[Omen of the Witchblade] Chapter 95 — Tomato Pancake

Mel raced back to the camp as fast as [Windstorm] would take her.

[Windstorm]: Enhances Sense, movement speed, and wind-based skills while reducing the effects of earth-based skills.

With her sense enhanced, Mel could pick out the three bodies creeping stealthily up to the sleeping forms of her friends.

In that instant, she weighed the cost of shouting an alarm against the element of surprise. Ruining her element of surprise might cause the ambushers to panic, while her friends would be disoriented. Instead of saving her friends, she might place them in even greater danger. Mel was confident in her ability to ambush the ambushers.

The most likely to survive a direct hit would be Gwen. So long as they didn’t cut her throat, or hit somewhere else similarly vital.

A grip of guilt squeezed her heart as Mel watched the three figures crowd around the obvious leader of the group. The big beefy Amazonian lady that was cuddling a massive hammer.

In the dim firelight, she must have looked like the most threatening one of the group. A dagger, a sword, and a club were raised to stab, cut, and pummel Gwen’s slumbering form.

As soon as she judged the distance, Mel summoned her twinblade, twisted, and threw it with all her strength.

Her twinblade flew through the air like a horizontal buzzsaw. The noise drew the attention of the attackers, turning their heads as one toward the noise in the dark.

They clearly lacked Mel’s senses because they looked around for the source. She could only imagine what it must have sounded like hearing an ominous buzzing coming from deep in the forest.

Mel ran an oblique path around to their flank. Once she was near enough, she used [Condensate], placing a nail of Mist right at their feet.

With their attention split between the buzzing blue blur coming through the forest, and the strange misty nail on the ground, they didn’t even see Mel until she crashed into them.

She didn’t even bother to summon another weapon. Using [Condensate] to practically fly the remaining 50 feet, Mel latched onto the back of the smallest figure.

The man screamed and tried to slash with his dagger, but Mel was already wrapping her arms around his head. She didn’t bother to ask questions. Switching to [Firestorm] took all of a second for the practiced Magi.

[Firestorm]: Enhances Strength and fire-based skills while reducing the effects of ice-based skills.

The man’s screams grew as the flames burned him, but they stopped soon enough as Mel’s enhanced strength overcame his neck muscles.

A sickening snap echoed in the camp, drawing the full attention of the two would-be assassins. Mel grinned at them, her emerald eyes sparkling with rage.

When Mel was done with the dagger-wielder, a club flew her way. Literally. As the man turned his raised club to strike her, Mel’s twinblade-turned-buzz-saw severed the man’s arm at the elbow and the club flopped out of his grasp.

The swordsman was luckier. His head was cleanly separated from his shoulders before he even knew what was going on.

The sound of screaming and the rain of blood woke Gwen up with a start. She snarled, sweeping her long legs around her, knocking the remaining one-armed attacker to the ground.

He writhed and screamed, trying to hold on to his bleeding stump as Mel used [Condensate] to push herself off the falling corpse.

Gwen didn’t hesitate to assess the situation around her. She saw one living enemy, picked up her big hammer, and swung it with all the force she could muster as if she was trying to win a prize at the carnival.

The prize, of course, was another bath for everybody.

The man was crushed into a fountaining red paste in a single blow. All his armor crumpled like a flattened tin can.

Thomas was up in a heartbeat, wand out, eyes darting back and forth. “What happened?”

“No, Mister Rabbit,” Heath muttered as blood rained down on him. “Trix are for kids…” He rolled over and went back to sleep.

Breathing hard, Gwen scented the air while scanning their surroundings. She looked a little like a spooked wild animal.

Mel alighted on the ground. “You good, Gwen?”

Gwen examined Mel quickly, then touched some bloody sludge on her arm to make sure it wasn’t Mel who was injured.

Mel looked at her. “I’m good. Got two of them before they could make a move. Missed the last guy.” She looked at the tomato pancake. “You didn’t though.”

“How?” Thomas asked.

Gwen flashed a relieved grin at that, her aggressive posture beginning to relax. Apparently, she trusted Mel’s assessment of the attackers.

Mel motioned for him to follow her. “This way, I’ll show you.”

Less than a minute or two had passed since Mel discovered the wire. When they returned, the thing was glowing white hot. Thomas took out his wand and lifted it out of the ground.

It fell to the side and cooled rapidly, making a metallic ping-ping sound as it did.

[Spellwire]

(Copper Rank, Crafting Material)

(Epic)

Silver wire used in both rituals and equipment enhancement, applying ritual designs to applicable armaments.

Gwen ranged around their campsite like a guard dog on high alert, searching for any other competitors. She moved about stealthily for once, prowling on all fours.

It didn’t take long for her to return.

Mel and Thomas were studying the wire now that it had cooled.

“I didn’t know such a thing existed,” Thomas said. He studied where the wire had been. “I wish you had left the one who did this alive.”

“Can’t figure it out?” Mel asked, hunkered down in a deep crouch as she examined the runes and sigils of Thomas’ alarm ritual.

“I’ve got a theory about it,” Thomas admitted, coiling up the wire and pocketing it. “It’s an inventive use. One that I hadn’t even considered. This is the first I’ve seen of such an item.”

“Can’t defend against what you’re ignorant about,” Mel agreed.

“It’s an easy vulnerability to patch.” He pointed. “It’s just easier to design the frames for the runes in that way, but it apparently opens the whole thing up for a…wire attack or whatever we want to call it. Instead, if I place them in a zipper configuration, starting at the epicenter and radiating out, the same attack can’t be executed.”

Mel wasn’t nearly as good at ritual magic as Thomas, and her grasp on magical foundation was significantly less than his. She hadn’t bothered to ask, but it seemed pretty obvious Thomas was an upperclassman.

You and Deklin would have gotten along great, Mel thought to herself.

Gwen, who had been silent the entire time she had been back, asked, “Why not?”

Mel had to wonder if she just liked hearing Thomas talk. The look she shot the Berserker said as much.

Thomas pointed at the edge of his sigils glowing on the ground. “Typically, I design a rune frame from the outside in. It’s easier, and it’s the way the system teaches you. However, if you do that, your outer defenses and wards can—apparently—be defeated by a simple silver wire.”

He turned and pointed back at the camp. “If, instead, you start at the epicenter, you can extend a ritual out to nearly any size. Though it makes it harder to construct. However, the whole of the ritual is contained at the center and spreads out like a web. If the edge of the web is damaged, it will break the ritual and alert me. Even if they find a way to overcome the outer defenses, it doesn’t matter. The moment they step within the confines of the ritual, they set off the script at the epicenter.”

“Is there any downside, such as difficulty, or would it be any more resource intensive?” Gwen asked, clearly ignoring Mel’s desire for brevity.

Mel threw up her hands and walked off as Thomas continued to expound on the difficulties and increased time it would take to set up the protective wards.

She came upon Heath, who hadn’t woken up at all during the screaming or fighting, but now that he was utterly alone, he had woken up.

“You’re like a little puppy,” Mel said, putting her hands on her hips.

“I thought you all were dead!” Heath cried, rushing Mel and skidding to a stop as she put a hand out to stop him.

“You’ve got red on you,” she said stoically.

“Wha…?” He looked down at himself. His horrified expression was hilarious. Although entirely justified. There sure was a lot of it.

The smell was really beginning to set in.

“We were attacked in the middle of the…well, not night, but while we were sleeping,” she explained.

“Did anybody get–”

Mel shook her head. “Just a little shaken up. We got them. You didn’t wake up.”

“More like you protected us,” he said, shaking. “Thank you.”

Mel pointed to the tomato pancake. “Gwen did that.”

Heath stared a long while at the tomato pancake. “That’s a person?!”

“Was,” Mel corrected. “Was a person.”

Heath ran off toward the river, his face looking unusually green.

Mel shouted after him, “Yarf downstream! Downstream, Heath! We still need to bathe!”

Unsurprisingly, nobody could sleep after that. Mel wasn’t the only one with a quest for the manastorm. They were all rested enough, anyway. After another dip in the river to wash off what blood Mel couldn’t siphon off to make a coat, they were ready to go.

Of course, Mel looted the bodies while everybody else was cleaning off.

(5) [Spellwires] have been stored in your inventory.

(30) [Copper Rune Coins] have been stored in your inventory.

(1) [Ring of Blades] has been stored in your inventory.

(1) [Shielding Ring] has been stored in your inventory.

You find (1) [Moonshade Razor].

You find (1) [Verminshell Longsword].

As the two weapons fell to the ground, Shardscript flashed in her vision, startling her more than the dropping weapons.

Hidden Quest Complete: Witch Vs Witch

Objective: Defeat a person with a Witch-based class in one-on-one combat (1/1).

You find (1) [Elphaba’s Witch Hat].

Since the campsite was still set up as a haven, Mel put her enhanced ritual magic knowledge to use and quickly scrapped the two useless weapons. She didn’t have enough Epic rarity scrap. It was fairly hard to come by, but both weapons provided two pieces each thanks to her [Blood Tax] title.

Consequently, Mel was able to clean up the club-wielder’s remains. The so-called “tomato pancake”.

Heath stayed far away while Mel broke down the armaments. Thomas watched her with keen interest. “It’s a sick sort of serendipity that the people we take gear from also happen to be full of blood.”

“What else would they be filled with?” Mel asked, clearly unbothered.

Thomas shrugged. “A lot of things. I’m just saying, it’s pretty convenient.”

“It’s really just the bones we can’t use,” Gwen said, rather casually.

Mel could see Heath turn a shade of green again at that.

“What?” Gwen asked. “It’s not like one of us has Bone aspect. And I only get [Sanctified Beast Bones] from monsters.”

“You’re talking about people!” Heath said.

“People who tried to murder us in our sleep,” Thomas pointed out. “Competitors that have made it this far. Doubtful this was the first time they performed that tactic.”

“And now it’s their last,” Gwen said grimly.

Mel was intrigued that the campsite was still considered a haven after being recently attacked. Havens were necessary to use her ritual magic, not to mention accessing the Emporium and using the [Soul Kiln].

I suppose there’s no one left here to threaten us. They must have been fairly strong too, to make it out this far and sneak past our defenses.

After giving the rings a look over, she put them on, and split the [Spellwire] with Thomas, but the real prize was the witch hat.

[Shielding Ring]

(Copper Rank, Item)

(Rare)

A simple goldsteel ring with a flat shield-shaped motif studded with star amber.

 Imprint: Blocks (1) instance of severe, non-lethal, damage. Downgrades rarity when successfully blocking. Breaks once it falls below Common rarity.

[Ring of Blades]

(Copper Rank, Item)

(Rare)

A brutally designed ring, banded in fanning angular, red-edged blades, hailing from Darkshard Lormar. Mysteriously excised of Guilt’s tremendous weight upon the soul.

Imprint: Heightens the potency of all critical damaging attacks and aspect skills. Adds slashing damage to punches dealt with the hand equipped.

Mel lifted up the greatest prize of all. Her very own witch hat.