"Whoa, it’s the young lady. Why is she here? Get ready, on guard."

"Sis, that’s a bit much, right? She’s all alone. Sure, she’s pretty famous, but would our Round Table Knights really be scared of her? It’s not like she has what it takes to wipe out our base."

"Yeah yeah, and I actually kinda like the young lady. She’s also a Dragon Witch, she’s our own kind, we don’t have to act like this, do we?"

"Like hell we don’t. Just a few days ago, Mountain No. 8 of the Dragon Roar Colosseum got sliced in half by a single swing from her. Who knows if she’ll suddenly flip out and one-shot our garrison too? Anyway, just stay on guard."

"Uh, but I heard that No. 8 Arena’s already being rebuilt, and it’s the Guild under her command that’s helping with the reconstruction."

"Isn’t that even scarier? What kind of normal Armed Witch runs a civil engineering business? She totally looks like a repeat offender. She even self-consciously set up a cleanup Guild—she’s out there farming performance metrics." 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"Oh oh, true that. What serious Armed Witch spends her days hauling bricks?"

....

All along the way, the whispers of the Knight Witches were very quiet, but they still couldn’t escape Dorothy’s ears—she is a Highly Inspired Witch after all. And the content of their little chat really made the homebody witch harden up.

Her fists and her blade both hardened.

Slander, this is slander, I’ll sue you for slander, you hear me? Who’s farming performance here? I’m running a fully legal business, okay? And my main job is civil engineering witch, okay? It’s not some mere side hustle.

Dorothy had long known her reputation had gone pretty crooked, but this kind of intimidation factor was absolutely not what she wanted. At this rate, she was getting treated like a hazardous individual or walking calamity wherever she went.

Fortunately, even though everyone was on alert, no one actually came up to block her way or pick a fight. The Knight Witches just silently stepped up their vigilance and went straight into combat readiness mode, looking like they were prepared to deal with any emergency at a moment’s notice.

And so, with mixed feelings, Dorothy walked into this heavily guarded, locked-down garrison.

"You must be the representatives from Stars Industry. Please come with me."

As soon as they entered, a Knight Witch in full Heavy Battle Armor—helmet and all—seemed to have been waiting for quite some time. She stepped up to greet them and asked this.

Even though this Heavy Armored Knight looked tall and burly as hell, armor included she was nearly four meters high, practically a Little Giant. But the voice coming from inside the armor was unexpectedly soft and cutesy.

Yeah, pretty sweet. Just from the voice you’d think she was some sweet little girl; it was really something to find out she was actually such a massive warrior.

Maybe this is what they call contrast moe.

Hearing her, everyone obediently followed this contrast Knight onward, and they were eventually brought to a council hall.

The Heavy Armored Knight opened the door for them, and the first thing that entered their sight was a huge round table. Judging by the style, it was a replica of the holy round table they’d seen outside earlier.

Although a lot smaller than the original Round Table, it was still big enough for nearly a hundred people to sit around.

Right now, more than half the seats were already occupied.

As the homebody witch and the others stepped in, the people at the table all turned their heads to look at them. Taking advantage of this moment, Dorothy also began sizing up these witches.

"Huh, there are quite a few familiar faces."

She thought to herself.

At a glance, she spotted many familiar faces, like Ostana, that Thunder Dragon Sorceress from Roaring God; Faye-Faye from Deathwing; Miss Celine from Red Eye, and so on.

Yeah, most of them were clients who had only recently bought custom Spell services of the Witch of the Forest from her.

Which made sense. Even though these Battle Groups were huge powers, Peak Bosses were still pretty rare. These few were originally the external representatives of their respective Battle Groups, so it was perfectly normal for them to show up at today’s meeting.

However, these bosses hadn’t come alone today. There were also people seated next to them, who should be the relevant personnel from the Four Great Warship Workshops.

Dorothy was quite unfamiliar with these people and just skimmed over them, but her gaze paused slightly when it passed over the members from the Deathwing Corps.

Ah, we meet again, Ultimate Weapon Girl.

The homebody witch hadn’t expected to see Miss Nibelungen here at this Warship mobilization conference. She should belong to the Armed Witch category, so why was she here? Acting as security or something?

That’s what Dorothy was thinking.

"Everyone, this way, please."

Miss Heavy Armored Knight once again took the lead in front, guiding the homebody witch and company to a corner of the round table and arranging their seats.

Dorothy hadn’t thought anything of it at first. She figured the seats were probably just filled on a first-come, first-served basis. But once they sat down, the homebody witch keenly noticed that quite a few people were looking over at them in surprise, occasionally lowering their heads to whisper among themselves, then showing expressions of surprise, shock, and so on.

"Uh, is there some kind of hidden meaning to these seats?"

The homebody witch was a bit puzzled, but when she took a closer look at the seating order, her brows furrowed slightly.

"A hexagram?"

She realized that, if you took the round table as the boundary, the seats of their side and those of the other Four Great Workshops formed a hexagram pattern.

As for how five factions could make up a hexagram, that was because Dorothy and her group were currently seated at the bottom point of the hexagram, while the topmost corresponding point was still empty, with no one seated there yet.