Chapter 4: The First Battle

Description

Within the ruins, two figures stood in confrontation: one a twisting, surging phantom, the other a bubbling, rolling pool of acid.

The dim soul-fire within Tunzuo’s emerald eyes flared instantly.

Two spots of green light danced wildly deep within her pupils, like twin ghosts from hell.

However, to Antuxi, who was watching while cloaked in invisibility, Tunzuo’s seemingly terrifying battle stance looked more like a cat cornered by danger, fluffing its fur in a symbolic display of defiance.

Although the posture was fierce, the uneasily surging shadows—like a trembling tail—betrayed Tunzuo’s inner collapse.

“Oh? Have you finally decided to fight back? Then let me see what kind of amusement you can bring me, you who have been granted the title of the Shadow of the End.”

Even though Antuxi’s form was blurred, her voice resonated throughout the ruins like a broadcast heard everywhere.

She floated in midair, resting her chin on one hand, watching with great interest as the daughter she had picked up tried her best to strike a “I am strong, I am terrifying, don’t mess with me” pose.

Tunzuo took a deep breath—though she no longer needed to breathe, it seemed to provide her with a psychological comfort known as “courage.”

Tunzuo raised her slender right hand, splayed her fingers, and aimed them at the mutated slime that was secreting disgusting acid and squirming its way toward her.

“Soul Shock!”

Tunzuo whispered a low command.

The vast, cold soul energy within her body gathered instantly in her palm, transforming into an invisible mental blade that stabbed directly at the slime’s turbid body.

This was a soul-attack method Tunzuo had devised herself, as in her mind, soul attacks were often high-spec skills that ignored defense and delivered one-hit kills.

“Get out of here, you disgusting piece of snot!”

Pale soul ripples spread like waves, instantly piercing the slime’s dark-purple gelatinous body.

However, things did not go as planned; the scene she had envisioned—the slime screaming in agony as its soul collapsed and its body dissipated—did not occur.

The soul shock, which was strong enough to cause instant brain death or soul annihilation in ordinary magical beasts, vanished without a trace the moment it touched the core inside the slime, as if a stone had been tossed into the sea.

The mutated slime simply paused for a moment, appearing confused by the “breeze” that had made it feel a bit “itchy.”

Then, it made a disgusting “squelch” sound again, opened its maw filled with acid, and accelerated toward Tunzuo.

“Huh?”

Tunzuo froze, her beautiful eyes filled with the thought, ‘This isn’t how the script was supposed to go.’

“My, it seems my foolish daughter’s ghost brain isn’t working very well.”

Antuxi’s mocking voice rang out right on cue.

She offered guidance to Tunzuo with a mix of sarcasm and amusement.

“Tell me, my silly daughter, do you really think that every living thing must have a soul?”

Tunzuo dodged, rolling backward in a clumsy fashion to avoid the acid sprayed by the slime, while shouting madly toward the sky.

“Isn’t that obvious?! Things without souls are dead objects! That’s a rock! That’s…”

“That is a miracle of alchemy, a pure aggregate of magic power.”

Antuxi explained with a smirk.

“This ‘Acidic Nightmare’ was specially crafted by mother just for you. It has no soul, only an endless instinct to devour and a hunger for magic power. Hitting it with a soul attack is like using a sword to hack at water; other than exhausting yourself, it is utterly meaningless.”

“Bad mommy! Why did I get stuck with a mother like you!”

Tunzuo finally couldn’t help but start swearing at the wicked mommy who was full of pranks and loved pitting her against impossible odds.

‘No soul? Then how am I supposed to fight it?! Do you want me to engage it in hand-to-hand combat?! Are you kidding me?!’

She was just a ghost witch who found even walking to be tiring.

Sending her to engage in close-quarters combat with an acid-covered, high-lethality alchemical product was more painful than death!

“Squelch—!”

The mutated slime didn’t give Tunzuo a chance to catch her breath.

Its massive body sprang up like a purple cannonball, slamming down hard on the spot where Tunzuo had been standing a moment before.

BOOM!

The ground was instantly corroded into a large crater, and acid splashed everywhere.

Although Tunzuo reacted quickly and melted back into the shadows, she could still feel the sickening, acidic scent following her every move as she traversed the gloom.

This mutated slime didn’t just track her shadow; it seemed to react to the fluctuations of magic power in its surroundings.

Any slight ripple of energy drew its frantic attacks.

“So troublesome… really so troublesome…”

Tunzuo crouched in the shadow of a broken stone pillar dozens of feet away, panting heavily.

The high-intensity shadow traversal had drained most of her strength.

Tunzuo felt her spectral body becoming thin, as if she were about to dissipate at any moment.

“Is this your way of handling it, my silly daughter?”

Antuxi’s voice carried a hint of disappointment and boredom.

“Only running away, only using those flashy but useless soul techniques? Have you forgotten your current identity? You are a ‘Ghost Witch,’ the ruler of shadows, the monarch of the lost souls.”

“I want to rule, too! But the only thing I can rule right now is my bed!”

Tunzuo gritted her teeth, a flash of resentment and dissatisfaction appearing in her emerald eyes.

“This thing cannot be killed! It has no soul, and my soul attacks are useless against it. Do you want me to bite it with my teeth?”

“It’s not impossible. After all, a witch’s teeth are indestructible. Aside from being unrefined, there is nothing wrong with it. However, your silly brain seems to have forgotten that what you should be best at right now is shadows, not the soul, which is currently far too profound for you.”

“Shadows?”

Tunzuo subconsciously looked down at her feet.

In the dim light of the ruins, her shadow was stretched long, like a pool of black mercury quietly flowing across the ground.

Right… of course.

She had been researching the uses of shadows all this time, and her primary methods of attack were supposed to be shadow-based.

She had just panicked after failing to look cool and completely forgotten.

Tunzuo looked away and scratched her cheek awkwardly.

Floating in the sky, Antuxi also began to wonder if something had gone wrong with the witch transformation ceremony; otherwise, how could she, with her intelligence that topped the universe, have given birth to such a dim-witted daughter?

“This ‘Acidic Nightmare’ is a pure aggregate of magic power. It has no soul, but that does not mean it is immune to all attacks.”

Antuxi’s voice became ethereal and filled with temptation.

“It is a blind spot of light and shadow, but it is also ‘matter’ that exists in this world. Since the soul cannot touch it, then use the laws of physics to crush it.”

“Laws of physics… crushing…”

Tunzuo muttered to herself.

Her gaze refocused on the slime’s writhing form.

That was right.

Even though this slime had no soul, it had mass and volume.

Since it existed in this world, it had to follow the basic laws of this world.

“Let the battle… begin again.”

Tunzuo’s eyes finally showed a trace of fighting spirit.

If she had been a resigned couch potato before, she was now like a cat that had been rudely awakened by someone stepping on its tail.

“If you won’t let me sleep, I’ll turn you into a mattress!”

Tunzuo began to leap through the shadows.

This time, she didn’t try to run away; instead, she closed her eyes and sank all her consciousness into the darkness at her feet.

“Shadow Bind!”

Following Tunzuo’s low shout, the shadows that had been peacefully flowing on the ground surged instantly.

Countless pitch-black shadow tentacles shot out from Tunzuo’s shadow.

Unlike before, they weren’t just simply shaped; they carried a suffocating sense of pressure, coiling around the charging mutated slime like giant black pythons.

“Squelch?!”

The mutated slime clearly hadn’t expected the “prey” that had been running away to suddenly fight back.

The moment the pitch-black tentacles made contact with its body, they instantly hardened, turning into black crystals harder than steel.

The mutated slime would not sit still and wait for death.

A violent wave of magic power surged from within its body, and the pustules on its surface burst, spraying highly concentrated corrosive acid in an attempt to dissolve the crystallized shadow tentacles.

However, a cold sneer curled onto Tunzuo’s lips.

“You have no soul, so my soul attacks are ineffective against you. By the same logic, my shadows have no physical substance, so your acid is also ineffective.”

Just as Tunzuo said, while the tentacles looked as hard as iron, they were essentially still “shadow.”

They had no physical matter; the slime’s acid splashed onto them as if it were spraying air, causing absolutely no damage.

The mutated slime seemed to realize that things were going poorly.

It twisted its body frantically, trying to break free from the shadow’s bonds.

But since Tunzuo had already made up her mind to end this farce, she wouldn’t give it any more chances.

“Compress.”

Tunzuo raised one hand and squeezed her fist.

The countless shadow tentacles wrapped around the slime tightened instantly.

It wasn’t ordinary force, but gravity derived from the shadows.

Crack—snap—

A teeth-grating sound of liquid being squeezed echoed out.

The massive mutated slime began to deform under the all-around pressure of the shadow tentacles.

Its gelatinous body was forcibly compressed, and the acid and magic power inside were squeezed about, causing it to emit painful “squelch” sounds.

“Is this… my power?”

Tunzuo watched the mutated slime struggle in agony and felt a strange pleasure surge within her heart.

The blood belonging to a witch began to boil in her veins.

No complex incantations, no need to consume massive amounts of magic power.

Just by controlling her shadow, she could inflict the most direct destruction on the matter of this world.

This feeling was like a mage who had always relied on magic clashes suddenly discovering that her staff was actually a heavy machine gun with infinite ammunition.

“It’s not over yet.”

Antuxi’s voice rang out again, finally carrying a hint of praise.

“Since it is a pure aggregate of magic power, why don’t you treat it as… food?”

“Food?”

Tunzuo was stunned, taking a long while to register what Antuxi had said.

“You want me to… eat it?”

Although the mutated slime had no soul, it contained vast amounts of magic power.

For the current Tunzuo, it was undoubtedly a highly nutritious supplement.

Although her current body was physical, it was still composed of ghostly energy at its core.

Devouring such high-purity magic would not only replenish the strength she had just spent but might even make her stronger.

“Go ahead. Eat it. Swallow its energy into your stomach, and feel the pleasure of feeding.”

Antuxi’s seductive voice echoed in Tunzuo’s ears.

Driven by Antuxi, Tunzuo’s eyes gradually became unfocused.

She swallowed and loosened her hands.

The shadow tentacles that had been tightly binding the slime dissipated instantly, then rapidly gathered and transformed behind Tunzuo.

In the blink of an eye, a massive vortex composed entirely of darkness appeared behind Tunzuo.

The center was bottomless and radiated a heart-stopping suction, as if it were a gate to the underworld.

“Squelch!”

The mutated slime seemed to sense the threat of death.

It struggled desperately to escape, but the suction of the vortex had already completely locked its movements.

“I’m hungry… I want to eat…”

Tunzuo waved her right hand, and the dark vortex behind her erupted with terrifying force.

The struggling slime was lifted into the air and dragged viciously toward the center of the vortex.

The mutated slime didn’t even have time to let out one last shrill scream before it was swallowed whole by the dark vortex.

Following the disappearance of the slime, the terrifying suction gradually subsided.

The dark vortex behind Tunzuo slowly closed and returned to the quiet shadow on the ground.

“Whew…”

Tunzuo let out a long breath.

The witch felt as if all her strength had been drained and collapsed onto the ground.

“So tired… really so tired…”

Tunzuo lay on the cold ground, looking up at the gray sky above.

She felt a warm current flowing through her body; it was the magic power she had gained from devouring the mutated slime.

The replenished energy was restoring her weary body and strengthening her ghost witch constitution.

“Ugh, it doesn’t taste good, it’s so sour…”

As the vortex consumed the slime, its taste and texture were naturally transmitted to Tunzuo.

How to put it? It was like a piece of taffy covered in sour powder and full of resilience.

Regardless, the taste was not good at all.

“For your first battle, the performance was barely acceptable.”

Antuxi’s figure condensed in the air once more.

She looked at Tunzuo, who lay on the ground with a look of utter hopelessness, and a complex emotion flickered in her eyes—a mix of admiration, teasing, and a hint of indiscernible doting.

“Although the process was a bit clumsy and you made a low-level mistake at the start, you eventually found a way to solve the problem.”

Antuxi waved her staff gently, and a soft green light fell upon Tunzuo, easing the exhaustion in her body.

“Remember this feeling, silly daughter. We are witches; we use any means necessary for power and everything we desire. If your wish is to sleep, then for the sake of sleeping, you must be willing to destroy an entire world if you have to.”

“So can I sleep now…?”

Tunzuo rolled her eyes and said weakly.

“Hehe, what an unruly child. Sleep, I will watch over you.”

Antuxi chuckled, her figure beginning to turn transparent again.

Tunzuo closed her eyes, her body slowly sinking into the shadow as she fell into a deep sleep.

“I’ll consider this a passing grade for now. The good days are still ahead of you.”

Antuxi’s giggles drifted through the air, but unfortunately, Tunzuo had already fallen asleep and heard nothing at all.