Editing Failing Witch:Volume2 Episode3 (section)

===Part 2===

“Teacher!! Good morn- oh, you’re already up.”

“Yes, good morning. You really are in your element in the forest, aren’t you?

Myousou Yagoro was folding up (his own) blanket when Viocia arrived, quite cheerful for the morning.

“Hm, hm♪ Not even you can stand up to me out in nature, teacher.”

“Then should I summon a great storm to use the terror of nature to get your field trip canceled? By untying the three knots in a string one by one, by digging a hole in the ground and filling it with water, or by striking the water’s surface with my staff? There are innumerable ways to bend the stormy weather to an individual’s will.”

“Eeek!” Viocia ducked down and held her witch’s hand down with her hands. “Don’t scare me like that first thing in the morning, teacher. Besides, it’s such a nice morning, but Dorothea and Melehe are both still asleep in the tent and won’t play with me.”

Viocia had already secured her breakfast, so she pouted her lips while holding a simple hot dog made by sticking a wiener and lettuce in a skinny baguette. She had perhaps too much energy.

But it was unusual for Melehe, the prep school’s strongest witch who could easily accomplish most anything, to be too sleepy to leave her sleeping bag. Yagoro had difficulty imagining it. Perhaps she had gotten too accustomed to urban life while busy studying for the exam.

Yagoro took another look around and found the witch students were eating thick-cut bread covered with handmade pickles, sauerkraut, and other sour picked vegetables, and with a generous helping of melted cheese on top.

“<span style="font-size:75%">Ugh, I-I at least need to wash my face in the river. Eep.</span>”

“Dorothea, stop being a sleepy zombie and wrap yourself up in those bandages! They’re all loose!”

The girls were sluggish from aching muscles and spending the night in a tent, so they were in no mood to enjoy the greasy barbecue (other than Viocia the forest master).

After eating a simple breakfast, they left the bulkier luggage like their tents at the camp site, and set out for the Goddess’s Spring deep within the Dazzling Forest.

Schanze waved her hand up at the front.

“I totally need you all to follow after me. Before we left, you signed a waiver saying we aren’t liable if you get separated from the group and end up lost in the forest, so try not to get yourselves killed out here.”

“Damn. Witches can fly, so what are we doing crawling along the ground like this? And I can do a vertical takeoff, so I don’t even need the 500m runway.”

“The trees here totally form a tunnel overhead, so if you try to fly through the deep forest, you’ll run into some cool birds and die. Worse, the branches could tear all the flesh from your bones, or you could even totally get decapitated☆”

“<span style="font-size:75%">Oh. Eep.</span>”

Dorothea hadn’t even said anything, yet she was the one who shrunk down in fear.

Flying quickly wasn’t always a good thing. Bird strikes during high-speed flight were a major problem for witches.

After trudging through the humid forest for two hours, struggling past tree roots, large rocks, and flowing streams, they finally noticed a change in the natural scenery around them.

They saw white.

And straight lines.

They were half buried in the tropical greenery, but there were white marble rectangles visible on the ground. That had once been stone pavement. Looking further back, the ruins of pillars and walls could be seen here and there. The density of artificial structures gradually grew until they finally saw a temple even larger than a compulsory education school.

Viocia looked up at the white temple.

“Wow.”

“This is totally the starting point of the Dazzling Forest, which is bigger than an entire kingdom. It’s also the source of water for rivers all over the place. And the cool water source built into the center of the Water Temple is known as the Goddess’s Spring.”

How long had it been since this was built?

There were collapsed pillars and crumbled stone walls here and there. It was unclear if they had even originally been white. There was no clear distinction between the inside and outside, so the tree roots had gotten in everywhere and little squirrels ran around at their feet. Schanze didn’t lead them along the shortest route because she was carefully choosing a path that would avoid precarious ceilings that could collapse at any time.

Once inside the building, it seemed to take another half hour before they arrived at the deepest point.

They reached an area with a notably different atmosphere.

“This is totally it – the Goddess’s Spring,” said Schanze.