I Reincarnated as an NPC Witch

Sudden Discoveries

Keeana jumped on the tree immediately, checking who shot an arrow at them. “It’s some damned bandits again.” She draws her bow and aims at the ones who are exposed in her angle. She shots one of them in the chest which prompted the rest to attack more aggressively. Their side prepared for a fight. “These guys don’t know who they are fighting against.” Gallant draws his sword and charges at one nearby him, taking it behind a tree, so the rest of the bandits don’t take advantage of her exposure. Lavena stretches her arms and charges on one of them. She landed punches on their face with the spikes in her knuckles dealing more wounds and damage. Her appearance might be cutesy but she’s a beast in this sort of martial art style of fighting. She took one of the bandits' life with just her punches and severely damaging kicks. “Be careful with your attacks, Edsel,” Winsel said as he stretched his left arms towards the side, stopping a charging bandit from his tracks. “I will don’t worry. I don’t want some forest fairies to be angry at me.” Edsel starts attacking and rooting for the ones who have the projectile. Winsel looks at the bandit that tries to attack him. He holds his neck as he makes a gagging sound. He dropped to the ground while struggling to breathe. Seconds later, he stopped moving and breathing entirely.

Abigail was tucked in behind a tree, protecting herself from the projectile. Beside her was Catrina that was gripping her dagger. She inserts her hand on her robe and grabs something on it. It was another glass tube but it was much different than others. Instead of a circular hole on the top of it, it has a conical with a flat thin beak. She inserts the tip of the dagger into the beak and inverted both the knife and the glass tube. The liquid slowly pours on the blade, its consistency was much like a flowing jelly. The transparent liquid dries out on the blade. She pulls out the knife and inverts the bottle. She stored it in her robe again. Catrina peeks at the bandits. She takes a deep breath and charges out on the battlefield. She tackles one of them in the bushes. She tried to go for the neck but the opportunity didn’t arise. She diverted and pierced the dagger on the bandit’s waist. He screams as he feels the pain that the dagger inflicts on him. It was an unusual pain, he can also feel painful hotness that presses through his inners, making it more torturous than it ever was. He was overwhelmed that Catrina had the chance to draw her dagger and pierce his neck finally. It finished his suffering as she slit her throat inside. “It worked. My pain of getting the ingredients for this was paid.”

The shrieks of pain, cries for help, and screams of terror slowly fade as the battle ends. The bandits lose as their dead bodies lays on the warm and loving ground of the forest. Abigail goes out of her hiding spot as she saw Lavena was sitting on the ground under a tree. She’s groaning in pain as she has a bow behind her back. “Lavena!” Abigail shouted as she approaches her. “Oh my god.” The others turn their heads to her. “Lavena.” Gallant runs up to her. Abigail was panicking about what could she do. She grabs her book from her bag and skimmed through the contents of it. She was shocked as something pushed her away. “I’ll take care of this.” Catrina pulled something out under her robe, “You must be glad that I don’t hold grudges.” She flicks the cap of it as she suddenly pulls the arrow without even a warning. Lavena screams as the wound starts bleeding again. She breathes heavily as she holds on to the tree she was leaning sideways on. “Endure the pain like before.” Catrina pours the blue-colored liquid onto her wound and pulls a flask. Lavena hisses as she can feel the pain that the liquid inflicts on her wound. Catrina turns and opens the flask’s cap which has a suction tube. She pulls the smaller cap on the cap’s surface and sucks an amount of healing liquid. She hovers the tip of the suction tube and pressed the smaller cap down, letting the liquid flow on the wound. It drips on the wound slowly which makes Lavena hiss every time it does.

After half of the liquid remains in the tube, Catrina withdraws and puts back the cap on the flask. The wound slowly patches itself, although not as beautiful as how Abigail’s potion patches up their wounds before. “That’s enough to clean your wound and stop it from bleeding.” She stands and helps Lavena up. “Is the rest okay?” They all nod, “We have some wounds but it's bearable.” Keeana said as she returns her bow on her back. “Just a scratch.” Gallant twists his arm, showing a long scar that goes across his elbow. “I think Lavena has the greatest and severe wound. So, save your healing concoction for a later date.” Edsel lits up Winsel’s torch once more. “Glad to hear that, my wound is still painful but I can bear it.”

“I think we should continue now. Just scout for bandits, Wren and Keeana.” Winsel looks up to them which both of them nods. “Do we still need to? I mean, the dark wizard assured us that we wouldn’t be harmed until Crocus has something to go against him.” Keeana cackles, “Assured? Edsel, are you really using that in the same sentence as the dark wizard? You know people like that wouldn’t assure and even keep a promise, especially to his enemies.” Lavena nods, “Keeana’s right. We can’t be sure that he will leave us alone just because Crocus isn’t ready to fight him or something. We ourselves have something that has the capability to have an even fight with him or less than that. He can just leave Crocus and target us instead. Besides, it’s not new to him to play his tricks on us. It will entertain him before he fights the witch that he prophesied to have a battle or feud on if that fits.”

Abigail feels a lingering fear and nervousness. She keeps asking herself the reason for her being the one who will fight the dark wizard, whoever it is. She’s not as confident as fighting him in the game before. A silly question came upon her mind and said her thoughts out loud, “Could we respawn?” A lot of pairs of eyes look at her with confusion. It was rather embarrassing for her. “What? Respawn?” Gallant snickers, “You are out of your mind. Resurrection isn’t a thing here. At least, not on us. I don’t know to you.”

She looks at Gallant, rather curiously, “How did you know that word?” It made the man more confused, “Because I know it? What reason could be possibly said about that? I am not that dumb as you think, I was a prince  after all.” Abigail shakes her head, “No… no, no. You aren’t supposed to say that.” “The last I checked, the word ‘respawn’ isn’t a slur nor a f*******n word.” Edsel leans on the tree, looking at her. “Is there something wrong with saying that word?” Abigail turns to Lavena, “All of you know that word?” They all look at each other and nods rather awkwardly. “It’s not a big deal, Crocus. Let’s go. You’re just distracting us from continuing our long journey to a nearby town.” Inside, Abigail is breaking down. “You shouldn’t know that word. It’s a modern term.” Then, her eyes suddenly became wide in realization. “You guys are victims too, aren’t you?”

“If you are saying we are victims of the dark wizard, sure. If you want to put it that way.” Lavena shrugs. “You are a weird one, Crocus.” Abigail looks at Keeana, “…and I like it!” The purple-haired girl was rather feeling hopeless now. She sighs, “Nevermind it. I am sorry for bothering you guys.” She embraces herself, “I don’t know what came up to me. Let’s… Just go. Maybe it’s just my tiredness or something.” They all nod as they continue to trek their way through the forest.

Meanwhile, Abigail was still thinking about what happened just earlier. Her rather stupid session of “thinking out loud” was a bit helpful for her to confirm her suspicions in this world. She has heard some modern-sounding words roll off their mouths like it was just nothing. She understands that that’s how they are “programmed”. Which leads her to another question, if they were programmed, they are too intelligent to be one. She doesn’t believe everything was scripted by the ones who locked her in this sort of simulation. Everything was raw, everything seemed so normal. The people she’s with are not adhering to some sort of programming rule or some story. Although, they seem to have some knowledge of what’s happening. Especially Gallant who fetched her in the hut that she stayed for like half an hour. The man said that they learned it through the people of Pacuvinium which she have zero interaction. How could these people know her existence in the first place? How could they even know her existence when she wasn’t existing yet? She was known as a witch, a hero, and even treated as a goddess even before she was here. Was there another witch? Or, is this some sort of programming voodoo that she isn’t aware of?

It hurts her mentally to even think about how she got here. A small part of her mind still denies this is her reality now. It feels like a dream still. She felt pain but it wasn’t enough to push her to a hundred percent of thinking that this is the reality, as far as she know what reality really means. She shakes her head, she tries to take away the dreadful thoughts in her head. It makes her weak. She takes a deep breath and squeezes her arms. She needs to be tough.

“Are you doing alright there, Crocus?” She snaps out of her thought process and looks at Lavena. She nods rather awkwardly, “Y-yeah. I am fine. Just rethinking what I just did.” The pink-haired girl smiles, “I am glad to hear that. You just kept staring ahead or on the ground. I am surprised that you didn’t trip on any roots that are pretty common in this forest.” Abigail gulps, “I am surprised as well. Very… very surprised.” She whispers to herself, “So surprised…”

They continue their journey through the night. Among the trees with only the torch that the twin holds dearly and the moonlight as their guide through the darkness that surrounds them. Occasionally, they munch on some animal meat that was cooked for their convenience. The sustenance that was given to them and their motivation to go on keeps them awake and travel in the annoying terrain of the forest. Their yawns normally abrupt the silence between them but it wasn’t an excuse to stop their tracks. They know the dark wizard is just somewhere in these woods, watching them from afar. The forest isn’t their friend with someone that could take advantage of the darkness that the shade of the trees gives. With Keeana’s mastery and Wren’s vision from above, they traveled the woods rather quite efficiently and fast. The dark and starry night turns into a gradient of dark blue and warm pinkish-orange and good news arrived at them.

“I spot smoke! Civilization just the north of us!” Wren declares as they celebrated shortly and started going faster in their walking pace. As they arrived in the quaint little village, one resident welcomed them. “The heroes, they are here!”