A black witch stood on a massive magic circle.
With a haughty yet noble appearance and purple hair, her name was Teresa Kaitlyn.
She was a member of the hero party that saved the world and the greatest black witch, one of the companions of the Mangja Seongnyeo.
In her world, which was left in darkness, there was no light.
However, Teresa did not despair.
Instead of feeling hopeless, she thought about those who she would meet again and tried not to forget the faces she missed.
Snap!
Thus, Teresa flicked her fingers, shaking off negative thoughts, activating the magic circle.
“Starting record for the 1192nd multi-dimensional mana access spell.”
What is needed to cross dimensions?
Mana?
Miracle?
Magic?
Sacrifice?
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On Earth, it would be hard for current humanity to even prove the existence of ‘parallel worlds,’ let alone traverse them, citing various scientific theories.
And it was the same for witches in a world where magic and demons existed.
Creating something from nothing, even if parallel worlds existed, there was no certainty of reaching the desired one among countless others.
She had increased the less than 1% chance somehow.
Swish!
Jumping through the unstable bottomless pit, she made countless attempts.
Many sacrifices were made in the process.
Gulp!
As the magic activated and the price was paid, Teresa coughed up blood.
Her magic hadn’t failed, but it also wasn’t a complete success.
At the moment the spell activated, Teresa collapsed, unable to stand and spilling blood on the ground.
“This time it’s my left arm…”
Where there should be an arm, there was none. Her lungs that needed to breathe had vanished.
“And my right lung and part of my trachea, half of my right thumbnail… Cough! Is this considered a failure?”
Not only that, but muscles and parts of her body were also gone.
As if erased by an eraser, her body had not disappeared due to the cost of the dimension spell.
She had succeeded in dimension hopping but hadn’t fully transported her body and mind; only her lungs, left arm, and a few body parts had been recognized and sent to another dimension.
And soon, the pain came flooding in.
“Ugh…! Cough…! Ahhh…!!!”
The loss of her body from the grand spell was terrifying.
The pain didn’t feedback immediately; rather, once the spell was over, all the pains she hadn’t felt rushed in like a wave.
Despite having a rough life, this pain was unbearable, leaving Teresa gritting her teeth.
“Hah, hah, hah…”
As the pain subsided, Teresa moved her remaining right fingers.
Then, fragments of her left arm and doll parts to replace the lost muscles were drawn toward her thread from the pocket dimension.
Thud!
As the doll pieces clung to the severed area, blood and dark mana splattered.
“Ggh…!!”
The severed surface burned painfully.
For others, this pain would be screaming-worthy, but Teresa merely bit her lip.
‘If it were Shia… she probably wouldn’t feel pain and would heal much better…’
The black witch was far from skilled in healing others.
While Teresa was confident in destruction, plague, taboos, and pain, she didn’t possess gentle and soothing healing abilities like Shia.
That’s why Teresa could only reinforce her lost body like fixing a broken tool.
This was also true when she had hastily patched up Menelapie’s severed arm with magic threads during the battle against the Demon King.
Feeling the doll pieces merge with her body, Teresa tried moving her left arm back and forth.
The integration rate was low, and it didn’t move as well as planned, but time would fix that.
Since breathing wasn’t necessary for this body, she would add them later.
She could survive with just her black mana, but the organs were merely decorations set in place because Shia liked ‘human-like’ things.
The same went for her fingernails.
Though excruciatingly painful, not having a few nails wouldn’t hinder her hand’s movement.
Now, she had to complete a higher spell rather than just reinforce her body.
Though Teresa’s methods required time and pain, they offered a certain potential.
She needed to transport her flesh, soul, and mind fully to the parallel world where Shia resided.
She researched and researched the dimensional spells.
While studying existing theories would be easier, all theories concerning dimensions and parallel worlds didn’t even exist, and Teresa had to create and pioneer them one by one.
“Hah, that damn Menelapie…”
Interestingly, Menelapie had increased the chance by using her own body, but it had been a gamble close to suicide.
If she had failed, Menelapie wouldn’t have met Shia and probably would have become a dimensional lost soul herself, but… for some reason, that hero seemed destined not to fail.
In fact, Teresa had attached a thread to Menelapie.
Of course, the thread must have broken when Menelapie passed through the bottomless pit, but at the very least, Teresa knew Menelapie didn’t die a miserable death as a dimensional lost soul.
“She succeeded, damn it. I should’ve followed her…”
There’s no use regretting it now.
Let’s do what she could do.
And…
“Kyaaahhh!”
“Shut up, it feels awful!”
For a moment, the black dragon, who had been asleep, was throwing a tantrum again as part of its body had been lost.
Menelapie had touched the magical thread piercing the heart of the black dragon before it could resist any further. Then it screamed in pain and fell silent again.
The dimensional travel spell naturally consumed a tremendous amount of mana, and the heart of the black dragon that Teresa captured was currently the power source for this spell.
Isn’t that cruel?
Not at all.
It was a creature that brought destruction to a world with the power of a child.
This was barely a price to pay.
I want to quit.
“It’s okay. I’m still okay…”
1291st experiment…
Failure, the body was intact, but this time part of the mind was erased.
Due to fragmented memories, she forcibly merged the backup memories of her spare puppet body.
1989th dimension spell.
Half succeeded, precisely half of the body transported successfully.
But as expected, half of the body was lost, and it would take a long time to recover it.
Activated the 2380th dimensional spell.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul shattered.
The soul….
Recovery complete.
Time spent: 47733 hours.
I’m still okay.
I’m still okay.
Restarting the 2843rd dimensional spell.
The spell failed.
Arrived in a world where everything except combat and myself was lost.
Failure.
Complete failure.
Ah, I want to quit.
Whenever this happened, Teresa looked at a painting.
It was a painting of Teresa’s memories created by her magical thread.
On the right was Menelapie, wearing an infuriatingly charming smile.
On the left was Teresa, with a frustrated expression.
And in the center was the Mangja Seongnyeo, grinning idiotically.
Whenever she wanted to give up, Teresa would look at that painting.
Then, she would remember…
The concept of space and time had long been shattered, and she would reflect on what she was doing…
The heart of the doll did not beat, but the warmth engraved in her long-ago heart still remained.
“Let’s not give up.”
That child would have said so.
“2844th, spell… activated.”
Let’s meet again.
○○○○
“Then what about that evil Vegan Mawang… and this Demon King’s Castle…?”
“How could I know how vast this world is and just blindly search for you? It’s only natural to think that creating a shabby Demon King’s Castle and messing around as the Demon King would attract my Seongnyeo, and she couldn’t possibly neglect me.”
In fact, Teresa’s thoughts were spot on.
For Shia, Earth was her home. For Teresa, this world was dangerous and unexplored territory with no prior investigations made into what might be lurking or what powers there were.
So for Teresa, the conclusion was, ‘If Shia exists in this world, I need to create something to attract her.’
“Originally, I considered creating a Meat Castle or Candy Castle to attract attention, but I was worried that it might lure dragons or hungry monsters, so I made it this shabby Demon King Castle.”
“I see… but why make it so one can eat prison?”
“Prison?”
“That! The room that tastes like meat.”
“Oh, that? You mean the remodeled version of the Gongheo Gungjeon?”
“Yep, yep!”
At Shia’s words, Teresa shrugged her shoulders with a smile.
In fact, she was feeling good.
It felt great to meet Shia after a long time, and she still loved that absurdly bright face with tears glistening in her eyes.
“Well, you’re the only crazy one who would actually eat something that tastes like marinated bulgogi from that room.”
“Ugh…”
“What if someone else was trapped instead of Shia?”
“I set it so that after a certain time, they’d be ejected outside the Demon King’s Castle.”
She wanted to ask how that was even possible, but it wouldn’t be strange if Teresa, being called the greatest black witch, could set the entries of the Gongheo Gungjeon like a machine.
After all, the Gongheo Gungjeon was a pocket dimension created by Teresa.
“And I mixed in not just pork and beef but also goblin meat and dragon meat—things a normal human couldn’t even touch—into the Gongheo Gungjeon just in case, so if our gluttonous Seongnyeo had come, she would have devoured it all.”
“That… makes sense?”
“Wow…! How did you know?!”
“How would I know, you dimwit?”
The Mangja Seongnyeo, who met Teresa again, was still an airhead.
But still, Teresa seemed to be in a good mood, as she kept smiling faintly.
“Had you escaped from the Gongheo Gungjeon, you would have inevitably met the fake Demon Lord Vegan. If you didn’t escape, you would have just been shot out outside the Demon King’s Castle. No matter how much I tried to pull attention with the shabby Demon King Castle, I had to prevent any potential accidents.”
“Ohhh? You have developed a lot. Didn’t you say you didn’t care if anyone other than Shia died before?”
“What the hell.”
“Hehehe, and you even thought to use Shia’s appetite. You’re still shrewd.”
Menelapie grinned proudly, and Teresa shot her a dirty look, her face growing sourer.
Anyone could die except Shia.
And she often thought to kill Menelapie too.
Yeah, there were times like that.
However, Teresa seemed to want to forget that memory, her face slightly flushed as she turned away.
“Shut up, retriever-like girl. You were the one lounging around here first.”
“Hehehe, it was sweet.”
Without the annoying emperor’s duties and only looking at Shia, it was sweet enough.
Of course, Shia was sweet, too.
“And did you think about me after coming here? You must have, right?”
“………. ”
“I thought about you a hell of a lot…”
As soon as she heard that, Menelapie and Shia shut their mouths and avoided Teresa’s gaze.
They did indeed think about her a bit…
However, for Shia… she thought she would never see Menelapie again, and after reuniting, she had been earnestly and diligently doing broadcasting… and, with the fragments of the Demon King, the mermaid, the elf, and various things going on, honestly, she had somewhat forgotten about Teresa until just before the appearance of the Demon King’s Castle.
And Menelapie?
Why would she think about Teresa when she was enjoying Shia right beside her?
“…………”
“What? Hey. Why aren’t you answering? At times like this, we should at least babble some cliché phrases like ‘we’ve always thought of you,’ right? Huh?”
“… No, I mean, I’m sorry.”
Clears throat.
“No, no, wait?! Hey… you bad girls. You really didn’t think about me at all?”
“It’s not that… um…”
Trying to appease Teresa, who couldn’t lie, Shia desperately racked her brains but couldn’t come up with any answer. In the meantime, tears began to well up in Teresa’s youthful eyes.
Sniff
Drip, drip…
“Ugh…”
“Are you… crying?”
Menelapie was quite shocked.
Though she had witnessed all sorts of scenes in their previous world, it was her first time seeing Teresa on the verge of tears.
“Hic… Who said… I’m crying?!”
“Wha… what, Teresa…”
“I came here and just searched for Shia… Hic… How much I’ve suffered… Aaaaah!!!”
At that moment, Menelapie and Shia realized the huge side effects of Teresa becoming a child again.
It wasn’t just the shrinking of her height and magical pouch; the bigger side effect was that Teresa had become completely uncontrolled with her emotions, a state of chaos.
