Magical Journey: The Other Shore Blooms on the Other Shore

"Are you out of sync with maps? Is this a country?" Qin complained as always. As far as the eye could see, there was only desolate ruins, making it impossible to associate this with a country. Perhaps it once was, but now it was nothing but rubble.

"Next time, you lead the way, okay?" Elena retorted, "I'll make a good fool of you then."

Originally, I wanted to find a kingdom to settle down in, but now it's clear that I don't even know if anyone lives there. It's getting late, and although it's not night yet, it's difficult to reach another kingdom in the remaining time.

After all, they've been walking the whole time, so they can only make do with looking around here now.

If the original map description is correct, a country of medium size should definitely have magic item shops.

But this place is ruins.

The two went straight into the country, which had been reduced to ruins. If there were any intact buildings left in the country, only the dilapidated royal palace remained.

Although the palace was also a deep, charred black, at least it hadn't collapsed, making it undoubtedly the best place to spend the night.

Of course, it doesn't matter to Qin anywhere; he could simply lie down in the ruins and fall asleep.

With a single hand, Elena burned down the dilapidated palace gates.

Since it's already broken like this, I won't pay compensation for any further damage.

To their surprise, there were still people in the palace.

At first, they were unaware of this until they started wandering around the palace and were stopped by a woman in noble attire, at which point they discovered this surprising fact.

"There are people here?"

"People actually come to this place?"

In short, it was a very classic greeting. Irene didn't mention that she was the one who burned down the palace gates; presumably, such a beautiful, elegant, and considerate noblewoman wouldn't mind such a trivial matter.

"How did you get here?" asked the noblewoman Mirarose.

During the conversation, Elena learned that she was the princess of this kingdom, Mila Rossai, and that she had lost her memory. In any case, when she woke up, her kingdom had already become ruins.

“We are travelers,” Elena said simply. “So why don’t you leave? There’s probably nothing here worth staying for.”

“Please take a look at this.” Mila Rossel handed Elena a letter.

The letter, written in the voice of an anonymous person, describes the kingdom's predicament: every night, monsters attack the kingdom, and the royal palace is the only safe place. To survive, one must stay inside the palace or kill the monsters outside, otherwise they will chase you to the ends of the earth.

Elena was not about to be fooled by a letter from an unknown author. The letter was full of strangeness, the strangest of all being that the writer knew Mirarose had amnesia, but made no mention of why she had lost her memory.

"Aren't you going to take a look?" Elena kindly handed the letter to the quiet guy next to her who was taking a nap with his eyes closed.

"I'm not interested in."

“I know you’re not interested, but I’d like to hear your opinion.”

Qin took the still-new letter, glanced at it casually, and then handed it back to Elena.

“Years ago, I studied curses,” Jean said. “Some curses are activated at the cost of memories.”

"You mean, Mirarosai is under a curse?" Elena didn't understand what Jean meant at first, and she subconsciously ignored the word "activate".

Jean probably meant that Mila Rossi was the one who released the curse, and therefore lost her memory. But Jean didn't want to say anything more at the moment. He had never been interested in this matter to begin with; in the end, he was indifferent to everything.

"How could this be? Who would curse me?" Mila Rosselli said, somewhat alarmed.

"Who knows?" Qin yawned.

Night had fallen, and the monster foretold in the letter arrived as predicted, wreaking havoc in the already ruined country. A protective barrier near the royal palace saved it from harm, but it was still affected to some extent.

Incidentally, this monster has a name: Jabaliya.

The next day, the princess still decided to personally kill the monster in order to end the nightmare.

Not long ago, she finally remembered the magic she used to know.

But magic alone is not enough, so she asked Elena for a small favor and promised to give Elena a fair reward.

This little favor is digging a hole.

All we need to do is dig a huge pit and let Jabalie fall in. Since it doesn't have wings, it will take a lot of time to climb out naturally. During that time, Mirarosai just needs to throw a lot of magic down into it.

Elena wanted to criticize the plan's recklessness, but since there was a reward and it wasn't a difficult task, she was happy to have such an opportunity presented to her.

After all, she really... was running out of money. There was still a broom waiting for her gold coins to protect it.

She's been sleeping outdoors for the past few days, without even a decent piece of bread. If she had been eating bread, she would have been penniless long ago.

But she soon regretted taking on the task.

She underestimated the sheer size of the hole she was going to dig; if she had known it would be this exhausting, she wouldn't have agreed so easily.

Perhaps it was the price she paid for constantly overdrawing her magic power when she encountered the magic explosion cloud, but Elena felt powerless when faced with such a large-scale project.

If it were the old her, would she have had it less tiring?

However, Elena stopped thinking about these things. There was no point in dwelling on what had already happened; one should always look forward.

After that, Elena was in charge of digging the soil, and Qin was in charge of transporting the soil upstairs.

By evening, the great task of digging the hole was finally completed.

"You two have worked hard. Now it's my turn," Mila Rossai said confidently, patting her chest.

"Are you alright all by yourself?" Elena asked.

"Oh dear, does the witch want to help? Then I..."

"No, that's a different price."

"You're really stingy. Well then, just watch my performance."

Qin had already gone to sleep. After all, digging such a big pit was quite exhausting; he had spent the whole day carrying soil up and down the hill.

As for sleeping... of course, I just lay down in the pile of ruins to sleep.

He even used a small brick as a pillow.

"I haven't asked yet, is he your boyfriend? Or are you already married?" Mira Rosse checked the time and decided to continue chatting with the Gray Witch.

"Just friends." Elena didn't like this topic. Although the relationship between the two seemed a bit strange to outsiders, she felt that they were at most friends.

"So that means he'll be my boyfriend in the future?" Mila Rossai persisted.

Elena didn't want to say anything more. Normally, she would have been a real Elena if she hadn't made Elena cry with her silver tongue. But now, after a long day of work, she was exhausted.

I don't want to waste any more breath on this.

But to be fair, it's not surprising that Mila Rossai would guess in that direction; in fact, she wasn't the first to think that way.

Generally speaking, people who travel together must have an unusual relationship.

How could people who have no connection possibly get together? After all, they don't even know about the magical artifact called the Yin-Yang Sphere. Elena usually wouldn't proactively reveal why she and Jean couldn't be too far apart.

After all, this is currently her fatal weakness. If it falls into the wrong hands, the consequences would be unimaginable. Elena is very clear that loose lips sink ships.

This is one of the reasons why their progress in solving the Two Elements Ball problem has been particularly slow so far.

"Are you shy? Even though he doesn't know magic, he should be quite gentle with you. Don't be so narrow-minded, Miss Witch, after all, most boys don't know magic."

Elena's eye twitched. Finding a partner was probably too early, but she couldn't help but think about it more... She didn't continue the conversation.

Seeing that Elena remained silent, Mirarosai wanted to say something more.

But at that moment Jabalie appeared, so Milarepa immediately changed the subject and resolutely headed toward the monster.

……

"Actually, you already knew, didn't you?" Elena had already left the ruins of that land without people.

Recalling Qin's words, the curse that came at the cost of memories. I hadn't understood them at the time; my mind was a bit fuzzy.

Qin remained silent, which was taken as tacit agreement.

Finally, after Mirarosa defeated the monster, she remembered everything.

Mila Rose was once a princess of this kingdom. She fell in love with a servant and became pregnant with his child. When the king found out, he was furious and executed the servant and cruelly killed the baby in the princess's womb.

But as the kingdom's only witch, the princess was not in mortal danger. So Mirarosa harbored resentment and, at the cost of her own memories, cursed the king, who was also her father, to retain his memories and become a monster, so that he would destroy his own kingdom with his own hands.

In short, this is the story.

Knowing the truth, Elena left the now-ruined country, feeling a strange and awe-inspiring fear of the princess.

At least the people of the kingdom were innocent, yet they all died unjustly in this princess's revenge against her father. This behavior was no different from that of a devil, but it was difficult for her to say who was right and who was wrong.

Anyway, we were just strangers who met by chance, not even close acquaintances.

Then let's part ways here and let time judge what's right and wrong.

She was merely a traveler, not a judge; she could only decide her own course...