Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 296: Annihilation Bullet

Around noon, the tavern in Mudmouth Town was filled with whispers and gloom, even heavier than usual. Bobo was hunched in the same corner near the bar as yesterday, a glass of barely-touched rum in front of him. Head drooping, he quietly listened in on all the rumors drifting through the tavern.“Did you hear? Lord Charulu’s little underlings vanished before dawn. They must’ve gone to Riftscar City to tip them off,” a beastfiend with a face full of knife scars muttered in a low voice.

“Of course. The Nest Lord’s dead—like Ironwall Wev is just going to let that go? I bet you by tomorrow at the latest, the City Lord’s troops will be at the town gate.” Another goblin slouched in his chair, a look of gleeful schadenfreude on his face. After saying that, he carefully glanced around the room, only continuing in his shrill laugh once he’d made sure that purple-haired girl wasn’t anywhere in sight: “That witch is done for. And not just the witch—certain people who picked the wrong thigh to hug are too… heh heh.”

A few gazes drifted in unison toward the kobold in the corner. Bobo instantly felt like he was sitting on a bed of needles. He forced himself to sit up straighter, only to hear a wolfkin beastfiend not far away look at him and say, “Hey, Bobo, you really stole the spotlight yesterday. So eager to go lick her boots—what, you really thought cozying up to that witch was gonna let you turn your life around in this rotten puddle of a place called Mudmouth Town?”

The tavern burst into loud laughter.

They were all long-term locals, no strangers to Bobo; everyone knew this kobold’s story. As a kid, he’d somehow gotten his paws on some romance novels brought over from the Eastern Continent and soaked in them completely, spending his days fantasizing about becoming some gentlemanly knight and playing out grand, tear-jerking romances with beautiful, noble ladies. But anyone with a pair of eyes could tell his abilities could never support those grandiose dreams, so they took every chance to mock him on purpose.

Whether they did it to burst his bubble or simply because they found it fun was unclear. What was clear was that Bobo really was Mudmouth Town’s resident bottom-rung daydreamer. Without a powerful benefactor, he truly had no chance of ever clawing his way up in this life by his own strength.

Bobo himself knew that too—that was exactly why he’d acted so eager and devoted last night.

But now that he was calm, he suddenly realized that had been a very impulsive move. The witch had killed Charulu. That meant she’d provoked Lord Wev, City Lord of Riftscar City—a fifth-rank powerhouse, someone so far above them he could only be looked up to. Even if Miss Witch was strong enough to escape unscathed… what about him? If Miss Witch just ran off, would he be left behind as the scapegoat?

The odds were pretty high. After all, he hadn’t even really managed to latch onto the witch’s thigh in the first place… He didn’t dare think further, but behind the bar, the half-transparent Slippery Jim slowly spoke up. “Alright, alright, enough. Cut him some slack. Bobo’s just trying to find himself a backer. Who doesn’t want a little security in times like these?”

As the only demon race that could survive just by eating grass, slimes had the lowest survival pressure among the nine great demon clans, so their temperaments tended to be mild. They often ended up playing mediator. Bobo’s heart warmed a little, but he still muttered, “Miss Witch said that so-called Ironwall Wev is nothing to worry about.”

“Lord Wev is a fifth-rank powerhouse, and he’s nothing to worry about? Don’t tell me she’s planning to skip fighting altogether and just run for it?” A goblin squealed back, as if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

The kobold fell silent at once.

And just as the noise in the tavern grew louder and louder, an unusual commotion suddenly came from the direction of the town gate.

Everyone’s heads snapped toward the door and the windows. Through them, they could vaguely see a column of uniformly-armed soldiers marching in along the main road from the entrance of town. Most of them were beastfiends and goblins, with a few trolls mixed in, all wielding terrifying battleaxes or spiked maces and radiating a ferocious aura.

“I–It’s Lord Pigoru! Lord Pigoru from Riftscar City! He got here this fast?!” a sharp-eyed goblin shouted, voice excited. He clearly realized that Pigoru was here to avenge Charulu.

The mood inside the tavern instantly grew restless. Everyone was settling in to watch the show. Only Bobo felt a chill shoot straight up the back of his skull. The others might still be fine, but last night he had truly taken the initiative to get involved in Charulu’s death. If Miss Witch couldn’t handle this… how was he supposed to survive?

With that thought, he swallowed hard and started edging his rear off the stool, wanting to slip out through the back door of the tavern. But the second he moved, the other goblins in the bar swarmed him, piling on and pinning him to the floor.

After struggling desperately to no avail, he slowly realized he was probably done for.

When Riftscar City’s demon powerhouse Pigoru marched into Mudmouth Town with a ragtag squad of soldiers, Yvette was upstairs in the lair—or rather, in a second-floor room of the Witch’s mansion—fully focused on optimizing and debugging her destruction magic system.

At present, her destruction magic had only a single rudimentary framework, and inside it, only one spell was remotely battle-ready. She called it “Annihilation Bullet.” The principle wasn’t complicated: she simply used anti-element as a micro spell-sphere and shot it into the enemy’s body.

Because the micro spell-sphere was absurdly small—only about the size of a grain of rice—and pure black to boot, with its damage taking a few seconds to kick in, it was incredibly inconspicuous. So much so that when she killed Charulu last night in front of a big crowd, no one had noticed the bullet’s trajectory. To everyone else, he’d just vanished into thin air for no reason.

But for all its apparent simplicity, the amount of work required on the rune level was terrifying, far beyond that of normal elemental magic. Anti-element was inherently repulsive, incompatible with conventional runes, and extremely unstable. Even for Yvette, a master of rune compilation, it had taken half a year of tweaking just to barely reach a primitive, usable version. There was still plenty of room for future iterations and optimizations, and they would depend heavily on field testing. She was really feeling her way forward step by step.

Before long, after an afternoon of micro-adjustments, a beastfiend soldier and several goblins came knocking. Only then did Yvette learn that Riftscar City’s army had already arrived and was gathered in the central plaza within sight of the lair. The main commander, a pigheaded demon called Pigoru, was astonishingly arrogant, demanding that Yvette come over and surrender of her own accord, in which case he might consider sparing her life.

Yvette didn’t feel much of anything about his tone; the end result was already decided anyway. She just found Riftscar City impressively efficient—what had happened last night, and by this evening they were already here. In that case, she might not need to go to Riftscar City herself. If the City Lord came to her door, she’d save herself the trouble of making a trip and hunting him down.

With that thought, Yvette didn’t bother putting on any airs. She nodded and followed the soldiers from Riftscar City toward the center of town. Shana and Mira hadn’t wanted to go at first, but under the beastfiends’ vicious glares, they had no choice but to steel themselves and trail after her, trembling.

A few minutes later, Yvette arrived at the small plaza. The pigheaded demon Pigoru, built like a tower, was pressing a massive iron-booted foot down on Bobo the kobold’s head, grinding his face into the mud while he laughed wildly and without restraint. When he noticed his true target approaching, he turned around. Surprise flashed through his eyes, swiftly replaced by even deeper scorn and interest. “Oh, so it’s you, little girl? You’re even greener than I thought.”

He slammed his spiked mace into the ground, punching out a small crater, and went on, “If this were any other time, I might have treated you a bit more gently. But you killed Charulu—you broke the rules. Get on your knees and surrender now, and come with me nicely. Maybe I’ll consider putting in a good word for you in front of Lord Wev, depending on your attitude.”

As he spoke, his piggish face twisted into a cat-playing-with-a-mouse grin, his gaze roaming blatantly up and down the purple-haired girl’s slender figure.

Yvette watched him calmly without answering. Then, just like before, she raised her right hand, extended her index finger, and lightly pointed forward.

“So you insist on doing this the hard way.” Pigoru snorted heavily. Thanks to the goblins who’d run ahead to report, he knew this girl had used that very gesture to turn Charulu into dust. So before she even finished the motion, he had already activated his mana barrier, bracing himself in full defense.

Nothing happened.

At least, in his perception, nothing had hit him at all, as if that had just been a bluff.

So it was fake. Pigoru sneered to himself. Goblins really did love to exaggerate.

Just to be safe, he felt around carefully with his senses again. At last, he found a slightly unusual spot on his mana barrier—a tiny little hole, smaller than a sesame seed or a grain of rice. He even wondered if it was just a flaw in his defensive technique and didn’t actually prove he’d been attacked.

Relaxing, he let the tension leave his face completely and broke into a grin again, about to say something.

But the moment the first syllable left his throat, the pigheaded demon’s bulky body began to crumble in total silence. It wasn’t burning. It wasn’t corrosion. It was disintegration from the most fundamental material level—skin, muscle, bone, and organs all turning into the finest black grit, like a handful of ash blown apart by a storm wind, rising into the dusk as a dense black smoke.

The whole process was faster than anyone could have imagined. In just two or three breaths, that towering mass of flesh that had radiated such ferocity was gone from where it had stood, as if it had never existed. Only the heavy spiked mace crashed to the ground with a loud clang, the sole proof he had ever been part of this world.

Dead silence froze the entire street.

The looks of amused spectators vanished from the faces of the Riftscar City soldiers, replaced by boundless confusion and helplessness. Clearly, none of them had figured out what had just happened.

Shana and Mira cupped their hands over their mouths, blinking blankly. It was their first time seeing Lady Witch take action, but… what kind of magic was that? Did a magic like this actually exist?

The crowd in the tavern was equally stupefied. For some of them, this wasn’t even the first time they’d seen a scene like this, but the shock hadn’t diminished in the slightest.

Because the person who’d vanished this time was a fourth-rank demon powerhouse—the pigheaded demon Pigoru, second only to the City Lord of Riftscar City!

If even a super-powerhouse like Pigoru could die in such a bizarre, inexplicable way, just what level was this witch at?

Only Bobo, the kobold who had been stomped under Pigoru’s boot a moment ago, recovered first. He sprang to his feet and shouted excitedly, “As expected of Lady Witch—peerless divine might! That was truly peerless divine might!” Then he spun around to glower at the surroundings, roaring at the top of his lungs, “Pigoru my ass! You Riftscar mutts are all blind idiots! Get lost, scram! Go drag Ironwall Wev over here! And when he gets here, you’d better open those dog eyes of yours real wide and watch how your City Lord gets kicked to death like some stray cur at the side of the road in front of Miss Witch!”

At those words, the Riftscar City soldiers finally snapped out of it. They scattered like startled birds and beasts, fleeing in panic toward the outskirts of Mudmouth Town.

Yvette didn’t spare the routed soldiers a glance. What she’d wanted to say was more or less what Bobo had just shouted—that Ironwall Wev should come to her, so she wouldn’t have to go looking for him herself. It was just that Bobo’s tone was far more arrogant and fired-up; maybe it was some kind of emotional release after all his pent-up fear.

After that, she collected and confirmed the before-and-after data on Annihilation Bullet’s effect on Pigoru’s body, then turned and headed back toward the mansion with her two witch’s maids, who were still so shaken that they couldn’t pull themselves out of their shock.