Once upon a time, long ago.

A girl was dying on the street.

The reason was simple.

The girl was too weak to survive on her own, and her parents, who should have protected her until she grew up, had already passed away.

It wasn’t an incredibly tragic or fateful death.

In an era where poverty, disease, and plunder were common.

Many died of starvation, died without receiving medical treatment, or were killed after having their precious things taken away by someone.

The girl’s family was also caught up in one of these numerous misfortunes, and so the girl became alone.

“…”

She hugged her legs, burying her face between her knees.

Countless small wounds were carved into those arms and legs. They were traces of the girl’s struggle to survive after losing her parents.

It was evidence that she had tried not to give up, even if it was in vain.

However, that too had come to an end.

The girl no longer had the strength to stand up and walk.

All that remained was death.

“—Your aptitude isn’t bad.”

However, the death that came to the girl was somewhat different.

Although it was certainly death, it was a being that wore human skin and spoke human words.

“Child, do you want to live?”

At the question heard from above her head, the girl slowly raised her head.

A woman was there.

Skin without a single wrinkle, smooth hair.

The woman’s appearance looked younger than the dead girl’s mother, but for some reason, the girl felt a deep scent of time from the woman’s appearance.

The girl stared blankly up at the woman and tried to say something, but then coughed and sputtered.

Her mouth and throat were dry, and her voice wouldn’t come out well.

After somehow calming her breath, the girl asked, “Are you helping me?”

At the girl’s question, the woman’s lips twisted.

It was close to a smile, but it was an expression that felt strangely ominous to be called a smile.

“No,” the woman calmly continued speaking to the girl’s question. “Help is giving. But this is a trade.”

The girl’s and woman’s eyes met.

“I’ll give you power, I’ll teach you how to survive, I’ll pass on wisdom to navigate the world. However, this is not free kindness, but a clear contract. Unlike the kind witch in fairy tales that suits people’s tastes, I always receive payment for work. So you too—“

“I’ll do it, the contract.”

“Oh?”

The woman’s eyes narrowed at the girl’s boldness in interrupting her words.

Towards such a woman, the girl spoke with a voice that seemed squeezed out, but with intense eyes, “If I stay like this, I’ll die anyway. So, whatever the price, I’ll pay what I can pay.”

The woman read the unspoken latter part of what the girl didn’t say to the end, so you too give it.

“Good. Then from today, you are this body’s apprentice.”

And so, the girl became the woman’s apprentice.

And, about 5 years later.

“I must have been really crazy back then…”

The girl, Dorothea Aschengard, now 13, lamented while walking through the forest.

Her whole body was covered with something like green slime, which was a mixture of slimy troll saliva and gastric juice.

It was also an honorable wound obtained after escaping by making the troll seasick with the “Curse of Nausea” used at maximum output just before being eaten by the troll. In fact, Dorothea herself thought she’d gladly give up such honor if she could just wash up as soon as possible.

After washing her body by the river and drying her clothes with drying magic, Dorothea headed to the Witch’s Dwelling deep in the forest.

A building of bad taste made entirely of bones, from the floor to the bricks to the roof, welcomed her.

As she opened the door irritably with a bang, she saw her teacher lying on the bed, peacefully asleep.

It was a calmness that made it hard to believe this was the person who had pushed her only apprentice into a troll’s nest just to get some herbs.

Dorothea’s hand holding the leather pouch trembled.

Imagining herself throwing the pouch in her hand at that face and screaming, “Here are the herbs you were looking for!” Dorothea secretly felt a gloomy pleasure.

However, it was just a fantasy that couldn’t be realized in reality.

It was a fact she knew as the person who had tried something similar just a year ago and ended up buried alive in a coffin for a month.

Therefore, Dorothea sighed deeply but started the work of classifying and organizing the herbs by opening the herb pouch one by one.

Just as the work was about to end, a voice came from behind her.

“Yawn, you came back more intact than I thought. You made such a fuss before leaving as if you were going to hold a funeral, I thought you’d come back having lost an arm or something.”

“…I don’t know how to react to such a warm welcome. Why don’t you just curse me to die and come back?”

“Don’t say foolish things. If I had intended to kill you, would I have merely given you such trivial tasks?”

“It might be trivial by your standards, but by my standards, it’s a great adventure bordering on life and death!?” Dorothea screamed, but the Witch of the East remained nonchalant.

“That’s why you’re still a half-wit. Tsk tsk, I wonder when you’ll graduate and become a full-fledged person.”

“Grrrr.”

Dorothea’s face turned red and her body trembled, but she couldn’t bring herself to retort.

This was because she recalled the sight of the Witch of the East instantly killing the troll that Dorothea had barely managed to temporarily incapacitate and escape from, just by looking at it without doing anything special.

If that was a “real” necromancer, then certainly, she was a half-wit now.

It was a misconception that would make necromancers scattered across the continent protest that it wasn’t true, that she was being scammed, if they heard it.

But even the weak must assert their opinions loudly in their own way.

“A-anyway! The root of the blood herb, the stone honey of the twin-sting bee, and now the petals of the trolliana. I’ve gotten everything you asked for! So keep your promise too!”

“Promise? What was it again?”

“Give me money! I want to buy some proper clothes now! You said you’d give it to me when I finished all the errands!!”

Seeing Dorothea desperately screaming, the Witch of the East clicked her tongue as if looking down on her.

“Come to think of it, I did say that. But… is there really a need to buy clothes? You’re overflowing with mana anyway, so you can just make and wear them with necromancy.”

As if to show an example, the Witch of the East fluttered the clothes she was wearing.

A lump of cloth so loose that it was simple in structure and revealed half of one shoulder.

Looking at the clothes that were close to what the Tin Knight would call a “box-style”, Dorothea frowned.

“That’s because it’s you! Do you think it’s easy to maintain necromancy while moving around all the time?”

In fact, what the Witch of the East showed was magic that Dorothea could also use.

Since necromancy often used incomplete corpses rather than complete ones as mediums, there were many cases where “missing body parts” needed to be reconstructed with mana, and with a little application, it was possible to change the shape or material of the reconstructed parts to some extent.

Theoretically, it was entirely possible to reconstruct only the fur part from a handful of animal bone powder and weave it like clothing, or to create long threads from dried silkworm shells.

But that was only possible for the Witch of the East, who had reached the extreme of necromancy after years and years of practice—it was a level unimaginable for the current Dorothea.

Dorothea, who didn’t have the abnormally high level of control ability like her teacher, had no choice but to wear clothes that corpses had worn, washing, purifying, and mending them as much as possible, like rags.

Although Dorothea wasn’t particularly rich in girlish sensibilities compared to her peers, she still had at least the desire to walk around in decent clothes.

Ironically, living with her teacher in a deep forest where others rarely set foot, she only had a vague image of “decent clothes” and couldn’t recall any detailed designs.

“Alright, I understand. A deal must be kept.”

As the Witch of the East said so, one of the drawers in the living room opened by itself with a thud and spat out a pouch that was inside.

Dorothea quickly ran to check the contents of the pouch, and soon showed joy on her face.

The pouch was full of silver and copper coins.

“Then, can I go to the village?”

“Do as you please. I’ll call you if I need anything.”

After saying so casually, the Witch of the East waved her hand and issued an expulsion order.

If it had been the usual Dorothea, she would have felt dissatisfied with that gesture as if shooing away a fly, but now she was so excited that such trivial things didn’t matter.

***

To cut to the chase, Dorothea’s plan went awry from the start.

“I can’t believe there’s no shop that sells clothes…”

In this era, clothes were basically made to wear.

Or to be more precise, the culture of buying and wearing clothes sold by others already existed, but that was only in villages or cities of some size.

The Witch of the East’s mansion was close to a wild area, not even a village, famous for being rarely visited by people even in the eastern part of the continent, and there was no way a proper and decent village would exist around such a place.

Therefore, to buy and wear clothes, one had to head to a larger place.

If there was an advantage that a child had over others in this world, it was that they received relatively less suspicion from others when asking something.

Dorothea was able to obtain information about a “big village that might sell clothes” from people without much trouble.

And if there was a disadvantage that a child had compared to others in this world, it was that they were easily looked down upon by others as easy targets.

Especially a child who asked where to buy clothes. After all, the very fact that a child was asking where to buy clothes implied the existence of enough money to buy said clothes.

“Hey, kid. Hand over that pouch while I’m asking nicely.”

So, it was in a way quite natural that such a person appeared to threaten Dorothea.

An adult man with a bushy beard, demanding in a secluded place to hand over her belongings.

It was a threat enough to scare an ordinary girl, but Dorothea was not ordinary.

By her standards, who had seen the inside of a troll’s throat just a few days ago, a single man without even a weapon was not even close to being a threat.

“I don’t want to?”

“What? You little brat—“

The man’s words didn’t continue to the end.

Dorothea casually threw a bone fragment on the ground.

That bone fragment rapidly increased in size, and soon became a large skeleton that pounced on the man.

“Hik, hiiieek!?”

At that terrifying and dreadful experience, the man who had only intended to extort money from a child ran away without even thinking of fighting properly, and Dorothea nodded at that sight.

“…Indeed, it seems I’m looked down upon a bit as a child. I should keep a few undead around as guards.”

It was a “cautious” judgment in Dorothea’s own way.

She was still inexperienced, and the risk of being subdued by the opponent by exploiting a gap before summoning undead was certainly not low.

Maintaining one or two undead was not even difficult compared to maintaining the clothing like her teacher did, so this was an extremely rational action.

That was right.

Dorothea, who had often seen her teacher casually summoning undead to do household chores when she wasn’t around—while making Dorothea do the work when she was present—had long since had her common sense destroyed.

And as a result.

“D-don’t move, necromancer! You can’t take a single step into this city!!”

“…Huh?”

***

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