After a brief nap, I woke up mildly refreshed and resumed my pursuit. The goal today was to stay around 250 meters away this time. There would be no crystal harvesting this time- after all, I was sure whatever crazy shit I’d see today would be more valuable than mere crystals.
How did I know? Because they’d arrived at the east bank of the Acheron River. Vinnick once told me that even if you were strong enough to swim across this torrential river roughly 1-2 klicks wide, the mana-beasts in the river would never turn down a free meal. Fighting aquatic mana-beasts in the water was a fool’s errand. These Witches had to have come here specifically due to some intel, and I doubt that their source was capable of surviving past the Acheron. So most likely, whatever they’re after is somewhere nearby, at the east bank of the river.
I put on a sound bootie made of bear furs on my boots to further reduce the noise level. Slowly, but surely, I followed the tracks of the Witches. I was about 400 meters from their position when I suddenly heard explosions and shouting from a place near the base of the largest mountain in the Wild- Mt. Fae. Abandoning the stealth approach, I sprinted quickly towards the battle. When I finally got a visual on it, I saw a bunch of village lodges on a mountain slope on fire, and corpses all over the settlement.
After climbing a tree that had an excellent sightline of the entire battle, I finally saw the Witches in action. The strike group had 2 frontline fighters, 2 archers, and 1 mage. The frontline fighters were dodging every arrow shot at them from a line of defending archers. How the fuck was that humanly possible?!? The Witch mage then launched a spell that summoned a sandstorm that blankets the entire settlement, blinding the opposing archers. That must be the Expert-level earth elemental spell she just used.
The Witch fighters then charged into the sandstorm to smash through the line of defending archers while their own archers methodically picked off the retreating survivors one by one. When the sandstorm subsided, all resistance had been completely crushed. Wow, what a textbook example of combined arms tactics, but for fighters, archers, and mages.
So this was how real fighting was done in this world… Welcome to the big leagues, me. If I were to walk down my path, these were the potential obstacles in my way.
Whoever the Witches were fighting, they were not incompetent. It took a certain strength to live and thrive this far from Carnwennan. Based on their arrow accuracy under fire, they’d give the Rangers a run for their money. And yet it wasn’t even a fair fight- it took all of 5 minutes for the Witches to dispatch them. If every Witch squad is anything like what I just saw, I needed to seriously reevaluate my firearms plan. I was gonna start off easy with a flintlock musket, but after witnessing this one-sided massacre, I’d decided to go with a modern rifle instead. Sure, that would take longer to build, but anything less would simply be insufficient.
Sadly, that’d push back my harem plan by quite a few years. There would be a whole slew of things to figure out, starting with how to rifle a gun barrel without any modern tech. But the alternative was to face these women with a gun that takes 30 seconds to reload on a sunny day, and that was basically suicide with extra steps.
After finishing off the wounded defenders, the Witches began to loot the settlement. A black blob appeared on one of their hands, and the other hand tossed a whole corpse into the black blob and the corpse promptly disappeared.
Did I just see… a… dimension storage pocket?!? Well, that certainly changed the game… I gotta get me one of those!
Most of the corpses, save for a few, got taken by the Witches. Maybe they wanted proofs of kill? Then I saw them going into a cave and exiting with a prisoner in tow a few minutes later. Right before they left, the mage launched a couple of fire spells at some of the lodges and cabins. The amount of damage those 5 women did in 20 minutes… was truly staggering.
After patiently waiting 10 minutes after their departure, I got down from the tree and quietly approached the ruined village. Why was there a settlement this far from Carnwennen? And why would the Emperor care enough about it to send Witches to exterminate them? Nothing about this makes any sense...
The answer to my first question was answered by the 3 remaining corpses near the entrance- Elves. This is… no, was an Elf village. I looked further in and saw the destruction up close. The village cabins had a real quaint look to it, if it weren’t still on fire. I looted the non-burning cabins for any valuables left behind. Sadly, the remaining loot consists of a couple of trinkets, a few books, and some second hand field gear (I still took some though).
The only trinkets of any value were a couple of magnets I found. Since electricity generation was a distant, but important goal of mine, I definitely would be keeping that.
I also saw a couple of Nightshade berries (a berry on the DO NOT EAT list) on a workbench. It looked like the Elves like to dip their arrows in the Nightshade extract to poison it. Well, it’d be a real shame if the arrows and the Nightshade were just left unused, so I took them all. Looting is love; looting is life.
Then I walked to the cave the Witches were just at, past the dead bodies and smoldering ruins. As expected, the cave appeared to be a mana crystal mine that had been stripped clean. Sigh, I supposed it was too much to expect the Witches to leave me a crumb of the good stuff.
Well, it was still an informative and exciting field trip nonetheless. Time to head back. As I stepped out of the cave, an Elf that I thought was dead suddenly stirred. He then tried to sit up with an arrow stuck to his chest next to the entrance of the cave. He weakly motioned me over for a conversation. I don’t speak Elvish, so this ought to be interesting.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Friend... gibberish*… foe..?” The dying Elf coughed out blood as he tried to say more.
What the fuck?!? Why do I partially understand Elvish? Was that from the kid’s memories? Or was that a side effect of whatever transmigration magic that landed me in this world? Wait, do I know how to speak Elvish?
“Neither.” I surprised myself (and the Elf) with my reply in Elvish. I tried to elaborate more, but I couldn’t find the right words. Unlike Imperial Common, there were severe limits in my fluency.
“Gibberish*... enough… gibberish*” Hmm, this one was harder to infer. Did he want my help? Let’s be non-committal here. As much as I love sexy Elf maidens, I wasn’t gonna fight the Witches on their behalf. No fucking way.
“Maybe.” I replied noncommittally.
“Gibberish* daughter… gibberish* back from… gibberish*” Yup, this was starting to look like an impossible sidequest. I’m guessing that the prisoner the Witches took was somebody important to somebody.
I switched to Imperial Common, “Listen, I can’t do what you’re asking.” I shook my head for emphasis. I pointed toward the direction the Witches left in. “I can’t beat them!” I switched back to Elvish, “Too strong!”
The Elf was gasping for air. I didn’t think he was gonna last long. He showed an expression of resignation and offered his trembling hands to me while muttering something inaudible. Guess he wanted to lie down and die in peaceful disappointment. Alright, I supposed I could at least help you with that.
The moment I grabbed his hands, he gripped with all his might. Oh fuck! He’s doing something! A blinding flash of light erupted from our handshake. I felt a flow of warmth from his hands to my hands, then up my arms to my eyes. I saw a glowing symbol (a clover of some kind?) hovering above my hands. Startled, I pushed him off to stop whatever it was he was doing.
The Elf didn’t resist my startled push and he slammed to the ground. Despite that, he smiled at me and said, “Gibberish*... payment…I gibberish*... eyes… gibberish* you can…”
And those were the last words this sneaky bastard ever said to me. He closed his eyes forevermore soon after. Fucking hell, the way this guy shamelessly foisted this mission impossible shit onto me on the verge of death reminds me of my mother. Can’t these pushy people just take no for an answer?
Well, before I decide to honor his shameless request, let’s see if this “payment” of his is legit or not. If I’m not wrong about this warm sensation I felt, he did something to my eyes. So I guessed this was some sort of vision enhancement. To test it out, I tried to focus my eyes on a blurry tree about 250 meters out. All of a sudden the blurry tree focused into view, and I could see every splendid detail of the tree, from the leaves to the branches. Wow! That was truly impressive! That sneaky bastard somehow did some magic LASIK surgery on my eyes to give me 20/20 vision on crack (let’s call it “<
Something about this bugged me though. Why would he give me an advance payment this valuable? Was he just hoping that I’m a good person who repays favor with favor? Or was he just a desperate man who was hoping for the best?
Then it hit me. If he could bless my eyes to have <
Well, I pondered more about this as I rushed towards the Witches. I exited the village and began to sprint back east. The Witches should be traveling slower since they now have a prisoner in tow. I’d have to pick up the pace if I wanted to catch up to them before they reached Carnwennan.
Rescuing this damsel in distress and killing the evil Witches that captured her like a shiny white Knight sounded great on paper, but that was utterly impossible to do given my current tech and knowledge about the enemy combatants. However, walking away from all of this just doesn't sit right with me. After all, I hated being a deadweight who takes without giving. Plus, while saving her doesn’t guarantee the denial of <
Fuck, I knew there’s gotta be a smarter solution somewhere~ I ran and ran as I continued to think...
Field Inventory
Primary Weapon
Recurve bow made from Champion mana-beast sinew/Quiver with arrows
Secondary Weapon
2x Short throwing spear
Armor
Champion mana-beast leather body armor, bracers, and greaves; Leather boots lined with bear fur
Mana Crystals
1x Adept-level air elemental mana crystal
1x Adept-level fire elemental mana crystal
1x Adept-level earth elemental mana crystal
Stash of various mana crystals
Misc.
Utility belt, grappling hook, rope, dark green cloak, field satchel, waterskin, rations, boarskin map and steel knife
Elven leather body armor, cloak, arrows, and Nightshade