Chương 98: (96). 2.49. A Chance In Hell

Vin and Shia traveled in silence all the way back to the village. Vin certainly wasn't in any sort of mood to talk, and based on the sniffling he could hear still coming from his companion, Shia clearly wasn't either. They didn't encounter any more giant spider swarms this time, which was both good and bad. Good because they probably wouldn't have been able to take them on as they were at the moment. Bad because Vin really wanted to scream and punch something.

Not even the surprise notification that he'd increased his running to level 12 was able to put a dent in the current mood. They didn't stop running until they'd broken out of the treeline, slowly coming to a stop as the familiar village finally came into view. Vin knew so long as they could see the village they were under the protection of Madam Trebella's ritual, and he finally let himself relax ever so slightly.

Now that he didn't have to fear the freakishly fast Divine Warrior suddenly appearing beside him at any moment, he could focus on other things. Like how to best kill him. He didn't know if it was coincidence or if Shia was just able to read him by now, but the elf placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, doing her best to give him a calming smile.

"Take a deep breath, Vin," she said, following her own instructions and letting out a heavy sigh. Doing the motion a second, and then a third time until he finally joined her. Vin had to admit he felt ever so slightly better after breathing alongside her.

"I'm going to go find Scule and Reginald and… tell them what happened," Shia said, her voice strained.

"I think you should go lie down for a bit, but I have a feeling you won't. If that's the case, you should talk to Madam Trebella and ask for her help. She's the only one we've encountered so far that actually managed to fight off the divine warrior, so we need to talk to her before we go anywhere near him again."

"Yeah… Yeah, that's a good idea," Vin nodded, realizing she had a point. His mind had felt muddled ever since Alka had vanished, and not just because he'd lost the extra stats she provided. Breaking off from the elf, Vin aimlessly poured what little mana he'd managed to recover during their run into Renewal, healing the remaining damage in his hand and welcoming the fresh headache his spell brought on.

He'd been so blinded by rage in his attempts to stab the divine warrior that he hadn't even realized just how close he'd come to slicing off his own fingers by grabbing the top half of Alka's sword. Walking up to the manor, Vin knocked on the door, waiting for Malzar to open it. To his surprise, it was another familiar face that greeted him instead. One that he really didn't feel like dealing with right now.

Rather than the young and excitable infernal, Vin found himself staring at an impassive Xaril, book open in hand.

"What?" The infernal asked, not even bothering to look up from his book.

"I need to talk to Madam Trebella," Vin said through gritted teeth.

"Mmm…" the infernal grunted, moving to the side and letting Vin enter as he kept reading. Shaking his head, Vin walked into the manor and headed straight for Madam Trebella's study. He passed a few younger infernals here and there that gave him strange looks and whispered about him, but he couldn't bring himself to care at the moment. Not even bothering to knock, Vin walked into the Witch's study, finding the head of the village neck deep in paperwork.

"Do you have any idea-!" Madam Trebella stopped her shout, clearly surprised to find him standing before her instead of one of her charges. Giving him a thorough look from top to bottom, she grunted.

"You look like hell."

"How did you defeat the divine warrior?" Vin demanded, not bothering to answer her unspoken question. The Witch paused for a moment, staring at him carefully as if deciding between answering his questions and turning him into a newt, before letting out a heavy sigh. Leaning back in her chair, she motioned for him to take a seat.

"I didn't so much as defeat him as I scared him off," she finally said, tapping one of her horns with a smirk.

"Divine magic doesn't play by the same rules as regular magic, meaning you generally can't best a divine warrior in a battle of strength. You have to be tricky. Win the battle of wits the golden idiots don't even realize they're fighting."

"How?" Vin repeated, still not hearing any actual answers.

"Surely you understand you won't be able to replicate any of my methods?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Unless you became a master at rituals since last we spoke?" Vin just stared at her. After a few seconds, she clicked her tongue.

"Youth these days," she muttered.

"I have countless defensive rituals already prepared all across the village that I can trigger with barely a thought. I already told you, Witches and Warlocks are far more powerful than standard spellcasters, but only if they have time to prepare. If the divine warrior had jumped me beyond the boundaries of this village, he would have made short work of me."

"What did your rituals do, exactly?" Vin pushed.

"First was an evacuation ritual," she said, ticking them off her fingers.

"I had a bad feeling the moment I laid eyes on him, so before the idiot had even finished the first bit of his chant, I'd summoned a handful of bound air elementals to lift up the nearby villagers and float them out of his reach onto a temporary hardened cloud. He didn't like that one bit," she cackled, grinning at the memory.

"Even with the villagers out of harm's way, my gut feeling hadn't gone away, so I decided to activate one of my more powerful and expensive personal rituals I always keep prepared in the event of an emergency. It was a costly, stupid decision to make at the time, and it's the only reason I'm still alive." Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"What was the ritual?" Vin asked, frowning at the mention of how costly it was. Based on Madam Trebella's tone, he had a feeling she wouldn't be able to do it a second time.

"A ritual of haste," she said, sitting up and fixing him with a pointed look.

"Time magic that enhances the caster's speed significantly, making it a particularly vital ritual for Witches and Warlocks seeing as we need longer to enact most of our magics than the average mage if caught off guard. Dexterity and focus are already the two most important attributes for a Witch, so I'm actually much faster than I look. The ritual enhances my speed even further, to the point where I'd probably be able to get up, smack you upside the head, and sit back down before you even know what had hit you."

"So you were able to match his speed then?"

"It would be more accurate to say I was able to dodge his attacks. Barely," she frowned, clearly not happy admitting her failures.

"I don't know how, but that warrior's dexterity attribute has to be incredibly high. Based on his expression I'd clearly caught him by surprise when I dodged his first attack, and honestly it didn't take much more than that to run him off. For some reason once he realized I could almost match his speed he started to panic, and his technique began to grow sloppy. To the point where I even managed to hit him with some minor curses before he fled."

"I see…" Vin said, wondering what all of that meant. Madam Trebella herself admitted that she hadn't been able to match the warrior's incredible speed even with her powerful ritual. If she was still slower than him, why had she frightened him so?

"Your turn," she said, snapping Vin out of his concentration.

"What do you mean?"

"A tale for a tale," she said, rolling her eyes.

"I told you how I managed to survive, now you do the same. Tell me what you did to escape with your life, and why you're so hell bent on taking him down now. Hells knows it's not because I asked you to." Vin was tempted to tell her to shove it and walk away, not really in the mood to talk about what had happened so soon. But even in his irritated state he knew Madam Trebella was a powerful ally to have. If she couldn't help him come up with a way to take down the divine warrior, then possibly no one could.

Sinking down into his chair, Vin forced himself to retell everything that happened as closely as he could remember it. To his surprise, Madam Trebella actually listened to his story very carefully, interjecting with a question here or there when something strange popped up, such as when he talked about his first time meeting the Rebel Queen. The only things he left out were how he'd managed to map the tunnels, and the fact that he had a divine boon of his own.

After what felt like no time at all, Vin got to the end of the battle, feeling his throat begin to close up as he reached the part that would be etched into his brain forever.

"After he finished his speech and drew his sword, he… he cut down Alka like it was nothing," Vin managed, the now familiar phantom pain radiating through his missing hand as he tried to clench it.

"His golden rapier cut straight through her sword like it was made of paper. We couldn't do anything. He dodged everything we threw at him with a smile on his face, like he was playing with a bunch of angry toddlers."

"Hmm," Madam Trebella said, giving him a strange look.

"So how did you survive then?"

"I managed to catch him off guard with an enhanced cast of L ight, right before he could take my head," Vin explained.

"By the time I could see again, he was gone, as if he'd never been there in the first place. I still don't understand why he fled so quickly. A quick twitch of his wrist and I would have been a goner."

"I think I may know the divine warrior's weakness," Madam Trebella said slowly, rubbing her horn absentmindedly.

"You do?! What is it?" Vin asked, leaping out of his seat and leaning over her desk.

"Calm down," she hissed, actually swatting the hand laid on her desk, causing him to recoil in surprise. One thing was certain, she was faster than she looked.

"It's just a theory, but it would explain why I freaked him out so much when I got close to his speed, and why he fled the moment you blinded him."

"He's fragile as an egg." Vin blinked at the infernal, wondering if he'd heard her right.

"…Explain?"

"Think about it," she frowned, getting up and pacing behind her desk.

"Even if he has a combat class, he couldn't have gotten that much experience since we arrived on this world. There's no way he's prestiged more than twice at the very most. If that's the case, where does his speed come from?" Vin stared at the infernal, slowly picking up what she was putting down.

"You think he's taken every single one of his attribute points… and put them all into dexterity?"

"It's the only thing that explains his incredible speed without using time magic," she nodded.

"Normally that's regarded as a rather stupid thing to do, as what good is speed if you lack the strength to do anything with it. But he's managed to solve that problem, hasn't he?"

"His golden sword," Vin gasped, the pieces falling into place.

"If that sword can cut through petrified elder wood, it can cut through anything. He doesn't need to invest any points into strength." Vin almost jumped for joy at discovering the divine warrior's weakness, when a sudden thought put a damper on their line of thinking.

"Hold on, I thought you can't just dump points into dexterity without splitting it between that and focus. Doesn't he need the focus to even comprehend how fast he's going?"

"Normally yes, but there's a chance he has passives, Capstones, or even a title that helps him get around that," Madam Trebella said, looking thoughtful.

"You said he fought with a rapier, correct? If his base class is something similar to Duelist, then he almost certainly would have been offered abilities to help his mind keep up with his speed. Without having to invest in focus. They might solve the problems he'd have with getting tired quickly as well. Or his divine power might play a role there, there's just too much we don't know."

"So he's invested everything into speed," Vin muttered, sitting back down and putting his head in his hands as he thought. If their theory were true, that meant a single blow, not even one that was all that powerful, would be all it would take to finish the lizardman off. No wonder the warrior had fled the moment his speed advantage had been nullified by the Witch, or why he hadn't wanted to risk fighting blind against Vin.

Vin was so lost in thought, busy trying to come up with all the different ways they could use this knowledge to their advantage, that he missed what the infernal said next.

"Sorry, what was that?" He asked, glancing up at her.

"I said he's still not going to be an easy opponent to take down," Madam Trebella frowned, clearly disliking having to repeat herself.

"Especially without your front-line fighter."

"Yeah," Vin muttered, his heart catching at the reminder that Alka was gone. Madam Trebella gave him an expectant look, as if she were waiting for something. When he merely looked back at her blankly, she pinched the bridge of her nose, muttering something that sounded like a prayer for strength.

"I hate trying to make deals with idiots," she sighed, shaking her head.

"What deal?" Vin asked, looking confused.

"We already agreed to help you take down the divine warrior."

"Not the warrior, you idiot," she glared, slamming a hand on her desk and leaning over him, striking a rather imposing visage with her gleaming horns and shining gold eyes.

"Your friend! The ghost that wouldn't stop pestering me the other day!"

"Do you want her back or not?!"