Winter was almost over. Soon spring would arrive, and so would my birthday. I’d officially turn ninety. I had spent the last few weeks going from settlement to settlement to say goodbye to everyone, occasionally dropping by the church.
“Witch, you’re here again? And your guardian too,” Shael noted when she spotted me.
“Aren’t you two leaving soon?” Raphilia asked me. “Do you really not have anything better to do than sit there?”
I had been staring idly at the statues of the goddesses; at the sound of their voices, I turned to greet them, smiling blithely.
“Everyone keeps trying to convince me to stay in the forest. This is the only place where I can truly relax,” I explained.
“The kids at the mansion are all really sad to see us go,” Teto added.
The representatives of all of the races in the forest had encouraged me to leave, but many others didn’t want us to go. The kids would throw their arms around my waist and beg me to stay, while the mythical beasts would bite the hem of my robes and pull it as if to say, “Please don’t leave us.” While I was moved to see how much they cared about me, comforting them one by one was really exhausting. To top it all off, some of the servants and office staff at the mansion looked like they didn’t want me to leave either, and the bigger mythical beasts had even started mock-fighting each other in front of me to show that they were strong enough to protect me on my travels.
And so, whenever I felt like having some peace and quiet, I had nowhere to go but the church.
“That’s proof of how much everyone loves you both. Well, I have to say I’m glad you popped by. You even made a statue for the last goddess!” Shael said, pointing at the new Loriel statue I had just installed.
We now had accurate statues of all five goddesses, and while I hadn’t voiced it out loud, I was very pleased to have completed the collection.
“It felt weird having only one statue be different from the others,” I explained.
“They look very pretty,” Teto added.
I had taken inspiration from the goddesses’ appearances as I saw them in the dream oracles and made the statues with my Creation Magic. All five of them looked incredibly majestic. I made a last prayer to the statues, telling them that I would be resuming my travels soon and five soft voices echoed in my mind, all of them wishing me safe travels.
“We’ll be heading on home. See you two later,” I said, standing up.
“Bye-bye! We’ll come again soon!” Teto added.
Shael and Raphilia saw us off, and we returned to the mansion.
Then, a few days later...
“We’re off.”
“We’ll bring you lots of souvenirs! Look forward to them, okay?”
It was finally time for our departure. We had asked the griffins and pegasuses who were traveling to the Liebel margravate to trade to take us to Darryl, and they had kindly accepted. I had preemptively changed into my sixteen-year-old appearance so that no one would recognize me.
“Be safe on your travels, Master. We will look after this land during your absence,” Beretta said as she and the several other maids who had accompanied us to Darryl bowed their heads to us.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re making it sound like a much bigger deal than it really is. We might be going away, but we’ll be dropping by often. And you can always contact me if anything happens.”
I had put my trusty magic communication crystal and a couple of transfer gates in my magic bag in case of emergencies. Beretta would give me periodic reports, and if I deemed that I was needed, I’d use my transfer gates to return to the Forest, so it wasn’t like I’d be out in the wild with no way to be contacted for years. I really wished Beretta wouldn’t take it as seriously as she did.
“Well then, Teto, let’s go.”
“Roger!”
The first leg of our journey would be a trip to the graves of the three people who earned me my promotion to S-rank adventurer: Arsus in Apanemis, King Alberd—Selene’s father—in Ischea, and Gyunton in Gald. King Alberd and Gyunton were a king and a duke, respectively, so we most likely wouldn’t be able to visit their graves directly, but we planned on offering a few prayers to the stone monument honoring their families as our way of paying our respects.
“First stop: Apanemis. Teleport!”
We disappeared right from under Beretta’s eyes and found ourselves in a meadow outside the dungeon city.
“It sure has been a while since the last time we came here.”
“Lady Witch, will we be using Teleportation Magic again to go to King Alberd and Gyunton’s graves?”
“Probably not. I’d rather we take our time and stop by a few towns along the way. It’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything.”
Teleportation Magic allowed me to reach my destination in a split second. I had decided to use it to take us to Apanemis, but I didn’t want to abuse it and miss out on the joys of travel: unexpected encounters, unseen landscapes, and local culture. For the past decade, my only outings had been to sell potions and use the money I’d made from them to buy tea, books, and works of art. But I pretty much always rotated between the same couple of towns and hadn’t done proper sightseeing in Gald or Ischea in over fifty years. I thought it’d be nice to take a little trip down memory lane and stop by the towns I used to be familiar with on my way to pay my respects to Arsus and the others. And if there was a new town I hadn’t explored before, then all the better. Besides, with my current appearance and C-rank guild card, no one would recognize me, which meant that there was no reason for me to abuse my Teleportation Magic. I wouldn’t be using our flying carpet either, as it was pretty much our trademark and it’d be an instant giveaway.
“Okay! Let’s go visit Arsus’s grave! Then, we’ll take our time to go see Gyunton and King Alberd,” Teto said.
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan. But what should we do after?” I wondered out loud.
I took out the travel diaries I had retrieved from the fallen Kingdom of Krista and looked at them with Teto.
“I’d like to go somewhere we’ve never been before,” I said.
“Teto agrees! Teto wants to go eat some yummy food!”
The two of us huddled together in front of the book, discussing our options. We decided to first travel through Ischea and Gald on our way to pay our respects to Gyunton and King Alberd, and then make our way to a brand-new nation.
Teto and I exchanged smiles as we entered the city of Apanemis, our hearts pounding with anticipation of the new adventures waiting for us.