Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai] (ch. 73)
Blurb:
What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!
I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.
But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?
Follow Elsa Grimly as she:
- Makes new friends and tries to save them and herself from getting burned
- Finds redemption from the deeds of her previous life
- Tries to get along with a cat who (like most cats) believes she runs the world
- Deals with other slice of life shenanigans.
--
Chapter 73. Doughtry Tech
Possibilities raced in my head as the name was mentioned. Order of the Unseen, the legion of doom whose true purpose I hadn't fully figured out yet.
This was probably as good of a chance as I was going to get to understand what exactly they planned to do in Ravenwind (because I didn't trust what the angels had told me the last time I met them). “I've never heard of such an organization. Who even are you?” I said.
We were met with more silence from the abyss.
What the hell? Did the non-disclosure clauses of the angels’ contract extend to not even talking about the organization? But this man didn't have any problems telling us he worked for that organization.
I froze in place as a realization slowly dawned upon me. Was this destruction, this man turned into a monster some kind of twisted publicity stunt? Was this their tactic of getting the word out? But it didn't make any sense. What kind of message were they even trying to send by doing something like this? Or was this even a message or just a terrifying mishap?
Also, there was no telling whether this matter would ever be fully disclosed in the newspaper. So again, what were the angels even playing at?
Before the leader of the sirens could bark another order at me I voiced another question of mine, “What were you planning to do by coming here? You said you turned into an abomination because you failed your quest. But what brought you here?”
“It wasn't by my own will, that I came here. At first, I just felt the pain. And then I felt myself buried under dirt. And then my body began to grow until I crawled out of there,” the abyss said.
“That quest that you mentioned failing at, what exactly was that?” the leader of the sirens said, “Was it some kind of sport or some kind of job that you were given? Where did this happen?”
“The dungeon. The dungeon that is under this city,” the abyss said. “It's a sport that tests your life. It's a job that binds you to itself. Once you are in, you either accomplish your quest or come back like me.”
The leader frowned deeply. “Under this city?” she mumbled. “Can you tell us the exact location?”
“Yes, he can.” I nodded and looked at the abyss. I focused the malice into my voice and cast the spell, “Perceptio.”
I felt the information flood into my mind. The place where this man had been--I saw it in my head and the road that took him there. I pulled out the notebook from my reticule and quickly scribbled the name of the place and a rough map from where we were and to the destination.
I took the scrap of paper and handed it to the leader of the sirens. She looked at it and nodded before handing it to her subordinate. “Go and investigate this place and report back as soon as you can,” she said.
The two witches flew off right away.
Next she interrogated the abyss for the other routine stuff.
His name was Magister Ignatius and he had been born and raised in some village on the borders of Ravenwind. He had no family on this side or even back home where he grew up. He was a monk who belonged to a sect called the Void of Solistism.
I paused. Because that name rang a few bells. Before I could ruminate on it any further I got distracted by the leader's inner thoughts.
“That's just perfect. As if the situation wasn't complicated enough.”
I was curious about the reaction and this monk. So I spoke up. “Um, you want me to dig further and try to find out about this Void of Solistism and the monk?”
The leader scoffed. “You won't have much luck with that. Void of Solistism isn't just any light magic sect. Their disciples have to take a sacred Vow Of Silence before their actual training even begins. Not even a god can torture secrets out of that man.” She shook her head and turned to walk towards her subordinates.
“So we are done?” I said.
“Yes, you may leave. I'll act like we never met,” she said.
Lily quickly tugged on my sleeve like a child that didn't want to be at the school any longer. I quickly liberated the abyss and left with her.
--
“Solistism,” Lily said as we were making our way towards Doughtry Technical school. “Isn't that–”
“Yes, it's the same art that Saint Cornelius has mastered.” I nodded. “Since the sect that teaches it makes its disciples swear a vow to never talk about it, that only means one thing.”
“Cornelius learned it at the Void of Solistism himself,” Lily said.
“No.” I shook my head. “If I remember correctly, his great grandson told us that Cornelius developed the art himself. Whether or not he invented it is another matter, but that man has taken that kind of magic to its absolute limit.”
“We still can't be sure.” Lily blew a stray strand of auburn hair out of her face. “If I remember correctly, the great grandson told us that St. Cornelius the first wasn't a very involved parent. What he knows about the man might just be the myth surrounding him.”
“Makes sense.” I shrugged as we kept walking.
For a stretch of time, our footsteps did all the talking. When we finally arrived at Doughtry Technical School, Lily voiced the question that I had been trying to ignore since we left the Soulless Sirens.
“Do you think he will come after us when he finds out we stole his testicles?” she said, gazing up at the abandoned building.
I scoffed and said, “Of course he will. And he'll say ‘My name is St. Cornelius. You took my balls. Prepare to die.’”
Lily laughed. The sound of it made me smile through the grimness.
--
Doughtry Tech didn't look cursed if you didn't look hard enough. On the surface it had the sights and smells of any other old, abandoned building with that slightly haunted feeling you got from everything of that nature.
Swollen wood panels, creaking doors, rusty hinges, broken windows. There was the usual invisible presence you felt in places like these and the usual feeling of being watched by someone you couldn't see.
But the haunted feeling seemed to dissipate as we made our way past stark, empty classrooms and torn hallway posters that said stuff like:
“The Pride of Noblegate.”
“The Future of Ravenwind.”
“Doughtry Forever.”
Yes, the school didn't seem very haunted when you looked at these things up close. It just looked…sad. That somehow cut me somewhere deeper than fear and anxiety would have.
If failed expectations and broken dreams were a religion, then Doughtry Tech looked like its temple.
Lily and I made our way to the school workshop which was behind the main building on the other side of a gravel pathway. It was a concrete cabin that was roughly seven hundred square feet wide.
We walked inside. Everything that was visible in the darkness seemed to be covered under a layer of dust. There wasn't any old machinery or equipment laying around. Most of it was probably scrapped since no one would've bought anything that came from the so-called ‘cursed school.’
Standing in the middle of the old workshop, I felt a bit underwhelmed. With my eyes altered, I was hoping to hear screams of dying children and maybe some evil laughter. Instead what I felt was a feeling similar to the one I'd got when we'd been to Rosa's Public House for the first time.
Okay, that was a lie. I felt something else as well.
“Can you feel the heat?” I asked Lily.
The girl looked at me as if I'd grown another head. “Miss Elsa, it’s much colder here than outside.” To prove it, she stepped forth and put her hand on my arm.
Her touch was like ice indeed. Then I felt a chill down my spine. “This is going to sound crazy. But I actually feel warm,” I said as I walked up to an old, half-burnt desk and dragged a finger over its surface. It felt warm too.
I felt my own fingers after touching it. I sensed a paper-like texture that crumbled away the moment I rubbed my fingers together. As if I had just rubbed some ash off my fingers.
Then I heard a whisper. “No one's laughing anymore…”
I stood in the haunting silence of the desolate workshop, the gears turning rapidly in my mind. The liberation ritual had brought me back to life in Elsa's body. And corpse blood had altered the mark of the liberation ritual itself. This in turn had altered the way I perceived not just abysses but also curses.
If I had to compare Rosa's Public House to this workshop, the sensations this place invoked were much more evocative of what happened here. And it wasn't just because a lot more people had died here or the possibility that this curse was stronger than what Rosa left behind.
If that had been the case then Lily would've sensed what I sensed instead of just feeling an oppressive aura that you come upon at cursed places.
“Shall we begin, Miss Elsa?” Lily said.
I nodded, feeling quite thrilled for some reason.
Lily opened her box of potions. “So are we cleansing it or channeling it?” she said.
“We will channel it. And I want to try something new here,” I said and pulled out some goatskin parchment that I had cut into doll shaped pieces before we came here.
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Posted Sep 22, 2025, 1:42 PM UTC