Release that Witch

Now everyone in the Third Border City knew that a God’s Punishment Witch could regain her appearance and feelings when she entered the Dream World by cutting off her consciousness. Roland had repeatedly heard Phyllis describe their enthusiasm for the Dream World. According to her, every time she got back to the underground, they would follow her and keep asking about her experiences in that world.

He wondered whether they would still be eager to merge with shells when they found out this new method to restore their feelings.

However, it was not a perfect solution to their problem, as they could only regain their appearance and feelings in their sleep. By contrast, being in shells, they could always have some feelings, and these shells were almost immortal unless they were heavily damaged.

It would be difficult to make a choice between these two alternatives.

He thought of another possibility for them. If they had kept the news about the Dream World a secret, they would have been able to send the instrument and God’s Punishment Witches there to carry out their Soul Transfer. This way, the volunteers would never be able to go back even if they regretted afterwards. However, he believed that Pasha would not delude her witches into accepting the shells. Based on his observation in the past month, though the Taquila witches had lived in seclusion for hundreds of years, they did not turn into a conservative organization. They were still open to new things and had abolished class inequality in their group. Apparently, the sacrifice of the Three Chiefs had deeply moved them, and the threat posed by demons had kept them working to make greater progress.

Pasha seemed to read his mind. ”You don’t have to worry about this problem. With more shells, we’ll be better equipped to defeat the demons. Original carriers can operate the magic core, and devouring worms can speed up the construction of the defense line. They’ll do everything to win the upcoming Battle of Divine Will without hesitation. In fact, the volunteers have decided to go to the Great Snow Mountain together with the instrument.”

”Volunteers aren’t afraid of any sacrifice...” Roland thought while biting his lips. ”It seems that I’ve worried too much. I’ll send ships to transport the instrument for you when the exploration has finished.”

”Thank you for helping us,” she said happily.

He nodded and laid Soraya’s pictures on the table. ”All the information I’ve sent you before were written materials. I finally received these pictures of the ruins today. I would like to know your thoughts on this monster.”

”Please wait for a moment.” She waved her tentacles to summon Celine and Alethea, who had been repairing the Instrument of Divine Retribution. Three blobs came to the light curtain to study the pictures together.”

With their tentacles connected, they remained silent for an unexpectedly long time, and communicated though their minds. As they were not able to show any expression on the outside, he felt as if this video call had already disconnected.

After a long time, he finally heard Pasha in his head again. ”Sorry to have kept you waiting. We’re shocked by some pictures, so we have to discuss them thoroughly.”

”It’s neither a demonic beast nor a demon, right?”

”Yes,” said Celine, ”and the skeleton that fell into the water has appeared in Lady Natalia’s description about the Divine Land.”

”Are you sure?”

”Yes. We’ve stayed underground for hundreds of years, but we would never be so foolish as to forget such an important piece of information. In fact, carriers have a much better memory than human beings,” said Alethea, grumpily. ”Lady Natalia saw the sea and skeletons in the third painting scroll. This thing in the pictures matches her description. More importantly, this lake is connected to the sea. We can be sure it’s the thing mentioned by Lady Natalia.”

”So, now we can say it’s from the unknown civilization?” He asked while touching his chin. He was not surprised at their conclusion. When he had found the devouring worm also swallowing things in the Devil’s Town, he had suspected that it must have been sent by some neutral party who had decided not to help anyone in the Battle of Divine Will. Alternatively, it could also have been the unknown enemy in the upcoming battle. He had made up this exploration plan not only to help the Taquila survivors but also to eliminate hidden threats for Neverwinter and spy on the unknown enemy.

He had read a similar description in Zero’s memory fragment, but it was vague. Now, as the Taquila witches also thought the monster belonged to the unknown enemy, he could confirm that suspicion.

”It’s highly possible, but...” Pasha hesitated for a while and continued. ”There’re still many things we don’t understand, such as the demonic beasts.”

”These beasts across the Land of Dawn are mutated animals. They should have been affected by the Erosion of magic power, just like witches. But why did they follow this monster’s orders? It’s different from the demons who enslave the demonic hybrids. The beasts seemed to willingly obey this monster’s orders.”

Roland had also pondered over this question. He thought that if the unknown enemy were intelligent creatures who had demonic beasts as part of their civilization, they would have accumulated these hybrids first and then used them to eliminate both human beings and demons. He could not understand why the unknown civilization wasted these beasts in the Months of Demons every year.

Maybe the origin of those mutated beasts might not be as simple as they had believed.

”We’ll know the answer when the Battle of Divine Will starts.” He shrugged his shoulders, pretending to be relaxed. ”They’d better be the monster’s relatives. In that case, we’ll never see these ugly beasts on the snowy plains after we have defeated all our enemies in the battle.”

Pasha was stunned and then started to chuckle. ”Yes, you’re right indeed. No matter where they come from, we’ll still have to defeat them in the Battle of Divine Will.”

After that, they discussed the defense line construction project and the method to block the underground river in the newly discovered ruins. When the meeting was about to finish, Roland suddenly raised a question.

”Ah, yeah, as we’ve caught some clues left by the hidden civilization now, we have to give it a name, don’t we?” He cleared his throat. ”Just like what we did with the first painting scroll. We call the guys in it demons.”

”Is this important?” Pasha tilted her main tentacle. ”Demons is just their most widely known name. They were also called Blood Beasts, the Deformity or Polluters back in the Union.”

”Of course, a proper name is very important for propaganda and motivational campaigns. We should make it sound as evil as possible so as to arouse the people’s indignation.”

”So... do you have any idea?”

”Well, since these hidden enemies stay in the sea for most of the time, shall we call them ’Sea Monsters’?”

”...”

All the people in the meeting fell silent.

”Uhm... isn’t that good?”

”I thought the name ’the Third Border City’ was bad enough. I never expected you to make up something even worse,” Alethea mocked, ”’Sea Monster’? It sounds like a giant octopus.”

”Alethea!” Pasha moved her main tentacle to give Alethea a knock on the head. ”Your Majesty, if you think it’s alright... I think... we don’t have a problem with it.”

The ancient witch agreed on the name, but reluctantly. Roland picked up his cup to sip some tea whilst trying to conceal his embarrassment.

”Ahem.” Scroll who was by his side and taking notes for this meeting coughed suddenly. ”Your Majesty, how about calling them Deep Sea Demons?”

”Deep Sea... Demons?” He repeated.

”Yes, since the concept of demons has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, they’ll understand what this new name refers to without us clarifying. This way, we don’t need much efforts to describe the unknown civilization for the people. It’s better for the City Hall to carry out the propaganda campaigns, and the people won’t feel that we’ve got to fight many enemies at the same time,” explained Scroll, with a quill in his hand.

Though he was unwilling to accept the fact that someone else came up with a better name, he still twitched his mouth and said, ”It seems to be a little better... Let’s use this name.”

Now the civilization depicted in the second painting scroll got a formal name.