"It's a road map that avoids the eyes and ears of the shrine. As you know, the memory and lifespan of a weak witch are similar to those of humans, and at my age, I always forget some things, and I can only write down what happened with pen and paper.

There is something special about this route, and the people of the town believe that the mountain is shrouded in an ominous atmosphere, and that people often go missing, and no one is alive or dead.

Every night, the witch who passed by on a broom would hear someone howling and screaming, and over time no one dared to fly into the airspace over there, and the people of Asahina named the mountain 'Wailing Mountain' because it often made a sound like a woman's crying.

A few years ago, a few ordinary tourists went to Sorrow Mountain to try their courage, all of them were young people who didn't know magic and didn't know the height of the sky. They only asked for a guide from the town to accompany them, and they disappeared along with the guide. ”

Lady Yoshino makes tea for them while telling the story of the mountain behind Asahina Shrine, making this hot afternoon "cool and pleasant."

"Sure enough, it's easy to have strange stories in the mountains. Is there a follow-up to this story? ”

Ryji felt a chill down her spine, but she was curious about what was going on.

"Of course, I'm not done yet."

Sprinkle a handful of tea leaves into the purple sand teapot and close the lid, and Mrs. Yoshino continued.

"In 1989, the last year of the Showa era, I went to the mountains to collect silver bellgrass that grew among the cliffs, a rare material shaped like wind chimes that could be used to make potions. It's just that the Sorrow Mountain is too dangerous, and everyone is reluctant to go, so the number of silver bell grass is particularly large. I tried my luck and went up the mountain one evening. ”

A gust of sea breeze blew the Japanese wind chimes hanging outside the wooden house, causing Ruiji's hand holding the rice ball to shake suddenly.

This kind weak witch always surprises her.

Yue has been silently holding the food in the lunch box, cooking seriously, and her every move is in line with her image of a cooker. The story told by Mrs. Yoshino was a good place to eat, and instead of feeling afraid, she became more and more appetizing.

"They can only be seen when they are picked at night, and during the day they are almost transparent, and they cannot be found unless you look carefully. By the time we reached the halfway point of the mountain, it was already completely dark. Guess what happened next? ”

Mrs. Yoshino deliberately stopped at a wonderful place and poured three purple sand tea bowls full of golden tea soup.

"Got a terrible weird story?"

Rui Ji picked up the tea bowl, was scalded by the hot tea to his tongue, spit out the tip of his tongue like a cat, and blew cool air on it hard. Thriller stories are always nerve-wracking, and even if it's daylight outside, there's an illusion of a gloomy wind behind you.

It's getting cooler and cooler in the cabin.

"That's not a strange story at all, it's two witches. One is a weak witch from our town, and the other is a witch from Nagoya, a beautiful city person. ”

"Elopement?"

"It's elopement. The atmosphere in Asahina is very strange and depressing, and more and more young people don't want to stay, but the mayor of the town is a ruthless person, and she knows that the witch who wants to escape will not end well, and she thinks that people born in Asahina should stay here for the rest of their lives. As a result, the unbearable young people will leave with the help of the strange talk of the Sorrow Mountain. ”

Although the reversal of the story is a bit cliché, it is also reasonable.

Strange tales can hide the truth behind them, so the legend of Wailing Mountain was born to help young witches who were trapped in prisons to break free.

"Did the pair of witches end up being discovered?"

Riji's focus has now shifted from the weird tale to the ending of the elopement witches. If the elopement doesn't work out, the story becomes a bad ending. Anyway, she still hopes that her lover can eventually become married.

"Don't worry, they made it down the mountain and boarded the ferry from Asahina under my watch. I decided to go with them from the beginning of my encounter with them, so as not to meet the people of the town without any attention, and the journey was uneventful, and a few witches knew that I was collecting medicine, because they did not have a good relationship with each other, and they did not bother to take care of me, and the two children hid in the grass next to them, and their faces were blue with fright. ”

Hearing that the two witches who eloped broke away smoothly, not only Ruiji, but even Yue, who was silently cooking, breathed a sigh of relief for them. Hearing about someone else's tragedy during a period of mental tension will only make your mood worse.

The topic finally came to the main part, and the previous story is equivalent to building momentum for the most critical content promotion.

"You can make good use of the strange story of the Sorrow Mountain to attract people's eyes, there are many young people who have 'mysteriously disappeared' and have successfully left with it, never to return, and have successfully disappeared from everyone's field of vision under the pretext of going up the mountain to collect medicine. When they reach the top of the mountain, they hide in the shadows and fly to the back of the shrine, and the patrolling witch doesn't think that anyone else will take this path. ”

The folded brown paper draws a route map for the climb of Mt. Sorrow, which is steeper than Mt. Akabane, the peak where the shrine is located, and is a way to exercise oneself by not relying on a broomstick and relying purely on physical strength to climb a sorcerer.

This evening is the perfect time to rehearse in advance, and only by being familiar with the rescue route can you be handy and able to deal with everything that is coming.

Rhetti had never been involved in such a special rescue operation, and after looking at the map several times, he realized that something was wrong.

"You mean, we climbed up the north slope with almost no focus?"

"There is a road up the hill on the southern slope, but I don't rule out the possibility that people will pass by. You are all witches, not weak witches like us, how can this small hill hundreds of meters high be difficult for you? ”

"That being said...... Don't have a safety cable? ”

"No, you need to climb with bare hands all the way, please take advantage of the pure-blood witch's bloodline."

Mrs. Yoshino bluntly shattered her last illusions.

The afternoon training mission was temporarily changed to a more thrilling pathfinding mission. This time you have to face a mountain several hundred meters high and a group of superstitious weak witches with sinister minds.

Although the broom is not used for the time being during the climbing, it cannot be left with it, and it must be changed to carry the weight on the body. Motorized brooms cannot be folded, which tests the technique of climbing.

This incident once again confirms that the witch world is crazy.

Yue, who has become accustomed to freehand climbing, even plans to take on the world's highest peak, Mount Everest, on the border between China and Nepal, when she has time.

"Go climb Everest, are you serious?"

"When I was in junior high school, I had already climbed Mount Fuji, and Mount Everest was nothing."

The cold, pink-and-white long-haired witch tied her hair into a neat single ponytail, put on the gardening gloves she had received from the innkeeper, and opened a bottle of eerily colored transparent green potion.

"One of us drinks half of it."