Chapter 92: Tank and Spank

"Want to play a game?" Magna asked with a silly grin on his face.

Renna, sitting across from him, looked at his smiling face as she raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

They were in the middle of planning how to confront the Faceless Witch, so him suddenly asking her to play a game felt completely out of place.

Seeing her confusion, Magna cleared his throat. "I mean, I have a tactic for fighting her."

He wasn’t discouraged that she didn’t share his enthusiasm for the game talk, and kept going anyway.

"I call it Tank and Spank. Since we’ve already found this mana fruit farm, we can rule out the idea that the Faceless Witch has no mana.

She definitely has some. So what we need to do is use our numbers to our advantage, and stop her from ever getting the chance to cast a spell."

He went into detail, laying out the whole strategy piece by piece.

Every so often, he paused to ask her what spells she could use and what her general strengths were, trying to work out her position on the game board he had built in his head.

Renna kept listening with rapt attention while answering his questions, which he sometimes slipped between his explanations. Some were logical, while most were weird.

"If someone ate your favorite cake that you had saved for yourself, what would your reaction be?" was one of the weirder questions, which Renna found strange but still answered honestly.

Still, despite all the weird questions, she kept listening to his plan, and her surprise grew with every new detail he revealed.

By the end, she just stared at him, speechless.

Magna still hadn’t gotten used to that look, the one she gave him whenever she couldn’t find the words to respond, and he pushed her for feedback. "What?"

"Nothing." She said, standing up and brushing the dirt and grass off herself. "Let’s do it."

’Let’s do it? That’s it?’ Magna felt a little let down by the reaction, but he stood up too.

Renna pulled out some of her leftover mana supplies, at Magna’s request, and handed them over for him to eat, keeping half back for herself to restore her mana during the fight.

After refilling his mana reserve, Magna checked the numbers.

Mana 38.7%

’This should be just enough to cast Glacial Calamity once.’ He traced the pattern in his mind to check, and saw it would be enough, though barely.

Once they were both ready, they started waiting for the Faceless Witch to find them.

Magna was fairly sure that if he simply went and started eating the Golden Sunberries, or tried to reach the hut, she would show herself right away, but he chose not to risk that.

Drawing the Faceless Witch’s attention that way ran the risk of drawing the attention of the other enemy too, the one they assumed was waiting outside the dimension.

Luckily, they didn’t have to wait long. Magna soon heard the rustle of bushes moving, then footsteps, and before long the Witch entered his detection range.

"Go." He gave the signal, and Renna took off immediately, running in the opposite direction from where the Witch was approaching.

Magna kept his eyes fixed on the trees, slowly drawing his daggers from his belt.

"Come on, I know you can move faster than that. I’m right here, come catch me." He called out toward the trees in a taunting voice.

Soon enough, she showed herself, slowly stepping out from behind one of the trees.

Seeing her again, Magna felt his blood go cold for a second, his instincts screaming at him this is not an enemy he should face at all.

Her charred, completely black Witch Hat hid half of her skull, leaving only her bony chin visible, making for a perfect combination that would make any child who saw it pee their pants.

But that wasn’t all, as his eyes could also see the bright, glowing gold light on her abdomen area.

It was so intense that it was almost ten times the brightness and density of the light emitted by Renna’s full mana.

Magna didn’t let himself flinch as he held his ground, keeping up the taunt. ’Don’t be shy like that. No one should hide a face as beautiful as yours.

The Faceless Witch didn’t seem bothered by the taunt at all, just standing there kept watching.

Magna felt himself tense slightly. ’Is she deaf or something?’

He was sure those words would have been enough to enrage most of the makeup beauty back in his old world.

After a long stretch of silence between them, just as Magna was about to put his plan into motion, the Witch beat him to it.

"You’re quite special, aren’t you?"

The moment her jawbone moved, Magna, thinking she was casting a spell, almost lunged at her, but hearing her words made him stop.

He knew exactly what she meant.

She was the only living being right now who had witnessed Magna casting a spell.

Still, he decided to play dumb, acting like he had no idea what she was talking about. "If having a face makes someone special, then yeah, I guess I am."

"You’re funny too." Her jawbone moved again, her voice coming out surprisingly normal, like any ordinary woman’s, even sweet.

She kept talking without moving an inch. "Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone. I want to keep it a secret. It makes things more fun for later."

Magna wasn’t sure if he should feel relieved or threatened.

"So where’s that girl?" The Witch turned her attention elsewhere, glancing around.

"Her mother made quite a good toy, kept me company for a long time. She could take her place, if she’d just come out now."

Now it was her turn to taunt.

Renna was someone who got angry easily, so words like that would normally send her charging out in a fit of rage.

But Magna stayed calm, since he had already planned for this, positioning Renna far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to hear any of it if the Witch started talking.

That was one of the details that had shocked Renna the most while listening to the plan, that he had thought things through down to something this small.

He hadn’t just studied Renna’s personality to build the plan around it, he had even accounted for the chance that Faceless Witch might talk and try to bait Renna into ruining it.

While the Faceless Witch waited, glancing around for Renna to show herself, her attention snapped back to the boy as he spoke again.

"Why are you trying to waste time?" He said with a smile, a mocking look on his face.

He pointed at her blackened, injured leg. "Don’t tell me you’re scared of losing the other one too?"

That taunt finally seemed to land as this time, instead of talking, the Witch started to move.