The Seed Thief - Vol. 1 Chapter 1.2 - The Witch of the Forest

Meanwhile, chaos erupted in Magic Tower. The moment the world shook, blurring the boundary between the living and the dead, the mages of Magic Tower felt the presence of countless old souls in an instant.

“Has anyone ever succeeded in boundary-shaking magic so far?”

“Still, it was indeed that magic. We’ve started tracking it, so we’ll soon know who cast it.”

The mages of Magic Tower confirmed the magic was cast in the house of a witch who had left the tower a long time ago.

They thought the old witch would greet them and boast about her success. But instead, a child wearing the witch’s clothes greeted them.

“Did you, by any chance, shake the boundary?”

“Where did she go?”

Startled by the sudden visitors, Lulu hid inside the house and peeped at them, saying nothing. In the meantime, the mages were astonished to know that Lulu had indeed cast the magic.

Their eyes started to glisten with greed.

A young mage without a guardian, if you make her your apprentice, she will be of great use. Moreover, the old house was full of precious grimoires that were rarely found, even in the Magic Tower.

“It’s only right for us to reap what she sowed.”

“Yes. It would be good to take what she left behind to the Magic Tower.”

The mages, nodding in agreement with each other’s points, entered the house and grabbed Lulu’s wrist, trying to take the witch’s books with them.

“Stop! Those belong to the witch!”

She was surprised when the strangers tried to drag her away, but when they went outside with the witch’s book, Lulu screamed frantically to stop them.

The mages tried to subdue Lulu with magic as her resistance was beyond predicted. At that moment, Lulu cast a spells the witch had told her to use in dangerous situations.

Clouds gathered in the sky, and the lightning struck overhead the mages instantly. The startled mages tried to dispel Lulu’s magic, but their magic was soon engulfed when it clashed with Lulu’s. The difference in the amount of mana was overwhelming.

The mages and Lulu battled for days, and the first to fall was the mages. They thought she would fall first because she was a child, even if she was strong. But Lulu managed to keep her eyes wide open until the end.

“Though we offer to help, if she refuses stubbornly, then we have no choice.”

“Yeah. Let’s just leave it alone. The book over there isn’t really necessary anyway…”

The mages, ashamed of losing to a child, made excuses and retreated. Then they returned to Magic Tower and made a rule not to approach the area where the forest witch lived.

Since Lulu already perceived them as enemies, facing her again would only bring shame.

After the mages retreated, Lulu’s life returned to peace. It was good that the scary humans didn’t return, but she read alone, ate alone, and slept alone, Lulu thought.

‘Lonely.’

The home was a cozy, joyful place when the witch was alive. But now she felt like she was standing alone in a vast field with no end in sight. Lulu wished she was with someone, of course, not someone scary like the mages who had come before, but someone who could live here peacefully with her like she was with the forest witch.

So Lulu decided to create such a being.

Knowing the magic formula alone isn’t enough to cast the spells. In particular, creation-type magic requires ingredients. However, proper ingredients were unavailable in the house that had been uninhabited for a long time. Lulu had to look for ingredients in the surrounding area.

Just like that, the first thing Lulu breathed life into was a broken scarecrow abandoned in the forest. Was this the result of using the least amount of ingredients? After the scarecrow’s broken part rejoined, he didn’t follow Lulu’s control. The scarecrow roamed wild around the forest, causing the villagers to run away, screaming it was a scarecrow possessed by an evil spirit.

The second attempt was a dead crow with only bones remaining. This time, the magic was barely successful.

It was good that the dead crow came to life, but it couldn’t fly because only bones remained. Eventually, the skeletal crow became a forest member, running around the vicinity of the home rather than flying.

Learning from her mistakes, she put her heart and soul into the third attempt, which resulted in the golem that woke Lulu in the morning.

She found the densest stone in the forest and gathered all the ingredients she’d seen in the book. Thanks to that, her third attempt was a great success.

Though made of stone, it was agile and understood human commands without problems. It worked so well that one of the ingredients, an eagle’s feather, gave him a cheeky eagle’s personality. Other mages had spent a lifetime trying to endow it with such a personality but never succeeded.

Lulu was pleased to have created the golem. She thought she finally had a family. But as time passed, she realized that the golem could not replace the forest witch.

Even though the golem understood Lulu’s commands and could communicate to some extent, it was impossible to talk and share thoughts together like the forest witch.

‘I need a human.’

At first, Lulu thought about bringing a human living in the village near the forest to make them her family. Soon she dismissed that idea.

After living with the forest witch, Lulu felt lonely when she disappeared. So what if she brought in one of the humans? Wouldn’t the rest be lonely and sad?

‘I don’t like that.’

Lulu wanted to have her own family from the start, not one taken from other humans.

If she couldn’t bring one, she should make one. Then it hit Lulu.

‘Wait. The villagers can’t even use magic, yet they make families?’

As she used to be a child herself, some villagers had little children running around the village, which meant that the villagers had made little humans somewhere and raised them. How on earth did they create little humans?

The forest witch’s books had nothing about how to create humans. Lulu decided to ask directly. But when she showed up in the village, people ran into their houses screaming, “It’s the forest witch!”. Then, shortly afterward, the village men came to Lulu with sharp farming tools.

“I thought she was dead because she didn’t show up for so long!”

“The witch must have killed the people who disappeared in the forest!”

“I don’t think her hair was that color before…Was it true that drinking blood makes her hair and eyes red?”

While Lulu was puzzled at the villagers’ outburst, someone ordered a dog to bite her. Dogs raised as fighters rushed toward Lulu without hesitation. This time, she felt her life in danger and cast the magic she had used against the mages of the Magic Tower.

The sky darkened and the clouds gathered, then lightning struck between Lulu and the dogs.

A thunderous boom shook the earth and sky, accompanied by blinding light and vibrations that engulfed the village. The dogs immediately rolled up their tails and fled away. So were the people. Lulu ran away as well.

‘The villagers are so scary!’

I just came to ask, but they’re trying to kill me! They even said I killed people and drank their blood! 

Returning to her house, Lulu shivered under the bed for the rest of the day.

Fortunately, the villagers did not come into the forest. Instead, houses in the village built fences of thorns and kept ferocious dogs. Seeing that, Lulu gave up on going back there.

‘It’d probably be the same in other villages.’

Far away was a city with many more humans than the small village below the forest. But seeing the villagers shout as soon as they saw her, the people there would surely do the same.

Lulu eventually gave up on going to other villages.

So much time had passed since then.

Lulu grew more accustomed to living in the forest with the beings she had created. During that time, her body underwent many changes. Her arms and legs grew longer, and her stick-like body gradually revealed soft curves.

Lulu grew up alone in the forest. Still alone.

One day, when it seemed she would never know how to create a human, the wooden stairs broke down again when the golem tried to enter the house.

While cleaning up the sharp pieces of wood that might hurt her, she discovered a few books hidden beneath the stairs. Dusting off the book hidden in the deepest part, she saw the faded title.

“<How to make a homunculus>?”

The words caught her eye. Lulu sat down and started to read, forgetting to clear the stairs debris. After a while, she jumped up with a flushed face.

“I can make a human!”

Surprisingly, the book contained instructions on how to create a human. Lulu hugged the book tightly, suppressing her excitement.

It was no hyperbole to say that it was the most sophisticated magic in existence. The magic formula to create a homunculus was more complicated and gigantic than any formula Lulu had ever seen. Not only was the magic formula an issue. Creating a homunculus also required a wide variety of ingredients compared to other types of magic.

But the thought of making a homunculus and having a family herself already occupied Lulu’mind.

From then on, Lulu devoted herself to creating Homunculus. She memorized the book as if it were a lullaby and visualized the magic circle in her head. Then she started gathering ingredients.

Truly, creating a homunculus required all sorts of ingredients.

Strange ores, the fur and bones of rare beasts, and the water deep in a cave that had never seen sunlight were understandable. But why a 60-days rotting poop of a bird that had grown up eating only worms hanging behind blades of grass in the morning dew? Was this really what it took to make a human?

Lulu doubted the ingredients several times a day. Even so, she had no choice but to do as the book instructed.

And so Lulu devoted several months to collecting ingredients. She was able to gather most of them after a bloody effort. However, except for one thing. There was only one ingredient she couldn’t find, no matter how hard she tried.

The human seed.

‘Where on earth can I get the human seed?’

Other ingredients were hard to come by, yet she still managed to obtain them. But for the human seed, she couldn’t even guess where to find it.

For months, even today, she still couldn’t find a way to get it.

Laying on the bed, dead as a doornail, Lulu’s stomach rumbled.

“Hungry…….”

Lulu, who was writhing in bed, groped her stomach. She realized she hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. Usually, she would have enhanced the vegetable garden in the backyard and harvested the fast-growing crops.

However, magic could not make it grow in a day. It took about a week at the least so she had to time it right. She would have remembered to enhance the field only if she hadn’t been so focused on making homunculus…