[This may be inconvenient, but I want you to stop talking.] [Who knows what the others will do to you if they realized that I’ve summoned a talking familiar with human-like appearance.]

Without saying anything, Vram just tilt his head downward as he agreeing to Josephine’s condition. The two of them walked together away from the Hall that was used to summon Vram before.

[… You’re quite docile actually, despite what you’ve done to me.] [If by any chance I were going to undre-]

[Then I’m going to slap you again.]

His sudden remark makes Josephine shivering all over again while rubbing her ass again. It was truly an experience she would rather never experience all over again, as she keeps rubbing her ass while tugging her dress up and down.

[… What should I say to Yohana if she sees me like this….]

***

[GYAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH! I CAN’T BELIEVE MY EYES!! OH GIRLS~! THE ELDER WILL BE SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS!!]

[Muu…!! Will you stop laughing at people’s misfortune like that?!]

The girl whom have been waiting outside of the building where the summoning was set, with her striking gradient green-blue hair, and a pair of framed two-transparent mirror on her face, combined with her gaudy appearance of green-white combination, Yohana, seen laughing out loud in front of the building as Josephine’s face went red listening to Yohana’s tease, as Vram’s just standing beside Josephine, being silent.

[Ahah… ahahahah! Well in the first place, you weren’t someone who would yield to anyone no matter how much you were tortured, but… Ahahahahaahh!!!]

As she tried to holding off her laughing whilst wiping off her tears, she tried to observe Vram a little bit longer.

[Well, as usual, quite an unusual Familiar you have there.] [It surprised me the most of its striking resemblance to that of a human male.]

[You’ve seen a human male before, Yohana?]

[Well, not as fierce as this one, okay~❤] [Most of male human whom trying to invade us were both stupid and full of greed.] [This one somehow seems… I don’t know how to describe it; it feels like he was the perfect familiar you could’ve ever had.] [Despite its tremendous strength and high resistance against magic, just like how you described him, I feel no malice from it.] [But this guy definitely a monster.]

[I… I see....]

[No kidding, what kind of material have you collected that you ended up summoning “it”???] [It was most likely the kind of monster that appeared outside the continent, considering its size.]

As she keep explaining and asking Josephine at the same time with her finding, Yohana keep rubbing, stroking, and pinching Vram’s body all over starting from its head until toe.

[O… outer Continent?]

[Yeah, you see here? This insignia? It was never recorded from our ancient history.] [Whilst I’m unsure whether the Elder had met one, but I was once heard from the elder that there are many humanoid-like monsters lingering out of this continent.] [But all of them have never been able to speak to each other though, so they still consider them Monsters.]

[I… I see….] As Josephine’s face turns sour after hearing Yohana’s explanation, Yohana’s letting go of Vram and started to hug Josephine from the back while pinching Josephine’s cheek.

[I suggest that you take great care of it, my little juniors~❤]

[Of course I’d do that without you reminding me!!] With her expression suddenly getting serious whilst a little bit angry.

[I understand, I understand~] [Then I shall report this back to elder, then returning home.] [Is that okay with you, or do you want me to stay behind for a while?]

As Yohana’s offering her support, Josephine’s face turn sour again as she looked like she’s holding back something, she tried to force herself to smile.

[Mm~… I’m fine. Besides, I wanted to visit that places together with Vram….]

[Oho? Already a name for your familiar~❤? Nice name you have there~❤] [Then, I should go right now.]

Before she finally go, Yohana hugged Josephine’s tightly as Josephine’s also leaning on her breasts as she looked like she needed some support from Yohana as her senior.

[I hope this’ll be the last time for you to visit this place.]

Josephine’s just tilting her head downward as she keeps hugging Yohana as if she doesn’t want to let her go at all.

***

[Can you keep up with me, Vram?]

Vram just nodding to responds to Josephine’s answer. Seeing such bland response from her own familiar, Josephine went a little bit annoyed.

[Why aren’t you responding me back with another talk?!] [It’s a rare occasion for me to have a talking Familiar, so I want to hear more of your story!!!]

Vram just scratching his helmet again with his palm looked confused to Josephine’s remark [But you’re the one who told me not to talk.] As he replied Josephine.

[Well I think it’s already safe to consider us safe without somebody’s overheard us.] [Also, you seem quite sharp, so I think you’ll know the time when you could talk or not, right?]

It looked like Josephine’s was quite expecting something from Vram, as she looked up to Vram with her blinking eyes piercing straight right at him.

[… I did able to sense Miss Yohana’s presence right when we’re about to get out from that place, but I don’t think you should expect much since I’m still having a hard time sensing a creature whom were able to hide its presence.]

[OHO~❤! As expected~❤!] [Then shall we have a little chat before we’re reaching the place? Since it doesn’t seems like we’re going to reach it quickly~❤] As she said that, she began to hug Vram’s arm and rubbing her face against it.

[Is it really that far? I have confidence in my stamina, though I can’t say the same for you, Master….]

[I’m fine~❤] [I’ve always been coming here at least once a week, so this much is nothing~❤]

[… You’re tougher than you look.]

As they continued on their journey, Vram did ask a lot of things regarding his own situation. The first thing he’s going to clarify is the witch’s existence. As mentioned before, witches are people whom were able to use magic without the uses of any catalyst. Josephine’s actually didn’t understand the concept of using catalyst as medium, mainly because she’s a native. So Vram had to elaborate some of the current magic system he knows.

Magic mainly operates from a formula which was made in order to bend, force, or even create a natural phenomenon by writing them with Rune Words. After the formula is written, it will processed itself using the energy gained from somewhere and started to unleash the formula result, which was referred as magic.

With that said, there was a need for a human to use mediums as means of writing those formulas in order to unleash magic. It can be said that these medium can be of anything, as long as it can withstand the flowing energy inputted from writing the rune formula.

Josephine’s actually surprised since the process of normal magic spelling was almost the same as the humans, by the exception that their magic didn’t need to use any medium at all.

[Rather, we wrote them right inside our head, after that we just unleashed them by converting an amount of these said energy to compliment the formula we’ve created inside our head.]

By that logic, it was safe to assume that these witches actually using their own body as a medium in order to unleash the magic. It’ll completely cut the processing time of magic whilst being able to use multiple magic at the same time. Vram deduced that the reason these witches are being exiled was due to the reason that how efficient their magical ability was.

The second thing he wanted to clarify was about how the witches operate. What surprised Vram the most is that witches never had a male descendant since long times after their exile. It was also mentioned that actually, every witches can get pregnant no matter what kind of creature inseminated them. It was deduced that since the way they use magic had a different nature than the other humans, it changes the way their body operates biologically. As a result, not only do the children they bear will ended up having the same nature as their parents, the child also had the potential of turning into a witch.

[That’s why we didn’t have any male human at our places.] [If we ever need to copulate, we can always use our own familiar to inseminate us.] [Since it’s also served as a way to restore a familiar’s energy, it’s quite convenient for us.]

As he heard Josephine’s explanation, Vram can only let out a long sigh as he scratched his head confused. [Does that mean that one day I have to do that with you, Master?]

[Of course~❤] As she said that cheerfully, this left Vram being awkward all by himself.

But he wasn’t stopping at that, as there are various questions linger like how they procured resources, culminating food, their lifestyle, common occurrence, protection around the populace, their hierarchy, and so on. While sometimes Josephine’s quite taken aback by how much information demanded from her whilst left her confused, she was quite happily chatted with Vram as it was the happiest moment of her life.

But as they almost reached their destination, Vram begin to ask one question that somehow left a bitter taste on Josephine.

[Then… how are we familiar being treated?] [If I’m not mistaken, familiars were supposed to be the same as a slave, as their sole mission was to tend to their masters.]

Hearing such statements, Josephine put on such a complex facial expression in her face. It was a face devoid of her cheerfulness as her frowns keeps getting darker with her eyes keeps getting darker and tears almost collected in her void brown eyes, but still trying her best to keep smiling all the time.

[... Is that so…?] [If that’s the case… I guess it would be easier for us witches should we’ve thought like that from the very beginning.]

Her last sentences left Vram confuses as he ponder to why would his master put on such grim expression on her face. Before long, they’ve finally reached their destination.

***

A gentle, breezing wind can be felt through the entrance of the place. A solemn feeling can be felt through his armor onto his inner side. A little bit of shiver can be seen covering up Josephine’s body as they entered the place. Many stone tablet can be seen popping out from the ground, as there are many kind of flower and grass growing out of them, but with so little weed to be seen.

[… A graveyard…?]

Vram tried to ask Josephine her reason of coming here, but after seeing her devastated expression lingering on her face, Vram decided to hold back.

[This here is a resting place for the familiar whom are dying before its master’s demise.]

It was explained that familiar is akin to monsters that have been summoned in order to fulfill their master needs. As such, they need to be constantly received their master’s energy or they’ll be disintegrated right away. That said, the moment that a master had finally meet their end, their Familiar will be also disintegrated right away as a part of their contract. But a familiar that ended up dying before its master will ended up leaving some parts of its previous body.

[To think that this place would treat their own familiar this way… I guess I should be impressed.]

[… Is it such a rare occasion for a familiar to be treated this way outside?]

[More like they don’t even care what would’ve happened to their own familiar.]

[… Is that so…?]

The moment Josephine’s stopped talking; she went deeper and started to sit down while at the same time, she started to clean up the weed and moss that’s covering the graveyard.

[… Is it possible that… I’m not the first familiar you’ve ever summoned?]

Josephine’s just nodding lightly as she keeps pinching and pulling out the weed and moss on the grave. As Vram finally decided to stay silent and helped her to clean up the grave.

[… Thank you….]

As both of them helped each other in cleaning up the grave, Vram somehow quite good with pulling out the weed, so the job went by without a cinch. But as soon as they finished weeding one grave, Josephine started to move onto the next grave. This left Vram with confused and perplexed expression shown on his gesture.

[… You know Vram?] [I did explain to you that when we need to copulate, we’re doing it with our familiar, right?] [It’s actually become our primal needs that we need to do one, in order to further increasing our ability as witches.] [I don’t know about the details, but as long as we’re being hunted by the humans, there’s no way for us to be loved by them, to be hugged by them.] [That’s why; we turned our love into our familiar.] [Most witches here always ended up having their one and only familiar they ever summoned, no matter how weak they are.]

As Vram tried to get himself together, he immediately went and helped Josephine cleaned the other grave as soon as possible. Whilst trying to suppress his emotion while listening to her.

[Before long, it has become something normal to summon familiar in order to become your family, not as someone whom always fulfill the need of their masters.] [We summoned them, because we wanted to, and we needed to be loved.]

Thus that explains Josephine’s insistence of not wanting to cancel the summoning and decided to keep him in this world. Her clingy attitude was also caused by how much losing one familiar devastated her so much. And that also explain why would Yohana reminding her of taking care of him.

[But then again….] [Losing a Familiar… is not something that I can get used to, no matter how many times it had happened to me.]

[What?]

As if he was being attacked by a wild beast all of a sudden, Vram just jumped back surprised and letting out such remark.

[Since a familiar was meant to love and to be loved by us, we would always use everything we’ve had in order to protect them.] [But somehow, my familiars….]

She tried to hide it by keep lowering her head to the ground, but it can be seen that her tears had already reached the ground. Vram tried to observe the situation around the graveyard a little bit longer. It can be seen that some grave still had many weeds covering them by an odd amount. By total, there are at least around 20 to 30 graves lingering here, but the graves that looked like it had been maintained well are about 2/3 of the total graves in here.

{By any chances… could it be… that most of these familiar were belongs to….}

He could hear Josephine’s sobbing as she tried so hard to pull one weed while shivering a lot, unable to pull it. Her dirty left hand keep rubbing of her eyes, wiping out the tears collected in her face.

Seeing such pitiful state, Vram couldn’t hold back and started to pull Josephine’s arm. [Eh?] As he turns her body right at Vram and hugged her tightly inside his chest. As if he’s trying to calm her down, he also stroked Josephine’s hair gently.

[I’m sorry, Master…. That my armor was dead cold.]

[I… I... *hic… U…. UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!]

A wail finally released off her throat throughout the place as she let out all of her building-up tears that she’s been holding back all these time. For many years she had to endure the pain of losing someone she would’ve loved and loved her back, over and over again. In Vram head, comes out an image of a little girl keep sobbing as she cleaned up a grave of a familiar. It was weird for him to be able to imagine such thing, but as he looking up to those images he keeps hugging Josephine tightly in order to ease her trouble.

The wailing keep on going for a long time, as Vram decided to renew his oath of loyalty for his own master.

[This I will promise you, Master.] [That I shall be together with you from now on, and forever.]