Chapter 91: We should kill that Witch

The golden line in the sky was pointing straight down at the hut, casting a faint golden glow over its surroundings.

"That house is the exit from this place." Magna told Renna, before starting to check the area for any presence.

He badly wanted to run over and eat all the Golden Sunberries, or just rush straight to the hut and leave the place, but something felt wrong, and that feeling kept him rooted in place.

"Do you think it’s a trap?" Renna was sharp enough to notice his hesitation.

She found it strange too.

The sunberry field looked far too neat and well tended, like someone had been taking care of it constantly. But there shouldn’t be anyone else in this dimension besides the Faceless Witch.

What would she even be doing farming ordinary sunberries here?

If they were ordinary at all.

Then it hit her. "These aren’t just regular sunberries, are they?"

She had finally remembered a resource called Golden Sunberry, one she had read about among thousands of others she had studied before.

Magna didn’t deny it, and just nodded, confirming her guess.

That only made her realize something bigger, pieces finally clicking together in her mind. "All these resources. This is even bigger than my family’s Marrow-Weed Larvae farm."

She was now certain a farm this large couldn’t belong to just one Witch.

The Faceless Witch had to be nothing more than a guard placed here to protect the farm, standing in for some family that actually ran the place.

"Magna, I think we’re in more danger than we thought." Her eyes narrowed, and her voice dropped low.

A field this valuable, sitting so close to Winterborne territory, would never be guarded by just a single 10th Trial Witch.

"Yeah." Magna, seeing the same bigger picture, said gravely. "What should we do?"

The hut looked so close, right there in front of them, but he was also sure that the reason it had moved there was so that no one, him included, could ever use it as an escape route again.

"I don’t know, but we need to find a way out and warn the others." Renna was thinking about the attack Celeste and Rowena were planning.

What they thought would be a simple fight to kill the Faceless Witch could suddenly escalate into a much bigger battle, one that would put them face to face with a far larger force.

With Seraphina, the 12th Trial head of the Winterborne family, not around, if they ran into a 12th Trial enemy, a single surprise attack could kill them instantly.

"Let’s come up with a new plan." Magna finally gathered his thoughts and slowly sat down on the ground.

The fact that they were still alive at least proved one thing.

Their only immediate threat right now was still the Faceless Witch, as long as they didn’t do anything that would draw someone else’s attention, like trying to reach the hut.

If things were exactly as they suspected, then while the Faceless Witch guarded the inside of the dimension, someone else was likely waiting just outside it, guarding the barrier from that side.

That brought them back to where they started as Magna raised his earlier plan again. "We should kill the Faceless Witch."

—

Outside the dimension, a figure stood in front of a blurry barrier, one only she could see.

She wore a dark green robe, and her wide, pointy Witch Hat seemed to gather every bit of sunlight that poured down through the tree branches above.

Normally, aside from which Matriarch a Witch followed, the color of her hat was tied to the element she specialized in.

For the Cinder family, their red Witch Hats represented their focus on fire spells, while the Winterborne family’s blue one represented water and ice.

Green, meanwhile, was usually tied to nature and plant spells.

If Magna had been there to see her through his newly gained eyes, he would have been shocked at how dense and bright the light pouring from her stomach was, marking her as a 12th Trial Witch.

She was the head of the Thorn family, part of the enemy alliance, Sable Thorn.

Her green eyes stayed locked on the blurry wall in front of her, unable to see through it as she murmured under her breath, clearly annoyed.

"I should just kill that useless wretch already, after all the trouble she’s caused me."

She was talking about the Faceless Witch, currently inside the barrier, tasked with protecting the Golden Sunberry farm.

Because of her earlier mistake, letting Magna escape twice, it had led to an unavoidable outcome.

The Winterborne family discovered this barrier, which forced this 12th Trial Witch to come and deal with the problem herself before it got any worse.

It had already been difficult enough hiding the Golden Sunberry farm they found here, right in the middle of enemy territory, and now one small mistake from that useless Witch had brought their secrecy crashing down.

The Faceless Witch wasn’t tied to any family at all. She was more of a wandering mercenary, taking jobs from whoever paid her.

Sable Thorn had hired her simply because she came cheap, and her Time based spells were well suited for setting up barriers like this one.

But her lack of discipline, her habit of toying with her victims and prey, had finally led to this mess.

’At least, for now, only the Cinder and Winterborne families seem to know about this place. As long as they’re dealt with, I can still hide the traces later.’ She thought quietly, her gaze shifting away from the barrier and deep into the forest.

She could hear the whispering of the trees, telling her someone was coming.

The news didn’t panic her at all. Instead, she smiled, a cruel curl to her lips. "I’ll leave the two kids to her, while I keep myself busy with these two."

Then her body began sinking into the ground beneath her, and soon she disappeared from sight completely.