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1.

Diana, who had extremely limited knowledge about men due to her sheltered upbringing and education…

Recently got to know about ‘sex’ thanks to the erotic novel that her mother wrote.

Just yesterday, she even got to peek at her mother and her tutor making love to each other.

Because of that she had changed her perspective on this sort of thing. Instead of treating it as something filthy and dirty, she became extremely curious about it.

Naturally, the target of that curiosity was the only man by her side; her tutor, Shin Siwoo.

Although, she’d deny it if one were to confront her about it.

His muscular body kept her awake at night, and from then on, her imagination would wonder to his manhood; the same part that her mother touched the other day.

Everything was still so fresh in her mind, since it was only yesterday that she peeked on the two of them.

This was also why she felt extremely uncomfortable while walking with him side by side.

“Hey.”

“Yes, Ms. Diana?”

“Can’t we go somewhere closer to home instead?”

“We can, but since we’re already here, might as well go around the town, no? Today, I want to show you a bunch of interesting items from the Modern World.”

Their plan for today was to go around the closest town to the Modern World.

Border Town.

Actually, Siwoo’s original plan was to go somewhere close to the Grand Bath, but he remembered that Diana had never gone to the Border Town before, so he thought that it would be a nice change of pace if they were to go to there instead.

More specifically, to the smuggler’s Contact Point where there were a lot of goods from the Modern World being sold. Since he knew that the twins would love this place, he thought that Diana would probably also love it.

Especially considering that she loved the drinks and sweets from the Modern World.

“Haa…”

But now that they were on their way there, he realized that he probably picked the wrong place to go.

Holding up her umbrella in the heavy rain, Diana didn’t even bother to hide her scowl.

Her expression was significantly worse than the time they went fishing together.

“I don’t care about such things. Besides, that town is dangerous.”

“But, there are a bunch of interesting things here. Just look around, you’ll definitely find something that catches your eye.”

Though he said that, he still felt a pang of regret as he walked down the winding cliff road that overlooked the Border Town.

Even with the umbrella, the rain water was still able to soak his collar. There was also the unpaved road that felt so sticky to tread on, as if they were walking on a swamp.

Every time Diana’s shoes were stained with dirt, his heart just sank further and further.

“…”

‘Enough of this! I’m going home! Leave me alone!’

Siwoo thought that Diana would throw a tantrum like that, but…

She had been clamming her mouth shut, completely defying his expectations.

“We’re here.”

After a while, they arrived at the dock where a bunch of slaves were working, then Siwoo guided her straight to the Contact Point.

‘Fat Mermaid Contact Point’, the place where he bought their fishing gears the other day.

Inside the single-story building—which looked like the inside of a warehouse with its high ceiling—there were various Modern World items arranged in such a way that made the whole place feel like a maze.

Since this was a place where anyone could just come in, there weren’t any expensive items being sold, but Siwoo thought that there bound to be one or two things that caught Diana’s eyes here.

“I heard that you love these sweets don’t you, Ms. Diana? Why don’t we buy a box or two?”

“…I still have plenty of them at home.”

“What about this one?”

“Not interested.”

But the more they went through the place, the more he thought that he screwed up big time.

All this time, Diana just looked around the place with clear disinterest in her eyes.

It was completely different than when they went out fishing; back then, at least she was still staring at him with a curious gaze.

Nevertheless, he still had to adhere to his contract.

No matter how hard it was to please this completely disinterested girl, he still had to do it.

He was about to let out an inward sigh, but then…

“Hey.”

Diana suddenly called out to him.

“Yes, Ms. Diana?”

Though she was the one who called out to him first, she didn’t say anything else.

Instead, she tapped her dirty shoe against the floor as her frilly dress bobbed up and down, following the rhythm. After a while, she opened her mouth.

“The tutoring… Do you enjoy it…?”

“Um, by tutoring, do you mean what we’re doing right now, or when we’re playing Witch Board?”

Instead of answering that question, Diana just shook her head.

“Ah, did you mean my tutoring session with the countess?”

When she heard that, Diana’s body trembled slightly.

She nodded her head a little, but her gaze was focused on the tip of her toes, as if she was concerned about the mud that was sticking into her white shoes.

“Of course. Countess Yesod is a true master of her craft. I always learned something new from her every day.”

“…What about the other thing?”

“The other thing?”

At that moment, Diana directed her gaze at Siwoo for the first time today.

Even so, it was clear that she was doing it with such difficulty, as if there was something that weighed her down from raising her head and stared at him.

“…You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?”

I’m…what…?

Siwoo noticed that she was acting strange.

From her expression, it seemed like she was angry at him

But, the problem here was that he didn’t know why she was angry, or why she was even asking such questions in the first place.

What did I do wrong?

“Um, can you elaborate a little, Miss…?”

Meanwhile, Diana took Siwoo’s reaction as him playing dumb, so she clenched her fists in anger.

This man lied.

As far as she was concerned, her mother and this man were doing something completely different under the pretext of ‘tutoring sessions’.

Though he was being truthful, in her eyes, he just straight up lied to her.

The strange thing here was that…

She was frustrated by his response.

After all, he was merely her tutor, nothing more.

Not only that, he wasn’t even her ‘real’ tutor, but rather a ‘play’ tutor.

With that kind of relationship, whether he lied to her or not shouldn’t be something that she needed to care about. Even if there was really something going on between him and her mother, he didn’t have any obligation to say anything to her.

If anything, the fact that he kept his mouth shut was a good thing, since that meant he wouldn’t just blabber his mouth about having a relationship with the countess.

Diana hated Siwoo.

She hated that he kept dragging her into these annoying outdoor activities, that he was so annoyingly good at Witch Board, and that he was her mother’s secret lover.

There were a lot of things about him that she came to hate.

Recently, they got to talk with each other more, and she came to notice how considerate of a person he was.

But after everything came to light, it turned out that he was just being nice to her because he was trying to get under her mother’s pants.

In other words, to him, she was just a stepping stone.

He was the same kind of man that her mother had always warned her about.

She mistook him for a good person.

The moment she realized this, a deep sense of betrayal washed over her.

Before she realized it, she already directed harsh words towards him.

“…Disgusting.”

“Huh?”

“You’re disgusting, do you know that?”

“Huh? Sorry?”

His dumbfounded expression suggested that he didn’t know what she was talking about.

If she didn’t know any better, she would definitely have fallen for it.

And this only made her hate him even more.

“You think you’re some kind of great person just because you’re the first male witch? You’re nothing but dirt in front of our Yesod Family.”

“Um, yes, that’s true?”

If he had gotten angry right there, or at least, flinched a little, it would satisfy Diana a little.

But, he only blinked at her, as if he really didn’t know what she was on about.

As if she was the one in the wrong here, accusing him for no reason.

It went without saying that her frustration only grew deeper.

“Whatever. I’m going.”

“Huh? Did I do something wrong…?”

“Shut up!”

Diana stormed out of the Contact Point, and Siwoo quickly followed behind her.

Not wanting him to follow her, she turned around, glared at him and opened her mouth again.

“Just try to follow me, I swear I’m going to fire you tomorrow.”

Of course, there was no way that she could just fire her mother’s man just like that.

But, she felt like she wouldn’t be satisfied if she didn’t at least say this.

Leaving Siwoo—who had stopped walking—behind, she quickly walked away from the Contact Point.

2.

“Huu…”

“Gulp…”

Someone let out a sigh, followed by another person’s gulping sound.

A group of men, their skin covered with cold sweat that exuded a pungent smell.

Their eyes closely followed a certain witch who was wearing a gorgeous dress—a sight that was far from the image that the Border Town had.

“Isn’t that her?”

“Yes, she looks exactly like the picture.”

The men in the group numbered ten; they were Jack and the other thugs who met Bianca just a while ago.

All of them hid themselves—either behind a box, or beside a building—while watching each other with stiff expressions on their faces.

“So, what are you gonna do, Boss? Are you really gonna do it?”

“…”

“She’s an apprentice of a countess, you know?”

Bianca, who came to visit them, asked them for a favor in exchange for two artifacts.

“Shut your crap, why are you bitching like a little girl? So what if she’s the apprentice of a countess? Noble or not, if we got caught messing with an apprentice, we’re gonna end up dead anyway.”

Jack shot a sharp glare toward the other thugs.

He had been waiting for a long time for this moment.

From the moment he was captured by those witches and forced to live a life worse than a normal human’s, he had been biding his time.

So that he could take revenge on the witches who were walking around with their chins raised high, as if it was the most natural thing to do.

Now, his wish was about to come true.

Through the contract he signed with the devil, he finally managed to obtain the last piece of the puzzle he needed.

Jack looked down at the katyusha in his hand.

This was the aforementioned last piece of puzzle that he received from that Exile, ‘Ring of Subordination’.

According to the self-proclaimed good witch who loved to grant others’ desires, this artifact could suppress the magical power of the witches whose autonomous self-defense wasn’t active, and allow them to obey any of his commands.

The artifact could work on regular witches, let alone apprentice witches.

In other words, as long as he could get the apprentice to wear this on her head, it would be game over for her.

For him, it wasn’t a difficult thing to achieve.

The only problem here was whether the trash accompanying him would follow through the plan until the end or not.

Even Jack wasn’t confident that he could take on an apprentice witch all by himself.

At that moment, one of the thugs called out to him with a trembling voice.

“…Boss, can we just stop…? I have a bad feeling… Maybe we should wait for another opportunity…”

And his concern was proven correct.

One weakling spoke out and successfully spread anxiety to the whole group.

He was about to go a step further and weaken their resolve for revenge.

And so, Jack decided to answer the weakling’s action in kind.

“Keuk—!”

In an instant, he took out a dagger, stabbed the weakling’s neck with it and twisted it.

He did it so quickly that the weakling didn’t even have the chance to let out a scream.

“Urrg…ggrrrg…”

The stabbed guy started moving in a bizarre way before collapsing and died without being able to say anything else.

After finishing his deed, Jack wiped the blood off his face and threw a sinister look toward the other thugs around.

As far as he was concerned, whether their plans failed or not, they would end up dying anyway.

The worst case scenario was that if they were to stop and wait for another day, one of the thugs would betray him and tip-off the countess about their plan.

That was in his view they had to carry out the plan today whether they liked it or not.

“Anyone else?”

Facing the stiff-faced thugs, Jack bared his teeth.

“You fucking cowards. In the first place, you idiots were the ones who agreed to this. Now that our chance to get back at those whores is right in front of us, you’re telling me that you’re fucking scared?”

No one among the thugs were brave enough to refute his words, especially when there was a corpse right in front of them.

“Think about it for a second, you morons. Do you think that witch who came to us was such a naive whore who’d just let it slide and let us go if we were to go back without doing anything? After she gave us two fucking artifacts?”

“…”

“If we were to back down now, we’re just going to die without getting fucking anything.”

“…True. If I were to die anyway, I might as well die after eating an apprentice witch.”

After hearing the pale-faced pig agreeing to Jack’s words, the rest of the thugs nodded their heads slowly.

There was a reason why they were death row inmates.

They were the dregs of society who were willing to throw their lives away just to unleash their anger and sexual desires.

“So you can say something good once in a while, huh, Pig?”

“S-Shut up… Anyway, I’ll only allow myself to die after raping that apprentice!”

“We’ll decide the order by drawing lots, alright?”

In the midst of their excitement and tension, the thugs’ eyes were locked at the back of the apprentice witch, as if they could strip her naked with just their gazes.

“We’ll follow the plan. Release our frustration on that bitch properly.”

As the apprentice witch moved toward a place with less people…

The nine thugs followed her closely.