Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 260: The Snow Emperor and the Silver Witch’s Game

Standing on the wooden veranda, Yvette stared at the mysterious white-haired girl and fell into a long silence, unsure for a moment whether she should just pretend she hadn’t seen her.Just then, the maid who had just left came thudding back, suddenly flinging the door open and blurting, “I’m terribly sorry, miss, I assigned you the wrong room—this one should be the one next door!”

At the sound of her voice, Yvette saw the white-haired girl lying by the edge of the bath stir slightly. She slowly turned her head, and her gaze met Yvette’s.

Her eyebrows and eyelashes were as white as her hair, pure as the falling snow in the sky, impossible to ignore.

But what drew even more attention was her eyes. There was almost no trace of emotion in them, like a lifeless doll.

Yvette was very familiar with that look. Before she came to this world, in the thousand years she’d spent living alone, she had often worn that same empty gaze—the kind she only noticed sometimes in a mirror, or reflected on the surface of a lake. Ever since coming to the Radiant Continent, the times she showed that expression had dropped sharply.

When she wore that hollow look, her head was usually completely empty—in other words, spacing out. Was this mysterious invisible girl the same?

She withdrew her gaze and calmly answered the maid, “Oh? Is that so?”

“Uh—miss, is there… someone else in the room?” Seeing Yvette standing near the sliding door to the outdoor bath, the maid looked nervous to the point of panic.

Yvette turned her head, let her eyes sweep around the outdoor hot spring, skimmed past the girl’s emotionless, lake-blue eyes, and said casually, “No one.”

“Thank goodness.” The maid let out a sigh of relief.

Yvette slid the door shut, cutting off the invisible girl’s line of sight. As she walked, she asked, “So there was already someone staying in this room?”

“I… don’t know. This room is special;usually it’s empty. But the owner specifically said we mustn’t assign it to any guests. Last time a clerk accidentally brought a guest in here, the boss blew up and docked a month of her pay,” the maid said carefully. “Miss, could I trouble you not to mention this incident to anyone?”

“Sure.” Yvette nodded slightly.

Amid the maid’s repeated thanks, Yvette was led to another private bath courtyard elsewhere in the estate.

Compared to the previous room, this one was simpler and smaller, with a more cramped hot spring. As usual, Yvette released her spiritual fragments, making sure the entire courtyard was under surveillance before finally relaxing. She undressed and slipped into the water.

As for that well-proportioned mystery girl just now, she guessed the girl was probably a local powerhouse of Icehammer City. Icehammer might only be the nominal capital of the Snow Country, and Snowmist Lodge only a well-known luxury inn, but it wasn’t that strange to run into one of the city’s big shots here.

Still, remembering Flami from before, she didn’t want to jump to conclusions too easily.

What if it was another Witch Cult infiltrator?

As a True God about to spread her radiance across the continent, and a traveler planning a long stay in Icehammer City, she felt it necessary to take precautions.

She would just have to find a chance to investigate the girl.

Her snow-pale body melted entirely into the hot water, which was almost scalding. Breathing in the faint smell of sulfur in the air, Yvette rested her head against the edge of the pool. The sky above was blurred by drifting white steam, like she was sinking into endless fog.

She closed her eyes in contentment. Her awareness began to grow hazy;drowsiness crept in, and she yawned without meaning to, ready to take a little nap. But just as she was about to fall asleep, a spiritual alarm jolted her awake and she snapped her eyes open, looking toward the top of the surrounding wall.

A snow-white forehead was slowly rising above the edge. It was easy to imagine what would appear next: brows and eyes.

Yvette wasn’t sure if this counted as “returning the favor”—she’d stumbled into the girl’s bath and seen her soaking there, so now the girl wanted to look back?

Either way, it didn’t stop Yvette from using Wind Magic to scoop up a stone from the side and fling it.

With a sharp crack, the stone hit dead center.

The snowy forehead immediately vanished.

Once she was sure the other party had left her surveillance range, Yvette closed her eyes again and, copying her, cast Light-and-Shadow Magic over herself, adding an invisible disguise.

On the other side of the wall, Shuanghua stood rubbing her still-faintly throbbing forehead. For once, her normally empty eyes flickered with emotion—mostly confusion, with some other hard-to-name notes mixed in: surprise, curiosity, and a touch of wariness.

In the four hundred years she’d lived in the Snow Country, she had never once seen anyone who could see through her invisibility at a glance.

The spell was one her teacher had taught her, a piece of ancient divine magic excavated from an Ultra-ancient Ruin. After her teacher’s modifications, even spiritual sense would struggle to detect her in her invisible state.

Her own understanding of the spell was still only at the level of practical use, but its effect was astonishingly good. There were many disguise spells dug up from the Ultra-ancient Civilization, but none could compare to hers.

According to her teacher, if she ever met someone who could see through this invisibility at a glance, she had to check whether that person was a stunning beauty with silver hair and red eyes.

Absolutely not.

It was just a short-haired girl with chestnut hair and very ordinary looks.

So who was she?

Shuanghua stared blankly as she turned the question over in her mind. Without realizing it, she’d thrown on a white bathrobe and stood behind the wall until the sky had gone completely dark and stars were glittering across the heavens—but she remained oblivious.

It wasn’t until a word suddenly drifted up from the depths of her mind, sending ripples through her thoughts, that she finally moved.

The Witch Cult.

Maybe she was from the Witch Cult.

At the thought of that name—one that even True Gods were wary of—Shuanghua bit her lip on reflex. Her figure scattered into tiny flakes of snow, returning to her room in the deepest part of Snowmist Lodge. There, she changed into a plain fur cloak.

As the guardian of the Snow Country, she told herself, she had to find out who that unfamiliar girl really was.

Yvette stayed in the bath from dusk until about nine in the evening. With no further spiritual alarms, she slept very soundly. When she finally climbed out, the water beading on every inch of her skin made her white complexion glow with healthy color.

She’d divided her plan for the Snow Country into two main parts.

The first was information gathering. That included soaking up the local customs and legends, then meeting the Snow Country’s Great Prophet, Esvia Solomon, to sound him out about the secrets buried in the depths of the Snowfields.

Rumor had it that the Great Prophet occasionally appeared in Icehammer City’s holy site, the Snow Emperor Temple. As long as you paid a certain fee, you could ask him a single question—anything from the origins of the world down to everyday family squabbles. That made him incredibly popular, drawing wealthy merchants from all over.

The second part would be personally exploring the deep Snowfields.

The entire Snowfields were divided into four rings. Besides the “Outer Rim,” where the Snow Country lay, there was the “Cold Mountain Zone” of monster-infested ranges, the “Blizzard Zone” dominated by frozen plains, and the deepest “Frozen Abyss Zone.”

Both the Blizzard Zone and the Frozen Abyss Zone were officially designated forbidden areas where life could not survive. Almost all adventurers who entered them never returned. Even so, the Snow Country’s government was just a loose alliance of tribes. If adventurers insisted on throwing their lives away, no one bothered to stop them, and two to three hundred were lost each year after trespassing into the depths of the Snowfields.

Not all of them died, though. According to the information Anya had given her, the Blizzard Zone would occasionally “refresh” a mysterious Snow Priestess. Some said she served the Snow Emperor;others claimed she was a fragment of the Snow Emperor’s own being. But whatever she was, she appeared in the storms to guide the lost.

Thousands of adventurers tried each year to explore the Snowfields, hunting for Ultra-ancient Civilization treasures buried beneath permafrost, and only two or three hundred went missing. The Snow Priestess’s rescue rate was clearly pretty good.

Yvette thought that if she wanted to explore the depths of the Snowfields, she would have to find a way to avoid this Snow Priestess.

She didn’t know what relationship the woman had with the Snow Emperor, but as a low-profile visitor, the last thing Yvette wanted was to attract the attention of the local god.

And the Snowfields were obviously the Snow Emperor’s ideal battlefield—a perfect setup of timing, terrain, and people. If she were seen as some kind of religious invader and a clash broke out, it would be a huge waste of her Aberrant Mana.

Speaking of which, she thought, Abella’s been developing on the Blacktide Continent for so long now. She must have accumulated plenty of nutrients. I should have her send a few tens of thousands of Aberrant Mana units back to the island so the maids can pay tribute to their master. Perfectly reasonable.

After changing into a plain cotton yukata, Yvette checked herself in the mirror. She felt the garment was a bit too loose, making her head look small—like she’d wrapped herself in a quilt.

Then she waddled out in her slippers like a penguin, shuffling down the corridor toward Snowmist Lodge’s dining area.

They also offered herbal oil massages here, but the thought of a stranger’s hands roaming all over her body filled her with deep dread. She would much rather use the oils in her room and give herself a massage. And if she didn’t have any spare hands—well, that was what tentacles were for. Very convenient.

When she reached the dining hall, there weren’t many people at the free buffet. Anyone rich enough to stay at Snowmist Lodge could afford to eat at famous restaurants outside, or at the inn’s own paid restaurant. For now, Yvette saw no need. She picked up a tray and studied the Snow Country specialties, finally choosing a reasonably balanced mix of meat and vegetables and sitting down in a corner seat.

A few minutes later, she saw a white-haired girl set down a plate of roast meat on the empty seat beside her and sit down.

Yvette glanced at her, thinking, I didn’t go looking for you, and you show up on your own? Is this some kind of warning?

Then again, they were both staying in the private bath courtyard area and were living quite close together—practically neighbors, always running into each other. It wasn’t that strange if you took it in stride.

Unlike Yvette, who was overthinking it, the white-haired girl didn’t look at her at all. She bowed her head and began to eat, and the other guests all acted as if they couldn’t see her.

Only then did Yvette realize that the girl was still using invisibility even while eating—she’d even made the plates and utensils invisible. It was just that there weren’t many people around;otherwise, someone would have noticed a chair sliding back on its own.

So… should she keep pretending she couldn’t see her?

But wouldn’t that be a little too fake? She had just nailed the girl in the forehead with a rock.

Forget it. The other party hadn’t come over to talk anyway. She might as well eat first.

For over four hundred years, Shuanghua had been revered as the Snow Emperor in the Snow Country. It had been a very, very long time since she’d tried to initiate contact with anyone. Partly, that was just her introversion. Partly, it was because whenever she went out in another guise, people would naturally gather around her;she didn’t need to do anything. All she had to do was respond.

That meant when she decided she had to investigate the chestnut-haired girl who could see through her invisibility, her mind went completely blank. She had no idea how to start, no idea how to say hello.

How was she supposed to open?

With no plan at all, her body simply ran on habit. She picked up a tray, spaced out while grabbing food, piled on a heap of meat to her taste, then, still following instinct, sat down in the seat closest to the chestnut-haired girl and started eating.

She even remembered to pour herself a mug of ale. People of the Snowfields loved meat and alcohol, and after four hundred years here, she had long since adapted to local customs.

Of course, from Yvette’s point of view, this whole sequence of actions was already being interpreted as some kind of signal and warning.

They ate quietly for over ten minutes. Shuanghua never stopped eating meat and drinking. Because she was used to no one seeing her like this when she was invisible, her table manners were a bit on the hearty side—still within normal limits, but combined with her icy expression, presence, and looks, it made for a slightly jarring contrast.

Only when she was almost done, cheeks tinged with a faint flush from the alcohol, did she suddenly notice that the chestnut-haired girl beside her had stopped at some point and was now calmly watching her.

Her muddled thoughts slowly cleared. Her knife movements grew sluggish. After a few more seconds, she suddenly dissolved into wind and snow and slipped out of the dining hall.

Yvette had no idea why the white-haired girl had suddenly left. She just assumed the girl had finished eating and gone. The problem was, leaving all those magically disguised leftovers and dishes sitting on the table like that seemed a bit reckless. Once the spell wore off, everything would suddenly pop into view. It wouldn’t be hard to give a waiter a good scare.

Was that on purpose? Had she left those things there knowing Yvette was beside her, intending to make Yvette clean up after her?

Revenge? A test? A warning?

With those questions in mind, Yvette hesitated for a moment, then finally pulled the plate of leftovers over, quietly dispelled the disguise, and set the dishes on her own tray.

It could just be that she forgot, she thought, then immediately decided that was unlikely. The girl was a high-level powerhouse. At that level, every action definitely carried some hidden meaning.

Either way, she told herself, there was no need to drag the waitstaff into their little game.