Not long after the prince returned to his office, the scroll followed.

"Your Highness, I'm sorry, Lily's child...... Not intentionally. ”

"I don't care," he smiled, "she's just a little girl." ”

"You're the only one who is so lenient with us," Shujuan sighed, "she wasn't like that at the beginning, it's just that after being deceived, it's hard for her to trust ordinary people now." ”

"Was it before she joined the Mutual Aid Society?" he asked, "and I remember that she had only been with you for a year. ”

"That's true, I found her on the outskirts of Chishui City," the scroll said, "You know, I can feel the presence of magic, the closer you go, the stronger it gets, and although it doesn't directly see the shape and color of the magic like the nightingale, it can at least be used to discover new witches. So every time I passed through a town, I would disguise myself as a noble lady who wanted to adopt a child, and go to the local shelter or orphanage to look for sisters who might have awakened. She paused, "Lily was being held in a remote township shelter, but when I asked to adopt her, I was refused, and the owner of the shelter told me that they only sold adult girls. ”

"Why?" Roland wondered. The latest time for witches to awaken is before adulthood, does it have anything to do with this?

"We thought it was strange at the time, so we asked Nightingale to sneak into the shelter and look up the books, records, and information in the shelter. Luckily, the shelter is far from town, so we can stay here for a longer period of time. ”

"Why don't you just take Lily with you, with the help of the Nightingale, it shouldn't be difficult, right?"

"It's not that difficult," Shujuan nodded, "and there are no other stones or mechanisms in the shelter other than the one the proprietor is wearing. But we can't do that, there is a precedent for this kind of thing. ”

"What precedent?" said the prince, making tea for the scroll.

"Thank you," she said, taking her teacup as soon as we found her, "we would have taken witches away by force at first, but an accident in Seabreeze County changed our approach, when a young witch who had just awakened thought we were evil and was brought back to the Aid Society and attacked us without explanation, eventually killing two of our sisters from her injuries and being killed by Hakara's "death sentence" serpent. So from then on, we would carefully observe the witch for a while, ascertaining her situation and thoughts before taking action. If the church is chasing urgently, we ...... You can only choose to give up. ”

"So, wasn't Nightingale and Wendy's encounter an accident?"

"Of course not," Shujuan took a sip of tea, smiling and shaking his head, "it was just over a month between the discovery of Nightingale's existence and Wendy's contact with it, during which time we recruited other sisters, such as Red Pepper and ......Chasing the Wind," she said, her expression darkened considerably, "but unfortunately they were all buried in the wilderness." It would be nice if everyone chose to settle down in the border town from the beginning. ”

Roland also felt quite regretful, if more than 40 witches of the Mutual Aid Society gathered in the town, I am afraid that this place would have entered modern life.

"Don't talk about that," the scroll took a deep breath, "let's talk about Lily." After searching the shelter and following its owner's whereabouts, we discovered the striking fact that this small country house was neither a real shelter nor built to screen witches. ”

"What's that for?"

"In order to satisfy the selfish desires of the operator. "Even if he is as well-nourished as a book, his expression is a little gloomy when he says this, "The proprietor will go to the slums of Chishui City every week, abduct those street girls, and deceive them that he is a kind aristocrat, and has opened a shelter in the suburbs, where there are often big nobles who come to the door in disguise to choose adopted daughters, and as long as they are chosen, they will not have to worry about food and clothing for the rest of their lives." Not everyone will be deceived, though...... Over the past decade, hundreds of girls have been coming to the shelter one after another. ”

"So many?" Roland frowned, "but you said the asylum wasn't huge. ”

"Hundreds are just records on the ledger, and most of them are ...... Dead," she whispered, "in ten years he found three witches, and sold them all to the church, and if the other girls were good-looking, he would dress up and sell them to those in need, and none of them were killed by him in the woods of the asylum." ”

...... "The prince didn't know what to say for a while. Suddenly, he felt a pair of hands gently resting on his shoulders from behind.

"The witch's chance of awakening is not high, so excluding the cost of containment, the amount of golden dragons he has earned over the years is about twenty, which is based on the data recorded in the ledger. But for these twenty golden dragons, nearly three hundred people died, and the pit in the forest was filled with corpses. When Hakhala interrogated him as to why he did this, he went so far as to say that it was not his intention to earn the golden dragon, but only to keep the shelter running, and that it was for this reason that only adult women were sold - a witch could sell them for a much higher price than ordinary women. His purpose is to enjoy the thrill of life and death, and the casual disposition of the lives of these stray girls makes him feel like he has become a king. Hakara killed him in a fit of rage, and when we tried to disperse the girls, most of them glared at us as if we had robbed them of their chance to be adopted by the nobles. ”

Lily did the same at first, until Hakhala took her to the woods behind the building, where she saw her friend, the "lucky" girl who had left the shelter a month ago under the false claim of being chosen by the nobles, and several stinking dirt pits, after which Lily threw up and fainted in Hakara's arms. When he woke up, he also looked blank, and he couldn't see any look in his eyes, and it wasn't until he slowly recovered under Wendy's care. From then on, she was wary and distrustful of ordinary people, especially nobles. "But I'm sure she'll be able to correct her slowly, as you're one of the nobles." ”

"I see," Roland secretly sighed in his heart, after experiencing this kind of thing, it is already considered tenacious to be able to cheer up his spirits.

Shujuan lifted the kettle, refilled the cups of the two of them, and was silent for a long time before speaking, "Your Highness, I have a question for you. ”

"What's the problem?" he was stunned, and noticed that the scroll's expression was a little serious.

"Nightingale, are you there too?"

"Hmm," Nightingale figured out, "do you need me to leave?"

"No...... You know about it anyway," she shook her head, "and you should witness it with me." ”

After speaking, the scroll will look at His Highness Roland, "You have said that you are willing to marry a witch, but I don't know if you know that witches cannot have children. She paused for a moment and asked word by word, "Your Highness, even so, won't you change your original intentions?" (To be continued.) )