I woke up with a loud banging on my door.
"Who is so active this early in the morning?"
With noises that only an old man will make, I got off my bed to open the still-noisy door.
"What's the problem here?"
On the other side of the door was Froggy with a smirk on his face.
He was in a purple robe similar to one of a witch, but this one was more customized than the one given by the system.
He had grey bags under his eyes from the sleepless nights of the past week.
But his expression was so full of energy that I thought he would explode soon if I didn't take him on a walk.
"Is this how people feel when they wake me up? This is kind of fun, why are you always complaining about it?"
My response was a little slow since I was still sleepy.
"It's because you usually don't wake up so easily. So why are you here so early? Did you not sleep at all last night?"
Froggy seemed on edge, his attention wasn't on me, more on the room I was in, it was like he was looking for something... Or someone.
"I rented another room for our friend, she's not here."
That seemed to catch his attention and he looked at me.
"Oh-uh, I wasn't looking for her. I was uhh, I was just looking if your living place was good enough."
He quickly tried to come up with an excuse, which only made it more embarrassing.
I don't think he's fallen in love with her. It's more likely that he's curious about people similar to him.
"We could check up if she's awake now since I'm already up."
"If you insist."
I could only shake my head at his attempts of not looking too interested.
We walked a few steps down to another door and knocked on the door, but this time it was gently unlike other people.
A few seconds passed with no response, I knocked for the second time and waited a few more seconds.
Froggy started time get nervous
"Maybe we came too early-"
Before he could finish his sentence the door was opened and a person with long black hair, a big nose, pale skin, and sleepy eyes greeted us.
"Morning, did something happen?"
She looked at me for a few seconds before finally seeing my friend and froze.
Looks like she was also curious about my Witch friend and didn't know how to act about it.
This could actually be some fun to see.
"Morning Catharine, I'm sorry if I woke you up too early. But I and Froggy wanted to do some shopping before we meet our new friends, do you want to join us?"
Both of them looked at me with surprise at the sudden proposition but accepted the deal.
Of course, this was not true, I already have everything I need taken, but this is a great excuse for Froggy to make a new friend.
I hope that their not evil in the end. I didn't want to kill them after we got close.
After a little preparation, we were back on the streets with the sun shining down upon us, making all of us truly awake.
Since it was a casual shopping trip, we didn't wear any armor on us, so all the people could see the very pale villagers hanging out with a person who didn't have a nose.
To say that we caught some stares was an understatement.
First, we decided to eat something, we sat down at a table and got some food from the nearby stalls.
Since I was the one that made the suggestion, I was the one paying as well.
I got some chicken and a pumpkin pie, Froggy ate some stake and Catharine seemed to be satisfied with beetroot soup.
I had never seen anyone eating that, so I was surprised when I heard her order.
But if she likes it, I can't say anything about it.
We sat like that for a few minutes, nobody saying anything but I could see the two of them glancing at each other thinking that their sneaky about it.
In the end, I got bored so I broke the silence.
"So Catharine, what were you before becoming a witch?"
She stopped eating her soup and looked deep into my eyes with suspicion.
But since I was just curious and had no bad intentions, she decided to answer the question.
"I was the youngest of a small noble household. A year after I got my job assigned by the system, an accident happened and I became a Witch. My family decided to abandon me since it would ruin their reputation."
"Uff, that must be rough, struck by lightning, and then abandoned by the family. I'm sorry I made you bring this up."
She seemed to freeze when I said that, and quickly looked at Froggy.
"Did you tell him about the lightning?"
"I didn't tell him that, he knew about that before we met, even I didn't know about this process until he told me about it."
Her eyes were back on me, but this time with curiosity.
Looks like the process of becoming a witch was a close secret for the Clan members only.
"My experience was not too pleasant either."
To break the building silence, Froggy decided to tell his tragic story as well, which unfortunately didn't help, it only brought the mood down even more.
This was my fault, I asked a sensible question without thinking about the consequences, so I had to think about something else, I had to break out of this poor mood.
"So what's your Clan's relationship with the Pillagers?"
This seems to bring her back to normal, maybe a little too energetic now.
"As you may heard some rumors, everyone thinks we're in the same boat as those monsters. But that couldn't be further from the truth! We are an exclusive Clan that only accepts Witches and tries not to harm others. Instead, those stupid Piligers, are looking for trouble, they are bigger than us in numbers and power, and they also double with forbidding magic. We may have been forgotten by the system, but they are simply despised. We also don't like to trade with them, so those potions didn't come from us."
Looks like she had some strong opinions about the Pillagers, which took me by surprise.
"How did the Piligers come to be? "
This was one of the few topics that I had no information from the game.
Since the game lore was so loose, I didn't know the origins of Piligers, only a few theories posted on the internet. But now I'm curious about the truth of this world.
Froggy also looked at Catherine with curiosity. Since his birth was that of a normal villager, he didn't know too much about the outside world.
Only recently it got expended, but few know about the Piligers, only some stories were told as legends. They liked to keep their secrets pretty close.
With a sigh, she began the story.
"We don't know too much about them, but we're the ones that have the most contact unfortunately. We all appeared shortly after the great war, At that time the System was at its weakest and people started to experiment outside of its domains. In the end, the system found out about them and cursed them, cursed us. That's how the Pillagers and Witches came to be.
At that time, we were part of the same Clan, but as time went on the experiments got more inhumane, so we the Witches left the Clan to make one of our own.
The rest of the people didn't forget about us, and the constant kidnapping of the villagers didn't help us in any way. And now we're once again here suffering because of those dammed Pillagers!"
I didn't expect to hear such a great tale about their history.
Once again, the great war comes up but this time even the System itself has suffered.
So this is not a simple invasion by some dumb monsters. No, the true battle was over who would rule over this world, and the System managed to defend its home.
The question now is, who attack it?
The Nether dimension or the End one?
There was also a mysterious portal in the game that couldn't be opened. The dimension where the Warden came from.
But from her story I can tell she doesn't know anything about the war, she most likely knew these from mouth-to-mouth stories, not something written down.
"Enough about me, I thought you hated Witches like all the others, but you seemed to have a witch friend. What's that all about?"
She seems angry about the way I treat her people and how I treat my friend Froggy.
I could only awkwardly say, that he saved my life and we have been friends ever since then, but at the palace, something happened, and ever since then I was more angry towards the Pillagers.
And I knew that in a big raid, there would usually appear some witches and ravagers.
"You know more than others, that's for sure. I haven't heard that beast's name in a while, they are crazy strong and hard to kill. But they haven't appeared in any raids recently."
Catharine was starting to feel more comfortable around us, and her strong reactions seemed to be filled with new information as well.
"I got some information from here and there while I was traveling. It's nothing too impressive."
I tried to downplay my knowledge, but she didn't seem to believe it.
"So what's the life in the Caln?"
Froggy who was silent this whole time finally spoke.
Catharine moved away from me and looked at Froggy with a sad look in her eyes.
"I'm sorry we didn't contact you before. From what you've told me you're from the Sandstone Kingdome, and we don't have a good network there to look for other victims like us. It must've been hard for you to live on your own isolated by everyone. I'm surprised you didn't lose your mind from lack of brewing potions."
Froggy looked away like he was shy, but I could see him trying to hold his cry to not appear week in front of our new friend.
"Don't worry, I don't blame you. It's not like you had an easier time than me. And it's not your responsibility to look after every witch in the world."
Catharine bit her lip at what Froggy said but accepted his statement.
"If you want, you can come with us to the Clan, you'll be more then welcomed."
That took both of us by surprise, I didn't expect her to invite him so easily, and she has a pretty high position from what I heard, so her beliefs represent the whole Clan.
Froggy on the other hand didn't know if he should accept the deal.
If he accepted it, he finally would be with other witches like him. But he recently made a promise that he will follow me anywhere.
Of course, I didn't want him to lose this opportunity just to hang out with me. I had a few friends here and there, and it's not like I had a problem making more. Instead, he's not really liked by the others, and me and Bobby are his only friends.
While thinking about this I also made a realization. While I and the piglings looked different from the normal people in this world, nobody seemed too interested in our looks.
The only difference a witch has from the common villager it's the colour of the skin.
But it's not as simple as a different skin color. The head knight from the desert was dark skinned after all.
No, it seems to be programmed by the system to instinctively be wary of them.
Is this also part of the punishment?
But why would it carte new witches if it kept the normal humans away from them?
Was the system angry at those people for some reason and decided to punish them by lightning?
I lost myself with this train of thoughts, even when I knew I wouldn't arrive to an answer.
While I had my internal battle, Froggy gave his answer.