You opened your eyes.

Or, to be precise, the you outside the monitor had been keeping your eyes open all along, but at least as the Tin Knight, you felt as if you had awakened from a long sleep.

For a moment, a shiver ran through your body.

You remembered something you had to do right now.

There was no time to waste. Such opportunities didn’t come easily.

Therefore, you shouted with all your might.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says it’s an unfamiliar ceiling!]

After savoring the intense sense of achievement for having done it, you raised your body from the bed.

The blanket covering your body slid down.

As a price for placing your body, which was incomparably heavy metal, on it, the bed’s cushion was visibly ruined.

You thought it was a bit of a shame. After all, your body was like armor anyway, so there wasn’t much difference between being on the bare floor or on a bed.

But you were somewhat pleased with the care taken to place your body politely on the bed and even cover it with a blanket.

Although it was a bit subtle to call it a return gesture, you neatly arranged the blanket instead of kicking it off and placed it on the bed.

The room was quite spacious and had a luxurious feel to it in various ways.

However, it was far from a typical guest room, with many unique features.

On the square-structured floor was engraved something like a huge magic circle, not simply drawn with chalk but with blood.

Moreover, the blood continued to circulate along the path of the magic circle.

The shape of the magic circle had a large outer circle with three smaller circles inside, and in each of the small circles were placed the bed you had risen from, another bed, and the Game Book.

You briefly looked at the Game Book, which was flickering like a flashlight with a barely surviving battery, then turned your gaze towards the other bed.

As expected, Sophia was lying there.

Sophia usually tied her hair back, but now, perhaps because she was lying down, her hair was loose.

That appearance reminded you of the “Owl” you had just seen, giving you a strange feeling.

To begin with, since Sophia, like you, had a body that hardly needed sleep itself, it was also the first time you had seen her sleeping.

Various questions arose and subsided repeatedly in your mind.

Did Sophia know about you even before meeting you? No, she said she couldn’t confirm your appearance or voice, so was she just guessing?

Was the future Sophia had seen in the past about this dream world rather than reality?

Had the “Owl” completely disappeared? Or did it still linger inside Sophia?

You pondered for a moment with your arms folded, then dismissed your worries, thinking, “Well, what does it matter?”

Your specialty was beating up opponents, not dealing with such philosophical or scientific problems.

What mattered to you was whether you had successfully fulfilled your role, whether your companion had safely returned as a result, just that.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks, so how many points out of 100 for this one!]

“…Hmm, well. I’ll have to think about it a bit?”

The answer came immediately.

Sophia, who had been lying on the bed as if dead, slightly opened one eye and smiled.

She asked, “How did you notice I was awake?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ answers that if you keep asking until they wake up, the probability is 100%!]

“That’s a silly answer to a silly question,” Sophia giggled.

It was a slightly more childlike smile than usual.

After laughing like that for a moment.

Suddenly, she uttered, “Thank you, Sir Tin. If you hadn’t been my conversation partner, if you hadn’t protected me, I surely wouldn’t have endured.”

You shook your head.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that’s not true!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says the Sophia he knows would surely not have crumbled even without him!]

You believed in Sophia.

You believed in the scholar who could question “Why?” to what everyone believed was natural, who could answer “No,” to the heavens that everyone bowed their heads to as if it were natural, who could challenge even acts that people feared as taboo according to her own beliefs.

You said she could have stood firmly alone even without you.

“Isn’t that an overestimation?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says people usually don’t know much about themselves!]

[The ‘Tin Knight’ answers that in contrast, he knows well because he has been watching Sophia continuously!]

“Hmm, that’s quite persuasive, and personally, it’s quite a pleasing conclusion.”

You felt puzzled.

Perhaps sensing your mood, Sophia continued, “Well, it means there’s someone who knows more about me than I do myself. That must undoubtedly be a blessing—perhaps even more precious than a blessing bestowed by God.”

Sophia’s face as she said this was very gentle.

Unable to think of an appropriate response, you turned the topic elsewhere.

Sophia seemed to notice your intention and awkwardness, but went along without pointing it out.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ says he’s curious where the other two are!]

“Hmm, I wonder? At least this environment seems to have been prepared by Miss Dorothea.”

You looked around and suddenly realized there was a window in one corner of the room and approached it.

The window was tightly sealed to prevent even sunlight or small air from leaking in, not due to the window’s function itself but as a result of some skull arm bones stuck tightly sealing the window.

You pondered for a moment, then tore off the arm bones, thinking that if something strange came out, you could just beat it up.

The scenery outside the window thus revealed was… in a word, fantastic.

“O’, Goddess! Please bestow your mercy upon me too…!”

“Great Goddess of the Earth! Salvation for this village!”

“Hey! Can’t you stand in line properly!? Didn’t you hear the Crow Goddess say to keep order and take turns!!”

You and Sophia stood side by side in front of the window for a moment, rubbing your eyes with your arms.

However, no matter how much you rubbed your eyes, the scenery you saw didn’t change.

[The ‘Tin Knight’ is shocked, saying not only the dream but even reality has been invaded by fanatics!]

***

While the Tin Knight and Sophia had experienced a dynamic event story that could be called the trinity of heaven, underground, and earth in the mental world, if asked whether the remaining companions, that was, Dorothea and Adelaide, had been peacefully playing during that time, the answer would undoubtedly be “No”.

Realizing that the Tin Knight and Sophia were having some kind of mental adventure, they intervened in the dream by applying the Game Book’s abilities, prepared a stage for the Tin Knight to rampage against “something” inside Sophia, and after realizing this fight would be a long-term battle, even deployed a barrier using the witch’s own blood.

If asked if that was all, the answer would obviously be “No”.

In the process of subduing the man playing the flute, the Tin Knight’s party physically subdued the people enchanted by him, and naturally, there were injuries.

It was an action taken under the calculation that with Sophia alone, any minor wounds could be healed, but now the recovery person was in an unconscious state.

To heal people with one of their limbs broken and rolling on the ground, Dorothea had to work herself quite literally to the bone.

Skeleton Team A transported people on stretchers, Skeleton Team B applied bandages, and Skeleton Team C distributed the witch’s special healing promotion stew to people.

At first, everyone was terrified, but the human adaptability striving for survival was truly at a great level, so later they reached a state where even if a human-shaped skeleton walked by while they were sleeping, they would just scratch their bellies and go back to sleep, thinking “Oh, it’s just bones”.

Resistance to being healed by the very person who broke their limbs… wasn’t entirely absent, but it wasn’t that serious, either.

The first reason was that most people who had been enchanted by the flute fully retained their memories of when they were enchanted.

The people clearly remembered that they had hurled abusive language at the lord and threatened him with weapons.

It was a world where a commoner could be sentenced to death just for blocking a noble’s path.

In a situation where it wouldn’t have been strange for everyone to receive death sentences, ending with just one part broken was rather merciful.

William also harbored dissatisfaction with the people inwardly, but he didn’t particularly stop Dorothea’s actions.

To a lord, the people were assets and potential soldiers. Executing them out of anger would only diminish his own power.

If it had been just one or two people, he might have executed them as an example to maintain his dignity as a noble, but too many were involved, and if he formally punished them all, the territory would become a ghost town or a large-scale second uprising would occur. Rather than seeing that, it was more beneficial to just act like a merciful lord.

The second reason was simpler.

It was because, surprisingly, Dorothea cooked for them.

It might sound like a joke, but this was a very important matter.

One of the reasons why the flute-playing man could easily enchant people was because the entire territory was in a state of famine.

To people who were grateful if they could eat even one meal a day of thin grain porridge with a piece of hard black bread, Dorothea’s special stew full of herbs, meat, mushrooms, and grains was truly a devilish food.

In fact, it also contained quite a bit of herbs that acted as painkillers, so it was a borderline drug.

And if one asked where the enormous amount of food enough to feed the people of a territory twice a day came from, of course it was the effect of the kingdom’s new sacred treasure, the Pouch of Lilium, that Dorothea had newly acquired.

Dorothea initially underestimated the power of the Pouch of Lilium, the ability to “endlessly pour out grains”, but when considered coldly, this was an extremely powerful ability.

Saying it poured out grains meant, in other words, that it could produce not just one type of grain but various types of grains.

If the user used the pouch without much thought, only the type of grain most familiar to them would pour out endlessly, but conversely, if they strongly imagined a specific grain, the type of grain coming out would change to that.

Even things like potato or corn kernels that made one think, “Is this really a grain?” could be extracted if one increased one’s concentration a bit. Though the efficiency was worse compared to regular grains.

After testing various things, it seemed that almost anything that grew from the ground worked.

Dorothea seriously worried that Algind might come chasing after this later to reclaim it.

Adelaide brought meat by raiding the nearby forest with a momentum just short of causing extinction, and for herbs and mushrooms, there was the undead labor union.

The reason Dorothea went this far wasn’t because she was overflowing with consideration or sympathy for the people.

It was just with the mindset of “Just eat this and be quiet,” and “I’ve done enough, so I’ll kill anyone who charges at me thinking kindness is a right,” to avoid the hassle of people causing various disturbances until the Tin Knight and Sophia woke up again.

If there was something Dorothea hadn’t calculated, it was that the image of necromancers known to the public was far more chaotic than imagined.

The residents, who couldn’t imagine the existence of a “necromancer who doesn’t intend to do good deeds but maintains minimum standards”, went through sufficient rationalization processes.

“Hey, wasn’t a witch supposed to be evil originally? Like eating children, digging up graves, and such.”

“I heard necromancers curse people as a hobby.”

“But, you know. I think I heard that if you cooperate with witches or necromancers, those cooperators get cursed, too.”

“””…”””

“Then, could it be that she’s not a necromancer?”

“Right, if she’s not an evil witch, then we haven’t done anything wrong. We won’t be cursed either.”

“Then, what is she?”

“Um… since she’s merciful, why don’t we just call her a goddess?”

“Doesn’t her clothes look a bit like a crow? Since it’s a bird often seen near corpses, it’s not strange if she has the authority to handle corpses.”

“Hmm, sounds good?”

As a result.

“The goddess exists on earth, and her name is Lady Dorothea!”

“Thank you, Goddess! Thanks to you, our children have survived!”

“Great Crow Goddess! Rest for the dead! Blessings for the living!”

A Crow Goddess faith arose in the east, and the witch buried her head between her knees.

***

https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken