Millennium Witch.

Chapter 73 - 73 - Sparring Partner
Carefully escaping Cooks, Yvette, for safety's sake, traversed the snow-covered mountains for a while, making sure she wasn't being followed, before heading to the valley town and arriving at the entrance of the air-raid shelter at the bottom of the valley.

It was still morning, but many of the puppets had already gotten up and greeted Yvette when they saw her.

Yvette nodded in acknowledgment. She had lived here for four years and wasn't particularly familiar with the local residents, rarely interacting with them. This wasn't because she discriminated against the machine race, but rather because she was inherently unsociable; to use a pet analogy, she was simply not affectionate towards people.

However, she was in a good mood today, her eyes unusually gentle. This was mainly due to her good morning's harvest; she had managed to escape unscathed from such a dangerous area, honed her combat skills, and even obtained some useful intelligence. She felt she had made tremendous progress.

Although the word "progress" sounds a bit strange on a scale of more than two hundred years, a person's growth is never measured by time, but by events.

Otherwise, Dugrabi, who is nearly a hundred years old, should have been a mature sage long ago. How could he still be a young dragon who would give others the silent treatment if he suffered a little grievance?

The last time she was in danger, and this time she risked her life, there were no other dangers in between, so it was a continuous series. And this time, she felt she had done very well, so it was normal for her to feel satisfied. Although no one else could know about this inner progress she had made, she could praise herself.

Speaking of which, the Spider Woman's fighting power is truly unfathomable. She fought the Spider Woman for so long, but she didn't see any fatigue or fear on the Spider Woman's face. On the contrary, her magic power was depleted to only one-third.

If we don't use the Black Eye ability and fight purely with mage skills, I'm afraid we won't have a sure chance of winning... Yvette is a little worried.

But the question is, what methods does she have to quickly improve her strength?

She pondered for a while and finally realized that there was only one way to go: to hone her combat skills and improve her fighting level.

And coincidentally, if Spider Woman had been stationed in Cooks for an extended period, she could have been a great sparring partner for her.

……

In the days that followed, Yvette would set off every two or three months to explore Cux.

Of course, she didn't always infiltrate the area guarded by the Spider Woman. Instead, she probed from various directions and confirmed some basic information.

Firstly, the aberrations of Cooks have all undergone special enhancements, making them far stronger than their normal counterparts. Therefore, we can only calculate the stage corresponding to their combat power, not their actual stage.

This is why when Yvette asked Spider Woman if she was a Stage 5 Aberration, her answer was an ambiguous "more or less".

Secondly, in the heart of Cooks, there are two more "lords" with the strength of the fifth stage, like Spider Woman.

One is a burly male humanoid, covered in scales, with a ferocious face that looks like a fish-man. His fighting style leans towards close-quarters combat, and he uses water magic for support.

The other was a gigantic mountain whale. Unlike other mountain whales, this one was far more powerful. It had a dense network of eyeballs on its body and could use all sorts of bizarre magical techniques.

After a brief encounter with the two "lords," Yvette found that the Spider Woman inside seemed relatively easy to communicate with; at least she would occasionally answer Yvette's questions, unlike the Mountain Whale and the Fish Man. The former couldn't speak, and the latter, like her, was taciturn and didn't like to talk. After several encounters, no useful information was obtained.

Finally, Yvette also managed to glean from the Spider Woman through conversation that above the three lords, there was a "commander" loyal to the monarch, namely the sixth-stage aberration, who was also its direct superior.

As for where this leader is, whether it is in the center of Cookes, Yvette has no idea.

However, out of caution, she would assume that the commander was in the city center. So, after harassing the Spider Woman for a while and consuming about half of her mana, she would quickly flee far away. This was partly to prevent the Fish Man and the Mountain Whale from coming to their aid, and partly because she did not want to be targeted by a sixth-stage commander-level powerhouse.

……

Time flies, half a year has passed, the weather has changed from cold to warm, and it's July.

As a snowy region in the northern part of Kuroshio Island, the area around Kux is very similar to Northern Europe in many ways.

After the snow melted, the rock strata were exposed, gleaming with a cold, iron-gray light. Grasses spread, merging with the moss-covered human remains. Further afield, on the mountain peaks, white glaciers, perpetually frozen, pierced the azure sky like ice blades.

In the morning, on her return from Cux, Yvette saw some golems studying how to herd sheep. The sheep they were herding were white sheep caught from the mountains, their fluffy wool making them look like giant cotton candies on a meadow from afar.

The reasons for herding sheep are twofold: first, to provide a more stable food supply for a certain ferocious camel; and second, encouraged by Bingyu, many local puppets also felt that being a shepherd was a good role model, allowing them to better emulate humans of a certain era and thus improve their "cultivation."

“I’m sick of eating mutton every day.” Dugrabi, however, was completely unimpressed and complained as he saw Yvette approaching.

Over the course of more than four years, this black dragon had also figured out the meaning of many Black Tide languages ​​on its own. However, it was very reserved and almost never spoke, always playing the role of a fierce and evil dragon. So, apart from the little magic puppet Jasmine who often played with it, none of the other magic puppets noticed this, not even Ice Rain.

Of course, part of the reason is that, in its view, these alchemical creations are not even as good as humans, so how could they be qualified to be friends with the noble dragon race? Only the Silver Witch, an unknown third-rate minor god, is qualified to be on equal footing with the dragon race.

Yvette gave an "oh," offering no comment whatsoever on its affectation.

After all, she hadn't eaten for many years, something that Dugrabi could also do, by sustaining its life with magic, but it wasn't willing to.

“Witch,” Dugrabi called out again.

"what's up?"

"Jasmine has discovered another large-scale site of ancient human civilization ruins. Do you want to come along?"

"What ruins complex?"

"I don't know, those kids said it was some kind of launch site."

"A launch site?" Yvette thought for a moment, then pulled up the pre-apocalyptic electronic map she had obtained. Combining it with the location of the valley floor, she roughly located the launch site. "Northwest?"

"You know?"

“Hmm.” Yvette looked at the information on the electronic map and thought that the launch site seemed to have quite a history. Before the Origin Civilization entered the cyber phase dominated by the eight major corporations, in the 21st century, that launch site launched a number of spaceships or probes into the universe, helping mankind to understand the situation of the Origin Galaxy.

Then it was discovered that, as a star system, the Origin Galaxy, apart from the Origin Star, a life-bearing planet, only had some very barren, lifeless, low-magic-value rock planets with extremely scarce resources, which greatly limited the civilization's desire to expand into space.

Although the known apocalyptic conditions indicate that the mutation began in the sea, where did the mysterious "divine transformation" and "erosion seeds" come from?
Yvette thought that perhaps it came from the universe.

So if she has the chance, the next time she enters a dream, she plans to investigate the space development history of the origin civilization.

Of course, it's just a superficial investigation. After all, the first priority in entering a dream is to obtain resources, and the second priority is to learn about the original owner's experiences and increase one's understanding of oneself.

Exploring the truth about the apocalypse can only be ranked third; it's somewhat important, but not particularly important.

On the other side, seeing that the witch wasn't interested in exploring the launch site, Dugrabi curled his lip and said nothing more.

It invited the witch to accompany it not so much for fun, but mainly because it was afraid of encountering mountain whales while exploring. Over the years, it had witnessed many mountain whales passing by and always harbored a fear of these sky behemoths that were several times larger than itself.

Although it might not necessarily lose in a fight, it was still genuinely wary—after all, it was restrained in its attacks against the mutants, afraid to suffer even the slightest injury for fear of being tainted, while the other side could attack it with impunity, which was a huge disadvantage for it.

However, in front of children, especially the younger ones, it still needs to show its fierce side as the eldest brother. If it really encounters danger, it will probably bite the bullet and go for it, after all, it is a matter of the face and dignity of the dragon clan.

With unyielding pride, they would rather die than be humiliated – that is the Dragon Clan!
Pulling a cart doesn't count.

　Keep reading these next couple of days, everyone, and see if there's a chance to snag a spot on Sanjiang! *bowing*
　　
　
(End of this chapter)