Witch Troupe and the Undead

The Shadow Hound vanished into a strange ball of demonic fire the instant it was hit by the missile. The skeletons and bats fared even worse, their ashes falling like snowflakes. Only when Angie felt as if he was about to be burst by this unknown power did the staff stop pouring out its power.

"Okay, so much..." Angie felt a huge amount of blessed power surging within her body. She felt like a water bag filled with liquid, and the slightest movement would make a splashing sound.

"Pour less next time," Black Horse thought for a moment and decided that he could pour less next time, and also give this top customer a discount.

Behind Angie's neck, a semi-transparent flame emblem representing the Hellish Dream Realm gradually emerged, but it was hidden by the hood and shawl, and no one had noticed it yet.

Chapter Forty-Eight: Taking the Witch's Pill

The flickering silver soul flame slowly settled into a strange, silvery-gray liquid-like, yet ethereal, gas-like form within the spherical flask. Her emerald eyes seemed to sparkle with starlight as the little witch gently shook the flask and poured its contents into the crucible in front of her.

The colorful magic potion liquid and soul essence fused into a viscous, silvery-white colloid, which the little guy then rolled into small, round objects.

【Soul Healing Pill】A type of high-grade magic potion that is effective against injuries to the soul and symptoms of soul weakness. It is meaningless to ordinary people, whose souls are so fragile that they would shatter at the slightest touch, and cannot withstand the effects of the medicine to the point that they are still alive or conscious.

Livia wiped the fine beads of sweat from her forehead, her cheeks flushed. It was clear that stirring and making this potion was a tremendous test for her incredibly weak physique.

"Huh, is this for me?" Leslie looked at the silver-gray pill in her hand, then at Roach and Vivi who were holding the same pill. Among them, Vivi was the one who knew its value, "A Soul Healing Pill..."

The price is at least 1000 gold coins. For those strong individuals, physical injuries are easy to heal, but injuries to the soul can take decades. Exchanging 1000 gold coins for an extra life is definitely worthwhile.

Ordinary lower-ranking knights and nobles who couldn't afford it generally didn't need this potion. Various high-level poisons and curses targeting the soul were also quite expensive, and were usually used against the empire's generals and kings, or at the very least, against the empire's high-ranking nobles' political enemies.

These people are all capable of spending 1000 gold coins. However, while it's easy to come up with 1000 gold coins, whether you can hire a master who can refine this kind of potion is another question.

"Is the treatment really that good?" Vivi was seriously considering whether to join the Little Witch's group. At least she seemed to be really rich, and she was also Master Roach's mentor. She just didn't know if this small master would be willing to accept a new apprentice.

Just as Vivi was thinking, she saw the black horse come over and eat half of the remaining dumpling in the little witch's hand, then get hit on the forehead with a stick, making a crisp "thud".

Roach was already used to being hit by Dark Horse, this "veteran wooden fish player." As for the dumplings in his hand, Livia gestured for him to eat them, as for the taste...

...It has no taste, it's like eating a lump of aerogel, probably no different from swallowing the northwest wind, you don't feel anything when you eat it.

However, in Livia's soul perception, the crisscrossing seams on Roach's soul, which were barely glued together, began to heal at an accelerated pace. This was the fundamental reason why she created this potion.

In the living forest, there simply aren't that many raw materials. After all, whether there are gods in this world is debatable, but there's definitely no underworld or netherworld. Souls, once they leave the body, are soon reduced to nothing by the "winds of the netherworld" formed by nature.

Unless there are special means or spells to bind and protect the soul, the "soul sorcerers" among the occultists are good at this method, binding and protecting the soul, and controlling the other party in this way, using it as the energy and battery for their own death occult spells.

If psychics are the "corpse-driving" type who use the power of death and souls to create zombies and various undead creatures, then soul sorcerers are the evil ones who use the souls of the living as batteries and energy sources to create the Ten Thousand Soul Banner.

Livia was actually very proficient in the magic of the Soul Ritual school, but her teacher told her never to reveal it to outsiders. Although the reputation of soul sorcerers was the best among all kinds of evil sorcerers, because they generally did not do anything bad except collect the souls of the dead, and did not even carry out fancy tricks such as massacring cities.

After all, dead people are everywhere. He doesn't need to do anything. He can be a gravedigger in a cemetery in a big city or wander around the back door of the houses of those precious imperial nobles every day. He can always find a lot of high-quality "soul batteries".

If all else fails, in this war-torn world, you can find a battlefield that has just ended and return with a full load of loot. However, it's different for the aristocratic class—because these guys really know how to rob tombs.

And who knows, a spirit might be pulled out from behind the scenes, saying, "This is your grandfather, this is your great-grandfather, this is your father, this is your uncle, this is your brother, and this is your son who died at the age of eight."

Then he explained that he was able to avoid the traps in your family's tomb because your grandfather personally guided him, and even the identification of the burial objects was done with the help of your father's spirit. Because the soul dissipates, they could even raid the tomb so that if you buried someone yesterday, you might find that the coffins of your ancestors for eighteen generations were missing when you went to visit the grave today.

"He deserved to be beaten..." This was Roach's first reaction after hearing about the so-called glorious achievements of the soul sorcerer. Then, considering Neel Riley's behavior and the fact that little Livia was extremely proficient in soul magic...

"Could this be how her teacher makes money?!" After all, the Witch of Youth had a notorious reputation. To raise a little girl in a forest far from the crowd, she naturally couldn't make money through ordinary means. So, Roach once again understood why Nier Riley didn't let the little witch talk about her teacher.

While others might say, "If you cause trouble in the future, don't tell your master," the little witch's teacher probably says, "Don't tell your master, or you'll cause trouble in the future."

"Can I keep this?" Vivi watched as everyone else took the pills and felt a little reluctant to part with the 1000 gold coins worth of pills in her hand. Her soul was perfectly fine, so taking this stuff was a waste of money!

"..." Faced with the confused gazes of everyone in the room, including the fairy Titania, Vivi obediently swallowed the pill. She felt nothing and had no taste. In fact, the taste of this pill was like the taste of drinking the northwest wind.

"Livia, why did you feed everyone these pills?!" The fairy landed on the little witch's golden hair, and the little girl tilted her head, "I rubbed too many..."

When I lived with my teacher, it was like this: if we had too many potions, we would share them. If we couldn't finish them, we would feed them to the horses, and if we still couldn't finish them, we would feed them to the fish in the bay.

The original Carrion Bay was just a reef-filled area where ships were prone to sinking, but now, thanks to the little witch's persistent efforts in watering it, it is about to evolve into a new [dangerous] level area.

"...This kind of thing is very expensive; if you make a lot, you can sell it."

"!!" Shock flashed in her emerald eyes, as if she were hearing for the first time that potions could be sold for money. "They can't be sold... Teacher said these potions can't be sold," the little witch said earnestly. These were all the potions her teacher had told her which ones could be sold and which ones couldn't.

As for the reason, it's probably because her teacher is too infamous. Once these high-level potions are sold, people can tell who made them just by looking at the methods. Then, following the trail, given Neel Riley's record of all sorts of evil deeds... the entire "Living Forest" would probably be wiped out by an army from several countries.

"Ah, can't it be sold?" Vivi couldn't understand why, and considering Master Livia's age, her teacher might still be alive. What kind of legendary figure would that be? In fact, she was indeed a "legendary figure," but in a way that was different from what she had imagined. It refers to a legendary wanted criminal jointly wanted by the countries surrounding the Luster Plain, who has not yet been brought to justice.

"Speaking of which, Livia, we've been in Ballista Town for quite a while now, haven't we? Have you collected enough materials?" Titania slowly munched on a biscuit the size of her face. No matter what, this place was too close to the front lines.

“Yes!” Livia nodded vigorously. Next, she would go to the Black Abyss Cemetery below the Deathwhisper Fortress to collect the remaining information, mainly about the information and knowledge about the activated armor. This was something that Niel Riley had not taught her, and she needed to go to the Black Abyss Cemetery to find this lost ancient knowledge.

"Adventure...?" Luo Qi scratched his face. It wasn't impossible. After all, his team's configuration was quite reasonable, even to the point of having one more person on the journey to the West.

It's less of an adventure and more of an archaeological expedition, because the Black Abyss Cemetery is just a "Perilous Realm," while the Little Witch has lived alone in the "Perilous Realm: Living Forest" for a long time. So, with Livia leading the team, going deep into the Black Abyss Cemetery is no different from going home.

The real trouble is that below lies a labyrinthine area, layered and twisted together by magic. The lost ancient knowledge is hidden in the murals and burial objects of these tombs, and some of it doesn't even have a physical form. The little witch needs to extract it from the few remaining memories of the undead.

"But the front lines haven't even started the attack on Deathwhisper Fortress yet, have they?" The main problem is the lack of manpower. The previous battle at Ballista Town resulted in more than half of the Grim Reaper Knights being killed or wounded. Both their warhorses and the knights trained over two or three decades are irreplaceable in a short period of time.

Therefore, it was necessary to mobilize the Imperial Eleventh Infantry Regiment of Lywood County for support. Unlike the Knights, which were composed entirely of nobles and knights linked by lord-vassal relationships, the infantry regiment consisted of professional soldiers from the commoner class.

Composed of the sons of retired adventurers, the sons of artisans, and mercenaries who have been recruited, their combat strength is greater than that of normal town guards, but neither their equipment nor their abilities can compare with those of the Knights.

Most of the new recruits in the infantry regiment were ordinary people, while the veterans only possessed the ability of "extraordinary physique," and their equipment was only at a level between that of ordinary town guards and castle guards of wealthy nobles.

This was a plan used by the Emperor to disperse the military power of local nobles. However, so many years have passed, and the commanders of these infantry regiments in many regions have been bribed and corrupted by the nobles. Otherwise, Earl of Lywood would not have been able to use this infantry regiment to clean up his mess.

Meanwhile, in the sewers of Hearthstone City, red magic runes, representing sin, spiraled down from a snow-white arm, converging at the tips of five fingers to form tiny runes representing five "great sins."

With the help of such a seal, one can continuously absorb the power of the evil concepts created by intelligent beings. The more densely populated the place, the stronger this aura becomes. For great sin mages, they are different from any other kind of evil mage. They do not live in seclusion, but choose to live in densely populated big cities and metropolises.

"So sweet..." Every breath she took felt like a tangible magic penetrating her lungs. The city was filled with the endless stench of sin, and every moment, the magic of the void washed over her like a tide. This was a feeling she had never experienced when she was learning the elemental mystic arts.

Even in a downpour, the magic of the water element in the air is like comparing a water stain on a table to a lake as vast as the ocean – it seems so weak and laughable.

Several slime monsters living in the sewers smelled the presence of living people and tentatively extended their corrosive tentacles toward the mage. The moment they touched the black robe, the mage transformed into a flurry of light butterflies and passed through the slime monsters' territory.

The slimes touched by the light butterflies began to attack each other frantically. The victors devoured the bodies of the losers, eventually bursting themselves out of shape. Most of the magic in the void realm endows things with concepts and characteristics that did not originally exist. For example, it gives greed and betrayal to mindless slimes, and rage and fear to the dead.

It may look like spells in the spiritual realm, but they are completely different in nature. Spiritual spells cannot affect things that do not have a spirit, unless it is a spiritual ritual in the spirit world, which is just a materialization of spiritual power and the power released through the medium of ether.

Even the most powerful mental mage cannot make a pile of rotten bones, which are incapable of having life or emotions, angry. However, a great sin mage can; they can even make stones greedy and furious.

However, maintaining this "characteristic injection" effect requires a continuous consumption of magic power, and the magic power of the Void Domain "Sin" used by the Great Sin Mage can be considered inexhaustible in any human city or settlement.

In the ancient kingdom of Luster, the power of sinful magic, especially the power of desire, was called the "seed of eternity," because as long as life exists in this world, this magic is eternal.

"The Seed of Eternity... what a mesmerizing research achievement! It's a pity there are too many mediocre people in this world," the female mage sighed, looking at the sewer outlet. In the research room below, she saw the research results of the great sin mages recruited by the ancient Kingdom of Luster. What exactly was it? It was the ultimate ritual known as the [Eternal Ritual].

It was formed by the combined power of original sin, creating an unprecedented magical entity. Its magic was provided by the probability of sin. As long as intelligent beings did not perish, it would exist eternally. The original sin mages at the time tentatively called this thing with infinite magic and infinite time the "Embryo of God".

And he made a wish to this newborn god for the kingdom to last forever, and then split its power into the "Seven Sin Lords". However, all those familiar with magic know that any magic with the effect of "making a wish" should ideally define the conditions and boundaries with as many words as possible.

“A foolish wish…” The female mage shook her head. The foolish king had made a foolish wish, and the entire capital was shrouded in terrifying demonic power, transforming into an eternal being, a highly distorted being enslaved by the power of the seven deadly sins, a being devoid of sanity.

In order to resolve the mess they had created, the Great Sin Mages sealed seven Sin Demon Lords using the Seven Secret Seals ritual, and then used this powerful divine power to seal the core of the entire ritual, the royal capital, within a powerful barrier.

"I might as well do it myself." The mage, imbued with the power of arrogance, emerged from the underground sewers with a disdainful expression. His eyes were slightly narrowed, and the sunlight was a little too bright, indicating that he had been underground for too long.

She had already planned what she would wish for the [Embryo of God] after the Seven Secret Seals were broken. She wouldn't make such a foolish mistake; she would use numerous boundary conditions to constrain the scope of her wish, granting herself endless power and knowledge, and then use that power and knowledge to fulfill even more wishes.

"Longbao, the location of the Seven Secret Sealing Ceremony..." The white-haired boy stood in front of the bookshelves that connected to the ceiling, browsing through the books he had collected about the capital city of Luster and the Void Source.

“Found it…” A thin notebook was pulled out. “The notes of the chief court mage back then.” The seven secret seals are all located on the Luster Plain. Although they are ancient place names, for a dragon with a long lifespan, many things seem to have happened yesterday. He only glanced at the geographical descriptions and knew where these seven ritual sites were.

"The First Secret Seal of Pride has been lifted..." Hearthglen corresponds to Pride, because it was once an ancient research base, naturally corresponding to the arrogance of the Great Sin Mages towards nothingness and gods.

"The second secret seal is Greed... It's all over." Greed's location is not too far from Hearth City. In fact, these seals are quite close together, like seven chains fanning out to distribute the power that maintains the barrier.

The Greed Seal is located in what was once the trade center, yes, which is now the lowest level of the Black Abyss Cemetery. "The Third Seal is in the Black Forest region, Gluttony." That area was once the largest grain-producing region of the Luster Plains, but later, with the fall of the ancient kingdom, the Black Forest expanded once again, submerging farmland and villages.

The remaining four secret seals are also located in the Luster Plain, but they are in the Eastern Province and the Northern Province respectively, and two of them are in the Kingdom of Rada.

"Was it an accident, or...? Looks like I need to find a way to urge them on quickly." Of course, not to urge someone to investigate, but to urge another dragon to take over, and then this matter would have nothing to do with him anymore.

Chapter 49 The Dragon's Self-Cultivation

Dragon Castle. A colossal white dragon coils within the hall, a small round pair of glasses perched on its nose, holding a book written in dragon language. Its title is... *The Dragon's Self-Cultivation*.

"Steps for handling problems you can't solve," the dragon claw hooked the page and turned to the second page. "First, cover it up and pretend nothing happened; second, if something has already happened, claim it's not a big problem and nothing needs to be done."

“That makes sense…” The sharp claws rubbed against the pale dragon scales, creating a spark.

The third step is that if the problem has become unmanageable, it means that there is nothing we can do now. The fourth step means that we should have done something in the beginning, but it is too late.

"The perfect workplace manual~" Bai Long nodded. For dragons, this four-step civil servant process is very suitable, because no short-lived species can outlive these big lizards. As long as they live longer than other insiders, who knows that it was he who initially suggested that he didn't need to do anything?

Unless it's a real apocalypse—something that even dragons can't sleep over—most short-lived species will be fooled by the dragon's four-step process, believing that these large lizards are qualified and loyal seal guardians. They don't even consider that if dragons were truly reliable, where would so many "accidentally broken" seals come from in the world?

In addition to the four-step process, there are also many wonderful techniques summarized by the dragon ancestors, such as "Dragon Language Long and Difficult Sentences" and "Making a Statement Without Making One's Own Statement," on how to shirk responsibility and get away from various things without losing a penny of reward. These have formed a set of books that even the lazy dragons would read in their nests.

It is said that as long as one masters this technique, not only will one be very successful as a dragon, but one will also be very successful as a court minister in a human kingdom, and will even be rewarded upon leaving office. It must be said that although this seems a bit unreliable, compared to the court nobles of previous and current eras, these dragons can truly be called "professionals with excellent skills".

Because they really do nothing, like perfect wallpaperers, able to please the king and fool all kinds of nobles. As for the wallpaper being torn by the wind and rain... what does that have to do with my dragon race?

"So, now it's time for the second step: declare that there's no major problem and nothing needs to be done." The white dragon put down the "Guiding Light," took flight, and circled the royal city once. A brand-new dragon language barrier covered it, restoring the seven seals and keeping all humans who approached them outside.

"Now that something has gone wrong, we can perfectly shift the blame." The white dragon landed back on the castle. It would be best if those human mages tried to break and attack its barrier again. Then, if something went wrong later, there would be evidence that the dragon race, as the guardians of the seal, had done its best to deal with "a small problem," but couldn't withstand someone sabotaging it.

Then it's just a matter of waiting for humans or other short-lived races to choose a "hero" to handle the problem. If they fail, it doesn't matter. With the dragon's lifespan and vitality, as long as it's not the end of the world, they can always wait for a "qualified hero." Then they'll jump out and proceed to the fourth step, claiming that they should have done something back then. They'll then guide the hero and finally use the guise of a test to take advantage of the situation.

In this way, they gain popularity, credit, shirk responsibility, and reap benefits without undertaking any substantial work.

However, just as the white dragon was conjuring up this perfect plan and tucked its head under its wing, "crack!" countless tiny cracks appeared on the second seal. The cracks spread outwards from the barrier at an alarming speed. Although it did not shatter on the spot, it was clear that it would not last long.

The Seven Secrets Sealing Ritual does not require breaking all of them; only a portion needs to be broken. The remaining sealing pressure will be transferred to other nodes for distribution. Even if the other nodes have design redundancy, after so many years, no one can say for sure how much redundancy remains.

Some of the secret ritual nodes that have less redundancy or have already been partially destroyed will be further damaged and collapse under the sudden increase in pressure, such as the secret ritual node located in the underground layer of the Black Abyss Tomb.

Undead do not possess the emotion or concept of greed. When both fortresses fall and the surrounding area is completely overrun, the secret sealing ritual node located in the lower level of the Black Abyss Tomb can no longer obtain enough [Greed] sin magic power.

The ancient ritual array had dimmed by nearly two-thirds, and the rune discs made of adamantite at its edges were corroding and cracking at an alarming rate, with fine adamantite dust constantly falling from above.

Deathwhisper Fortress: The human legion finally arrived beneath this former fortress and launched an attack. The attack began from the gentle slope on the west side of the fortress. Since there was no moat, Viscount Carius adopted the simplest plan: using siege engines to attack the gates. After smashing the gates open, the entire army stormed in.

"Whoosh~" The fire pot swept across the sky and slammed into the low western section of the city wall. Flames spread. The western side of Deathwhisper Fortress was a gentle slope with low walls and few weapons. Compared to the high walls and deep moats of the eastern and northern sections, it could be called an easy difficulty.

Even so, when the infantry and mercenaries charged forward, they were met with an unexpected barrage of arrows and magical attacks. The smoky gray crystals that filled every area of ​​the fortress provided the necromancers with an almost inexhaustible supply of reinforcements and death magic.

"Boom!" A battering ram, as thick as several men could hug, slammed into the city gate, tearing a crack in the gate made of anti-magic metal. "Quick, keep pushing!" The soldiers below pulled the winch to lift the giant ram, but green flames fell from the city gate like a waterfall. The moment they touched the flames, the human soldiers turned into ghoul-like monsters and scattered.

"Hmm~" Livia, on a small hill in the distance, looked at the stalemate in the battle. She seemed to think for a moment. A gust of wind came from somewhere and blew her light golden hair. Her skirt, embroidered with golden runes, fluttered in the wind. She clenched her small hands and swung them backward. The battering ram in the distance swung backward suddenly without anyone operating it. It even broke free from the constraints of the tripod and floated in mid-air.

"Heave-ho!" The little fist swung forward with force, "Bang!!!" With a deafening roar, the two sturdy doors flew backward, sliding several meters down the street, smashing the undead skeleton behind the doors into a pile of fragments.

"..." Vivi stared blankly at Livia's little fist. What kind of monster is this girl? Operating a siege hammer from such a distance is not an inconceivable thing for someone of her Gold rank. However, that last strike also meant that she had output such a large amount of magic power, but there was no sense of wind or earth element depletion in the air.

It felt more like the battering ram had come to life and then slammed its full force into the city gate. "Livia, aren't we a bit too close to the battlefield?!" Leslie, who had helped Livia draw a magic circle consisting of three rings on the ground, was somewhat worried. They were indeed a bit too close to the front lines of the war. If the ballistae on the city walls wanted to fire, they could easily reach Roach and his men.

“Don’t worry,” Livia patted Leslie’s head. “Ah~ I’m exhausted. Is this the last bottle?” The fairy flew over with an empty crystal bottle and took a cookie from the little witch’s palm.

"I've finished mine too..." Roach showed up carrying a large pile of processed life essences. "So, what exactly are you planning to do?"

"Hmm," the little witch watched as Luo Qi fell into deep thought, seemingly reassessing his intelligence. After a while, the witch explained "soul guiding" this time.

“Soul summoning!!!? This isn’t a forbidden demon…” Before Weiwei could finish speaking, she felt a shiver run through her body. The black horse grazing on the edge of the earthen slope gave her a kind smile.

"Uh... I don't know anything," Vivi wisely admitted that she knew nothing, in order to avoid becoming the first person to fall victim to the Soul Ritual.

Life essence was infused into the outer magic ring, emitting an aura strong enough to attract any soul. A light green halo shot towards the sky, spreading in all directions into countless streams of green light. A large number of complete souls and soul fragments followed the streams of light toward Livia, and were then grabbed and dragged into the magic circle by an unknown force.

The second layer of the magic circle lit up, responsible for stripping away and discarding the consciousness and memories of these souls, leaving only the pure soul essence, which eventually converged in the center of the third layer of the magic circle, turning into silver-white soul fire poured into the crystal bottle.

The little witch reached into the ever-expanding ball of soul fire as if scooping out jelly, quickly kneading it in her palm into a dreamlike, silvery-white bubble. The bubble continued to expand until it enveloped the entire mound, the extracted soul magic flowing into its interior.

"Higher Soul Ritual? Is it the Phantom Legion or something?!" The fairy looked curiously at the soul magic permeating the bubble.

Compared to the summoned creatures of hell mages or the soul-bound corpses crafted by necromancers, the summoned creatures of soul sorcerers can only be used within such a pre-defined battlefield. However, as long as they are within this area, the heroic spirits or soul warriors they summon are endless and immortal.

Essentially, it's just a real illusion projected by soul magic. Even the internal space is distorted by magic, forming a battlefield with a one-sided advantage. Since this battlefield can be maintained by a magic circle, soul mages are basically invincible when fighting in their own pre-set positions, except... when they encounter something like a mystic mage.

The reason is what Luo Qi was doing. He took out the Soul Essence Extraction Tool and catalyst and started to produce a large amount of Soul Essence Essence, which was also the task assigned to him by the Little Witch.

Drops of the soul essence fell into the container below the tool, transforming from ethereal mist into a slightly solidified liquid. Ultimately, under the action of a catalyst, it formed a solid resembling white amber, and the irregularly shaped "white amber" quickly accumulated into a thick layer.

The soul magic within the spherical space became incredibly thin, and eventually the entire spherical bubble collapsed. The remaining soul magic was pressed back into the bottle by the little witch, turning into a faint wisp of soul fire.

"Miss Livia, you created so many Soul Sources...."

"Materials~" the witch explained, but not too much. These were materials she had prepared for the upcoming activation of the armor and her travel plans, and of course, materials for repairing her companions.

"If your souls fly out, I'll help you repair them." The witch meant that if these companions, or rather, pets and apprentices, were on the verge of death, their soul essence amber could be used as a substitute for "Soul Silk Jade" before their souls completely left their bodies.

In the study of souls, the soul threads refer to the three filamentous light bands that connect the soul and the body. If one of them breaks, a phenomenon similar to ALS will occur, with the soul and body gradually becoming disconnected. If two threads break, the person will become a vegetable, and if all three threads break, the person will die.

Even if the soul leaves the body, as long as the longest thread connecting them remains intact, it cannot be called death. At most, it would just mean that the "thoughts" and "body" have both been severed, leaving the person in a vegetative state, unable to think or feel anything.