Millennium Witch.

Chapter 42 - 42 - After the Door

It was a spring morning, with low-hanging clouds that draped the sky like a thin, gray-white veil, filtering the sunlight into soft, diffused light.

A cold wind blew as Yvette stepped through the thin ice that hadn't completely melted, passing through a dense forest of evergreen trees, and arrived at the foot of Mount Ish. The cold, damp air filled her lungs with each breath, dispelling some of the drowsiness she felt from waking up early.

Behind her, seventeen-year-old Rosalyn, dressed in a fitted trench coat, looked exceptionally tall, with an increasingly curvaceous figure that no one with a teenage girl's body could match.

In response, Yvette could only express her gratitude that Rosalyn's height growth had basically stagnated since last year, remaining at around 1.7 meters. Otherwise, she would really worry that one day she would have to look up and touch her head while talking to her students—either way, it would sound quite pathetic.

Thinking of this, Yvette couldn't help but lower her head and quickly glance at her flat shoes.

"Maybe I should get a pair of boots that make me taller..." she thought silently, but then worried she wouldn't be used to them. After all, in her previous life she was a perfect 1.82 meters tall, a real man, and had never known what height-increasing shoes were. Now she was a beautiful silver-haired, red-eyed girl, she had gained a lot, but also lost a lot. Thinking about it carefully, it was quite poignant.

"Is the mountaintop where the teacher woke up?" Rosalyn asked curiously as she walked, gazing up at the misty mountaintop.

Yvette gave a soft "hmm." At this point, aside from the matter of time travel, there was no need to hide anything else from her students. Besides, she herself didn't know her origins, and letting her students know might give her some inspiration.

Then, accompanied by a gentle breeze, Rosalyn walked briskly ahead, humming an unknown otherworldly tune, looking very happy.

As if infected by her, Yvette's eyes softened slightly. She would occasionally hum a song when she was happy, but as her memory became increasingly hazy, she had forgotten most of the good songs from her past life.

Sometimes she wonders if she could enter the dream world again and record all the songs she can remember, then become a plagiarist of the Origin Civilization in the dream, dominating the entertainment industry with Earth's cultural and entertainment resources. She should be able to earn a lot of credits and buy a lot of high-end goods.

Well, of course, that was just a casual remark. As a powerful mage, it would be embarrassing to imagine him singing and dancing.

More than an hour later, they reached the end of the mountain road and there was nowhere else to go. The two took out their magic skateboards and flew directly to the edge of the crater lake to look down.

Now, just as Yvette had when she first escaped her cage decades ago, the dark lake before her eyes remained deep blue and still, silent as an abyss. In the center of the lake, the small metal platform still stood, like a forgotten old country house, waiting for someone's return.

Three minutes later, after casually draining the life out of a few suicidal mutants, Yvette stepped back onto the metal platform, opened the small door beside her, cast a light spell, and led the students, who were full of curiosity and looking around, down the road.

"The first floor is the quarantine floor, containing a lot of elite military-grade weaponry and equipment. I initially thought this was the only place with sunlight, so I moved most of what I collected, including usable books, to this floor..." Yvette said as she walked, her calm voice echoing in the empty corridor.

Rosalyn adopted a solemn and reverent expression, as if on a pilgrimage, and began to search around this floor. She saw many draft papers written with the sap of magic vines as ink, which she had left behind when she was learning about runes, as well as many remains of magical equipment that had been disassembled into parts.

Although it was just a fleeting glimpse, she seemed to see countless years ago, when her teacher was here, diligently studying, dissecting, researching, meditating, and practicing.

Those scenes repeat themselves monotonously day after day, like a malfunctioning movie projector, recording the entire process of a witch's birth.

Continuing on, Yvette meticulously described the function and location of each level, recording the details of her initial exploration. Rosalind followed, reconstructing the past landscape of this vast underground ruin through her teacher's narration.

Finally, after traversing ten underground floors, they were met with a sealed alloy door. Unlike their previous helplessness, this time they could try using the extremely powerful alloy battle blades. If that didn't work, Yvette could consider prying open the elevator shaft or restoring power to this floor to explore other possibilities.

Activating the Alloy Blade, and with the amplification from Muscle Limits Unlocked, Rosalyn slashed fiercely without the teacher lifting a finger, and the effect was remarkable—a deep dent was cleaved into the alloy door.

Seeing the remarkable results, Yvette also took out her own blade to help. Soon, with the combined efforts of the master and apprentice, a gap was finally cut in the door leading to the next level, large enough for one person to pass through. The smell that came out was not unpleasant—which was normal, because the redundant design of the ventilation system was based on wind pressure. As long as the wind in the crater lake continued to blow, the air could continue to circulate and eventually be discharged from an outlet in the mountainside.

Even this layer showed traces of the all-pervasive magic light vines, but the brightness was limited, so the two still used magic for illumination.

"Teacher, what floor is this?" Rosalyn looked at the sign next to her. She had learned a little bit of Black Tide language in her dream, but she had been communicating with her teacher in the common language of Radiant Continent, and had almost forgotten it.

“It should be the management's living area,” Yvette guessed after carefully examining the blurry handwriting.

Compared to the floors above, this floor is much more spacious and offers a wider variety of living and entertainment rooms. The two didn't rush to explore further, but instead opened each door to inspect the rooms.

"It seems that the people here have also been unable to escape the fate of mutation..." Rosalyn guessed with mixed feelings as she looked at the many strangely shaped skeletons in the rooms, and even a relatively complete mutated mummy.

Clearly, she now feels conflicted, wanting to sympathize with those who died tragically in the apocalypse, yet also believing that these people must have locked everyone else out to save their own lives.

“Perhaps.” Yvette nodded slightly and began rummaging through the clutter. The paper materials here were mostly rotten, but as expected of the executive living area, there were quite a few well-preserved hardcover books, all in the field of runic medicine, which were still very valuable.

"Teacher, look at this!" After a while, Rosalyn suddenly noticed something and shouted.

Yvette walked over and saw a luxurious notebook that had not yet been corrupted. It contained information written in the Black Tide language, but Rosalyn, being semi-illiterate, could hardly understand it.

Picking up the notebook, Yvette glanced at the words on it, her pupils contracting slightly.

“I am Athene Omega, CEO of Black Tower Medicines’ Ish City branch, and Vincent Omega’s granddaughter. This is my will.”

"If anyone who comes later can enter here and see this letter, it means that the world has not been destroyed, and I must clarify something for you here."

“I swear by the honor of the Omega family that the ‘divine transformation’ of the Abyss Base remains preserved at the bottom of the Divine Corruption, without being leaked. We are not the sinners of the world.”

"The true source of the anomaly is the sea!"

　A more fitting codename was chosen.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)