What witch? The Deadly Pharmacist!

Leon and Lena saw blood splatter between the fences, and Hannah made no further sound.

Then, a rustling sound came from the bottom of the pool, just like the sounds the monsters made when they fed them.

The two stood motionless, like two statues, neither of them immediately going forward to check on the situation.

Lena felt her mind go blank, and after a long while, her legs went weak and she sat down on the ground with a thud.

Hearing the noise, Leon turned around and looked at Lena. Lena looked up at him and suddenly moved back in fright.

"Don't look at me like that, okay?" Leon felt a pang of pain in his heart and said with dissatisfaction.

He killed Hannah to protect himself, but also to protect Lena. Now, Lena is looking at him with such terror, as if she were sizing up a mere murderer.

Lena gradually came to her senses, and a chill quickly gripped her.

Although Leon was constantly telling her to do it, she ultimately let the monster attack on her own.

She killed Hannah; she is the murderer. How can she remain uninvolved?

"I killed someone..." Lena trembled all over, clutching her head in terror and sobbing softly, "I killed someone! I killed someone!"

Sensing that Lena was on the verge of a mental breakdown, Leon's expression turned serious. He quickly stepped forward, knelt down in front of Lena, grabbed her wrist, and said in a deep voice, "I can comfort you."

"Lena, Lena! Calm down! You didn't kill her. She was beyond saving after I smashed her like that. You just gave her a quick death! And understand this: she wanted to kill you, she wanted to send you to the stake for a little money. She deserved to die! You were just protecting yourself! Do you understand? We just wanted to live, what did we do wrong?"

Lena sobbed a few times, finally stopping her trembling. After a while, she raised her tear-streaked face, stared blankly at Leon, and asked:

"Then next time, if we're discovered by others, will we do it again? Are we... going to keep using this excuse to kill and cover up our crimes?"

Leon was stumped on the spot; Lena's understanding of the matter was surprisingly clearer than he had imagined.

Admittedly, Hannah deserved to die this time, but what about next time?

If an innocent person discovers their secret and reports it to the church out of a universal sense of justice, will they then use the excuse of needing to live to continue killing to silence them?

"When you became a witch, did you ever think about what would happen if you were discovered?" Leon countered.

Lena thought for a moment, then shook her head blankly: "I don't know, I was just thinking about saving people..."

"I just want to make money," Leon sighed.

The two remained silent. In fact, they were the same; they did these forbidden things for their own purposes without seriously considering what would happen if they were discovered. Everyone did these things with the wishful thinking that "as long as we don't get caught, it'll be fine."

They are now complete accomplices, whether it's manufacturing and selling magic essence or killing to cover it up.

"We don't know what the future holds, and what's done is done. There's no point in dwelling on things we can't understand!" After a while, Leon stood up expressionlessly. "Let's deal with the problems at hand first!"

After saying that, he walked over, picked up the wooden bucket that had fallen to the ground, scooped some water from the trough, carried it to the edge of the breeding pool, and began to wash the bloodstains off the fence.

Chapter 28 Man-Eating Monsters

Three weeks later, at night, in Lena's cellar.

Lena opened the cellar door, holding a candle, and slowly walked down the steps. Behind her, Leon followed, struggling to carry two buckets of magic potion.

Lena lit a few more candles to illuminate the cellar. After setting the bucket down, Leon turned to Lena to confirm, "Is it okay to just pour the contents into the distiller?"

"Mmm." Lena responded softly, her back to Leon as she prepared the basin and lid for the distiller on the altar.

Watching Lena's retreating figure, Leon sighed quietly.

In the first few days after Hannah Wesland's death, both of them lived in constant fear. Just to be on the safe side, Leon had Lena stay at his house for a while, while he personally managed the studio and oversaw the progress of the body's disposal.

As Leon had predicted, the day after Hannah disappeared, her youngest son mobilized the village's self-defense force to search the mountains. Some people also approached Lena for questions. Lena, who had been repeatedly warned by Leon, calmly denied seeing Hannah and went into the mountains with the villagers to search for her.

No one suspected Lena. Mrs. Wesland had always kept her business dealings with Lena discreet, only occasionally bumping into her in the village. In the eyes of the villagers, Lena and Mrs. Wesland had little interaction; Lena was merely a distant cousin's granddaughter. In contrast, many people in the village had far more complex relationships with Hannah Wesland.

The villagers searched for two days without success and had to give up. Now, only the youngest son of the Weslan family is still insisting on asking around about his mother's whereabouts. He even went to the town guards, but the guards could only tell him tactfully that his mother had been involved in illegal transactions and that her disappearance might be related to the underworld she had been in contact with, which was not something an ordinary person could investigate.

In the end, Hannah's disappearance was only registered by the police department and the Inquisition, and no in-depth investigation was carried out. After all, the body was not found, so there was no way to investigate.

Now, not even a trace of Hannah's body remains. The remnants of her clothes were burned by Leon, and the hammer used in the murder was thrown into the river. No evidence has been left behind.

Thus, his and Rena's murder was completely buried in the darkness.

But for them, it's still impossible to pretend nothing happened.

Over the past two weeks, they have had far fewer conversations than before, and have barely even exchanged glances.

Leon could clearly sense that after Hannah's suicide, Lena had become noticeably distant from him, just like when they first started working together.

However, it's not quite right to say they've fallen into a cold war. They're not lovers or family members. Apart from business cooperation, they don't actually have any other relationship. Rationally speaking, maintaining a certain distance is normal.

Leon still misses the time when his relationship with Lena was more amicable during the time he was treating Ms. Selene. It wouldn't be so bad if they had always kept their distance from each other, but the contrast between their close friendship and sudden coldness is what's most unsettling.

Looking back now, even without Leon, Mrs. Wesland and Lena's business was bound to run into trouble sooner or later. The foreseeable outcome would have been that when Hannah was arrested again, she would implicate Lena, and then Lena would be arrested by the Inquisition. In fact, if we had to say, Leon's intervention ensured Lena's safety.

However, from another perspective, Leon's intervention greatly accelerated Hannah's betrayal of Lena. His failure to properly handle Hannah's murder directly forced Lena to kill someone herself, a point on which Leon felt he had no excuse.

Leon stood by with his arms crossed, watching Lena repeatedly extract and purify the magic essence. Occasionally, he would lend a hand, helping Lena lift the wooden barrel containing the magic essence potion and pour it into the distiller, or pour the liquid extracted from the distiller into the waste liquid barrel. During this process, no one said a word.

This was their first large-scale harvest. They used the potion to extract two large barrels of magic essence. The two of them worked for two hours before finally completing the extraction of magic essence from one of the barrels.

Looking at the amount of magic essence that Lena had poured onto the scales, Leon knew that this harvest was more than he had imagined.

After they extracted all the magic essence and weighed it, the final result was 62 carats. Adding the previous accumulation, the total was 71 carats, or a little over 14 grams, worth more than 280,000, which greatly exceeded Leon's expectations!

Then Lena used a glass rod to touch the magic element and stirred it in the black reagent. The reagent quickly turned red. Lena held it up to the flame to compare the color and suddenly exclaimed "Eh!" in surprise.

"What's wrong?" Leon asked instinctively.

Lena didn't answer. She carefully observed the color of the reagent, then took out an old book, turned to a certain page, and carefully compared it with the colored strips drawn on it.

“The purity has increased…” Lena murmured.

"what?"

"The purity of the magic element has increased. The magic element extracted here this time has a purity of about 78%. I have never extracted magic element with such a high purity before!" Lena said in surprise.

Leon was also surprised. The purity of the last refinement was only a little over 70%, but this time it reached 78%, which was even higher than the limit that Lena could refine in the past.

"Why? Is it because they were raised in the maze for a long time?" Leon asked subconsciously.

"No, theoretically, raising them in the maze will only affect the total amount of magic energy, not the purity..." Lena muttered to herself.

Leon also realized that this guess was untenable. The few monsters they had slaughtered earlier had been raised in the maze for a while, but the amount of magic essence extracted had only increased, and the purity had not changed much.

Suddenly, the two of them opened their eyes wide at the same time and realized the reason.

If there's anything different about these monsters... it's that they ate Hannah Weslan's corpse, and they ate people!

"..." The two fell silent.

No one brought up the topic. Leon knew very well that discussing it now would only worsen their relationship and was pointless. They couldn't possibly keep killing people to feed the monsters in order to increase the purity of their magic essence.

Monsters are creations of the primordial witch Moirai. They are creatures that appear out of thin air from the labyrinth. Like ordinary creatures, they need to eat and sleep, and they also mate to reproduce. The difference is that they have a more powerful physiological structure than animals of the same size, and they have magic flowing through their bodies. Some species have special powers.

In addition, they are unusually aggressive towards humans. Once they detect humans, even non-carnivorous monsters become extremely ferocious. Regardless of whether the monster is resting, feeding, or even hunting other creatures, it will lock onto humans as soon as it spots them.

Among humans, they especially abhor those who are blessed by the four primordial gods. It is said that when the knights of the church enter the labyrinth, even monsters that are natural enemies will unite and attack the enemies who enter the labyrinth.

Legend has it that the four gods created humankind as the most intelligent of all beings, bestowing upon them eternal life and wisdom. However, the evil Moirai hated the gods and humankind. She cursed all living beings, corrupting eternal life and giving birth to pain and death. In order to protect humankind, the gods sealed Moirai forever underground.

Now they have discovered that the magic essence extracted from monsters that have eaten humans is of higher purity, as if these monsters have received some kind of extra "blessing," which seems to further corroborate the claim in the church's scriptures that the Moirai hate humans.

After thinking it over, Leon tentatively said, "I'll sell ten grams of magic essence, and you can keep the rest for your research, how about that?"

Chapter 29 A Grasshopper on a Rope

Hearing Leon say this, Lena was quite surprised: "Is this okay?"

Having obtained such pure magic essence for the first time, she really wanted to keep some for research. Theoretically, the higher the purity of the magic essence, the better the potion produced after activation.

A five percent increase in purity is probably not enough to advance her current research on drugs to the point of reversing the process of salinization disease, but as long as there is a significant effect, it can at least point the direction for research.

But Leon's biggest goal is to make money; he should want to sell as much as possible. But now Leon has offered to leave behind a full four grams of magic essence.

“This yield has far exceeded my expectations, and there’s still room for us to increase production. I’m not in a hurry. It’s rare to have such high purity; it might lead to a breakthrough in your research. We’ll split the profits 50/50 as usual,” Leon said.

"No need for that, you can just deduct it from your share," Lena suggested.

“Consider it my sponsorship of your research. I also hope you can develop a cure for halogenation disease as soon as possible.” Leon looked into Lena’s eyes.

“You…” Lena looked at Leon, and she suddenly realized that it had been a long time since she had looked at his face directly like this.

She suddenly realized that this was actually Leon's effort to ease the tension between them.

Leon clearly cared more about his relationship with her than about the money.

In fact, Lena herself understood that Hannah's death was entirely her own fault. Leon was determined to kill Hannah to protect her. Even if Leon hadn't pulled her into this business, she would have been implicated sooner or later because of Hannah.

From the moment she decided to become a witch, she had been trapped in this predicament of being doomed in the light of day, and this was not Leon's fault.

The shock of the murder was too great, and she had difficulty sleeping for several days. Even now that the dust has settled and the pressure has gradually subsided, she still doesn't know how to face Leon as before.

Being in this stiff atmosphere all the time was actually quite uncomfortable for her.

Now she understood that Leon felt the same way; both of them had wanted to ease the tension between them, but they just couldn't find the right opportunity.

Thinking of this, she chuckled softly and accepted the favor: "Alright then. Thank you, Leon."

She lowered her gaze and thought for a moment, then suddenly spoke up, "Well, actually, I've been thinking about something a while now..."

"What is it?" Leon asked.

“Leon, would you like me to try and heal your injuries?” Lena asked tentatively.

"You mean this?" Leon realized that Lena was referring to the aftereffects that had been troubling him, so he rolled up his sleeves to show the purple scar. "But didn't you say you hadn't researched it and therefore had no clue?"

"What I mean is to start the research from scratch. When my grandmother and I first started researching the salt disease, we only started with a bunch of fragmented data. Witches are passed down from generation to generation, so I have preserved a lot of research data that my grandmother accumulated from her teacher over the generations."

Lena looked intently into Leon's eyes. "I was thinking, maybe you could acquire some chicken-snake poison from your sources so I can study its toxicological effects. Perhaps I can find clues to the antidote from the existing information. If you weren't suffering from this injury, you wouldn't need to spend so much money, right?"

Leon looked at Lena in surprise. Lena suddenly offered to help him research an antidote as a way of repaying him for his willingness to give up some of the magic essence.

If one were to think more critically, it's possible that Lena is completely fed up with her current schemes and wants to get rid of him, perhaps even trying to poison him. After all, Lena only recently had her first act of killing unbanned, and after Hannah's death, he was the only one who knew the secret that Lena was a witch.

However, upon careful consideration, given Leon's understanding of Lena, the possibility is still very, very small.

Seeing Leon remain silent, Lena immediately understood his thoughts and waved her hand to explain, "I was just mentioning it. Of course, I understand you must have concerns. It's okay, I'll listen to you."

Leon looked away, thought about it seriously for a moment, and quickly gave his answer: "Okay, then I'll trouble you."

"Are you serious?" Lena looked at Leon in surprise. "I thought you were going to say something like, 'You thought I'd give you the chance to poison me.'"

Given Leon's past wariness, Lena actually felt that her proposal would most likely be rejected.

“I’m afraid you might poison the medicine or accidentally mix the wrong medicine. Wouldn’t it be better to just catch a mouse to test the medicine before using it?” Leon said, letting out a long sigh. “Think about it carefully. What we’re doing is already so dangerous. One wrong step and we’ll be doomed. Wouldn’t it be too foolish for us to waste our energy scheming against each other?”

Lena understood the implication in Leon's words, but neither agreed nor disagreed; she simply nodded slightly.

The case of Hannah Wesland made them fully realize that they were now accomplices, in the same boat; if one of them was exposed and caught, the other would also be in danger.

They were actually surrounded by dangers. If they continued to backstab each other and fight amongst themselves, it would only escalate into a life-or-death situation like the one between them and Mrs. Wesland. Mrs. Wesland's fate serves as a cautionary tale.

“Alright, let’s tidy things up. I’ll go over there and sell them as soon as possible, and while I’m at it, I’ll ask if I can buy what we want.” Leon said, and began to clean up the scene.

“Okay.” Lena quickly packed up the magic essence, and as she handed the goods to Leon, she suddenly remembered something. “By the way, Leon, do you think we should move the things in the cellar?”

"You mean move the altar and everything that could be evidence into the labyrinth?" Leon glanced around the cellar.

“Yes, after all, last time it was…” Lena hesitated for a moment, but still finished her sentence, “It was the trouble caused by Grandma Hannah sneaking into the cellar.”

“Hmm…” Leon thought about it carefully, but finally shook his head. “She’s dead, the lock has been changed, and it’s not as dangerous here anymore. There’s only one altar, so don’t destroy it unless absolutely necessary. It’s very difficult to move out of the maze quickly, so it’s best to leave it here. If you have any concerns, you can give me a key to your cellar. That way, if anything happens, even if you’re not there, I can come over in advance and help you take care of the evidence.”

“Okay, I happen to have two keys. Here, take this one.” Lena said, taking out a key from her pocket and handing it to Leon.

Leon didn't answer immediately, looking at Lena with some surprise: "I thought you would hesitate for a moment. Aren't you afraid I'll come in and do something strange?"

"It's not my house key, what do I have to be afraid of? Here you go." Lena tossed the key to Leon.

"Then I'm off." Leon smiled, put away the keys, and set off to town to sell the goods.

"Okay, be careful on the road," Lena replied softly.

Chapter 30 Fenrir