping up his chin. ”Theoretically, such a situation would be almost impossible for two territories separated by the Impassable Mountain Range, unless these two territories were of the same origin and had frequent contact.”

”But she called the Four Kingdoms the Barbarian Land.”

”That’s the point ... I don’t know what the scene was like 400 years ago. Perhaps all this used to be was just a few scattered villages and some criminals exiled by the world of witches. The Kingdom’s history book also records that the age of the major cities was generally between 200 and 300 years, and astrologers also came into existence during that era,” he said with great interest. ”It had always bewildered me that the astrologers, who generally had no achievements nor research findings, were also called ’sages’, the same as alchemists. Now I think I’ve got my answer—the Union fled to this borderland, and brought with them the survivors, their language and civilization. These people mingled with the locals, and helped the latter build the regime, fortress and city.”

”You speak as if you’d seen it happening.” Nightingale shook her head, smiling.

”This is the only way we can explain why we’re using the same language as her,” Roland said earnestly, ”because we’re of the same origin. And during these 400 years, civilization was constantly in the process of rebuilding without the slightest opportunity of advancing past where it used to be. ”Alright,” she said with her hands laid out, ”anyway, you’ll know the answer by tomorrow, and if your guess is wrong... then you’ll have to give me a ’luxury lunch’.”

The so-called luxury lunch was composed of corn soup, roast chicken drumstick and ice cream bread and was usually only served once a week.

”What if you’re wrong?”

”Whatever you want,” said Nightingale, tilting her head and squinting. The perfect curve formed by her cheek and smooth neck was exceptionally beautiful. ”Regardless of what kind of movement an attractive person makes, it will always look seductive.” Roland finally believed this saying.

”I will bear that in mind,” he said with two coughs, turning his attention back to his notebook.

Since Agatha had only recently awakened after four decades of sleep, Roland didn’t want to press her to give accurate and detailed answers to all his questions. For the most part, his questions followed her train of thought, and the information he gained was quite disordered as a result. What he was doing at the moment was to rearrange the information he gleaned from Agatha, and to find out the key points he had to know next.

Undoubtedly, the most pressing problem was about the demons.

What was the cause of the war with the demons, and why did the demons cease fighting? This information was essential to Border Town. No war could have been started without a reason, but the demons’ behavior didn’t seem like an attack motivated by resources or expansion. They didn’t occupy the Barbarian Land, nor did they pillage mankind. What they did seemed like an act purely for the joy of slaughter.

Roland also noticed that Agatha mentioned the term Battle of Divine Will. Could it be that the two sides waged the dreadful war under the will of God? But at that time, the Church hadn’t come into being, so there wasn’t the one and only God that the Church declared. Without this explained, his mind remained unsettled.

Meanwhile, he needed to figure out the basic necessities of life in the Holy City’s civilization as soon as possible, or in other words, assess its degree of economic and civil development. He needed this information to measure the level of this civilization and deduce the demons’ capabilities.

As for the Union, Roland wasn’t too concerned about it. Its witches were scarce and their abilities were unstable. This organization’s capability for organized combat wouldn’t be very high. Historical experience had repeatedly stressed that before the formation of a generation gap, a comprehensive war was all about attrition. A few sophisticated weapons wouldn’t reverse the overall disadvantage.

The second question was about the Magic Stone.

Considering what Tilly said, the magical nature of such stones could greatly compensate for the witches’ unstable ability, enabling the witches to exert powers that didn’t belong to them. In this way, even auxiliary witches could be sent to war. However, in Roland’s point of view, that was like putting the cart before the horse. He’d rather turn all the combat witches into auxiliary witches and put them all to work in production roles.

Oddly enough, the Union, which had large numbers of witches, didn’t make use of Magic Stones to fight against the demons. Instead, it chose to produce God’s Punishment Army, which in Roland’s view was beyond comprehension. Maybe the Magic Stone had some unknown shortcomings, or its production was extremely difficult?

Fortunately, Agatha was a member of the Quest Society, an organization similar to the current Alchemy Workshop, which gathered a group of highly talented witches specializing in the research of Magic Stones and magic power. Roland faintly felt that there must be a wealth of potential information to be exploited.

The last question was about the Church.

He drew a circle on this column. Obviously, he couldn’t count on getting details from Agatha about the organization’s foundation and development. What he could infer from the scattered information at hand was that the Church was founded after the witches’ defeat. After obtaining the Union’s secret, the Church concealed everything about the witches and declared them as incarnations of demons. If the people of the Four Kingdoms were seen as descendants of aborigines, the Church would be a veritable outsider. Since the aborigines didn’t have their own civilization, they could be easily fooled by fabricated history and prophecies.

”Was it only because the witches used to suppress ordinary people that the refugees took the witches as their enemy and went on to hunt the witches on this continent?” Roland frowned. ”All these deductions did sound reasonable, yet... he felt that there was something wrong.”

The Union had a great number of Bliss Warriors, Extraordinary Witches, and even Transcendents. Even if the Church managed to get a hold of God’s Stones of Retaliation, was it possible for them to defeat an opponent like the Union?

To wipe out a much stronger force, you couldn’t purely rely on hatred. Clearly there was some key information missing.

”That witch seems to dislike you,” Nightingale suddenly said.

”After all, she used to live in a world where the witches were considered superior to the human being.” Roland laughed. ”I’m afraid I’m just no different from the roadside weeds in her eyes.”

”Don’t you hate her?”

”Why would I? She is nothing but a poor woman abandoned by her own time.” He shook his head. ”She’d been sleeping in the frozen coffin for 400 years, and woke up to find the world had completely changed. The strangeness brought by the new world would bring her fear, so it was no surprise that she would build a defensive wall in her heart. After she accepts all this, she will probably gradually change her point of view.”

”What a typical response of yours,” said Nightingale with a smile. ”But rest assured, I won’t allow her to offend you in any way.”