Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 236: Curtain Falls

After the Flesh Waymark dissolved, Yvette Loxivia lost her view into Tertia’s domain.The Flesh Waymark could have held a good while longer, but to conserve Aberrant Mana she swiftly pinched out a lesser Waymark, swapped it with the one inside, and reclaimed the remaining Aberrant Mana to avoid needless loss.

In this, she had always been thrifty.

Then she looked to her side.

Lucia was already fast asleep against her, clearly shattered by the night’s ordeal; she had cried herself to sleep. As for Anya, it was fortunate her fatal wound had not been to the head. So long as the biological brain was intact, as an inheritor of Black Tower Pharmaceuticals’ techniques, Yvette could pull someone back from multiple mortal injuries. Besides, her Shadow Tendrils could devour, deconstruct, and mimic; on the spot she could hand-craft new organs with zero rejection.

When she finished, a sweep of Wind Magic carried the two unconscious girls, and she slipped away into the cold, rain-soaked night.

==

After a night of wind and rain, Blossom Street—twenty kilometers from Beast Spirit College—remained quiet. Morning light fell through the windows of the Scholars’ Harbor Apartments, catching motes of dust drifting in the air. The street below had awakened; the rhythmic hiss of steam in the magitech conduits could be faintly heard.

When Lucia woke, she was already lying in the bedroom of the apartment.

She stared blankly up at the ceiling for a long time without moving, then noticed out of the corner of her eye that Yvette was in the room.

Yvette had returned to her chestnut short-haired look and was reclining in the armchair by the window, quietly paging through a heavy religious volume. In the morning light, her profile was especially calm, as if none of last night had anything to do with her.

Silence spread through the room, broken only by the soft rustle of turning pages. At length, Lucia spoke in a very soft, bewildered voice. “Yvette… last night… was it a dream?”

“No,” Yvette said without lifting her head.

A heavy gloom fell over Lucia’s violet eyes.

Back in Sanggren Village, because of her ill-fitting local looks—red hair with a purple gradient and purple eyes—her peers called her a “red-haired freak,” and she never had a real friend. That was why, after warming up to Yvette, she insisted on being friends rather than master and disciple: she envied those her age who had friends and could play together every day.

At the Academy of Truth, she had finally made two friends, only to lose both in a single night. It was a blow unlike any other. Thankfully, she had already cried herself out in Yvette’s arms and found some release; though she still felt awful, her mood had steadied.

She exhaled, thoughts racing, when she heard Yvette again. “But you don’t need to be too sad. Flami was a Witch Cult plant and got what she deserved. As for Anya, she didn’t die.”

“She didn’t?!” Lucia pushed herself up on the bed, eyes wide. “Really? Anya really isn’t dead, Yvette?” She paused, then brightened in sudden realization. “You saved her, didn’t you?!”

As a prodigy of the Battle Arts College, she knew all about fatal wounds. So did Flami. Last night, both of them had been sure that with a thrust like that—unless Anya’s heart wasn’t on the left—there was no surviving it, and the blood loss said plenty.

Now Yvette told her Anya lived. Considering Yvette’s mysteries, it was almost certainly her doing, some means of snatching life from death.

“Mm.” Yvette nodded, without explaining. Lucia, by tacit understanding, did not press.

Lucia let out a long breath and managed a survivor’s smile. Just as Yvette had said, Flami had it coming. If she had to do it again, she would still pass judgment on Flami with her sword, grief or no grief.

Anya was different. Her death would have left Lucia miserable for a long time, even hating her own powerlessness. Now that Anya had survived, she felt as if the timeline had shifted. With Yvette’s help, she had crossed a river of sorrow to reach the far bank of a happier ending.

“No wonder it’s you, Yvette.” Lucia wiped her eyes, her voice a little hoarse. Then something occurred to her and she blurted, “Right, after that… what happened next? Those magibeasts, and Daedalus…”

“It’s over.”

“Over?”

“The damage wasn’t severe. Don’t worry. The details should be in the academy’s daily paper soon.” Yvette wasn’t sure how the papers would write it, and was a little curious.

Lucia nodded. Given Yvette’s mysteries, perhaps she had influenced the beast-horde crisis somehow, though what that was she couldn’t guess.

Then her expression turned awkward. In a small voice, she said, “Yvette… I… I think I have Demonkin blood…”

Yvette glanced at the lovely purple gradient at the ends of her red hair and her violet eyes, and made a small sound. She should have guessed sooner.

Bloodlines always write the answer on the face of the riddle. On the Eastern and Western Continents, aside from Demonkin like Lant, what other human-adjacent race bears purple as a racial trait?

She had not known the East before and thought Lucia’s purple tips and eye color might come from a minority lineage or a genetic quirk—the red hair could be from the Herman Empire. But after six-plus years together she had grown used to it. When Lucia’s talent exploded, she still didn’t think of it, and chalked it up to secrets of the Three Saints Church.

Now it seemed not only was it Demonkin blood, it was an exceedingly rare unshackled Demonkin bloodline. No wonder that Inquisitor Alistair Valois had spirited her out. If the Church discovered this, who knew what would happen.

“Then what do I do next… should I turn myself in?” Yvette heard Lucia ask.

She looked over and read stark fear in the girl’s eyes. As an ordinary citizen of the Eastern Continent, Lucia had heard too many tales of demonic evil growing up. To her, a Demonkin bloodline was of course tainted with sin.

She had done nothing, yet suddenly she was a sinner. No wonder she was at a loss, torn between confessing and hiding the truth.

“Do not use the Demonkin transformation. Otherwise, live as usual.” Yvette’s voice had a calm that soothed the heart. She added lightly, “So long as you aren’t found out, that’s enough.”

“Okay.” Lucia nodded lightly.

By late morning, Anya—alive after all—did come by. Her face was still pale, tear tracks on her cheeks, clearly she had cried. She brought a neatly wrapped gift to express her gratitude to Yvette.

After Yvette saved her last night, she had soon stirred, and Yvette had sent her straight home. Now, comparing notes with Lucia about the night before and confirming Flami truly had been a Witch Cult mole, their moods grew heavy again.

If Flami had been pure evil, that would have been that. The trouble was, she wasn’t rotten through and through. Many small details and her last reactions showed she seemed to care about what she had experienced during her time as a mole at the academy. That made the two who should have hated her feel complicated instead.

After lunch, Palea came as well. She had clearly heard that Beast Spirit College had been attacked by the Witch Cult and came specifically to check on her team. Learning that Flami had been a Witch Cult mole, she was stunned a long time, sighed, and left.

By afternoon the apartment was quiet again. The sunlight slanted west, casting long shadows across the floor.

After seeing Anya and Palea off, Lucia, following a long silence and struggle, finally seemed to make up her mind. She stepped before Yvette, bowed deeply, and said anxiously, “Yvette… I… I want to ask you to teach me to become stronger… may I?”

Hearing this, Yvette set her book down and looked up at the girl’s tense face. She was not surprised. As she thought, a hard lesson teaches quickly.

She said, “All right.”

“Thank you, Master.” Lucia was grateful and abashed. She remembered the many times before when Yvette had asked if she wanted to become a disciple; back then she had no clear goal for the future and little drive to grow stronger, and had foolishly refused every time. Thinking back now, the fact that Yvette was still willing to take her in spoke to uncommon generosity.

But she was not the same as before. Now, she had never wanted strength so badly, even if only to protect those beside her.

“Call me teacher. I’m more used to that,” Yvette said.

“Okay, teacher,” Lucia replied respectfully. Then, catching the implication, she asked curiously, “Yi… teacher, do you have other students?”

Otherwise, why say she was more used to it?

“Yes. I had four before, but they’ve all gone out into the world.” Yvette looked toward the sunset burning like fire outside the window, her tone calm. “If there’s a chance in the future, I’ll introduce you to your senior brothers and sisters.”

“Okay.” Lucia’s curiosity sparked. She thought that anyone who became the teacher’s student could not be ordinary. She really looked forward to meeting the four seniors—surely they were big names somewhere, in some field…

====

Anyone familiar with modern civilization and the Origin Civilization would never believe the Eastern and Western Continents of the Mortal Realm could have “fast-paced cities.”

Even so, as one of the few cities with newspapers, the City of Truth already moved information quickly. The beast-horde incident at Beast Spirit College on the night before last had, by the morning of the third day, set the city abuzz in print. In nearly every tavern or café one could hear talk of it.

The focus, of course, was not the Witch Cult, nor the beast horde, not even the rampaging behemoth Daedalus, but that breathtaking twin manifestation of the gods.

The mysterious super-tier forbidden spell “Cold Haze,” the reappearance of “Spell Hijacking” long deemed an unsolved riddle of history, and even what should have been Tertia’s domain unfolding afterward—all of it was ascribed to the Legendary Mage and the Silver Witch, counted as parts of the miracle.

That revived two old, threadbare topics.

First, had the Legendary Mage truly fallen? Was she still alive but unable to return to the Mortal Realm due to some reason, such as maintaining the seal on the Endwitch?

Second, did the Silver Witch truly exist? In the past, She never answered prayers and had become a generalized belief no church paid much mind. Yet now, She seemed to have revealed Her power in the Mortal Realm for the first time. Could that still be called a generic faith? Wasn’t She an actual, present deity?

On this, the academy’s top leadership, those with the highest authority, remained silent from start to finish. They neither suppressed public discussion nor offered any official explanation, tending quietly and efficiently to follow-up and investigation. That sphinx-like reticence only further stoked popular speculation and imagination.

In truth, the leadership themselves were at a loss. Ignatius Zackley of Flame Demon’s Hand, the sub-dean of the Battle Arts College, had no idea what had happened. He went to ask Dean Tertia, only to be told “I don’t know”!

Ignatius did not believe it. Tertia was thought to be the person on the Eastern Continent closest to the True Gods—perhaps unmatched. If even she could know nothing about an event she personally took part in, then wouldn’t the so-called twin manifestation of the gods be real?

There had to be some special reason for the dean to refuse to reveal the truth—for example, saying it would harm the academy’s reputation or cause panic.

Such conspiracy theories did Tertia an injustice, though, because she truly did not know, and even felt a little regret.

That night, when she arrived at the scene, she did not know Spell Hijacking had occurred. By the time she came, Daedalus was already downed. All she saw were the vast arrays of runic circles that generated the Cold Haze, and nothing more.

Had she seen Spell Hijacking, she would likely have been far more courteous to that mysterious presence. A gentleman uses words, not force.

What baffled her even more was the way the other party escaped her Domain of Knowledge.

A divine domain is a special space entirely self-created. Any link to the outside world should be severed, essentially outside the three realms and beyond the five elements.

If one wished to leave, there was only one method: counter it with another domain.

If one were manipulating a puppet, then upon being drawn into a domain, the connection between puppet and body should also be cut.

Yet that mysterious presence slipped away right under her nose, vanishing without a trace in a space she knew like the back of her hand.

Even as the person reputed to be the world’s most learned, Tertia could not fathom how it had been done. At her level, there should be no unknowns; all should leave traces.

Unless it was a higher order of power, she thought—rules on a tier above those of the Domain of Knowledge. Only that kind of ranked authority could leave her with nothing to grasp.

But…

If that were true, wouldn’t it mean the other party was a True God?

Her teacher was a True God, but the other party’s tone did not sound like her teacher… or her teacher’s teacher.

Was that grand-teacher also a True God?

Because the twin manifestation of the gods halted Daedalus and the horde on Magibeast Boulevard, the subsequent tallies showed surprisingly low casualties for Beast Spirit College’s beast-horde incident. Some twenty-odd faculty and students of the academy died; around forty residents near Magibeast Boulevard were killed; hundreds were injured. Altogether, the death toll did not even break a hundred.

Bear in mind, District Four holds 250,000 people. With such commotion, fewer than a hundred dead in the end—though still a major malignant incident—made the ending feel more thunder than rain. It could even be counted a major victory against the Witch Cult.

Especially since dozens of cultists died in the action, several of them experts like Flami. The Disciplinary Committee followed the trail to smash several lairs in the Outer Eaves District and arrested over a hundred cultists. All told, the Witch Cult suffered heavily.

As things stood, the festival a week later could even proceed as scheduled.

Of course, the atmosphere and commercial effect would take a significant hit. That was inevitable. Thinking of those magibeasts rampaging through the streets, even knowing it was poison from the Witch Cult, visitors could hardly keep their nerves steady.

Still, they had come all this way, and travel wasn’t cheap. Tense or not, since they were here, what else could they do?

That evening, after several days of continual support work in District Four, Palea finally returned to District Nine. She stepped into the familiar Sapphire Health Restaurant and climbed the stairs to the second floor, usually quieter and favored by the academy’s people. She ordered her usual: a potato salad, and took a seat by the window.

Soon after she sat down, she noticed a familiar figure at the stairwell—the vice dean of the Elemental Sanctum, Hills

Heller.

He still wore his immaculate staff formalwear.

Out of courtesy, Palea inclined her head to him as usual.

What surprised her was that the typically taciturn, silent vice dean gave her a strikingly bright smile, making her think for a moment she had mistaken him for someone else.

“Good evening, Vice Dean,” Palea said, uncertain.

“Good evening, Miss Palea,” Hills replied with a slight smile.

That brief exchange ended, and Hills went to his customary seat.

Still puzzled, Palea couldn’t help glancing back at him during her meal.

Then she saw the long-vegetarian vice dean cutting into a juicy steak with knife and fork.

Sensing her gaze, the vice dean looked up again, turned her way, and smiled.

Palea hastily looked down at her potato salad, a strange and uncanny feeling rising in her heart for no clear reason.