Lord: Starting from a Goblin Nest

「An hour later.」

A short, ancient, grayish-green torso, like a sprouting potato, slowly grew four emaciated limbs. The limbs looked like the arms and legs of an infant, only they were wrinkled and old, appearing so fragile a single breath could tear them from their sockets.

Ron looked down into the torso’s cavity. Inside, hidden away, was the opened jar containing the Ghost Witch’s eyes and mouth, a rhythmic glow of Magic pulsing around it. Polly was finally free from her vicious mother’s control and could once again use the inexplicable Magic of a Ghost Witch to construct a new body for herself.

”This is... incredible...” Gordon and Shiva watched the entire process without blinking, while Elden’s pen was practically smoking as he wrote. If Ron hadn’t lent the dean his inkless pen, the Dwarf probably would have exploded from sheer frustration!

”Did you guys notice?” Silvia sidled up to her companions and discreetly pointed at Elden’s hair. ”Just now, it looks like his hair has regained some of its color.”

”You really are too kind, Lord,” Polly’s voice emerged from the cavity. Perhaps this unheard-of ability was consuming a great deal of the Ghost Witch’s Energy, as she sounded weak and utterly exhausted. ”How many times have you helped a Ghost Witch now? Is this the second time, or the third?”

”It’s not that I want to die, but... why? Why are you helping me like this?” The Ghost Witch’s voice was filled with utter confusion. ”No one likes monsters like us. Everyone detests Ghost Witches. The few who do seek us out only treat us like wish-granting machines, hoping to fulfill their own desires.”

Polly sighed. ”Fine, fine. Maybe you think that way too. But it doesn’t matter. You’ve already helped this old hag several times. Whatever you want in return, I can grant it. No payment necessary. Come on, state your wish. Treat me like a genie in a lamp, a golden fish, or whatever else you want!”

”Just give me a little time. Once I’ve mostly recovered, I’ll fulfill my promise.”

”A Ghost Witch saying she’ll fulfill a promise? Is there something wrong with my ears?” Sera pouted and dug a finger in her ear.

”If you think your hearing is bad, I can swap them out for a pair of rabbit’s,” the Ghost Witch laughed hoarsely, even though she currently lacked the anatomy for a throat. ”But I think it would be better if your leader made the request, don’t you?”

”I don’t want anything from you,” Ron shrugged. ”If I have to say something, it’s that I was just curious how a creature with only its eyeballs and lips could continue to live. Now, my curiosity has been satisfied.”

”Besides, these three are scholars who have traveled a long way, hoping to study a Ghost Witch from Delusional Land. If I had just killed you, their trip would have been for nothing.”

”Scholars, or bookworms?” Although the Ghost Witch’s body had yet to fully recover, her malicious words were barely affected. Gordon’s and Shiva’s faces immediately fell.

”You know why you’re unhappy? Because it’s true!” A strange laugh came from the Ghost Witch’s cavity. ”Look at that Dwarf! He’s not reacting to my words at all!”

”Why is that? Is it because you’re a true scholar? Or is it because your miserable life has forged you into someone so tough that mere words can’t hurt you?”

”Come on, old man. You want to know more about Ghost Witches, so why not be a little more direct? Open your heart to me, let’s have a proper chat. I promise you’ll find it... ’most enlightening’!”

Elden looked up, gazing at the literally headless Polly. ”Interesting.”

”You want me to open my heart first? Fine. But why don’t you start by explaining how your own mother came to torture you so miserably?”

”From what I know, after you broke your contract, you hid in your mother’s lair to avoid retribution from the Lord. But by that point, your mother should have already been killed by the Lord. Did she come back to life? And then she sewed your and your sister’s limbs onto—”

”Stop it!” Polly shrieked. ”How was I supposed to know that old monster still had a trick up her sleeve?! How was I supposed to know that the human-faced mushrooms she was growing in her garden were all actually her backup consciousnesses and puppet bodies!”

”Damn it, how could I have been so careless back then! To just rashly go and pick them!”

It was hard to tell if Polly’s voice held more regret or resentment. ”I should have known! We crawled out of her belly, so of course she’d have ways to counter us!”

”Those mushrooms controlled me, stripped me of my body, and that old monster used it to return to the world! And me? She wouldn’t let me go. She gouged out my eyes and lips, put them in a jar, and forced me to stay by her side forever, to watch how she continued to live on using my body!”

”I curse her, and the body she used! Thank goodness you destroyed it. Otherwise, just the thought of having to look at it, of considering whether to use it again, makes me sick! It’s disgusting!”

’A deep-seated grudge...’ Elden jotted down his observations and assessment on the paper, then continued his questioning. Once he had a handle on Polly’s emotions, the Ghost Witch lost all ability to mock him and could only be led by the nose.

”Next, I’d like to know about you and your sister, as well as your past Ghost Witch covens...”

Ron and the others had no intention of listening in further. They went outside to perform a final sweep of the underground area, making sure the other Ghost Witch wouldn’t resurrect yet again.

She clearly harbored malice toward Ron and his group; letting her be was not in their best interest.

”How strange,” Delaford said during the sweep, rubbing his chin. ”Look, there’s still living moss and fungi in these rock crevices?”

”That explosion Ron set off earlier didn’t even manage to completely evaporate all the moisture here!”

Big White chittered, its four paws clinging tightly to the cracks in the rock wall. Its small, red eyes were fixed on the unusual life forms.

”Hilarious,” Silvia said, exchanging a look with Ron. ”If I were Elden and his group, I definitely wouldn’t be able to resist taking some of this back to study.”

”But unfortunately,” Ron said, understanding her completely as he took a bag of salt from his pack, ”although I know a little Alchemy, I don’t have the first clue how to cultivate fungi and moss.”

”I’m always so careless, with no scientific spirit whatsoever... Whoops, I seem to have spilled the whole bag of salt on them!”