What witch? The Deadly Pharmacist!

“Then before killing her, let her prepare a secret letter and send it to the contact point she mentioned,” Leon said to Lena, having made his preparations.

To gain the upper hand, one must be quick; before the count can react, he must have the knife pressed against the other's throat.

The next target was Bishop Beckett.

Chapter 172 The Positions Have Swapped

Two days later, in an ordinary hotel room on the outskirts of Hamel, Bishop Beckett was still sitting at his desk studying the recent report.

After secretly returning to Southport County, in addition to eliminating Selene Hershey as instructed by the Earl, he also mobilized his own forces to begin investigating Leon.

However, these investigations yielded largely the same results he had anticipated, yielding no useful findings.

Inside the Inquisition, and on the grounds of Southport County and River Valley County, Leon showed no obvious abnormalities.

Put yourself in the ear of Bishop Beckett's shoes. If he were Leon and had already done something that might provoke the Count's wrath, he would certainly not do anything unnecessary within the Count's surveillance range.

For Leon now, only the labyrinthine stronghold on Arend Island, which he firmly controls, is relatively safe.

Neither the Count nor Bishop Beckett considered visiting Arende Island, as it would be pointless; Leon had ample time to deal with them.

Leon Seth was just a low-ranking official; they didn't need to waste time on this kind of maneuvering. If the suspicion was deep enough, they would act.

Even if they were to take punitive measures against him now, poisoning Selena Hershey first and then issuing an ultimatum, it would be considered a relatively mild approach for them, considering that Leon still has the value of being tamed and used for a while longer.

Suddenly, there was a knocking sound with a peculiar rhythm on the door, followed by a letter being slipped under the door.

An attendant was leaning against the door. He glanced down at the secret letter, exchanged a look with Bishop Beckett, bent down to pick up the letter and examined it carefully. After confirming that there were no problems, he came over and handed it to Bishop Beckett.

Nowadays, all of Bishop Beckett's subordinates in the area, once they have investigated and found any results, will follow the procedure to send a secret letter to a contact point, and then a special person will pick up the letter and deliver it to his location.

Bishop Beckett opened the letter, which was from Zona Mendes, whom he had placed in the Inquisition. Just two days ago, he had given Zona the task of poisoning Selene.

The poison they used contained a delaying agent, and according to their calculations, Sally should die around today as well.

Bishop Beckett opened the letter, checked the handwriting, and after confirming that it was correct, quickly read on.

As he expected, Zona reported that this morning, the guards at the prison found that Selena Hershey had not gotten up. After checking on her, they found that Selena had a high fever and was unconscious.

Leon immediately initiated resuscitation procedures, but Selene's condition deteriorated rapidly. At noon, about an hour earlier, Selene Hershey died of respiratory failure, initially suspected to be a complication of salinization disease.

Bishop Beckett read the letter twice and put it down. The plan had succeeded, but he was still slightly surprised.

He speculated that Leon should have been somewhat aware of the Earl's betrayal, and that it was possible that Leon had discovered Zona's poisoning beforehand.

As it turned out, Leon still failed to notice, and it seems that he had ultimately overestimated his student.

Beckett wasn't worried about the possibility that Zona was being forced to write false information to him. The people he had planted were all rigorously trained and wouldn't easily give in or cooperate, at least not in such a short time.

Moreover, even if his men were forced to deliver messages, they knew to use coded warnings, but this letter contained no coded warnings, and the handwriting and delivery process were perfectly normal.

Ultimately, Beckett didn't believe that Leon would take such a drastic action as challenging the Count; it was 100% suicide.

He used his teleportation ability to immediately report the situation to the Earl.

“Very well.” The count said in a cold, hard tone after hearing this. “Proceed according to plan. When you see him, let me speak to him directly and I will judge him.”

“Understood,” Bishop Beckett replied, then quickly began packing his things, preparing to head to the Inquisition to meet with Leon.

With Selene Hershey dead, Leon has been punished and lost a major reason to continue risking his life to protect Weiss Rogers, so it's time to give him an ultimatum.

Leon has only one way out: to agree to hand over Weiss Rogers on the spot and swear never to defy the Count again. The Count will then take the opportunity to plant his own people in the labyrinth, completely control it, and use the witch Rena Lothark as a hostage to further control Leon.

Any other reaction—feigning ignorance or resisting—would be met with no chance from the Earl. He would be taken into custody, and soon an army would be assembled to conquer Arend Island, while all his strongholds would be destroyed.

They searched high and low for Weiss Rogers in those places, and if they couldn't find her, they would capture Lena Lothar and torture her to further interrogate Leon.

At that point, regardless of whether Leon spoke up or not, he was basically doomed, while Lena still had a chance to survive as a tool for refining monsters.

Even if there's a 30% chance that Leon is truly innocent, killing the wrong person wouldn't matter much to them; they had already considered this when they targeted Selena Hershey.

The Earl executed many people out of suspicion, not just his nephew Jay, but many others whom he never gave a chance to. There were also more than one case where it was later found that he had killed the wrong person.

But so what? The count has never felt guilty about it even once. Such things are not uncommon in the underworld. Their style is to rather kill the innocent than let the guilty go free!

After packing up, Beckett left the inn with his entourage. Bishop Beckett and his entourage mounted their horses and prepared to head to Hamel.

There, Bishop Beckett would gather the men in town and then summon Leon from the Inquisition to meet him and deliver the Count's judgment.

They were walking along a forest path in the suburbs when they came towards them a man dressed as a farmer. He was wearing loose linen clothes, a straw hat, and had a cloth bag slung over his shoulder and hanging in front of him. He was walking with his head down, carrying farm tools.

The attendants didn't pay much attention to the farmer, but Bishop Beckett still glanced at him and suddenly felt something was off when the farmer didn't look up and move aside despite hearing the horses' hooves so close.

In that instant, he activated the basic blessing of the Mystic God, and a sense of near-clairvoyance spread through his mind.

Then he sensed the outline of what the farmer was carrying in his cloth bag—it was a half-length, large-caliber flintlock rifle!

He immediately reined in his horse, and his attendants, seeing this, also skillfully reined in their horses and stopped.

Before the attendant could ask a question, Bishop Beckett had already placed his hand on his sidearm and shouted to the farmer from about ten paces away: "Stop, you over there, lift your face!"

Upon seeing this, the attendant immediately became alert and reached for his own gun.

The "farmer" finally raised his face and met Bishop Beckett's gaze.

Bishop Beckett gasped sharply.

Leon Seth!?

The next instant, Leon launched a frontal charge at the two, simultaneously activating his werewolf transformation and time acceleration!

Time acceleration was pushed to its limit, nearly five times the normal speed, which also increased the speed of the werewolf transformation. In the eyes of Bishop Beckett and his entourage, Leon's werewolf-transformed body exploded in an instant!

The attendant drew his gun, and Bishop Beckett drew his gun; both men drew their guns quickly, but to Leon, it looked like a slow-motion replay in a movie!

As Leon charged, he also drew his gun and fired at a speed that neither of the two could match, aiming at the follower on his left. The bullet was so fast in his time field that its trajectory was unpredictable. Before the follower could raise his gun, blood spurted from his left eye, and he fell backward from his horse. Everything seemed so slow to Leon.

Bishop Beckett saw that Leon's first target was his attendant. He thought he still had a chance to fire a shot, but the moment he drew his gun, a cold, numbing sensation suddenly spread from his upper arm to his whole body, causing his movements to become noticeably sluggish.

Before transforming, Leon had already begun to activate the cursed blood implanted in Bishop Beckett's body. After he used time acceleration, the poisoning speed of the cursed blood also increased exponentially!

In his werewolf form, Leon leaped forward and, before Bishop Beckett could react, grabbed him by the neck with a claw, using the immense strength of a werewolf to pull him backward off his horse!

Beckett's last thought, as he nearly suffocated, was to bestow a blessing upon the Earl:

Fenrir has betrayed us! Leon Seth has betrayed us! They misjudged...this man!!

Neither the Count nor Bishop Beckett had anticipated Leon's madness—he had actually challenged the Count to war!

However, Leon's immense strength nearly choked him at that moment, and the cursed blood poisoned him five times faster. He had no time to do anything, and his consciousness was severed in the midst of the dizzying spin.

Leon landed and pressed the petrified Bishop Beckett to the ground. He wasn't worried that Bishop Beckett's body would shatter. Before death by petrification, the petrified body would still retain a certain degree of toughness, and its texture was actually more like a metal with a certain degree of ductility. Only after the body irreversibly dies during petrification would it salt and become brittle.

After he landed quickly, the body of his follower, who had been shot off his horse earlier, fell to the ground next to him.

Leon reversed the time acceleration, and the two frightened horses, as if waking from a dream, neighed and began to gallop away.

Leon glanced at Bishop Beckett on the ground; in the distance, his prepared carriage was rapidly approaching.

“The positions have been reversed this time, Bishop Beckett,” he said in a deep voice to Bishop Beckett, though the latter was in no condition to hear him.

A year ago, Bishop Beckett led a raid on the Hamel Labyrinth and captured the unsuspecting Rena.

Now, it was his turn to raid the unsuspecting Bishop Beckett and capture him.

The carriage stopped, and Leon's men got off and began to quickly clean up the scene.

Leon waved his hand, and his men stepped forward to lift the petrified Bishop Beckett onto the carriage.

Next, he will have many questions to ask Bishop Beckett, the Earl's most trusted confidant. His intelligence will be the key to defeating the Earl!

Chapter 173 The Trial of Bishop Beckett

When Bishop Beckett awoke, he found himself in a dark room, chained tightly to an iron bed, with no feeling below his neck and unable to move.

The moment he regained consciousness, he wanted to use the blessing, partly to investigate the surrounding situation and partly to contact the Earl.

However, a subtle sense of dizziness immediately began to invade his consciousness, and the scene in front of him seemed to be spinning repeatedly, making him feel extremely nauseous, and the power of the blessing also became disordered.

“There is a potion that the witches of Moira call ‘Water of Vengeance.’ When given a large dose by the Blessed Ones of the Four Gods, it can temporarily seal the power of the Four Gods’ blessings,” Leon’s voice came from the side. “No wonder the Church is unwilling to promote potions; this thing is too detrimental to the Church’s rule of blessing.”

Bishop Beckett took deep breaths to catch his breath, then turned to look at Leon, who was standing beside him with his hands behind his back, looking down at him. The dim candlelight behind him cast only a shadow on his face.

“That’s a potion that only the Witches’ Gathering possesses. You couldn’t possibly know the recipe for such a potion. It seems that Weiss Rogers really is in your hands,” said Bishop Beckett.

Weiss had met the Great Witch Lamia in the St. Rosalia Prison. As a key figure in the Rose School, it's not surprising that she knew some special potion recipes.

“Don’t talk like confirming this is important to you. You’re just trying to drive me to my doom simply because you doubt me,” Leon said to Bishop Beckett.

“You betrayed the Earl first, and this is how you repay his kindness?” said Bishop Beckett.

"Gratitude? The only difference between what you did and what Archbishop Rogers did to the Earl is that you didn't force Lena to her death. In the end, weren't you the ones who forced me to sacrifice Mrs. Hershey to save Lena? If the Earl can hate Archbishop Rogers so much, shouldn't I hate you too?" Leon retorted.

That being said, he never truly hated the Earl, and was even somewhat grateful to him, but he never considered offering his loyalty to the Earl.

“We are the ones who have given you your current position!” Bishop Beckett continued.

"Because you want me to produce for you, and my returns have far exceeded your expectations. I supply you with more goods than you need, and I hand over every penny of the profits from the territory! My agreement with the Earl only includes that I set up production for you, and then you provide me with the conditions to rescue Mrs. Hershey."

"Our deal doesn't include my involvement in the Earl's revenge plot, and you've always treated me as an outsider, haven't you? Strictly speaking, it was your attempt to poison Mrs. Hershey that broke our agreement," Leon replied calmly.

“Selena Hershey is insignificant to the Earl. He’s doing this to give you a chance! Having been punished, you can regain the Earl’s trust as long as you hand over Weiss Rogers!” Bishop Beckett said, then added, “Even now, it’s not too late!”

“An opportunity, like the count treated his nephew?” Leon asked.

He had heard about the Earl's execution of his nephew, Jay Sid. He poisoned his nephew, secretly mixing the antidote into a crippling potion, and forced his nephew to drink it. The plan was that if Jay accepted the punishment of becoming crippled, he would survive. Jay spilled the antidote, and after being poisoned, died in a fight with the Earl.

This is the opportunity the Earl is giving you: to accept punishment and demonstrate your loyalty to him, or face certain death.

“The Earl is rarely willing to give someone another chance. If he really intended to drive you to your doom, you would already be dead,” Bishop Beckett said.

"It sounds like I should kiss his foot and kneel down to thank him for sparing my life after he kicked me?" Leon chuckled.

“This is your only way out, and you’ve even given up this chance.” Bishop Beckett looked at Leon with utter incomprehension. “You actually went to war with the Earl. What were you thinking?”

“Actually, I’m also confused about what I really want, but I know very well that being a dog under the Earl like you is definitely not what I want,” Leon said calmly.

"The most important thing for a person is to understand themselves. It's a pity that you've used all your abilities to bring about your own destruction. Do you think that by defeating me, you'll have a chance of winning against the Earl?" Bishop Beckett asked.

“That depends on what kind of intelligence you can give me,” Leon said.

“Do you think I would say that?” Bishop Beckett retorted.

“That’s not up to you,” Leon replied calmly.

Beckett's heart sank as he remembered the secret letter he had received.

The fact that Leon was able to intercept him so precisely when he received the letter suggests that he must have known his whereabouts beforehand. This implies that the contact point had most likely been exposed, and the secret letter was probably fake.

But no matter how you look at it, the letter was written by Zona, which means that his subordinate, whom he thought wouldn't easily give in, not only revealed crucial information but also actively assisted Leon in deceiving him.

The fact that Leon dared to strike him first suggests that he possesses some kind of interrogation technique unknown to them.

A tall, slender figure draped in a monastic robe emerged from the shadows behind Leon. Bishop Beckett strained to see and recognized the face beneath the robe as Lena Lothark, but with a slight difference. In his memory, Lena Lothark was much smaller and had the youthful, innocent look of someone in her teens.

But this Reina looks much more mature, with those horns on her head and those deep purple... eyes...

Bishop Beckett's thoughts grew increasingly heavy. Seeing Lena's eyes, which radiated an evil light, a strong sense of dizziness began to assault his consciousness.

Succubus! This is the seductive power of a succubus!

Bishop Beckett now realized that during his petrified coma, he had been given not only the Water of Revenge, but also Rena's blood!

This doesn't make sense. Rena Lothark possesses the succubus form of a second-tier witch, so why was she captured by the Apprentice Knights back then? Could it be that she acquired her power after that?!

And then there's Leon's werewolf transformation ability, which doesn't look like a beast transformation drug at all. It seems like he was the one who activated the Cursed Blood!

All of this was outside their intelligence; it was a card in Leon's hand that they didn't control!

Bishop Beckett began to do his best to resist the allure that was controlling his consciousness. After all, he was blessed by a second-tier Mystic God and had a certain degree of resistance, but it was hard to say how long he could hold out.

Upon realizing this, Bishop Beckett immediately tried to bite his tongue, but found that his jaw joint was too weak. He could only squeeze his tongue painfully with his teeth, but he could not bite it off. His tongue was as tough as cowhide in his mouth.

Leon did not underestimate Bishop Beckett's loyalty and will to the Count, and even gave Beckett a drug that could paralyze the muscles near the jawbone, a technology developed by the Church. However, it required precise dosage control to ensure that the person could still speak, while weakening the person's biting force to the point that it could not bite off the tongue. Fortunately, they had the Church's best apothecary, Weiss.

At this moment, Leon activated the Cursed Blood, and a strong paralyzing sensation reappeared from the depths of Beckett's body, spreading up his neck and arousing an uncontrollable fear at his primal level.

Pulled by fear, Bishop Beckett was forced to distract himself, allowing Lena's alluring power to take over.

Despite Bishop Beckett's best efforts to resist, Lena gradually grasped the sense of synchronization with the magical fluctuations.