Chapter 535: The Witch Demon's Corpse Stitching

“Enemy attack!”

The sharp shout made the raging freak stop.

He trembled, his stiff, shriveled mouth grinning wide. “My little darlings, get ready!”

Monster after monster stood up. At the wave of his large hand, they surged forward. He was certain that in this region, he had no rivals.

NO! RIVALS! AT! ALL!

However, considering the previous surprise attack, he decided to add an extra layer of insurance.

A figure wearing armor with a pig’s head, holding two blades, stepped forward.

“Yes, my darling,” the freak said, looking at the Pig Knight’s figure, his eyes full of affection. “Go, my darling, show those bastards what you can do.”

「On the other side.」

Leech was discussing the applications of the crystals with a group of difficult scholars, but most of the time, he was just listening to the others argue.

Betty’s academic knowledge was undoubtedly the most limited in the group. Her research on explosions had also nearly reached its end. Without the help of the knowledge from those chemistry books, the cannon would have been her final powerful invention.

Her attempt to hand-build an internal combustion engine had to be temporarily halted, possibly because Leech had sent Chuina away on a temporary assignment.

However, after seeing the new energy source, she clearly had a different idea—a new idea about explosions.

“If it can be released, with just a little guidance, we could use the fire-water refined from fire-oil to create a highly concentrated Alchemy Bomb…”

She was clearly preparing to replace gunpowder with the new Energy Crystals. Leech even secretly guessed that he might leap directly from the early stages of gunpowder weapons into the era of energy weapons.

‘Building a laser cannon from scratch… As expected from the talent I value.’

“No, that’s too wasteful.” Tangkx Scholar would not allow such waste. She rejected Betty’s proposal without hesitation. In her view, this energy source should be used for casting Magic and for Magic augmentation.

If properly harnessed, it could make a single spell last much longer.

Theoretically, this application was feasible. Especially after studying the man-eating Magic Staff, Leech had already obtained a dozen or so sets of data and could begin preparing for the production of the first batch of Magic Staves.

When it came to crafting Magic Staves, the other parts were easy enough to handle, but finding curios imbued with Spiritual Power was difficult.

Now, they could craft a Magic Staff and then mount an Energy Crystal on it, just like changing a battery. This would allow for the mass-equipping of apprentices with Magic Staves, greatly increasing efficiency.

When the battery ran out, they could just swap in a new one. The cost was low.

Differing from the two women was Toma Scholar. He hoped to use the crystals as a power source for Rune Armor, as well as for Magic Arrays and Magic Scrolls.

After all, creating a Magic Scroll also required infusing it with Spiritual Power. Before the crystals, this had to be done manually, and infusing too much would take a toll on the body.

Leech thought Toma Scholar’s idea was excellent, but when he saw that it took two or three crystals just to make the armor’s arm move a few times, he decided to temporarily veto the idea.

If they really followed Toma Scholar’s design and used Energy Crystals to power movement, not to mention whether the underground ore reserves were sufficient, just moving for ten to twenty minutes would probably require carrying a small mountain of Energy Crystals taller than a person.

With everyone talking over each other, they couldn’t reach any conclusion.

The herbology apprentice, Vic, pitifully mentioned that he hoped they could try using Energy Crystals to grow medicinal herbs, but he was instantly silenced by the fierce glares from everyone else and obediently shut his mouth.

Pitiful and helpless.

In the end, it was Leech who made the final decision.

For now, the Energy Crystals could be used on small alchemy products, like the silicone-feel hand warmer made by that junior apprentice.

The silicone feel, however, had to go.

They would also be used for the production of Magic Staves and Magic Scrolls.

‘Suddenly having batteries and entering the energy age.’ That’s how absurd Leech felt right now. Before this, he had been relying on pure manpower. But this was good, too; he wasn’t about to wait step-by-step for his enemies to catch up.

After the discussion ended, Leech received a notification from Isis.

The war in the underground world was over.

The team of Dark Creatures led by Corpse Ghost Kaqi had won a decisive victory.

Once a group of ogres and Giants were enchanted with Magic, they became unstoppable armored vehicles. The Scorpion-tailed Lions picked off stragglers, and the centaurs finished off the wounded. The entire battle didn’t even last as long as the scholars’ argument.

Thousands of Undead Skeletons were CRACKED into heaps of bone fragments under the Giants’ fists. Occasionally, a few peculiar-looking creatures would charge out, only to be sniped by a two-headed ogre’s Fireball.

One of the more difficult opponents was a dual-wielding Knight with a pig’s head.

Its power level was somewhere between Extraordinary and Palace Level. To be precise, its head was Palace Level, but the rest of it was merely ordinary Extraordinary. So, when the Pig Knight charged menacingly toward Kaqi, he was sent flying with a single, casual punch.

Its head was fine, but its body shattered.

The fundamental reason the battle finally ended was that Kaqi had captured the leader behind the scenes.

A shriveled corpse.

An Undead.

But it possessed a strong sense of self, extremely high intelligence, and it could also feel fear.

This was an emotion Leech had never even seen in his Corpse Ghosts. Palace Level Corpse Ghosts were already incredibly powerful, but aside from their specific areas of interest, it was difficult for them to become interested in anything else.

“Name!”

“Um,” the Undead sobbed.

“Age.”

“Ninety-seven, or maybe eighty-seven,” Um said.

Leech kept a cold face and continued the interrogation. A crying Undead wouldn’t arouse his sympathy—a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed loli, on the other hand, might.

“Race?”

“Human.”

“Hm?”

Um said fearfully, “That was before. Now, I’m a Witch Demon, of the Undead Race.”

“Mm,” Leech nodded.

“All your handiwork?”

He looked at the peculiar things before him, one by one.

“Is this a Chimera?”

Leech controlled a Corpse Ghost to approach one of the bodies.

A Chimera, a powerful magical beast, possesses the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and a tail made of a python.

But the Chimera corpse before him seemed a bit too crudely made.

The body had been grafted together in a completely unreasonable way. The goat’s forelimbs were chopped off and crudely stuck onto the lion’s front, while the goat’s head lay on the lion’s back.

And there was the python tail, with a snake’s head at its tip.

“I adore those things,” Um said. “So… so I wanted to make my own. I researched a type of cutting and stitching Magic, but sometimes I also use bone cleavers, corpse-suturing needles, body-drying racks, flaying knives…”

Leech then looked at the Pig Knight and a humanoid monster covered in hands, and even saw something that looked like a dragon.

But it was obviously just the bat wings of a Scorpion-tailed Lion torn off and sewn onto the body of a Giant Lizard. It looked completely mismatched.

They were all created by the Witch Demon Um: dismembering corpses, stitching them together, and then turning them into Undead.

The craftsmanship was crude, but they weren’t just for show. Some of them actually had decent combat power, even rivaling Transcendents. A considerable number of Leech’s own forces had died.

Unfortunately, the Witch Demon had no top-tier power. He was helpless against the Palace Level Corpse Ghost Kaqi and could only get thoroughly beaten up.

“I’m very interested in your research,” Leech said.

Compared to the major investment of filling bodies with gold, or the waste-recycling-like method of directly extracting Extraordinary substances, the Witch Demon Um’s stitching technique took cost-effectiveness to the extreme. With a few patches and repairs, a corpse could be used again.

If the Half-Beastmen had been able to wait for this technology, more of them could surely have been saved.

“I am willing to serve you, my lord!”

“Don’t be so hasty,” Leech didn’t agree immediately. If all he wanted was the knowledge in the other’s head, it didn’t really matter if the guy was dead or alive. In fact, dead might even be better.

He asked, “What do you want those ores for?”

“A sacrifice,” Um said. “It’s an offering to the Demon Lord.”

“Mm,” Leech nodded, then ran a sword through the other’s heart. But considering it was an undead creature and probably wouldn’t die from that, he immediately summoned Black Dragon Du Ao.

“My… my lord?” Um was stunned, not understanding what he had said wrong.

“Deterrent bombardment. Don’t stop.”

Du Ao received the order and, facing the Witch Demon Um, frantically unleashed his deterrence attack. Under the ceaseless assault, Um’s soul grew weaker and weaker.

Leech believed his greatest strength was his ability to control his curiosity, to a certain extent.

This was the second time he had heard the title “Demon Lord.” The last time was on the High Magic Land island when he encountered Dreden Bill, who had wanted to obtain that crown that could bewitch the hearts of men.

That crown was now tossed in a crypt by Leech, permanently sealed away.

Who knew how many such crowns existed? Not touching it was the smartest choice.

When Leech felt a spiritual emptiness, he ordered Du Ao to stop. Du Ao still seemed like he wanted more.

Patting Du Ao’s head, he said, “You had your fun. I’m completely drained.”

Leech had the Corpse Ghost pick Um up. The next step was to turn him into a mere corpse, then acquire his stitching knowledge, but he would have to skip the part about the crown to avoid being deeply influenced.

As his own power and perspective grew, Leech became very wary of the consciousness and thoughts of the powerful.

He had always treated the Demon Lord’s crown as a taboo, and that hadn’t changed. Even the slightest bit of news about the crown was enough to grab his full attention.

Leech thought, following his gut, ‘If it comes to it, I’ll just have the Water Nymph look at the memories first. She can take the hit for me.’