The Witch's Anatomical Notes

Chapter 75

Judgment of Truth and Falsehood

"What nonsense are you spouting?"

Uli's voice was trembling.

Under the shroud of the "Saint Radiance," a storm raged in his sea of consciousness, revealing the panic within his heart.

Lucy remained unmoved, still maintaining the divine power output of the "Saint Radiance of the Scales."

"Among the remaining five people, how many are official apprentices?"

"I will never tell you!"

"One? Two? Three... so there are actually three." From the sudden turbulence of his mental fluctuations, Lucy captured the answer.

Uli's pupils contracted sharply. "!!!"

"Are there any Tier-2 apprentices?" Lucy continued to press. After a long silence, she suddenly let out a soft laugh. "There really is a Tier-2 apprentice... how many?"

"?!?!" Uli's mental sea shook violently again.

"One?" Lucy tapped her chin lightly with her fingertip. "Is there a Tier-3 apprentice?"

"What did you do to me?" Uli roared. "I know nothing!"

"Seems there is no Tier-3 apprentice." Lucy quietly let out a breath of relief, ignoring his collapsing screams and continuing, "Does he command Tier-1 offensive witchcraft... yes. Defensive witchcraft... also yes. What is the gender?"

"Kill me! Kill me now!"

Uli struggled madly, only to despair as he realized that his mental fluctuations were betraying him, exposing all the information about the captain a Tier-2 female apprentice who commanded two types of Tier-1 witchcraft.

At this moment, Uli had already roared himself hoarse.

He clearly had not answered anything, sometimes had not even spoken, yet the other party seemed to have some mind-reading art that allowed her to pry out every detail she needed.

Thinking that his remaining teammates would be exposed because of him, Uli nearly wished to kill himself out of shame.

"Ahhh, I will kill you!"

He bellowed, attempting to construct a witchcraft model within his sea of consciousness, but Lucy, who had long been prepared, interrupted him with a blast of mental force.

As the spell collapsed, the backlash of magical energy struck Uli’s body. Blood streamed from his seven orifices as he slammed headfirst onto the hard ground.

With a dull thud, Uli’s eyes rolled back, and he fell rigidly unconscious. The surging sea of consciousness finally went completely still.

Just then, the crystal that had been providing divine power also exhausted its energy.

Lucy casually discarded the divine power crystal, which had turned into powder.

"The ability of the Saint Radiance Judgment of Truth and Falsehood is even more useful than I expected." Lucy rubbed the crystal residue, murmuring softly.

Though it possessed no offensive power, as long as the opponent’s mental strength was not vastly stronger than hers, it was simply perfect for interrogation.

She glanced at the unconscious Uli. After a moment’s thought, she decided not to kill him.

After stripping away everything valuable from him, she infused a wisp of magical energy into his badge. The teleportation array immediately sent him out of the arena.

"A Tier-2 apprentice... I didn’t expect to run into such a tough one right at the start." Lucy unconsciously quickened her pace.

If any of the other team members ran into that Tier-2 apprentice, they would likely struggle to hold their ground.

...

At the same time.

Several kilometers away from Lucy, in a patch of forest.

Keira, who had already rendezvoused with three team members, pressed one hand to the ground, silently sensing the frequencies of vibrations upon it.

Her five fingers had transformed into the long, black-haired legs of a Trapdoor Spider.

Those fine hairs could detect every faint tremor within a kilometer.

Relying on this Transfiguration Studies zero-ring witchcraft, she had managed to find her three teammates so quickly.

"Captain, did you locate Uli and the others?"

The spider legs reverted into slender fingers. Keira shook her head at her companions but then lifted her hand to point in two directions.

"There are people over here and over there, but none of them are members of our squad."

Before coming, she had memorized the gait patterns of every team member, making it easy to tell them apart.

"So what should we do now? Do we keep searching?"

Keira’s tongue swept across her cracked lips.

"If they end up dead, they can only blame their own bad luck. First, let’s snatch the badges off those two."

Hearing this, the three teammates quickly stood up. Under Keira’s lead, they sprinted in one direction.

On the other side, Lucy, who had changed her course, still had not received any favor from Lady Luck.

After silently counting up to ten thousand steps, she still had not reached the rocky wall marking the arena’s edge.

Feeling slightly fatigued, she was about to sit down and rest for a while.

But in the distance, a series of booms and explosions rang out.

Lucy narrowed her eyes slightly.

In the end, she decided to head over and take a look.

...

"Where are they?"

Keira’s expression twisted as she seized a teammate by the collar of his red robe.

At her feet lay the corpse of another teammate.

Half a sandglass ago, guided by the vibrations she sensed in the ground, she had indeed found the two lone witches.

Immediately, she led her two subordinates to encircle and kill them.

But when they rushed to the designated location, what awaited them was an ambush already set in place.

Amid the explosions, one teammate died on the spot, while the prey seized the chance to break out.

This left Keira utterly humiliated in front of her own men after having devised the plan herself.

The male apprentice gripped by the collar pointed in a panic toward one direction.

"They ran that way!" The surviving teammate shivered as Keira clutched his collar. "They were from the Tower of the Four Sages one controlled vines, the other was a fat witch who only used props..."

Having obtained the information, Keira immediately released him.

Her body twisted abruptly, the lower half swelling into an enormous spider abdomen. Eight black legs, sharp as steel spears, stomped deep pits into the ground.

Then, under her teammate’s terrified gaze, she blurred into an afterimage and darted into the forest.

Several hundred meters away.

Talia felt as if her lungs were about to burst into flames.

"Just hold on a bit longer!" Talia dragged the gasping Nure as they fled.

Blood kept seeping from the wound on her arm, and the injury from the Symbiotic Vine Bind had drastically weakened her combat strength.

A few hours earlier, she had been grateful to have teleported together with her teammate. Now, they were trapped in a deadly pursuit.

"I... I really can’t go on..." Nure collapsed onto a rock, his round face flushed purple. "Maybe I should just withdraw..."

His aptitude for witchcraft was poor to begin with. After months spent running merchant errands, he had scarcely meditated. His mental strength had only barely broken past four points.

Even though he carried quite a few witchcraft tools, those were still just external aids. He had never thought he could achieve any notable results.

But Talia hauled Nure onto her shoulder. The face that usually carried an easygoing smile now looked shockingly resolute.

"Lucy said we are one whole!" Talia suddenly shouted, her petite body erupting with astonishing strength as she forced the fat man upright.

The words seemed to ignite something inside him. Nure gritted his teeth, just about to stand...

Rumble!

Not far behind them, Ghostface Trees were uprooted and toppled one after another.

Amid the billowing haze, a colossal spider as tall as two grown men charged straight at them.

From the spider’s back, the upper body of the Tier-2 apprentice from the Witch’s Cottage sprouted unmistakably.

"A spider aaahhh!"

Nure let out a miserable shriek. Just a moment before, he had been on the brink of collapse, but now he was hurtling forward, stubby legs pumping frantically.

His terror of arthropods somehow unleashed astonishing speed, and his plump body shot past Talia, bolting ahead.