Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 242: The Silver Witch’s Benediction

After she understood the structure of the Benediction light-sphere, Yvette extracted the Benediction spheres from the other two cultists as well.Because the Eldritch God had remotely flipped the power switch, these gray spheres had all lost their luster; they looked like ordinary round magic crystals, nothing remarkable about them.

“What’s this, Teacher?” Lucia leaned in, curious.

“A god’s Benediction—extra power, and also the puppet strings,” Yvette glanced at her and handed one over. “Want to feel it for yourself?”

“Uh!” Lucia backed away again and again as if facing a mortal enemy. “N-no, I’m good!”

Yvette smiled. She hadn’t intended to give it to Lucia anyway. She could now fabricate and bestow Benediction power herself—as long as the recipient held sufficiently devout faith in the Silver Witch. But a Benediction’s power is fixed and cannot keep growing; moreover, after receiving it, it will hamper your original mana growth, causing your cultivation speed to nosedive.

So only those without talent or strength are suited to this fixed boost. If you have talent, you should stick to the proper path.

Also, crafting Benediction power is expensive.

It has three parts.

The outer layer consumes a great amount of faith-element; it determines how much mana the vessel can hold. If you pour in enough—vast amounts—the ceiling can even reach an Archmage’s 10,000 points, which is essentially a man-made Archmage.

The middle layer is the rune layer—Yvette’s specialty in rune compiling—which decides what innate spells the recipient gains. It’s quite similar to the Sitt Kingdom’s blood-inscription secret arts and Black Tower Pharmaceuticals’ active rune sets.

The innermost layer is a core composed of Aberrant Mana. The more Aberrant Mana invested there, the more force Yvette can transmit across space when her will descends upon a believer.

Yvette didn’t have that much faith-element at hand. She could jury-rig it with her mimetic ability, but the Aberrant Mana price would be too steep to be worthwhile.

So she planned to appropriate the Eye of Omniscience’s Benedictions for herself—swap out the core Aberrant Mana and then modify the runic middle layer.

As for how to design the rune-layer gifts and who should receive the first Benediction—Yvette thought of the siblings Ezra and Aina.

Maybe try it on Ezra first?

==

After her research into faith-element made a breakthrough, Yvette happily burned the three cultists to ash, then she and Lucia slept soundly through the rest of the night until a bright morning.

After breakfast, they left Adelock; near noon, they reached a wild grassy slope ten kilometers out and, in the distance at the foot of the mountain, saw Lute Village.

At first glance, Lute Village was no different from any scattered hamlet—if anything, too serene.

The only unusual thing was the eye carved on the post at the village entrance—likely the Eye of Omniscience’s “holy sigil.” Ordinarily, only someone like Lucia, a Disciplinary Committee member from the Academy of Truth, would recognize what that eye meant; most adventurers wouldn’t.

Soon, after taking in the village as a whole, Yvette did something unexpected: she truly didn’t go any farther. She stopped and gave up on a deeper probe of Lute Village.

Ezra and Aina didn’t find that strange; they were even relieved, thinking the two sisters had finally decided not to bull-headedly march into a cult stronghold to die.

Lucia was a little surprised, but let it go. She, too, had dealt with a cult before—no less than the infamous Witch Cult—and one contact had left a lifelong impression. Once bitten, twice shy; even if it was a different Eldritch church, her instinct now was to keep a respectful distance.

And so, back to Adelock again, it seemed time for the two parties to go their separate ways.

Ezra would take his sister around to various churches to try their luck for a menial spot; Yvette and Lucia had their own business to attend to.

Before parting, still on the first floor of the Lucky Coin Inn, Yvette gave Ezra an extra gift: a small wooden figurine of a perfectly proportioned maiden—though the features were indistinct.

“What’s this?” Aina asked, curious, turning the carving over in her hands. Ezra, beside her, seemed to remember something and blurted, “Isn’t this the one the Adventurers’ Guild sells—the God of Serendipity, the Silver Witch’s icon?”

Yes. Although the Silver Witch was one of the Academy of Truth’s twin gods, there was no official church. As a diffuse faith, and tied to good fortune, the Adventurers’ Guild often cashes in on this public “IP,” selling Silver Witch carvings, badges, and prints for profit.

Yvette nodded. “Since you’ve left the cult, you probably don’t have a new object of faith yet?

I think you might as well put your faith in the God of Serendipity. Perhaps She really can turn your fate.”

A faintly bitter smile crossed Ezra’s face. During their flight, he had prayed to the three True Gods, and to the Free Alliance’s native sun god and Lord of Sky and Firmament, but not a single deity had answered these helpless siblings.

As for the Silver Witch, a diffuse faith—people didn’t even know if She truly existed or was a made-up deity. How could that save a future that showed no light?

Even so, the Silver Witch’s figurine was lovely; it was clear Aina liked it. And it offered a bit of comfort. Ezra still thanked Yvette.

Thus, with the five silver coins from the City of Truth that Lucia had given them as aid, the siblings took their leave of the Lucky Coin Inn, planning to exchange them for local small change and then head to the Outer District.

The law there was abysmal, but rooms were far cheaper—a night could be had for a handful of copper coins—better suited to their situation.

Night fell. In the Outer District of Adelock, at a cheap inn called the “Broken Cauldron,” Ezra and his sister Aina squeezed into a tiny room with nothing but a broken plank bed.

The air reeked of mold and a faint, acrid sweat. Drunks’ slurred mutters in the next room and coughing from who knew where rose and fell, making sleep hard to come by. Though five silver coins here could be exchanged for not just five hundred copper coins, tomorrow’s uncertainty was still as black as the night outside, dragging their mood down.

Around midnight, Aina had long since fallen fast asleep, hugging the featureless-faced Silver Witch figurine and curling beneath a thin blanket, as if the little carving alone could give her a great sense of safety.

Ezra, however, couldn’t sleep for a long time. He felt his father might still be alive—he had only drawn the pursuers away; escape wasn’t impossible. But even setting that aside, hatred for the cultists and anxiety for the future churned his heart into a mess.

Exhausted wakefulness dragged into the latter half of the night; at last he dozed off.

In his sleep, he saw jumbled shards of memory—pounding footsteps, the cultists’ ferocious faces, Sister Lucia’s dashing arrival, and Sister Yvette’s calm, unruffled gaze.

Gradually, all the noise receded; silvery-white radiance enveloped everything. Unaware, Ezra felt as if he were lucid dreaming; he regained awareness. He found himself standing in a void, a mercurial glow flowing beneath his feet, pure white all around.

“Is this heaven?” he thought instinctively.

In the churches’ accounts, a deity’s realm is always portrayed as a blissful paradise. But Ezra didn’t know—if this was heaven, whose heaven was it? For now, they had no clear faith.

Bewildered, he saw a figure condense before him: a form with long silver hair and graceful poise, as if it gathered all the world’s beauty into one. Her face remained indistinct, like veiled by gauze, yet faintly behind the blur he could see a pair of beautiful dark-red eyes watching him.

Those eyes held no emotion at all, matching every worldly conception of a god, high and aloof.

“Ezra Yarrow.” An ethereal voice, sounding directly in the depths of his soul, called his name.

Whether it was his imagination, Ezra felt the lovely voice was familiar—very much like Sister Yvette’s.

As that thought flashed by, he remembered the icon Yvette had given him, and a bolt of lightning streaked through his mind.

“Are you the God of Serendipity—Lady Silver Witch?” Ezra asked, trembling. It wasn’t just his voice; his very soul was quivering—part awe of a god, part excitement for what might be about to happen.

“I heard your voiceless plea, and I saw the hatred and the defiance flowing in your blood.” The Silver Witch—face blurred, eyes dark red—inclined Her head and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion. “The filth of Lute Village has befouled the land and imprisoned souls. The false god’s gaze should not go on peering into this world.”

It really was the God of Serendipity—the Silver Witch! Ezra dropped to his knees with a thud.

Then he heard the Silver Witch continue: “Do you long to change your fate? Do you long for the power to raise a sword against the blasphemers?”

“I do!” Ezra shouted.

“Then offer Me your devotion. I will grant you a blade to sever the darkness. Go, and cut down those wicked abominations.”

“Yes! If You grant me the power to change my lot—so I can take revenge on those vile wretches—I will offer You everything!” Ezra said, breathless with excitement.

As he sent out that intent, the next instant he saw the Silver Witch lift Her hand slightly—then a searing stream of light slammed into his chest.

Next, the dream-world shattered. In a rush of shock, Ezra snapped upright in bed, gasping for air. Beside him, his sister slept on, oblivious.

A dream—was it?

He lowered his head, pulled open his shirt, and looked at the place on his chest where the light had struck. In the faint moonlight filtering through the window, he stared to see a clean-lined silhouette of a maiden appear on his chest. The style of the sigil was unlike any religious crest he’d ever seen.

So it wasn’t a dream?

A serendipitous turn to change fate—had it truly come?

Ezra sat on the cold edge of the bed, in the deepest darkness before dawn, clutching his shirt tight over his chest, as if afraid it might all prove an illusion.