BXBX NOVEL Chapter 302 302 Things At Home
"That\'s exactly the sort of mess we\'re in. Honestly, we weren\'t completely sure how much influence you had on the village, so we were a bit afraid they would take a "shoot first, and ask questions later" approach to dealing with the Morgana Coven. The Rebels have turned basically everyone in the territory outside the City against the Coven, and getting anything is a pain.
The villages had no way to learn firsthand of what happened in the city, so they got their news from the traitor military units who looted them dry and then basically disappeared."
That didn\'t make sense. If they weren\'t defeated, it shouldn\'t be hard to find a whole bloody army.
"What do you mean, they disappeared?" He asked.
"Just that. We suspect that they actually went to work with the humans, despite their whole \'no humans in the witch cities\' talking point.
They were fighting, then they disengaged and just seemed to vanish. We have searched for them, tried to use scrying to find them, everything, but there is no sign of where the leaders of the army went or where most of the numbers have gone.
It\'s likely some Witch Magic thing blocking the search, but in practice, they\'re just gone, and nobody can find them."
"I guess we will have to note that as an unsolved mystery for the moment until we can find them or find out what happened to them. For all we know, they might have disguised themselves as Mundane Army units and hid somewhere in the Frozen Wastes or Morgana Territory to bide their time until they think they have a chance again.
But you four should get a shower and then meet us in the spire for lunch. I think you\'ll like the rooms. They work the same as usual, with no added magic needed for a nice hot shower. Well, technically, it is using magic, but we have arranged everything in advance with Arrays, so the whole city just needs a charge every day."
Wolfe led them up to the guest rooms and left them to their routine while he went to find Cook and see what was for lunch. It was coming up in only a few minutes, and they had asked for the above-ground buffet today so that everyone could meet the visitors.
Well, maybe it was for their own entertainment as the witches from the Morgana Coven realized just how different things were here, but the best part was definitely going to be when they met the seven young students who were clearly not old enough to have awakened their auras, but who were already getting quite powerful, thanks to the dense mana in the area.
Once the newest five had a chance to summon a Familiar, they would be doing even better, but the density of the mana in the area still forced some through to their aura, even without one.
It was really holding them back, waiting for most of a month until the next full moon to do the summoning again, but their summoning ritual routine was working very well, and nobody wanted to mess with a good thing and risk getting a batch of mediocre Familiars, when even the plainest of the last batch, the Flame Winged Sparrows, were still relatively powerful magical creatures.
Though, if they wanted to experiment, they did have a bunch of freshly healed Witches here from the city. Wolfe wondered if any of them were among the group that never had a Familiar before being drafted.
The entire draft seemed to have been based on lineage, so some of the ones who were sent couldn\'t really be called Witches, and they might have never attempted the spell, so they would still be able to call their first Familiar.
He knew he really should feel bad about thinking of them as test subjects, but he really did want to know what the Summoning Circle in the tower would call on a normal afternoon.
One after another, the members of the delegation joined them at the tables set up on the balcony of the spire, though Wolfe noticed a few who chose to sit inside, with their back to the wall, facing the center of the spire.
That was one of the larger oversights of this city\'s design. Even if you told them that there were safety spells in place, a lot of people were simply terrified of heights.
Their fears certainly weren\'t calmed by the fact that nearly everyone in Forest Grove had a staff with a flying spell on it now, and it was much faster to get up to lunch that way than to take the elevator, so most of them chose to fly.
"Whose genius idea was that?" Headmistress Peach asked, pointing toward a group of witches who had flown up to one of the walkways to avoid the crowd headed for the spire.
"It was a mutual decision. We were working on uniforms for the patrols, and the staves were chosen as the multipurpose weapon and tool of choice. There is an attack spell, a flying spell, and a disguise spell inscribed into it, so it can serve every purpose they need.
In addition to the enchanted staves, the green robes and the fancy hats have [Grasping Vines] and [Horrific Visage] Witch charms on them to scare and capture trespassers.
It\'s a bit like living in a movie, though, isn\'t it? Everyone flying around everywhere, and the mundane helpers won\'t be here for another few weeks. We recruited a bunch from the villages that are now in the Forest so that we had the skilled workers we needed.
A whole village of powerful witches is great, but all of them are draftees and recent graduates, so none of them had much job training outside the army." Wolfe laughed.
Mary came running up and hugged the Headmistress from behind, with today\'s choice of white lace lolita dress and silk cape embroidered with hundreds of roses billowing around her as she came to a sudden stop.
"You really don\'t hold back now that you don\'t have to wear a uniform, do you?" Peach laughed as she realized who was holding her and what Mary was wearing.
"Not at all. Do you like our newly created school uniforms? Aren\'t they adorable?" Mary asked with a gesture to where the seven young Witches had just come into sight.
"Oh, you have children here. Did you open a grade school? No, wait, they look young, but they\'re Witches?
Wolfe, what did you do?"
Mary laughed and poked Wolfe in the side.
"See, I knew she would blame you right away."
Wolfe waved the girls over and placed his hands on Katerina\'s shoulders so that she wouldn\'t hide from the Headmistress. Or, more likely, Mary.
"I would like to introduce you to our first-year class at the Forest Grove Academy. The rest of the witches are working on finishing their educations with the materials we have obtained, but these are our seven newest students. Katerina here was the first to have the Curse cleansed from her body, and the Faerie that you have likely seen flitting about the trees is her Familiar.
It is thanks to the pair of them that we have a Fae Forest here. The Familiar was the one that shaped the spells for us, with the help of everyone here in Forest Grove." Wolfe explained.
If Wolfe had thought that Headmistress Peach was shocked before, it was nothing compared to the look on her face when Katerina lowered her hood and the fluffy cat ears popped free to flick out their flattened fur.