Chapter 14: The Sought-After Witch

“How about it? Our proposal? This is your last chance, Night Witch!”

The voice and the long spear formed from blood arrived beside me almost simultaneously.

The difference was—the long spear inserted into the ground immediately turned into a pool of blood, quiet as if it had never existed; while that arrogant tone continued to stimulate my eardrums, making me not dare to relax even my breathing.

Bloody Lotus kept using thrown long spears to maintain my “battle state,” preventing me from logging out; and my “Voodoo Doll” had also been destroyed by her in advance, entering cooldown.

Escape routes were completely cut off.

Battle?

No, impossible.

For now, my three skills wanting to face off against a KING was simply a pipe dream.

Moreover—

“1, 2, 3, 4…”

I counted the blood bars above Bloody Lotus’s head in an extremely small voice.

Unlike ordinary virtual characters who only had a single long health bar, above Bloody Lotus’s head, there were solidly four steel tubes lined up side by side.

The emerald green HP carried in each steel tube made one feel a chill in their heart.

In other words, her health was at least four times that of an ordinary character—even if I knew this might be caused by skills or character traits, it still meant one unavoidable fact:

My “Witch’s Scythe” couldn’t achieve a one-hit kill on Bloody Lotus.

“May I ask… if you could give me a reason to join your legion?”

This was also one of the questions troubling me.

“Reason? Does our decision need a reason?”

She wrapped the blood long spear with her tongue and lips, slowly licking it.

Her petite body making this action was excessively incongruous—if it were a mature big sister, it might be more harmonious.

But I had no qualification to judge.

After her lips and teeth seemed preheated, Bloody Lotus opened her mouth again:

“We chose you merely because of your ‘style.'”

“Style?”

“Mm, as you can see—our Bloody Castle members are all dark-style or horror-style, yo~ And you happen to be the same. We want to collect this style~”

So it’s such a casual reason?

No… perhaps it really was that simple.

I didn’t even have time to brew a retort before my own intuition refuted it—when Bloody Lotus stared at me with that elegant posture almost like “role-playing,” what naturally emerged in my mind was: she really was this kind of personality.

Pretending to be noble, obsessed with style, wanting to collect all horror-type subordinates into her territory—for her, perhaps it wasn’t absurd.

I had to admit, this proposal was very tempting.

Whether from “game experience” or “status in the real world from BHAO,” Bloody Castle was a top-ranked territory, and joining it was even the dream of many players.

But—

“Sorry, Bloody Lotus, allow me to refuse!”

“Is this your answer?”

“That’s right.”

My reply seemed to surprise her.

She circled in the air flapping her wings for a while, then once again raised the long spear, aiming in my direction.

“Then there’s no helping it. For things we don’t need, we have no choice but to evict them.”

Her voice was solemn, yet soft like reciting some ceremony.

The raised long spear sprayed blood outward—blood as thick as threads layered upon each other, weaving into a grid, sealing the entire sky inside.

Horizontal and vertical—just these two simple combinations, yet forming a precise pattern like computer chip circuits.

At the instant my overhead was completely covered by that pattern—Bloody Lotus’s blood bars also reduced by a full two bars accordingly.

“Ultimate move? To deal with a small witch like me, does a KING need to use an ultimate move?”

Using HP as consumption for powerful skills.

This might be why Bloody Lotus had four times the health.

But the consumption of a full two blood bars—this was absolutely not comparable to ordinary skills.

“Our attack methods are only gorgeous! Mediocre and ugly ways, we don’t want to try them out!!!!”

Her explanation and charging were almost completed synchronously.

In the sky, every intersection of “horizontal” and “vertical” began to extend downward—the two-dimensional plane was forcibly pulled out into the Z-axis.

Blood condensed into downward-pointing sharpness, countless blood long spears uniformly aimed at the ground.

No need to guess, I also knew what would happen next.

—Long spear rain.

This density, there was fundamentally nowhere to hide.

Is this the power of an ultimate move?

My eye sockets expanded uncontrollably.

Those sharp long spears, not a single one was something that could be easily blocked—the range was broad like cheating, the oppressive feeling like directly pressing on the chest.

As for damage…

This level of penetration, as long as two, my HP would hit bottom.

“Blend into Shadows” only let me submerge into shadows, it didn’t mean immunity to attacks.

“Looks like, this time death in the ENDLESS WORLD… is unavoidable.”

I had already prepared myself mentally.

Since there was nowhere to escape, then use the body to withstand it.

—It’s decided.

However, just as I almost gave up the desire to survive in the next second.

The air was suddenly torn apart.

Not a beam.

But a bone spike coming from afar breaking through the air.

Slender, pale white, surface with unnatural bone textures, the tip sharp like it wanted to nail through the night. It didn’t pursue gorgeousness, didn’t even carry any extra decorations, yet it carried a colder, more cruel “sense of death.”

The bone spike’s target was precisely—Bloody Lotus.

“Tch~!”

Bloody Lotus in mid-air lightly tsked, her figure instantly dispersing into countless bats to dodge that bone spike.

The ultimate move’s guidance state was forcibly interrupted, the blood-colored long spears suspended in the sky collapsed accordingly, turning into blood water reflux, surging back toward Bloody Lotus’s body anew.

Immediately after—her consumed blood bars also quickly replenished with the return of the blood water, restoring to four bars once more.

The bone spike passed through the bat swarm, continuing to charge forward, finally sinking into the ground.

A brief silence descended.

Like the world had been paused.

But that silence only lasted the time for me to turn around.

When my line of sight completely looked behind—the explosion and soaring flames simultaneously tore through the night, the roar of collapsing earth and stones filled the five senses, as if even the ground was wailing.

“Ah… So this is the true fighting style of high-level beings?”

I murmured unconsciously.

Only at this moment did I understand that my “Witch’s Scythe” compared to them was simply not worth mentioning.

The so-called “witch’s” idol status was also only having prestige among ordinary players—those truly standing at the top didn’t even need to look at me properly.

“Using a Tier 12 small skill to interrupt our ultimate move…”

Bloody Lotus’s voice lowered a bit, that frivolity adding a trace of wariness.

“Death Lord, your strength is still undiminished.”

“Well, just interrupting.”

The response came from afar.

It was a gloomy, slightly thick male voice, like slowly floating up from very deep darkness, carrying the weight of a story, even the pauses seeming meaningful.

“For me… it’s nothing.”

I followed the sound.

Finally, in the deeper night, a figure slowly appeared.

He rode on a black skeleton horse—the horse’s skeleton black as iron, blue flames burning in the eye sockets, the firelight jumping reflecting cracked shadows, as if even the air was frozen.

And behind him—

Hundreds of Death Knights silently arrayed, armor heavy, auras surging from afar like the wind of a cemetery, making one feel their throat tighten just from seeing.

“You…”

Bloody Lotus’s tone indeed tensed up.

She lowered her head, I couldn’t see her expression clearly, but that “KING’s composure” was obviously forced to retract.

“Death Lord… What do you want by coming here?”

“Of course—”

Death Lord’s voice lowered a bit more, like a shadow pressing on the heart, slow, clear, undeniable.

“To snatch the Night Witch from you.”

He paused for a moment, as if confirming some conclusion already written to death, then dropped the last sentence with a firmer tone:

“She isn’t ‘possible.'”

“She definitely—is mine.”