I had built a manor inside a verdant forest...and that’s where I lived.
“Lady Witch! Good morning!”
“Good morning, Teto.”
“I’m looking forward to the breakfast Beretta and the others made for us today!”
I headed to the dining hall with Teto, who was smiling and skipping along happily. When we arrived, our food was already laid out on the table as Beretta, my manor’s head maid, waited for us.
“Good morning, Beretta, everyone.”
“Good morning! I’ve been looking forward to breakfast!”
“Good morning, Mistress, Lady Teto,” Beretta greeted us.
She was a doll attendant I had once found in some old ruins. In those early days after I’d found her, she would eat at the same table with Teto and me. But after many long years and the addition of more doll attendants to assist as her subordinates, dining times were split between groups. Nowadays she usually waited patiently off to the side, save for the rare occasions we all ate together. Though I found it a little sad, more doll maids made the manor livelier, and I accepted it as just another change in life.
After Teto and I were seated, we feasted on our meal and enjoyed a pot of tea Beretta prepared for us.
“Delicious, as always. Thank you for the meal,” I said.
“Thank you for making breakfast every day!”
“You are both far too kind, Mistress and Lady Teto.”
After our meal we moved to the terrace and I admired the view. The doll attendants I’d made using Beretta’s body as a reference model were doing farmwork, managing the manor, and harvesting food for our meals.
Meanwhile I intended to spend the day reading books, taking naps, and living a self-indulgent life. But I had the right to do so.
“The trees sure have grown a lot, haven’t they?”
“Mmmph... Yeah, they have. To think this used to all be wasteland,” Teto replied after chowing down her snack. Despite having just eaten breakfast, she was already helping herself to some scones slathered in jam Beretta had made from the strawberries grown in the fields.
One might assume the manor had been built after clearing out a grove of trees, but the splendid forest had grown long after the building was raised. In the beginning, it had been a barren wasteland.
After an ancient magical civilization had gone on a rampage, the land’s mana was drained, the leylines ravaged, and the terrain reduced to a desolate void. Teto, the others, and I had spent several hundred years planting trees across barren land the size of a small country. We filled the air with our mana, grew trees to attract living things, and created an ecosystem. We also placed a magical keystone to govern and manage the damaged leylines (which circulated mana all around the world), and to move excess mana elsewhere so as to avoid an overabundance of it in any one area.
“Ah, by the way, Mistress. An envoy from the country that neighbors our forest is scheduled to arrive today.”
“What for?”
“I believe there has been a change in kings. The envoy is likely coming to report this, since you have a contract with their country.”
“Ah, a change in kings, huh. Then I’ll have to prepare some elixirs.” I downed the rest of my tea and set my cup aside before standing.
I then headed to the keystone that managed the leylines, and the magic tools that controlled it. Not only did the stone adjust the flow of mana, but it also stored the excess mana that it absorbed from the leylines. Its maximum capacity was 10,000,000 MP.
I utilized a portion of this mana to cast a spell.
“Creation: elixir!” I used the unique skill the goddess had given me as a reincarnation bonus—Creation Magic. This allowed me to use mana to create objects out of nothing. But instead of using my own mana as I normally would, I utilized the leyline mana stored by the keystone, creating three elixirs: crimson all-purpose remedies. It took 1,000,000 mana points to make a single one.
“Whew, it really takes a while to create something in the 1,000,000-MP class...”
“Thank you, Mistress. I will watch over these until it is time to hand them over.”
“Okay, thanks. Hopefully that will be enough to satisfy the delegation, and then they’ll go right back home.”
“Lady Witch, after they leave, I want to go for a walk.”
“A walk? Sure, it’d be nice to go see everyone again, I suppose.”
In the forest where we lived, aside from my manor, there were a number of different settlements. We had hidden villages for persecuted races, and housed mythical and sacred beasts that were on the verge of extinction due to overhunting and environmental shifts caused by humans. We had revived a wasteland the size of a small country into a forest, and now protected rare creatures and those who were chased out of their homes.
This region was once called the Wasteland of Nothingness, but now it was known as the Witch of Creation’s Forest.
This is the story about my reincarnation into another world, and my carefree nomadic life before creating a place for myself. Or, the long, long annals of this alternate world after I created somewhere I belonged.