Witch Taming System-Chapter 38: Leticia Herscher [1]

"Lancel. I’ll drop this matter for now."

"Thank you."

"But there’s something I still need to ask. What was your relationship with Leticia?"

"That..."

Lancel took a seat across from Faust, letting out a breath as he gathered his thoughts.

She really did have a lot of questions. It had always been like that ever since the day they met.

To put it into analogy, Faust seemed to be the probing type. Someone who needed answers, not assumptions.

At the very least, she didn’t jump straight to conclusions, wanting facts first, then building understanding from there.

If only all witches were like her.

There was a clear difference between a witch raised within a human environment and the more eccentric ones.

"I guess you could call her a companion?"

* * *

Two years ago.

The creed of the Leviathan Group was simple. A job, once taken, was never left unfinished.

So when Lancel was tasked with eliminating a witch loitering on the outskirts and conducting field experiments far from any oversight, he had no intention of dragging it out.

The faster it was done, the cleaner it would be.

Truth be told, witches only seemed omnipotent to ordinary people. To those who didn’t understand how they worked, they might as well have been untouchable.

But they weren’t.

There were ways to deal with them.

Firstly, witches were still bound by process. Magic wasn’t instantaneous. Whether it was a chant, a gesture, or a mental trigger, there was always a window, however small, where they were vulnerable.

And that window was enough.

Secondly, witches relied heavily on mana flow. Disrupt that flow, even for a moment, and their spells would break. Specialized tools or even accurate physical strikes could throw off that balance.

They didn’t need to be stronger.

They just needed to be smarter.

Thirdly, witches were still human in body. Strip away the magic, and what remained could bleed, could break, and die like anything else.

Close the distance, deny them space, and their advantage would drop significantly.

That was the role of a hunter.

Close the gap before they can react, and end it before they could even begin to think.

That was how the Leviathan Group operated.

And Lancel had been one of their best.

To fight a witch, one had to come prepared.

Lancel carried a variety of tools, such as weapons, restraints, and even interference tools.

They were all crafted by witches and monks alike. Items made not to overpower magic, but to disrupt it, to create openings where none should exist.

That was how hunters like him survived.

———!

But for the first time in his life, Lancel had hit a wall.

The target, Leticia Herscher, had already been waiting for him, trapping him, cornering him, forcing him into a position he had never been in before, like a mouse caught in a carefully laid trap.

Field research?

Bullshit.

She had anticipated the attack from the very beginning.

"Good morning, Mister Assassin!"

It had to be said, but it was the middle of the night. Not even close to morning.

This was her lodgings, the same place Lancel had been observing for weeks. He had memorized her routines, patterns, and every detail needed to carry out the job cleanly.

And yet, he was the one caught.

Leticia tilted her head, her blonde hair falling to the side as she looked at him with a wide smile.

"Let me go, you bitch..."

There was no reaction from her. If anything, she looked excited.

Perhaps it was around this time that Lancel started to understand something.

Witches liked to keep things. Whether humans, animals, or anything that caught their attention, they didn’t immediately go for the kill.

They observed and took things apart until they understood them, or until they lost interest.

"No way~ You just tried to kill me, you know~?"

Lancel clicked his tongue. "Then finish it. You’ve already got me like this."

"Hmm..."

Leticia leaned in slightly, observing his face in close detail.

"That’s no fun."

"...What?"

"If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead," she said. "But I’m more interested in you."

"...Why is that?"

"For one, you carry quite a few powerful magic tools. Did you steal them from the witches you killed?"

"...."

And just like that, Lancel’s first experience in captivity under a witch began.

For a man who had never truly known freedom, the situation was nothing new.

In just the next few hours, Leticia had already figured him out.

Lancel of the Leviathan Group. Lancel of the Adventurer’s Guild. A certified A-class adventurer who had been deliberately hiding his strength to avoid drawing attention.

"Why are you doing that?" she asked. "You could easily climb the ranks if you actually tried."

"Just kill me."

"Ehh... you’re no fun."

Leticia pouted.

Then, all of a sudden, she leaned in and blew something toward his nose. Whether it was magic or something else, Lancel couldn’t tell.

"I’m trying not to raise my rank because I intend to kill a politician’s son who recently reached A-rank."

"Oooh~ a conspiracy?"

Lancel blinked. "...Did I just—"

"Yeah, you did," Leticia said, bursting into a laugh. "Hahaha!"

The realization hit him immediately. He hadn’t meant to say that.

Later, he had come to understand what she had done. Leticia was capable of casting a spell called Internal Verification. A spell that forced its target to speak nothing but the truth.

At the time, Lancel could only think that it was a very useful tool for interrogation.

For the next three days, he observed Leticia just as she observed him.

And from that, he reached a conclusion.

Every witch he had hunted before had been nothing more than a big fish in a small pond. The ones out in the wild with no official backing, the ones he had been assigned to eliminate, they were nothing compared to this.

The real witches, those who hailed from Riviere and were born into nobility.

Whether they were apprentice witches or not, the gap was obvious. They were on a different level and far more dangerous than anything he had dealt with before.

"If you really want to leave the organization, why can’t you just do that?" Leticia asked. "Aren’t you strong, Mister Lancel?"

On top of that, she treated him like some sort of toy to pass the time. Asking questions, poking at him, observing his reactions. And because of that spell, he couldn’t even lie.

Every answer came out as it was.

"The organization will kill me," Lancel said. "Anyone who joins Leviathan dies with Leviathan. That’s why I’ve been planning this for a long time. I’ll fake my death and disappear for good."

A pause.

"...At least after I kill everyone I want to kill."

Bit by bit, she was uncovering things no one was supposed to know.

"Then... want me to help you?"

"...Huh?"

"I’ll kill you right now. Wouldn’t that be nice?"

Lancel would only come to realize later that Leticia’s field research had been centered around the intricacies of human dynamics.