Chapter 101: Chapter 101 The Great Witch’s Proof_1
Priesia’s grip on her left hand intensified, and Aiden now felt as though his palm bones were about to be crushed. However, Priesia herself was oblivious; the pain had robbed her of all attention, and she was only tensing her muscles reflexively.
With her current monstrous strength, even such a "reflex" could severely injure an ordinary person.
"Warden!?" Flandre and the other prison guards all wore anxious expressions.
In desperation, Aiden had no choice but to utilize his body modification abilities, trying his best to make his hand soft and slender. By altering his tendons and cartilage, he could make his body as flexible as a yoga master’s, even surpassing human limits—after all, he could also change the dimensions of his bones and the distribution of his muscles and fat within a certain range at will.
Using this technique, he neutralized Priesia’s monstrous strength and managed to pull out his hand. Fortunately, Priesia’s palm was already covered in sweat from enduring the pain, which somewhat helped to lubricate the escape.
"Almost lost my hand there..." Aiden shook his still throbbing hand, then looked across the surgical table at Meiruki with a smile that was not quite a smile, "I’ll settle this score with you later."
"Oh dear, I was only a few seconds late, warden. Don’t be so petty." Meiruki laughed it off, "Someone as generous as you surely wouldn’t fuss over such a trifle with a little woman like me."
"Sorry, but I have one trait: I’m particularly vengeful..."
As the two faced off across the surgical table, Priesia let out another birth-like wail.
Aiden looked down soberly, and saw that the snake scales on Priesia’s body were spreading rapidly, with the grey-brown pattern of a python vaguely emerging.
The witch’s legs, which had been bound together on the bed, were twisted in agony, so tightly it seemed as though they might merge into one... No, they were indeed fusing together. Her legs deformed and lengthened at a visible rate, sticking together as flesh gradually melded, skin joined, and scales appeared, forming a snake tail in a blink.
Aiden couldn’t help but think of the mermaid princess in fairy tales, who longed for human love so much that she became mute and endured the agony of stepping on knife edges to demand a "Magic Potion" from the witch, to turn her fish tail into human legs.
The witches of this world could create a similar Magic Potion, but with the entirely opposite purpose: Their concoctions were designed to turn humans into monsters, thereby gaining the monsters’ power.
As the transformation continued, Priesia’s voice became increasingly distorted and hoarse, no longer human. With her cloudy amber eyes, she swept her gaze over those present, her pupils elongating into slits, the corners of her mouth splitting towards her ears, and a long, forked tongue protruding as if searching for prey.
After her transformation into a monster, Priesia was no longer the image of weakness she had been before, but instead began to struggle energetically on the surgical bed.
Several straps neared breaking under her thrashing, thankfully there were relatively sturdy chains. However, her snake tail was much more flexible than human legs and, after a few twists, it seemed about to slip out from the layers of restraints, prompting some of the watching guards to subconsciously reach for their batons and sidearms.
Aiden stepped back calmly and said, "Time to work, Daili."
"Understood."
Daili chanted a spell, summoning several tentacles of shadow demons from under the surgical bed to tightly wrap around the frenzied Priesia, securing her to the table.
"The emetic should also be taking effect about now," Meiruki glanced at the clock.
Seconds ticked by, and Priesia suddenly stopped struggling. She made a few strange noises and then began to heave. Soon, stomach acid flowed backwards from her mouth, spilling into the basin prepared in advance.
She had already vomited several times when first brought to the prison, and since then had not eaten, so now only stomach fluids came out, albeit mixed with a coffee color from bleeding.
After retching for a while, she suddenly opened her mouth wide, far beyond the normal limits of human jaw expansion. Her neck thickened, and from her abdomen to her chest, unnatural movements began to appear in her body.
Under the influence of the Magic Potion, she began to regurgitate indigestible materials like a snake.
Meiruki knelt in front of Presia to observe and suddenly exclaimed, "Ah, it’s coming out!"
Something emerged from Presia’s mouth and she spat it into a basin.
Aiden looked closely and saw that the object appeared to be a polyhedral diamond-shaped pendant, made of a material resembling black crystal, transparent in texture, neither too small nor too large, with sharply defined edges—it was quite impressive that Presia could swallow such a thing.
Daili also saw the foreign object clearly and her eyes widened in shock. She waved her short magic wand and summoned a shadow demon’s claw from her shadow to pick up the pendant.
"Don’t touch it, Daili," Aiden suddenly spoke up.
Aiden’s unusually icy voice made Daili instinctively halt the shadow demon’s action; she looked at Aiden, who was staring back at her with an expressionless face.
"Do not touch that thing," Aiden said emphatically, "Draw your hand back, now, immediately."
Daili shivered. Aiden’s tone was calm, but his eyes held a chilling sharpness. It was not just a command, but also a warning; if Daili insisted on touching it, he would not hesitate to use the demon contract to subdue her... or even kill her outright.
Aiden indeed would not be soft-hearted; objects expelled from the Great Witch Priesia’s mouth could be magical items with special powers, and he would not allow anyone to contact potentially dangerous objects without his permission.
"I’m sorry." Under Aiden’s gaze, Daili obediently withdrew the shadow demon’s claw.
"So, you know what this is, don’t you?" Aiden persisted, observing her. Daili’s immediate response had been decidedly unnatural.
"..."
Daili remained silent, which somewhat surprised Aiden. Since they had established this transactional relationship, she had hardly ever resisted his commands.
"You don’t want to say?" Aiden inquired.
This time, Daili shook her head.
"What’s going on?" Aiden furrowed his brows, suspicious.
"Perhaps it’s not that she doesn’t want to say, but that she cannot say," Meiruki interjected suddenly. She was injecting Presia with an antidote. "She might have possessed this object before, and the person who handed it to her likely bound her with a ’contract of silence’."
"So, you have some clue about this thing?" Aiden turned to ask her.
"Sort of. I’ve never seen this object, but I guess..." Meiruki slowly said, "it’s likely the ’credential of the Great Witch,’ crafted by Abigail, the ’witch at the pinnacle’."
