Leel hadn't given the matter much thought. His first reaction was actually delight:
"So I already count as one of your good friends?"
That's the part you focus on? Ais looked at Leel's simple happiness and couldn't hold back — she reached over and tapped him on the head:
"I'm telling you this so you know I accidentally ended up on a fairly sinister supernatural pathway. The sinister organization that controls this pathway — the Witch Cult — may come looking for you because of your connection to me."
Ais put emphasis on the key point:
"So — if anyone approaches you or your parents asking about me, be on your guard and don't say more than necessary. You don't want to give away how close we are.
If the person approaching you happens to be an unusually attractive woman, be especially careful — the potion on this pathway grants a significant boost to charm. That's one of the reasons the organization in question is called the Witch Cult."
Though Ais hadn't used much force, Leel still held the tapped spot with theatrical suffering:
"Understood. But Ais, you're very aggressive today."
Ais awarded him another look:
"I barely touched you. By the way — an evil organization full of Extraordinaries certainly has divination resources, so don't tell straightforward lies. There's no harm in letting them know basic facts about me — just be careful not to reveal the nature of our relationship clearly. Don't put your family in danger."
Her current contact with the Femi family was all motivated by practical reasons, so as long as Leel didn't let anything slip, those obsessive fanatics would have little justification to implicate the family. Especially with the church's pressure being what it was.
Still, a few words felt insufficient to put Ais's mind fully at ease. On the way to the countryside, she gave Leel a rough outline of the Instigator's abilities — to make him aware of those types of supernatural influence — and passed along a few conversational techniques so he wouldn't be subtly maneuvered into revealing things without noticing.
After passing through Green Park Street and looping around Green Cemetery, Ais and Leel reached the outskirts west of the city.
It was spring, but this section of the suburb near the cemetery drew very few visitors.
Clear of other people at last, Ais stopped concealing herself and quickly opened a wide gap between herself and the physically fragile Seer, leaving him only a receding silhouette.
Leel didn't hurry. He used his cane as a walking stick and slowly took in the fresh spring air and the green stretching to the horizon. Through the Eye of Secrets, even a landscape this full of life came with the occasional odd spiritual entity or strange visage mixed in — but long since accustomed to it, he found nothing particularly wrong with the experience. In fact, he thought pleasantly:
"Having a moment just walking freely on your own like this, without worrying about anything — that's not so bad either."
About twenty minutes later, the leisurely-strolling Leel spotted Ais in the distance, dragging something toward him with one hand and waving with the other.
Leel quickened his pace to catch up and found a wolf carcass beside Ais — its hind legs still encased in ice. Ais was breathing slightly hard, with a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead.
"This is just an ordinary coyote. How did it tire you out like this?" Leel said, puzzled.
Ais answered with visible satisfaction:
"I got lucky — ran into it within a few minutes. But on a whim I decided to try catching it barehanded. I spent about fifteen minutes not managing it — but running after it felt great."
Leel gave the carcass a sympathetic look:
"It must have been terrified."
"But it doesn't have to be afraid anymore." Ais said briskly:
"I'm about to turn it into an animated dead. You, Leel — a Seer who probably can't fight an ordinary person — step back."
"If I'm given enough preparation, I'm not completely helpless against ordinary people." Leel objected as he retreated.
In the broadest sense, any art not sanctioned by the Seven Gods could be considered dark magic. In the narrow sense, the term referred specifically to spells leaning toward the bloody, the sinister, the depraved — spells that practically announced themselves as evil.
The dark magic built into the Witch potion was dark magic in that narrow sense. So Ais naturally commanded the spell capable of transforming a corpse into an animated dead.
After pouring purchased wild-carrot powder over the carcass, she ground one of the wild-rage herbs down with tools borrowed from a pharmacy and scattered that over it too.
Then Ais summoned a sharp ice blade and made a small cut on her right index finger, letting her spiritually-dense blood fall onto the coyote's body and the newly scattered powder.
With that done, she crouched, spread her spiritual energy through her right hand into the mixture of carcass, powder, and blood, then spoke the Ancient Hermes word for "awaken."
As the word left her, she sensed through her intuition that the coyote's spiritual body — previously dissipating — suddenly became violently agitated. The spiritual energy that had been slowly fading within the carcass surged to life under the spell's stimulus, as though something inside this body was waking.
With the change, both Ais's spiritual energy and the powder and blood on the carcass began to be gradually consumed.
After a few seconds, Ais noticed her spiritual energy hadn't decreased much, but the powder and blood were nearly depleted. The activity of the coyote's spiritual energy also began to weaken in response.
Seems insufficient — but the amounts of my materials were all within specification. Could it be the type of animal? Sensing the spell was about to fail, Ais quickly brought out another portion of wild-rage herb and wild-carrot powder with her left hand and scattered it over the carcass.
Seeing the activity hold but not increase, she cut her right middle finger with the ice blade and let new blood fall over the body. With fresh blood soaking the carcass, the coyote's internal spiritual energy surged to life once more.
Signs of success again.
After another second or so, when the second batch of powder had been reduced by about a third, the activity of the carcass's spiritual energy crossed some threshold — and the body itself began to tremble.
The spell "Rouse Corpse" had succeeded.
Ais stood to observe. The trembling grew more pronounced, and the spiritual energy of the carcass — now radically different from before — seemed to be adapting to this new way of operating its own body.
She looked over her shoulder at Leel and offered the thought:
"You felt it too, didn't you? Wild-rage herb and wild-carrot powder seem to be doing exactly what their names suggest — stimulating the spiritual energy of the corpse, making it frenzied and active."
Leel reflected and replied:
"That might be why occult arts and supernatural power seem so inexplicable. Whatever these two plants originally do — as long as they carry the symbolic meaning of 'moving from still to active,' a spell can apply that symbolic meaning to make the same transformation happen in a corpse's spiritual energy, achieving the goal of making it move."
Ais added:
"But blood doesn't seem to carry that kind of symbolic meaning. Perhaps the two powders only provide the foundation for movement, while a craving for living spiritual energy is what actually drives the corpse."
The Witch's knowledge only emphasized that richer and more vital blood increased the success rate — without explaining why any of the materials worked.
"Possibly. What caused the near-failure partway through?" Leel nodded and asked.
"My guess is the type of corpse matters. The potion's built-in knowledge for comparable spells all uses human corpses as the subject." Ais offered.
"Because an animal's resentment and unwillingness at death is weaker than a human's — so animating one as a corpse is harder?"
"Possibly."
Even in this context, this kind of conversation was entirely normal. Observations of supernatural phenomena could only be made through the researcher's intuition — and speculation and conjecture were the standard mode of inquiry.
"Ais! Ais! Turn around — the corpse just stood up!" Leel's expression suddenly shifted to alarm.
Author's Note (this chapter):"That might be why occult arts and supernatural power seem so inexplicable. Whatever these two plants originally do — as long as they carry the symbolic meaning of 'moving from still to active,' a spell can apply that symbolic meaning to make the same transformation happen in a corpse's spiritual energy, achieving the goal of making it move."
Sounds like the Bloodclot Pill that treats edema. · Shandong ·