1 — Prologue

Claaang!!

“You witch, stay quiet right there!”

“Ow!! Hey, don’t pull me! I’m telling you, this is a misunderstanding!”

Beth was dragged along by the arm with the man’s overwhelming strength, and when she was violently thrown onto the floor of a small cell where not even light shone in, claaang! the dungeon door was violently shut.

“Hey! I’m telling you, this is a misunderstanding, let me out of here! I can’t use magic, I’m just a miller!! A miller, I tell you! Calling me a witch is no joke!!”

Beth rattled the iron bars, but they did not budge.

She had been saying the same thing over and over like this ever since she had been kidnapped, but no one would listen to her.

In the morning, after finishing the laundry as usual, she had been working in the fields when three or four men dressed in black magician robes had suddenly called her a witch, kidnapped her without warning, and loaded her into a carriage.

Judging from the way the carriage Beth had been stuffed into had gone straight down the single road leading to the royal capital, this was probably the royal capital’s dungeon. The village also had a jail, more or less, but it was bright and clean, and she had never seen anyone put in there except drunkards who had caused trouble, so this was certainly not the village.

She had admired the royal capital and had wanted to go visit it someday, though.

Beth was merely a village girl living alone and barely getting by beside a small mill with a waterwheel on the edge of the forest.

She had no connection or relation whatsoever to these magicians-sama in such splendid attire, and if there was any connection at all, it was only the adventure stories she read while grinding flour, where magicians were the protagonists.

He was probably the ringleader who had dragged Beth away from the mill. The magician man before her, who possessed a frighteningly beautiful appearance, glanced at Beth with eyes as cold as navy-blue ice and said,

“Hmph. It is useless to pretend to be a frail woman. I know your true identity. Once you feel like reflecting on your evil deeds, I will hear what you have to say. Until then, reflect on yourself there!”

After spitting those words out, he lightly swept his high-quality black mantle behind him and went up the stairs leading from the dungeon to the surface with sharp, clicking footsteps.

“Come on, listen to what people are sayinggggg!!!”

Beth screamed and stomped hard on the floor of the dark cell where she had been left alone, but there was no reaction from anywhere in the dark basement.

(Why… Why do I have to go through something like this!!!)

Beth had not lied about anything.

Beth lived alone in a small house beside a mill with a small waterwheel on the edge of the forest.

From time to time, she received requests to grind grain from villagers or townspeople, and she received one-tenth of the flour she had ground as payment. The income from selling that flour was all of Beth’s meager cash income.

Just as Beth had declared, there was absolutely no mistake that her occupation was miller.

Although she had little cash income, she was able to provide almost all of her own vegetables and other such things from her own field, so she was not particularly troubled in her daily life.

Borrowing books from the village library from time to time, and buying slightly sweet sweets on days when she went down to town, were Beth’s greatest pleasures.

She had continued that modest life for many years.

This mill and the small house were things she had received from Beth’s late grandfather.

Beth’s grandfather had been her only blood relative. She must have had a father and mother, but they had died somehow when Beth was little, so she had no memories of them.

When she was a child, she had even once fantasized that perhaps she was actually the hidden child of some noble, but looking at her own features, which seemed like those of any commoner anywhere, she had felt even as a child that that probably was not the case.

She had also graduated from the village school, more or less.

She could read and write well enough. She was not good at calculation, but she could do it at an average level.

Her smiling face was cute, but a cute girl on Beth’s level could be found anywhere; she was an ordinary country girl.

A witch was utterly out of the question. Even more so being dragged off to a jail in the royal capital.

…Beth was a good-natured, ordinary country girl who could be found anywhere, acknowledged as such by both herself and others. It was just that, only just a little, Beth had something she was better at than ordinary people.

To think that it would lead to something like this.