The Witch's Anatomical Notes

Chapter 92

Conflict and Gorge

"My... My lord, we hold a pass issued by the Sofit Kingdom, and we can also vouch for this lady. Please—"

Captain Leo had rushed over in haste, but before he could finish, Branny's surge of mental strength nearly shook him off his horse.

"Get out of the way."

Branny’s voice was hoarse with desire as he revealed the cuff embroidered with the crest of the Thousand-Eyed Tower of the Sofit Kingdom.

"I am a Tier-3 apprentice of the Thousand-Eyed Tower of the Sofit Kingdom. I am now going to search you."

He fixed his gaze on the tattered cloak wrapped around Lucy and ordered,

"Take off that shabby cloak, turn around, and place your hands on the carriage. I want to check carefully if you are hiding any contraband."

Lucy closed her tome and sighed inwardly.

The whole purpose of joining the caravan had been to avoid trouble, yet even after keeping such a low profile, she had still drawn it in.

She leapt lightly to the ground and tried once more.

"How about ten magic stones to waive the interrogation?"

For a Tier-3 apprentice, this was quite a decent deal, but with the smaller head governing the larger one, Branny, who had been overtaken by desire, could not possibly agree.

Besides, he had calculated that as long as he subdued her, both the person and her treasures would belong to him.

"Rest assured, I guarantee a fair—ah!"

His words cut off abruptly.

A mass of ink-green fire suddenly burst before Branny’s eyes.

At the same moment, the witchcraft ring on his index finger split apart with a sharp crack.

That had been a protective charm he had purchased at great cost, sufficient to withstand any magical attack below 20 degrees.

Realizing what he was facing, Branny took several strides back, roaring,

"She’s a Cordovan witch! Kill... seize her!"

The accompanying Tower knights all drew their long swords, and the two Tier-1 apprentices gathered their mental strength.

But under the power of High Elvish, a terrifying fan-shaped soundwave swept outward from Lucy like the scythe of death scraping across the ground.

The two Tier-1 apprentices let out muffled groans, spat blood, and collapsed, while the other soldiers died instantly where they stood.

Branny, who had witnessed everything, turned deathly pale in shock.

Terrified, he hastily summoned the creature he prided himself on.

"Kill her! Quickly!"

But the dragon-lion merely curled up, shielding its eyes with its leathery wings.

In front of Lucy, who carried the Dragon Bloodline Curse, the thin draconic lineage it possessed brought not oppression, but a fear etched into its very marrow.

Any ancient draconic sub-species weaker than degenerated dragonkin were no different from facing Death itself when they looked upon her.

Its instinct commanded it to flee, to get as far away as possible, yet its master’s orders drove it to attack.

The dragon-lion’s mind seethed with a blazing agony as its master’s furious kicks clashed with the primal command of its own blood.

"You worthless beast, get over there!"

"I command you!"

"Damn it... I’ll have your hide flayed!"

At last, something in the creature’s brain snapped with an audible crack.

It suddenly turned and clamped its jaws around Branny’s cheek.

Accompanied by a crisp crunch of shattered skull, Branny’s shrill commands were silenced for good.

"Good child."

Lucy patted the dragon-lion as it sank back to the ground, and with a flick of her hand, she stored the now docile summoned beast into the Living Specimen Laboratory.

Then she looked toward the watch post that had already descended into chaos.

She had never intended to cause such a disturbance at the border between the two kingdoms, but now that her identity had been exposed...

A dozen servants erupted from the Wraith Essence, sweeping toward the watch station not far away.

Soon, screams of agony tore through the sky.

These servants were not individually powerful, yet they possessed two overwhelming traits: invisibility and immunity to physical attacks.

Without a witch’s support, the Tower knights stationed there were utterly defenseless. In moments, they were all dead.

When the last soldier was seized by a strange servant and lifted into the air, then dropped like a can to shatter upon the snow, Lucy turned toward the caravan, whose faces had all gone ashen.

Captain Leo’s complexion was chalk-white. His axe slipped from his grasp and fell with a clang.

"Y-you... what are you really..."

"Just a witch apprentice who didn’t want any trouble."

Lucy put away the now-calm Wraith Essence and retrieved a pouch of gold coins from the Living Specimen Laboratory, tossing it to Leo.

"Consider this compensation for the caravan and the mercenary group."

"I’d advise you to change your route and head for the Sofit Kingdom. Just say..." She blinked. "Just say you ran into bandits."

With that, she took out the Black Cat Broom.

The broom, which looked utterly ordinary at first glance, suddenly came alive the moment she straddled it sideways, feline paw prints appearing along the wooden handle.

As a breeze lifted her silver hair, the girl shot into the sky.

While ascending, Lucy noticed that, exactly as the system had described, several translucent cat paws extended from the broom’s tail, wandering mischievously near her thigh.

"Behave yourself!"

She flicked the broom handle with her finger, eliciting a pitiful whimper.

Watching the silver-haired witch swiftly vanish into the snowy horizon, Leo swallowed hard and muttered to his equally dazed men,

"I actually said I’d vouch for her just now!!"

...

The Black Cat Broom carried the silver-haired witch along at nearly a hundred meters above the ground.

At first, Lucy felt intense discomfort at having to sit sideways on a broom to fly and wished she could strap herself to it with a safety harness.

But as time passed and she gradually grew accustomed to the sensation, she quickly came to love this way of traveling.

However, the Black Cat Broom consumed no small amount of mental strength, and in such weather, flying for long stretches was undeniably a strain.

Both hands guiding the broom, she had one of her strange servants hold Traveling with Migratory Birds floating in front of her.

"The canyon described in this book should be right here. How could it not be showing up?"

What she was searching for was a canyon waterfall. According to the travelogue, within that unnamed gorge lived a kind of enchanted beast called the Emerald Salamander.

These salamanders possessed an astonishing regenerative ability; even if their heads were destroyed, they could swiftly grow new ones.

Such terrifying regeneration might prove quite useful for her living specimen experiments.

She urged the broom to search the area for nearly half an hourglass’s turn, but the drain on her mental strength and the severe weather eventually forced Lucy to land in the dense forest.

Though this was still the rotting swamp forest, it lay well past the Cordovan border, deep within Sofit Kingdom’s territory.

The heavy snow piled into soft drifts under her boots, making each step an ordeal.

Just as she was debating whether to retreat into the Laboratory to warm herself and wait for the blizzard to ease, an immense fissure stretched across her path.

"A canyon! But where’s the waterfall?"

Following the rock wall upstream for quite a while, Lucy was startled to discover she had been searching right above her destination all along.

As for the waterfall she’d never managed to find due to the blizzard, the little river that formed it had frozen solid and ceased to flow.

Sending out her strange servants, she soon discovered traces of the Emerald Salamanders in the deep gully directly beneath the frozen cascade.

When she descended to the bottom of the gorge, a wave of heat rushed to meet her.

In this frigid, snow-laden forest, there was an enormous open-air hot spring.

A dozen Emerald Salamanders were sprawled around the steaming pools, fast asleep.

These enchanted beasts were about the size of mongrels, their bodies reddish-brown, and a line of green crystals ran along their backs.

Sensing a threat, the largest salamander abruptly lifted its head, nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air.

Then its cheeks bulged, and from its gaping mouth erupted a stream of viscous, milky-white liquid.

Tsssss—

Crystals shattered, but the Reverse Scale Shield held unmoved like a mountain.

Having missed its target, the other Emerald Salamanders began to scatter in a frenzy, but Lucy had no intention of letting these creatures escape.