Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 241: Night Raid and Benediction

As night deepened, the Lucky Coin Inn finally sank into a sleep-like stillness, broken only by the occasional bark drifting in from distant alleys.In the cheapest little room on the second floor, the oil lamp had long since gone out; only cool moonlight slipped through the window, laying a small square of glow upon the rough floorboards.

Ezra Yarrow stood by the window, quietly watching outside, when he heard his sister behind him say, “Brother, why aren’t you sleeping yet?”

Ezra turned; seeing Aina poke her head out from the covers, he thought a moment and reassured her, “You sleep first. I’ll keep watch.”

“Do we still need to keep watch now?” Aina asked, puzzled. “Holko and the others have already been driven off, haven’t they?”

When they fled Lute Village earlier, their father, Old Yarrow, drew the pursuers away, giving the two of them a chance to breathe. But with no money—and fearing ambushes on the road to Adelock—they took the long way around and camped rough in the wilds outside the city for a day, hence the need to take turns on watch.

But this was a high-end inn in the Middle District; patrolmen with hounds even walked the nearby streets. She felt there was no need to push themselves so hard anymore.

“I’m afraid Holko and his two won’t let it go—and they rely on an Eldritch God. Who knows what secret methods they have.” Ezra spoke. He looked barely past ten, thin and small in patched clothes, yet his gaze was unexpectedly steady.

Right… an Eldritch God. Aina grew uneasy as well. “Then, Brother, let me take a turn for you.”

“No need. I’m not sleepy yet.” Ezra glanced over and smiled—but just then, his sister’s expression suddenly turned to sheer terror.

“What is it?” Ezra asked, instinctively confused. At that moment, his peripheral vision caught an extra shadow cast across the patch of moonlight on the floor—its outline much like a human torso.

Someone was outside the window!

But this was the second floor!

In an instant, a chill of dread surged up Ezra’s spine. He snapped his head around and saw Toby—one of the three from earlier—sprawled against their window, eyes gleaming with excited malice as he stared in at the two of them.

A heartbeat later, the window flew inward with a brutal kick. Ezra rolled aside to dodge, ready to shout for help—only to see Toby clamp a hand around Aina’s throat. “Ezra,” he said, “if you don’t want your sister to die right now, I suggest you behave.”

Ezra’s urge to cry out froze in his throat. Staring at Toby, he forced down the panic and snapped, “Toby, what are you doing?! Those two ladies are right upstairs. One shout and they’ll be here!”

“Heh. Keep dreaming. Their end tonight will be no different from yours,” Toby sneered.

He was a young man with a knife-scar on his face. Back in Lute Village he had some personal grudge with the siblings’ father, Old Yarrow—caught stealing, he’d been thrashed by Old Yarrow several times. So when it came to hunting down the Yarrow family, he volunteered to the priest and joined Holko and Red Hammer in taking the job.

Then, before Ezra could say more, Toby’s body swelled, his size ballooning by at least a third; his head nearly brushed the ceiling. He showed off, “See that, Ezra? This is the power our god just bestowed. I’m stronger than ever!”

So the Eldritch God had granted them even more power—realizing that, Ezra felt his heart plunge into ice.

Over dinner, he had learned from Sister Lucia that the two were students from the legendary Academy of Truth—either prodigies from the common folk or scions of great houses.

That explained why they were young, strong, and compassionate. But when it came to an Eldritch God, they were no different from ordinary people—unless they had church backing.

Now the cultists had received greater power, clearly tailored for this operation—didn’t that mean the two ladies upstairs might not even be able to protect themselves, let alone save them?

At the thought, Ezra strained to listen—but heard nothing.

Opposite him, Toby was unconcerned. He took out a length of rope, planning to tie up the siblings and then go upstairs to take a look. In this round of Benedictions, Red Hammer had gained a sleep-inducing poison mist and a single-use reserve of extra mana. Used properly, they could quietly subdue those two girls who had ruined their plans and sack them out of the city.

Thinking of the red-haired one with the pretty, delicate face, Toby’s mind wandered to lurid places. As for the chestnut short-haired girl—well, her face was plainer, but still quite nice, with a still-water calm that suited a connoisseur like him who appreciated inner qualities.

Lost in such thoughts, he let out a lecherous chuckle and neatly trussed up Ezra and Aina. But just as he was about to leave the room and haul his two little trophies upstairs, the door creaked open on its own.

Toby started and turned—only to gape wider. Ezra and Aina, bound like caterpillars, noticed his odd reaction, wriggled twice, craned their necks, and were just as stunned to see a dense sphere woven from countless emerald vines hanging in the corridor. Through the gaps they could clearly see Holko and Red Hammer inside, bound tight with rags stuffed in their mouths.

What was this?

After a few seconds of stupefaction, Ezra and Aina quickly guessed with delight that Holko and Red Hammer had been captured. Toby, however, clearly couldn’t accept it yet. He shouted, “Holko, what the hell are you two doing?”

Inside the vine-woven sphere, the immobilized Holko and Red Hammer looked terrified and bewildered, as if still reeling from a massive shock. Their mouths were gagged; they blinked hard, as though signaling—but what, Toby couldn’t tell at all.

Next, the two girls from earlier appeared at the door. Both wore white sleep-robes; the red-haired one’s expression was severe, oppressive, while the chestnut short-haired one kept yawning, looking very drowsy.

Without the slightest hesitation, Toby turned and vanished out the window.

He didn’t know what had happened, but even a fool could see Holko and Red Hammer had failed. Those two girls were deeper and more unfathomable than they’d imagined; even Holko and Red Hammer, empowered with stronger Benedictions, had been silently taken down!

He had to leave at once. Only the priest could give him any sense of safety now!

Uneasy, he dropped from the second floor into the alley outside. But before he could sprint off, vines came from who knew where, snapped around his legs, and yanked him hard into the air!

“Get off!” Toby struggled wildly—only to find that even with his Benediction-strengthened body and superhuman force fueled by mana, he couldn’t do a thing to these vines, as feeble as a child trying to snap a chain.

And so, within seconds, he could only watch as he too was bound up tight, hog-tied, becoming one more prisoner to be hauled inside.

In the second-floor room, with the soundless writhing of the vines, the three cultists’ figures quickly vanished—the vines conveyed them upstairs, to Yvette and Lucia’s room.

After finishing all this, Yvette glanced into the room; Lucia was untying Ezra and Aina. Newly freed, the siblings were clearly still stunned by what had happened. After several seconds they exhaled in relief, then thanked Yvette again, excited and grateful for having their lives saved once more.

They’d been on the brink of despair—Toby had looked so confident, as if everything were in the bag. Who could have thought he’d just been bluffing!

Of everyone present, only Lucia could truly read the situation. She could feel the three cultists had indeed grown much stronger—not only a rise in magic level, but more importantly, a grasp of strange new abilities. Unfortunately for them, they’d run into her teacher. That was just their bad luck.

“All right. It’s over. Get back to sleep,” Yvette told the siblings. Her tone was as even as ever, yet it carried a curious power that soothed.

Afterwards, back upstairs, Lucia looked at the three cultists bound by vines against the wall and asked, “Teacher, how should we handle them? Want me to interrogate them?”

Yvette shook her head. If she wanted information, she only needed to reclaim those spiritual fragments. She could also obtain it by devouring their memory cores, of course, but that would waste precious Aberrant Mana.

What interested her most was the Eldritch Benedictions on the three of them.

In the past, she’d encountered cultists of the Witch Cult who had received Benedictions, but at the time she hadn’t known what Benedictions were. Only after turning them over to the Disciplinary Committee had she learned of this power-granting method. Now, meeting Benediction power for the second time, she intended to study it properly.

“Just knock them out,” Yvette said.

Lucia was a little puzzled, but obeyed. After she knocked all three cultists out, she saw one of her teacher’s hairs suddenly lengthen, turn black, and become an inky filament that pierced into one cultist’s body.

This was Yvette using devouring to seek the source of the cultist’s power—the so-called Benediction.

The probing wasn’t long—if anything, it was quick. Soon she found a strange gray light-sphere on one side of the cultist’s chest. The material of the sphere’s outer layer was peculiar, as if a shell forged from faith-element essence. Within, a complex structure of countless minute runes were constantly arising and vanishing, rotating and colliding in a pattern beyond comprehension, radiating ominous waves of power.

She didn’t rush to remove it. Instead, Yvette gathered her mind and made contact with the mysterious sphere.

However, the instant her psyche touched the shell, a chaotic mental force burst forth and struck at her—a mental attack of the mind-corrosion kind.

It reminded her of Adelock two centuries ago, when she and Moga had encountered a cultist. Before that cultist died, an invisible eye had launched a mental corrosion at Moga—what the churches called Eldritch corruption.

So now, could that invisible eye have been the Eye of Omniscience?

With that thought, discomfort prickled through her spirit-body, and she frowned.

Mental shock like this was the sort that hurts a thousand enemies at the cost of eight hundred of your own—two people ramming together; even if you knock the other down, you won’t feel great yourself. Yvette’s spirit-body was strong enough, but against such a vicious assault, even if she wouldn’t be harmed, it was deeply unpleasant.

So she immediately prepared to hurl a mental shock of her own at the sphere in reply.

But before she could act, the gray sphere suddenly dimmed, becoming like a dead thing. The power within vanished entirely, leaving only a husk crafted from faith-element essence.

So—did they just hang up?

Yvette was a little taken aback. She hadn’t even figured out whether that mental strike had been an automatic response from the Eldritch God or a deliberate assault when the other end cut the link. Either way, hitting her and running was too much. She made a note of it—next time an opportunity came, she’d make sure to hit that god back, hard.

After that, she used her Shadow’s Touch to devour and deconstruct the gray orb, now dim and emptied of power, and drew several basic conclusions.

First: to use Benediction power, one must hold sufficiently devout faith in the deity who grants it—that is the key that activates it. Should your devotion wane one day, the power will naturally close off.

Second: the Benediction itself is the Eldritch God’s mental feeler—both a vessel for its rituals and a power that can be switched on and off remotely. In other words, even if you are devout, should you unknowingly displease the god, your power can be stripped at any time.

What shocked Yvette most, however, was the mana structure within, wrapped by a faith-element shell on the outside. After devouring it, she discovered the inner keystone of the Benediction’s power was not ordinary mana at all, but—Aberrant Mana!

Yes—Aberrant Mana. After completing the devouring, she had even directly increased her own Aberrant Mana. Only by a few dozen points, but unmistakably.

But why would the core keystone of a god-wrought Benediction be Aberrant Mana? Where did they get their Aberrant Mana?

Wait—A sudden insight flickered through Yvette. Aberrant Mana was harvested from aberrant entities, yes, but in essence she converted aberrant factors into it using her own devouring ability.

So the aberrant factor and Aberrant Mana aren’t inherently linked?

Is Aberrant Mana itself, in fact, a power exclusive to the realm of godhood?