Donnengarten was in an uproar.

“What on earth is going on!? Not once, but twice in a row the tower’s defenses have been breached! I told you to be thorough with the security!”

“W-we’re sorry, my lord.”

“In that case, I’ll personally—“

“No, you mustn’t!”

“That’s right. Not only those who were originally guarding the tower, but even those newly approaching the tower are collapsing immediately. It’s too dangerous!”

“Hmm.”

The lord sighed, but his retainers were adamant.

Not only the soldiers guarding the area around the tower, but even other soldiers who approached to check on the condition of those who had fallen immediately lost consciousness, as if fainting.

Moreover, pale somethings were suddenly appearing here and there, circling around those who had fallen, creating an eerie atmosphere.

There was no way they could send the lord near the tower in this situation.

Meanwhile, Adelaide, who had been watching this whole situation from a corner, asked in a trembling voice, “T-this, M-Miss Witch did this, right?”

“Probably. You can see the vengeful spirits here and there.”

“Will we be able to… deal with the aftermath?”

“Hmm, maybe?”

At Sophia’s somewhat carefree answer, Adelaide made a sour expression.

“But it’s strange. Usually, Miss Witch was reluctant to use necromancy in front of others. I wonder why she’s doing it so openly this time?”

“There could be several reasons for that. Maybe because this is such a rural area, she thought rumors wouldn’t spread to other places as much, or looking at the situation, she thought she could deny it wasn’t her doing, or perhaps she’s gotten so fired up to resolve this matter that she’s willing to go this far. And, most importantly.”

“Most importantly?”

“Maybe hanging around with Sir Tin has broken her standards a bit? Thinking, ‘This much should be fine, right?’”

“…”

“Ah, please don’t tell her I said that. Though I wouldn’t stop you if you want to watch her vehemently deny it at first, then writhe in self-loathing.”

Adelaide nodded blankly.

***

Rapunzel quietly composed her breathing.

She recalled the “plan” she had received through the bone mouse in her mind.

I’ll explain one last time before we start, so listen carefully.

The “tower” you’re in is a space different from reality. It’s likely that only those who meet certain conditions can enter, but we lack both the time and resources to investigate in detail. However, its a different story if you give us hints from your side.

When the operation starts, swallow the gem the mouse is carrying. It contains my mana, and if you consume it, my mana will dwell in your body.

Cut your hair and place it in the locations the bone mice show you. So I can detect my mana that has entered your body.

However, after you swallow the gem, we won’t have a way to see your condition from this side. You won’t be in a situation to leisurely read writing either. In other words, we won’t be able to communicate anymore.

I’m not going to say things like, “Do your best,” or “You can do it,” we don’t even know each other that well to begin with. But I’ll say this one thing.

Somehow make it happen. If you want to get out of there.

Rapunzel looked at the ground.

One bone mouse, whose presence had greatly weakened perhaps because it had removed its gem and given it to Rapunzel, used its half-worn tail as chalk to write words.

“Start.”

“Hup.”

Rapunzel gulped down the gem she had been holding in her hand.

Questions about whether it was okay to eat a gem that had been attached to an undead were meaningless.

If she didn’t do it, a gloomy future awaited her, whether starving to death, dying of stress, or some other more miserable fate, so what did it matter if it upset her stomach a little?

The gem, which had been solid when she first put it in her mouth, melted like water by the time it went down her throat.

At the same time, vitality surged through Rapunzel’s body.

In stark contrast to her lethargy from not eating properly for days, energy overflowed as much as—no, even more than usual.

She kicked the door with all her might.

Bang!

The iron door that had confined Rapunzel rolled on the floor with a loud noise, and the bone mouse with its shortened tail leaped over it.

Rapunzel started running, following the bone mouse.

Clack!

When the bone mouse showed the motion of circling around a certain point on the floor, Rapunzel grasped the end of her long hair and wrapped mana around her hand.

As her hair was cut to a length that could be fully grasped in her palm, Rapunzel threw it into the center of the circle the bone mouse had made.

As soon as the bone mouse confirmed this, it immediately ran towards the stairs. Rapunzel followed behind.

The layout of each floor was chaotic.

She thought she had gone up from a place with four doors to one with eight, but then suddenly three would appear, or she would clearly go up the stairs and then back down, but a different floor from what she had seen before would appear.

The locations designated by the bone mouse were also completely arbitrary, such as blank walls, between stairs, gaps in tightly locked room doors, so Rapunzel had to sprint and scatter her hair in a truly frantic manner.

She was anxious about whether things were going well, but there was no longer any means to communicate with the mysterious “witch”.

Above all, the situation didn’t allow her the luxury of leisurely worrying.

Clank. Clank. Clank!

With footsteps approaching faster and faster, “they” revealed themselves.

Armor appropriately mixed with metal and leather. Grasped spears.

While they looked exactly like the guards that could be seen anywhere in Donnengarten, the problem was the contents.

Where there should have been eyes, nose, and mouth was smooth nothingness, and their skin was like black rubber.

These beings, clearly far from human, chased after Rapunzel with a terrifying momentum.

Rapunzel couldn’t suppress her tension.

These black guards weren’t particularly fast or strong.

During her first escape attempt, she had even managed to take one down one-on-one.

But they were endless.

No matter how many she knocked down, new ones kept appearing from somewhere, and the longer her escape took, the more frequently they appeared.

There’s never been a time when multiple came out from the start…!

Rapunzel soon found herself cornered.

She had failed several times even when solely focused on escaping, so it was perhaps natural with the added constraint of having to move to designated points following the mouse’s guidance.

The bone mouse, too, at first, used its small size to dodge the soldiers nimbly, but when the soldiers started throwing their bodies to press down instead of using spears, it soon stopped moving.

The shafts of the spears extended by the black soldiers pressed down on Rapunzel, and part of her golden hair covered the spot the mouse had just designated.

It was at that moment.

Slash!

Boldly, without any warning. The heads of five soldiers surrounding Rapunzel flew through the air.

“Huh?”

Rapunzel didn’t realize what had happened.

While she was sitting dazed, looking around, the bone mouse flew at her face and slapped her cheek.

“Eek!”

Clack!

“No, wait, there’s no need to hit me…! Let’s go together!!”

***

While Rapunzel was frantically running around in the “Donnengarten Tower” in the alternate space.

Dorothea was busy relaying in the “Donnengarten Tower” in reality.

“Third floor! 11 o’clock direction!”

《Third floor 11 o’clock! Third floor 11 o’clock!》

Grasping her staff with both hands and thrusting its end into the ground, Dorothea’s eyes were closed.

Her vision was not focused on the darkness under her eyelids, but on the bizarre magic circling the entire tower.

It was like a mass made of shadows. Water contained without a container. A square rounded with no corners. The weight of a cat’s footsteps.

If a typical imperial mage had been here, they would have been shocked or screamed that this wasn’t magic.

It couldn’t be helped.

The magic they knew was precise formulas, errorless blueprints, logical propositions.

It was only through this extremely regular and rational construction that magic became an understandable “technique”.

If one threw a paper with childlike scribbles at such mages and said, “Interpret this,” it would only provoke their anger.

But Dorothea was different.

She was a necromancer.

Moreover, she was a witch.

Not a female mage, but a witch who inherited witchcraft.

From the time when magic was not yet a technique.

From the time when magic itself was a mystery.

Like the fairy tale witches who easily performed miracles in response to a crying girl’s call, she unraveled the mysterious power hanging over the tower.

“Second floor! 4 o’clock direction!”

《Second floor 4 o’clock! Second floor 4 o’clock!》

Every time Dorothea shouted, the skull at her feet repeated her words.

The skull that the Tin Knight was holding would be saying the same thing.

Sure enough, incessant thumping sounds were echoing above her head.

If Dorothea hadn’t put all the people inside the tower to sleep with her spirits early on, there would undoubtedly have been a great commotion.

“Fifth floor! 2 o’clock direction!”

《Fifth floor 2 o’clock! Fifth floor 2 o’clock!》

What they were doing was as follows.

Dorothea interpreted the “signal” sent by Rapunzel and gave approximate directions, the Tin Knight used mana detection to pinpoint the exact spot and pierced it with his sword, then Dorothea’s mana flowed through that “gap”.

It functioned as a wedge of sorts.

However, it was by no means an easy task.

Both accurately grasping the moment when the two towers touched point to point, and physically cutting it and then inserting mana, were things that ordinary capabilities couldn’t even dream of.

But for Dorothea and the Tin Knight, it was possible.

Woong!

The tower started shaking.

The mage’s panic could be felt.

As the wedges increased, the twisted space was gradually returning to normal.

The tower in reality and the tower in the alternate space were gradually overlapping.

If left like this, it would become possible to physically influence each other.

As if to prevent this, the walls and ceiling of the first floor where Dorothea was rippled.

Something like black mud seeped out, then became soldiers wearing armor and thrust spears at Dorothea.

Dorothea didn’t open her closed eyes.

Clang!

The staff in Dorothea’s hand merely emitted a green light.

As if not tolerating anything touching its master, the staff created a translucent barrier with a low resonance.

The black soldiers increased their numbers and attacked Dorothea wildly, but the staff greedily absorbed Dorothea’s mana and further increased the strength of the barrier.

The staff that Dorothea had prepared to fight against Algind had the power to convert the user’s mana itself into defensive power.

Due to Dorothea’s absurdly large mana capacity, it couldn’t achieve perfect conversion, but even with the capped defensive power, it was at a level that could easily look down on ordinary castle walls.

Moreover, although Dorothea herself didn’t realize it, the staff itself was growing in real-time and gradually increasing that cap.

The mage, seeming to think that ordinary attacks couldn’t break through Dorothea, sent out a soldier with as much mana as all the soldiers that had appeared so far combined.

A black soldier that looked like a knight wound up its swing—

[The ‘Tin Knight’ shouts that he’s found a high-scoring hidden mole!]

—but was ultimately thwarted by the Tin Knight, who had suddenly appeared on the first floor, cutting off the black soldier’s neck.

The black soldier tried to regenerate by transforming its body like mud, but before that, the Tin Knight swung his sword from top to bottom.

Bang!

Although the attack was a slash, the result was as if it had been hit directly by an explosion.

As the Tin Knight cut the enemy, he scattered sword energy like turbulence, grinding up the inside.

It was a technique he rarely used because it would terrify his pupil—and even the witch would frown, though she wouldn’t say anything—if used on humans, but it was perfect against regenerating monsters like this.

The lord’s wife quietly swallowed her breath as she watched from the side, but without even glancing in that direction, the Tin Knight said.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ reports that he briefly saw the appearance of the kid he saw in the water mirror!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says he cut down all the strange guys because it looked like they were about to catch her!]

“If physical interference is possible to this extent, it means we’re close—hey, fifth floor! Fifth floor! Quickly!”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that although he can understand even crude instructions perfectly, you still need to tell him the direction!]

“Center! Right as you go up the stairs!”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ understands and sprints!]

***

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