Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 340 Failed
For a moment, Adele wondered if she was still dreaming.

"Five stars will rise... does that mean five more murders will happen tonight?"

Wendy's voice was trembling. She was not mentally prepared for this situation, so when she became a witness, she seemed a little flustered.

"It's obvious."

Adele said solemnly, "However, we have now discovered that the other party was hiding in the dark and attacking. Are they so confident that they can complete a limited number of murders under the eyes of more than a hundred people on the ship without leaving any clues?"

Adele had seen this kind of advance notice method many times. Many assassins who had just become Beyonders liked to do this. It could make the target a frightened bird, exposing many flaws that had not been there before, and at the same time satisfy their morbid hobby of appreciating the despair of others.

However, after being notified in advance, the target will mostly be very alert and take precautions in advance. This kind of murder notice with other limiting conditions (such as quantity, time limit) often means backfire.

If the killer fails to achieve the goal stated in the notice, not only will he lose face, he may even lose his life.

As a professional assassin, Adele was disgusted by such behavior and at the same time, she felt a little uneasy.

The "Yukikaze" had been out of the port for only a few days, and it would only take three days at most to return to the port at full speed. Even if the other party's declaration took effect, by the time everyone returned to the port, at most a dozen sailors would have died. But if the lurking existence could be hidden from the people on Adele's ship, could it be hidden from the demigod in the port?

Moreover, the demigods, as commanders, now have the means to summon William Augustus, the "Founder of the Nation". Even if the demigods can't find it, the angels can always handle it, right? In the end, all they got was a few days.

But the other party still made this declaration which seemed very immature in Adele's eyes... Was it because the other party was stupid, so stupid as to think that the death of a few people could stop the fleet from setting sail?

No, obviously not. The other party dared to tell Adele the truth, which meant that they must have been sure that they could solve the problem with the current means and kill all the crew members on the ironclad ship before the ship arrived at the port of Berens.
Of course, it is also possible that their original purpose was to force Adele and her group to return home so that they could take the opportunity to sneak into Berens Harbor and do something...

In short, Adele doesn't have much information at the moment, and can't determine the other party's motives, nor can she make an immediate and effective response.

After much thought, Adele finally came up with an idea.

"I have an idea. You go... No, let's go together."

Adele gave the order subconsciously, but she remembered the rule on the ship that one should not be left alone as much as possible. She was afraid that something might happen to Wendy, so she forced herself to change her words and said, "Let's go find Tracy first. She should be able to help."

……

Soon, Adele and her friend came to Tracy's room and knocked on the door. Not long after, the steel door opened, revealing Tracy's slightly tired face.

Although this does not affect her beauty, and even adds a haggard beauty to her, this is not what Adele cares about.

Before Tracy could ask what happened, Adele stuffed the paper into her hand.

"There it is again, the piece of paper with the curse on it."

Adele got straight to the point and confessed to Tracy directly.

"Come in and talk."

Tracy didn't waste any time and just stepped aside to let the two of them into her room.

This place was decorated by Adele. It was quite different from the luxurious captain's room she had seen on the "Black Death" before, but it also had a warm feeling, which was the decoration style that Adele liked.

Tracy didn't say anything, but Adele once saw her taking good care of the flower that Adele placed on her windowsill, so she thought that at least she wouldn't dislike her for that.

"Can your disease ability bring the entire ship under your sphere of influence?"

Adele first asked this question.

"Of course." Tracy felt insulted at her ability. "When I was on the Black Death, I could make people on the dock feel my charm and be infected with epidemic diseases just by standing on the deck."

"Although this ability changes qualitatively at Sequence 4, when I reached Sequence 5, I was able to expand the range of influence to a radius of hundreds of meters... Panatia, who specializes in this, was only Sequence 4 at the time, but he was able to make the fog sweep across the entire Backlund; and as a Sequence 5, it is enough for me to affect an area within a hundred meters."

"Then, do you have any way to make the two diseases restrain each other and find a way to delay the symptoms of the fatal disease?" Adele continued to ask.

"In theory, it is possible."

Tracy thought about it for a moment and nodded. "The disease of the Witch of Pain is actually implemented in the form of a plague aura. I can cast multiple non-overlapping auras at the same time, so that the two diseases in the middle can cancel each other out."

"Okay then. I will notify all the sailors to gather on the deck. You will directly cover all of them with the disease halo, and then use a larger disease halo to directly cover the entire ironclad ship."

Adele acted decisively and gave instructions directly to Tracy.

Tracy was stunned for a moment, but immediately understood what Adele meant. She showed an understanding expression and nodded in agreement.

The space on the ironclad ship is not small, and in incidents involving supernatural powers, the role that ordinary people can play is minimal. The three people who died before have used their lives to prove the effectiveness of the other party's camouflage skills on ordinary people.

Therefore, under the current circumstances, not only can the crew members not be allowed to disperse in groups of two to search for the ambushing assassins, but they must be gathered together as much as possible to avoid accidents of being left alone.

……

After making all the arrangements, Adele quickly used telepathic magic to summon all the sailors and asked the naval officers among them to count the number of people.

Looking at the group of sailors on the deck who were counting their numbers and glancing at her anxiously, Adele couldn't help feeling helpless.

——I don’t know the whole story. Even if you come to please me, I can’t guarantee that you won’t be the next one…

Soon, several team leaders came up, and one of them reported to Adele:

"Everything is fine, no problem, everyone is here."

"Are you all here?"

Adele was stunned, "How many people are here today?"

"One hundred and fifteen." The naval captain whose name Adele forgot answered.

Adele was suddenly stunned, then quickly took out a notebook from her pocket. The first page of the notebook was the attached crew list.

Adele quickly turned to the last line and found that the crew member’s number at the end was “115”!
"How can this be?"

Adele was stunned for a moment. "Three murders happened yesterday. How could there still be 115 crew members?"

"Yeah, is there anything wrong with this?" asked the naval captain in confusion.

"Of course not. Did you get kicked in the head by a donkey?"

Tracy cursed without hesitation, "Three people died yesterday, and that guy..."

However, she froze in the middle of her speech and tapped her forehead hard. "Strange, why can't I remember who died?"

After trying hard to recall, Tracy still couldn't remember what happened before, and glanced at Adele in panic.

But Adele was also in shock at this time. She didn't expect that she would forget such a big thing.

"Captain, you really like to joke." The navy captain smiled innocently and nodded, "If this really happened, even if you don't remember it, you will find out that there are fewer people when you work."

"If you still don't believe me, I'll have them line up, and that will make it easier for you."

The captain shouted out orders, and the pirate mercenaries on the ship quickly formed into a 5X23 square formation, neatly arranged without any missing piece. Everything proved that yesterday's murder did not happen.

"Oh, right, the corpse. Didn't Constantine take the corpse and make it into a zombie?"

Adele suddenly remembered this and quickly looked for Constantine in the crowd.

"That's exactly what I wanted to tell you." Constantine looked frustrated. "This morning, those bodies suddenly disappeared... I just asked them to return to the warehouse and cover themselves with white cloth, and then I found that the connection between us was broken..."

This, this is not mysticism...

Adele felt an inexplicable chill down her spine, and things began to become increasingly unbelievable.

"Just do as I say. How long will it take for your disease to develop to the point of being fatal?"

Adele asked Tracy.

She planned to use disease to make all the sailors present lose their combat effectiveness in a short period of time, control those who might pretend to be dead, and then use more lethal diseases to directly kill all possible ambushers outside.

The witch's disease is different from normal viruses and bacteria. It is closer to a spiritual virus. The witch's spiritual aura needs to directly infect the spirit of a living person to cause the disease. It will not contaminate dead objects such as food stored in the cabin, so Adele is not worried about the impact of releasing the plague on the ship.

The current situation was beyond Adele and Tracy's expectations. Although several extraordinary people who had seen the corpses with their own eyes remembered that there were corpses, they had no recollection of the corpses' appearances or names. The crew members on the ship only remembered that Adele had told them in the morning that three bloody serial murders had occurred on the ship last night, but they did not seem surprised by the result that no one on the ship was missing.

"About 30 minutes."

Tracy answered, giving Adele a questioning look that meant "Can I start?"

Adele felt for no reason that this pirate general, famous throughout the five seas, had obviously begun to waver... This was something no one wanted to see.

Adele nodded heavily, and after explaining the situation to the soldiers, Tracy gently raised her hands.

She raised her hands flat in front of her chest, and two distinctly colored halos spread out from her body. This was an ability that only the extraordinary people of the Witch Path had a unique type of psychic vision that could discover. Extraordinary people of other paths could only discover it when there were slight symptoms and abnormalities in the body.

Then Tracy untied the empty glass bottle from her waist, shook it vigorously twice, and then opened the cork.

A violent storm arose and spread outward, spreading the range of the ring of plague to the entire ship in an instant.

When Tracy was choosing the magical item, she considered that this magical item called "Bottled Lightning" could store lightning, storms or heavy rain, which was very suitable for her fighting style. Now she could use it to spread the disease quickly.

After a few seconds, Adele felt her nose was a little blocked, and then everyone around her showed similar signs, but most of the witches had a certain resistance due to the same path, and performed better.

As time went on, everyone on the entire deck began to cough violently. Except for the witches who protected themselves with black fire, most of the sailors had ferocious expressions. Many of them had never known that coughing could be such a terrible thing.

However, if you look at the environment outside, you will know that the conditions inside the deck are already very good. Perhaps the scene outside is not intuitive enough, but if you look closely, the birds falling from the sky with rotten internal organs and the fish floating on the water with their bellies up all show that Tracy's plague has a terrible effect.

She was able to achieve this level without any change in her expression... Tracy could probably apply to the sect to become a demigod at any time as long as she accumulated enough merits...

Adele's mind flickered. After all, after Katarina was taken to the starry sky by the mysterious color, Tracy was the most suitable person to inherit her faction and followers. But the prerequisite was that she had to contact the Witch Sect in time to prove to the sect that she was not dead yet.

As for suppressing the voices of opposition, Tracy now has a dual identity. She is a member of the witch sect's peripheral organization and a thug of the kingdom's military. With Adele's support either openly or secretly, it is a simple matter.

However, even if she deliberately retained her strength, she still felt very painful after being infected with her disease... After all, she was a witch who had completely digested pain, and it had become a habit for her to bring pain to others...

After taking a look at the sailors lying weakly on the ground, Adele extinguished the black flame around her, left a few Beyonders to guard the deck, and prepared to patrol the entire ship again with Tracy to check if there were any assassins who were forced to stop hiding due to illness.

So far, there are too many secrets on the caravel that suddenly appeared. Adele has a hunch that if it is not resolved as soon as possible, it may turn into a big problem that may have a decisive impact on the situation.

However, twenty minutes later, the two men returned to the deck with confused looks on their faces.

During their patrol, they didn't even encounter a single ambusher!

(End of this chapter)