The two of them stopped laughing at Mirelda’s declaration of being Fallen Angels… about twenty seconds later. At the very least, Mirelda had the presence of mind to understand they were making fun of her.

Ryan decided to keep pushing while they had the upper hand.

“I’ve definitely heard cultish words like that before. Tell me, was hexing Pinkie your coven’s idea, or the Witch Tyrant’s?”

That was a question too far apparently. Mirelda first opened her mouth to object, then closed it. Her eyes started to focus on his face. He could tell that she was trying something. Reading his emotions maybe? Ryan gathered both his aura and tried to wave his [Saboteur] arm in the air. Seeing if the antimagic field and contained aura could stop her from reading his emotions.

It did not.

“You will not get me to say anything about our coven’s dealings.”

Mirelda had finally figured out that they were playing her and was shutting up. It was frustrating, dealing with [Witches] that could read your emotions. He had been hoping that following a heckler routine with Clara would stop her from realizing they were intensely curious as to how it worked.

Since that had blown up, Ryan went back to his old method when he used to be much worse at lying. Honesty, his voice taking a sincere concerned tone, his emotions the same.

“Well at least tell me this, how likely is it that San Kingsgrove is about to go up in flames because dragonslayer tier [Witches] are going to duke it out on the Witch Tyrant’s honor?”

The [Witch] was a little horrified at his implication.

“We would never. We… might curse each other in private—it helps us practice, but get civilians involved? Never. We are the Witch’s Coven. Even in the depths of the war with Earth, the Witch Tyrant had always maneuvered to minimize loss of civilian lives.”

It did sound like Mirelda actually believed that. It probably was true, just not anymore.

“Well if you know my story, then you know she’s been leading kids into deathmatches and planning genocides. Did you hear about what happened to the Unwanted in the Cataclysm Abyss?”

There was a visible reaction from the [Witch]. Mirelda wasn’t as cold as Gamielle. She was absolutely disturbed by her idol having planned a massacre.

“It turned out fine.”

“It wouldn’t have turned out fine if it wasn’t for me. I know better than anybody what was down there. It was a bare game of inches and still plenty of innocent civilians died, Mirelda.”

Rax had killed so many Unwanted that just wanted a better life. Ryan’s fists clenched, remembering how he had buried every single one of them.

Mirelda started shaking her head vehemently.

“You of all people should know that her plots run deeper than the deepest trenches in the Quadra Sea. It was all likely a… a smokescreen to prepare The Realm. No, that was your test, I’m certain of it. Sacrifice for the greater good is sometimes needed.”

Ryan had thought that too once.

“That’s funny because the Manager itself showed me that it wasn’t true. The Manager showed me the world the Witch Tyrant had planned out. The Unwanted elves all ended up being labeled as monsters to the rest of the world, where I killed everyone else in the fourth realm. The blacklisted dragonslayers stopped pretending and started ordering Earth about, using them as meatshields against her. He also said that she would be doing much, much worse things before all of this is over.” Ryan stared right into Mirelda’s eyes. “Read my emotions and tell me that I’m lying.”

Mirelda looked away from his intense gaze, knowing that he meant every single word.

“You could be wrong. Reading e-emotions doesn’t mean truth, y-you could be manipulating me.”

“Matron Grettfield didn’t think I would be good at any of that. Now tell me, am I lying to you?”

Ryan flared his aura at the [Witch] in denial, pushing [The Rogue Adventurer’s] soul in her face.

Mirelda started shaking. It couldn’t have been his aura making this reaction, it was definitely his emotions.

Was this what Grettfield had meant when she said that I can turn their strength into their weakness?

He pushed, letting out all of his emotions that he held bottled back. The loss, the frustration at the insurmountable wall that was the Witch Tyrant, the knowledge that should he fail, the world was going to go to shit.

Mirelda was trembling like a leaf now, almost choking.

“You of all people should know why she does as she must!” Mirelda shouted desperately, “Doesn’t she deserve better? For all that she did, for the peace that both worlds enjoyed, it’s all because of her! Doesn’t the world owe her that much?!”

A tap on his shoulder from Clara told Ryan that she thought he was going too far. To her, to his team member, he tried to step back..

Ryan took in a deep calming breath, trying to pull back some of his emotions, his tone softening.

“Maybe you’re right, maybe the world does owe her a little bit.”

Mirelda almost looked relieved. It wasn’t just the emotions that had been battering away at her, she’d clearly been having doubts about the very nature of the Witch’s Coven itself. Plus, it wasn’t like Ryan hadn’t seen this before. He’d seen it with Larix, the leader of the Obsidian Sect and a little in Tar’el. Perhaps a little in himself when reality wasn’t the perfect image of something you held dear.

He did sympathize with her.

She could read that.

He held the cup of water out to her. Mirelda reached out with the stump of her arm, then remembered it was missing, and just leaned forward to take a sip.

Then he pulled the glass of water back and drank it down in slow gulps.

Mirelda’s eyes widened in horror as he did. Watching every inch of that water being gulped down. When he was finished, he sighed in satisfaction at the refreshing tap water.

Then he grinned at her.

“Let me guess, the Witch Tyrant told you something about how Artigan is a naive idiot that tries to do the right thing?”

“N-no.”

“Well—”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Clara punched him in the back, she must have put all of her strength into it because she immediately yelped and held her wrist in pain.

Ryan turned to her. She tilted her head to the door.

“Can we talk outside? Now?”

“You’re kinda interrupting something.”

“You’re going too far.”

He stared at his friend for a good few seconds, then realized she was right. During that outburst of emotions he hadn’t realized just how much crimson rage had come out too. He turned back to Mirelda and realized that he might have done more psychological damage to Mirelda than Pinkie had.

She didn’t deserve that, no matter how stupid and wrong she was.

“C’mon, cool off?”

Ryan let Clara drag him out of the room. They both stepped outside to greet a Pinkie that had a drake’s body… other than enormous tits and a human face.

It really did not look attractive. Especially when she was sharpening her claws with the spikes on her tail.

Pinkie took that as a cue to step towards the room instead. Before she could though, Clara closed the door behind her and pulled Pinkie by the collar of her shirt.

“Nope! We’re all having a little chat first. Uh, Pinkie can she hear us from here?”

Pinkie exposed more of her sharp teeth, then hid them back once she remembered the promise. She ignored Clara and turned to Ryan as if questioning him on how the progress was going.

Ryan wanted answers to Clara’s question. “Well can Mirelda hear us?”

“No, that room is warded and she can’t use her mana.”

Ryan turned to Clara. “What’s wrong? That should have been the perfect time for you to play good [Mage].”

Clara bit her lip, pulling her hand away from the clearly annoyed Pinkie.

“You were just going too far. You were kind of a little too mean.”

Ryan tried to play it off, despite knowing Clara had been spot on.

“You should’ve heard the stuff I was telling Tar’el and Shara.”

The joke didn’t land. Ryan scratched his neck.

“Okay fine. You’re right, I kind of got a little more heated up than I thought I would. Pinkie, can you stop glaring at me like I don’t know what I’m doing?”

The [Shapeshifter] was clearly getting impatient with all of it. “Do you?”

“Does anyone know how to interrogate a fanatic [Witch]?”

“Ella would have had her cracking already.”

“Well I’m not the freaking Tyrants’ Secretary!”

Pinkie sniffed, agreeing with the point. “No, you’re not.”

Ryan rolled his shoulders, feeling himself a little more level headed than before.

“I am making her crack though. Getting to understand her and her coven better. She’s definitely having doubts about it. Aren’t I right, Clara?”

Despite the unfortunate emotional outburst, Ryan had thought they had been on the same wavelength for most of it. A real adventuring team that could read each others’ minds on the fly.

“Uh well. There’s something that’s bothering me.”

“What is it?”

“Isn’t Mirelda… kinda stupid? Like an eighth realm [Witch] should be smarter right? Are we sure she isn’t playing us?”

Ryan shook his head. “She’s told us too many damning secrets to be some sort of mastermind. I think she’s more of a [Savant] kind of [Witch]. One-Eyed Rick was really stupid too. The first thing she did was just stare at my arm like it was the most interesting thing in the world.”

Pinkie started clawing at the wall, a breaking sound in the stones.

“Why are we not using that recording?”

Pinkie was referencing the recording that they had of Mirelda, the idiot dragon was probably thinking that they could simply blackmail her for the information with it.

Ryan shook his head. “It won’t work. She’s a true blue fanatic. The recording might be humiliating, but she’d rather die than betray her coven sisters. That might be best saved for a smaller issue.”

“So you’re saying it’s impossible?”

“I didn’t say that. I have a few ideas that might work but some of it depends on you Pinkie.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one thing, she knows that you’re going to kill her the moment she tells you the truth.”

“She should have thought of that before eating a part of my wing.” Pinkie hissed.

Ryan didn’t actually need this to potentially get the answer from Mirelda. He was trying to get it into Pinkie’s thick lizardbrain that she couldn’t just kill and eat whoever she wanted.

“Well, now it’s the most important negotiating point. You need to be able to convince her that you won’t kill her the moment she tells you the truth.”

“I can be convincing.”

The worst part was that Pinkie said it with a straight face.

He rolled his eyes. “You can be convincing to those that don’t know what you’re like. We need something else, like a guarantee.”

Pinkie rumbled her throat, annoyed at being potentially bound to something like that.

“How did you and Ella convince people that you weren’t going to eat them before?”

“Ella just told me who I could and couldn’t eat.”

…That did not help at all. Ryan rubbed his forehead.

“Right, the Secretary can order you around and you’d actually listen to her.”

“Just get her to believe it then.”

The more they talked, the more Ryan kept putting Pinkie lower in his estimation of her intelligence. He couldn’t believe he had been tricked by her.

“She won’t believe it since I don’t believe you’ll listen to me.”

Pinkie clacked her teeth in annoyance, as if it was all his fault that she was a lying conniving little [Shapeshifter].

At least it was time to hammer the point home.

“This is what happens when you break your word Pinkie. I can’t convince her since I know from past experience that you’ll break your word.”

They both glared at each other for a moment. Pinkie knew he was still angry about what she’d done but she wasn’t completely stupid either. At the very least she did understand that trying to get information from a fanatic was a pain in the ass.

“Can you do it or not?”

“I can, I just need a couple more pieces to be put together. I just need her to feel like she can trust us.” Ryan ran his fingers through his hair. “Though we might need more time, she’s going to be terrified of me for awhile.”

His [Detect Aura: Fear] skill pretty much confirmed it.

“I want this done sooner!”

Ryan looked to the ceiling, he swore one day that he would strangle Pinkie.

Clara raised her hand, as if she was waiting for her turn to speak.

“I think I can do it. Uh, bad [Rogue], good [Mage] right? I’ll be the good [Mage].”

Both Ryan and Pinkie stared at the completely ordinary girl from Brentwood

——

Mirelda was having the worst time of her life. She wasn’t sure how much time she had been stuck in captivity, only that Pinkie would sporadically zap her with electricity to keep her awake.

She had made too many mistakes. One was hoping that mentor Dremma was still watching over her and this had been a whole big test. The other was that Matron Grettfield would give her shelter to another Matron of the Witch’s Coven. The third and final mistake was attempting to sneak into the System portal in San Kingsgrove.

If she had made it, her body wouldn’t be exposed on Earth, and she could simply hide with one of the other matrons.

She just hadn’t expected Pinkie to have been camping it. Twenty four portals on Earth! What were the chances!?

The next mistake was hoping that Artigan would save her. Like he had supposedly saved the Unwanted and Tar’el. It was unfair! Wasn’t he supposed to be some roguish hero? Not a schoolyard bully that liked kick people when they were down!

No, he was worse than that, he was more like a dastardly devil.

Someone who knew how to use the [Witch’s] greatest strength against them. He had already been too bright to read properly. When he had then brought all of his emotions to bear?

What sort of chosen hero had so many damned complex emotions?

Mirelda was even more exhausted than she thought possible. There was a reason why most [Witches] liked to live in isolation. Too much emotion at once and you would burn out.

Who could even live like that?

During her weakened state, the too bright emotions had disoriented her and hurt her and now she was just drained.

And thirsty.

Mirelda sniffed, too dehydrated for tears to form.

The door opened with the girl in a pink ski mask leading the front. Mirelda had seen her face when she was first dragged into the mansion but she kept that to herself.

Mirelda still had her dignity. A [Witch] had to hold blackmail material for when the situation turned around after all.

The girl dragged a chair, struggling with it before Artigan lifted it and placed it in front of her. She sat down, the emotion of sympathy and concern floating about her.

It was genuine, she did care, even if this girl in front of her was a bit of a bully.

“Hi, are you okay? Actually, sorry, that’s a really stupid question.”

“Please, could I get some water, please?”

Mirelda knew it wouldn’t come but she had to ask, she was so thirsty and the girl in front of her was so sympathetic that it made her hopeful. The girl in the mask turned to Artigan and nodded. He stepped out.

“Mirelda, I’m curious. Can you tell me a bit about the Witch’s Coven and how they recruit?”

Mirelda shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

The girl in front of her looked behind her and bit her lip.

“I want this between us, okay? Pinkie can listen into this room but Artigan can’t and I don’t want him to know. I promise you he’ll give you his water whether you tell me or not, okay?”

While Mirelda knew they were trying to work her, she could also tell that the girl in front of her meant most of what she said.

She nodded. Too desperate for water.

The girl took a crumpled piece of paper out from her pocket. On the front were words that took a little too long for Mirelda to comprehend. The handwriting was familiar too, it was on the front page of the book in front of Grettfield’s shop.

If you wish to chat, my door is always open. I believe you have potential as a Witch. Trial System or not.

Mirelda sputtered, her thirst completely forgotten for a moment.

“Impossible! Matron Grettfield has never taken in an apprentice before. Y-you don’t even fit the criteria!”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep