“No need to say anything. I know exactly what you’re planning.”
Mirrorheart directly cut off Corolla’s words, leaving Corolla somewhat at a loss.
“It’s not like you’ve had designs on Master for just a day or two. Hearts are practically popping out of your eyes.”
“I-Is it that obvious? Does Master know?”
Corolla’s gaze began to dart away; being caught red-handed with her secret feelings left her a bit embarrassed.
“Master might know, or he might not. After all, he’s lived his entire life under that kind of gaze; he’s long since gotten used to it.”
Mirrorheart stated the obvious, which only put more pressure on Corolla.
“Forget it. Come find me tonight, and just follow my orders completely.”
“Yes!”
Having made her pact with Mirrorheart, Corolla was overjoyed.
…
“This is a special virus, a combination of snow from the Lost Snow Mountains and a specially formulated virus from the God of Plague.
“This virus has an extremely strong reproductive capacity. As long as it has sufficient resources, it can rapidly and infinitely multiply.”
“The principle is this: the snow from the Lost Snow Mountains causes loss of reason, and the virus allows beings that have lost their reason to fall under the God of Plague’s control, turning them into puppets of the God of Plague.
“This virus gives the Lost Snow the ability to spread, but it quickly deactivates upon contact with air, so it can only be transmitted through blood.
“Once the virus enters a human body, it spreads rapidly throughout the entire system, showing no visible difference until the virus has completely infected the brain, at which point the host is fully transformed into a puppet.
“Because the infected are essentially still alive, they require energy, which the virus supplies. This renders the internal organs useless; in fact, the organs are digested first to provide energy for the infected…”
After a full afternoon of research between Loren and Paqina, Loren finally understood the exact principle behind the virus. Loren once again marveled at the power of Paqina’s Arcane Ability.
Though her ability had no combat potential, from certain perspectives, it was still one of the strongest Arcane Abilities out there.
But if he were to name the single strongest ability, Loren had two candidates in mind.
The best mechanics belonged to Scarlett’s [Life Thief]. As for the strongest stats, that belonged to the Wrath Witch’s Arcane Ability.
[Eternal Terror]—that was the name of that ability.
As long as someone feared her, her stats would increase. And the stronger her stats became, the more people feared her.
At the same time, as long as anyone still feared her, she could never truly die. One day, she would be reborn from within people’s fear and continue spreading terror.
Therefore, it was almost impossible to kill her, making her the highest-difficulty BOSS.
There were only two ways to kill her. Either completely eliminate people’s fear of her, or use a specific Tarot card.
The Death card.
The effect of the Death card could be summed up as: “If you’re killed, you die.” With the Death card in hand, one only needed to kill the Wrath Witch once, and she would truly die. Even if people feared her again, she would never resurrect.
Without the Death card, the only other option remained, but completely eliminating people’s fear of the Wrath Witch was nearly impossible, not even for the God of Confusion.
The Church, however, could still manage it. They could make use of Anomalies.
In fact, the major churches all controlled a few manageable Anomalies, but even controllable ones came at a significant cost, so they were rarely used.
Thinking of this, Loren couldn’t help but sigh. He was only missing Lust and Wrath to have gathered all Seven Sins Witches, while the Witches’ Church was still in hiding.
Unfortunately, there were no leads on those two, and they might even still be young.
Having determined the virus’s principle, Loren used Return to Earth to dispose of the heads, leaving only a few syringes’ worth of the virus.
Loren planned to find a few death-row inmates to experiment on when he had the chance. Loren didn’t value the lives of death-row inmates—they should have considered that before committing their crimes.
The laws established by the Bountiful Church were actually quite lenient. Anyone sentenced to death under such circumstances was undoubtedly an utterly heinous criminal.
Of course, wrongful and false cases did occur. All Loren could do was minimize them as much as possible, but some situations were truly beyond his control.
For example, if some great noble committed murder and dumped the corpse on a loner with no family, and the Church immediately arrested and executed the loner.
In that case, Loren would have no way of knowing.
Fortunately, under Loren’s influence, such incidents rarely happened. The weeds in the Square might well have sprouted from the very spot where some noble had died.
By the time Loren and Paqina emerged from the laboratory, it was already evening. They had missed dinner, but everyone knew Loren’s personality and hadn’t disturbed him.
Paqina was just like Loren in that she would lose track of time while doing research, often accidentally pulling all-nighters.
However, her constitution was clearly not as robust as Loren’s. If she stayed up too long, the dark circles under her eyes became very noticeable, unlike Loren. Despite the extreme exhaustion—both physical and mental—from the previous night, Loren was still lively and bouncing around today.
After coming out, Paqina finally felt hungry. Fortunately, Mirrorheart had saved them some food, and it was just being reheated.
Today, Paqina had been exceptionally happy. After all, she got to spend an entire day researching with the person she loved. Though the content of their research was a bit gruesome, it didn’t diminish Paqina’s joy in the slightest.
As long as she was with the person she loved, she could do anything. She even ate with much more gusto during the meal.
They had come out very late; most of the others were already asleep, with only Mirrorheart and a few maids still waiting for them.
Corolla was yawning, clearly very sleepy.
“If you’re tired, go rest. We can clean up ourselves later.”
“You are our esteemed master. How could we possibly allow you to do such work?”
Mirrorheart suddenly spoke up, and her formal tone caught Loren a bit off guard.
“Right, right, right! I can’t eat your food for nothing. I have to earn my keep.”
Corolla quickly chimed in with Mirrorheart, even slapping her own face a few times to force herself awake.
“Alright, suit yourselves.”
After finishing the meal, Loren said goodbye to everyone. Having gone without sleep the entire previous night, Loren was feeling drowsy.
“Good night…”
Paqina yawned as she bid Loren farewell.
Mirrorheart watched Loren enter his own room, shot Corolla a meaningful glance, and then followed him in.
Loren lay down on the bed, ready to sleep. But just then, Mirrorheart suddenly walked in and covered his eyes.
“Guess who?”
“I need to sleep. Don’t bother me, Mirrorheart…”
Loren helplessly grabbed Mirrorheart’s wrist, trying to pull her hand away, but Mirrorheart didn’t budge an inch:
“Give me one more time before you sleep. Let’s do something special this time. Don’t open your eyes.”
“Fine…”
Loren ultimately chose to comply with Mirrorheart. Then, Mirrorheart began signaling Corolla with her eyes.