Chapter 118: The Poisonous Witch

Outside the pitch-black tower, a red-eyed crow glided silently across the night sky.

Suddenly, inside a lamp-lit room on the fourth floor of the Marsh Tower, which stood quietly amid the swamps, a streak of crimson radiance flared. With a sharp whoosh, it shot through the window and blasted the red-eyed crow into a cloud of bloody mist.

“Hmph. That makes four! What in the world is Hawkeye trying to do?” Mary gently lowered the blood bow in her hands and cursed bitterly. “Should I go have a little talk with him right now?”

“Looks like those people have joined forces again,” Grimm replied absently while continuing with his work.

Mary tilted her head in thought, then nodded in agreement.

Hawkeye, once one of the Three Strongest, was now, at best, merely a high-grade apprentice. If he truly provoked Mary, she could tear apart his Eagle’s Nest in a matter of minutes. Since he dared send these expendable pawns to spy on them again and again, someone was clearly backing him from the shadows. And within the Marsh Tower, the only one capable of doing so was the evil insect, Entik.

Most of the residences on the fourth floor were reserved for formal wizards. Thus, besides an exceedingly luxurious and comfortable bedroom, each was also equipped with a private study and a small laboratory. At that moment, Grimm was lying meticulously over a miniature alchemical platform, observing the changes in that drop of Primordial Blood through a special magical array.

For several days, he had tried nearly every magical method he could think of to activate the genetic vitality of the Primordial Blood. In the end, he discovered that only blood saturated with a powerful energy aura could revive it. Grimm therefore slit his own wrist and poured his blood, brimming with fire energy, into a culture vial.

Soon, he obtained a tube of boiling blood that had undergone a slight mutation.

No—strictly speaking, it no longer resembled a tube of blood. It was more like a blood monster trapped inside the vial.

The blood Grimm had injected was rapidly devoured by the Primordial Blood, then contaminated and transformed into vampire blood identical to its own. The fire energy infused within Grimm’s blood did kill a vast number of vampire-blood factors, but under the relentless assault of the successive waves of invading factors, the fire energy was neutralized, and every trace of Grimm’s blood was contaminated and mutated.

The tube of blood then became a blood monster that seemed to possess a will of its own. From its viscous body, it constantly drew out needle-thin tentacles and frantically stabbed at the sturdy walls of the vulcanized glass vial. If those walls had not been as tough as magical alloy, the creatures within might truly have escaped.

As he watched their movements, Grimm clicked his tongue in admiration.

Incredible. Simply incredible! In this strange, high-magic world, even a single drop of a high-level vampire’s Primordial Blood could display such terrifying destructive power. One could easily imagine that if a vampire injected these blood factors into its prey, the victim’s life and death would fall entirely under its control.

Could this be the secret behind high-level vampires’ ability to create blood slaves on a large scale?

After assimilating so much blood, the drop of Primordial Blood had hidden itself deep within the mass. If Grimm had not relied on the chip’s assistance to implant a trace of spiritual marking inside it from the beginning, even he would have found it difficult to locate the Primordial Blood’s true position within that constantly shifting mass of blood, whose outer structure changed without pause.

The energy required for the blood mass’s frenzied activity came from nutrients produced by the self-decomposition of its internal blood factors. Thus, the more violently it moved and the more furiously it struggled, the smaller its own volume became. It was like a blazing flame whose fuel was none other than itself.

At last, once it realized that escape was impossible, the blood mass finally grew still and entered a dormant state. By then, it had shrunk from the size of an egg to that of a thumb. According to the chip’s calculations, that thumb-sized mass contained enough energy to sustain it for half a year. Only external stimulation would cause it to enter an active state again.

Were the vampires of this other world truly so terrifying? Or was there something special about the vampire that Anderson and the others had hunted down?

No wonder Mary had suffered a slight decline in intelligence and become irritable and quick-tempered after transforming into a vampire. Anyone whose body was filled with blood that might boil and ignite at any moment would find it difficult to remain as calm and composed as before.

Judging from the traits displayed by this drop of Primordial Blood, Grimm had reason to suspect that when its original owner came close enough, it might even be able to seize control of the blood once more—and thereby control the thoughts, consciousness, and life of its host.

For that reason, Grimm conducted an exhaustive search through every record and experimental account related to vampires. Piece by piece, he assembled a map of the direction and path of the vampire race’s strengthening and evolution, striving to find Mary a way to break through the shackles imposed by her present blood.

Mary was, after all, a mutated vampire. Put bluntly, she was nothing more than a slightly more advanced blood slave. If that high-level vampire ever appeared before her, she might not even have the chance to control her own fate. Grimm’s frantic study of the Primordial Blood was therefore aimed at severing the spiritual connection between the mutated blood and the source bloodline, allowing Mary to become the true master of her own body.

……

At the entrance to the Magical Swamp.

It was still the same barren and desolate hill.

With a piercing shriek, a witch dressed in gray robes and wearing a gray pointed hat descended from the sky on her flying broom and set foot in this wilderness.

When she laboriously dismounted, a lively and adorable girl who looked like a beautiful doll leaped down from behind her. She was short, with a doll-like face and a pale-yellow princess dress, and she held a golden birdcage in her hands. She was Alice—the same Alice who had suffered a crushing defeat in the Magical Swamp the last time.

“Great-grandmother, this is the place!” Alice’s appearance was sweet, but when she saw the familiar scene before her, hatred blazed in her deep-blue eyes. “Those bastards who bullied me live inside!”

The witch Alice called Great-grandmother had a face so old that it was almost beyond recognition.

Beneath her crooked, filthy pointed hat was the ugly, withered face of an elderly woman. Her features were covered in wrinkles like dried tree bark, and she had a hooked nose resembling an eagle’s beak, murky gray eyes, and yellow, broken teeth. Her body was hunched, and she leaned on her flying broom as a cane. Even the slightest movement left her gasping for breath.

Yet this frail old hag, who looked as though she might collapse and die at any moment, possessed a terrifyingly powerful spiritual fluctuation.

After leaning on her broom and panting for a while, she finally reached into her robes and pulled out a filthy, pitch-black clay disk. In a cold voice, she ordered, “Go, Alice. Grind this into powder and scatter it across the swamp.”

The old hag’s voice was aged, but her words carried such imposing authority that no one dared disobey her. Even the unruly and cunning Alice did not dare defy her will. Obediently holding the clay disk, she walked to the edge of the Magical Swamp, crushed it into fine powder, and scattered it bit by bit into the marsh waters shrouded in thick fog.

While doing so, Alice even placed a thin spatial barrier over her hands, ensuring that her skin did not touch the inconspicuous clay disk in the slightest. Anything taken from the robes of the witch Endo would either contain a terrifying poison—or else the title of Poison Witch would never have spread so far and so widely.

Sure enough, not long after the clay powder was scattered, a new mist began to rise from the damp marsh. Drop by drop, it merged into the fog already covering the swamp. As the new vapor spread across the Magical Swamp, every magical creature living in the region suffered a catastrophe.

A red-eyed crow perched on a ghost tree at the edge of the Magical Swamp tilted its head, puzzled as it studied the two sudden intruders. Then its fluffy black feathers abruptly exploded without a sound, and its flesh and shattered bones scattered through the air, becoming a new bloody mist.

As the vapor spread, every living thing containing magical elements—whether plant or animal—detonated the instant it came into contact with it. The ordinary plants growing within arm’s reach of them, however, remained completely unharmed.

Thus, as the invisible vapor drifted through the swamp, red-eyed crows, man-eating trees, bloodsucking demon vines, green-spotted snakes, hags, infant monsters, and even the parasitic magical insects all suddenly burst apart while moving freely through their habitats. Once great numbers of magical creatures had died, those that remained were all creatures with keen senses of danger. They no longer cared about the Magical Swamp’s monstrous territory and fled at full speed in directions far from the spreading vapor.

At first, the disturbance was limited to the outer reaches of the Magical Swamp. But as the vapor advanced layer by layer and slowly penetrated the inner region, a full-scale rampage of magical creatures finally erupted.

By then, the patrolling wizard apprentices had also detected that something was wrong. After the alarm was relayed through several levels, the entire Marsh Tower began to light up floor by floor.

Compared with the formal wizard towers of the Dark Caverns, the Marsh Tower was far simpler and more rudimentary. Although most of its internal facilities were adequately equipped, its ability to monitor the vast swamp region was considerably weaker.

The Sarubo family had once flourished, but after the prolonged absence of its fourth-level wizard and the failure of a new fourth-level wizard to emerge, the family’s prestige and influence had greatly declined.

For a small resource site such as this, the Sarubo family lacked the wealth to construct a proper wizard tower for its protection. They could only substitute a weakened high tower. As a result, when a powerful enemy invaded, the tower’s response was clumsy and sluggish.

As the Magical Swamp descended into chaos, Wizard Anderson, who controlled the Marsh Tower, finally emerged from his magical laboratory and quickly locked onto the enemy’s location.

With a muffled boom, dust and torn grass erupted across the hill outside the entrance. Wizard Anderson crossed nearly ten miles of space and suddenly appeared before the old hag.