How About a Refill? ~The Elegant Tea Party of the Grand Witches~ - Chapter 37

At Eleonora’s House

“Welcome to my house.”

“Th-thank you for having me over.”

Eleonora’s house was in the middle of the valley that separated the kingdom from the demonic realm. It was a strange house made of an extremely large boulder which made one feel peculiarly like they were stepping inside a rock. 

Eleonora invited them inside. Miriam, Emilio and Leonardo, all three of them who had visited this place for the first time, drew in their breaths at the view before them. Inside the room, one wall was left bare and was a simple rock surface. But the side facing the valley had a large window covering the entire wall. Through the window, you could see a magnificent valley spreading to as far as the eye could see, with a large river snaking through the valley floor. 

“What an amazing view.”

“Ah I can’t believe your house is on the edge of a cliff like this…” 

Beatrice, Valeria and Robin were already there when the three were summoned to Eleonora’s house.

“Sister Millie!”

“Oh, Robin!”

Robin ran to Miriam with both arms spread open. She also spread open her arms and pulled Robin into a warm hug.

Emilio and Leonardo both saw this, but both had different reactions.

Leonardo’s face softened at the heartwarming exchange between the angelic boy and his beloved little sister. Emilio, on the other hand, furrowed his brows and opened his mouth as if to protest.

“Leo, am I strange?”

“Huh?”

“I’m feeling jealous of Robin.”

“… he’s a kid?”

Miriam pulled back from Robin and they headed to the salon where Beatrice and the others were sitting. Emilio sighed as he watched their backs.

“I also want to hold Miss Miriam’s hand, I also want to hug her, I want her to regard me with that happy face as well.”

“… Emilio, you’re quite disgusting.”

Miriam noticed the two hadn’t followed and were lost in conversation. She called out to them, “Brother! Prince Emilio! What’s wrong!”

Emilio’s face softened when Miriam beckoned them over with a wave of her hand. He quickly rushed over to her.

“… what a simp.”

　◇

“If you’re going with this design then it would be better to do a chain stitch rather than a box stitch. Look.”

“Oh, you’re right! This looks so much more striking!”

“Let me know once you’ve finished this part.”

“I will! Thank you!”

Miriam was summoned here to be taught embroidery but was also given the role of babysitter. She sat doing her embroidery while keeping an eye on Robin. The others, meanwhile, were having a serious discussion.

“Ok, today we’re going to go over what we know so far of the incident, and try to guess the kidnappers’ objective. We’ll think of the next move based on what we come up with.”

Everyone straightened up at Beatrice’s words.

There was a reason they were having a meeting today at Eleonora’s house.

Alessia had been returned as soon as they had discovered the identity of ‘Gil’ and the situation of the Feline family. On top of that, when they’d raided the mansion with the flower garden, it was already completely empty. There was probably a spy in the royal palace.

Therefore, they decided to investigate the cases in secret without involving any officials. The cases were, ‘deliberate summoning of a person from another world’, ‘the Black Dragon incident’, and ‘Alessia’s kidnapping’. All of these seemed to be connected to each other. 

They decided to refrain from gathering in Beatrice’s mansion for the meantime so that no one would know they were still meeting to investigate.

Valeria’s house was too small to accomodate so many people so they had decided to gather at Eleonora’s for now.

“First, let’s talk about Robin’s case.This is the case with the least amount of leads, but considering it involves space-time teleportation, it has to be done by someone who excels in magic.”

“Robin was discovered deep in the forest. So the place where he was summoned must be somewhere on the outskirts of the capital. There are relatively fewer beasts there so it would be easy to throw someone in the forest form there.”

“Thanks to that, Robin was safe until Valeria took him under her care.”

If he was thrown away in a place with a lot of wild beats… It was too horrifying to think of what may have happened. 

Valeria, who had spent the longest time with Robin so far, furrowed her brows in anger.

“From his memories we gathered that the people who summoned him were from an organisation wearing red robes. The person in charge who seemed to be giving instructions was a middle aged man… he was the one who ordered to throw him away in the forest. I will never forgive him!”

“The perpetrators in Sia’s kidnapping were also an organisation with red robes. While she was being held at the mansion, it seems she was looked after by a man named ‘Gil’, that is, Gilbert de Feline. But she occasionally saw another man dressed in red robes who Gil gave instructions to.” 

“So, that middle aged man might be the current Count Feline?”

“It’s still too early to tell… we only have circumstantial information right now.”

Eleonora took down the small bottles she had shown to the witches before front heir shelves and handed them to Leonardo and Emilio.

“What’s this?”

“This is probably the hardened form of a young black dragon’s blood. I found these installed in various places in the valley, each surrounded by a magic circle for silencing.”

“Silencing magic circle?”

“Yeah, the bottles contain the screams of the young black dragon too. It’s fine right now since they are sealed, but usually the red stones constantly let out the screams. Since the screams can be heard by humans too, the bottles were placed on silencing magic circles. That meant only other black dragons, who have abnormal hearing, would be able to hear them.”

“So, in other words, it was to artificially lure out other black dragons…”

“How cruel…” Both Emilio and Leonardo frowned.

“But why would they go to such lengths to do so? If they wanted their beard or to extract magic stones from them, then they could have done so when they killed all these young balck dragons.”

Eleonora replied self-deprecatingly at Emilio’s question.

“They probably wanted these young dragons to kill me.”

“To kill Lady Eleonora!? How can they even think of touching one of the grand witches!” 

“There are many people who don’t like me. Because I’m half human and half dark elf.”

“Ellie…”

“That made me think of the Feline family’s movement to ‘exterminate’ us. Don’t you think this might be a continuation of that?”

Valeria gasped at Eleonora’s remark.

“That’s right! The Feline family believe that people born with silver hair and golden eyes carry the blood of the Holy Dragon. They interpret that person as a ‘halfblood’.”

“Didn’t Dino say that Gil approached Ivan saying he was looking for a beautiful girl from a noble family with pure lineage. That would be the ‘Noble One’…”

“Then they were doing the time-space summoning to find the ‘one from a distant place’… it makes sense. But I still have some doubts.” 

(TN: The halfblood, noble one, and person from the distant place are the three witches from the prophecy. It was mentioned in the prologue.)

Everyone turned around at Leonardo’s words.

“Is it necessary for the ‘noble one’ and the person ’from a distant place’ to be a woman? Also did they say the ‘noble one’ had to be beautiful as well?”

“That’s probably just the culprit’s fetish!”

Everyone’s expressions became disgusted at Valeria’s words.