Release That Witch

"She picked up the sword of the Judgement Soldiers, stabbed Faria and split a Judgement Soldier into two pieces. The blade was broken into several pieces. However, the whistle had alerted the entire cloister, there were a lot of people rushing to the scene with oil lamps. She put on Faria's clothes and picked up the weapon of the other Judgement Soldier and walked towards the guards all by herself."     

"I sat in a room full of bleeding bodies and I came back to myself after staring blankly for a while. One of the deadmen was in charge of the keys of every entrance of the cloister, I pulled the keys out from the clothes that were scattered on a side and took the God's Stone of Retaliation off their bodies at the same time. Although I didn't know what the use of the stone back was then, I simply thought that with its translucent appearance, it could be sold for a good price. The priest, the guards and the Judgement Army of the cloisters were searching for her. I almost got to the hidden side door of the backyard without any hindrance. Fortunately, having tried almost every key, I opened the door and left the cloister."     

After that, I only managed to sell one of the stones and the rest were robbed. I wandered around and finally stopped at Seawindshire having depended on only the 10 silver royals that I had. I was awakened as a witch in the winter after two years." Wendy paused. "This is my entire story."     

Nightingale held Wendy's hands and kept quiet for a while before she said. "What about the girl from the ritual class?"     

"She may have escaped or be she might be dead. After that, I heard that the church claimed that there was a fire in the cloister and it was closed down. No one cares exactly where all the girls went. They were all abandoned."     

Nightingale sighed and took Wendy into her arms. "Now you have us. Go to sleep, Wendy."     

After a long while, Wendy answered, "Uh..."     

*******************     

Roland yawned while walking into the office the next day. He found Nightingale gravely sitting beside the table and waiting for him.     

"Huh, what happened?"     

"Have you ever heard about the Extraordinary?" she asked in a deep voice.     

After Roland shook his head, Nightingale repeated the story that Wendy told her the night before. She said, "It's hard to imagine that a teenage girl could easily behead a member of the fully armed Judgement Army if she was not awakened."     

"A witch who can't be controlled by the God's Stone of Retaliation..." Roland contemplated for a moment after hearing the story and he remembered the categorization he made for the witches abilities. "Could it be that she's a self-strengthening witch?"     

"Self... What?"     

Roland took a piece of paper out from the drawer and handed it to her. "I made a basic classification according to the type of magic you use. As a self-strengthening witch, she would consume magic all the time to transform herself, and her magic wouldn't be affected by the God's Stone of Retaliation. Although an ordinary witch's physical quality would be improved accordingly with the magic content, it's more prominent on the self-strengthening witch. If I understand correctly, Scroll is supposed to be the Extraordinary in the eyes of the church."     

"Scroll?" Nightingale was surprised. "But, she..."     

"But she's not good at fighting, right?" Roland said with a smile, "The classification isn't determined by strength, nor is it absolutely correct as it's just my personal ideas and speculation. A power self-strengthening witch can really cause a lot of trouble to the church. Without the restriction of the God's Stone of Retaliation, she can selectively kill the Judgement Army, or single-handedly destroy the church of small towns. However the strength of one person is still limited, and the awakening of a self-strengthening witch must be less than the other two types, otherwise, the witch would have hunted down the church in return." Although it's easy for him to say, Roland had a faint unease, thinking of both the red and black pills.     

There were only a few Extraordinary, but there should be at least a dozen of them over the past century? As long as there were two or three power self-strengthening types, it could get the church hung up. For example, the church would focus all its energy on the Hermes defense line to clean up the church facilities of the other cities without restraint. They could destroy the church, the priest, and the priestess altogether. The number of church believers would be greatly reduced after a few years.     

However, other than the Extraordinary witch whom Wendy met, Roland had never heard about another incident of the witch attacking the church and even the cloister Wendy used to live in was destroyed by a huge fire, and no one knew the whereabouts of the girls from the ritual class.     

"The church would absolutely not be sitting around waiting to be killed," he thought, "Perhaps they already found the means against the Extraordinary, and the two pills could be one of it."     

"In any case, we should first test the effect of the pills."     

Thinking about it, Roland summoned for the guard standing outside of the door to pick up a prisoner and look for Carter.     

The test field was arranged outside of the city wall.     

But as a preventive action, Roland had arranged four groups of the First Army to surround the test field and they were armed.     

Other than Roland and Nightingale on the city wall, Anna and Nana were also standing there. As long as there was no God's Stone of Retaliation, Anna's green fire was enough to protect his safety and Nana could provide the most effective treatment.     

"Is everything okay?" Roland leaned over and asked Carter who was stretching his muscles and bones, "Don't despise the opponent."     

"Don't worry, Your Highness," Carter put on his helmet and said, "Your Chief Knight doesn't earn his name with nothing. And, as the opponent is only using a wooden sword, it's impossible to hurt me."     

The test object was a murder and robbery prisoner who was sentenced to death, and Roland did not like the death redemption after doing good deeds. He had directly told the prisoner that the family would be awarded five gold royals as a reward if he sacrificed himself for the test. The prisoner hesitated for a moment and agreed.     

Carter even suggested the opponent to be armored and armed with an iron sword to have a fair duel with him, but Roland rejected without any hesitation. If the death penalty criminal was armed with a sharp weapon, the risk would increase exponentially. If the chief knight's head was chopped off, Nana would not be able to revive him. As for not wearing armor, it was just to test the pain tolerance of the black pill.     

After the prisoner took both of the pills, the expression on his face quickly changed, blue veins appeared on his forehead and his arms, his skin appeared to be dark red and he was breathing hastily. He grabbed the wooden sword and dashed towards the chief knight who was quietly waiting, at the speed comparable to a running wolf. Everywhere he stepped he left a small hole, and the soil beneath his feet was trodden out into a few small pits.     

Carter looked a little surprised, but still calmly took a step to the side and sliced with his sword. This trick could force the opponent to change direction, or the blade would cut into his ribs.     

The opponent was just a murderer who never went through any combat training except for his strength. It was not a surprise that he was fluttered into the air with the side of his chest deeply cut open with blood gushing out. The injury was enough to affect half of his body, but he looked unconcerned and pounced towards the chief knight. Carter used the same trick, but with a slight change this time, when they passed by each other, the prisoner single-handedly pointed the wooden sword towards the knight. Generally, the awkward posture should not be threatening, but the chief knight saw a shadow when the wooden sword was swept out, and he subconsciously blocked with his sword. The strong impact forced him to take two steps backwards, while the wooden sword was also broken.     

"You're pretty strong," Carter swang his arm and said, "Give him another sword, come again."     

The prisoner did not catch the wooden sword that was thrown to him, but suddenly turned around and ran towards the forest. His speed was increased to a level where it was hard to be matched by an ordinary human, as fast as a galloping horse. He crossed his hands in front of his body and directly bumped into the soldier who was getting ready to fire. The soldier screamed miserably and was thrown into the air. At this time, other soldiers pulled the triggers. His blood was gushing out of his body, however, it did not slow him down. He was running so quickly out of the circle that it was more than 10 meters away within a few breaths.     

"Don't let him escape," Carter shouted, "Get me my horse!"     

Before Carter getting on the horse, the prisoner was suddenly startled and looked at his stomach incredulously—there was a horizontal wide-opened wound across his stomach and his boiling hot intestines were rolling out.     

He slowly turned around and saw that a lady dressed in white, holding a shining silverlight dagger had appeared behind him without him realizing.