There was something wrong with Ivy Margaret.

  Ethan meant that sincerely.

  He rode through the rain with a thousand thoughts racing through his head. The mysterious Margaret family. The garrison in Gearford. The officer he was supposed to find there. What exactly was he supposed to say when he handed over Ivy's revolver?

  Then his mind drifted somewhere else entirely.

  If the witch and her followers attacked, what were the odds of him slipping into the crowd and landing a surprise shot with Ice Arrow?

  In theory, the witch should be a caster too, just like him. Against an attack she wasn't expecting, a fragile body would only drag her down. That was probably why three Tier Two knights had once managed to cut off her head.

  The witch probably had no idea there was still someone in town who knew both Fireball and Ice Arrow. Elemental casters were rare on this continent. If he could keep the element of surprise, his odds were actually not bad.

  The problem would come afterward.

  Ivy would definitely investigate, and followers of the God of Truth were not the sort to accept the witch was tragically killed by an unexpected chunk of hail as a reasonable explanation.

  A saying Ethan had once heard came back to him.

  Anyone who kills people regularly knows the hard part isn't the killing. It's getting rid of the body.

  Even after two years in another world, Ethan remained a complete amateur in that particular field.

  By the time he rejected his thirteenth excuse, the cabin in the woods came into view.

  He quickly realized he no longer needed to worry about excuses at all.

  The moment he dismounted, he spotted Chloe.

  Standing beside her was a woman in a black cloak, one hand resting on Chloe's head. Chloe was trembling all over and looked deeply uncomfortable.

  There were other visitors outside the cabin too.

  They were all dressed more or less the same, in the sort of clothes that would make anyone on the street assume they were up to no good.

  The white horse Ethan had ridden in on seemed to reach that same conclusion. The moment Ethan locked eyes with the unexpected visitors, the horse bolted without hesitation and vanished into the rain before he could even call it back.

  Apparently the horse was even more eager than he was to get to Gearford and deliver the message to the royal army.

  So the worst-case scenario had happened after all.

  Before Ethan could reunite with the main force from town, the witch and her followers had already surrounded him. The way they looked at him made it clear they had already decided he would make an excellent new sacrifice.

  And yet, in a strange way, Ethan also felt a little more at ease.

  At least now he no longer needed to think up excuses for Ivy. He no longer had to estimate how many people in town would die in the disaster the witch was about to bring down either. If he had stayed, all the follow-up condolence visits would have fallen to him as the town clerk.

  Chloe, who had been crouched unhappily on the ground, heard him arrive and lit up at once.

  The instant the woman beside her looked away, Chloe shook free and ran straight to Ethan. She planted herself in front of him, lowered her body, and let out a low warning growl.

  "Go inside and stay out of the rain. You'll catch cold."

  Ethan gently stroked Chloe's head.

  She tilted her neck up at him and let out a questioning little chirp.

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  "Be good."

  "Cluck."

  Chloe shook her neck, then headed toward the cabin, glancing back every few steps.

  "Oh?"

  The woman in black looked mildly surprised.

  "So you didn't try to run."

  She spoke calmly.

  "The only reason I'm here is because you took something that belongs to me. Though I have to admit, I wasn't expecting you to use it on a chicken. I can tell that bird likes you."

  "Her name is Chloe."

  Now that he was closer, Ethan could finally make out the face beneath the hood.

  The sight of it left him frozen for a moment, and the words slipped out before he could stop them.

  "Wait. It's you?"

  "You know me?" the witch asked.

  "You're Baron Byrd's daughter. We met at the harvest ball in Willowbrook."

  The harvest celebration was a regular event shared by the two towns. Every year when the crops came in, Baron Byrd would bring his wife and daughter to Willowbrook for the festivities.

  Unfortunately, as mayor of Riverbend, he would not be attending any more of them.

  The reason Ethan remembered the girl named Betsy was because of how strange she had acted at the ball.

  While everyone else was celebrating the harvest, she had stood alone in the corner, watching Baron Byrd's back with a gaze that had made Ethan's skin crawl.

  According to Baron Gideon's description, the witch was supposed to be a fully grown woman, something much closer to an old crone.

  But Betsy looked no older than fifteen. The loose black cloak hung off her frame, and with her hair soaked from the rain, she looked more shabby than terrifying.

  "Oh, Betsy was a pitiful child."

  She grinned, and it was exactly the same eerie smile Ethan remembered from the ball.

  "Sick from birth. Doctors everywhere, and every one of them said she wouldn't live past ten. The more pitiful part is that she had a foolish mother who was willing to beg an Old God for help just to keep her daughter alive."

  As she spoke, she raised her right hand and aimed her index finger at the skin just beneath her eye.

  Then she pushed the sharp nail into her own flesh.

  Bright red blood ran down from the cut on her face.

  "See? Betsy's gone."

  Ethan felt his scalp go numb.

  This witch was not just unsettling. She had issues.

  "But I don't remember you," the witch said with a shrug.

  "That's fine," Ethan replied. "I'm not the sort of person worth remembering."

  "But you're from the town. I heard a sheriff showed up in Willowbrook. How did she describe me?"

  "She said three Tier Two knights managed to defeat you once. So there's no reason she can't do it too."

  As expected, the witch's face darkened.

  She let out a cold laugh.

  "You mean those three knights who poisoned the water supply to win, then shamelessly wrote themselves into history as heroes?"

  "I knew her plan was shaky. There was obviously something wrong with The Three Knights."

  Ethan had wanted to say as much earlier, but he could hardly say that with Baron Gideon sitting right there.

  That book was strangely detailed in many places. It spent pages and pages on how the three men had become knights, how they had traveled from the Capital to the frontier, and all the strange little adventures they encountered along the way. Ethan had actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

  Then, right when it reached the battle with the witch, it completely fell apart.

  It felt like one of those web novels that secretly changed ghostwriters halfway through. All the schemes and deadly back-and-forth in the fight became laughably shallow, like the author had slapped it together in one lazy afternoon.

  Since this world did not have the concept of dragging out chapters just to collect more pay, Ethan could only think of one explanation.

  The real way the three knights defeated the witch did not make for very heroic propaganda, so the story had to be "artistically adjusted."

  But that led to another problem.

  The witch's actual abilities were far more dangerous than Ivy had assumed.

  When Ethan stayed silent for too long, the witch's gaze drifted to the revolver at his waist.

  "Well? Are you planning to use that on me?"

  "Of course not. I've never fired a gun in my life."

  Ethan denied it immediately.

  There was no way he was going to bet his life on a weapon he did not even know how to use.

  "That's a token of the Capital nobility. That young lady values you highly. Are you her lover?"

  "I'm just a clerk she dragged along to help investigate a case."

  "Then prove it."

  The witch smiled in a way that made Ethan's skin crawl.

  "That man over there was Baron Byrd's steward. To prove his loyalty to me, he personally used this to contaminate the town's water."

  She held up a small gray cloth pouch no bigger than her palm. A sharp medicinal smell drifted from it.

  Her eyes gleamed with a faint green light, and her voice carried exactly the same seductive edge described in the books.

  "She trusts you. That makes this easy for you. Cast the curse on them, and I'll spare your life. I'll let you follow me. I'll even share my master's power with you."

  This was not a negotiation.

  Ethan had already noticed what the witch's followers were doing. They had blocked every possible escape route. The consequences of refusing were painfully obvious.

  This was, without question, the worst job interview Ethan had ever experienced.

  He was soaked through by cold rain, surrounded by cultists of the Old God Bazarthos, and any answer the interviewer disliked would result in him becoming a sacrifice.

  "What's the goal?"

  Out of basic politeness, Ethan still felt he should ask about the long-term prospects of the position.

  The witch burst out laughing, as though she had just heard the funniest thing in the world.

  Clearly no one had ever asked her that before.

  "The goal?" she said. "To kill everyone who stands in our way."

  At least on one point, The Three Knights had not strayed too far from reality in the way it portrayed her.

  The witch raised her voice.

  "Tell me. What's your answer?"