Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode1

Episode 1: The Broom, the Unfortunate Witch, and the Demon Lord

1

The stone apartment got too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

It was early in the morning, before all the newspapers had even been delivered, when a loud voice called his name through the apartment window.

“…goro. Myousou Yagorooooo!!!”

“You’re being a public nuisance, don’tcha think!?”

He shouted toward the window, nearly causing the bipedal black cat familiar to fall off of the roof sheathing. He quickly opened the window and rescued the kitty (who moved in a weirdly human way) carrying a waterproof cloth delivery bag. But on the ground below his 2nd-floor window, a gentle young woman with brown skin was smiling up at him.

She owned a nearby used book store, which primarily dealt in grimoires.

“My, my. Yagoro, you were the one who asked me to check in on you if you didn’t respond at this hour because it could mean you had died from overwork or from a botched meditation.”

“…”

Apparently he had been too focused on coming up with quiz questions. This seemed like a lot of fuss for a short nap. The smartphone sitting on the side table displayed the current time. Maybe he should have set an alarm.

He got the feeling the silver-haired, brown-skinned bookseller would continue to call for him if he took too long, so he couldn’t take his time making breakfast. He grabbed some hard bread that kept at room temperature and ate that while tossing his phone and a different manual into an empty water tank where the former was “dismantled”. Once it gained the color, shape, and function of an electric toothbrush in accordance with the paper manual, he washed his face and brushed his teeth. It was fortunate he could use these things without a power source in this world.

He lived in an HEA house. The enclosed water tank contained lots of wooden ants. By tossing in one of the thick handwritten manuals, the ants would rearrange and dig up the colorful dirt they lived in to create any number of home appliances. But if he got too lazy, his room would be full of devices unknown to this world, so he generally only let them eat one manual at a time and he would let the device return to dirt before he left the house.

(I would love to share these inventions with the neighborhood because it’s a lot more convenient than cooking over a wood fire, but a lot of people would make a fuss if I messed with the cultural level. Like the Benandanti.)

He covered his upper body with armor made of bound parchment, wore his male sailor uniform over that, attached extra armor over that, and attached his “weapon” at his hip. He had to wear a tight leather corset around his waist because the parchment armor would give him a noticeable gut if he didn’t.

Then he heard another call from the window.

“Yagorooo!!”

“Yes, yes, I’m coming, shut up!!”

He grabbed his key and rushed out of the room. He ran down the hallway and out of the building to find the used bookseller smiling. She had done so much to help him he should really be more polite with her, but she always got angry when he was overly polite. A cute kind of angry, but still.

“Hee hee. That was quick for someone who only just woke up. How did you get ready so fast?”

Using his home electrical appliances, or HEA. But he couldn’t tell her about that.

She was a gentle young woman of indeterminate age. She had long fluffy silver hair and healthy brown skin and, as evidenced by the broom with a shiny silver handle and gold grapevine decorations she held, she was most likely a self-taught witch. The apron embroidered with a bunny rabbit clashed with the traditional black dress she wore below it. Also, when she wore it, the animal on the chest was rendered nearly unrecognizable. Why? Because a certain part of her anatomy had grown to an extent some might call excessive.

The brown woman, who had a way of raising Yagoro’s blood pressure so early in the morning, smiled gently as she greeted him.

“Good morning, Yagoro.”

“A pleasant morning to you, ma’am.”

“My, my. Are you tired after staying up all night?”

His overly polite greeting didn’t even faze her. She only smiled with a hand on her cheek.

For that matter, he had never seen her even remotely flustered.

“Oh, dear. Yagoro, your knee protector is out of place. It isn’t going to protect you at all like that. Here, I will fix it for you. There, all done.”

She didn’t even give him time to fix it himself. Her chest seemed all the more excessive when looking down at her while she crouched in front of him. Specifically, he couldn’t see her stomach at all. But he wasn’t ungrateful enough to say any of this out loud.

“Hee hee. I see you are still carrying that illusionist’s wand with you. The one that grows when you wave it. Do you put on a show for people on the street corner? You’re a lot more adorable than you look.”

The bookseller poked at the stick he wore at the side of his hip.

He couldn’t tell her it was in fact an extendable baton. This shiny world of swords and sorcery apparently had bandits not just in the fields and caves but in the towns too, but he didn’t feel safe using a bladed weapon to keep them away. And as long as he could draw up a diagram, the local blacksmith did a great job of making whatever he needed. Although when he thought about it, it was very frightening that this fantasy society let him just buy one of those without even having to register it as a weapon.

(It’s honestly strange they can make something like this but can’t make guns. But maybe it’s for the best they haven’t invented those in this world.)

As far as Myousou Yagoro was concerned, it just had to be something sufficiently long and heavy that didn’t include any magical symbols like a sword or knife would.

The young woman slowly straightened her legs to stand back up.

“Are you sure you’re ready to head out for the day? You seem emptyhanded to me.”

“?”

“Hee hee. Today is garbage day, remember? Old parchment day only comes twice a month, so if you miss it, won’t you end up with a lot piled up? Parchment is such a pain because it gets heavy when you have too much of it. And even when it’s preserved, it must have some kind of nutrients because you end up with mold and bugs when you leave it out too long.”

He had completely forgotten.

Not that it was garbage day, but the amount of parchment.

The manuals he used for his HEA house (which he had to keep a secret from the entire world) were all handwritten on parchment using a quill made from a goose or swallow feather, but using so much seemed unusual to anyone who didn’t know that.

“Well, I’ll be fine if I use the backs of fliers.”

“Oh? Yagoro, are you an artist?”

He heard a bleating from the ground near the gentle and very curvy witch.

That was a Sketchgoat, a goat bred in this world to support the parchment-dependent society.

(Just like a fluffy sheep, it lives symbiotically with humans because it can’t survive without periodic shearing. In that sense, you could call it a sacrificial scapegoat, don’tcha think?)

“This goat really seems to like having his outer layer of skin ‘sheared’, doesn’t he? I wonder of it’s like peeling away a sunburn.”

“Hee hee. You were so nervous your first time shearing him with that reed knife. Had you always used storebought parchment instead of supplying your own?”

The bookseller used one hand to lift a pile of parchment tied together with string. With parchment, each piece was thicker than with plant-based paper. Which meant it was heavier too.

“Why don’t you create your own familiar?” asked Yagoro. “To help out with your magic. Or you could buy a cheap used one.”

“A domestic familiar, you mean? Don’t you have to draw out the temporary muscles and fat with an incantation and then create the details using a 3D jigsaw puzzle that takes the place of its skeleton? I prefer real animals because they’re so cute.”

The bookseller looked somewhat troubled while she petted the Sketchgoat to answer its bleats for attention.

The texts from Earth said a demon gave a witch a familiar at her first Sabbath and she could then sell it to or give it away to another witch, but in this world, several witches had to be gathered for an objective and impartial safety check based on a thick manual to ensure it was all right for a witch to go through the puzzle-like familiar construction process in a populated area. Even the trainees still struggling with the entrance exam would know the necessary technique, but you had to go through that ritual if you wanted to use it outside.

Yagoro recalled the black cat delivery worker he had rescued at his window.

“Are they really that creepy? I mean, it’s not like you’re creating an entirely fictional creature. The puzzle is focused on their skeleton and joints, so they’re identical to a real animal from the outside.”

“That you can’t tell them apart is what scares me.”

A massive dragon loudly flapped its wings to fly by in the blue sky overhead. But that wasn’t an artificial familiar. It was a giant monster born from a test tube in Maleficium. Chimaera and kraken fossils had been discovered in older strata, but there were no natural monsters in modern times. There were reports of elf sightings deep in the distant forests, but they had never been officially confirmed. Much like the Japanese wolf.

“Also, Yagoro, did you check your hair? Here, I’ll do it for you.”

“I redyed it recently, so it should still be fine.”

Yagoro teased his bangs with his fingers. The bookseller also viewed his unnatural blond hair.

“My, my. Natural black hair is used as a dye in the most powerful curses, so if you aren’t careful, you could end up bald after being attacked by scissors-wielding madwomen out in the streets at night.”

“I’ll be careful.”

(Madwomen, huh? Now there’s a scary thought. You would have to be mad to attack someone to cut off their hair.)

Misinformation ran rampant even this large city of swords and sorcery. It didn’t help that “boiling pig hair to make it rain” was real magic.

That was one way his life in this world was very much supported by the bookseller. She had saved him many times over with her trivia about living her and with her rare books of useful magic.

After parting ways with her, the tutor boy walked from the stone apartment building to the main street.

He saw white and black.

The tiered city was designed with a chessboard pattern of orderly marble and obsidian. That was the best way to describe Temple School City. The red pieces of metal shaped like giant scales were the elevators that had become quite popular recently. The elevators were little more than a cage with a railing that was suspended by a single thick chain, so they were terrifying to use.

(Their size is hard to judge from a distance, but the scale supports are more than 100m tall. Of course, that height is necessary to rotate well above any of the roofs in this tiered city.)

Overall, the city resembled a diamond-shaped bowl. Or you could call it a reverse pyramid. It made a tiered descent the closer you got to the center. And at the center of the arena-like city was a massive artificial lake with a radius of more than 5km. At the very center of the lake, past the white diamond dust that hovered over the water no matter the temperature, was the dream of all witches – Summon Restricted Magic School Maleficium.

Yagoro’s apartment was located in Red District, Block C. His destination, Caraway Cs Preparatory School, was in Green District, Block R. He was near the outer perimeter, which meant at the top tier. But there were a lot of tall buildings, so the buildings looked fairly normal even when viewed from here.

“Good morning, Elen.”

“Good morning, Blancmange. Those commercial Nap Sheep are dangerous. The entire idea is for them to give you a nap, but I slept for 8 hours straight. My head still feels so heavy…”

The various girls around were reciting “Happy Halloween” as an incantation and giving a quick wave of their Formula Brooms before pulling out crepes and donuts so early in the morning. The wave was necessary because the incantation alone would have no effect. Technically speaking, they were mixing a potion that would instantly create a snack. None of the food stands were selling actual food. They instead sold plates carrying parchment recipes held between clear glass panels. The quantity of flower shops were for the witches who frequently used herbs in their ceremonies. There were also shops selling cards and various sizes of crystal ball.

Most of the people on the street were girls between the ages of 15 and 18.

In this world, hopeful witches were thrown to the extremely harsh entrance exam immediately after completing their compulsory education, which covered what would be called elementary and middle school on Earth. Failing the exam was the assumed result, so people ordinarily began working after graduating from their compulsory education. But it was common for girls to try at the entrance exam for around three years, so there were also some sexy young woman who were definitely past 20.

(That said…hmm. I never know where to look.)

One girl wore a vampire costume that amounted to a cloak over her naked body, another wore a prisoner costume of thick chains wrapped around her bare skin, and a third wore a succubus costume of black leather clothing with fake horns and tail. The morning rush hour was flooded with girls in what looked a lot like Halloween costumes. Including a giant pumpkin lantern rolling around nearby.

Yes, Halloween. Needless to say, All Hallows’ Eve and the Celtic festival did not exist in this world. Was this another piece of culture born from the influence of the knowledge taken from Earth? If Yagoro thoughtlessly let people see his HEA house, it could have a similar result.

“Did you hear? A witch singlehandedly bombed some knights-turned-bandits in the great forest. Maleficium graduates really are next level.”

“Hey, you’re absentmindedly lighting a fire in your hand again! Hot! You’re burning my hair!!”

While two girls who looked like sisters were playfully arguing, other girls slapped their cheeks. Each time they did, the look of their face changed. They were literally using magic to instantly change their makeup. Was it a form of transformation magic using ointment or an incantation?

Changing the color or pattern of an object was a classic form of stage magic, most commonly seen with handkerchiefs, but this was different. These differences couldn’t be explained away as simply applying a thin sheet or removing paint from the skin.

“I wish I could pull off a more mature look, but this makeup makes my face so tired. It’s so thick and heavy I doubt my sensitive skin can stand it for a full day.”

“Ha ha ha. A sporty look is more true to who you are and everyone seems to like it better too.”

Magic could be used to do just about anything. It completely changed the options available in everyday life.

But that was only true if you had fully acquired the skills needed to pull off what you wanted.

“I just have to get into Maleficium. Then I’m guaranteed a spot among the super elite witches who even the castle and public agencies rely on. I swear I’m passing the exam this year and earning a life of luxury that even makes the nobility jealous!”

(You would think I wouldn’t need a weapon to walk around town in a fantasy world full of girls showing off so much skin, but you’d be wrong. Not having one brings its own troubles, so everyone displays just enough of a threat to deter anyone else from trying anything. Kind of a heartless world, don’tcha think?)

And…

“Good morning, teacher. What’s with the focused look first thing in the morning? Oh, I know. You’re checking out the girls around here.”

“Good morning, Viocia. But could you not make comments that lead to devastating misunderstandings? Especially when men’s social status is already shrinking year by year because it’s thought we can’t use magic.”

“What, old friends can’t make jokes?”

“We only met a month ago. Not exactly old, don’tcha think?”

Myousou Yagoro sighed and slumped his shoulders when the nearby naked cloak girl glared at him. His flashy male sailor uniform was not his preferred way of dressing. It was as far as he was willing to go to blend into this city of constant partying. Or to be more accurate, it was an outfit the silver-haired, brown-skinned used bookseller had prepared for him when he wasn’t sure what to do. In this flashy world, a thick suit of armor or a tuxedo only looked like someone handing out fliers on the street corner or like a café waiter.

“I’ve been meaning to ask: what’s with the weird wand? Is it an illusionist’s prop?”

He opted not to comment on that one. He couldn’t let anyone know what the extendable baton really was.

All the girls wore such revealing outfits because of how openminded the Aspect of Antiquity was and because the Aspect of Amorality took advantage of the malicious stories invented about witches. But things could have been worse. Without the Aspect of Admiration acting as a brake, the view on the city streets would have been even more shocking.

“Hmm, hm, hmm. Breakfast. Yummy, yummy breakfast☆”

“What are you doing, Viocia?”

“I bought a recipe at that stand, so now the food is just a broom wave away. I’m having a cupcake for breakfast today! Tah dah! Happy Halloween!!”

A puff of colorful smoke burst out and a cake with the color and scent of a banana appeared in her hand. Yagoro’s reflex was to ask if a cake really counted as a meal, but bananas were a standard choice for a quick breakfast. It was a borderline case.

That said, “new and improved” was a standard marketing phrase in this world too, so there was always a new version of the instant recipes to buy.

“Why don’t you visit the more witchy stands selling flower seeds and seedlings? You only ever bother with the dessert magic.”

“Eh heh heh. That’s cause you taught me this magic, teacher!”

It was hard to win when she honestly failed to pick up on the criticism implied by his words.

No matter how great a witch’s mastery of magic, they never suppressed their desires.

It was thought those desires could drive them to reach their goals when consciously controlled.

The ever-disappointing girl put her Formula Broom, which resembled a hero’s sword, on her back. She wore her long dress that looked like a pumpkin tart thanks to its autumn colors of orange, red, and purple. She was a witch who still could not fly without close guidance. Thet fact that she could approach Yagoro in that pointy hat without him noticing showed just how colorful the girls of this city were. And with all the bare skin they showed off, he never knew where he was supposed to look.

This was an incredible city where half the population had previously taken and failed the exam. That created a unique pattern to the flow of foot traffic, so the peak time for the streetside stands was the commute to and from school.

“Try the Rabbit Gardening Service! Miss, miss, are you having trouble with your home garden? Just dump the contents of this cauldron on it and those vegetables will be ready to pick in no time!”

“Witch exams are all about motivation and focus! Do not forget that potion mixing and synthesis can give you a leg up in our competitive society. With this homemade aphrodisiac kit, you can create the circumstances you need to truly ‘fall in love’ with studying and test taking. The key to victory is right here!!”

“Limited time offer! Wouldn’t you like a collection of questions from past Maleficium entrance exams? Study these and you’re guaranteed to pass. When you know what kinds of questions to expect, how can you not rise to the top? Kee hee hee.”

A certain stupid girl was so tempted she literally had a finger in her mouth, so Yagoro decided he had to intervene.

“Viocia.”

“Aweh? But…but, teacher, past exam questions would be so useful. That’s like a treasure!”

“Every single one of the countless prep schools across the city has to be doing everything they can to get their hands on what kinds of questions you’ll find on the exam, don’tcha think? Because if any one school managed it, it would unbalance the entire city’s economy. At the very least, you’re not going to find them for sale on the side of the road.”

Not to mention that no one remembered the questions from their Maleficium entrance exam. The elites who had passed all kept their silence on the subject, but the majority who failed all lost their memories of the exam just like the memory of a dream fades after you wake up.

Witches weren’t the only people hawking their wares on the streetside. There were also plenty of men and plenty of women who had given up on being witches. No one knew better what sales pitches would sound tempting than someone who had attempted that path in life and failed.

So if any of the stands were offering something that sounded too good to be true, it was.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect diet guide. Because once you sold that, you could never sell another one again. Exam study guides work the same way, don’tcha think? There’s no easy way out, so don’t listen to their enticing promises.”

“Uhh.”

He called Viocia’s name again. Had she made that last awkward groan because she had fallen for the diet guide scam before?

(Understandable when the rules for broom-riding witches are the complete opposite from the rules for knights and martial artists. The lighter a witch, the bigger her advantage.)

The face-to-face transactions like that were bad enough, but there were also fliers passed out for correspondence communities where people shared their exam worries or shared the new textbooks that went for sale each week. There were even fliers advertising cheating teams. The entrance exam city was rife with a wide variety of scams.

“Oh, it’s Dorothea.”

The girl hopped up and down, earning her an annoyed look from a water seller carrying water buckets hanging from a long stick balanced over his shoulders, but she ignored that and called out with a smile.

The girl who answered her call had light blonde wavy hair fluffily spread out at shoulder blade length. Every witch had her own way to carry her broom and Dorothea simply held the center of the handle in a hand. In Earth terms, it was a lot like how a salaryman would carry around a folded umbrella like a sheathed sword. (This was actually somewhat dangerous for whoever walked behind her.)

She was dressed as a zombie girl, which meant bandages wrapped around her bare skin. But the glasses girl herself was very cute, so it made her look like a white no-bake cheesecake.

Of course, zombie powder and voodoo were not a natural part of this world.

Her name was Dorothea Rockpool.

The shy bookish girl attended the same prep school as Viocia. Just like Viocia, she had failed the exam once and was 15. When the two girls walked side by side, Dorothea stood a head taller than Viocia and she may have even been about as tall as Myousou Yagoro. In the same way(?), her chest was quite large.

She was shy, but costumes were the norm in this world and she only smiled timidly at her friend.

“Hee hee. G-good morning, Viocia.”

“Huff puff.”

A handshake wasn’t enough for Viocia, so she hugged Dorothea from the front and breathed deep at her chest. The plain but curvy girl was only wearing the bandages on her upper body and they looked dangerously close to unraveling.

“Dorothea, help me eat this banana cupcake!”

“Eh? Ehh? You shouldn’t eat instant food, Viocia. It’s bad for you.”

As her tutor, Yagoro felt like he had to intervene here.

“Viocia, skirt check. Hugging your friend is fine, but her broom caught and lifted your skirt. I swear you’re a miracle worker when it comes to clumsiness.”

“Eh? Y-yikes!?”

Viocia blushed and quickly covered up.

There was a werewolf girl in a fur bikini and a vampire girl in a naked cloak walking nearby, but for some reason having your panties seen was still considered embarrassing (and she was weirdly dedicated to the magical look, so the butt was printed to look like a pumpkin). It made Yagoro wonder why she bothered wearing them at all, but then he recalled a more fundamental issue. He couldn’t let this place confuse him. The naked cloak was obviously the stranger thing here.

Or is naked+1 article of clothing considered the norm here? he wondered.

Then the busty bandages glasses girl noticed his presence.

“Eh? Oh. G-g-g-good morning, Mr. Tutor. Eep.”

(Speak up. Why are you so quiet!? Not to mention the tears and the blushing cheeks. What happened to no one here caring how skimpy they’re dressed? Are my eyes the only ones that bother her!?)

Viocia may have sensed something from her suddenly-shy friend.

She looked back and forth between Yagoro and Dorothea.

“Hmph. He’s my teacher. We signed a tutoring contract, so he’s my exclusive tutor! Don’t even think about stealing him away with your big boobs, Dorothea.”

“Try to remember we’re outside on a sunny morning, idiot.”

The failing witch puffed out her cheeks, held her arms behind her back, and tackled Yagoro. While positioned so she would hit him with her flat chest.

“What now? That kind of hurts when you’re so flat, you know?”

“Why would you say that after a pure maiden worked up her courage!?”

Some deep clanking sounds passed them by from behind. They came from a fancy carriage that looked something like a teacup, but wheels were even less suited for this tiered city than horse hooves. The shaking had to be unbearable. Curtains blocked their view of who was inside, but the elderly coachman looked like his back was killing him. That had to be the result of some rich girl showing off her wealth.

That was not the mode of transportation everyone in the city hoped to use.

“Wow!” “Wow!”

Viocia and Dorothea cried out together while looking up into the early morning sky.

A witch on a broom flew by overhead. And she wasn’t alone. Formations of several witches – sometimes more than 10 – flew together, traveling from the perimeter of the diamond-shaped city toward a certain point in the giant lake. Leisurely soaring over the difficult-to-navigate tiered city and passing through the diamond dust covering the lake was a privilege granted only those accepted into Summon Restricted Magic School Maleficium.

They were practically legends, but they had their own daily routines and commute times, so the Maleficium witches flying together in the morning had become one of the city’s famous sights. There were even sightseeing tours scheduled to catch it from location with a good view. Even the Halloween costumed exam prep students stopped and looked up despite seeing it every single day. Most watched with a jealousy bordering on a hunger, but even they couldn’t hide the light of admiration in their eyes.

They all wanted to soar through the sky.

And that gave them the motivation they needed to crawl along the ground for now. For the not-insignificant period of time called a year.

“Incredible. I wish I could get those witches’ autographs.”

“I know. W-we live in the same city, eep, but they have a completely different aura.”

Excited Dorothea used her bandages to wipe off her fogged-up glasses.

The Maleficium students slept in the same city as everyone else. And there was an unspoken understanding among the entrance exam students that the Maleficium witches didn’t even seem real. Even though those witches flying above them now had all been entrance exam students at one point.

Pass rates and lists of passed students were the best advertisements for prep schools.

Even the sample images for the instant recipes used silver halide photographs or lithographs, but even if you had photos of the Maleficium students and searched all around the city, you would never find one. Did they disguise themselves, or did they distort other people’s perception? Whatever the case, they used some kind of magical camouflage to avoid causing a scene.

But this was not a cruel distinction that would forever be out of reach.

It was a legend with a very real path to reach it.

So maybe it was only natural for the girls to get so excited.

“H-hey, Viocia. Eep. Do you think we can be witches like that next year?”

“Of course we can, Dorothea. Heh heh☆ Let’s study hard and pass the exam together!”

Myousou Yagoro sighed too quietly for them to hear.

He might just have to give her a talking to later on.

2

Green District, Block R.

Quite a few witches studied at Caraway Cs Preparatory School and it had a lot of practical lessons.

The boxy building stood 10 stories tall. It looked as generic as the nearby apartment buildings, but keep in mind that it was only “normal” by the standards of Temple School City, where everything was flashy. Much like a government building or courthouse in America, the front entrance was lined with several decorative columns. Not that anyone in this world would know what an American courthouse looks like.

“It’s weird how the letters in the prep school names change sometimes.”

“That’s because climate change changes the region and climate conditions where the herbs grow on Earth.”

Viocia tilted her head at Yagoro’s answer.

Viocia, Dorothea, and so many other girls gathered in a large garage-like space. That was Cauldron classroom. The layout brought back some old memories for Yagoro. Large work tables were lined up at even intervals to give each team plenty of space to work in. It was a lot like a workshop or cooking classroom. The witches formed teams of three where one created, one used, and one spoke. They would each handle one of the Three Aspects when using Cauldron classroom.

As a witch prep school, all the students were girls, so the atmosphere seemed somehow sweet. In fact…

“(Hey, Viocia. You’re sneaking snacks during class again, aren’tcha!?)”

“(I-I’m studying. I’m experimenting by testing new recipes.)”

Myousou Yagoro was not a student here.

He was only sneaking in to support Viocia’s studies. Since he was only 17, he didn’t stand out too much in the school.

“(I still think they’d get mad at you if they realized you were here, teacher.)”

“(I’m not the only one. There are tutors, fortune tellers, and other outsiders mixed in. While classes are fixed for the year in compulsory education, this is a prep school. I doubt anyone really knows everyone they’re sharing a classroom with.)”

That wasn’t the only reason, though.

There was one crucial difference between a prep school and a normal school.

“Okay, before your practical lesson, I need all of you to totally open up your Formula Brooms. I need you to remember this part. Long ago, men who used magic with their own power were called wizards and women who used magic by borrowing power from nature or others were called witches. Witch powers were, like, really powerful, but they were a real pain in the ass if the witch lost control. Those failures were blown way out of proportion and witches were totally seen as walking disasters at one time.”

Schanze Dwelling.

The instructor standing at the lectern and guiding the students through the interior maintenance work was a woman in her 20s.

“But things totally changed after all knowledge of this world’s magic was lost. That’s why all new magic is based on the knowledge, like, dragged out of another world called Earth. That means it can only be used by borrowing someone else’s power. In other words, the only magic that can for real be used anymore is the female witch magic. But remember – the risk of losing control is totally still there, so you need to be careful. Everyone takes Formula Brooms for granted, but they’re not just super convenient witchcraft devices.”

Her brown skin tone likely wasn’t its natural color. She had thoroughly tanned it all using Sunlight Seals, a type of talisman infused with the power of sunshine. Her long blonde hair was wrapped several times atop her head, giving it a lot of body. Her large chest was covered by a black vest and a leopard-print show-off bra, she wore a scrunchie on her wrist, and her hips were surrounded by a tight ultra-miniskirt. She also wore a necktie, fishnet stockings held up by a garter belt, and bright red stilettos. A blouse was not erroneously omitted from that description – she really wasn’t wearing one. That meant her smooth shoulders and oblong navel were uncovered and what should have been a teacher-like suit ended up making her look more like a casino dealer. Altogether, the gyaru-style instructor had Mont Blanc colors.

“(Ugh, I’ll totally do any job as long as it pays, but I’m a self-taught witch who never graduated from Maleficium, so what the hell am I doing teaching kids how to pass the entrance exam?)”

“We can hear you say that, you know?” whispered Myousou Yagoro.

Yes. Self-taught witches could still use magic even if they hadn’t gotten into Maleficium.

All they needed was a Formula Broom, whether it was bought at a store or inherited as a family heirloom. And once it was hers, she could take it apart and perform some level of maintenance and adjustments.

But Maleficium witches could go a step further and remodel their Formula Broom.

That was a taboo that went beyond simple maintenance, which only ensured it was safe to use, or even minor adjustments, which were used to optimize it and fully harness its original specs. By crossing that line and altering the core, they could draw out power well above the design specs and even change the element and nature of the broom. But the core was considered off limits for good reason. Opening it up created the risk of the broom losing all power.

Only the witches who passed the entrance exam could cross that line.

Would you rely on borrowed power, or would you push that world of magic to new heights?

Getting into Maleficium greatly expanded a witch’s options.

“I totally don’t care as long as I get my money. So pay me please. Anyway, let’s start by reviewing the basics of a witch and her broom. These days, the Formula Broom is totally the standard partner for a witch, but there are old stories of some crazy witches who flew around on a fencepost, a giant mortar, or even a pig.”

This was one clear difference between compulsory education and a prep school. At a prep school, the student paid to be taught how to pass the exam. None of the teachers here were thoughtful educators who cared at all about instilling healthy ways of thinking into their students or teaching them communication skills instead of just cramming the lessons into their minds.

So as long as it didn’t interfere with their pay, the instructors here wouldn’t question or kick out an outsider like Yagoro. Sadly, the teachers at Carraway Cs Preparatory School weren’t going to put themselves at risk to protect their students from trouble.

Whispered voices could be heard in Cauldron classroom, which used the gentle lighting of Moonlight Seals to avoid damaging all the old books and antiques inside. The boy mixed in with them was being observed from a distance.

“(That’s the famous Navigate Exam.)”

“(I hear any student who signs a tutoring contract with that sailor is guaranteed to get into Maleficium.)”

He really wished they would stop spreading those rumors. He only wore the white sailor uniform to fit into a world with naked cloak vampires and bandaged zombie girls walking around. And he had never asked anyone to use that silly nickname.

“(So he’s the Prince Charming who helps you pass the exam, huh?)”

(Wait, a prince now!? I know I'm dressed in white, but since when did I become royalty? And where did the charming come from!?)

Myousou Yagoro shuddered, but…

“(But is it really true? His name isn’t on any of the prep school lists of successful students, so he must be self-taught.)”

“(Forget self-taught – he’s a boy. He can’t be a witch at all, so he can’t be a graduate. It’s all a bluff.)”

He finally laughed at that one.

Blending into the background to support Viocia was no easy task, but it was easier when the other people around thought he was just a liar. Unlike a sports tournament, the entrance exams were a highly anonymous competition. With the exception of referrals and non-academic admissions, a famous name was more of a hindrance than anything.

And the oblivious girl was already resting her head on her desk and pouting her lips.

“Hmph. Who cares about all this boring theoretical stuff. I want to awaken to unmatched magic power and go zooming off into the night sky.”

“Viocia.”

Had she really taken the exam once already?

Yagoro needed to correct this mistake since it made her sound more like a dreaming 5-year-old than anything.

“As convenient as it would be, the human body does not contain any magic power. All we have is our willpower, so we need the appropriate knowledge to reach into another world and draw out the power we want to wield. That’s a common misconception, so do be careful.”

“Hweh?”

“Witches in particular borrow all their power. That’s subtly different from using or controlling your power. No matter how powerful your results, you will never grow any further if you lose sight of that fact, don’tcha think? So if you don’t want to be one of the witches who dies plummeting from the sky, make sure you never forget that.”

This was a good opportunity, so the blond tutor spoke to Viocia who was passing folded parchment notes (“Stop that!”) with Zombie Girl Dorothea seated at a different work desk.

“Viocia, how do you view your classmates here?”

“Eh? Well, since we ended up in the same class, we might as well help each other study, right? I wish everyone in Carraway Cs could all pass the exam together.”

“No, that’s not going to cut it.” Yagoro bluntly rejected her interpretation. He kept his voice low but his tone was firm. “Prep schools are not like compulsory education. Everyone paid the hefty price for the same basic textbooks, but everyone has different supplementary materials. Some people don’t have the money and others don’t have the time or focus to read all of the books they bought. And whoever doesn’t have that extra help will lose. That’s how the entrance exam works.”

“But that gives the people with lots of time and money an unfair advantage.”

“And you chose to rely on a tutor yourself, right? You have me this year. That’s a special trump card only you have access to. At the very least, I know I’m not helping anyone else study.”

Viocia groaned awkwardly.

But that she felt guilty about it showed she still had the wrong mindset. If he didn’t correct this soon, it would mentally trip her up down the road. This was even more of a threat than if she let the results of each and every practice exam influence her too much.

“With entrance exams, it simply isn’t possible for everyone to pass. You aren’t in the last place group in a marathon. You need to be secretly doing more than everyone else around you to give you the leg up to win.”

The girl still didn’t look convinced.

Yagoro thought her way of thinking was virtuous, but she needed to learn that wasn’t enough to win here.

“You can’t just be first in this prep school when there are countless prep schools across the city. And there are plenty of students who don’t rely on a prep school after their first failure. Not to mention the students aiming to pass the exam on their first try, even if that’s basically unheard of. Viocia, you need to think of this as competing against every last one of them and aiming for the top spot. More than 99.9999% of hopeful witches fail the exam, so getting into Maleficium isn’t going to be a cakewalk, don’tcha think?”

That was where studying came in. Before flight training with her Formula Broom, she needed to perform maintenance in Cauldron classroom which was lined with shop tools. She also needed to learn about the interior structure of the broom, so this killed two birds with one stone for the prep school.

All the students began to work within their teams, filling the room with the buzz of chattering voices.

A surprised voice rang across the entire classroom.

Sadly, it was Yagoro’s dunce focusing on someone in another team altogether.

“Ehh!? D-Dorothea, your Formula Broom can talk!?”

“Eep? Um, yes. M-my Formula Broom – Lyceum can talk. I-I think everyone’s can?”

“I do indeed speak human language. Question: why do you ask, little girl?”

A somewhat awkward but sullen male voice came from Dorothea’s broom. Was it in a bad mood, or was it always like this?

Viocia’s eyes widened and she tapped at the handle of her own Formula Broom. It of course did not respond.

“Uhhh, Mephistopheles…”

She tearfully rubbed her cheek against it, but the broom she had acquired at a concerningly low price still showed no sign of responding. Even though witches who relied too heavily on their tools usually met an unfortunate fate.

Formula Brooms tended to be named after magical locations in the other world called Earth.

Or more accurately, after the people of this world lost their magic, they had used special lights and vibrations to probe different parts of their world to detect alternate terrain on “the other side”. It sounded a lot like nondestructive testing to Yagoro. The distance between this world and Earth could not be measured in meters. There was some uncertainty what exactly “the other side” even meant, but that vagueness had been used to treat it as if it were close by and gather a vast amount of knowledge from it.

So magical knowledge was based on terrain and thus the magical locations of Earth. It may have been a more expansive version of the counseling technique that viewed someone’s miniature garden to assess their psychology. This meant each Formula Broom could access more than just magical knowledge. They could also access people’s “thoughts” and the “atmosphere” of the location itself. However, no one here considered this creepy. The brooms were treasured as the guides who allowed witches to easily search through massive and inscrutable collections of knowledge.

“You’re so lucky, Dorothea.”

“Um, I think yours is more impressive, Viocia. I mean, how do you even, eep, work with a Formula Broom that won’t communicate with you?”

Viocia pouted her lips and booed while poking at the Formula Broom that had its tip held firmly in place by a giant clip attached to a movable arm installed on the work table.

And she spoke a simple phrase.

“Break the seal.”

The broom’s thick handle immediately unraveled.

Like a book’s pages or a scroll, but more accurately like a three blade propeller, it unraveled in a spiraling circle. Each individual page was a map of an area on Earth. Tablets covered in orderly squares of symbols, sigils, and letters were included in places. This was the massive and complex guidepost drawn out by a witch viewing her destination. Since she used the map and not the terrain itself, she could customize it by adding various things to it.

And witches flew through the sky by surpassing the boundaries found on the map.

It was a technique – a miracle – that let them freely and instantly fly across the terrain and borders drawn on the map.

It was the insolence to easily soar over the head of the king who ruled an entire kingdom.

Now, a map of the entire United Kingdom, a map of England, a map of London, and a map of Blythe Road were all treated the same. The scale of the map used had no bearing on the strength or level of the magic. Each map did something different and a witch could not wield all forms of magic by using a full world map. Just like a world map that omitted all the details was no help when treasure hunting in a local field.

(The Flying Scroll, huh?)

Myousou Yagoro wondered just how much of their knowledge and concepts they had imported from Earth. The scary part was how some of it had lost its original meaning, like in a game of telephone.

“Admiration, Antiquity, and Amorality,” continued the gyaru-style prep school instructor named Schanze.

She stepped away from the lectern and slowly walked around each team’s work table.

“A witch’s broom is, like, an invisible whirlpool creating all three of the Three Aspects. That rotational power produces some crazy propulsion that totally harms the world as it pushes the broom forward. So generally speaking, a witch’s broom is constantly moving forward. Making it hover in place or move vertically is totally not possible, so watch out for that.”

“(Trick Question Alert: That’s not quite accurate, don’tcha think? Just because it’s hard doesn’t make it impossible. This could be used as a trap on a practice exam, so be careful, Viocia.)”

“Hweh?”

The dunce’s focus had faded before the trap could even affect her.

It was true a witch’s broom almost always continued forward for stability, just like a paper airplane, but there were some witches who excelled at hovering in place like a helicopter or skimming across the surface like a ground-effect craft. But instead of being seen as a rare skill, they were more seen as acrobats or weirdos.

“Hm, hm♪ Mephistopheles is cool, but I bet it would feel great to fly around on a big dragon or griffin.”

“Yeah, that’s not possible.”

She must not have expected a response. Viocia just about jumped out of her skin and was answered by a wink from Schanze while she checked on each of the teams.

“None of the monsters you see nowadays are natural. They’re totally all Maleficium creations that went wild, which means they were super unfriendly and found a way to run off. There’s no way you could tame one of them☆”

And…

“Huh? Um, th-this is supposed to go…what? Eep.”

Yagoro heard the damp voice of someone on the verge of tears.

It was the glasses zombie girl named Dorothea Rockpool. Unlike Viocia, her broom had a ship’s wheel on the end of the handle. She had gotten Formula Broom – Lyceum’s handle opened like a propeller, but she hadn’t reached the point of tuning her map.

“Aristotle’s philosophy tried to, like, explain all things in the world using only four elements. And that totally led to modern witchcraft and alchemy.”

Schanze spoke smoothly while slowly walking around Culdron classroom, but that was all she did. She spoke on and on like a record, but she did not give specific advice for individual students (although she would tease the students who had captured her interest). Prep schools were not compulsory education. In the world of the entrance exam, it was assumed the failures simply hadn’t been paying attention.

Yagoro was a tutor. He had only snuck into the prep school to watch over Viocia’s studies.

But.

But.

But.

(Ugh, fine.)

“The Lyceum was a Greek garden surrounded by castle walls. So is your guide Aristotle?”

“Eep! Eh? Eh?”

“But that alone isn’t what matters. A tool is only a tool. Don’t let the name and the reputation trick you. When you focus your mind using a broom, there’s always a risk of getting confused. Witch flight requires focusing on the Three Aspects to ignore time and distance and soar above the terrain. How are you handling the other two Aspects? That is, the textual Admiration and the Amorality that takes advantage of biased assumptions.”

“Um, uh, C-Cinderella and a crop failure curse.”

“So including Aristotle’s four elements, is the central formula you’re using ‘transformation’? And the animal acting as the core linking the Three Aspects would be a rat. Check through the text again and you should figure out what parts need maintenance, don’tcha think?”

“Wow,” she said like she had just opened a present.

She drew out just the right symbol on her map to link everything together, so she must have solved her problem.

“Th-thank you, eep, Mr. Tutor!”

She innocently bowed, but Yagoro wasn’t so sure what to think.

In fact, he was kicking himself for this.

Why would he help out another student? Helping one of Viocia’s rivals get a better score would only reduce his student’s odds of passing!

3

“Your attention please!!!”

Noise exploded in the beautiful woodgrain gym that had sunlight seals hanging from the ceiling for light.

The students’ heads were rattled.

Gyaru-style instructor Schanze immediately realized her mistake, gave the megaphone in her hand a curious look, and made a slight adjustment to her magic.

“Huh, was my voice, like, too loud? Test, test. Is this totally better?”

This magic was used by witch’s working as tour guides in Temple School City and to organize exam takers at the Maleficium entrance exams, so it wasn’t unusual for it to be the first magic a hopeful witch saw someone use. It was a common experience in the harsh journey toward the exam.

“Okay, let’s try that again. Attention please! Especially you single-failures who’ve been working on your brooms since entering the school. This will totally be your first practical test!!”

Shanze Dwelling struck the floor with the Formula Broom she held upside down. The well-polished wooden floor made the gym look nice at least.

But then lines of light ran lengthwise and widthwise through the floor behind her and 2m square panels started to flip up. The panels disappeared into scattering sparkles of light, revealing a large indoor pool with a depth of more than 5m.

This was the Witch’s Chimney, the indoor training ground the witches used to practice their flight.

It was in an entirely different building from Cauldron classroom which was in the structure building. This was in the adjacent practical building. They looked like two seperate stone buildings erected side by side, but they were secretly connected. Without building standards laws, this world could be sloppy about these things. This one room was a vast, tall space, but there were identical-sized rooms both above and below it.

(This place always impresses me.)

A world without smartphones and air conditioning could seem inconvenient, but they had no trouble at all doing things which were impossible on Earth.

On either end of the room, something dropped from the ceiling. They lowered a lot like movable basketball goals, but they were 10m-tall diving boards. Except they weren’t meant to perform a beautiful dive down into the pool.

This space was designed with only straight lines. A lot of people might think of a magical barrier as a circle drawn on the floor, but straight lines were actually preferred when artificially separating a piece of the landscape from the natural world around it.

Schanze gathered the students’ attention.

“Now that you’re totally done learning the basics and studying the interior structure, it’s finally the time you’ve all been waiting for: the practical lesson. I’ll demonstrate first.”

The diving boards stood around 10m tall and they were positioned around 50m apart.

The pool was 5m deep. That must have been to ensure a student survived if she operated her broom wrong and dropped like a rock.

“The pool water is so clean, but I’ve heard that’s because they have Doctor Fish familiars eat all the filth,” said Viocia. “So if I fail this and fall in, they’ll swarm me and everyone will know I keep staying up too late and don’t take good care of my skin.”

“How about you don’t think about the possibility of failure? You should be focusing on how you’ll be flying on your broom, don’tcha think?”

Also, did students in this world not avoid the word “fail” so it wouldn’t jinx their chances of passing their exam? Even though this exam was for witches who used real magic?

“Formula Brooms generally move forward. Hovering in place or moving vertically isn’t happening. A witch’s broom totally can’t stay in one place because they fly by destroying the night sky ahead of them and quickly repairing it all in their wake.”

10m was about equivalent to three stories, so reaching the top of the diving board meant climbing zig-zagging stairs with a few landings in between.

As the students’ example, Schanze Dwelling spun her broom like a baton. Her Formula Broom had the surprisingly chic coloration and mature wood grain look of a well-polished executive’s desk. The handle had a thick leather belt attached. That was the reins used to control a horse. And unlike a standard model, it had two small blade-like wings at the end.

(Are those canard wings?)

“Formula Broom – Lake Padarn. Reveal your guide to me. Answer me, Merlin.”

There was no response.

An awkward silence set in, but this must have been normal for the gyaru-style instructor. Schanze didn’t seem to mind and theatrically pouted her lips.

“Oh, is that how it’s gonna be? You won’t answer me until I totally use your real name?”

She lightly kissed and whispered to the tip of the thick broom that shined like a racecar.

But the voice amplifying magic meant everyone below could hear her just fine.

“Pretty please, Myrddin?☆”

A sticky orange light raced across different parts of the broom, forming magic circles, sigils, and spells. This only made it look more like a racecar.

The Formula Broom had activated.

The gyaru-style instructor stood confidently on the end of the diving board and spoke to the poolside below.

“Witches totally use ointments to assist their flight☆”

Schanze removed the cap from a vial and scooped some white cream out with her fingers. She rubbed that into her broom with her palm. Formula Broom – Lake Padarn ticklishly vibrated side to side.

“You can also use it on yourself to, like, protect yourself from the cold, or you can totally use it on your broom like extra fuel to give it an extra speed boost. But just like with paint and spices, it’ll all go to waste if you just throw everything in at once, so you need to learn your own strengths and weaknesses and decide if you want to enhance the former or make up for the latter.”

With a grunt of effort, Schanze Dwelling raised one leg to mount her broom and then kicked off the 10m diving board with no hesitation whatsoever.

She demonstrated witch flight.

However, there was no blast of light, sonic boom, or any other flashy supernatural phenomenon. Overall, it was very quiet.

Floating would be the best word.

Simply put, running across the gym on foot would have been faster.

However.

“A witch’s broom will generally zoom forward if you don’t do anything to stop it,” continued Schanze while she slowly traveled out at the same height as the diving board. She was confident enough to fly and talk at the same time. “So a slow, stable flight is way harder. Now Witch’s Chimney is an indoor training ground, so it isn’t all that big. You need to learn what it feels like to fly slow and steady while way up high. Once you can do that, flying fast will be totally easy for you. How about this?”

She made it look easy, but when the flying instructor pulled on the reins, her Formula Broom aimed almost straight upwards and decelerated further.

Now she was moving slower than walking speed. Hovering and vertical takeoffs and landings weren’t completely impossible, but they definitely weren’t something your average person could do.

She had the assistance of an ointment made from Iceland moss and sandalwood, which increased stability during low-speed flight, but managing such a slow speed without stalling demonstrated just how much knowledge, technique, and willpower she had as a witch.

Myousou Yagoro was reminded of an old term while he looked up at that special maneuver.

(The cobra?)

After spending more than a minute coasting across the 50m gap, Schanze placed her feet on the other diving board. Self-taught or not, her skill was very real. She had what it took to teach as a prep school instructor.

After winking, blowing a kiss, and raising a leg to dismount the broom, she gave the students their instructions using her magically amplified voice.

“Attention please. Are you ready? It’s finally time for the practical lesson I know you’ve all been waiting for☆”

The witch students in Halloween costumes rushed toward the only stairway. In no time, the line looked like a store with a good sale shortly before opening time. The most excited girls were the single failures and the ones who had transferred from another prep school. They were the ones who had never used Carraway Cs’s practice facility before.

They were free to use their time how they liked. Ultimately, they weren’t even required to listen to their instructor Schanze.

Unlike a normal school, everyone here had already read all of the textbooks and had already failed the entrance exam at least once. They each had trouble with a different area and it was less important for them to listen to the explanations of other areas.

But it was their own responsibility if they stopped paying attention to everything and couldn’t keep up with the lessons. If their grades suffered as a result, the prep school wasn’t going to return their monthly tuition.

The staircase continued on and on. Next to Yagoro, Viocia used the wait time to pout her lips and flip through some small flash cards. Since it involved memorization, she was likely studying Admiration.

“ATU 0500 is the Supernatural Helper’s Name. ATU 1000 is the Anger Competition.”

“You need to memorize more than just the big round numbers, Viocia. Being lazy isn’t going to help you in the long run.”

“Shut up! There are over a thousand of them! It’s too many!”

“It may be memorization, but it’s useful knowledge, don’tcha think? +1 point: To help memorize as many as possible, you can start with ones where the index title is also the title of the story, since those are easier. For example, ATU 0328a is Jack and the Beanstalk and ATU 0510a is Cinderella. And when the index title is only a description, you can use the same tactic as for studying history: just picture the characters or their personalities and you’ll never forget it. ATU 0124 is Blowing Down the House, but it’s easier to remember if you picture the three little pigs.”

“Ehh? But, teacher, some of these flashcards must be wrong. They have the same number meaning different stories.”

“That’s the tricky part. The letters and asterisks at the end are remnants of some older systems of organization. Just remember that the flow of the story differs depending on the record style. Like how ATU 0315 is the Unfaithful Sister and ATU 0315a is the Man-Eating Sister.”

“Why does it have to be so confusing!?”

Viocia held her head in her hands and took a step up the stairs as the line moved, but then she shouted at Yagoro.

“Th-then what about you, teacher!? What’s ATU 0310!?”

“The Girl in the Tower. But it’s easier to remember by the name Rapunzel, don’tcha think?”

“Darn. So if you know them, you don’t even have to think about it?”

“You need to break your habit of finding people who can’t do what you can’t so you don’t feel as bad. That won’t help you with your exam.”

Just like a farmer had to know the names of the seeds they sowed on their land, ATU numbers were the very foundation of the witch world. A witch had to memorize them, but there was also some organization to how the numbers were laid out. Being able to rattle them off wasn’t something to be proud of.

“Grr. The Aspect of Admiration is just a bunch of fancy stories. It’s so childish. I want to be a more mature witch who’s right at home in the shadows of the night!”

“Verily, thou art a fool.”

“Why are you insulting me in old-timey speak!?”

Viocia literally jumped in surprise, but that was the least of her worries.

There were no cheats or shortcuts for studying. No one was stupid enough to skip to page 50 of their textbook just because working all the math problems was a pain.

“You can’t rank any of the Three Aspects above the other two. No witch can fly without learning all three.”

Which meant you had to learn it all from the beginning. As many times as it took.

If you didn’t understand it, you had to go back and relearn it all from the last point you did understand.

“Specifically, the Aspect of Antiquity produces the power, but the extreme mental concentration of using a broom creates a risk of confusion. With the Aspect of Admiration, you use the motif of a text to control that power and apply the brakes. Now, Viocia, what role is provided by the Aspect of Amorality – by the Black Mass that intentionally includes people’s biases and malice against witches?

“1. Applies a weight for stability.

“2. Explosively amplifies the power by intentionally pushing it beyond control.

“3. Purifies the power by passing it through a special filter.”

“???”

“The correct answer is 2.”

Yagoro raised two fingers for the girl who, for some reason, was hesitant to guess at a multiple choice question.

“The Aspect of Amorality is a tricky one to get your head around, so some people end up falling for the baseless discrimination and lies and start worshiping a demon because they believe the power of the Black Mass is real. On the other hand, the Aspect of Admiration is the most simplified, so it’s easy to understand. That’s why it’s so valuable as a brake when you need one right away. You can learn that one just by memorizing the texts, so you don’t have to learn how to apply it or work any complex calculations. To be blunt, only an idiot wouldn’t learn it, don’tcha think?”

The line was slowly moving forward. And upward since they were climbing stairs.

The 10m climb covered three flights of stairs. Some might find that height nerve-wracking, but…

“Wow, we’re really high now! I’m so excited!!”

“Viocia. I get that, so stop swinging your broom around. You’ll knock someone off.”

Yagoro quietly cautioned the girl with the beaming smile.

She was not afraid of heights. If anything, they energized her.

That might seem silly, but it may have been one of the qualities looked for in a witch.

Once they arrived at the top, it was finally time for Viocia and Dorothea to use the prep school’s practice facility for the first time.

Yagoro heard a quiet groan.

Zombie Girl Dorothea shrank down when she saw the diving board. The tearful look behind her glasses said this was more about not wanting to be the center of attention than it was about a fear of heights. She was an extremely rare case among all the prep school students rushing in to practice as much as possible.

“Dorothea, let’s play rock-paper-scissors for it!!”

“Eep!? Eh? Ehh!?”

“Darn, my rock lost. You get to go first, Dorothea.”

“Ehh? Eep. Y-y-y-y-you can go first.”

The nervous girl with slipping glasses had won, but she let her friend go ahead of her. It wasn’t Yagoro’s problem, but could she really come out on top in the exam like this?

Meanwhile, Viocia must have sensed that insisting Dorothea go first would get them nowhere, so she walked out ahead.

“Then I’ll go first. Now to get Mephistopheles ready. I’ll rub that ointment on him.”

“Hey, Viocia, what ointment are you using?”

“What else, teacher? I used black myrobalan and ginger for some extra fuel.”

(Wait. Doesn’t that provide extreme acceleration? Like an afterburner!?)

“Since slow speeds are so unstable, I figured flying will be way easier if I have enough speed. And with that, Viocia Modestlucky is off!”

“No, wai-”

The explosive sound was a lot like an artillery blast.

She had blasted off and stabbed her broom into the ceiling.

The indoor pool was more than 50m long, but the entire structure really did tremble vertically.

What did she think would happen? Had she not given a single thought to the obvious outcome of using so much acceleration in an enclosed space like the Witch’s Chimney indoor training ground?

The gyaru-style instructor looked up at the ceiling from the other diving board and sounded legitimately impressed.

“Wow. We have the deep pool in case someone falls, but we totally didn’t expect anyone to run into the ceiling.”

“Ughhh.”

Woozy Viocia dropped into the pool with her witch’s broom in hand. Unfortunately, there was nothing Yagoro could do for her here. That unnatural toughness was her one strong point.

And seeing such a spectacular failure only made the shy bandage zombie girl more nervous.

“Eep.”

(Yeah, I’m not surprised.)

Dorothea had petrified while holding her Formula Broom in her hands and shrinking down.

Yagoro was a personal tutor, so he didn’t need to help out any of the other students. In fact, increasing another girl’s score would only hurt Viocia’s chances. He knew that, but what about in this case? Maybe he should help when Viocia was the source of the trouble.

“Um, uh, don’tcha think?”

“Eep!? Um, what?”

“Look at it this way: anything you do now will look great by comparison. Takes some of the pressure off, don’tcha think? Or you could touch something cold to forcibly relax that tension.”

Dorothea hesitantly did as he suggested by holding the solid tip of her broom. It appeared to work.

It was probably best not to tell his was based on the Earth knowledge that touching the icy demon of the Black Mass would never be pleasant and would only scatter your focus.

“O-okay.”

Dorothea retied the bandage around her forehead like a headband. Maybe it helped her focus.

The shy glasses and bandages girl uncapped a vial and rubbed the ointment on herself instead of her broom. Yagoro felt like she would scold him if he watched her fingers running along her skin.

He couldn’t know what the exact recipe was, but he detected the scent of a few different herbs.

(The ones I can sense the most clearly are common agrimony and common ash. So is it meant to make her body seem lighter than it is?)

That too was an important factor in flight.

Dorothea mounted her broom and muttered something under her breath. As if in prayer.

“Formula Broom – Lyceum. …P-please answer me, Aristotle.”

A pattern drawn in pale light appeared on the broom. Red, yellow, blue, and green lights raced across it.

She grabbed the round grip that resembled a ship’s wheel and leaned forward. She stared at the other diving board 50m ahead.

She shifted her weight forward.

She was mere seconds away from throwing herself off the diving board and into the air.

“?”

Yagoro noticed something odd out of the corner of his eye.

He turned around to see one of the witch students – a naked cloak vampire – fidgeting with something. The crowd was in the way, but he saw her coat a 30cm wax doll with oil and stick a long needle in it.

The doll was modeled after the victim, it had the victim’s hair or nail inside, and it was given a temporary baptism to create a link with its victim. That way any damage done to the doll would affect its designated target as well.

Curses were another form of witchcraft.

They were just one of the vast amounts of knowledge a witch had to learn when studying for the entrance exam.

However…

(Who is stupid enough to actually use them!? And just to trip up a fellow student!?)

“Oh, no. Schanze!!” shouted the blond boy.

Schanze Dwelling must have noticed what was happening too. On the other diving board, she pulled a parchment talisman from her pocket with a swiftness not usually associated with her gyaru look.

She tightly gripped the talisman that included a willow leaf as a purifying herb of the water element which also carried the power of revenge. And the witch spoke a word of power.

“I’m totally sending that back at you. Mycpeblis!!!”

“Gah!”

The vampire girl doubled over. The curse had been returned to its caster with a last-second exorcism, so the physical damage wouldn’t have actually reached Dorothea.

But she had always been a timid girl.

The unexpected accident caused her to screw up the timing of her jump and her foot slipped below her.

She fell.

“Eep!? Ahh!”

“Dammit!!”

Why should Yagoro have to do this for someone other than Viocia? He didn’t have time to ask himself that. He didn’t even hesitate to kick off the diving board and dive into the deep pool.

He dropped 10m in a flash.

He couldn’t see the great pillar of water he had created. In fact, he had sunk so deep and sharp, he had to swim back up to reach the drowning girl.

The depth was necessary to prevent injury if someone fell, but 5m was too deep to stand on the bottom. This was a literally life-or-death problem for the panicked drowning girl.

(Damn, I should’ve removed my corset and parchment armor before I dived in!)

He thought back to his water landing training when he was in the Force. He had been kicked into a deep pool with an open parachute attached. Not that that knowledge would be much use in this world since he wouldn’t be fighting enemies in a flying weapon here.

Yagoro circled behind Dorothea, whose bandages had partially come undone when she hit the water, and pulled both their heads from the water by more or less pinning her arms behind her back.

“Pwah! Breathe, Dorothea. You’re safe now, so take slow, deep breaths!!”

“Cough, cough, ughh!! Cough!”

Yagoro noticed something while grabbing and pulling up the drowning bandage zombie girl.

She had applied her witch’s ointment to her body and when he breathed in, he mostly detected common agrimony and common ash. He knew the ointment was meant to assist her flight by making her body seem lighter, but…

(Wait. Is that what I think it is?)

Applying an ointment to the body to protect the witch like a flight suit was fine. So was applying it to the broom for additional fuel like an afterburner. Artificially lightening the body was another valid strategy.

How a witch used her ointment was up to her. Just like with paint and spices, you couldn’t just throw everything in at once, so it was important to decide whether you would enhance your strengths or make up for your weaknesses.

But this couldn’t be explained by a single witch using a single ointment.

The girl who had fallen in earlier doggy-paddled over. Her long skirt had spread out to around her in the pool.

“Dorothea, I found your glasses!”

“You idiot, don’t approach a drowning girl from the front! Are you trying to get yourself killed, Viocia!?”

4

Myousou Yagoro was not having a good time.

He didn’t have a change of clothes, so he was stuck being soaked. The parchment armor he wore under his clothes felt especially gross. At least he bleached his hair before dying it blond, so getting it wet didn’t matter.

“…”

“What are you doing here?”

Gyaru-style instructor Schanze Dwelling did not sound pleased to see him when he entered the faculty break room. Not too surprising when he was an outsider who wasn’t paying a monthly tuition.

Flight practice wouldn’t normally be called off if a witch in training fell into the pool, but this had involved a wax doll curse, albeit an unsuccessful one. The students were stuck doing self study for the rest of the period.

Dorothea Rockpool was resting in the infirmary.

She had gotten some water in her windpipe, but she would be fine. Physically, anyway. The psychological trauma was outside Yagoro’s area of expertise.

“How is she doing?”

“Hm? Oh, you mean Miss Dorothea Rockpool?”

The gyaru-style instructor thought for a second and must have decided the lip service wasn’t necessary with an outsider. She dropped the “miss” as she continued.

“To be honest, Dorothea is going to have a rough time.”

Yagoro breathed a heavy sigh.

He’d thought as much.

“Her grades totally aren’t bad. She lives on her own, but it’s a stable life and she’s economically capable of focusing on studying for the exam. Of course, that’s led to some pain-in-the-ass envy from the students who have to work part-time while studying. But on the physical side, there’s her size, which totally can’t be overcome with hard work.”

Her ointment was made to make her seem lighter than she was.

That meant the shy glasses girl had feared this and worked to eliminate that weakness.

“Now, that’s totally not worth getting bent out of shape over. If she only wants to be a self-taught witch, anyway.”

Schanze intentionally pushed out her voluptuous chest.

Her obvious curves had a way of drawing the male eye. In other words, she had a nice distribution of subcutaneous fat. And while she couldn’t say so in front of other women, that made her that much heavier. She had not grown in just that one direction. She had also grown tall as if to strike a nice overall balance. The same could be said about the silver-haired, brown-skinned used bookseller who appeared to have a Formula Broom. That was part of who Yagoro had pegged her as a self-taught witch when he first met her.

Schanze Dwelling interrupted his thoughts with a definitive statement.

“But that changes if she wants to get into Maleficium.”

“I imagine it would.”

“It’s a totally simple fact that lighter is better for a flying witch. Maleficium is a crazy selective school that rejects more than 99.9999% of hopeful students without batting an eye. It’s worth assuming that a single extra kilogram – no, a single extra gram – could mean the difference between passing and failing. Of course, being light alone isn’t enough to ensure you pass.”

“Earning as many points as possible is the standard rule of entrance exams.”

And those who couldn’t pick up a point within their reach would be failed without mercy.

He understood that.

And yet…

“But this a different issue, don’tcha think?”

“Hm?”

“Dorothea Rockpool isn’t just using a standard ointment. She’s using something else too. Isn’t it your job as an instructor to ensure things like that don’t find their way into the prep school?”

“Maybe if I got paid extra for it.”

Yagoro heard a distant voice calling “teacher!”

Viocia innocently jogged up to him.

That signaled the end of the conversation.

Schanze stood from her seat and left the tutor alone with his student.

“Here’s a towel, teacher. Wow, you still look like a drowned rat.”

“I already told you I don’t have a change of clothes.”

“Oh, right! Hee hee. Then I’ll dry you off with my specialty: the fire magic I just learned.”

“Please notice the contradiction there, Viocia. Before you set me ablaze.”

Viocia’s face lit up with excitement, so he had to put a stop to this before she turned into a little arsonist.

Witch and tutor were both hungry. After all the delays, they couldn’t use the school cafeteria, so they would have to buy some bread at the school store.

“Ugh, I really am worried. What if I keep failing the exam? I don’t want to get a normal job.”

“Don’t worry. We’re paying good money to study here, so we’ll be fine! The teachers all say so. I mean, when there are professional instructors to teach you, studying at home instead of a prep school is basically suicide.”

Yagoro quietly sighed at the conversation he overheard between two girls passing by.

Continuing your education was better than getting a job and a prep school was better than studying at home. Those salary-obsessed adults had done a great job of convincing the girls they were the best option. If the instructors’ claims were to be believed, then the 99.9999% failure rate wouldn’t exist in the first place. Then again, who you trusted and how you chose to study was part of the exam-taking process. Simply taking someone’s claims at face value was just asking for trouble.

The cafeteria and school store were in Carraway Cs’s structure building.

There was quite a crowd there, but coincidence played in their favor. The prep school girls didn’t want to be anywhere near soaking-wet Myousou Yagoro, so the crowd parted in front of them.

“Wow. It’s like I can see your charisma in action, teacher!”

“Can’t say I’m happy about it. Anyway, where’s the usual girl? Dorothea, I mean.”

“She brought her lunch. She makes her own lunch every single day. I wish I could do that☆”

(Makes her own lunch, huh? Is that a sign she avoids eating out because she can’t control how healthy the food is?)

Yagoro’s thoughts turned toward what he had recently learned.

That was another standard concern for witch’s preparing for the exam.

“I think she’ll meet up with us later,” said Viocia.

“I see.”

Viocia had to be boarding somewhere in Temple School City since she had come from her grandmother’s house deep in the woods, but based on her earlier comment, Yagoro had to wonder what her lodging situation was like.

“Red is fire. Yellow is wind. What is blue?”

“Um…water!”

Yagoro gave her a problem while using the metal tongs to grab a product from the shelf. That said, they didn’t have anything like stuffed breads here. It was all instant lists and example lithographs of the finished product held between glass panels. In other words, it was all witch recipes. That meant you could only choose from premade options, but it would all appear with only a wave of a broom.

“Since you can’t use a Formula Broom, I’ll do it for you, teacher! Happy Halloween!”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Yagoro, grabbing the recipe for a sandwich containing hot vegetables seasoned with salt and pepper. He didn’t really need to worry about his diet since a tutor wouldn’t be taking the exam, but he decided chowing down on something unhealthy while Viocia was restricting her diet would form a crack in the trust between them.

“Yay! They have a new product. A dessert sandwich with whipped cream and five kinds of cut fruit. I need to try that!!”

Hitting her head with the borrowed tongs would have been unhygienic, so he kicked her instead. Right in her shin.

“Ow!? A-are you the kind of hotblooded teacher who believes in corporal punishment?”

Oops. He’d fallen into a bad habit he picked up when building up his body in the Force.

Even though that sort of thing had felt out of place for him since he had only wanted to reach outer space at the time.

(Then again, the witch legends from Earth suggest they too used corporal punishment against rulebreakers.)

“I agree it’s a major problem that this world’s culture allows me to do that in a school, but let’s talk about something a little more close to home, Viocia. Are you kidding me?”

“But they say you need sugar to fuel your brain.”

“A favorite excuse of the weak. Salt, fat, vitamins, and minerals are all necessary, don’tcha think?”

“Vita-whats?”

Yagoro coughed. That term must not have existed in this world yet, so he had only confused his student.

“And working your brain isn’t going to drain your nutrients until you grow visibly emaciated. Throw out those convenient girly fantasies and focus on reality.”

“Ugh.”

“Eat that and you will gain weight.”

“Do you have to be so blunt with a girl in a moment of weakness!? I mean…don’t I deserve a treat after all that studying? It’s a necessary investment to keep my motivation up!”

“That way of thinking is the whole problem, don’tcha think? You’re paying good money to attend this prep school. If you want to pass the exam, you need to make yourself enjoy the time you spend studying.”

“Are you saying I should brainwash myself to like studying?”

Sketchy sleep learning using a wind-up phonograph was one thing, but if you could get into Maleficium by stuffing all the necessary knowledge directly into the brain, everyone would be doing it.

“Boo.”

Viocia pouted her lips and then hit a little too close to home.

With the innocence of a 5-year-old.

“Your life must be really boring, teacher. What can you do with magic, anyway?”

“You can pass the exam, don’tcha think?”

That was all Yagoro said while clacking the metal tongs together a few times.

(Yes. There is no easy path to passing the exam.)

That reminded him of something else.

Dorothea Rockpool and the strange scent he had sensed on her skin.

(Which is why shortcuts like that are such a bad idea.)

5

Dorothea Rockpool was in the infirmary.

She hated that sterile white room. It reeked of disinfectant. It was an artificial space created by repeatedly driving out all signs of nature for the convenience of the humans.

She tried to throw out that meaningless fantasy.

But she couldn’t.

“Uh,” she groaned as she got up from the bed. The back of her throat hurt. Was that because she had swallowed so much pool water? And that pool water that creeped her out because it was so thoroughly purified by those artificial familiars.

(It’s lunchtime. I need to get my lunch and join Viocia.)

She spent a few minutes feeling around for her glasses. She noticed her ears felt strange and then realized that was the temples of her glasses, meaning she was already wearing them.

She bit her lip.

Was she really this useless?

She had done poorly on the last practice exam. She had just barely remained at Rank C and she still showed room for improvement, but that room for improvement wasn’t nearly enough to reach Maleficium. This wasn’t like getting into an ordinary school, so she had to work even harder. She needed every point she could get. She needed every advantage over the other girls she could get. But she couldn’t even reach the one point right in front of her.

Her weight.

Her height.

Being big was a plus for knights and martial artists, but not so for witches.

Witches flew, so being small and light was best.

“Wh-what…” she muttered, squeezing the edge of the blanket in her hands. “Eep. What am I supposed to do?”

She had known she was growing faster than her peers even back during her compulsory education. When her classmates had said she looked “mature”, she had pushed herself to respond with a modest smile. The way the boys had looked at her had of course bothered her. But when she was growing and growing back then, she hadn’t imagined it would cause so much trouble in the future. Everyone knew you weren’t supposed to discriminate based on physical characteristics, but that didn’t apply in this ruthless competition.

Anyone who couldn’t earn this one point would fail in the very end. She had experienced it already.

(I can’t go to Viocia. Sh-she could never understand how I feel.)

Dorothea was afraid Viocia would innocently say she was jealous of Dorothea.

That friend always had a bright smile on her face and she meant no harm, but her small and slight build was everything Dorothea wished she had. Seeing what was forever out of her reach was painful at times, so Dorothea couldn’t open up to that girl about this.

Which left only one option.

“A-Aristotle.”

Her partner was always there for her.

A witch must always keep her broom with her, so it was leaning against the wall nearby.

“Formula Broom – Lyceum. I-I don’t want to change. Eep. Can I still get into Maleficium?”

She wasn’t expecting a response.

While Formula Brooms could talk, they were not boutique clerks. They didn’t need to smile politely for a young girl.

But she did hear a voice.

And it was undoubtedly speaking to the lonely girl.

“Conclusion: the odds are quite low. Quitting now would honestly be the wise decision.”

“Eh?”

For a moment, she didn’t understand what he meant. She even stopped breathing. She only felt a tingling in the back of her head, which pushed in from the sides of her vision like a sandstorm.

She couldn’t stop it. This was the exact opposite of her faint hope. The Formula Broom’s response was even more cruelly precise than a slide rule.

“This should be obvious based on your practice exam results. You are currently Rank C and the average percentage increase in results is 0.03%. Conclusion: even if you work consistently to improve until the day of the exam, you will not reach the passing line. And your efforts have already reached their upper limit. Odds of a miraculous increase in your results at this point: 0.”

“Stop.”

Which ATU number was this? Right, it was ATU 0709.

The Earth text called Snow White included a magic mirror.

But.

The truths revealed by the mirror were all cruel things that drove its owner to her ruin. If the beautiful stepmother hadn’t had that tool, she never would have gone down the path of evil and would have lived out her life both attractive and happy.

“N-no more!!!”

“If you choose to ignore your physical inadequacies and focus on learning as much as possible, you will need at least 5 more years of studying. Report: you would then have a chance of passing assuming no prominent rivals appeared in the meantime. But, Dorothea, your family said you were only allowed one failure and you agreed to return home if you failed a second time. The conditions you need cannot occur unless you solve that problem.”

That wasn’t possible.

She had needed to cry and beg to get permission to come here and try to become a witch in the first place. It had taken a week before her puffy eyes recovered. Her shopkeeper parents must have given her permission more out of exasperation than anything. They had told her to return and inherit the family store once she had gotten this witch thing out of her system. They said she had to take responsibility as the eldest daughter.

“Eep. Uh, ahh.”

Another year after this one wasn’t an option.

It simply wasn’t possible. She thought and she thought but there was no solution!!

If she tried to convince them, she just knew they would tie a rope around her and drag her back home if they had to.

Then the life she had dreamed of really would be over.

“Ahhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Conclusion: your dream cannot come true unless you reduce your weight. Otherwise passing the Maleficium entrance exam is logically impossible.”

He was so mean.

How could he be so mean?

She couldn’t do anything more than she already was. She couldn’t lose any more weight. What could she do when she kept growing taller no matter how much she cut back on her food? It didn’t even have anything to do with the material they were studying. How was that fair!?

Dorothea held her head and screamed, but her Formula Broom did not hold back. The cutting-edge witchcraft device simply accurately and precisely answered the question it was given. Because it was not human.

“Then…”

The tears fell. Her mask was stripped away. She tasted blood from the lip she was biting.

She had not been lazy about making her dream come true. She had studied every single day, she had kept her weight down as much as possible, and she had worked so hard to fight her own growth. In all seriousness, she was pretty sure she had shortened her lifespan doing it. She had even done that one thing. So how was it possible she hadn’t earned a single point from it all!?

So she screamed.

Her face crumbled below the weight of the world’s unfairness.

“Then…wh-wha-what am I supposed to do, Aristotle!!?”

The foolish girl kept making the same mistake.

Hadn’t this all begun when she sought answers from a mere object?

And the witch’s broom answered.

Mercilessly.

“Suggestion: you need only let me take care of everything.”

6

“Huh? Dorothea’s really late today.”

“She was in the infirmary, so she might not be feeling good, don’tcha think?”

Having a daily routine was important. You couldn’t let yourself get mentally distracted or neglect your physical habits. This was true of bathing and sleeping, but those little things could also influence the overall effectiveness of your studies.

That was when it happened.

Yagoro didn’t think there was any kind of warning.

He heard a dull clang. It was a metallic sound. He looked over to see a change in the closest window. Thick metal bars wrapped in rose vine decorations had dropped down like a guillotine.

They were suddenly shut in.

A deluge of clanging sounds spread from right to left, so it wasn’t just this one window. Every one of the building’s windows was solidly sealed off. Probably the doors as well.

An alarm rang.

The flowers in the vases around the school were all fake. And those fake flowers all opened their mouths to play an announcement.

“Emergency alert. A Voland has been detected on Carraway Cs Preparatory School grounds.”

The female voice was awfully robotic.

This must have been prerecorded on a wax cylinder.

“Repeat: A Voland has been detected on school grounds. The entire building has been locked down to ensure the damage does not spread to the surrounding area. All faculty should follow Countermeasure B and all students should swiftly follow the faculty’s instructions. This is not a drill.”

“Eh?”

Viocia clearly didn’t understand.

She sprang up from her break room chair.

“Ehh!? Um, teacher. What is a Voland? What is happening!?”

“Someone – a witch – has been taken over by her Formula Broom.”

Formula Brooms were not just convenient tools. Everyone had to already know they had minds of their own and could talk.

But because they had a mind of their own, a relationship with them was not guaranteed to remain favorable forever.

They came with a unique problem.

“That’s called a Voland, or Demon Lord. A Formula Broom is only a tool, but by hijacking their master’s body, they obtain physical freedom.”

Humans did not have anything as convenient as magic power.

All they had was their willpower. They used their willpower to absorb fuel from a mindless world and used that to power their magic.

But a Voland could absorb far more power than a human, which let them wield a massive amount of energy. This was not a good thing, however. When a human was placed in that extreme situation with no preparation whatsoever, that power would be triggered by dust, water droplets, and any other miniscule objects in the air around them and their runaway power would harm their body. Much like a supersonic aircraft crashing after sucking in garbage or accreting ice. But in exchange, they briefly gained a maximum firepower far greater than anything even the elites of Maleficium could produce. Even if every studying witch at this prep school banded together, they would all be slaughtered by that self-destructive power.

It would be over in the blink of an eye.

They would quite literally be reduced to a pool of blood.

“Please avoid using the S1 unofficial exit on the practical building’s 1st floor, the S2 shaft exit in the headmaster’s office, the S3 underground steam line exit, or the S4 emergency stairs on the structure building’s rooftop as their safety has yet to be confirmed.”

“Um, unofficial exit? Underground? What??? I’ve never heard of any of that,” said Viocia.

“…”

From the outside, the buildings looked like two similar stone buildings built side by side, but they actually had secret passageways and rooms both underground and below the roof. And the girls who attended the school hadn’t been told about them. Carraway Cs was, after all, an educational institution meant to train witches.

From the sound of this, the people at the top had escaped through the secret exits before having all the doors and windows locked down.

“The trick will be surviving until the Benandanti arrive, don’tcha think?”

“Benan-whatty?”

“Benandanti. When this happens, those monsters fly their brooms in from Maleficium . But we’re toast if we run into the Voland before they arrive.”

The building might as well have been a giant labyrinth with humans and a wild beast released inside.

They had no choice but to run away on their own until the hunter with a giant bow arrived to save them. If they ran into the beast before then, they would have to curse their bad luck and give up.

When a Voland so much as stood there, all human life was less valuable than simple scraps of paper.

The prep school was full of witches with Formula Brooms. And they had all failed the exam at least once before. That meant they were all inexperienced witches who carried dangerous Formula Brooms despite lacking the skill of a true witch. The odds of a Voland appearance were highest in a prep school. Which was why most prep schools had countermeasures in place.

They would not let the Voland cause damage outside the school, even if it meant trapping the inexperienced survivors inside with it.

(An internal “accident” can be covered up, but an “incident” that escapes outside their walls would be a major scandal. God, this is the problem with those salary-obsessed prep schools!!)

Yagoro noticed a familiar back up ahead.

The blonde-haired, brown-skinned gyaru-style instructor didn’t even try to hide that she was running away instead of doing her job.

“Schanze, where do you think you’re going? Don’t you need to guide the students to safety?”

“Totally not my problem.”

Her response was about as blunt as it could get.

She was supposed to be a teacher, but she showed no guilt whatsoever.

“I’m not a noble-minded government-hired teacher working at a normal school. I’m a prep school instructor who gets paid to teach and then goes home. Why should I risk my life to protect the customers now that we’re totally trapped in here with a Voland? Not happening. Or do you know some reason I should bother?”

Apparently the idea that the customer is god didn’t exist in this world. Of course, it was apparently an entertainer who originally said that, so it wasn’t even based on economic logic.

“So the instant I decide I’m not getting paid enough for what I’m being asked to do, I am totally out of here. There’s no way I’m guiding anyone in here. For that matter, all the windows and doors are locked down and there’s a Voland in here. Nowhere is safe.”

Yagoro breathed a heavy sigh.

He roughly brushed a hand through his unnatural blond hair.

“Oh, really? Then why do you bother humoring Viocia when she starts talking about stupid stuff like dragons or griffins during a lecture? It’s not like the student is going to tip you.”

“Gh.”

The gyaru-style instructor’s shoulders shook.

If she couldn’t stick to her indifferent act, he had to lay on the pressure.

“And you immediately took action to protect Dorothea from that wax doll curse in the indoor training ground. That exorcism-style defense magic introduces the risk of you being affected by the curse too if you screw it up, don’tcha think? But you didn’t even hesitate.”

“~ ~ ~”

“It’s true a self-taught witch can choose whatever job she wants. But that means you like it here, so are you really going to throw all that away now, Schanze? It’s not too late.”

Viocia looked up at the tanned blonde gyaru.

With quite a few tears in her eyes.

Schanze tried looking away, but her awkward sweating finally reached its limit.

“Oh, hell! Stop it with the crazy guilt-tripping, you little villain!! I totally want to run off and ensure my own safety, but now I can’t do that no matter how much I want to!!!”

“Do your job, Schanze. If you don’t, I’ll play a sappy music box to really stir up those feelings. Do I need to turn you into the kind of hotblooded teacher who covers her face and cries in front of a student?”

Schanze really did stomp her feet in frustration, but since she stopped herself at the last second, she wasn’t a bad teacher deep down. Someone who was truly rotten to the core wouldn’t have felt any reluctance to leave. Someone who had to work hard to harden their heart could be convinced by the words of someone close to them. And as indifferent and irresponsible as gyarus could seem, they tended to care a lot about bonds and feelings.

“You don’t actually have to fight the Voland. All you need to do is use some kind of magic to blow a hole in a wall or floor to let the trapped students escape. As a self-taught witch without the backing of an educational history, you must have a ton of trump cards hidden away just in case, right? The kind of thing that’s too powerful to let anyone know about.”

“It’s risky no matter what we do in here!”

The prep school instructor looked ready to go with her Formula Broom at the ready, so Yagoro figured he could entrust the rest of the students with her. He would take care of Viocia. He couldn’t allow her to get hurt no matter what happened.

But his pale-faced student was looking all around.

“Um, where’s Dorothea?”

“…”

“The instructors are taking roll, but I don’t see her anywhere. Do you think no one thought to go get her from the infirmary?”

Yagoro slapped his forehead.

He had a pretty good idea who the Voland was now.

“…Teacher?”

Viocia seemed to sense something in his brief silence.

If only she could remain clueless when it came to this.

“Wait, teacher. You aren’t saying what I think you are, are you!? Please tell me you aren’t!”

“It’s Dorothea Rockpool.”

The girl’s voice caught in her throat.

The intensity of her silence told him she too knew it had to be true.

“I-it’ll be okay,” she finally said.

“…”

“Those…Benandanti? Anyway, those elite special forces from Maleficium are coming!! So they’ll have Dorothea saved in no time!”

Lying with a smile would have been the kinder option.

He knew needlessly increasing her worries wouldn’t help their situation.

But Myousou Yagoro still shook his head.

This girl was worried about her friend and he didn’t want to gain her trust with lies.

“The Benandanti are only interested in eliminating the Voland.”

“You mean…?”

“They’ll have redefined the hijacked witch and the ferocious Formula Broom together as Demon Lord Aristotle, don’tcha think? They don’t see their opponent as human anymore, so they won’t hold back. Those monsters don’t care at all what happens to the Voland’s ‘vessel’.”

He didn’t get a chance to say more.

Viocia spun around.

He could easily imagine what she was about to do.

And because he knew…

“Viocia!”

He firmly called out to stop her.

This had to be a crossroads. A major one. So he couldn’t let her choose rashly.

He was a tutor, so he had to present his student with the problem even if it meant becoming a villain.

“Listen. Saving your friend won’t help you pass the exam, don’tcha think? In fact, if you do save Dorothea and she goes back to studying, it could reduce your odds of passing.”

“…”

“Maleficium fails more than 99.9999% of the exam-takers who show up from all over, but you have a reason you want to pass that exam and get in, don’tcha?”

Viocia was silent.

Except for the quiet noise of biting her lip.

“But…but.”

Her voice was frail.

But not for long. She stared straight into Myousou Yagoro’s eyes and gathered all her strength in her voice.

“What does that matter? You helped Dorothea when she needed it too!”

“Kh.”

“You did it when we were working on our brooms in Cauldron classroom and you did it when she was drowning in the pool. You’ve been helping her way more than I have! So why would you suddenly insist on abandoning her now? If I want to pass the exam, I just have to study that much harder. Dorothea’s happiness has nothing to do with my ability!!”

An ordinary prep school instructor or tutor might have slapped their forehead here.

The standard for the entrance exam was to earn every point possible and eliminate every rival possible. Any time or effort spent on anything else was only hurting your chances of passing.

But Myousou Yagoro only clicked his tongue.

“…Fine.”

Why had he chosen her out of all the possible candidates?

Wasn’t it because she was the kind of person who wouldn’t hesitate to say that here and now, in this situation?

His focus turned to the object at his hip.

That stick would extend to 70cm when he swung it. The baton was only good for direct physical blows.

But now that he had decided to do this, he didn’t think twice about drawing it.

Nor did he need to hide his smile any longer.

“Fine. We’ll do this your way.”

“Teacher!!”

He feigned annoyance and shook off his adorable student when she spread her arms and leaped at him.

Half-measures weren’t enough if he was going to intentionally approach danger.

Myousou Yagoro was a tutor. He needed to ensure Viocia could focus on studying for the exam. When each and every point mattered, he couldn’t let her take a break due to injury.

Finding Demon Lord Aristotle wouldn’t be hard – he only had to follow the tremors. He heard explosive booms that shook the entire building. A Voland wouldn’t rampage all on its own. It had to be fighting or destroying something.

“Is that coming from…the indoor training ground?” meekly asked Viocia.

Then the building’s outer wall was blown through right next to her. Yagoro frantically tackled her to the floor just before pieces of rubble larger than her head flew over into the hallway’s opposite wall, badly damaging it.

A sharp voice called in from outside the wall. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the ground floor.

(Is that the Benandanti?)

She looked nothing like most people would picture a witch.

A girl of around 18 with her red hair in pigtails wore armor so thick it was easy to forget she was even human. Her armor looked more like a bipedal weapon than anything, but she did not wear an ebony-hilted sword. Instead, she wore an athame, a double-edged knife that witches used to collect plants when walking in the forest. Except this one was so large and thick it looked more like a machete. The thick rope she also wore at her hip would be cut with the athame and then used in conjunction with a spell to immobilize and neutralize a witch.

Was that supposed to be a broom she held in her hand? With the giant hunk of metal on the end, it looked more like a hammer. That highly unique Formula Broom would be what she had used to break through the wall.

Her small face was out of proportion with the armor as a whole. The fully-equipped witch scoffed at Yagoro’s baton.

“Formula Broom – New Forest. Answer me, Gardner, so that I might repay that ugly witch threefold. Before considering morality or personal preferences, we witches must always be beautiful. Carraway Cs Preparatory School has already been placed under our control so we can slay the ugly Voland who cannot even control herself. Everyone in here must obey our instructions and protect your own lives!!”

(You force us to obey you, but our safety is our own responsibility? They never do play fair, do they!?)

More and more thick armored witches entered, until there were more than 10 of them. Every last one of them had an identical Formula Broom – New Forest. And once they were all inside, the pieces of the broken wall were absorbed back into the hole and the wall repaired itself. When witches flew through the night sky, they destroyed the world before them and repaired it in their wake. This was an offensive application of that phenomenon.

At any rate, only the Benandanti, combat specialists, had arrived. The Witch Doctors who acted as combat medics were nowhere to be seen. They really were only thinking of killing their target.

Viocia spoke half in a daze while the armored witches clanked down the hallway.

“I-if they can destroy and fix the wall, they could just let everyone escape.”

“The Benandanti won’t bother with that. They’re only interested in killing the Voland. Those immobilizing ropes are just for show. They’re only there to prevent anyone from calling them inhumane.”

However, this didn’t mean the witches themselves were that cruel. The Benandanti wore special armor called a Hexenturm. While wearing that, the Maleficium witches had their conscience and guilt trapped in an externally imposed mental cage to help them achieve their objective.

(Be beautiful, huh?)

This world also had a time when witches were persecuted.

The lesson they had learned then had created a unique set of values designed to protect them.

They saw their own desires as a tool to adorn and enrichen themselves with and they aggressively made use of that tool.

(Being beautiful comes before morality. Because beautiful witches were more easily accepted by the people and were more likely to survive than old witches. It’s a survival strategy based on past experiences, but did this world never develop the idea of the beautiful witch who leads the king astray?)

Simply put, Maleficium did not allow ugly witches to exist. They refused to let anyone view witches as the frightening old hag who feasted on travelers who happened across her home deep in the mountains. Because they feared any harm to the witch brand would bring them all back to an age of persecution.

Yagoro thought through all this before shaking his head.

Was succumbing to fear and forcing your own values and way of life onto others really so beautiful?

“Anyway, we’re going to go rescue Dorothea, right? Then we can’t let the Benandanti get ahead of us.”

He didn’t hear her eager acknowledgement.

The entire building shook with a far more powerful vertical tremor than before.

“…”

They both looked down the hallway.

The baton in Yagoro’s hand felt so inadequate.

There was nothing. They didn’t hear a thing. There was no counterattack after that initial blast. And the Benandanti had been acting as a group. Even if they had ended their battle, that many people moving around would create a noticeable amount of noise.

What did this mean?

Yagoro walked cautiously down the hallway. Viocia followed with her Formula Broom at the ready. They approached the door to the Witch’s Chimney indoor training ground they had used that morning.

Still no noise.

The boy in the male sailor uniform quietly pushed open the double doors.

Destruction and defeat – that was all he saw.

Thick armor had burst and broken.

It had bent and stabbed into the walls.

A jumble of toys lay on the floor like stuffed animals a child had grown bored of and tossed aside. The Benandanti would have calculatedly eliminated their conscience and guilt before engaging the Voland in battle, but the Voland had still only seen it as a game.

Yes, only one person remained standing inside. She had her slender hand down the neck hole of a thick suit of armor and dragged out the contents.

The human contents.

The defeated girl had her long red hair done up in pigtails and had the look of a strict class president.

But that arrogant Maleficium elite’s limbs were now hanging limply. Continuing her labored breathing was all she could manage. A red liquid dripped from the corner of her lips.

“Ooh ha, ha ha, ha hoo♪”

The culprit had a familiar face. The face of Dorothea Rockpool.

Red. A sharp crimson.

Her eyes shined bright behind her glasses. She now had the slit-like pupils of a snake, like another mind altogether had taken up residence there. Maybe that was the sign of a Voland.

She lazily tossed the unconscious Benandanti aside with one hand and placed that hand on the long rodlike object she was already holding with her other hand. She pulled it into a loving embrace.

That was Formula Broom – Lyceum.

She rubbed her cheek against it in a strangely sensual way. Just watching it gave Yagoro heartburn.

Her nails were frightening. When she turned her small face his way, his legs went weak like he had a wild animal’s horns aimed his way. She didn’t have wings, but when she spread her arms, it felt like the entire world was enveloped in darkness and he thought she was going to crush him to death in her arms. Visually, it was the same adorable girl. Invisibly, something about her had changed.

Viocia managed a trembling voice with her eyes opened wide.

“What…is that?”

“Question: oh, am I a ‘what’ now? Ee hee. Reference: I have simply granted this brat’s wish.”

A crude and vulgar voice spoke while entirely ignoring the red-soaked bandages. Was that the Benandanti’s blood or her own?

The voice was definitely coming from the girl’s mouth, but it was a deep male voice. She was rubbing her cheek against the broom, but the difference was clear. This voice was not coming from the broom. It was being produced by the girl’s tongue and throat.

She wasn’t just lashing out. That couldn’t explain this unseen pressure.

That was a Voland.

Demon Lord Aristotle had hijacked the witch’s body to appear in this world.

“She wanted a light body, a small body. She wanted to lose every gram possible and earn every point possible. But that was never possible!! Solution: I have boosted her strength in another way to help earn those points. Gya ha ha! Reiteration: I granted her wish. I flipped everything on its head to grant that witch’s wish. Conclusion: it is right for me to be here. Bwa ha ha! I am the correct answer for this braaaaat!!!”

That was how the Voland had ended up here.

By repeatedly suggesting options more effective than anything allowed by the troubled witch’s values, he had silenced all of her arguments. And by trapping her soul deeper and deeper within, he had free rein of her body.

His arguments were nothing more than weapons designed to bring harm.

The tutor asked a quick question.

“You. What’s your estimated rank?”

“B. I’m Rank B at least. Kee hee. Speculation: but I bet could reach Rank A if I had time to work at it.”

Yagoro clicked his tongue.

He hadn’t been actively following Dorothea’s grades, but he knew she hadn’t been doing that well. In the national practice exams, earning Rank C was considered pretty good. Which meant she wasn’t good enough.

Formula Broom – Lyceum demanded a high level of academic ability. And the more a witch was lacking there, the greater the risk of her body being hijacked.

All witches used borrowed power and a Formula Broom had a mind of its own, meaning it was not just a convenient tool. If you did not display sufficient academic ability, it would take over before long.

“What did you do to Dorothea?” asked Viocia.

“Denial: nothing yet.”

The serpentine eyes looked almost puzzled.

Then the Voland licked the handle of the broom and formed a crescent moon smile.

“Gya ha ha!! I was just getting to that part!! I finally have a body all my own!! Addition: so it would be a waste to not indulge in every last type of pleasure this body can experience! Are you stupid? I mean alcohol, drugs, ○○○, **** – all of it!! Ah hya ha! Announcement: I’ll run this body into the ground!! I’ll keep at it until the color of its insides have changed and it can no longer move a single finger!!”

“Don’t you dare!! Dorothea isn’t yours to use!!”

“Reply: oh, yes, she is. This brat chose to rely on a Voland. On me!! She forgot a Formula Broom is also a tool, despaired in her lack of academic ability, gave up on thinking for herself, and relied on a blind trust in me! Bwa ha! Ah ha ha!! Conclusion: she sold her soul!!”

“Did Dorothea really choose to do that? Odds are you cut off every avenue of escape to make her think that was her only option, don’tcha think? When there may have been other options left.”

“Question: what are you talking about? Are you stupid? Ee hee, ee hee hee. The stress of pulling so many all-nighters studying while also restricting her diet wore her out to her very core. Conclusion: this body will last longer in my hands and I’ll actually have some fun with it. I!! I am the correct answer! Conclusion: I am the perfect score!! Kee hee hee. You have no right to barge in and criticize her decisions!!”

Maybe not.

But the Voland had failed to notice a fundamental factor.

Humans were capable of never giving up on a dream they truly believed to be impossible and to continue searching for happiness no matter how many times they failed along the way. Everyone could do that to some extent. Humans were not creatures of pure efficiency and optimization.

If they were, tutors who supported those struggling girls wouldn’t exist.

“I won’t…I won’t let some broom have Dorothea!!” said Viocia.

“Ee hee hee. Question: so what? Do you foolishly think you can steal away the Formula Broom and break it? Do you think there is any way of safely stealing this broom from me, Demon Lord Aristotle!? You fool! Gya ha ha!! Judgment: you crack me up! Gee kah kee hee ah ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

“Viocia.”

An obvious path to salvation was in fact the entrance to an inescapable bog. The more extra thoughts in their head, the more they would distribute their power and their already nightmarishly miniscule odds would fall to actual zero. That was why the Benandanti sealed away their own hearts to remain coldly focused on defeating the Voland and nothing else.

“Give back Dorothea.”

“Ee ha ha!! Gya ha ha ha ha ha!! You fool! Do you think she is the victim here? Question: are you aware what this gloomy girl does in secret to deal with her exam stress? Gya ha ha!! Question: are you familiar with tickle diets and bondage diets? Bwa ha. And she tricks herself into thinking it’s not about her own desires by insisting it’s for the exam!! The fool created a body-pillow-sized hot water bottle so she could soak her bed in sweat. Gya ha ha! Report: she even created her own chair that moves back and forth like you’re riding a horse. Hee hee hee!!”

Demon Lord Aristotle held his stomach.

He doubled over in laughter with broom in hand.

While shredding through the sensitive topics even the people they were about tended to avoid thinking about.

“She even ventured out at night to buy a guaranteed weight loss talisman. Hee hee. Question: do you know what that is? Explanation: it’s a parchment talisman made from a filthy mixture of all sorts of ingredients that you paste on your skin. Is she stupid? Question: she was embarrassed by this and didn’t want anyone to know, so where on her body do you think she hid it? Do you want the detailed location on this body with so much skin left exposed by those bandages!? Bwa hya hya hya!!”

“What? But…Dorothea?”

“It’s a common mistake,” spat Yagoro.

Delinquents weren’t the only victims of the back alleys. There was an endless list of entrance exam students pushed to their psychological limits being on preyed on there. Especially in a city where over half the residents had failed the entrance exam in the past.

“It could be candies to improve focus, drinks to keep you alert late at night, or talismans to help you lose weight. No matter how ridiculous it sounds, when a witch tries to take the easy way out, she tends to go for sketchy magic items. Remember when I said there is no perfect diet guide? If someone is making outrageous claims about their product, they’re not interested in running an honest business, don’tcha think?”

Losing weight fast. Guaranteed weight loss.

Those things might sound nice, but they were actually serious curses. Serious enough to obstruct your natural growth or eat away at the very core of your body. Just like someone stranded on a snowy mountain, the threat to her life would have caused uncontrollable hallucinations and the shakes.

Using more than one of the same talisman wouldn’t improve its effects much.

And her body would grow accustomed to it the more she used it.

So even with the recipe in hand, it wouldn’t be enough. She would want a stronger, more dangerous talisman. So she kept returning to the back alley, wearing her body down more each time.

“Bff. Revelation: she said it was for her family.”

This seemed to come out of nowhere.

But it was not actually a non sequitur.

“The brat apparently has a big family. They’re barely making ends meet with their family store, so she wants to become an elite witch to earn enough money to support them all! Pff. Gya ha ha ha ha!! Is she stupid!? What kind of dumbass is she!? Question: does this brat think she can make a tearjerking story out of resorting to that deadly garbage the second she ran into any trouble!? Ee hee hah!! I only wanted to be support my family. Ridiculous!! Serious question: who in their right mind would rely on a girl who’s weakened her bones and destroyed her stomach with weight loss talismans!? Ah hya ha ha ha!!!”

“Dorothea…”

Viocia knew her friend well.

She knew Dorothea excelled at housework, paid careful attention to what she ate, and always made her own lunch. Why had she learned those skills in the first place?

For her family. For her parents. For her many siblings. All because she wanted to make them happy.

That was how it had all begun, but as her troubles mounted, she had started to view her family as something trying to keep her from her dream.

“How stupid is she?” Demon Lord Aristotle mocked everything about that girl. “Supporting your family and siblings? Don’t make me laugh! Declaration: that doesn’t further your academic field and it doesn’t contribute to the world at large!! Magic is greater and more important than that. Did you think destroying your body like this was a noble self-sacrifice? Rejection: a moron like you doesn’t deserve to use magic! So this is your punishment. Kee hee ha ha ha. Confirmed: this brat gave up!! So everything happening to her now is her just deserts!! Conclusion! I!! I am the correct and perfect answer!!!”

Just then, a quiet voice interrupted.

“…She wasn’t wrong.”

It was the failing witch.

Viocia Modestlucky.

She couldn’t use Formula Broom – Wittenberg, which she had bought for a disconcertingly cheap price.

But that wasn’t going to stop her.

She glared straight at the extraordinary being known as a Voland and gripped her broom tight in her hands.

“I don’t care if you’re Demon Lord Aristotle or whatever else.”

She seemed to be biting out the words.

This was no way to speak to a Voland.

But she couldn’t abandon her friend. A little thing like a Voland wasn’t enough for her to give up.

She might live in a world where abandoning people over the exam was commonplace, but she refused.

“She really was trying so hard.”

This was something only Viocia knew.

The witch entrance exam was a truly cruel world where friendship was meaningless. Everyone said so, but this friend had still studied with her. So Viocia didn’t even hesitate to speak.

“Dorothea studied so much every day, she watched what she ate, and she worked harder than anyone. I won’t let you laugh at that effort and pain just because of some numbers or letters related to the exam. Maybe you’re a Voland who knows everything there is to know about Earth, but I won’t let you deny what she did!!”

Viocia looked up.

She squeezed Formula Broom – Wittenberg in her hands.

And the girl who was still considered a failure roared.

Into the heavens.

“I won’t let anyone deny how Dorothea felt or how she prayed to pass the exam and make her dreams come true!! So give me the power to fight, Mephistopheles!!!”

This was followed by an odd sound.

Myousou Yagoro had grabbed the brim of her hat and tugged it down over her face.

“Gwah, I can’t see!? Uh…”

“Don’t be dumb, Viocia. It isn’t time for that. Like I always say, don’t rely on your tool’s abilities if you want to be a top-rate witch. Do that and Formula Broom – Wittenberg will hijack your body and the rest of us will have to deal with a second monster: Demon Lord Mephistopheles. Then there really would be no fixing this.”

And the Formula Broom was probably aiming for precisely that.

Demon Lord Aristotle had said a witch needed to earn at least Rank B on the practice exam to control him.

But Viocia’s Formula Broom – Wittenberg required far more than that. Even Yagoro’s eyes had bugged out when he first saw it.

Its estimated rank was Rank S³.

You didn’t even need that rank to pass the national practice exams designed for Maleficium’s standards.

And not only was its rank so ridiculously high, but it had been sold to her for an unnaturally low price. Even earning a perfect 100 in all subjects would not be anywhere near enough to meet the standards set by that supremely extraordinary device.

It was guaranteed to consume your average witch.

It was such an absurd challenge Yagoro suspected it might be a witch-hunting trap.

A girl who had failed the exam and now attended a prep school had no chance of wielding it. Not to mention that she had yet to complete the consecration that linked human with witchcraft device. That may have been why she hadn’t been consumed yet, but it was best to assume Mephistopheles would not conveniently lend her its power with no strings attached.

At the very least, that wasn’t going to happen in the current situation.

“An exchange of Voland magic wouldn’t save Dorothea Rockpool. Viocia, would you be satisfied if you came to and found you had harmed and spilled the blood of your friend while you were unconscious? Like hell you would. You’re the one who said you wanted to save her. So you shouldn’t give up on that now, don’tcha think?”

The girl gasped.

Had she only now realized how close she had come to beginning a fight to the death with her good friend?

“But…then…?”

But Viocia still wasn’t going to stop.

She was the kind of girl who seriously considered someone else a good friend during the harsh trials of the witch entrance exam, so she would never stop at this point. Even if no one else cared at all about ordinary Dorothea.

“Who else will save Dorothea!? The other students and even the instructors already left. And the Benandanti witches from Maleficium only care about defeating the Voland. I can’t leave Dorothea all alone. Someone has to do it. Someone has to fight to save Dorothea!! And if no one else will stand up, then I have to-”

“I’ll do it.”

Myousou Yagoro didn’t hesitate to answer.

He didn’t even let her finish before he declared he would face almost certain death.

“You’re a student, so you need to focus on the exam. And as your tutor, it’s my job to deal with any trouble that would distract you from your studies.”

“Eh? Huh?”

“Simply put, I will save Dorothea Rockpool no matter what. You aren’t the only one. I’m just as pissed at Demon Lord Aristotle as you are.”

“Weh, ah, ah! Ahhhh, ah, ah!!”

“Oh?” interrupted a voice.

The Voland’s serpentine red eyes glowed as he used the ordinary girl’s body to smirk.

“Assessment: interesting. Even witches can only wield borrowed magic, but you aren’t even a witch. What can a filthy boy do? Oh, I get it. Conclusion: are you going to rely on nonexistent miracles like this brat did!?”

The tutor said nothing.

A shockwave erupted out. It happened the instant he twirled the end of his 70cm baton. The first to attack was Myousou Yagoro, not the Voland. The invisible strike gained color as it absorbed splinters of wood and shards of stone and flew toward Demon Lord Aristotle like a horizontal storm.

The Voland only swept his broom along the floor in front of him as if drawing out a dividing line on the world itself.

The pool’s water swelled up, formed a thick clear wall, and stopped the stony scattershot.

But the Voland’s temple twitched disconcertingly at being forced to make that move.

“I said I was pissed, didn’t I? I’m pissed a mere Voland is standing in the way of my student’s future.”

“Tch! A boy using magic? Question: I’m sure it’s a trick, but what kind of trick are you using?”

“Tossing flint to the west without anyone noticing creates a storm . But that was about as much as I could expect from just the one secret technique. I need to cover all Three Aspects if I want to give it any power. In that case…”

“Demand: shut the hell up!! Are you foolish enough to think I will let you try it again!?”

Scorching orange heat absorbed oxygen with a disturbing roar.

The still-usable wall of water was evaporated in an instant. The Voland controlling the zombie girl had only swept his Formula Broom forward along the floor and then sharply swung it up.

The end of the broom summoned a glob of steel-melting heat that rushed out toward Yagoro. This was a maximization of fire. The glob had some gooiness to it, so it had to be orange-glowing lava.

This was a Voland. It was within his power to transform the crust and rewrite the map.

“Eek!”

Yagoro shove Viocia to one side before leaping to the opposite side.

The air-scorching glob of heat magic passed between the two of them and then melted deep into the thick wall.

It could seem odd to dodge supernatural magic on foot, but Formula Brooms were a technical system based on magic locations in the other world known as Earth. That meant they could not completely ignore all physical limitations. In fact, it was rare that a witch only had to pray in order to accurately curse someone with no regard for time or distance.

“Fire, wind, water, earth.”

Was this the power that had defeated so many elite Benandanti?

“I am Demon Lord Aristotle! I reign as the philosopher who logically explained the world’s composition!! Do not make me laugh, fool! Question: what can you do!? Elements reveal the truth not as one, but altogether. This heat can destroy even the plaster used to create molds filled with molten steel. Gya ha ha! Do not assume you can escape me forever!! Declaration: your very bones will be evaporated until not a speck of your curses remain!!!”

The tutor responded to this by visually scanning his surroundings to see which way he should jump, but then he paused for a moment. His feet slipped. The floor was wet here on the poolside.

He was engulfed.

The lava exploded into scorching light. The blond tutor was unable to resist in the slightest.

Viocia screamed while only able to watch.

No, wait.

“What can I do?”

“!?”

The being known as a Voland gasped and turned in surprise toward that casual voice.

The lava was blown away from within and the white and lemon yellow boy brushed the embers off his shoulders.

“Exclamation: what!? Speculation: you aren’t a phony? Then what in the hell did you use!?”

“I didn’t rely on any kind of special miracle, if that’s what you think. I only did what I could.”

He wasn’t injured or burned.

The boy rested the baton on his shoulder and winked with a belligerent smile.

“Remember, Voland. This is magic. Study hard and you can work out all the answers yourself.”

Myousou Yagoro was a tutor. He couldn’t lose his student’s trust if he wanted her to pass.

So if he said he would save that girl, he would make sure he did so. 50/50 odds weren’t good enough.

“Go to hell!!”

The red serpentine eyes shined out from the bandage girl’s borrowed body while Demon Lord Aristotle swung his broom. This produced a massive wave capable of bending and crushing a thick metal door and it produced a tornado of vacuum blades capable of slicing and dicing a human even more finely than tomato juice. All of it had to be the most powerful magic available. This was in fact the power that had harmed Dorothea Rockpool’s own body while crushing so many Benandanti at once.

But it didn’t reach the boy.

Dodging side to side shouldn’t have been enough to avoid it.

But the threat presented by the tutor far surpassed that of the Voland.

Yagoro never stopped moving while he twirled the baton in his hand and swung it in a complex pattern. Almost like he was drawing an orderly magic circle in the empty air. He released his magic with more than twice the power of the incoming barrage. After the steel tip had accumulated enough power, a red light surged out and a yellow gale roared. The Voland’s magic was canceled before it was complete and his borrowed face grimaced.

“What did you do? Denial: that stick is no Formula Broom. And a boy wouldn’t be able to use a witch’s broom anyway, so that must be the wrong answer.”

The soles of Yagoro’s shoes squeaked along the floor as he came to a stop.

“Yeah, this is just a steel stick I paid the local blacksmith to make.”

“Steel. So it is metal? Why not use an ordinary wand? The club is a symbol of male authority. Or is this not about direct power? Steel is said to have purifying and exorcising properties when-”

“Wrong.”

“Kh. The weight? No, does it symbolize a percussion instrument? No again!! Extension? Standing upright? Confusion: no, no, and no. Then what is it? What the hell did you just do!?”

“Stop saying what it isn’t and try figuring out what it is. Even an idiot can list out wrong answers, don’tcha think? That doesn’t prove your intelligence. And to be clear, I’m a tutor. Even if she isn’t my student, I’m not going to hit an exam student on the head with this heavy stick.”

Viocia gave him a “but you’ll hit me with your slide rule?” look, but he ignored that.

More importantly…

“Question: how is magic possible without a Formula Broom, and for a male at that?”

“This world’s magic was completely lost once. We only have magic now by using knowledge from Earth, so only the witches who wielded borrowed power survived. The male wizards who used their magic on their own couldn’t recover in the same way. …Or so they say.”

“?”

“But is that really true? Sure, it’s true the extinct male magic never made a full recovery. The ancient priestesses and women of the Black Mass all essentially worshipped someone else to borrow their power. That’s what we now call witchcraft, don’tcha think? But there were alternate styles that allowed even men to use those things.”

The blond boy in the white and lemon yellow sailor uniform rested his club on his shoulder.

“The thing is, as long as you understand each and every spell and magic circle without the help of a Formula Broom, anyone should be able to use witchcraft on their own. It’s a lot like navigating the wide world without using a map or compass, don’tcha think? You don’t need a map to follow landmarks and you don’t need a compass to determine the direction from the density of plant growth.”

The Voland remained motionless for a while.

Even a being of that level required more than three seconds to respond.

“Rejection: do you have any idea how many calculations that would require?”

“Disappointing. That isn’t even worth calling a trick question. The correct answer is it depends on the type of magic.”

“Hey. Confirmation: witchcraft is used by borrowing power from another!!”

“Which is what I did. This truly is witchcraft. I’m not creating some strange magic power for this. Besides, isn’t the entire point of science that it’s reproducible? It’d be pretty pointless if not everyone could get the same result, don’tcha think?”

“Spells, diagrams, math, potions, anatomy, psychology. Question: do you have any idea how much work we do to respond to every request the witches make of us? Hee…hee. Rejection: it’s not possible. You can’t complete so many calculations while managing your own body and responding to the outside world!!”

“Are you sure about that?” muttered Myousou Yagoro under his breath.

This was nothing compared to Earth where every little thing was tied up in regulations and making a safe takeoff and landing required reading a flight manual over a 1000 pages where even how to access the clear plastic cleaning fluid had an entire double-page spread to itself. The grimoires of this world presented new and exciting magic on each and every page, so he never got tired of reading them. The best part about magic was how you could control any miracle as long as you understood the logic behind it.

So he was now the only person in this world who could use magic on his own without relying on a Formula Broom.

With a dull thud, the glasses bandage girl’s back bumped into the wall. Yagoro’s precise movement during the exchange of attacks had driven Demon Lord Aristotle into a corner of the indoor training ground.

(But I’d be wasting my time giving a lengthy explanation of this unfortunate academic theory that shows no sign of catching on.)

He knew a faster method.

“Seeing is believing, right?”

“!!??”

Green light flashed out.

A heavy weight appeared at the end of the club as he swung it horizontally and it detached at the end of the swing. The destruction took the form of a hammer. A hammer was the standard choice for opposing a rampaging witch. So he used the heavy projectile to deliver an accurate blow to the invisible presence occupying the center of the girl’s chest.

“Gh?”

He focused his mind on knocking it out of her. That would swiftly destroy the wicked and noncorporeal being without harming the captured girl’s physical body.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

…What can you do with magic, anyway?

Yagoro suddenly recalled that question his sulking student had asked it. Demon Lord Aristotle had roared much the same question. So he couldn’t help but smile.

The magic-wielding tutor collapsed the baton between his hands in front of his chest.

And he made a final statement.

“When someone’s in serious trouble, you can save their life.”

7

It was all over and Dorothea Rockpool was in the infirmary. She had had already woken and sat up in bed to watch the sunset out the window.

Summon Restricted Magic School Maleficium – the place everyone dreamed of going – was letting out for the day. Dorothea had an excellent view of all the witches riding their brooms out from the center of the lake to the diamond-shaped city.

She too had dreamed of going there.

She had wanted it so badly she had relied on guaranteed weight loss talismans, had Demon Lord Aristotle hijack her body, and received considerable internal damage. She was taller than average and had a curvy figure. With the Voland gone, all she had left was her damaged and worn-out body.

This can’t be easy for her, thought Myousou Yagoro in the same room.

To be blunt, her odds of getting into Maleficium were slim even if she did continue working toward the challenging entrance exam. The simple academic side was no picnic, but her physical characteristics were something studying alone could not help her with.

If she was going to give up, now might be the best time.

Hanging onto a halfhearted dream would only lead to more pain.

But.

But.

But.

(Yeah, screw that. I can’t agree with that.)

“Hey, Dorothea. There are ointments that make your body seem lighter than it is.”

“I-I’m already using those. Eep. It isn’t enough.”

Just as he thought. He already knew about her common agrimony and common ash ointment.

However…

“But ointments are a mixture of oil and chemicals. Why not use your own fat as an ingredient?”

“Eh? Y-you mean…?”

She sounded surprised.

Do not underestimate a tutor. He couldn’t do his job if he didn’t know more about magic than an exam student. And unlike the prep school instructors who shared their texts as a group, he had to do it all on his own.

“For example, you can view yourself as a ‘sinner’ for your inability to lose the weight you want, use that to magically extract your fat, and boil that. You’ll be reducing your own body and creating a lightening ointment. That synergy should help make you a lot lighter, don’tcha think? Of course, the reducing your body part isn’t easy and it’s bad or your health and your looks. It isn’t a pleasant path, but it is one option if you want to continue working toward the exam.”

8

After leaving the prep school infirmary, Myousou Yagoro held a hand to his forehead and breathed a heavy sigh.

(What am I doing?)

His job was to get Viocia to pass. Helping Dorothea Rockpool get her grades back up didn’t help there. In fact, if she conquered this problem, she would be a formidable rival. Considering the failure rate for Maleficium’s entrance exam, that would only harm Viocia.

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

When he saw that girl biting her lip and shrinking down in the infirmary bed, he couldn’t make the clever choice and convince her to drop out. Deep down, he was a tutor who worked to the very end to help students get their grades up. He wasn’t an examiner or grader who coldly failed anyone who didn’t earn a passing mark.

“Teacher,” called a voice.

It was his client Viocia.

Her grades were poor. Winning this battle did nothing to help her pass the exam. All her other rivals were leaning magical lessons from their texts or mixing potions to learn how to use the formulas. And to top it all off, her tutor had chosen to hurt her chances further. The situation wasn’t looking good, but she was smiling.

She spread her arms wide and tackled him without even a hint of doubt in her smile.

“Thanks for saving Dorothea, teacher!!”

…It was probably time he admitted it.

Most likely, Myousou Yagoro only wanted to help her pass so much because she was the kind of person who could say something like that and mean in the midst of the cruel grind of studying for the witch entrance exam.

Today’s Quiz 1

Yagoro: Now, let’s review today’s lesson before you forget it.

Viocia: Heh heh heh. You went baboom with your magic! The Voland went gyahhh! And you saved Dorothea!! My strongest teacher really is the best!!!

Yagoro: Yeah, sure. But I really want to get home and go to bed. I’m exhausted.

Viocia: Ehh? But what did you even do back then?

Yagoro: That’s the point of the quiz. You can find hints throughout the prep school. Okay, Viocia?

Question: Fill in the blanks to explain what magical methods the human Myousou Yagoro used to defeat Demon Lord Aristotle and rescue Dorothea Rockpool. (10 points per blank, 100 points total)

Witches focus on the Three (____).

First the Aspect of Antiquity. But this time, I only used the correspondence of (____), wind, water, and earth with red, (____), blue, and green.

Next, the Aspect of (____). I activated the ATU (____) text.

Would it be easier to describe that as Jack and the Beanstalk?

The (____)stalk is a route used by deadly threats such as ogres and demons, so you can prevent their arrival by cutting it down. That’s a magical lesson telling you that, under the right conditions, magic can be forced to malfunction or fail to activate, don’tcha think?

Lastly, the Aspect of Amorality. I used the popular wax doll curse. This lets you remotely damage a target by sticking a thick (____) into a doll made to look like them.

Altogether, I prevented the activation of Demon Lord (____)’s magical attack, which was in truth a function of the four elements, and then launched a counterattack with a wax doll. A (____) curse can harm its target regardless of distance and space, so it can damage a noncorporeal being who exists only as thoughts. And it goes without saying that Dorothea and the Voland are two separate things. By setting a specific (____) before launching the attack, I could make a clear distinction between the two. They occupied the same body, but that method allowed me to defeat only the Voland and purge him from Dorothea’s body.

That’s all. Any questions, Viocia?

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