Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai] (ch. 83)
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 83. Next step
We arrived back in Ashmedows around half past nine. Actually ‘arrived’ wasn't a strong word for it. We annoyed the steam carriage driver throughout the drive to floor the pedal. At the gates of our house, we shoved the ten firebolts into his hand without thinking about the change and rushed inside.
I was surprised to find Cynthia and Rowland in our living room. Cynthia wore a simple nightgown that probably belonged to Lenora and Rowland was wearing an expensive looking dress shirt on a pair of pajamas that seemed two sizes small for him.
“Rowland, whose pajamas are those?” Lily asked.
“Oh, Lenora bought these yesterday because I would need something more comfortable than my trousers to wear to bed.” He ran a hand over the fabric of his pants. “Though, they are a bit small, I admit.”
“She should've bought you a cotton shirt too,” Lily said. “Because what you are wearing looks too formal for bed.”
“We forgot to tell her,” the siblings said in unison.
“So I just wore my undershirt while sleeping,” he said.
“Wait a minute!” I snapped. “Who cares what they wore to bed?” I pointed at both of them. “How are you both alive?!”
The sibling exchanged a blank look. “Why do you want us dead?”
“That was rude, Miss Elsa,” Lily whispered to me.
I groaned. “That's not what I meant. I’m talking about your house. It's destroyed. How did you survive that?”
“Um, you sent us hunting for property across the province,” Rowland said.
“Oh right.” Lily nodded and let out a sigh of relief. “It wasn't just the two of us out touring for places to build more taverns.”
Before anyone could say anything more, Lenora entered the living room with a plate of sandwiches in her hand. “I changed the sheets in the guestroom and filled your bath water with all the ice we had, Rowland,” she said. “You should go do whatever you do in it.” She handed the plate to Cynthia and then she noticed us. “You girls are back!” She rushed over and enveloped us in a hug. “Make yourselves comfortable. I bought more honeydrop cakes this morning anticipating you because Cynthia finished all that I had yesterday.”
“Sugar makes me think, Lenora. I was trying to replenish my intelligence,” Cynthia said with a pouty look.
It didn't matter much because Lenora had already run off to the kitchen to get the cakes. I sat in the armchair opposite the siblings. “What was it that destroyed your house?” I said. “What kind of monster was it?”
“Oh, it looked like a spider. It was made of something that looked like crystal and it was big as a house,” Rowland said.
“How do you know it was a monster that destroyed our house?” his sister asked.
I told them about the Noblegate situation.
An ominous quiet swept over the room. Lily was the one who broke the silence. “Lenora, you were going to bring honeydrop cakes, weren't you?”
Instead of Lenora's voice, we heard a loud thud in response. We all rushed to the kitchen to check. The woman was sprawled on the floor, limbs bent awkwardly, her eyes closed.
Lily gasped and lifted Lenora off the floor as if she weighed nothing. She carried her upstairs and we all followed.
“What the hell happened to her?” I asked the siblings.
“We don't know.” Rowland shrugged. His sister smacked him over the head. “Were you passed out yesterday?”
Then she looked at me. “Lenora was running around all day for us. She prepared the guest room for us. Then did all the chores. She bought the pajamas for Rowland.”
“She also made really nice steak and potatoes,” Rowland added.
“I love the steaks she makes,” Lily said as she carried the woman to her room and gently lowered her on the bed.
“Oh, she said she had bought that for you,” he said. “I ate it.”
“Not fair. I didn't even get to eat the fancy dinner in the Centennial express.” Lily grumbled.
“Lenora didn't eat either,” Cynthia said with a hint of guilt in her voice. “She kept running errands around the house.”
“Why didn't you help her?” I narrowed my eyes at the siblings.
“Oh, we were busy with our own work,” Rowland said. “I was taking a long, ice bath and reflecting upon my day and all the work I had done,” he said.
“Didn't you say you didn't do any work?” I asked.
But instead of answering me Cynthia followed her brother's example and said, “I was busy meditating for thirty minutes, victory posing for nine minutes to restore my confidence and then I wrote fifty self affirmations in my journal.”
I brought my palm to my face. “All that bullshit is just wasting your time,” I said.
“Bullshit?” Rowland gasped.
“What do you mean?” Cynthia said. “We are training ourselves to be better entrepreneurs for our adventurer's guild. We are religiously following everything written in this book of wisdom.” She pulled out a thin leather bound tome from a discreet pocket in her dress.
The title on the book, embossed in golden letters said 15 Totally Normal Things that Totally Regular People can do to become Totally Rich.
Below the title was the name of the author: Braen. D. Ed.
I was about to make a comment on what I had just witnessed but Lily said, “Everyone quiet.” Then she pulled out a blue colored vial from her pouch of potions and a glass tube. She siphoned a bit of liquid from the vial with it and dripped a couple of drops into Lenora's mouth. “It's a strength potion. It will energize her as she sleeps. She will wake up feeling better.” She gave a motherly smile to the woman and picked up her box of potions. “She had been running around, wasn't she? We should let her rest for a bit.”
--
It had been a few minutes since we put Lenora to bed when Smokewell returned. She stretched her back after entering the house through the living room window.
“Where were you again?” I asked her as we followed her into the kitchen.
“Chasing butterflies,” she said nonchalantly. “Either way, I'm glad we are all in one place now. Time for some much needed discussion.” She hopped onto the dining table and sat at the center. “So tell me, how has our progress been so far?”
Lily and I filled her in on our little adventure in Noblegate. I left out the information about the dark mage that Aria had told me about. Smokewell’s accusation of me being an imposter was still bright and painful in my mind like a fresh wound. I didn't want to give her even the slightest chance to doubt me now. If she found out that the mark on my hand wasn't something I'd come up with but the curse of an evil god, I would have to answer some tough questions that even I didn't know the answers to completely.
After Lily and I were done talking, Cynthia and Rowland stood to address everyone. They laid out a map of Ravenwind which had a couple of places circled in red ink. “We reached out to father's old friends in Cinderburn, Ivan's Hollow and Locke Hill as we'd planned,” Rowland said.
“And we offered them special gifts--clothes made by the finest craftsmen who worked for our father,” Cynthia said. “We also talked about this new business we wanted to start and wanted to find cheap real estate.”
Rowland smiled. “And they agreed. They introduced us to brokers who offered us great deals.”
“And now land is ours,” Rowland said, laying out the papers of deed of sale on the table. Lily, Smokewell and I went through the papers.
The cat nodded. “I wasn't expecting you to accomplish anything, so I'm really satisfied to find out you did something right,” she said.
“It's all thanks to victory posing,” Cynthia said triumphantly.
“And ice baths,” Rowland added.
“What?” Smokewell cocked her head.
I groaned. “It's nothing important,” I said and scribbled something on a piece of paper. I passed it onto the siblings across the table. As they read through the note I said, “It's the address to a school named Doughtry Technical in Noblegate. I want you to go there and purchase the place. The property is quite big. We can have several uses for it.”
Rowland gave me a salute. “We'll get to it.”
“The last important matter is the thing that occurred yesterday,” I said, steepling my fingers together. “The monster that destroyed the Radcliff mansion. As we already mentioned a similar thing happened in Noblegate while we were there. And I wouldn't be wrong to suggest that something like that happened at other locations where the dungeon gates exist. It’s quite clear that the Order of the Unseen is starting to reveal its cards. What those cards mean we aren't sure. But what we do know is that people have witnessed these things. Now they know about the dungeons. Something is going to happen and it will happen quicker than we anticipate. That means we will have to be quick with our next move as well. We have to begin recruiting adventurers for our guild.”
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Posted Dec 17, 2025, 5:42 PM UTC