"I'm sorry, but I promised that I'll stick with Trader for a while, maybe another time."

Froggy in the end decided to refuse her offer and stay with me.

A part of me felt relieved, while the other one felt bad for losing such an opportunity. But he's a grown adult so he can make his own decisions.

Catharine looked at him, then at me, and in the end, sighed in defeat.

"You managed to take care of yourself until now, so I trust you can keep doing that whatever path you choose."

With that, we continue our day shopping.

We slowly started to warm up to each other until the sun was coming down and the meeting time was getting closer.

With that, we put the armor on us and followed Catharine to the meeting place.

The streets were starting to get more empty, except for a few people who started their day now.

We were walking towards one of the entrance gates, after a few small streets we arrived at an abandoned inn forgotten by time.

In there, I could see a small light through the remaining window and soon the other witches greeted us.

"Good to see you again Sir Trader."

"Good to see you as well miss Elder, what's the final verdict?"

The Witch looked past me to Catharine, who only nodded her head, before looking back at me.

"We decided to bring you to our Clan in search for some answers. But only you are allowed to come with us, no other friends."

I did not expect to develop in this way, but this could be a great opportunity as it would be a great danger.

I felt that I could find some answers about the system and the war if I talked with a few important people, but at the same time, this could be a trap for me where I'll be killed.

The fact that I wasn't allowed to bring my friends with me didn't help with my worries. As I was about to comment on this, someone else spoke before me.

"I think we should make an exception with this person and bring him along as well."

Catherine said that while pointing at Froggy.

This surprised all of us, I didn't expect her to stick up for us.

"And why should we?"

Suspicion was in the air, and it was getting more tense.

"Froggy, sorry that I'm asking you this, but can you take off your helmet?"

Froggy didn't say anything and took it off, letting everyone see his pale face in the dim light of the streets.

Everyone started to gasp, as if not believing what they were seeing.

After a few minutes of silence, I decided to break this awkward moment.

"So is it ok if my friend will come with me?"

"Uh- yes, we can make an exception this time."

"Good, so when are we leaving?"

"We wanted to leave now, but we only have an extra horse, so you'll have to share it."

That was not going to be a fun. While horses are a great method of transportation, it's only meant for one person, if another passenger is on, it would greatly slow down the house while also having an uncomfortable raiding experience.

"I'm not going to do that, I'll buy a horse now, or tomorrow morning if I have to."

While the witches were uncomfortable about me changing the plans, they could only accept it as it was in their interest as well.

We checked a few shops, but everything was closed at this hour.

But the witches didn't want to wait until tomorrow so Catharine chose another option.

The black market.

While I have been in this world for over a year, and visited some big cities, I didn't get the chance or interested to search for such places.

Meanwhile, the witches didn't have a great start when they first came here, so they had to start their business in the black market until they could go in the open.

The black market looked pretty much as I expected, a huge cave that held some shops and people with hoods that covered their faces.

This place was underground, we had to go through one of the sewer systems to arrive here, it was an interesting experience, to say the least.

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It was deep underground, so nobody could accidentally mine into it.

While we walked around the large streets with cloaks to cover us, I managed to see what people in this world would consider illegal.

I saw some caged monsters, ender pearls, items made without the help of the system, unknown potions, and purple particles.

We didn't walk long before arriving at one of the shops, there the leader of the witch group haggled with the owner for the horse.

In the end, she managed to buy one for a stack of emeralds. Animals were not that cheap to buy.

With this, we left the underground place, it was fascinating in its way, and I intended to visit it again once I was back.

With this, everyone had a horse now, and surprisingly I wasn't the only one that came up with the idea to 'enhance' the horses.

From what I could tell the horses were pretty excited by this, they were truly interesting animals.

While we were speeding through the forest at night, some people would consider it a foolish decision to trust someone after one meeting. And that would be a reasonable doubt to have, but my gut feeling was telling me that I could trust them.

But of course, I didn't put all my trust in that. I also made some backup plans. If I didn't give any signs to Bobby that I was ok every two weeks, he had permission to break the ender pearl and bring me back to him.

Of course, that is the last plan. I still have an enhanced diamond pickaxe to break any blocks, potions of healing, speed, and invisibility if I needed to run.

And even if I couldn't do any of that, I was not afraid to fight for me and my friend.

With that we galloped throughout the night, no monster could keep up with us.

Soon it was daylight and we decided to have our first stop since the horsed needed to have some rest.

We got off and started to set up the camp. Since me and Froggy we're the guests, we didn't need to help the others, we could just take out the food and eat, while they took care of everything else.

A few minutes later, the others sat down with us. While we were eating cooked chicken and milk, they only took out some bread and water.

From what I could guess, they didn't have enough time to buy some other rations, instead, they were left with some basic food.

Funnily enough, Catharine had better food than them since she was shopping with us.

And now she didn't know if she should eat it or take some bread out like her friends.

In the end, I decided to share some of my food so we won't have this awkward lunch.

"Thank you, Sir Trader, we were in a hurry so we didn't manage to buy too much."

"You don't have to call me Sir any more, Trader is enough mis... "

"Oh, I'm sorry about this, I haven't introduced myself yet. My name is Anastasia, those are my Clan members Andrew and Catharine that you already know."

"Nice to meet you all, while you know my name, I want to present you my friend Froggy. As you can see, he has very similar features as you all."

I said that last sentence with a smile.

Since we were eating, we didn't have our helmets on, so we could see each other's faces.

"Yes, I can see the similarities, we're the others the same by any chance?"

"Not really, they are unique in their way, but they are not witches."

"I was curious how you didn't come with them yesterday. Did something happen?"

"They're preparing for a big battle so they don't have time for this."

This seems to offend Anastasia for some reason but also worries her.

"What could be more important than the Pillgere plotting something?"

Looks like I struck a nerve, but I could understand why.

The Piligers are enemies of every Kingdom, so it should be a top priority to stop them when they plan to do something big. But this time, the new problem was more urgent than the unknown plans.

"They preparing to fight against the Zombie Lord and his army of zombies."

They all looked in confusion at me. And I was confused at their confusion, this was news all over the Stone kingdom, how couldn't they know about this?

So I started to explain to them what happened in the past few months, and their faces started to get paler the more I talked.

It was quite a sight to see since they were already pale.

"Do you think this is somehow related to the Piligers? I could see them creating a monstrosity like that."

They asked an interesting idea, but I don't think they're involved, or at least not that much.

The system brought a hero against the monster, they didn't tell the church to stop the Pillagers, and whenever the Zombie Lord spoke, it was all in the name of the Void, which is more related to the End dimension than this one.

Unless the Pillagers worshipped the Void as well?

"That could be possible, but there's not much evidence for it."

The conversation died down a little after that, so we decided to hop on the horses and continue our journey.

It took another day with our speedy horses to get to our destination.

The trees started to get darker, and the grass was less and less replaced with muddy waters. We entered a swamp biome, and it was quite a sight to see.

There was mist forming here and there, a frog jumped out of the way, and in the distance I could hear the unique noises of a slime hopping around.

We got deep into the the mist until we saw a wooden wall appearing out of nowhere, it was seven blocks tall with lamps on the exterior every five blocks. It only gave a creepy experience overall.

Soon the gates were opened, and we passed them.

But when we did that, it was like we went through an invisible barrier that stopped the mist, and once we were past it, the sunlight was once again warming us up.

How was that possible? I don't remember this being a feature of the game. I'm I missing something?

But the horses didn't stop, they were still galloping toward the clusters of huts.

They all looked pretty similar in design to the Witch hut in the game, a small house on thick pillars of wood in the middle of a swamp.

The only difference was that they were a little bigger, connected, and a huge building in the middle of the compound.

We didn't go too far since there wasn't any land for the horses to use.

So we stopped and got off the horses.

"Welcome, to our Clan!"

Anastasia said with a proud voice while showing us her home.

And I was pretty impressed, it was a small size town with its own culture, people, and history.

I could even see some Witches tending to the Slimes like they were cattle.

It was a fascinating thing to see.

We climbed the ladders to get on the wooden platforms.

As we walked along the bridge, Witches came out of their huts to see what all the commotion was about.

Some of them looked curious at us, others with fear, and even some with anger.

But they all had one thing in common, the pale skin and the purple robes.

Our final destination was the big building in the middle of the compound.

It had a similar style to the huge wooden huts from African tribes in my home world. A circular base with an almost flat roof, It wasn't too tall but it occupied a lot of space.

We went through the big entrance and went along the long hallway, soon we were in a huge room, where ten chairs were positioned in a semicircle looking towards the middle.

Nine of them had an Elder sitting on them while the last one was empty.

But not for long as, Anastasia went and sat in the empty chair, showing her position in the Clan.

What was left was silence and tense air, as they all looked at us trying to intimidate us.

Finally one of the elders spoke.

"We were expecting you."