Chapter 176: The Grand Witch Hecate Kingsley

The giant Wyvern flapped its leathery wings, sending a crushing wind toward the Shadow camp.

Some of the boys found it too hard to stay on their feet and fell to the ground. Others endured it better, only shielding their faces with their arms.

It landed on its long claws, tearing through the earth and rock. Then it lowered its head, stretching its long neck for its passenger to walk down.

Everyone held their breath, locking their eyes on the woman they had heard was one of the strongest. They were seeing her with their own eyes for the first time in their lives.

The Grand Witch Hecate slowly walked down its long neck, her white high heels making a clicking sound against the reptilian’s hard black scales.

A slight wind passed over the mountaintop, brushing against the tree leaves, but it wasn’t even strong enough to move her white robe, which was decorated with golden lines.

As soon as every Shadow saw the countless golden lines on her robe, their minds were flooded with all the paragraphs of her biography they had read in books. Even more lines covered almost the entire surface of her white Witch hat.

Every golden line decorating her clothes represented a groundbreaking discovery or invention the woman had gifted to this world, benefiting both Witches and Shadows.

The most loved and respected by them was the Shadow Movement ability, the most commonly used ability among Shadows, which allowed them to travel through shadows freely without spending any mana.

Just this one ability was enough to make them respect and revere the woman.

They quickly recovered from their shock and bowed their heads to greet the Grand Witch.

"Lady Hecate Kingsley."

She kept walking, her snow-white hair flowing behind her with each step, while her gray eyes quickly passed over all the children. A small smile appeared on her fair, unblemished face.

"You have good children here, Adam." Her voice floated around them like sweet music as she took her final step from the top of the Wyvern’s head and floated down.

The old man also bowed his head slightly to greet her.

"The praise belongs to you, Lady Hecate. You are the one who chooses and sends them here every time."

Hecate laughed instead of feeling ashamed, clearly enjoying how openly he had pointed out that she was praising herself.

She was the Head of the Chamber of Spell Constructs department at the Tower, but she was also very involved with the Shadows, since the idea for the elite team had come from her.

Every few years, she would choose those she deemed geniuses among geniuses. She would then send a few of them to Adam for training.

She walked in front of the children, who were still bowing their heads deeply, when her smiling face slowly turned into a frown.

"Seems like 1 is missing?"

She hadn’t been informed about the details of what happened last night.

She had only received the signal that something was wrong with the seal, so she left the Tower to rush here as soon as possible.

Adam let out a sigh. "The boy carrying the Eyes fell into the entrance last night."

Hecate’s frown deepened when she heard that. Her demeanor changed right away.

The air also seemed to change with her expression.

All the Shadow candidates suddenly disappeared from sight. Only Adam, the Grand Witch, and her Black Wyvern remained, lying silently on the ground near the still-burning campfire and looking as if it were sleeping.

When the old man looked around, he could no longer use his eyes to see through anything either. It was as if the entire Order around him had suddenly changed, leaving him unable to use any of his Bloodline Traits anymore.

It was the most terrifying spell Hecate had.

It gave her the power to rewrite the rules of reality by creating a personal domain within that place.

If she deemed someone not to exist, they would lose their existence.

If she deemed someone to be weak, they would lose all their strength.

The most terrifying part was that even Adam was only able to hear the chanting words, like a wind passing through for a split second, before the spell took shape.

He stroked his long white beard, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked over the Grand Witch’s body from head to toe.

"Like your youth, your powers have also lost nothing." With the children no longer around, his demeanor also changed. He spoke more casually now.

Hecate didn’t seem to like his attitude much as she scoffed. "You are still the same annoying old man."

She herself was hundreds of years old but looked no older than 30.

For as long as she had known Adam, though, he had always been an old man, looking like he was only a few days away from the grave every time she saw him.

Though she didn’t quite like the man’s character, she still had respect for him, so she asked politely.

"Can you tell me what exactly happened here? How could the boy have passed through the entrance like that?"

She had taken quite an interest in Magna since the boy had the trait of one of the Great Mothers, the Eyes of the Matriarch of Death.

Losing him like this would surely be like losing a precious resource for her.

But the most noteworthy thing was that Adam didn’t say the boy had died. He said the boy had passed through the entrance and was lost.

The entrance was sealed with the very spell she had placed, so it was like saying someone had passed through a locked door without a key.

"Well, about that, I’m just as lost as you." Adam’s eyes fell on the still-burning campfire. "The only thing I know, or what my instincts tell me, is that he is the reason the seal broke and the entrance opened."

Hecate found herself standing before a mystery that caused a confusion in her mind she hadn’t experienced in many years.

Adam was someone who could be blindly trusted. His power was another reason for that. Another of his qualities was his instincts.

He had never been wrong about what he felt so far.

So if he was saying the boy broke the seal, that had to be what happened.

"But how?" She fell into deep thought, unable to imagine anyone in this world who could break her spell like this.

Only one thought came to her mind, a terrifying possibility that made her eyes fill with hope and anticipation at the same time.