Dox won the first duel. After the match, the two sides reacted differently.
After Gray Merchant rescued Wicked Woman, she still had not regained consciousness and remained in the savage state from the battle. In Angel and the others' view, the conventional way to restore her from this abnormal state would be to fulfill Wicked Woman's goal—kill Dox. But that was clearly unrealistic. The duel was already over; clinging to it would be unwise.
Yet if Wicked Woman's condition was not resolved, the duels would be difficult to continue. Gray Merchant was up next, and once he left, the remaining apprentices had no chance of restraining the rampaging Wicked Woman.
Faced with this dilemma, Angel was quite curious to see what Gray Merchant would do.
Gray Merchant's method was simple. He forcibly pulled over one of Wicked Woman's tentacles, wrapped it around his wrist, and tied it into a butterfly knot.
As everyone puzzled over his baffling behavior, Wicked Woman truly stopped howling. Moreover, it was as though her bloodline had been stimulated halfway into a reversal. The brutality in her eyes slowly receded, and her enormous body began to shrink.
Before long, Wicked Woman had returned to a "human" size. Yet in terms of appearance, she could hardly still be called human.
The half of her body that had previously been bound beneath bandages was now fully exposed. There was no alluring spring scenery beneath them—only withered flesh, yellowed bones, and organs shriveled into a lump.
She looked no different from half a corpse.
Half of Wicked Woman's face was rotten as well, but she seemed not to care. She glared viciously in Dox's direction, then said to Gray Merchant with some shame, "I lost."
She admitted the fact bluntly. She did not claim Dox had won through outside