The cute little lips opened and closed repeatedly.
Swallowing dry saliva with a gulp, moistening the drying tongue with saliva.
Elsie senior’s hesitation continued for quite a while. Instead of urging an answer, I looked around the interior of the workshop.
Traces of painstaking efforts were visible everywhere.
Things like books with numerous notes, drawing papers filled with geometric shapes, or papers written in unknown characters caught my eye one by one. Each time, I had no choice but to bite back a bitterly bitter smile.
It meant she hadn’t neglected any of study, research, or training.
Elsie senior wasn’t just wallowing in despair. Rather, she was struggling to escape from the bottom of despair. So that she could stand up once again.
That point made me feel endlessly sorry yet grateful.
It was then. When Elsie senior squeezed out a small voice.
“……I, I couldn’t do anything.”
Following the abrupt confession, my gaze slowly shifted. At the end, there stood a girl with her conical hat pressed down deeply.
The brim of the hat she gripped tightly was covering half her face. It was hard to read her expression, but from the gritted teeth, I could guess her feelings.
Is she frustrated?
As if to prove it, the girl’s lips were repeating faint trembles.
“Isn’t that right? In the last battle, I couldn’t provide any significant help… If anything, I was just a burden.”
“Elsie senior…….”
A sigh-mixed call leaked from my mouth involuntarily.
It’s a misunderstanding, I wanted to make excuses on behalf of Elsie senior.
The secret room wasn’t an advantageous environment for mages. Unless adopting a unique combat style like Mr. Reynolds, the firepower a mage could project in a limited space was restricted.
Moreover, if it’s easy to surround and hard to keep distance.
In every way, there was little room for Elsie senior to shine in the last battle. In other words, it meant there was no need to self-blame and drive herself like this.
But Elsie senior’s resolve already seemed firm.
“I was too complacent.”
It was a declaration without the slightest gap.
Sometimes, a firmly hardened determination doesn’t allow even a shred of persuasion. I tried to offer some counterargument, but soon clamped my mouth shut.
Elsie senior’s hand gripping the hat brim was trembling.
“While watching you get stabbed by the traitor’s sword… While watching you bound and suffering, do you know how much I trembled? If uncle hadn’t come, I would have lost you.”
“Senior…….”
“And in the end, I lost uncle.”
Before long,…