Chapter 62

Episode 62

The Three Witches

“I’m sorry. The knight led me to a distant place and I was waiting there. I came out because I was nervous and the door was locked, so I was late coming back.”

After he had finished speaking, he looked at my hands, wrapped them in his own hands, and pulled out a fragment of the vase from my hand.

Blood was dripping from the wound caused by the sharp piece of the vase which had been pressed against my hand. I didn’t realise, but I think I was still holding it. He pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it tightly around my hand to stop the bleeding.

I watched silently and opened my mouth. Ding. The seventh bell rang.

“Near the Empress’s Palace… there is a big mirror, need you to bring it, is there anyone out there?”

“There is not.”

“Then bring the mirror without being noticed by anyone. If it seems impossible to move the mirror, any other mirror is fine. Bring it as soon as possible.”

“All right.”

By the time the ninth bell rang, Anakin returned with a large mirror. I stood in front of the mirror that he firmly held.

“Medea, the bell is ringing. Help me.”

“Ah, in the end.”

Give me your hand. Medea said so and reached out to me. I stretched out my hand as if possessed, and caught her hand through the mirror.

I grabbed the witch’s hand tightly and pulled her out of her mirror. She slipped out of the mirror and adjusted her dress.

“I don’t have time, so I’ll skip the greeting.”

Medea, who glanced down at the dead crown prince on the bed, drew two circles on the floor with her fingernails. And when she tapped the floor inside the circle, the circle burned with light. Two women appeared in the blazing light.

Both had lustrous black hair, the woman with smooth dark brown skin had bright and vivid eyes, a high nose and plump lips. The other woman had ivory-colored skin with long, fierce eyes and a slightly raised slim chin.

“What’s going on, Medea?”

“…….A stranger?”

“I’ll explain later. I think there are only a few Bells of Transcendence left. How many times has it rung so far?”

“I just heard the eleventh bell.”

“There’s only two left.”

Medea shrugged her eyebrows once and took a bell out of her arms. It was the bronze bell that I was going to touch at the store. She squeezed it to me and pushed me between them. The other three witches held each other’s hands and circled around me.

“I’ll say the spell, so make sure to ring the bell.”

“Okay.”

They started chanting a spell, it was a kind of language that I couldn’t understand. But as I was getting closer to becoming a witch, I unconsciously noticed that it was the ‘witch’s language’.

The bronze bell did not make any sound even when it was shaken, but strangely, as time passed, a bell began to sound.

It was not the sound of a distant bell, but as if this bronze bell was making a sound. And my body heated up like it was burning. It seemed to be engulfed in flames.

Medea winked at me not to stop ringing the bell. I felt like I was getting burned, but I held it in and constantly shook the bell.

When they finally let go of their hands, I dropped the bell on the floor. While I blew on my hands, Medea smiled and picked up the bronze bell again. The sound of the bell stopped before I knew it.

“You’re the stranger Medea has been helping these days.”

“Ah… Nice to meet you…….”

“Hello. These are my sisters, Isis and Mirang… I didn’t know Mirang would come.”

While greeting Isis awkwardly, a woman called Mirang blinked and said.

“Circe is busy playing with her concubine, so if you were to call her, she would ask me to go instead.”

“Did her lover change again? Ha, that’s too bad.”

Medea wrinkled her nose and pointed with her chin at the crown prince in the back.

“I needed Circe and Isis to deal with that.”

“Reviving is my area of expertise……. It’s not so much that it makes him move, but rather, it’s close to that.”

“It can move and speak, but it’s actually still a corpse,

Isis.”

“Humans can move and speak.”

Isis grumbled, but Mirang talked casually.

“If you don’t like that method, why not just turn back

time?”

“Is it possible…”

“Even if it’s too much to turn the whole day around, half of it should be enough for the three of us.”

“Even if we turn back the time for two people?”

“Then half of that.”

Isis said, shrugging her shoulders. At her words, Medea sighed and muttered as she facepalmed,

“Ah, I should have brought Circe…”

“You asked Circe to find the sword, and she had a hard time, so please cut her some slack today.”

“We’ve come here to help you, but are you ignoring Mirang’s specialty right now because it isn’t magic?”

Isis lightly pinched Medea’s cheek. Mirang also ruffled Medea’s hair with her smug face. Rather than being angry, it was like a teasing act on a little sister.

I was going to hold it in because they were busy, but I couldn’t. I raised my hand slightly and asked.

“I’m sorry, but what is one’s specialty?”

“Ah, a specialty…how should I say this? It’s an area that a witch is interested in and understands more deeply than other witches.”

Isis added to Medea’s explanation.

“It’s useless to argue with a witch about who is stronger. We’ve all reached one extreme point, so there’s nothing more to develop. We can’t go up, so we decided to go down..”

After Isis beckoned a few times, a picture was dimly drawn on her hand with smoke. Several witches played on her hand.

“Some witches love death, so they began to study how to make it easier, more comfortable and less painful to die. Some witches studied the passage of

time and explored how to twist it, and some witches put all their energy into digging into the mind.”

Medea intervened at Isis’ explanation and said.

“Isis loves time, Mirang loves power.”

My guess was right. If Isis, Circe and Mirang have their respective specialties’, then Mirang is probably talking about the ‘nonexistence of power’.

(T/N: “nonexistence of power” means the power that shouldn’t “exist”, forbidden power)

“Then what about you?”

“I don’t know… What could it be? I’ll let you know when I have time later. I don’t want to waste my strength doing things that can’t be helped, so stop coming in here now, both of you.”

Medea fixed her hair and avoided my answer again. She’s always like this. When Medea called Anakin and me, Mirang looked at us with a cold gaze and asked.

“How can you devote yourself to helping strangers who are nothing special?”

“Don’t say that, Mirang. I found it thanks to them.”

At Medea’s words, Mirang opened her eyes wide and opened her mouth slightly.

The same was true of Isis.

“Did you find it?”

“I found it.”

“… Then you’re our savior.”

Isis looked at me for a while and bowed her knees slightly to greet me. Mirang also bowed her head with both hands together.

What did you find? I looked at Medea because I was embarrassed, but Medea was just smiling.

“That’s it for the greeting……. If you turn back time, you will be the only two who will not be affected by that time. All the other people’ won’t remember. Since it wasn’t there in the first place.”

This time, the three witches crossed their hands in an X-shape and grabbed us. It was a little cramped for Anakin and I to enter between the circles. Tick-tock. I heard the clock’s second hand.

“I don’t know if it will really benefit you or not.”

I held Anakin’s hand tightly. One side of my mind was anxious.

“I hope you make a satisfactory choice this time.”

When I woke up and opened my eyes, I was in the witch’s shop. Obviously, I was clenching his hand, but Anakin was gone. Instead, Medea was the only one who smiled brightly. I blinked a little because it was not realistic. Did I succeed? I wasn’t sure.

“You are back to the time when I looked at your fortune.”

“……Anakin?”

“I called him. He’ll be here soon.”

Medea gave me tea. Because my hands were still shaking.

She asked me quietly.

“What are you going to do? I can’t turn back time twice.”

“First of all… I have to go to the academy with Anakin. There’s a person who witnessed us there, and I think it’s related to the person who suspects the Marquis as a criminal.”

“The Emperor will call you again. It’s only the time of you both that went back, so the rest will try to repeat the same behavior.”

“I know. That’s why I’m thinking of going to someone the Emperor can’t move.”

The Empress. As long as I am with the Empress, the Emperor will not be able to bring me out.

I didn’t mean to protect the Marquis.

If the Marquis had his head cut off for treason, it was more beneficial for me. But my head, the traitor’s daughter, would be cut by his side.

However, depending on whether it was the Emperor, the Empress or the Crown Prince who wanted to kill the Marquis, there was a possibility that he could not die without luck.

– Now I have to give it back. You did not marry me, but this Imperial family.

….I remember what the Crown Prince said before he tried to touch me. Judging from the prince’s expression and attitude, it seemed that the prince did not want to prevent the breakup of the marriage.

The Empress decided that he could break up with me, so what was left was the Emperor. The Emperor trying to stop the breakup drove the Marquis to treason? There was no reason for that to happen.

Then, either the empress or the crown prince charged the marquis with treason……. If the empress was the culprit, it didn’t matter that she betrayed me, but if it was the Crown Prince, I wouldn’t die.

The Emperor will save me. Because I’m the Crown Princess from a noble family without a single maternal relative, there is no better woman to hold and shake.