What Witch? This Alchemist is Breaking Bad!

“You said what?” Leon looked at Rena in confusion.

“That mark is Lady Moilai’s Mark of Favor. It symbolizes her blessing. Once someone becomes a Witch through the ritual, this mark will appear on their body!” Rena was just as bewildered. “Why… would you receive a Witch’s blessing?”

To become a Witch, one needed to conduct a ritual at Moilai’s altar, at a location capable of connecting to the Labyrinth, and then drink a potion prepared with Mana.

But just now, Leon had done nothing other than poison an Inquisitor who possessed transcendent power.

Not to mention—Leon was a man.

Yet Moilai’s Mark of Favor had inexplicably appeared on Leon’s body all the same.

Only then did Leon realize why the mark looked so familiar.

The same sigil was carved into Rena’s Moilai Altar used for Mana extraction—it was the sigil located at the spot where Mana was generated.

Which meant… I became a “Witch”?

At that thought, Leon’s expression suddenly changed. Instinctively, he reached down toward his groin.

“Hey, what are you touching?!” Rena stared in shock, her eyes instantly not knowing where to look.

“I’m checking whether I turned into a woman!” Leon said solemnly.

Up to now, all followers captured by the Church who had received Moilai’s blessing had been women, hence the title “Witch.”

As for male believers, even if they devoutly worshiped Moilai and attempted to obtain her blessing through rituals, they almost never succeeded.

Having suddenly been told that a mark symbolizing the blessing of becoming a Witch had appeared on him, Leon immediately began to suspect whether some changes that should not exist had occurred on his body.

This was a matter of great importance!!

“S-so… how is it?” Rena asked cautiously, glancing at Leon and then quickly looking away.

“It seems to still be there.” Leon let out a temporary sigh of relief.

Nothing that should be there was missing, and nothing that should not be there had appeared. At the very least, he had not truly turned into some kind of Witch woman.

So what should his condition be called? A male Witch? A Warlock?

After calming down, Leon thought it over and realized something was off. He asked Rena suspiciously, “Are you sure this is the mark of becoming a Witch? Witches really have this on them?”

This was the first time Leon had ever heard of Witches having a special mark. If such a thing existed, the Inquisition would surely catch Witches with pinpoint accuracy.

Yet in the Inquisition’s case records, there had never been any mention of identifying Witches through Moilai’s Mark of Favor.

As far as Leon knew, the Church currently had no definitive method of identifying Witches.

“This mark disappears after a while, but the blessing stays with you forever. Still, your situation is truly strange. I’ve never heard of a man receiving the blessing, nor have I ever heard of the mark appearing on the hand!” Rena examined Leon with confusion.

“Then where does it normally appear?” Leon asked casually.

“Well…” Rena hesitated, then covered her lower abdomen with her hand. “Usually, it appears here.”

When her own ritual had succeeded, the Mark of Favor had appeared in that very spot.

Her grandmother had told her back then that once a Witch’s ritual succeeded, the mark would appear there and then gradually fade.

Leon could not help but frown. The lower abdomen—why did this setting sound so much like an erotic sigil?

Thankfully, the shape of the sigil did not look that strange…

Still, this might have something to do with female physiology. After all, the primary organs distinguishing women from men were located there.

But why had his mark appeared on his hand? And more importantly, why had it appeared at all?

With these questions in mind, Leon’s gaze subconsciously fell upon the petrified corpse of Caron Eso.

Was it because I personally killed this guy? Killed a blessed follower of the God of War?

Moilai was hostile toward the Four Gods of Origin, and her Magical Beasts were likewise filled with hostility toward the Church’s blessed followers.

He had killed a follower blessed by the God of War inside the Labyrinth, unintentionally offering up a sacrifice—so Moilai had granted him her blessing?

In fact, heretical sects that worshiped the Primordial Witch had once proclaimed, “Slay the Witch’s enemies within the Labyrinth, and the Primordial Witch’s favor shall manifest.”

However, in the Inquisition’s ancient case archives, there were many examples of heretics who believed in Moilai resisting the Imperial Church, poisoning or blowing up Fully Appointed Knights and then placing them into the Labyrinth as sacrifices.

Among the participants were male believers as well, yet there had still never been a recorded case of a man receiving the blessing.

Leon had also seen in the Church’s reading room archives that the Church had long positioned the Primordial Witch Moilai herself as female, using this to explain why her blessing targets were exclusively women.

But in recent years, some Church scholars had argued that forcibly imposing human gender characteristics onto such transcendent beings was far too arbitrary.

They proposed that Moilai’s power appeared capable of influencing biological reproduction, which might make the attributes of her magical power more compatible with life-bearing women.

Correspondingly, the blessing of the God of War exhibited a similar pattern.

Those blessed by the God of War were almost always male.

Although historical records did include women who had received the God of War’s blessing, the success rate of the divine selection ritual was extremely low.

Over time, the Church of the God of War formed the tradition of selecting only men as Fully Appointed Knights and bishops, likely because the attributes of the God of War’s power were more compatible with men.

This theory had received heavy criticism, especially from the Church of the God of War, which issued harsh condemnations, as the hypothesis effectively placed Moilai and the God of War on equal footing.

Setting aside whether the theory was correct, Leon still could not understand why he, as a man, and without undergoing any ritual at all, had received the Witch’s blessing.

Could it be because… inwardly, he was a person from another world?

If there was any greatest difference between himself and the people of this world, it seemed to lie precisely there.

Receiving the Primordial Witch’s blessing with a male body—could it be that after struggling in this world for so long, he had finally encountered the so-called transmigrator’s perk?

No, nothing could be confirmed yet… Leon thought cautiously.

Just as Rena had said, after only a few minutes passed, the so-called Mark of Favor that had appeared on Leon’s palm disappeared.

Leon did not particularly like the term “Mark of Favor,” even though he knew it was merely the customary phrasing used by Moilai’s believers.

A blessing is a blessing—why call it favor? I didn’t kill him for you. If you really have any favor to give, why not be more direct and give me some powerful ability earlier so I wouldn’t have had to struggle so much to kill him?

As he thought this, Leon shifted his attention to the wound on his shoulder and covered it with his hand.

The bullet had merely passed through the trapezius area. The damage was not especially severe, but it hurt like hell and was still bleeding.

“I’ll treat your wound,” Rena said, remembering that Leon was still injured. She turned toward the wrecked workshop to look for bandages and hemostatic medicine.

“Mm, thanks,” Leon replied casually.

If he really had received the Witch’s blessing, would he also be able to control Magical Beasts or produce Mana? Would there be other abilities as well? Leon let his thoughts wander.

After quite some time, Rena returned with the bandages, only to freeze in place.

She examined Leon, fear gradually appearing on her face.

“Leon, your blood…” she cautiously spoke up.

“My blood?” Leon looked at his shoulder in confusion.

At some point, the blood seeping from his shoulder had turned a purplish-red color.

Not only the newly flowing blood, but even the red blood that had already soaked into his clothes or flowed across his skin had inexplicably all changed into that eerie hue.

A few drops of blood flowed down his arm and dripped onto the ground, emitting a sizzling sound as they instantly turned into purple mist that spread outward.

Leon was completely dumbfounded.

What kind of ability did I awaken?