Miss Witch, even if we're poor, we can't sell ourselves!

When Mi Ye opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a flowing blue-green aurora.

A dazzling band of light drifted slowly overhead, as if someone had melted the entire Milky Way and then splashed it back onto the sky.

She blinked, and the tiny snowflakes clinging to her eyelashes fluttered down.

Miya propped herself up on her arms and sat up. Her sneakers slipped on the snow, and she swayed before regaining her balance.

The snow under my bottom had been pressed into a shallow indentation, and when I pressed my palm down, I could feel the frozen, hard soil beneath the snow.

She shook her head to remove the snowflakes from her hair, and straightened her cat-ear hat, which had been askew.

The cold air getting into my nose is awful.

"...Here we go again."

She muttered something, her voice full of grievance, and had no choice but to look up and look around.

An endless expanse of snow.

The snow surface was rippled with fish scales by the wind, and occasionally a clump of withered black shrubs would peek out from the snow, with icicles hanging from their branches.

The aurora borealis shone on the snow, giving the entire snowfield a cold, pale green glow, as if standing on the surface of some forgotten planet.

Meanwhile, overhead, the aurora continued to surge silently.

Miya took a deep breath and calmed down.

She's had experience with this before, and although she's always been pulled in unexpectedly, once inside, her mind works much calmer than usual.

Without a doubt, this is an unclaimed sea of ​​consciousness.

But the problem is, this is the clock tower garden behind Star Orbit Academy, how could there be an unclaimed sea of ​​consciousness in such a place?

Logically speaking, the unclaimed sea of ​​consciousness is the spiritual space left behind by the witch after her death.

Which little witch was murdered here?

Or is it that this sea of ​​consciousness has existed for so long that everyone has forgotten about it?

Mi Ye's brows furrowed, her mind filled with far more questions than answers.

Then she suddenly remembered Lena.

Lena said, "You have a familiar scent."

From the cafeteria onwards, Lenai led her this way in a seemingly casual manner.

When the other person uttered the phrase "familiar smell" on the way, Miya was still confused. Now it seems that what Lena smelled was probably the scent of her sea of ​​consciousness.

It was a trace of a lost consciousness left on Mi Ye's body after she was pulled into the abandoned hospital by Lan Ye's consciousness.

Miya memorized these questions and then refocused her attention on the most important matter at hand.

She had roughly figured out the rules of the unclaimed sea of ​​consciousness: find the owner of the sea of ​​consciousness, fulfill the obsession left behind by the other party, obtain the other party's most precious magic, and finally be bounced back to reality.

Miya squinted and glanced around.

To the left is an endless snowfield, and to the right is the same.

But directly ahead, about three or four hundred meters away, there was a small cluster of light that stood out starkly against the surrounding cool tones.

It was a warm yellow color, small, like an oil lamp lit in the snow.

She adjusted the position of her scarf, burying half her face in it to block the cold wind, and then strode towards the cluster of lights.

The snow was thick; every step I took sank above my ankles, and when I pulled my foot out, it made a dull thud.

Her sneakers weren't waterproof, and the melted snow quickly seeped in, making her toes numb with cold.

Miya gritted her teeth and continued walking, silently counting in her mind to distract herself.

Although they were wearing cotton-padded clothes, it was clear that they were no match for the extreme cold.

When she had counted to about one hundred steps, she could make out the outline of a small house, but she did not continue walking.

Because there were four brown bears in front of the cabin.

These four brown bears were all over two meters long, and their dark brown fur was covered with a thin layer of frost.

Their eyes were cloudy grayish-white and had no pupils, but each one turned its head at the same time to look in the direction of Mi Ye, its mouth open, revealing its thick canine teeth, and the white breath it exhaled shone with a pale green under the aurora.

Dark Brown Bear

[Rank C Monster]

Mi Ye immediately made a judgment: she could kill him instantly.

She pulled the scarf off her face, threw it on the snow, and then activated [Berserk Mode].

A faint red halo appeared at the edge of Mi Ye's vision, and her body became stronger, and the cold feeling disappeared completely.

This is achieved by consuming 10% of your life force, increasing agility by 15%, constitution by 15%, and accelerating recovery speed.

The price is a short period of weakness after the battle, but for her, as long as she can finish the fight before the weakness period arrives, it doesn't count as a price.

Before the first brown bear could even react, Mi Ye had already closed in on its left blind spot.

Her dash churned up a white wave in the snow, which, under the aurora, looked like water being cleaved by a speedboat.

She raised her right hand, and a engorged, deep red tentacle emerged from her sleeve. After using [Harden], its originally soft skin became as hard as steel, and its tip tapered into a sharp cone, aiming at the heart of the brown bear in front of her.

With tentacles attached, Mi Ye rushed to the brown bear's side in an instant. Without hesitation, she pierced through the bear's back, bursting out with a spray of blood mist.

The brown bear didn't even have time to roar; its body stiffened for a moment before collapsing to the side like a statue whose base had been removed.

Constitution +7

[Agility +4]

[Vital Energy +83]

Before the dull thud of the tentacles hitting the snow could reach Mi Ye's ears, she had already withdrawn her tentacles, twisted her body in mid-air, and spat out a mouthful of blood.

【The Empty Lice】

Countless white specks of light scattered out, like pollen blown by the wind, or like glowing fireflies.

Each empty louse is an independent symbiotic organism, formed from her blood and life force, floating silently in the air.

They spread out precisely and attached themselves to the bodies of the three brown bears.

The moment it was applied, pale red threads were drawn from the brown bear's body, flowing into the empty louse's body strand by strand, like unraveling silk.

The paralysis effect combined with the continuous loss of life force caused a brown bear that was closest to Mi Ye to raise its front paw to strike, but the paw slowed down halfway through the air.

But Mi Ye gave them no chance to catch their breath.

Upon landing, the soles of my shoes left two long drag marks on the snow, and I used the cushioning effect of squatting to propel myself forward again.

The tentacle swept across from the right, its hardened side blade slicing open the throat of the second brown bear. Black blood sprayed onto the snow like petals of a cut autumn ivy.

The third one was so weak from being sucked by the Void Lice that it was staggering as it walked. Miya flew over and finished it off with a single stab of her tentacles.

The fourth brown bear turned to run, but its four legs were paralyzed by the louse and it staggered seven or eight meters before plunging headfirst into a snow pit.

Miya chased after him, and a tentacle pierced his neck from behind, killing him instantly.

Constitution +22

[Agility +11]

[Vital Energy +237]

Current Vitality: 2516

From the moment the first brown bear collapsed to the moment the fourth died, only a few minutes passed.

Miya stood amidst the four still-steaming corpses, exhaling a breath of white air. Her tentacles automatically retracted into her body, and the Empty Lice flew back from the brown bear's carcass like bees returning to their hive, disappearing into her skin.

The berserk state automatically ended, replaced by a slight feeling of fatigue.

Fortunately, the consumption was not significant.

The life force replenished by devouring four C-rank monsters far exceeded the consumption of berserk mode, and his body even became slightly warm due to the slight overflow of life force.

She patted the snow off her hands, bent down to pick up the scarf she had thrown on the ground, breathed on it before wrapping it around her neck, then turned around and looked at the lonely little house.

Without the brown bear's cover, the cabin was finally clearly visible to her, and it looked even smaller than the cabin in the back mountains of Moon Forest where she had previously stayed.

The roof was covered with a thick layer of snow, with icicles of varying lengths hanging from the edges, shimmering with a blue-green light under the aurora.

Miya tucked her hands into her sleeves and walked towards the door of the cottage, the snow pattering under her feet.