Like the first breeze of early spring brushing across frozen soil, like the tremor of a seed breaking through its hard shell, or like the crisp freshness of Moon-Silver Wood sprouting its leaves under the moonlight.
“Moon-Silver Wood?” Tiechui stood up abruptly, her head nearly colliding with the tunnel ceiling.
“That's impossible! All the Moon-Silver Wood has been corrupted, its vitality buried by the curse. How could the scent of Moon-Silver Wood appear?!”
Yet that scent grew clearer and clearer, seeping down through the cracks in the rock layers. It carried a heart-trembling purity, indicating that a vast area was continuously releasing massive amounts of vitality.
“Someone is purifying them...” Tongque's voice trembled. “And on a massive scale... Look.”
She held up a palm-sized brass instrument. It was a Portable Magic Environment Detector she had bought during her internship, capable of measuring elemental activity and magical stability in the air.
The crystal needle on the dial was twitching wildly, sinking all the way from deep red before finally settling in the light green zone.
This indicated that the magical environment in this area was basically stable.
The Cursed Forest was a well-known corrupted wasteland. Its magical environment had long been in chaos, and its elemental activity was at least twice as weak as the outside world.
The needle hadn't dropped below the red zone once during their journey, but now, the magical environment in this area had actually stabilized!
On this continent, those capable of soothing the magical environment and purifying corrupted creatures...
Tiechui's breathing quickened. The Topaz Trading Company and the Path of the Silver Moon had always maintained a secret cooperation, which was an open secret within the trading company.
The core members of the Path of the Silver Moon were mostly witches. They had their own strongholds, intelligence networks, and supply channels.
Although goblins did not directly participate in the activities of the Path of the Silver Moon, they provided its members with supplies, intelligence, and safe passage.
In return, the witches would help the goblins brew rare magic potions, and the magical plants they cultivated often fetched high prices in human society.
Unfortunately, the witches of the Path of the Silver Moon were getting old, and newly discovered witches were becoming increasingly rare.
Without inheritance, it was difficult for newly awakened witches to reach their predecessors' heights.
The goblins could only witness the witches' plight, powerless to help.
“Maybe it's someone from the Path of the Silver Moon.” Tiechui gripped the control joystick tightly.
“Or... a newly awakened witch? Damn it, how is she supposed to survive in a corrupted wasteland! We have to help. The sun is about to rise, and she'll be overwhelmed by those damn corrupted creatures!”
“Sis, calm down.” Tongque quickly grabbed her sister's sleeve. “We're just rookie merchants. According to the regulations, if we encounter a situation beyond our mission scope, we should immediately turn back and report it to the guild. What if the person up there is a crazed witch, or if it's some kind of trap...”
“But what if it's a little witch in need of help?”
Tiechui interrupted her with a serious expression, her brown eyes burning with a light Tongque knew all too well. Her sister always made this face whenever she decided to do something that would invite trouble.
Tongque sighed helplessly. There was nothing she could do; this was her twin sister, so she could only cooperate.
Tiechui had already changed the direction of the tunneling machine, her voice ringing with conviction. “Don't you want to personally rescue a poor little witch who's in trouble?!”
“I do...” Tongque muttered under her breath as she pulled out the multi-barrel pistol from her waist to check its ammunition, “but I'd rather stay alive to collect our commission.”
However, the tunneling machine was already roaring as it changed direction, heading toward the area with the most active magic. Its runic drill bits spun furiously, grinding the rock layers and decaying tree roots into powder.
Although Tiechui had a heroic heart, she wasn't so reckless as to drill straight out of the ground where the elemental disturbance was most intense.
They stopped slightly on the outskirts, preparing to ascend to the surface.
“If anything goes wrong, I will pull you back underground immediately.”
Tongque warned Tiechui solemnly right before they ascended, “Preserving our own lives is more important than being hot-headed.”
“Understood.” Tiechui wasn't good with firearms, but she was excellent at hand-to-hand combat. She gripped a matching weapon tightly in her hand.
The tunneling machine stopped running. Above their heads, only a layer of soil less than ten centimeters thick remained.
Tiechui made a gesture, and both sisters simultaneously activated the 【Vital Signs Masker】 on their chests.
This was one of the dwarves' proudest masterpieces, capable of completely masking the user's presence and magical fluctuations for a short time, making them appear like two ordinary stones.
Tiechui carefully pushed the 【Periscope Probe】 through the soil. The brass tube, tipped with a multi-faceted cut crystal lens, silently broke through the surface, projecting the scene above onto the crystal screen in their hands via refraction.
Tongque took one look and nearly bit her tongue.
“By the Earth Mother...”
The image on the crystal screen looked as if hell itself had been transported to the surface.
Under the pale sunlight, grayish-black corrupted creatures surged like a tide from all directions toward a single center.
Tiechui even saw a 【Stitched Abomination】 that should have been sleeping deep within the forest. It was a massive monster cobbled together from countless corpses, and each one possessed the power to destroy a small town!
And at the center of the vortex stood a young witch wearing a black robe.
Her black hair danced in the polluted air as if it had a life of its own, and every wave of her raised hands was accompanied by the angry roar of the elements.
Most terrifying of all was the expression in her eyes—there was no fear, no anger, but instead a near-innocent delight.
Everything before her seemed to be nothing more than a satisfying, exhilarating game.
That was no fragile little witch like they had imagined; that was a humanoid spell battery!
Tiechui watched as the witch raised her hand to summon an Earth Wall to block the pounce of a corrupted giant bear. The deafening crash of the two-meter-tall bear slamming into the Earth Wall made the crystal screen tremble.
Yet the witch simply retaliated by blasting a Fireball precisely into the bear's wide-open, bloody maw, the shockwave of the explosion whipping her robe back and forth.
She even had the time, in the brief intervals between spells, to pull something from her pocket and stuff it into her mouth. The movement was so casual it looked like she was snacking on afternoon tea biscuits!
“Is she really a witch...” Tongque stared dumbfounded, her voice dry. “Even the bravest beastkin warriors can't go to this extent... and she looks so pleased.”
As if to prove her words, the witch suddenly stopped casting spells.
Standing in the middle of a battlefield of corpses and blood, she dragged a Moon-Silver Wood Bed radiating a silvery glow out of thin air, and then—
She lay down!
Those corrupted creatures, capable of tearing steel apart, had been like weeds in a wheat field before her, harvested swath by swath.
“Is she crazy?” Tiechui's grayish face began to turn green. “That's a Moon-Silver Wood Bed! Precious Moon-Silver Wood! And she just threw it right into the rotting blood like that?”
“That's not the point!”
Tongque slapped her hand over her sister's mouth, because the witch had suddenly turned to look directly in their direction.
Through the lens and projection of the Periscope Probe, those eyes locked straight onto their hiding spot.
The corner of the witch's mouth curved upward as she raised her hand, a Fireball condensing in her palm.
Rate on N.U.
