I headed to Sylvia’s room after finishing the macarons.

Knocking softly, I opened the door to find her sitting at her desk, papers scattered around, frowning and groaning to herself.

It was clear that she was racking her brain, trying to come up with a way to deal with the binge-eating witch.

Caught up in thought, Sylvia didn’t even notice my knock. I let out a wry smile at her obliviousness as I stepped into the room and called out to her.

“Sylvia, I brought macarons, so eat while you work.”

“Ah, Ms. Scarlet! What brings you here… oh, macarons! Right! I need sugar to think, so to improve my work efficiency…!”

Upon seeing the macarons I brought, Sylvia’s earlier frown vanished as her ears perked up and her eyes sparkled.

She seemed to defend her joy in eating the macarons, as if explaining to someone else why it was necessary. I chuckled softly and handed her the macarons.

Immediately, Sylvia grabbed one and took a large bite, a blissful expression spreading across her face as she murmured,

“Hmm~! Hehe, Ms. Scarlet’s macarons after such a long time taste even better! Thank you, Ms. Scarlet.”

“Thank you is unnecessary. But what were you looking at?”

“Oh, this? It’s a compilation of information on the sacred relics from the remaining records.”

When she mentioned information about sacred relics, I glanced at the papers spread across her desk.

Despite the small amount of information, most of it seemed crossed out as if deemed unusable.

Sylvia let out a wry smile at the meager amount of information.

“Well, as you can see, there’s hardly any useful material here. The only relics that might still have some hope left are the Everburning Furnace of the dwarves and the Jewel of the Sky used by the celestial and the join tribes… But the only records left are just the level of what was mentioned in historical textbooks.”

The papers she referred to had red circles drawn around the information about the relics I’d heard during history class long ago.

The Everburning Furnace, said to exist in the dwarves’ underground city,

And the Jewel of the Sky, which was supposedly used as a power source on the floating island of the join tribes.

Back then, I thought it was irrelevant and moved on without much thought, but I never expected a day would come where I would be searching for them like this.

In any case, the frustrating part is that all that’s left regarding these relics is vague information, and whatever is left conveys nothing but despairing tales for us.

I could roughly find out where the dwarves’ underground city, which supposedly housed the Everburning Furnace, was from old maps.

However, it is said that the dwarves chose to bring down the city and bury the witch of sloth under the rubble to defeat her when she invaded the underground city.

So, the underground city is now completely buried underground.

This means that to find the Everburning Furnace we would have to excavate and search through the vast area where the dwarves’ underground city once existed.

Moreover, the Jewel of the Sky posed an even greater challenge.

People in the past seemed overly fond of risking everything; the floating island that used the Jewel of the Sky as a power source was also said to have crashed because they wanted to defeat the witch of greed.

It’s absurd that while they made such grand gestures, the witches are still alive and wandering around.

Well, they aren’t the kind of beings that can simply be defeated by such means.

Anyway, that’s beside the point; the issue is that this floating island is literally a floating island — it hovers around in the sky, frequently changing its location.

Because the island moved around so much, there seems to be absolutely no information on where exactly it fell last.

This means we have to scour the entire world to find it.

Regardless of which relic we search for, we need to do this while uncertain of when the binge-eating witch might awaken, adding to our headache.

“…The more I think about it, the less answers I find. What am I supposed to do?”

“Yikes! Such bad words are not allowed!”

As I sighed in despair at the grim realities, Sylvia suddenly scolded me in a loud voice.

Startled, I blankly stared at her, and she flashed a bright smile and handed me a macaron.

“While it’s clear we’re in a tough situation, we can’t just dwell on negative thoughts. So I recommend you this macaron, Ms. Scarlet. Eating something sweet can lift your spirits and give you strength!”

“Eh? Ah, no, I already ate a lot while making them…”

“Oh please, don’t say such things. You like sweets too, Ms. Scarlet.”

I kept refusing politely, but ultimately couldn’t resist Sylvia’s insistence and popped the macaron into my mouth.

Sylvia watched me with curiosity as I took a bite.

“How does it taste? Feeling better?”

I simply smiled in response to her question and quietly left Sylvia’s room.

Then

“Ugh…”

I immediately felt like the macarons were turning into a sticky mess in my mouth and I spit them out onto my hand.

As I burned away the remnants on my hand, I internally whispered to Sylvia.

I appreciated her thoughtfulness, but I wished she wouldn’t do that.

It’s true that I liked sweet treats.

But right now, I couldn’t taste the sweetness of the macarons.

It wasn’t just sweetness; I couldn’t taste anything salty, sour, or bitter either.

The sense of taste had completely disappeared.

Without the ability to taste, eating felt like chewing and swallowing a lump of tasteless clay.

I didn’t know why I’d become like this or when it all started; it just happened gradually.

Roughly, it seemed to have begun around the time I became a witch.

In any case, the reason I hadn’t been eating much lately was due to that.

Even someone like me, who used to love eating, couldn’t muster up the appetite in this situation.

Sure, part of it was due to the fact that eating made me feel gloomy; I didn’t feel inclined to eat because I kept thinking about how I couldn’t enjoy it.

No matter how hard I tried not to think about it, the very act of eating would remind me of my situation and make me feel down.

So I tried to avoid putting food in my mouth as much as possible, but here I was, trapped in this condition anyway.

My spirits were sinking.

I could feel negative thoughts trying to consume me.

“…Sigh, huh…”

So, I took a deep breath to gather myself, my feelings swirling downwards.

I shouldn’t be too concerned over this.

It wasn’t a crucial matter that my sense of taste was gone.

Right now, I should be thinking about how to deal with the binge-eating witch ahead.

…Moving forward.

Damn it, just thinking about how to move forward seemed even more depressing.

Feeling like I couldn’t continue down this road, I pulled out a battle ration from Astra from my pocket.

It was that round rice ball that makes others twitch with distaste.

I looked at it for a moment before tossing it in my mouth.

Though it might seem strange to eat something tasteless, it was the opposite for me.

It was precisely because it had no flavor that I wanted to eat it.

When you eat something delicious and taste nothing, it makes you extremely gloomy.

However, if you eat something terrible and it tastes like nothing, it brings about a slight silver lining, doesn’t it?

As I thought this, I giggled while chewing what others are ready to die over as if it were gum.

After a moment of lighthearted laughter, I sighed heavily once again.

I just realized how bleak the situation was when I needed to think like a madman to find something positive.

My chest felt heavy.

“…Should I get some fresh air?”

Hoping a walk outside might relieve this heavy feeling, I exited the mansion and wandered aimlessly.

While walking, I thought about sacred relics and the binge-eating witch, but no answers came to mind.

Before I knew it, I had unintentionally wandered to the boundary area lined with barriers.

Beyond the barriers, Ari was there, protecting the city from the marauding demonic beasts approaching today, along with the angered beasts.

As I gazed at that sight, I fell into thought.

Ah, speaking of which, that was the place where the lustful witch brought the beasts to invade.

She was a total piece of trash, yet if I thought back, she actually helped us in many ways.

After all, she came and offered us information about relics, didn’t she?

Thinking that, I let out a hollow laugh.

It seemed I had sunk to a pretty low point.

Even though the situation was frustrating, my mind wandered to whether that greed witch would show up again.

Still, I mumbled my wish for something—anything—to happen.

“Ah, I wish a witch like the lustful one would just fall down from the sky…”

Just then.

“Fuhihihi, looks like you’re in quite a predicament?”

Suddenly, a girl with violet hair appeared right in front of me.

“Hey there. It’s been a while, Eva.”

Seeing her with that ominous smile, I recalled the old saying about the power of words and closed my eyes tightly while grumbling to myself.

Not you, damn it…