I don't want to conquer witches anymore.

In that brief moment of confusion, the whole world changed.

Suddenly, the clothes on Rice's body swelled up violently and broke free from his body, transforming into a humanoid monster. After separating from Rice, this monster swallowed the somewhat clever traveling merchant whole.

After swallowing the human, the monster let out a burp, and then its body swelled up again, growing from the height of a person to a gigantic monster three or four meters tall.

It all happened so suddenly, and everyone was still in a daze from the previous moment, so they had no time to react. Even Duke, who was right next to Rice, didn't have time to process what had happened. And it wasn't just Rice's clothes that were affected; the entire caravan's native inhabitants were attacked with their clothing!

The caravan members offered virtually no effective resistance and were gradually swallowed up by the clothes. After three or four seconds, only Xinghua and three other players (Duke, Tom, and Xiao Hei) remained untouched by the change in their clothing.

Hoshino's sailor uniform is unaffected, presumably because she's the protagonist of this witch's game. But what about the clothes of the three of us players? Is it because the floating city witch has provided some kind of protection for all players to adapt to the rules of this alternate dimension? Like the blessing the witch hosts at the end of each game?

Duke's divergent thinking came into play once again, but a loud shout quickly interrupted his train of thought.

"What happened? What happened?"

Tom screamed in shock, and several monsters in clothes nearby were immediately drawn to his shouts and attacked him. The monster scrambled to dodge, while the kind-hearted Starflower rushed to help Tom, preventing her only remaining companion from being devoured by the clothes.

Duke, however, remained rooted to the spot, ignoring the monster in the clothes beside him, and simply frowned as he questioned, "What do you mean by this?"

"I'm just trying to make you have some fun. What's the point of something as interesting as a witch game if you can just beat it easily?" Talia chuckled. "A caravan of seventeen people created more than a dozen clothing monsters. I wonder if you guys can handle them? Mr. Fake Amber, your biggest weakness is that you're too weak."

"Why should I be able to handle it?" Duke frowned. "If I can't beat them, can't I just run away? To put it another way, I can just destroy my clothes and leave this witch's game, right?"

“Of course I understand.” Talia shook her head, then raised her hand and made a gun gesture towards her temple. “So I’m going to give you a reason to pass the game.”

As she spoke, she made a gunshot sound with her mouth.

"boom--"

Empress Xingyin collapsed in response.

The dress she had previously removed suddenly billowed up, as if an invisible person had donned it, slowly being stretched out. Then, a beautiful voice, as melodious as a nightingale's, rang out—the voice of Talia's soul. However, her words were not as gentle as her voice; they were filled with madness:

"I wonder if you'll just stand by and watch me die, Duke! Hahaha, I look forward to seeing you in front of me!"

With that, Talia, who was attached to the dress, turned and left, leaving only the still unconscious Xingyin and seventeen menacing monsters in clothes. Three or four of these monsters were clearly lewd. As soon as Talia left, they rushed toward the unconscious Xingyin, vying to devour the beautiful queen.

"That lunatic, why do I always run into these crazy women who keep bothering me? First it was Annie, that yandere necromancer with extremely strong initiative, and then I encountered Talia, a mysterious and powerful member of an opposing force who acted like a stalker... Please, have mercy on me, I just want to live a peaceful life."

"Meow?"

Even if they are 99% responsible, don't you bear 1% of the responsibility?

This is definitely not what Xiao Hei originally said; it was embellished by Duke himself, but that's roughly the gist of it.

Duke glared at the little black dog perched on his shoulder, recalled his ill-fated relationship with Annie, and then reviewed how many times he had ruined the activities of the mute people, before letting out a resentful sigh.

He began to think of a way to divert the trouble to another country, and to find a way to get Anne to deal with Talia.

Using a yandere to fight against Stuka is like using magic to fight magic.

Chapter 106 Paying Makes You Stronger

"But before that, let's save people first."

Duke raised the neon sign and aimed it at the clothing-clad monster that lunged at Xingyin.

His intelligence was already very high, and he never had to worry about magic power after becoming a trickster. The magic power required to reload neon lights was also no problem for him. Duke's magic power was enough to reload neon lights three to four times in a row. If there was a break in between, he could reload them even more times.

However, he still couldn't unleash his full firepower at will when using neon lights.

He relied too heavily on the Lucky Dagger skill when using Neon, and the cooldown of Lucky Strike was a fixed 72 hours, making it almost impossible for him to obtain two pods of controllable bullets in a single Witch Game. And the completely random, uncontrollable Neon... wasn't very effective.

He had already used Lucky Strike to reload Neon once before, so the order of bullets in the revolver's magazine was arranged according to his idea. This time, the order was: Copy, Explosion, Sheep, Evolve, Heal, Soul, Instant Death.

Therefore, Duke had already used one "copy" bullet, and there were now six bullets left in the Neon Revolver's cylinder, so the first thing to do was "explode".

"Little Black, help me."

"Meow."

Upon hearing Duke's command, the little black creature that had been perched on his shoulder transformed into a large shadow, enveloping Duke and then carrying him away like lightning, rushing towards the still unconscious Xingyin. The monsters in the clothes panicked when they saw him preparing to snatch their prey; the seams on their clothes automatically unraveled, transforming into tentacles that blocked the shadow's path.

The result was predictable: how could tentacles made of silk threads possibly stop a shadow?

With Xiao Hei's help, Duke arrived at Xingyin's side in an instant, scooped her up from her unconscious state, raised the neon gun in his hand, and pulled the trigger on one of the monsters dressed in clothes.

"boom--"

Gunshots rang out, and the "explosive" bullet hit the nearest clothing monster. Then, it and the silken tentacles it shot out were all turned into explosives by the neon lights.

Duke, who had Xingyin in his arms, snapped his fingers, and shadows once again enveloped him and her. He gestured to the monsters emitting incomprehensible roars as if pressing a button, and laughed as he said:

"Eat the dust, loser!"

"boom--"

A huge explosion rang in their ears, but it couldn't harm Duke and Starflower, who had taken refuge in the shadows. Then a mushroom cloud rose up from the spot, clothes were destroyed in the high-temperature shockwave of the explosion, and several naked men were casually sent flying, their whereabouts unknown.

“Anyway, according to the rules of this world, the hostages you capture won't be harmed in any way.” Duke grinned excitedly. “Let’s cause a ruckus!”

As he spoke, he leaped out of the shadows of Xiao Hei, put away the neon lights, and took out five magic scrolls from his pocket.

From a certain perspective, Duke and Cecil's fighting philosophies are somewhat similar. They are both extremely typical cases of firepower deficiency. If they can defeat an opponent with ten fireballs, they will definitely throw eleven.

As for her fear of insufficient firepower, the Radiant Witch's cure was to transform herself into a magical turret, becoming a renowned humanoid strategic weapon of the floating city at a young age, simply taking firepower coverage to the extreme. Duke, unable to replicate Lightbao's path, could only alleviate his fear of insufficient firepower with a clumsy method—by throwing money around.

He was very clear about his own position. He knew that his strength and realm could not be improved much in a short period of time. So how could he improve his combat power?

Of course, I'll top up my account with money!

Duke Neon only has one "explosive" bullet and one "instant kill" bullet per load. What happens when you run out of them?

It's simple, are 5 Fireball scrolls enough? No, add five more!

He used his magic to "ignite" the five magic scrolls in one go, then scattered the scrolls at the surviving monsters in the clothes like coins. After hearing the sound of fireballs igniting the clothes, he nodded in satisfaction, then took out five more fireball magic scrolls from his pocket and aimed them at his next target.

This is much more exciting than throwing money around; one bill is equivalent to thirty or forty gold coins. At this rate, he'll go bankrupt in no time.

"It's not that exaggerated. I only bought about fifty Fireball spells, which cost me a little over a thousand gold coins. The Cinderella game has so many rewards, I'm far from going bankrupt. I wish I could tear up every magic scroll I use from now on, that's just how rich and willful I am!"

Listen to this, is this even human language?

But if throwing fireballs could solve these monsters in clothes, Talia wouldn't have left them here. Why would that idiot do something so pointless?

The monsters that had been attacking Tom and Starflower realized who posed the greatest threat to them and turned to surround Duke, who was holding Starflower. The threads on their bodies began to weave together again and connect with each other.

Soon, an even larger war machine appeared before Duke. It consisted of eleven clothing monsters, each dozens of meters tall, and the threads on their bodies were made of fireproof material (Duke didn't know how it worked, but fireballs were ineffective against them).

Duke swallowed hard and exclaimed, "How the hell are we supposed to fight this?"

"Use scissors."

He paused slightly, then subconsciously looked down at the Queen of the Kingdom of Clothes, whom he was holding in his arms. She had finally opened her eyes and woken up. Unlike the neurotic beauty she was when possessed by Talia, Xingyin's own personality was much colder. Even now, naked and being held in Duke's arms, she showed no change in expression, only coldly reminding him, "That demon left the scissors behind, didn't he?"

Duke quickly turned back to look at the spot where the "explosion" bullet had struck. The single-bladed scissors were indeed still there, and Talia hadn't taken it with her. This made Duke a little wary, but they still needed to use it to deal with the enemy.

"Starflower!" he shouted, "Go get the scissors!"

"okay!"

Xinghua cheered and dashed to the single blade of scissors. She reached out to grasp the divine weapon that could cut through all clothing in the world, but just as she was about to hold the handle, Xingyin's expression suddenly changed, and she shouted, "No!"

The little queen's warning did not stop Starflower's actions. She still held the single large scissors and suddenly felt a chill.

At that very moment, Xinghua noticed a thread tied to the single scissor blade, which connected to the combined clothing monster. It let out a triumphant roar and used the thread to control the scissors—several dazzling flashes of light appeared in succession.

Before Little Starflower could react, her sailor uniform was easily torn to shreds by the scissors, making it completely unrecognizable!

To put it simply

First of all, this isn't a declaration of not taking leave, nor is it a request for leave; I'm just briefly discussing the situation with everyone.

It's clear that this book isn't doing very well. When it was first released, it had 14000 favorites but only 800 initial subscriptions. Now, the average subscription is just over 1000. On Maoke (a Chinese e-commerce platform), the passing score for initial subscriptions is 10 to 1, so by that standard, this book is a complete disaster. Of course, traffic on Maoke has also dropped significantly recently, and I don't know what the passing score is now, but this book has definitely flopped.

In addition, some things have happened at home recently, especially this week. I've been accompanying my family to the hospital for check-ups almost every day. Next week and the week after, they will have even more detailed check-ups. I'm at the hospital during the day and writing at night, which has caused me to experience severe writer's block, and the number of subscriptions has dropped significantly. If the quality of my writing has declined recently, I can only ask for your understanding. If my family's test results are not good, I may have to go to the hospital to stay with them. I'll deal with that later.

Given the current situation, if you asked me to slowly and methodically craft a million-word story, I definitely couldn't finish it. But to conclude it, it will at least be after all five ex-girlfriends have appeared and the storylines of the main female characters are relatively complete. I estimate that writing 500,000 to 600,000 words should be achievable, at least after finishing the feud between the mute and the floating city.

Don't worry, in any case, "The Witch" will definitely be a relatively complete story.

I'll write happily, and you can read happily. If you're not happy while reading, just put the book down. It's all fine.

Regarding updates, I'm currently updating twice a day as usual, with occasional extra updates. Updating to 10,000 words a day wouldn't be impossible, but I've been quite busy lately. If I have some free time in about two weeks, I'll try a trial run of 10,000 words a day.

I'll post today's update later.

Chapter 107 The Heartless Boss Who Owes Wages

"Yeah!"

Little Star Flower screamed and tried to cover her private parts, but quickly realized that she was at least wearing underwear to cover herself. After thinking it over, she covered her face with both hands—clearly adhering to the ostrich mentality that "as long as others don't recognize me, I'm not ashamed."

The scissors that easily tore her sailor uniform to shreds were pulled into the air by the giant clothing monster and instantly fell into its hand. In less than three or four seconds, the scissors grew in the wind and expanded into a giant pair of scissors about ten meters long.

Although a ten-meter-long pair of scissors is nothing more than a short knife to a monster in clothes that is tens of meters tall, for Duke and the others, the huge difference in size is enough to extinguish all desire to resist.

"Hoshino, are you alright?" Duke was shocked to see Hoshino's blue and white sailor uniform torn to shreds by scissors. He suddenly realized that with Hoshino's sailor uniform ripped to shreds and Hoshino's dress taken by Talia, he would have no chance of winning the witch game if things continued as they were. "Hoshino, do you know anything?"

He looked at the naked empress in his arms, but Xingyin frowned, as if she was trying hard to recall something. However, there were huge gaps in her memory, so much so that whenever she started to think and recall, her brain would feel a series of sharp pains.

“I remember ‘me’… no, that devil made other arrangements.” Xingyin said hesitantly. The devil she was referring to was naturally Talia, who had once possessed her body. She tried to make sense of her hazy memories, and after a long while, she exhaled a breath of stale air and warned, word by word, “Watch your chest.”

After saying this, the already weak and feeble-hearted little empress fainted once again.

Duke took a potion from his inventory and put it in her mouth, letting the instantly melting healing potion heal her body—although Duke couldn't see any injuries on her body, Eve's potions were always a cure-all.

"Starflower, come here!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. The latter, who had been stripped naked, came running over as soon as she heard Duke's call, cursing as she ran, "Mr. Amber, it's all your fault! If you hadn't made me go get the scissors, my clothes wouldn't have been ruined. You have to pay me back for my nice clothes!"

"Is that the point?" Duke shook his head, both amused and exasperated, and tossed Xingyin, whom he was holding, to her. "She's yours now. Take her and run away."

“No, I will fight alongside Mr. Amber. And I will not help this evil queen.”

Little Xinghua was clearly an obedient and sensible child. Although she was very stubborn, she still obediently hugged Xingyin, complaining and grumbling as she ran away with Xingyin.

"I'll put this annoying woman in a safe place right away, and then I'll come back to you. Mr. Amber, wait for me!"

She herself understood that without the sailor uniform, she wouldn't be able to help at all; she would only be a hindrance to Duke and the others. Naked and wearing only her underwear, Xinghua carried Xingyin, who was also only wearing underwear, and slowly ran into the distance. Duke watched this scene, which he couldn't quite describe as erotic or comical, and fell into deep thought.

"Starflower's physical abilities really came from that sailor uniform? That means the normal path to completing this witch game has been completely blocked." Duke frowned and slowly exhaled. "So, Talia's goal is to prevent me from completing the game and force me to leave this alternate dimension?"

This is a witch game where there is no danger to life. Five groups of players have confirmed this. If you are injured, only your clothes will be destroyed. Once your clothes are destroyed, you will be teleported back to the floating city.