I! Vivian! The Witch!

Luo Er's heart-wrenching screams were abnormally piercing in the forest.

Don't misunderstand—the "heart-wrenching" here isn't an exaggerated figure of speech; this Fire God Cult mage was literally having his heart and lungs torn apart.

Looking at Luo Er's appearance, he was completely different from his subordinates who had been consumed by black flames earlier. There were no signs of burning at all, as if he were still a normal, unharmed person.

So why was Luo Er still screaming like a pig being slaughtered, writhing in agony on the ground?

The reason was that Liao Zixuan's black flames this time were burning from the inside out.

The Dark Flame Wolf could incinerate everything—not just matter, but even magic itself. A mage's most vital asset was their own magical source, yet Liao Zixuan had ignited it from within, burning it clean and dry.

In other words, Luo Er's path as a mage was completely finished. Liao Zixuan had crippled him.

What made Luo Er even more despairing was that, along with it, a gem in his bosom had also been burned.

The Magic Stone used to communicate and project images with the Bishop.

This meant he had lost even the last sliver of hope to let Lady Eugenia know and send rescue.

"Who is it! Who!"

"Come out!!" Luo Er had gone mad, completely mad. His eyes bloodshot, his voice hoarse as he roared.

He lay on the ground like a maggot, his internal organs already turned to charcoal, crumbling at the slightest touch. The only part of his body he could still move was the mouth Liao Zixuan had deliberately left intact.

Simply put, Luo Er was already a dead man—just a dead man who could still speak.

And that was exactly what Liao Zixuan wanted.

A small black wolf stepped out gracefully from the shadows.

Amid Luo Er's wide-eyed, incoherent curses, it opened its mouth, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and carried him back like prey.

Yes, Luo Er had to die in Liao Zixuan's mind.

But before Luo Er died, Liao Zixuan wasn't willing to waste such a useful tool.

After all.

Anyone in utter despair would erupt with immense malice, especially in front of the one who killed them.

Liao Zixuan believed that with Luo Er's level, he could definitely spew venomous, filthy words.

Venomous enough to make Vivian unable to accept them.

Filthy enough to make the young girl unable to bear them.

To make a girl who might never have even killed a pig in her life, for the first time, stir up the thought of killing!

The vast forest was eerily silent at this moment, not even the sound of insects or birds could be heard.

Only a small black wolf, carrying Luo Er like a dead dog, moved quietly forward.

The afternoon sun cast its rays through the treetops, falling onto the little wolf's body.

Though it was the body of a cub, under the sunlight, the shadow cast between the trees was inexplicably enormous, pitch black, as if it dimmed the entire forest by several shades.

Today.

Hopefully, it would be a day worth remembering. Right?

"Little Black?" After venting and driving back the Grey-robed Ones, the young girl hadn't even caught her breath before she realized her little wolf cub had disappeared.

Vivian looked around but couldn't find the wolf's figure.

But the girl wasn't too worried, because Vivian knew Little Black's strength. Those Grey-robed Ones couldn't even beat her, let alone Little Black.

Besides, through Telepathy, Vivian could vaguely guess what Little Black had gone to do.

So the girl waited in place with the two players. After a short while, rustling sounds came from the bushes in the direction the Grey-robed Ones had fled.

"Little Black!"

"Why did you bring him back?" Vivian exclaimed in surprise at first, but quickly frowned as she looked at Luo Er in Liao Zixuan's mouth.

As for Liao Zixuan, he didn't say much. He dropped Luo Er in front of Vivian and then lazily lay down at the girl's feet, looking like it was all up to her now and none of his business.

Vivian glared at Little Black, then turned Luo Er, who was face-down on the ground, upright.

But who would have thought that the moment the girl propped him up, Luo Er immediately burst into curses.

"I knew it was you!"

"Why won't you let us go, you vicious lowborn! Don't think being able to use a little magic makes you special. If Lady Eugenia were here, you'd be nothing!!"

Vivian had originally wanted to calm down and talk things through, but being hit with a barrage of accusations from Luo Er right off the bat, the girl got angry too.

"I'm asking you, we have no grudges, we don't even know each other—why did you attack us!" Vivian voiced the doubt that had been weighing on her mind.

Up until now, Vivian still didn't know why these Grey-robed Ones wanted to kill her.

"Hmph, why attack you? It's because you're ignorant and insatiably greedy, daring to venture deep into the forest and disturb the Bishop's plans. You deserve to die!"

"We didn't want to disturb you. We just wanted to go to the Monster Nest deeper in to collect a herb that could cure my brother."

Vivian still tried to reason with Luo Er through logic.

And this Fire God Cult mage wore a look of contempt, the kind an upper-class person has for someone beneath them, as he sneered in a haughty tone:

"Treat illness? People like you, lowlifes from some backwater village, are worthy of using Purple Crystal Grass? These herbs are all supplied to the big shots and nobles in the city. When did it become your turn, you livestock, to waste them?"

"Then I'm just supposed to watch my brother die?" Vivian's upbringing, like that of many villagers, had instilled in her a deep sense of class hierarchy.

They inherently believed, from the bottom of their hearts, that they were country folk, village people, inferior to the masters in the big cities.

Vivian clenched her hands, the girl's body trembling. Chains named "class," "birth," and "inferiority" quietly began to loosen in her anger.

"That's right, just let him die. Originally, your village only needed to lose your brother, but now—hahahaha—I'm telling you, it's too late. Just because you dared to fight back against us, your entire village will suffer because of you! Our Fire God Cult will soon raze your village to the ground. By then, forget your brother, the whole village will be buried with you!"

As a seasoned veteran, Luo Erde could see at a glance that the girl before him, though her strength was eerily terrifying, had the mind of a complete child—a state of mind he'd seen far too often among the lower classes.

People like this, the more aggressively you acted and the worse you made the consequences sound, the more they'd be scared, frightened out of their wits, and eventually crying and kneeling to beg for mercy.

Since he was already dead anyway, his insides burned to nothing, Luo Erde decided to vent his revenge, rubbing salt into the girl's wounds, taking pleasure in watching Vivian's pained and regretful expression.

"Your parents will be tied to fire pillars and burned alive, in front of the whole village! And then your brother—hah, aren't you so fond of your brother? We'll chop off his limbs, haul him into the city, and let all of Huodian City see—this is the demon's brother! The Witch's brother!"

"What? Why are you looking at me like that? Come on! Kill me! Let your parents know you're a murderer, let the villagers know your hands are stained with the blood of the Fire God Cult, let your brother know his sister has killed someone!"

Vivian fell silent.

The little girl seemed to have been cowed into lowering her head. She hung her head, strands of hair on her cheeks vaguely obscuring her expression, making her face hard to read.

"Hahaha, you're scared. You don't dare kill me. Now you finally realize the consequences of killing me. But I'm telling you, it's too late! If you kill me, you're a Witch, hunted for life by the Flame Domain. But if you don't kill me, I'll kill your whole village! So choose—be a heinous Witch, or let your parents and brother be buried with me!"

"Why aren't you talking? You were so loud just—"

Just as Liao Zixuan sighed inwardly, lamenting that he might have been too hasty, Luo Erde's words came to an abrupt halt, as if his throat had been squeezed.

Oh, not "as if"—his throat really had been squeezed.

Vivian had lifted her head at some point. On the little girl's face, there was no longer hesitation, no longer anguish, no longer that sense of regret for hurting others.

She channeled her magic into an invisible hand, gripping Luo Erde's neck.

The girl's pitch-black eyes held not a trace of emotion, as if she had been swapped out with the old Vivian.

Then.

"You're annoying." The girl raised her left hand and made a squeezing motion inward.

Pfft!

Like a water balloon filled to bursting, the blood-red liquid splattered everywhere, staining the girl's once-clean face a vivid crimson.

"If only this is how we lowlifes are allowed to survive..."

"Then I, Vivian, would rather be a Witch!"