Alchemists do not need self-cultivation

Dallian: "Shut up! You rude, unpopular, and deserve to be single forever alchemist."

"Isn't it a bit much to say something like that... huh?"

Isaac's eyes suddenly sharpened as he glanced out the window.

"what happened?"

Hugh noticed that Isaac's expression was abnormal.

"There's an extra person in the villa... or rather, someone who doesn't seem human."

"What did you say?"

"I gonna go see."

Isaac grabbed his coat and ran outside.

"Wait, I'm going too." Seeing this, Hugh followed.

Darian, left alone in the room, looked around uneasily, gritted her teeth, and stamped her foot.

"No...don't leave me here alone!"

------------

"Aaaaaah!!! What are you!? Don't come any closer!!!"

Geese, who had met Isaac and Hughie before, was now slumped in the garden of the villa, frantically trying to shoo away the huge figure in front of him.

The enormous figure was clearly not human; if it were, it would be deformed.

The monster was completely wrapped in white cloth. It had the shape of a human but was nearly twice the height of a human. The combination of its unusually broad shoulders and its ridiculously thin waist was quite incongruous.

The monster had a huge claw on its left hand and was covered in blood.

It slowly walked towards Gis, raising its claws as if to deliver a fatal blow.

"Wait a moment!"

Just as the claws were about to strike, Hugh arrived and pulled a military revolver from his waist, firing several shots at the monster.

The gun fired and struck the monster, producing only a few crisp sounds, as if it had hit a stone wall, leaving the monster completely unharmed.

While Hugh was fighting the monster, Isaac grabbed Geese, who had fallen to the ground, and threw him behind him.

"Is this the truth behind the murder of the people in the villa?"

"I'm afraid so."

Hugh skillfully reloaded the pistol and aimed at the monster in front of him once more.

The monster looked especially terrifying and ferocious under the moonlight.

"Firearms don't seem to work on him."

"We have to stall him," Hugh shouted. "Isaac, you take Mr. Geese back first!"

"I don't think you have much of a chance against this, so I'll handle it."

Isaac stepped forward and shoved Hugh behind him.

"I am an alchemist, and I am an expert at dealing with monsters."

"what?"

Amid Hugh's puzzled voice, the monster approached the two, its target seemingly the trembling Geese behind them.

"It'll be a good opportunity to try out Envy's useless ability."

Isaac stretched out his left hand, and stimulated by the red lightning, the hand suddenly began to change, turning into the arm of a thick, black-haired gorilla.

Raising this arm, Isaac took a step forward and threw a punch at the monster in front of him.

clang!

The monster took the punch head-on, staggered back two steps, and stood still, completely unharmed.

"Tsk, as expected, they are the most useless type of androids."

Isaac scoffed a few times, then changed his hand back, bringing his thumb and middle finger together towards the monster.

Snapped.

boom--

With a snap of his fingers, the explosion illuminated the entire night sky, and the monster was engulfed in the blast, turning into a pile of debris.

"This……"

The blast from the explosion made Hugh instinctively raise his hand to shield himself, and when he looked back, all that remained were rubble.

This was also the first time he had witnessed the alchemist Isaac's methods.

Isaac walked to the scorched ground and picked up a piece of debris that had fallen when the monster was blown apart.

"Stones... they're inorganic, so how do they move?"

"Isaac, are you alright?"

"fine."

Putting the stone fragments into their pockets, the two walked toward Gis, who was still trembling on the ground.

“Mr. Giss, you just now…”

"It's Estella..."

"what?"

"Estella was just here, and then that monster appeared!!" Geese shouted in despair. "It's a curse!! The Lilburn family curse!!"

"..."

Chapter 985: The Book of the Fetus

"Thank you."

Gies, wrapped in a blanket, took the hot tea that Hughie offered with trembling hands.

"This family... is terrifying..."

"Can you tell me in detail how you were attacked by that monster? It's definitely not normal for a monster to appear in a villa."

Clang!

"Attacked by a monster? No, not that monster!!"

Upon hearing Hugh's words, Geese smashed his teacup on the ground.

"It wasn't a monster attack? Then what just happened..."

Halfway through his sentence, Hugh noticed the wounds on Geese's body.

It looks like a stab wound from a blade, but the wound is small, so it must have been inflicted by a relatively small knife. The monster's claws were enormous, so if it was the monster that caused the wound, it would be far too small.

"That is……"

"It's Estelle! She's the one who did it!!"

"Miss Lilburn?"

“I don’t know why she suddenly attacked me, but when she stabbed me and tried to kill me, she seemed to sense something and suddenly left…” Geese said, clutching his head. “The monster appeared at the very moment she left!”

"I see."

Thinking about it carefully, the stone monster had no intention of harming anyone from the beginning. It was just that the two people who arrived saw the bleeding Geese and the blood-stained monster and instinctively judged it to be the murderer.

The monster was also blown to smithereens by Isaac.

"By the way, Lord Diswald, where is that person now?"

"That sir?"

"That adult who just defeated the monster, what is his identity?"

“You mean Isaac? He’s a guest who’s staying at my house temporarily for some reason,” Hugh said. “His name is Isaac, and he’s supposedly an alchemist.”

"An alchemist... I thought there were no more alchemists in the world after the Industrial Age, but I didn't expect that such a master still exists today." Giss said excitedly, "Could you please ask that person to help us escape from this villa?"

"That's true..."

"We will definitely leave the villa, but not now."

The door was suddenly opened, and Isaac walked in carrying a thick book.

"Isaac".

"Your Excellency Isaac."

"Don't get agitated, sit down."

As he spoke, Isaac sat down in a chair first and placed the book on the table.

“Tell me two things I’ve discovered. First, the monster is an inorganic matter made of stone, but it started moving due to some mysterious force,” Isaac said. “And the monster is very likely still alive.”

"Huh? Didn't you blow him to pieces?"

“I just took a piece of his debris, but when I got halfway there I realized it had disappeared from my pocket. When I got back to the scene of the crime, all the debris on the ground was gone.”

"This……"

"The second thing is that I looked up some interesting things about the family's history."

Isaac opened the book on the table, which contained accounts of Colonel Lilburn, Estella's grandfather.

"The problem doesn't lie with the Lilburn family, but with the family of Colonel Lilburn's wife."

"What do you mean?"

"His wife was driven out of her own country after a mass killing occurred in the territory in the last century. This family is recorded to have an uncontrollable urge to kill in every generation of women."

"This……"

“Colonel Lilburn’s diary states that he knew his wife had a murderous streak, so he took measures to cover it up, and that monster was the method of cover-up. Coincidentally, this murderous streak was passed down to Estella,” Isaac said. “Including the fiancés who died in the villa before, they were all lured here by Estella and then killed.”

“Wait a minute,” Hugh suddenly asked, “Miss Lilburn came to me looking for the Book of Illusions, could it be because…”

“Because her next target to kill is you,” Isaac chuckled. “Or it could be anyone, but because of the rumors, she can’t fool her fiancé anymore, so she has to find another way.”