"Everybody stop!" Michael shouted.
He was walking towards the group of people who were fighting, and when he did so, it gave me the chance to double check if the Rodenti were really powerful. Although I was almost sure that wasn't the case. After all, how could regular humans fight against creatures with the System and at a high level?
Just as I was expecting, all the Rodenti were tier zero. Meaning they were not even level 10. Even then, they had some advantage in the fight. What was likely keeping the humans capable of surviving, and fighting back was the fact that they had better weapons and tools. Farming tools that were being used to push the Rodenti away.
Michael's shout didn't stop them. A couple of the people looked around, but they continued fighting. The Rodenti seemed to be angry with his presence, but the humans seemed relieved. Almost as if they were expecting that Michael was joining them.
"I said stop!" Michael shouted again, but the two groups continued to attack.
Frustrated with the lack of even acknowledgment, the Silkbound Marksman pulled his bow and fired a few arrows. Every single one of them had the Loom's Volley skill. Making it so that once the projectile connected to the ground, everyone who was near it would be wrapped in silk, stuck in their movements. They even seemed to be more confused by the fact that his attacks were indiscriminate. All of those who were part of this battle were being captured in the attacks. It didn't matter if they were Rodenti or Human.
"What the hell are you doing?" A man with a broken pitchfork in the shape of a spear asked. "Why are you trapping us? Help us kill those rats!"
"Not rats!" One of the Rodenti tried to bite the silk, but the thread was too strong for it to cut through. He then trying to kick the man who was screaming but couldn't do it. Instead, the angry rodent just wiggle its feet towards the man.
"They're not rats, they're Rodenti. That's a difference. There's a difference," Michael replied, and all the Rodenti looked at him with a surprised expression while the humans just seemed even more confused.
"I don't care what they call themselves. We need to capture them now!"
"Why?" I asked, stepping forward to accompany the rest of them. Astrid was also close by, but she was playing defense, making sure that no one was trying to throw anything or attack Michael during this situation.
"Because if we don't, she is going to go to our village," the man replied.
"She takes us. We need to capture them!" the Rodenti that was still wiggling its feet shouted.
"Shut up, you filthy rat!" the man shouted again, and the shouting match began without anyone asking or explaining anything to me.
Michael rubbed his eyes and was about to fire another arrow. His aim was clearly off targeting a piece of empty land. I had a feeling he was just going to use a skill that was flashy but didn't actually hurt anyone. Maybe his {Splintering Shot} to cause a ring of wooden pellets on the ground that could be more of an inconvenience than anything.
But before he was able to pull his arrow, we all heard the voice. More specifically, a laugh.
"Well, well, what do I see? Still too many. Don't you agree? Not good, not good, I warned you right.
Last night, I said, to get the numbers tight. But here you stand, my test unmet. A shame, a shame, do you regret?
Those years you played the part so well. Now? You've failed, and truth I'll tell."
The strange rhyming voice sounded feminine and was coming from the ground itself. The sky. The wind. Everywhere. Even with the System, even with our skills, the feeling was overwhelming. Like an overload of sounds.
"First, the silent ones I'll take. Then the rest, their end I'll make. One by one, you'll share their fate. For crossing me? It's far too late. Calm down, for nothing is in sight. After all, I see you tonight."
Once the voice stopped speaking, I blinked, feeling my head a bit light. Almost as if I had just woken up, but I couldn't remember falling asleep. But I noticed that the sun was no longer in the same position.
"Now you've done it," the man who was shouting at Michael spoke again. He also seemed to be a bit lethargic, but he was still able to speak without a problem. "The witch is going to kill us all. She already took Ricardo."
"What?" I turned around and noticed that in the middle of this field, there were a few people missing. Both human and Rodenti. Thinking a bit, I realized that the ones missing were the ones who were sleeping or already unconscious when Michael started firing his arrows. People here didn't seem to be trying to kill each other. Instead, they were just knocking them out. And after the witch came, those who were no longer fighting had vanished.
"What's going on?" I turned to Riley, more because of the mention of a witch, expecting them to have any actual answers. But the second I did, Riley just looked at me.
"I have no idea."
"Can someone please start talking?" Michael asked.
"You want us to waste time talking to you when we should be back with our families, enjoying the rest of the time we have left? Fuck you," the man replied.
"Well, then," Michael agreed. "If we let you all go, what are you going to do? Start fighting again, or are you just going to go back home?"
"What's the point of fighting? The witch already said what she's going to do. You have doomed us all." The man grumbled. And even a few of the Rodenti nodded their heads.
I turned back to my companions. "Rex, can you go with the Rodenti and see what's going on on their side? I get the feeling that they wouldn't be as polite if we all went there."
Rex nodded. "Of course."
"Great. We meet back here in, let's say, before sundown. That way we don't have to worry about being in this place in the middle of the night."
Rex nodded again, and I gave Michael the go ahead. The Archer dropped his Loom's Volley skill, which meant he could no longer control it. The silk was still there, of course. However, there was nothing else increasing its strength anymore. It wasn't easy to break free, but it was no longer a struggle to even move around if you were trapped by it.
People slowly started to get rid of the thread, and then all the Rodenti gathered on the left side while the humans gathered on the right side of this clearing. They gave each other one last angry stare before turning around and starting to walk into the forest. From what we understood, they were all going back to their own villages.
Looking at Rex, I gave him a nod and tried to confirm our deal, "We meet back here before sundown."
The Rodenti nodded. "Deal." And scurried off to follow his people.
We did the same, and once we were close enough to a woman who was bringing up the rear of this pack, I approached her.
"Excuse me." But she didn't let me finish.
"We're all going to die. That's what's happening."
"What do you mean? Why were you fighting? What was the voice?"
"We were fighting because of the voice," the woman continued. "It's a witch that lives nearby. She got here a couple years ago and forces us to fight those giant rats every few months. It started off with just one, two, or three people being summoned to do that. But she's slowly started increasing the numbers. And she's only happy if we knock out the rest. Once one of the fighters was unconscious, then everybody's kind of blanks out for a moment, and the people who were on the ground vanish. We don't know what she's doing with them, but we can hear the screams. It's not something that you can ignore."
"You can hear their screams?" Riley asked.
The woman nodded. "Yeah, the witch can do something that lets us hear what she's doing, and it sounds awful."
"But why? Why is she doing that?"
"We don't know. Maybe for fun. Maybe she needs something to cast a spell or something. It's just how our life has been for the past couple of years. This time, when she asked for 10 people, she needed 10 unconscious people by a certain time. If we weren't able to give her what she wanted by midday, she promised to take everybody from our village instead."
"And we were about to win if it weren't for you," the man who was arguing with Michael barked from the front.
But the woman was the one who replied, "We were not going to win. Not before midday. We are too weak to fight those giant rats, and they seem to be too weak to fight us. So if we were still fighting, she was going to enjoy it and leave us alone. But you stopped us, and now we're all going to die."
"You don't know that's going to happen," the man protested, "She might have been enjoying the fight. As long as it continued, she wasn't going to care about not giving her the bodies until noon."
"Come on," another person said. "The witch never went against her own word. She always said You have until this time, and if you don't do it by then, this happens. And if we don't give her what she asks, she does it!"
"That doesn't mean she couldn't change it now," Jacob protested.
People started arguing, and I took that chance to turn to Riley. "So, what do you think?"
"Honestly, I don't know. It looks like we're dealing with a witch, and I know Michael and Astrid were thinking the same thing. But what are they doing? I mean, if Wistra is anything to go by, it's probably some pretty horrible experiments."
"And how were they able to make everybody sleep? Do you think they're more powerful than us?" I asked.
Riley shook their head, "I don't think so. If they were really super powerful, why play all these games? It's clear that they are not farming people. They're not using people as cattle, so this is not just about maintaining a healthy amount of people to continue to reproduce. Especially since we're dealing with humans. I don't think any witch would have the patience to do that kind of thing."
I watched as two men grabbed each other by the collar and were about to fight, but the surrounding people stopped them, saying something about what's the point of figthing now. But I tuned that argument out, focusing on what Riley was saying once more.
"So if they really just wanted to grab people, and they were that powerful, why ask them to fight and for someone to be unconscious? It feels very deliberate. It shouldn't be a game, but maybe a requirement?"
"A requirement?"
"Yeah. I was taking a look at some of the spells in Wistra's journal, and according to her, there are some things that require specific conditions to be activated."
"Like?"
Riley paused for a moment. "Like a spell that only triggers if spiders touch it. It was something that Wistra was doing to find more species of spiders in the wild for her research. But maybe whatever spell they are using is something that can only affect someone who is unconscious."
"Right," I suggested. "Actually..." I paused and turned to someone who was nearby and not participating in the brawl, "Can I ask a question?
The person stared at me with a confused expression and said, "Yes?"
"Do you need to go there to fight? Can you fight anywhere else, or is the witch not going to accept whatever you are sending her way?"
"We need to go there to fight. We can't fight anywhere else, or the witch is not going to accept it."
"Thank you," I said before stepping back to Riley and the others, "So conditions. Maybe that specific clearing has a spell circle. And that's why people need to go there to fight. It's not even just the condition, but where the circle is located. The witch might have engraved the spell circle on the ground."
Riley thought for a moment, trying to think a bit outside the box. "Witches are moths, and moths could fly. Maybe instead of just using the ground, they were using the patch of trees to make this giant spell circle that affected the entire clearing."
"Can we take her?" Astrid asked.
"I really don't know. I have no idea how strong this witch actually is. Maybe it's going to be just a tier one or early tier two. But maybe it's just like Wistra and we can't get to tier three," I replied.
"Then again, I don't think that's the case," Riley added.
"I know that. Yeah. If it were tier three, I don't think they would need to go through all this trouble. Heck, even tier two would probably be able to pillage a village without having much trouble. I mean, realistically speaking, any one of us would be able to destroy an entire village by themselves, don't you agree?"
Astrid frowned and said, "Wouldn't do it."
"I know that. I am not saying we're going to do that kind of thing. But I'm saying we have the power for that, don't we? Let me ask you. Just your {Emerging Glacier} would already cause a lot of problems. The other skills you have would be devastating, and that's a tier one skill. The things you got now would be a bit of a mess. And Riley's {Thousand-Loom Dominion} would probably get rid of anyone who got close. Michael also can do some real damage with his arrows. The only one who doesn't have that much of a punch behind her attacks is me. And even then, I'm somewhat confident I could handle most people if I put aside all my morals and beliefs."
"So if this witch is not doing that, maybe they're not that powerful," Michael suggested.
"Yeah, but what are we supposed to do then? People don't even seem to know where this witch is," I looked back at the brawl happening in front of us.
"Then let's ask. Maybe they know more than we are assuming they do. And then we can figure out where this witch is before she comes for the rest of the village. If not, we can gather with Rex, then split off to try to save both villages, since we don't know when the witch is going to attack either of them."
Riley stopped for a moment but in the end agreed with my suggestion. Not because it was the best plan they had ever heard, but just because there was no other plan that came to anyone's mind.
So right now, we would need to do our best to figure out where this witch was. And if not, split the party to defend the two villages at the same time. Either way, it seemed like the plan for tonight was to hunt down a witch.
#### Author's Note ####
Would you try to stop a group that is fighting? Don't know if I would