episode_0275

In the witch’s forest, there are no horses.

There are no witches who raise horses, no witches who ride horses, and no witches who drive carriages.

The reason is simple yet straightforward. Raising and handling horses requires surprisingly good communication skills.

Horses are intelligent animals that can express their emotions. They can show joy with their expressions, indicate sadness by lowering their heads, communicate pain through tears, spit if they are in a bad mood, and even kick nearby people when angry.

Of course, the witches, who are made up of half of their own concocted potions, won’t die from a kick, but what’s more important is that horses express emotions more freely than one might think.

“W-why are there h-h-horses in front of the e-elders’ house…?”

The witches, who are always cautious and self-conscious, are no exception when it comes to dealing with horses. They don’t want to regulate their emotions even with livestock.

That’s why witches are afraid of horses. The trembling LaLa beside me is proof of that.

It’s not that they are afraid of physical harm, but rather they are afraid of upsetting the horses’ emotions. In fact, animals with rich emotional expressions, not just horses, are all feared. Dogs, sheep, goats, pigs, deer, and so on…

Except for cats, witches dislike almost all mammals. If witches were to keep pets other than cats, they would probably stick to birds, amphibians, or reptiles.

So, the fact that there are well-groomed horses and gleaming carriages meant that there were visitors from outside at the house of the three elders. Except for the royal carriage we all came in.

“The royal delivery date is still far off.”

And this scheduled delivery was Seraphine’s responsibility, to arrive 2-3 weeks after finishing Liria’s event, so there was no reason for the royal carriage to arrive now.

“Huh? This is…”

I looked at the carriage, hoping to recognize it, and somehow a pattern that seemed familiar caught my eye.

It wasn’t the royal pattern. Nor was it the church’s pattern. And certainly not the Blackwood pattern.

I tried to recall all the noble patterns I knew, but nothing came to mind.

“Well, I can’t remember all the noble patterns.”

Still, if it’s a memorable pattern, I should remember the face. With that thought in mind, I knocked on the door of the three elders’ house without hesitation.

-Knock, knock, knock.

“Hello? Are the witch elders here?”

“W-wait, Rosewood…! I-I think there’s a guest, but next time…! C-come back later…!!”

“The witch exam is in three days, and if there’s a ritual the elders must perform before the exam, it’s best to tell them as soon as possible.”

“T-that’s true, but… I-I’m not fully prepared to meet the elders yet… A-and if there are other guests there…”

“I’ll tell Maychilling to handle it, so don’t worry. If you need to talk to the guest who visited, I’ll figure something out.”

“A-alright… I-if that’s the case…”

LaLa cautiously nodded behind me as I offered to speak on their behalf.

She’s taller than me and our chest sizes are similar, so she won’t be completely hidden behind me, but I didn’t mind.

Waiting in front of the house of the three elders with a somewhat awkward posture, we waited for someone to come out, but even after knocking on the door for quite some time, no one came out of the house of the three elders.

“……”

“……”

“Um, maybe they’re not here right now…? Should we come back another time…?”

-Knock, knock, knock.

“Excuse me, elders~? Are you inside~?”

“Oh, Rosewood…! What if the elders get startled by knocking like that…!!”

“You just said they’re not here right now, so why the sudden panic? If they’re inside and didn’t hear, knocking again is fine, and if all three of them are not here, then there’s no one to be startled.”

“They could be pretending not to hear…!!”

“Pardon?”

“Well, they might be inside but not in the mood to meet people today, so they might be pretending not to hear…!! What if that’s the case…!!”

…Considering the witches’ communication skills, it was entirely possible, but my hand knocking on the door did not stop.

Originally, such a situation had never occurred in the original work. There had never been a time when knocking on the door and the elder pretending not to be there.

“Then you should tell them to come out faster. My witch exam is urgent right now, isn’t it?”

“My exam is important, but… the elders might need to prepare themselves mentally too…”

-Knock, knock, knock.

“Ah…!! Oh my…!!”

At the third knock, Lala wrapped her head as if committing a great sin and sat down on the floor.

Thinking about her reaction incredulously, wondering if there really was no one inside the house at that moment, the door opened and a familiar young man with the distinctive sky-blue hair of the Auguste family appeared.

“Right now, the elders are talking with our sister. So if you could come back later…”

“Master Karam?”

“…Miss Lily?”

Ah, right. The carriage pattern did seem familiar.

⁎ ⁎ ⁎

I thought the pattern seen from the carriage was familiar, and it turned out to be the emblem of the Auguste Changbaek family attached to Rizi’s uniform. It was a pattern I had seen every day during student council activities, so it was familiar in some way.

Perhaps if it had been another witch visiting, Karam would have thought to send me away, but facing someone he knew, he couldn’t bring himself to do so and led us into the house of the three elders.

Even if he had tried to kick me out, with a clear purpose in mind, I had forcibly entered the house with Karam.

“Master Karam, what brings you to the Witch’s Forest?”

“It’s the regular trade of the Auguste Upper House. Our Auguste also trades with the witches of the Witch’s Forest.”

“Um…?”

What is this nonsense? Was this kind of setting in the original work?

As far as I know, witches are extremely cautious when meeting new people and are reluctant to trade with anyone other than themselves or someone they know well.

Usually, witches are not keen on dealing with profit-seeking individuals, and this cautious nature of theirs often causes problems in dealings with profit-oriented groups.

Upper-class individuals who seek to extract maximum profit from dealings with witches often present rough estimates as soon as they meet the witches living in the forest. It’s like, ‘These guys look naive, so if we tie them up with a trap contract, we can profit from them for a long time.’

In that way, the contract that was cleverly mixed with difficult words and toxic clauses to the point where ordinary people couldn’t understand it, along with contract terms like ‘market price,’ ‘price fluctuations,’ and ‘gift options’ that could change at any time, was handed to the witches. They were lured into the dream of using that contract to continuously extract potions from innocent witches at a low price.

And those who presented such contracts to the witches had always returned empty-handed. Even though the witches may have had communication difficulties, they were not so stupid as to not understand the meaning of the toxic clauses in the contract.

From the beginning, being a witch was a job that one could not do if they were not smart. Even novice witches, with at least a few hundred years of experience, could store tens of thousands of potions in their heads.

Moreover, while they avoided conversations with strangers, their network among themselves was better built than that of most siblings, so rejecting one witch meant that all contracts with other witches would be in jeopardy.

“Did that person bring those strange contracts last time with hidden toxic clauses? I almost fell for it. Really? I should never talk to that outsider. It creates the same atmosphere.”

So, I naturally expressed my skepticism about the fact that the Augustus Upper Class was trading with the witches.

“Augustus Upper Class is trading with the witches regularly?”

“Yes. Of course, it’s not about buying and selling specific items in regular trade. You can think of it as a high-end carriage that only Madam can operate.”

“By any chance, does Miss Lizzie also engage in trade similar to Princess Seraphine?”

“Oh, yes. Madam has learned a lot from Princess’s methods.”

There was only one way to engage in regular trade with the witches. Pull the upper-class carriage but do not act like the upper class.

Just get to know each witch’s face, visit them when you need something, suggest if they want to buy something specific, and that’s it.

Most upper-class individuals gave up on this method of trade due to the time and effort it required, as well as its lack of stability. However, for Seraphine, whose insider status in the game was close to max level, this method of trade was possible.

Just like in the previous life, being kind to a nerd was also an object of admiration in this world.

And in front of me now, there was another person who was as full of insider power as Seraphine.

“Can I also take the witch test that’s coming up, Elder? I want to be a witch too.”

The charming voice of the Augustus family’s darling, who was persuading the three elders. It was the moment of reunion with Lizzie after the start of the summer vacation.

It was a meeting in a completely unexpected way.