Editing Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode3 (section)

===1===

It was the second time he had been blown to bits.

Ultra-destructive President Ulrike had exasperatedly told him it wasn’t possible. “I don’t know if you were reincarnated or leaped between worlds, but why not treat this second chance at life with more care?” The witch of ice and cold, who made a fortune having her people run around the city selling ice told, him much the same thing: “You can’t do that.”

They were right.

But it was possible he had wanted to fail.

After all, he had known too much success. He had always been able to do things no one else could, but that had earned him a lot of grudges. That fateful day, he only should have flown out into space, but something was off kilter and he ended up crossing the barrier between worlds. So could he make use of that spectacular failure somehow?

He had met someone during his near-death experience. She looked like a priestess with blonde hair and blue eyes, but she didn’t seem to be from Greek or Celtic mythology. She was more like something out of a picture book, but he couldn’t figure out her identity even after studying up so much on witches. He simply had the impression she was an unbound goddess who toyed with freedom.

She had appeared from the center of the circular spring and spoken to him in exasperation: “I was the one who coordinated your trip, so I kind of need you to be happy in that world. If you overturn my decision and satisfy yourself with purely human actions, it could call into question the righteousness of the gods.”

It reminded him of ATU 0729, the story with the gold axe and the silver axe. The honest woodcutter was satisfied with just the iron axe, but the goddess or spirit was pleased and gave him the gold or silver axe. Without that, he never would have been a target of his neighbors’ jealousy. So was this really a happy story for the unselfish man living a simple life? And happiness was supposed to be defined by the recipient, not the giver.

The bewitching but unguarded goddess also said, “Isn’t knowing a bit of magic good enough? Especially when you can be perfectly happy without any magic at all. Surely you’ve noticed by now that the kings and nobles who truly run that world are all old men who can’t use magic. Maleficium is only working so hard to preserve their individuality because…interfered…and stop…from continuing the…”

He woke up to see how battered his body was and to learn which world he had ended up in this time.

On the verge of death, Myousou Yagoro clenched his bloody fist and grasped at the blue sky. Slowly. Very slowly.

That method hadn’t worked.

He needed to fundamentally rethink his plan.