Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 232: Chaos

Thunder detonated across the sky. Forked lightning laced the clouds, bleaching the writhing sea of trees a ghostly white before it sank back into deeper darkness.After leaving the theory-building sector and crossing a stone path, Lucia entered one of the beast-pen zones, the Verdant Woodland.

As the only place on the Eastern Continent devoted to breeding and cultivating magibeasts, Beast Spirit College sprawled on a scale that defied belief. From an airship it would look like a vast open world of stitched biomes—forest, snowpeaks, lava fields, great lakes, plains—coexisting under layered arrays. The teaching blocks students frequented were only the tip of the iceberg near the entrance.

That breadth of ground was a point of pride for Beast Spirit College students in ordinary times. For Lucia right now, it was only trouble. The Hall of Truth, the core of the barrier, sat at the very center of the college, deep within the pens. To reach it, she had to cross this magibeast-thick woodland first. The way there was unexpectedly long.

Glow-moss dotted the forest floor here and there, giving her a little light. She advanced at a cautious, steady pace. Midway through, a cultist tried to ambush her. She twisted and drove a blade through him.

Like the one she had killed before, his power clearly came from a Benediction. Unlike the first, this one carried several metal canisters etched with spellwork, some kind of alchemical device.

After checking what was inside, her heart went cold. She dimly understood the cultists’ aim.

Nine times out of ten these held Frenzy Toxin, the signature poison favored by the Witch Cult’s top target, Bazel Geiss. With so many alchemical canisters of concentrated miasma on their persons, slipped into the beast-pen zones, she did not dare follow the chain of consequences to the end.

Given how many magibeasts Beast Spirit College kept, once a mad beast tide formed it would be a catastrophe not only for District Four but for the entire City of Truth.

She quickened her pace through the Verdant Woodland and, at last, saw the Hall of Truth on a plain ahead.

Great pillars ringed the hall, and the torches of knowledge and guardianship burned atop them, lighting the forecourt. She could make out a few figures—people and contract beasts—while many more lay fallen, part of the devastation.

The faculty member on duty at the Hall of Truth tonight was a department chair from Beast Spirit College named Korf Hunter, a well-kept, handsome man in a steel-blue robe with long brown hair. A touch of elf blood tipped his ears to a subtle point: a not-so-obvious half-elf.

Korf was an Archmage with ten thousand mana, both a beastmaster and a storm-caller. Among the Academy of Truth’s department heads and professors he ranked near the top in combat strength.

Even so, he looked a bit worse for wear now, robe scorched and torn. He was facing not one but two opponents of Archmage level. Two fists could not beat four hands. He felt it was already something that he had held this long against these cultists.

Lightning fanned out. Fire rolled. One after another, mushroom blooms rose from the plain, ripping turf and sending clods flying. The Hall of Truth beside them flashed again and again, as if even the barrier trembled on the brink.

Outside the city there were no restraints. Both sides went all out. Korf’s high-rank contract beasts did not dare approach lightly. They could only watch their master become a bolt of lightning skimming the night, colliding with the two cultists like falling stars, flinging showers of elemental radiance.

After a long exchange, they broke off. Korf dropped beside a pillar before the hall, his breath ragged. A high-rank magibeast, a cloud falcon, landed in front of him to guard him.

An urgent voice sounded nearby. He turned to see an on-duty instructor running up.

“Director Hunter, the college is under attack by an unknown force. What happened? The barrier’s permissions were changed and comms are down. The Committee has taken heavy casualties.”

“Someone entered the hall,” Korf said, his voice low.

He did not have the full picture either. He had been circling the pens outside when an alarm tripped: an intruder in the Hall of Truth, and the defense array breached. He rushed back. He might have caught the intruder, but cultists had been lying in wait at the edge of campus. The instant the permissions changed, they poured in. With two powerhouse cultists appearing, he had to focus on the fight before him and the mastermind slipped away.

He bore a share of fault as well. Strictly speaking he should have stayed in the Hall from start to finish. But after decades of night duty, there was hardly a chair or professor in any division who did not slip out for a stroll or pass the time with a hand of cards. He was no different. Long peace had bred slackness, and tonight it bore bitter fruit.

“With comms cut, the Sky Realm should notice the anomaly here soon. Your priority is to preserve strength and wait calmly for support,” Korf said, glancing at the other instructors and Committee members.

It was a tonic. The edge of panic dulled, and they turned back to the fight.

Lucia was among them. She was one of the few Committee members who could help. Though only a beginner Magic Swordsman, she more than handled mid-tier cultists. Ordinarily, fighting above her weight like this would have drawn eyes, but no one was looking at her now. With life and death at stake, everyone was wholly focused.

A few minutes into the battle, a bestial roar rolled in from far off, riding the night breeze. It carried a brutal will and came from the dark’s horizon, like an ancient fiend waking and spilling boundless miasma over the mortal world.

“Daedalus.” Korf blurted the name, face gone pale.

He recalled two known traits of the Witch Cult’s Frenzy Toxin. First, the poisoned would not attack the poisoned. They clustered together instead. Second, the weaker the soul, the stronger the effect. Daedalus, like all Terrorclaws, had a naturally weak spirit and low intellect. It lacked any defense against the miasma. If it was poisoned, its madness would be worse.

As the festival’s core spectacle, Daedalus operated in the Storm Gorge sector with steady caretakers on hand. Given the situation, those caretakers were likely in dire straits.

“Director, do you think the surprise ends with Daedalus?” A languid female voice rose, soft and mocking, drawing every eye.

Lucia lifted her face. On a torchlit pillar before the hall, a figure in academy uniform with a Committee armband stepped from the night.

She was a slender girl with ink-black hair. Playful gray eyes reflected the crowd’s shock. Seeing this girl—clearly Witch Cult as well—Lucia’s expression flickered. For a heartbeat she wondered if she was dreaming.

Flami Frost.

Yet Flami’s look was utterly unfamiliar. She often smiled, yes, but it used to be cute and harmless, the smile of a bystander who liked watching the show. Now the smile brimmed with mockery and malice, a wicked siren sowing chaos. The truth of it was plain.

“You— who are you, really?” Korf locked his gaze on her. He recognized the fugitive mastermind.

“You can call me Flami Frost. Or Bazel Geiss. Both identities have run their course. Take your pick,” Flami said with a lilting smile.

Her eyes swept the field. The instant her gaze met Lucia’s, her smile froze—barely, almost imperceptibly—then slipped away. She turned to the two black-robed Archmagi and her tone cooled. “Alright. Withdraw.”

“Leave? What do you think this place is?” Korf snapped, lightning surging around him.

“Is that so?” Flami flicked him a glance. In truth she was a high-tier swordsman, a continent-class powerhouse, but not Korf’s match. For some reason she carried absolute poise. She laughed lightly. “Director, I suggest you run. What happens next is not something your little group can handle.”

As if to prove her point, a suffocating tide of sound rose from the far edge of the plain, from the Verdant Woodland—roars, shrieks, the thunder of a stampede, rolling nearer.

The ground began to tremble, louder even than the thunder.

Watching Flami’s smile, Korf did not need her answer. He understood in an instant what was coming.

It was not just the alchemical war-beast Daedalus that had gone mad. It was the tens of thousands of magibeasts kept by Beast Spirit College. They should have paraded as merchandise in the Beast Parade, the festival’s greatest draw. Now they would become a raging beast tide, destroying everything.

Lightning branched wildly across the night, stark light laying the herds bare.

“Everyone, get out of here,” Korf shouted. In truth, he did not need to. The will to fight was gone. People broke and ran.

Some panicked Committee members even plunged into the cultists’ ranks, fleeing shoulder to shoulder toward the campus entrance.

Lucia ran too, dazed at first, swept by the flow. A few steps later she fixed on Flami and her mind cleared. She sprinted straight after her, blade sheathing itself in red heat.

“Wait. Stop right there.” She shouted as she chased. The two plunged into the Verdant Woodland one after the other.

“At a time like this, you’re not running for your life. You want to chat?” Flami said without looking back. She drew her sword too, not to counter but to cut a path. A fusion of wind and shadow rippled from her edge, hidden waves of force that sliced several wind-beak eagles in half, feathers flying.

Lucia followed close, her sword hand shaking, not from exhaustion or fear but from a fury beyond words.

Back in Sanggren Village she had had no real friends. Yvette had been her friend for a short while, then became someone she revered. In her sixteen years there were only two she could truly call friends, Anya and Flami. No wonder she felt so bitter and angry now, like a fool strung along by the same person without guessing a thing.

She said nothing and overclocked her combat art, turning into a streak of fire. She caught Flami.

Flami spun, surprised, and brought her blade down. Blue and red light crashed together in a flash that stabbed the eyes.

“You can fight like this?” This time Flami was truly shocked. She had five thousand mana and the pressure to match. Against a beginner Magic Swordsman like Lucia, she should have ended it in a heartbeat.

It could not just be talent. What sword art was this?

Lucia did not answer. She struck in anger. In seconds they traded more than a dozen moves, steel clattering like rain on plantain leaves.

They broke apart again for a heartbeat. Lucia’s voice was low and husky. “Why did you join the Witch Cult?”

“I have always been Witch Cult,” Flami said, face blank.

“Since… when?”

“Since I was born.” Flami did not know why she answered. She had not meant to. But looking at the loneliness in Lucia’s eyes, she answered anyway.

“Why did you approach me?” Lucia asked again.

“Why ask so much?” Flami said coldly. She thought, it was not that the question could not be answered. But an answer would look like an explanation, and better no explanation at all.

Lucia was a Disciplinary Committee member of the Academy of Truth. Flami was an Evernight Apostle of the Witch Cult. Light and dark, water and fire. Since the bond was spent, better to sever what remained. Then her sword could be quicker and colder when it fell.

A moment later the beast tide’s rumble swelled. Flami’s heart skipped. Like Lucia, her mana was nearly gone. The mission had already cost her heavily, and now she had little left. If she stayed, whether or not she killed Lucia, she herself would not last.

“I have no time to waste with you. Anyone who blocks my escape dies. If you don’t want to die, don’t follow,” she threw over her shoulder, then fled again toward the edge of campus.

She had permission to pass the Truth Barrier. Once she was out, the trapped teachers and students inside would be swallowed by the tide without her lifting a hand. Even if some clung to life, it did not matter. The Evernight Matron’s order was to let Daedalus and the beast tide break the barrier, pour into District Four, and unleash devastation. As long as that goal was met, everything else was secondary.