Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 294: Lair

“L-Lord… where’s the lord? Where did the lord go?” A goblin attendant stared blankly around him. Charulu had disintegrated right under his eyelids, like a dandelion blown apart by the wind. With his shallow understanding, he had no way to grasp what had just happened and could only instinctively assume he’d seen it wrong.He looked around in a panic, at the other patrons in the bar, but everyone’s reaction was the same—stunned faces and repeated shakes of the head, indicating they knew nothing.

“It was her… she… she made the lord disappear…” Another goblin attendant pointed at Yvette not far away, speaking in terror. “I saw it, she pointed at the lord once, and Lord Charulu just vanished!”

Everyone immediately turned to look at the demonkin girl sitting at the bar. She was already the “heroine” of the whole incident, and plenty of people had seen that little gesture of hers. A moment ago, nobody had taken that harmless little point seriously; only after the goblin lair lord vanished did things suddenly become bizarre.

Was that magic? What kind of magic could make a person simply turn into a puff of smoke and disappear like that? And that was Siltmouth Town’s lair lord. In the Western Continent’s power system, he was a second-tier demon, equivalent to a mid-tier mage on the Eastern Continent with 2000 standard mana units!

“M-magic… witch—!”

No one knew who shouted the word first, but the goblins crowding the doorway instantly shrieked in panic, shoving and trampling each other as they bolted out. The other customers in the tavern snapped out of their daze as well, scrambling and crawling to get as far from the bar as possible.

Tables and chairs were knocked into a jumble, clay cups shattered, and sticky lime ale splashed all over the floor. In the chaos, monsters shrank into every corner they could find, while the purple-haired demonkin girl alone still sat calmly in her original seat, lost in thought.

In truth, she was simply musing over the fact that “witch” meant the same thing on both continents… The Eastern Continent was one thing, but the Western Continent too? Clearly, the Witch of Finality had left too deep an impression on the Mortal Realm.

She glanced back toward the bar. By now, the slime bartender had shrunk himself into a half-transparent blue ball, bubbles gurgling madly inside him like boiling gel. When he saw Yvette’s gaze, a human face slowly emerged on the sphere’s surface, and he stammered, trembling, “M-Miss… what… what are you really…?”

“As you can see—a witch,” Yvette said with a smile. “Now do you believe I don’t need your security services?”

“B-believe…”

Soon, once it was clear that the witch with the uncanny powers wasn’t going to start a massacre, the suffocating chill in the bar eased a little. Many people cautiously slipped away, but some bold onlookers stayed, casting curious glances at the witch.

The kobold Bobo, who’d been cowering in a corner and shaking like a leaf, had somehow made his way to Yvette’s feet. Crawling as he went, he raised his voice and declared, “Honored Witch, my lady! That move just now was pure art! That filthy green-skinned idiot dared to profane you with his polluted gaze! His death was well-deserved—utterly satisfying! To witness such a miracle with my own eyes is surely a blessing I earned over ten lifetimes!”

With that, he tried to kiss Yvette’s boots. His movements were extremely practiced, and he completely ignored the disdainful looks around him. It clearly wasn’t his first time doing this.

Yvette kicked him away—deliberately holding back, of course. If she wasn’t careful, she’d blow his dog head apart.

The kobold, his head knocked aside, was surprisingly persistent. He crawled back again, but didn’t dare stick his mouth out this time. Instead, he gave her a fawning smile and said, “Witch, my lady, as a newcomer to Siltmouth Town, you surely don’t know—this bastard Charulu has been plaguing the area around here for decades… In his lair, besides all sorts of treasure, there are many of your fellow demonkin women he’s captured! I know where his lair is. Might I be of service to you?”

Demonkin women dragged off to a goblin lair? That would mean… Yvette pressed her lips together as a few unpleasant images surfaced in her mind.

But now that she knew, she couldn’t just ignore it. That would go against her Dao heart. She picked up the black umbrella beside her, stood up, and said, “Lead the way.”

“At once!” Bobo scrambled to his feet and said earnestly, “It is truly my honor, honored Witch!”

…

By the time Yvette stepped out of the bar with her umbrella, the world outside was already completely buried under heavy night.

Cold acid rain drummed tirelessly against the umbrella, making a fine, steady patter and forming a hazy curtain of water around her. The street was pitted and uneven, and puddles dotted the ground like little mirrors of quicksilver, reflecting the blurred silver moon overhead and the swaying silhouettes inside the bar’s lit windows.

Charulu’s lair sat on the northern high ground of town, a two-story structure cobbled together from stone blocks and metal plates. By the time Yvette arrived, the remaining goblins had already bolted.

“They ran fast,” Bobo sniffed with his dog nose, confirming they’d long since fled.

Yvette wasn’t surprised. That had been Destruction magic’s debut in front of the masses, and the unknown alone was enough to magnify fear. She folded her umbrella and stepped into the pitch-black entry hall.

Bobo hurried in after her and said anxiously, “Witch, my lady, aren’t we going after them? You have to pull weeds up by the roots! If you let that scum go, they’ll definitely run to Riftscar City tonight to report this…”

Siltmouth Town’s lair lord, Charulu, had been appointed by Riftscar City’s troll city lord, Ironwall Wev. Killing Charulu was the same as openly challenging the order set by the High Lord and the authority of Riftscar City’s lord. Of course it would bring official pursuit from Riftscar City, along with bounties and possibly even a military sweep.

Although many books and scholars on the Eastern Continent painted the Western Continent as a barbaric world that “only respects fists and has no rules,” as if strength alone let you trample everything and climb to the top in a straight line, that was actually an oversimplified—even demonized—picture.

In reality, unless you had power close to a city lord’s, being stronger than a lair lord didn’t mean you were qualified to be one. Just as there were probably well over a hundred demon powerhouses with ten thousand mana units on the Western Continent already, but only forty-nine could sit as High Lords.

“Doesn’t matter,” Yvette said calmly. She felt that if those fleeing goblins could actually bring the lord of Riftscar City over, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. In fact, it would save her quite a bit of travel.[1]

To Bobo, the witch at his side, with her unfathomable tricks, just became even more mysterious. She wasn’t even afraid of the Riftscar City lord. That was supposedly a fifth-tier powerhouse—on the demon scale, every 1000 mana units was a tier. He, a little kobold, had only just brushed against the threshold of first tier. He couldn’t even imagine what fifth-tier power looked like, let alone what tier the witch might be.

Still, it was possible this witch just planned to kill and then run, which was why she acted so recklessly…

Charulu’s lair’s entry hall was piled high with junk and dimly lit. The first floor was all normal living space; bedrooms, valuables, and private stashes were on the second floor, and a corridor also led down to the basement—a hidden cell area.

Yvette headed straight downstairs, pushed open the iron door at the end, and cast a light spell. The room beyond was divided by iron bars into a long row of cells, with two demonkin women living inside.

But contrary to what Yvette had imagined, they didn’t look too bad. Both wore clean linen dresses, their hair neatly combed, and bore no visible signs of harm.

Each cell had a narrow bed with clean coarse blankets, and a little wooden stool with a clay cup and water jug beside it. Apart from the loss of freedom, the conditions here were actually better than in many homes in town.

After a brief silence, Bobo stepped forward a couple of paces, smiling. “Ladies, congratulations. This honored Witch has slain the wicked Charulu and taken over as the new master of this place. You are about to be reborn into new lives!”

The two women looked at each other, both of them stunned. Only when Yvette used a spell to cut through the iron bars and revealed her power did the demonkin women show a mix of surprise and nervousness as they left the cells.

The older-looking woman stepped forward first, bowing to thank her. “Thank you for your grace, my lady.”

The younger woman, who looked much more youthful, followed suit with a deep bow, her head lowered.

After they’d expressed their thanks, the older woman confirmed, “May I ask… Lair Lord Charulu, is he really…?”

“He’s dead,” Yvette said.

The two women exchanged a glance, a flicker of very complicated emotion passing through their eyes. Yvette watched quietly from the side, puzzled—by rights, being rescued from a goblin lair should have made them burst into joyful tears. Why didn’t they look all that happy…?

Uh-oh. Don’t tell me they’ve both gone completely corrupted already?

“My lady, what do you intend to do with… us?” the older woman asked.

“You needn’t worry, ladies. The Witch has already decided to take over this place. You’re free, of course!” Bobo thumped his chest. “What’s more, the Witch is merciful. Any difficulties you have in life, I can take care of for you on her behalf!”

“Thank you for the Witch’s mercy,” the older woman said, relaxing a little.

From a brief round of introductions, Yvette learned that the older woman was named Shana, about twenty-five or twenty-six, with dignified features and steady eyes. The younger was Mira, just over twenty, whose looks were merely plain and whose personality was withdrawn.

They were cousins. Two years ago, when the Night Demon King was stripped of his crown by the Demon Gods and the world changed overnight, the social standing of demonkin had plummeted. The north, dominated by abyssal demons, saw multiple massacres and roundups of demonkin. It was during that chaos that the two of them became slaves and were driven from place to place.

After hearing their story, Yvette suddenly asked, “How did Charulu treat you?”

“He… and his underlings all had plenty of… preferences and needs…” Shana said, her expression complicated, with humiliation in it, but even more exhaustion. “But honestly, before we fell into his hands, Mira and I had already suffered quite a lot. By comparison, as long as we behaved and cooperated here, at least we could stay alive. Putting those things aside, at other times he provided food, clean water, clothing, and a place to live… it wasn’t the worst.”

So that was it. Forced by circumstances, not exactly “corrupted”…

Yvette understood. “Now that Charulu is dead, this place is yours. You can live here as long as you like. Then, someday in the future, when a new Demon King ascends and the situation for demonkin improves, you can think about going back.”

Yvette’s words left the other three completely at a loss. The first half was still reasonable, if a bit thoughtless. The latter half sounded like a pipe dream. Unless demonkin took the throne again, why would a Demon King from another race bother sticking his neck out for demonkin?

Yvette didn’t explain. She planned to make these two demonkin sisters into believers of the Silver Witch and protect them through a holy icon. That way, even if she left, she could ensure they wouldn’t end up as someone else’s demon slaves again. And she could take the chance to develop a few followers among the demons.

Soon after arranging for Shana and Mira to pick rooms and rest on the lair’s first floor, the kobold Bobo tactfully excused himself.

Yvette could clearly see his burning desire to cling to her for protection, but she had no intention of traveling with a tagalong—unless it was a beautiful girl with both great looks and great character—so she didn’t plan to agree. At most, she’d appoint him as the Silver Witch Church’s first priest on the Western Continent and grant him a bit of Benediction.

After that, she went up to the second floor alone to check the rooms the goblins hadn’t looted too thoroughly.

Most of the rooms were a mess, with anything of value already carted off. Only one room was relatively neat, filled with stacks of long, cylindrical, dark-green crystals.

According to Shana’s earlier explanation, these were “filter cores” used to keep the town’s Purification Spire’s core apparatus running. Regularly replacing the filter cores to ensure the Purification Spire could continue to effectively disperse the poisonous miasma was the lair lord’s most important duty. Once the Purification Spire failed, being exposed long-term to the dense miasma would make even local demons—who were already somewhat acclimated—extremely uncomfortable.

But when she picked up one of the filter cores, let her mental power sink into it, and began parsing the rune structure within, she couldn’t help raising an eyebrow slightly in surprise.

The internal structure of these dark-green filter cores was remarkably novel—even she needed a bit of time to fully grasp and digest it.

In other words, this was very likely technology from an Ultra-ancient Civilization.