Millennium Witch

Book 3: Chapter 245: The Proxy in the Mortal World

In the night-shrouded woods, in the depths of a nearby shadow, Yvette stood quietly, feeling a faint touch of regret at the scene before her.When she noticed the black-robed priest trying to channel power from the All-Knowing Eye, Yvette immediately made ready, intending to use the tiny spatial conduit opened by that power transfer to blast her psychic shock through—paying back the petty grudge from when she’d been studying the power of Benediction and the All-Knowing Eye smacked her once and ran.

What she hadn’t expected was how alert the other side was. Almost the instant it sensed her presence, it decisively severed the power feed, abandoning the believers and Benedictions here without hesitation.

Otherwise, she might have had a chance to drop a small segment of a flesh-and-blood waymark into the conduit and lock directly onto that Eldritch God’s true body.

Of course, the thought only flashed by. Unless necessary, she had no wish to clash head-on with an Eldritch God,

as that would waste her Aberrant Mana for no good reason.

Afterward, she slipped away without a sound and came to the crude altar deep in the village. There she carefully examined the items bearing twisted eye motifs and, unexpectedly, found some complex and exquisite magical circuitry,

which was worthy of study even for her.

After all, in the legacy of the Origin Civilization, there was little development regarding faith elements; in this single area they lagged somewhat behind the gods of other worlds. This could be called “faith magic,” a brand-new conceptual field of magic worth exploring in depth.

Before long, using the faith-magic circuitry she had parsed here, Yvette gained quite a lot. Even without the Evergreen Revelation’s holy water for long-term preservation of faith elements, she was confident she could fabricate containers with similar function. Paired with a holy emblem, they could even act like receivers, gathering within a certain range the faith elements oriented toward her as the focus.

Isn’t that the foundational cornerstone for establishing a church?

A dozen minutes later, the sounds of slaughter, screams, and shouts in the forest thinned, and at last faded into dead silence.

Ezra sank to one knee, bracing his longsword against the ground as he panted hard.

After he slew the black-robed priest, the cultists’ morale collapsed on the spot, and they scattered with cries of panic. He pursued for a while and cut down several more, but the mana in his body was nearly exhausted, and he could only watch as the last few cultists disappeared into the dark depths of the woods.

—Of course, to claim the remaining spoils, those who fled would also be quietly erased by a certain someone; but that was not something Ezra could know.

When the fighting subsided, Old Yarrow and the other rescued villagers gathered around, their faces showing relief, concern, and a faint awe of Ezra’s power.

Then they were astonished to see a phantom doorway silently open beside Ezra. An invisible pull covered the battlefield; gray orbs of energy were extracted from the cultists—whether corpses or the unconscious—and were swallowed entirely by the doorway, which finally vanished along with them.

“This is the Goddess purifying the contamination left by the Eldritch God.” Ezra had made that up entirely in his head, but he still explained it to the villagers with a straight face.

“The Goddess—” Old Yarrow included, everyone’s expression turned subtly complicated.

They still remembered Ezra saying the Benediction had been granted by the God of Serendipity. At the time, they’d wondered who that was supposed to be—surely not the one people often mention offhand, right? But now, hearing the words “the Goddess,” they could be certain: it really was the Silver Witch—the renowned Legendary Mage’s master.

She actually exists?!

So without Ezra needing to preach a word, the villagers immediately began muttering prayers to the Silver Witch. Apart from giving thanks for what had just happened, the rest of their praises were lifted wholesale from the All-Knowing Sect’s prayers.

After the prayers, Old Yarrow looked at his son and asked hoarsely, “These days… you must have suffered a lot—What about Aina? Your sister—Is she still alive?”

“Please don’t worry, Father. While we were fleeing, we met two kind ladies from the Academy of Truth,

who gave us much protection and help, allowing me to settle Aina at an inn in Adelock,” Ezra hurried to reassure him.

Old Yarrow let out a breath, a relieved smile finally appearing on his face. He said, “It’s good you’re safe—

It’s good you’re safe—”

When all was still, in the deepest part of the night, Ezra, after many days away, finally returned to his familiar little bed in his room in Lute Village. He closed his eyes and drifted to sleep; when he opened them again, he found himself back in that pure white space.

As the Silver Witch’s figure appeared once more, he immediately dropped to his knees in excitement and babbled, “My Lady Goddess! I—I did it! I wiped out those cultists!”

Looking at the boy before her, nearly crying with joy, Yvette tried to imitate the tone a deity should have and said, in a slightly wooden voice, “Well done, Ezra Yarrow. You have not disappointed My expectations.”

“It wasn’t me—it’s that the power You bestowed on me is too strong, Goddess—” Ezra was a little embarrassed. His performance in battle hardly counted as good; he basically had no technique and won by raw stats.

“It is power, and it is responsibility, Ezra Yarrow. If you wish to continue holding this power, you must shoulder more responsibility. Conversely, if you wish to return to your original life, you may choose to relinquish it and return the power,” Yvette said.

Ezra’s expression wavered for a moment. He didn’t know what responsibility the Goddess meant, but it was likely no less dangerous than fighting cultists.

But soon he set his jaw and said, “I hope You’ll continue to trust me! I also hope to do something for You, to repay the grace You’ve given me!”

“Good,” Yvette said. “I am satisfied.”

Then she adopted a lofty tone—what she herself felt was suitably authoritative—and delivered the lines she’d prepared long ago: “The scourge of the Eldritch God has yet to cease. Thou shalt seek My proxy in the mortal world, Yvette

Loxivia. Thou and she are already acquainted. She now resides at the Old Oak Inn in Adelock. To follow her guidance is to enact My will.”

The Silver Witch’s stilted oracle was a bit of a mouthful, but Ezra understood. His heart trembled as he thought,

That Miss Yvette who gave them the Silver Witch statue was actually the Goddess’s proxy in the mortal world? So that’s it—so that’s how it is?

None of it was a coincidence. From the moment he met Miss Yvette and Miss Lucia, fate had already been sealed!

Buoyed by that sense of destiny, fervor surged in his heart. He placed his right hand over his chest, pressing upon the maiden’s mark, and answered devoutly, “I will heed the oracle! I will find the Lady Proxy without fail, even at the cost of my life!”