Witch, Fireball and Steam Evil God

Chapter 342 Hunger
"...I have never written a letter."

"You're finally here."

Before Ivy could speak, Valerie suddenly changed her mind.

The strange feeling intensified. Ivy seemed to see the shadow of another person in Valerie. She had two thoughts, just like the possession described in "Take You to Understand 100 Dark Creatures".

"go out!"

Valerie lost her composure; her eyes were filled with anger. With a sudden swing of her right hand, she swept the parchment book off the table, sending it rolling to Ivy's feet.

Ivy bent down and picked up the parchment book from the ground. This was clearly Valerie's doing on purpose. Her teacher was never one to lose control of her emotions. The only explanation was that she was in a bad situation. The notes in the parchment book were clues left to her by her teacher.

The two shadows seemed to merge into one at that moment, both warning her to leave immediately.

Ivy, carrying the parchment book, retraced her steps. Little Bellamore was still waiting for her at the entrance to the cellar. He heard the roar from the dungeon and asked, "Is she still alive?"

"Alive."

"That's good."

After a brief confirmation, he pressed the switch behind the barrel. As the hidden door closed, the sound from the other end was completely blocked behind the door.

At this moment, Valerie in the dungeon was as if possessed. Her body was nailed to the chair in a twisted way, her arms were being dragged backward by an invisible force, the area of ​​the candlelight was getting smaller and smaller, and the shadows were moving up her ankles. A dark hand was pressed against her face, almost squeezing her entire face out of shape.

"Human, you are disobedient."

A voice identical to hers came from the shadows, "You wrote a letter; this is our agreement."

"I don't."

Valerie struggled to even speak. She clearly saw the shadow creeping up her right hand, and in an instant, she lost control of it. Her hand slowly moved to the quill on the table, picked it up, and began writing rapidly on the table, "I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong..."

One after another, until the dense handwriting covered the entire desktop.

The voice echoed in her ears, "See, now you should be able to remember."

Fragments of memories surfaced in Valerie's mind. It was the middle of the night when she was asleep. She saw her body, which had been lying on the bed, suddenly sit up. With her eyes closed, she rolled off the bed, went to the table, tore a page from the parchment book, and began to write furiously on it.

This eerie scene lasted for more than ten minutes. After she finished, she walked to the front of the cell, bent down and handed the letter she had written through the gap in the bars.

There was no one outside the prison, but a pair of hands reached out from the darkness, grabbed the envelope, and pulled it into the shadows.

"Human, the only reason you're still breathing is because he wants you to live."

The voice in my ear said, "But if you cause me any more trouble, I'll snap your neck."

……

The first thing Ivy did upon returning to her room was to lock the door from the inside. She sat on the bed, lit a lantern that emitted a blood-red light, illuminating the words on the parchment book.

According to the timeline provided by Van Fleet, Ms. Valerie left the village a year ago and went alone to the territory of the "Red Eyes," which means she had been imprisoned for a year.

This was not in line with the ghouls' style. They did not treat Valerie as food, nor did they try to convert her. Instead, they provided her with good accommodations... The only explanation Ivy could think of was that the noblewoman needed something from her, and they had reached some kind of agreement.

In the parchment book, Ivy learned the noblewoman's name for the first time.

Ms. Morgana Blakelev.

Morgana Blackleaf was the last heir of the Blackleaf family. During the reign of Henry III, the Blackleaf family was one of the most prominent families in the capital. However, due to their conflict with the church, they were persecuted and their family fell into decline. The descendants of the Blackleaf family lived a precarious existence in the capital until the day Morgana Blackleaf was born.

The birth of the baby girl brought a prophecy: a high priest of the church saw the end times brought by this Morgana during his prayers—the sky was filled with darkness, and people who had fallen into madness came to the streets and devoured each other's flesh and blood.

This became the final straw that broke the family's back. The last head of the family was identified by the church as having secretly carried out evil god rituals. When Morgana was just a month old, her parents were tied to the stake by Julius.

Before their deaths, her parents used up their last remaining possessions to send Morgana out of the capital and entrust her to a friend for upbringing.

Valerie provided corresponding annotations on this.

She had investigated the history of the Bracklev family, and from her perspective, it seemed more like a pretext for a political struggle. Rumors circulated that the Bracklev family provided venues for anti-church members, offering their old house as meeting rooms.

After the plot was exposed, Julius's cronies devised a pretext to execute Morgana's parents.

Belief in an evil god is a universal excuse that the church can use to execute anyone they want.

Valerie believes that to find out what really happened in Darkhearth, it is necessary to investigate the feud between the Blackreve family and Grand Duke Bellamor. There is various evidence that Grand Duke Bellamor was a friend of Morgana's parents, and that he adopted Morgana and gave her a different name.

Morgana didn't suffer too much in Darkhearth, which was quite fortunate during Julius's reign.

The peaceful life continued until one day, more than ten years later, a group of witchers arrived in Darkhearth. They were investigating a strange incident of ghouls injuring people. They believed that the ghouls involved in this case were extremely special. They seemed to have retained human thinking, and they moved in groups, setting traps on trade routes and waiting for victims to take the bait.

Before the arrival of the witchers, several caravans had already been attacked.

The ghouls cleaned up the scene thoroughly, leaving no gnawed corpses behind. They moved all the victims to their lair and stockpiled them as food.

It was around that time that Grand Duke Bellamor fell in love with one of the witchers.

However, Morgana and her relationship did not go smoothly. From the moment they first met, they disliked each other. As Bellamore's relationship with the Witcher grew closer, the conflict finally erupted.

The Witcher sensed an evil aura emanating from her, but despite testing Morgana with holy water and various exorcism tools, she couldn't find anything wrong. However, the Witcher insisted that Morgana be kept away from the family, believing that Morgana's existence would bring misfortune to the Bellamor family.

Left with no other choice, Grand Duke Bellamor decided to send Morgana to be cared for by a distant relative. However, the caravan escorting Morgana away from Darkhearth encountered a mishap—they were attacked by ghouls on the trade route, and everyone disappeared without a trace. A month later, when the Witcher finally found the ghouls, they discovered the guards' belongings in their lair.

Morgana had long since become food for ghouls, a conclusion reached by the Witcher.

In reality, the ghouls did not harm Morgana. Instead, they were overjoyed to see her. They transformed Morgana and instilled in her the concept of "family," emphasizing that no matter what happens, family members should not abandon each other, and that Grand Duke Bellamore's actions constituted an intolerable betrayal.

They want revenge for this new member.

Breaking into Grand Duke Bellamor's house and tearing him and the Witcher to pieces later became the direct cause of their exposure.

Valerie recorded the events in great detail in the parchment, as if she had personally experienced them.

Ivy thinks this most likely comes from Morgana's account.

And that's where the story takes a strange turn.

Because ghouls never possess the ability to transform others—a concept typically associated with vampires and werewolves—these are undoubtedly a group of "evolved" ghouls. The question, however, is: what prompted this group of ghouls to evolve?
This became the direction of Valerie's investigation for quite some time.

According to Morgana's account, she was captured by the clan leader and taken to their lair. During the transformation, they took out a basin, and the ghouls used their proliferating claws to slit open a merchant's neck, letting his blood flow into the basin. However, when the blood flowed into the basin, it turned into a pitch-black substance, looking like a black mist. As Morgana stared at the black mist, an unprecedented hunger overwhelmed her.

This caused her to lose her mind immediately. When she woke up, she found herself lying in bed. The merchant's body was gone, and only some broken bones remained on the ground. A strong smell of blood surged up on her taste buds.

The existence within the black mist is the source of everything.

Valerie initially believed this was another creation of the evil god Bazartos, since most of the dark creatures in the world today were created by Bazartos and his followers. However, this idea was quickly overturned after meeting Morgana—Bazartos' followers were also on their menu.

They also never deal with any followers of other evil gods, because those followers of evil gods would almost always attack her with strange cries the moment they encountered her.

The followers of the evil god seemed terrified of her, as if it were a fear stemming from a biological instinct.

This is also why Valerie survived.

Morgana also wanted to know what exactly was in that basin of water that created this anomalous space. When she arrived, the mirrored Darkhearth already existed, and its citizens had turned into ghouls. Valerie was also unable to explain this anomalous space using the theories she knew.

Ghouls are humans who have been transformed. According to the Witcher's theory, at least tens of thousands of people have died here and all of them have been transformed into ghouls.

This is clearly impossible; since the founding of the empire, Darkhearth has never experienced such a large-scale death.

Valerie, in her parchment, tends to believe that these ghouls were "hatched" through some means. She argues that Morgana Blacklea and her offspring are not the greatest threat; the real threat lies hidden deeper in the mist, transforming their existence.

Even Morgana didn't know how to leave this place, and of course, she never intended to leave.

The entity they are investigating possesses characteristics akin to an evil god, capable of creating such a vast contaminated area that it envelops the entire city of Darkhearth.

"hunger".

This is the name Valerie gave it.

From Morgana's limited descriptions, it seems that hunger does not exist as a physical entity; it usually appears in the form of shadows, and in the polluted area it creates, it is omnipresent and can appear anywhere at any time.

Ivy's unease grew stronger and stronger.

If it wasn't Ms. Valerie who wrote to her...

So perhaps the target of "hunger" was never her in the first place!
Ivy almost immediately connected the anomaly Ethan had mentioned: the elemental spirits had lost contact with him here, something that had never happened before. Neither Old Bar nor Sincarlo could sever the presence of the natural elements when they faced them directly.

Sincarlo also mentioned that the elements of nature are older than the Old Gods.

After all the elemental spirits went missing, Ethan mastered a strange spell.

Shadow Arrow.

The naming format is similar to Fireball and Frostbolt, like a basic spell of a certain path. However, before this, neither the academy nor the astrologer's guild had any records of the Shadow Element.

Thinking of this, Ivy suddenly felt a chill.

Do not use Shadow Bolt.

The thought that immediately crossed her mind was that if Ethan were still in the house, she would warn him the moment she finished reading the parchment.

Ivy felt that this sudden spell was more like a trap, and she couldn't predict what would happen when Ethan used Shadow Bolt.

"Thump thump thump, thump thump thump—!"

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. "Is Sister Ivy home?"

A young voice came from outside the door. The voice sounded familiar because not long ago, this red-eyed ghoul named Peter had warmly invited Ethan to visit the ranch they had built.

Fortunately, Ethan returned in time.

Ivy rolled out of bed, ran barefoot to the door, and flung it open.

She had a lot to say to Ethan. This place was far more dangerous than they had imagined, and the thing that Ms. Valerie had named "Hunger" was likely after him; it had forged the letter just to lure Ethan here.

However, the next moment, Ivy was stunned.

Peter was the only one at the door.

She almost blurted out, "Where's Ethan?"

Peter stood on tiptoe and peered into the room. "Isn't Mr. Ethan here? I'm very interested in the gourmet club he mentioned earlier, and I was just thinking of talking to him about it."

Where were you just now?

Ivy's breathing became somewhat difficult.

"I?"

Peter looked puzzled. "I was with my brothers and sisters. We were talking about Mr. Ethan, and everyone wanted to invite him over."

……

Meanwhile, on the other side.

"This isn't right."

Ethan suddenly stopped. Peter had led him through the fog for a long time, and he felt that this was not the way back, but rather that they were getting further and further away from Darkforge City. "It seems like we didn't come from here."

"You're right."

Peter, who was walking ahead, turned around and looked at him. "Mr. Ethan, this is a shortcut (^_^)."

He smiled with his eyes narrowed, looking completely harmless.

However, his head and body seemed somewhat out of sync at this moment.

Peter didn't turn his body around; he continued walking forward. Only his neck turned, tilting his head back 180 degrees to look at him.

"We'll be there soon."

(End of this chapter)