CHAPTER 59: FIGHTING THE WITCH

"She was an adventurer who used to travel alongside her husband. They’d always return with some spoils from their adventures, and even the baron liked them."

"But one month ago, she’d returned alone in a miserable state. After saving her life, she told us that she had found an unexplored dungeon and decided to explore it with her husband. Unfortunately, they underestimated it, and her husband died to let her run from what she said had happened."

The guard suddenly bit his lower lip: "We found a strange black book in her bag. She almost lost her mind when we tried to open it, forcing us to leave that book. I thought that it was something left by her husband, but I should have suspected that book sooner."

’Oh, it might be how she learned black magic.’ Dante and Elizabeth thought in unison, understanding where the story was going.

The guard continued: "After that incident, my sister isolated herself and stopped meeting people. But at night, she’d always go into the forest and return with dark circles under her eyes. Then all of a sudden, the villagers began to disappear mysteriously."

The next second, the guard stood up and grabbed a few papers from a nearby box.

On these papers were the drawings of chaotic, red runic formations and animal heads placed on them.

"Someday, I decided to follow her into the forest, and there I saw her in a cave, dancing around animal corpses and blood formations, and I saw an unconscious woman in the middle of that cursed formation."

"Was that when you made that quest?" Dante asked.

The guard nodded with a dark expression: "Yes... I was so scared and didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I told several trusted people and they agreed that it was safer to get mercenaries to end this."

’What’s the point of being a guard then? What if no one accepted the quest? Would he just leave that bitch kidnap more people?’ Dante wondered inwardly, but his expression was still indifferent.

Maybe the guard simply couldn’t convince himself or anyone from this village to kill his own sister, and maybe he was truly scared of the consequences of fighting someone that used black magic. Regardless, Dante was getting paid to end this job, so that wasn’t his problem.

The next moment, the guard told them about the cave he had seen and where his sister lived before leaving them alone in the house, returning to the edge of the village to continue his job.

"Shall we go and find her now?" Elizabeth suggested.

Dante whispered: "My shadow is already on his way. I’ll tell you if anything happens."

"Oh, I didn’t notice." Elizabeth smiled: "I’ll be waiting."

Dante crossed his arms and closed his eyes, using his ability to share senses with Fafnir.

Fafnir crawled through the darkness, hiding from the gazes of the villagers as he passed by several streets. After a few minutes, he reached an isolated house close to the edge of the village.

He crawled up the wall and stopped at the window, looking through it to see if someone was inside.

There, he saw a young woman with messy hair and dark circles under her tired red eyes. Her body was too skinny as though she hadn’t eaten anything for days.

’Ah, it’s her. Her name is Beth according to that guard.’

She was sitting there in a daze, staring with hollow eyes at the ceiling with no purpose.

’Now we wait.’

As the minutes passed, Beth didn’t move a single centimetre from her place. If she wasn’t breathing and blinking, Dante would have thought her dead.

All of a sudden, the woman’s eyes widened, almost popping out of their sockets, as she stood up and wore a dark cloak. The next moment, she opened the door and left her house.

"It’s happening. Let’s go!" Dante said to Elizabeth as he carried her on his back.

For some reason, her aspect seemed to damage the black magic, so she’d be useful against Beth if she was stronger than expected.

Elizabeth started using her detect spell while Dante ran toward Fafnir.

Fafnir was slowly following Beth, ensuring that he wouldn’t be seen by her. Eventually, they left the village and entered the forest.

Beth continued to walk relentlessly, checking her back from time to time. Unfortunately for her, Fafnir was a living shadow, and night was his best hiding time.

After a few minutes, Beth’s figure disappeared into a cave.

’It’s that cave. Fafnir, follow her inside!’

Fafnir obeyed without hesitation and entered the cave. Instantly, Dante’s eyes widened in disgust.

As the guard had said, the cave was filled with strange blood formation and tattered body parts. The problem was that they weren’t only animal parts, but even human parts could be seen.

In the middle of the cave, Beth stood with a black book in her hand, a crazy smile plastered over her face. Behind her, a tied middle-aged man stared at her with immense terror in his eyes.

"BETH! You have to stop this madness before you do something you’ll regret! Listen to me, Beth!" The man yelled, trying to convince her: "I know you aren’t this kind of person!"

Beth stopped reading the book and glared at him, blood tears flowing across her face: "Haha, I can’t. Not now, not when I’m that... THAT CLOSE! Tonight, I’ll revive him in you!’

Ignoring the man, Beth went to a bag at the corner of the cave and took a few items from it. Some mana crystals, some cores, and some strange glowing plants.

"We will fight together again. We will travel together again. We will eat together again." Beth’s whispers echoed throughout the cave as she walked to a formation in the middle, but before she could do anything...

Silver Ether Spell — Ether Bolt!

BAM!

A silver bolt came out of nowhere, blowing her head off and shattering her core into pieces. Her headless body immediately fell to the ground.

The tied man looked at this sight in terror, before vomiting from Beth’s blood and brain matter that splattered over his face.

"Damn, what the hell was she doing?" Dante finally arrived at the entrance of the cave, looking at Fafnir who had just killed Beth with no hesitation.

’Good job buddy. I don’t know what she was doing, and I’m glad I didn’t get the chance to know.’

"I think the man there might need some help." Dante put Elizabeth down and held her hand, aiming it toward the man: "Maybe... more as a mental help. He looks a bit traumatized."

"Mhm!"

Elizabeth rushed toward the man and started using a healing spell on him.

As for Dante...

’Now, for my spoils!’

Without hesitation, he went to the black magic book and stored it in his ring. He didn’t know if he’d need it, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least try to sell it.

It was illegal to possess black magic items, but did Dante care?

No!

If someone wanted to find this book, they’d have to put their hands on Dante’s ring first. And to do that, they’d have to find a way to take it from his soul.

If they did, they might know that the ring belonged to a demonic centipede. That would increase the chance of them knowing about Dante’s tattoo, which would lead to revealing Dante’s demon part.

The demon part might then lead to exposing the dragon part. And with more investigation, they might find out about his Crown.

With all these things in consideration, a black magic item was nothing serious at all.

Then Dante started storing the cores and the mana crystals one by one. Although he would get a reward from completing the quest, the quest didn’t say that the witch’s belongings had to return to the village. He wasn’t stupid enough to let this chance slide.

But just then, he felt something touching his leg.

Shadow Technique — Shadow Step!

Instantly, Dante melted with the shadow beneath him and reappeared at the corner of the cave.

That wasn’t a spell, but a technique that involved Dante’s entire body. He was able to mimic it from a space technique called Blink after learning how to turn into a shadow from Fafnir in the carriage.

Blink allowed the original Fafnir to teleport in a short distance. The mimicked version that Dante had created allowed him to teleport between two shadows in a short distance.

At first, he called it Shadow Blink, but he learnt later that it was a common shadow technique that was called Shadow Step.

It was worse than the original blink, but it could also be a lifesaver, just like now.

As Dante appeared at the corner of the cave, he immediately looked at the thing that touched his leg—it was Beth. Her headless corpse had several tentacles coming out of her neck, and her body was forcing itself to stand up.

’How?’

Her Wheel of Luck had already shattered, and his eye didn’t show any Spirit value.

’Then I’ll destroy that body.’

Shadow Spell — FireBall!

Shadow Spell — Flaming Shadow Swords!

Without hesitation, Fafnir shot a fireball toward Beth, while Dante launched three shadow swords covered in flames toward three different parts of her body.

BOOM!

Before they could touch her body, a chaotic barrier appeared and blocked them, but the explosion shattered the barrier and sent some flames toward her.

Simultaneously, a blood formation turned into dust, suggesting that it was the source of that barrier.

Dante was about to turn his centipede tattoo into a weapon, but then...

BAM!

Elizabeth and the tied man were sent flying into the cave wall.

The blood formations began to glow brightly, and breathing was becoming harder, as if something was absorbing the air.

Dante looked at the centre of the cave, and there he saw what threw Elizabeth and the man away.

’. . .The guard isn’t paying me enough for that.’