The Conqueror from a Dying Kingdom: Volume 7 [Parts 1 to 9] by Fudeorca

Author:Fudeorca
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 3 — The Last Sabbath

I

The northern region of the royal capital was divided into numbered blocks, with the thirteenth being home to the Witches’ Forest. Few people ever referred to it as Block 13. The commonly used name was Grand Witch Square.

Manors, which belonged to the seven witch families and their associates, stood side by side around the forest that occupied most of the block. It turned the forest on the inside into a courtyard for use by witches. Naturally, ordinary people couldn’t gain access.

A thousand years ago, in the days of the empire, this spot had belonged to a general who was stationed on the White Wolf Peninsula. Back then, there’d only been one manor with fencing surrounding the wide swath of trees. The general and his subordinates had released animals on the land so they could enjoy hunting there whenever they had free time. In other words, it had once been a hunting ground.

After Shiyalta Shaltl had taken control as queen of the region, the forest had been offered to her. Later, she’d bestowed it upon the witches who’d accompanied her, and ever since then, it served as a base of operations for witches and their like.

In the distant past, there had been seven witches who’d supported the empire’s founder, Shamo Shaltl. They’d worked as apothecaries, making medicines using animals they’d bought from hunters and herbs they’d collected from a forest north of the Black Sea. They had been revered as the wise inhabitants of the forest and offered their support to Shamo Shaltl as her advisers, eventually becoming a key component of the empire.

A forest was a source of natural remedies. The seven witch families descended from those original seven witches considered it important to keep a bountiful forest close to their home, lest they forget their proud origins. While the warthogs and other beasts that had once been set free in the forest had been eradicated once the witches had inherited the forest, deer and small creatures, such as squirrels, remained—though those were also periodically culled.

The reason the deer hadn’t all been killed was because the newly budding antlers of fawn were an important ingredient in certain medicines. The witches’ justification was superficial, however, given that the more recent generations hadn’t preserved the practices of their founders in any meaningful way. The last group to hold the old traditions dear by making any medicines at all was the Yurumi family in the Kilhina Kingdom, but since such families were given no protection by the Shiyalta Kingdom, their old practices were now lost to history.

In the center of the Witches’ Forest, a space had been cleared of the carefully managed trees to make way for a small wooden house.

Closer examination revealed that the house was the work of a skilled carpenter who’d used the finest quality wood and lined the outer walls with cedar bark. Even the roof was special, in that it was covered with naturally flat stones rather than wood planks or tiles.

The stones

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