Chapter 444 – Someone’s Here, Come Quick

Lilith and Vasida’s undead zombie servants were finished as well. Now the only thing left was Sylph’s mutant blackdeath tree, which still hadn’t finished growing.

Before heading back to her tent, Mo Lan glanced over at the spot where Sylph had placed the blackdeath tree’s planting pot.

After this period of ample corpse supply and Hybrid Magic nourishment, the mutant blackdeath tree—originally just a tiny seed—had grown into a three-meter-tall tree, half green and half black.

Still, compared to the blackdeath trees in the Black Forest, this size was nothing—just a small fry.

Wait, why was it still the same height?

“Sylph, is it just me, or has the blackdeath tree’s trunk and branches not grown at all for several days now?” Mo Lan asked, puzzled.

Before, every other day she looked, the mutant blackdeath tree would have shot up noticeably!

“Its form can only grow this large,” Sylph said. “It’s already storing up energy and preparing to bear fruit.”

“It’s going to bear fruit?” Mo Lan asked curiously. “Has it explained what it meant by bearing ‘two kinds of babies’?”

Sylph shook her head. “Communication with it is much smoother now, but it insists that it’s super useful and wants to wait until it bears fruit to give me a surprise.”

“…” Mo Lan looked at the blackdeath tree beside them, contentedly shaking its branches after a full meal, and said with mixed feelings, “Well, it certainly has a personality!”

It seemed Sylph’s side would be reaching its goal soon too. It probably wouldn’t be long before they’d have to hit the road again. Mo Lan hurried back to her tent to study her heterogeneous contractor management plan and cards.

She had barely sat down when she sensed an unusual spatial fluctuation.

A golden bird flew to her.

“Mama Shanna replied already?” Mo Lan took the letter in surprise, only to find a single thin sheet of golden bird stationery with the words: “There’s a human here, come quick! Location is at…”

It was a letter from Lilith!

Mo Lan immediately stood up and teleported outside the tent, where she saw Sylph holding an identical sheet of golden bird stationery.

“You got the message too?” Sylph asked.

Mo Lan nodded and summoned her flying carpet. “Let’s go!”

The flying carpet raced toward the location written in the letter.

The distance wasn’t very far, and soon they spotted Lilith and Vasida on their own flying carpet.

They must have deliberately left their invisibility shield off to make it easier to rendezvous.

Mo Lan steered her carpet closer, and she and Sylph jumped onto Lilith’s flying carpet.

“What’s going on?” Mo Lan asked. “Where’s the human? Are they up to something bad?”

“How could a human end up deep in the Black Forest?” Sylph said.

“It’s nothing major. I called you over to see a human female,” Lilith said.

“And she’s alive!” Vasida added. “She really does look just like us! If her energy aura weren’t wrong, I’d almost think she was a witch!”

“Really? Where is she?” The anxiety on Sylph’s face faded, replaced by pure curiosity.

A “living human female” was still quite a novelty for Sorceresses who had just left the Wilds and hadn’t seen many living people.

When witches looked at human males, it was simply the ordinary feeling of observing a different species—perhaps finding it novel.

But when they looked at human females, besides novelty, there was often a slight sense of kinship.

Witches abroad were always more willing to lend a hand to human females, because witches themselves had originally awakened from human women.

Witches believed they shared a certain ancestral bond with human females.

Of course, all of this was predicated on the human female being friendly toward witches as well.

“There! Down there!” Lilith pointed at a dark figure prostrate beneath a blackdeath tree below.

Mo Lan focused her gaze—goodness, her life force was so faint it was nearly gone!

Her body had been ravaged by Death Force, and she was on the verge of becoming a dead human female.

Mo Lan also sensed faint fluctuations of magical energy from her. “She’s actually an apprentice-level mage?”

“An apprentice-level mage is about the same level as an Apprentice witch, right? How did she manage to venture deep into the Black Forest alone?” Sylph found this rather strange.

“Because she was lucky!” Vasida said.

Lilith explained, “We checked—there are no signs of her having fought any undead creatures, nor any traces of battling Animated Blackdeath Trees. Her weakened state is entirely the result of the pervasive Death Force in the Black Forest eroding her body.”

“That’s incredible?” Mo Lan looked down at the figure shrouded in a black cloak. “How about we first get her out of mortal danger, then knock her out and use the Origin-Tracing Spell to examine her memories? We can see what’s really going on with her. If she’s a good person, we save her life. If she’s a villain, we toss her back in the forest and let nature take its course. How does that sound?”

“Yes, yes! As long as she stays unconscious, there’s no risk of us being exposed!” Vasida said.

Lilith used the Levitation Spell to float the figure up into the air.

Mo Lan pulled out an empty, small-sized Spatial Tent and placed it on her flying carpet. “Put her in here!”

This tent had no windows, so even if she woke up unexpectedly, she wouldn’t be able to see her surroundings.

Once they placed her on the bed and the black cloak wrapped around her fell open, they finally saw the face of this human female—or rather, girl.

“She looks quite young!” Sylph said.

“Let me extract the Death Force from her!” Vasida said.

Extracting Death Force wasn’t difficult—anyone who knew Necromancy Magic could do it.

The Death Force that was insurmountable for this mage apprentice was, for a witch skilled in Necromancy Magic, something she could draw out with a mere crook of her finger.

Once the Death Force was extracted, the mage apprentice’s condition stopped deteriorating.

Without a word, Sylph poured a bottle of sleeping potion down her throat. “There. Now she won’t wake up without the antidote.”

Sleeping potion was completely different from drowsiness potion—the latter wore off naturally, but the former required an antidote to wake from.

Mo Lan nodded and first used Healing Magic to treat her slightly, improving her condition a bit more so she wouldn’t die from the strain of the Origin-Tracing Spell.

Once she felt it was safe enough, Mo Lan used the Origin-Tracing Spell to read her memories.

She was merely a mage apprentice. Her entire life’s memories, for Mo Lan who possessed an enormous reserve of psychic power, were nothing more than a brief clip—finished in an instant.

Mo Lan opened her eyes and looked at the sleeping brown-haired girl in surprise.

“Moira, what did you find?” Lilith asked.

“She’s that rogue mage the Temple has been hunting!” Mo Lan said.

“The Temple?” Lilith, Vasida, and Sylph all reacted at once, expressions of surprise appearing on their faces.

Up until now, they had only heard about a rogue mage impersonating a Temple saint from the corpses they’d found in the Black Forest outside Mino Town.

“How did she end up all the way here?” Lilith asked, bewildered.

“Exactly! If she was running away, she should have fled toward the Mage Empire!” Vasida said. “This direction is the complete opposite.”

“Could it be a human trap?” Sylph said, furrowing her brow.