Chapter 5: This Witch is Fired up for Acting

Chapter 5: This Witch is Fired up for Acting

As night descended, I entered the guild and walked to the desk. Mary showed me her best customer service smile. Bless her heart.

“My quest is finished!”

“You collected five green lamengrass?” She asked.

“Five? No, I collected way more than that.” I mentally cheered for a job well done. “Oh,” I said, “and I managed to get much more!”

“You did? Tell me, Eerie—” Mary’s face became scary. Her lips were upturned, but her eyes weren’t smiling. “Did you do anything else while you were out? Don’t worry, I won’t be mad.”

“N-no, in fact, I was just joking about collecting more lamengrass!”

“Of course you were!”

“Of course I was!”

“Hahaha!”

“Hahahaha!”

“Oh, Eerie,” she said, “you are such a jokester. Really, don’t scare me like that. I thought I was going to have to leave here sooner.”

“Leave?” I asked.

“I am transferring to the capital’s branch next week. Before then, please don’t make my workload unreasonable.”

“I would never dream of it!” I pulled the five lamengrass from my inventory and placed them on her desk. “Here.”

Mary picked them up and began inspecting them. She twirled them around by the stems as she looked at the leaves.

I sat in my one silver coin inn room. I pondered hard about what happened. It seemed my guess was spot on. They were an acting troupe, and next week, they’d be leaving together on a journey to the tentatively named Candlewax Kingdom’s capital. And how did I feel about all of this? I was bummed.

I didn’t want to lose the first acquaintances I had made, especially if they were actors. It’s not every day you get to meet famous people. Not to mention, the one job at the guild earned me five silver coins. If I stayed at an inn every day, that would only pay for five days.

“Yes, that’s it!” I stood up from the bed. “I just have to tag along with the acting troupe!”

This town also didn’t have many businesses. I wanted to try good food, and the only way to do that was to go to a large city. I chewed on one of the asparagus vines. “At least I still have you.”

But if I was going to leave with them, I had to make a plan. I needed to be prepared for anything. It wouldn’t cut it to remain at level one forever. Mary and Wood had been so friendly to me. I needed to rise up. I clenched my fist tightly. Coincidentally, the building shook at the same time.

“The earthquake traveled over to here as well?” I asked.

Luckily, the commotion ended as soon as I unclenched my fist.

I clenched my fist again, and the commotion happened once more. I unclenched it, and it happened again.

“Huh? Could it be?” A horrible realization dawned on me. “Someone is watching me!”

It was so evident that I should have known. First, they threw me inside a strange world. Then, they threw me at a place with a forest inside a cave. “And now they are playing tricks on me!”

No, that wasn’t quite right. The gods of this world had been playing tricks on me all along. It was like I had become part of their game. They reincarnated me as the weak one of the bunch and expected me to grow stronger. I had been playing into their hands all along by trying to level up.

“It makes so much sense now!” That was why I couldn’t level up. They’d given me a no-level system. “There must be some challenge I must overcome to level up. But I am not going to play by your rules.”

If the gods of this world expected me to level up, I wouldn’t. My mom always told me to follow my heart, and my heart was saying to join the acting troupe. I wasn’t going to bend or break. I would be an acting witch in another world, no matter what.

“And I could do some side quests along the way. Fufufu, my life is looking up!”