After confirming that even if Ivette was a Witch, she was a good Witch, Lucia relaxed a little during their subsequent conversation. She asked Ivette a few questions, but received no answers at all. Every one of them was brushed off with cryptic riddles.
She was not disappointed. She had never expected to learn anything in the first place. If anything, the fact that Sister Ivette had frankly admitted she was a Witch instead of denying it was enough to make her happy.
Later that night, Lucia's father, Emon Sterling, and the village priest Arnold paid a visit to the cottage in the woods.
As Sanglun Village's strongest fighters, the two had naturally come together after hearing that Lucia had gone to the Witch's house. Though the rumors had no solid proof behind them, that did not stop them from being deeply wary of the silver-haired Witch.
Yet after actually seeing Ivette and Lucia getting along peacefully, both men were rather confused.
The reason was simple. Even after secretly using sensing magic, they could not discern the silver-haired girl's strength at all.
Unlike Ivette's method of calculating Mana Points through the "Rune Siphon Effect"—a technique with excessively demanding requirements, requiring not just knowledge of mathematics and Rune Studies principles, but immense mental power as well, making it utterly unsuitable for 99.99% of people—
They used a broadly applicable traditional sensing method based on mana emission. By sensing the "mana aura" produced by the circulating mana naturally leaking from someone's body, they could determine that person's mana level.
Under this classic and highly versatile sensing method, they were shocked to discover that this so-called Witch was simply an ordinary person without any mana!
That should not have been possible. Most Witches were lawless, morally corrupt mages, and only mages had the