Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 96: Venata's Room
In the living room of 17 Calle Rosa, Altaïr watched as Venata made herself some coffee.

"To be honest, I don't recommend you to drink coffee. After all, even if your wound has basically healed, you are not suitable for such a stimulating drink."

Altaïr tried to dissuade him, but when he saw that the other party had no intention of listening, he stopped pestering him and made himself a pot of tea.

"Don't you want to sleep, either?"

Venata looked at Altaïr and asked.

"I guess so. After all, I haven't done anything about today's plans. I need to think carefully about what to do tomorrow."

Altaïr shook the teapot gently, causing the tea leaves to swirl and rise and fall.

"Come in, I just happen to have something to ask you."

Venata opened the door of her room awkwardly. Altaïr was stunned for a moment, but followed her.

"Have you told that demigod about the Buffett Garment Factory?"

Vinata put her coffee aside and sat down on the floor.

"Yeah. But she seems to be in some situation and didn't respond to us."

Altaïr nodded and looked around. He had not been in the second bedroom downstairs since Venata moved in. He was a little surprised to see the layout of the room.

Everything in the room was exactly the same as when Altaïr was still using the room, as if the hunter had left no traces of himself in the months he had lived here. Even the razor that Altaïr had never found was still on the table.

The bed was not unused, but it might have been used by Sophie who came here to study. All of Vinata's belongings were neatly arranged on a carpet made of various animal skins. This was the only additional furniture in the room, and Vinata sat at one end of the large carpet.

"sit."

Venata patted the empty space on the carpet next to her.

"Do you think I've turned the fireplace too hot? You have a bed but you have to stay on the floor."

Altaïr made a joke and sat down next to Venata without paying much attention.

"What are you going to do tomorrow?"

Seeing Altaïr sit down, Venata moved slightly away from him, but actually did not move much.

"What else can I do?" Altaïr shrugged. "Tomorrow morning, I will get up and go out alone to buy the peas and pork I need. Then I will try to make pork and black pea rice. Invite Sophie and Mr. Statham to come for dinner."

Vinata was stunned for a moment: "You don't seem to be in a hurry at all."

"Why rush?" Altaïr smiled nonchalantly. "You know my cooking skills. Even if I've never made it before, a bowl of rice with toppings is obviously not a difficult dish to make. In short, it doesn't take a lot of time."

"You know what I mean. There are things hidden in the factory outside that may be related to the devil, and we are here as insiders discussing the rice bowl for tomorrow night."

Vinata shook her head irritably. "Well, actually we are not even insiders. After all, we have no idea what is inside."

"So? You want us to just rush in?"

Altaïr sneered.

"With the hint from the demigod, you can even order me to do so."

Vinata's expression was gloomy, but she still stubbornly maintained a cold expression.

"I don't want you to do that."

Altaïr shook his head.

"You can do this, and if you figure these things out earlier, maybe a lot of people can be saved."

Vinata insisted.

"It may not be of any use. Anyway, I still don't want to do that. I'm about to become a witch, and witches won't do anything they don't want to do."

Altaïr looked at Venata's face and spoke seriously, enunciating each word with great force.

"...You are different from the Feysac men I have met. Whether they are gangsters or professors, they are all very anxious."

Vinata was silent for a while and concluded.

"Oh? What do they look like?" Altaïr asked with interest.

"They always like to be straightforward and want to achieve their goals within a day. This is true for academic research, group fighting, and relationships."

Vinata looked at the red moon outside the window and said,
"On the first day, they talked to me about classical music, Rossel's inventions, Lurmi's philosophy, and his tragic childhood. On the second day, they wanted to take off my skirt."

“So, when I was forcibly conscripted into the army because of my Beyonder identity, I wasn’t that disappointed.”

"If you interact with the middle class in Loen more often, you will know that here, we value reservedness, which is a very important quality."

Altaïr took a sip from his cup.

The room suddenly became quiet, with only the crackling of the wood in the fireplace. The brief Indian summer had passed, and the real and severe winter was lingering outside the room. The branches of the beech tree outside the window were like warning old man's fingers, trembling in the dim red moonlight.

"This carpet doesn't seem to be bought in the market?"

Altaïr raised his hands from the floor, and the unique smell of warm, worn leather wafted from his fingertips.

"That's something we brought out from the tribe. Every hunter in the Sevens tribe has one. Every time they kill prey, they take a palm-sized piece of skin from the prey and sew it on the carpet. If they kill a bird whose skin can't be removed, they take its fur to decorate the carpet."

Vinata leaned against the bed, her beautiful eyes staring at the red moon in the sky in a trance.

“Any requirements on the number?”

Altaïr looked at the carpet beneath him, which was nearly six runes (about 2 meters) in length and width. Conservatively speaking, there were nearly four hundred pieces of leather on this carpet.

"When the hunter dies, if his blanket cannot completely wrap his body, his soul will not be able to find peace in the snowy plains. Even though we later learned that there is no so-called peace outside the forest, only those blood-sucking bureaucrats, this saying still holds a very important place in the hearts of some conservative hunters. It can be said that this carpet is a symbol of the hunter's spiritual home."

"Before I was taken out of the snowfield by those people, I sold almost all of my spoils, including four tanned wolf heads, two deer heads and two bear heads, amulets carved from their bones, and my first falcon that died of old age. I made it into a taxidermy."

Vinata said nostalgically,

"However, this is the only carpet that I have kept. No matter where I am, as long as I spread out this carpet, I feel that I own at least a four-square-meter territory."

(End of this chapter)